When the founders of a dispenser to administer medicine for children with asthma attended Central Oregon angel investor conference last autumn, they came just short of the prize money. However JettStream certainly learned their lesson, and came back this month to walk away with $220,000.
This was the third annual Southern Oregon Angel Investment Conference competition, and Sarah Cota, who co founded the company while searching for a better way treat her son Jett’s asthma, said that losing out last year only made their product better. ‘Any time you go through a due diligence you get feedback that’s nice to hear. But all those nice things, you don’t learn anything from that,’ she said. ‘It’s the hard questions that challenge you and how you fill those holes in your strategy that help you.’
The non-intrusive dispenser developed by the company is for nebulized medications for children of all ages whose wellbeing has been affected by asthma and chronic breathing ailments. It involves a mask which administers the medicine while your child is sleeping, so he or she isn’t likely to pull it off. Cota noted that she has been using the prototype on her son, joking, ‘He’s our guinea pig.’
Yet the dispenser has shown serious results, as Cota told investors and other conference attendees at the Bigham Knoll Events Centre. She explained that she took Jett to the emergency room 18 times before introducing the prototype, but ‘since we began using the prototype we haven’t had to take Jett to the emergency room.’ But if Jett has been using the prototype all along, why wasn’t this enough to persuade the investors last year?
‘We were a finalist,’ Cota said, but this time around the company’s pitch has become more targeted in preparation for investors. ‘We learned we had to refine our message, describe what our target was and focus on staying focused.’ Cota commented that over this past year she has had to push hard to form partnerships with medical industry people and get customer feedback. She said, ‘we needed to bring in the right advisers.’
Proceeds from the investment will go to research studies, tooling production, marketing and working capital. ‘We will be able to hire more people now and begin paying some of the people who have been working for free,’ Cota said, and assured the effectiveness of the treatment by saying that the approach ‘takes the fight out of’ asthma treatment for parents who have to be in the room with children as they take it.
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