Funding Stories: Steve Roest co-founder of PocDoc

Funding Stories is a blog series that shares real-life funding experiences from our portfolio founders. Raising a round can be tough on founders and their teams. It doesn’t always follow a linear path and it takes time and perseverance. 

At Forward, we want to give founders their best shot at success, so by sharing these personal funding experiences from our portfolio companies, we hope budding entrepreneurs, founders gearing up for their next round and investors can gain some value insights from those who’ve been before them. 

For our first funding story, say hello to  PocDoc - a health-tech platform that combines digital technology and a proprietary lateral flow system that determines the quantitative concentration of key blood-based biomarkers associated with major global diseases.

The app allows anyone with a smartphone or tablet to test themselves for a range of medical conditions. Users can get tested using a smartphone anytime, anywhere, and get their results in minutes, instead of waiting days or weeks for the same result through a standard lab test. PocDoc’s mission is to solve global health issues by focusing on the prevention, monitoring and risk-reduction of lifestyle diseases and is passionate about sharing this message. 

Steve Roest is PocDoc’s CEO and co-founder, where he has raised multiple rounds of early-stage funding, won an Innovate UK grant award, and is a member of the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders review board. With over 15 years of experience in the digital and B2C technology sectors at global scale, Steve is on a mission to solve global health issues by focusing on the prevention, monitoring and risk-reduction of lifestyle diseases and is passionate about sharing this message. Want to learn more about their funding journey to date? Read on. 

Where did the idea for your business come from? 

The inspiration for starting the business happened whilst our co-founder, Kiran, was on maternity leave with her first child. A relative of hers was trying to get their cholesterol checked at the GP, but couldn’t. The GP stated that they hadn’t budgeted for preventative testing and  didn’t have anyone available to take the blood.

After further research, Kiran discovered that accessibility and affordability of diagnostic testing is a major problem - not just in the UK, but across the world.

Lack of access and high costs create huge health inequality, and long wait times for tests and results means that many diseases and health conditions aren’t being detected early enough. Because of this, people are missing out on vital treatment and outpatient services are under immense pressure.

This generated the PocDoc mission: to make diagnostic testing as accessible and affordable as possible. PocDoc allows anyone with a smartphone to give themselves a blood test for major conditions in real time, wherever and whenever they like, with results and health assessment immediately available in the PocDoc app.What’s your funding story so far?

After securing angel investment from a range of influential HealthTech investors, PocDoc won two Innovate UK awards as a critical part of the Covid response and signed partnerships with over 40 clients including NHS Digital, Department of Health and Social Care and PATH to deliver app-based health testing.

In January 2022, we announced the close of our $3.2m Seed Investment round, led by Forward Partners and MMC which will accelerate our growth in the UK and the US.

What’s your funding story so far?

After securing angel investment from a range of influential HealthTech investors, PocDoc won two Innovate UK awards as a critical part of the Covid response and signed partnerships with over 40 clients including NHS Digital, Department of Health and Social Care and PATH to deliver app-based health testing.

In January 2022, we announced the close of our $3.2m Seed Investment round, led by Forward Partners and MMC which will accelerate our growth in the UK and the US.

What fundraising tips would you give other founders who are looking to raise money?

• Define the problem clearly to help investors “get it” as quickly as possible. You need to explain the problem both qualitatively (user stories, case studies, personal experience) and quantitatively (market sizing, cost savings). Draw a clear line between the problem and your specific solution, communicating your solution in terms of a mission.
• Be proactive about your weaknesses across the aspects of your business and establish a pathway to addressing them. Understanding concerns investors could raise in advance allows you to develop carefully constructed responses and work out how to solve them. 
• Don’t kid yourself into thinking there are no weaknesses - especially if you're at an early stage. Ignoring your weaknesses will mean missing a chance to improve the company, and you’ll look naïve to investors.
• Talk to as many investors as you can, and take notes about what they ask. Every interaction with someone is a chance to learn and develop your pitch, but you have to be an active participant in that process.
• Don’t be afraid of hearing “no''. Embrace it, and hunt down the “why” – “why are you saying no?”. Excellent sales people intuitively do this but founders, especially ones without commercial backgrounds, can be scared of negative feedback. 
• Don’t take it personally, embrace it and use it to improve you, your company and your pitch. Don’t burn those relationships either. Even investors that say no can become advisors and connect you to others who may be interested.
• Finally, work hard and bring energy and positivity to your pitch. If you’re not the most positive cheerleader for your venture, who else will be? Fundraising is hard, but it is good discipline for building a successful venture. It’s humbling, but it should be – you’re asking people to give you their money.

What’s next for PocDoc?

PocDoc has an ambitious roadmap ahead, with plans to expand our line of tests. We have announced the launch of our world-first smartphone based PocDoc Lipid Test, which covers the full five marker lipid panel that has been established as the gold standard for cardiovascular assessment. We are targeting the UK market first, but we’re already on our FDA pathway for a US launch later in 2022.

PocDoc will then launch tests to address Type 2 diabetes, Female Hormone imbalance, kidney and liver diseases and more in the near future, which are all in development.

Beyond this, PocDoc’s cloud-first platform unlocks the ability to quickly and easily integrate any existing lateral flow tests to the app to enable smartphone testing anywhere and enable any smartphone to become a universal digital reader.

In 2022, we will deploy a PocDoc Polio app in Pakistan, Senegal and Tunisia in partnership with the Global NGO PATH to aid with Polio Eradication.

Looking to write your own funding story? We’d love to hear from you. You can apply for funding here or get involved with our new Office Hours here.

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