17 January 2007
When Giovanna Forte's doctor brother sought her help in marketing his female-friendly urine sample device, she struggled to get funding. That was until g2i came to the siblings' assistance.
Who: Giovanna Forte, MD of Funnelly Enough, a company founded with her brother Dr Vincent Forte. Vincent is the inventor of the Peezy, a flushable, single-use, patient-friendly product designed to capture a mid-stream urine sample.
Biggest challenge: 'Getting the first round of funding. Without it, we would have been struggling. Once you've got that, it gives you confidence: you're not defensive or pleading when you phone people up.'
Top tips: 'Don't give up. If you really believe in something, keep going. Also, listen to people who've done it and failed. Sometimes, you can learn more from them than from people who made it work.'
g2i experience: 'I learned a lot more about business and how to raise funding in four or five days than I had in my previous 17 years of running my sole proprietor business.'
When Giovanna Forte was a small child, she remembers her brother Vincent was always cutting up bits of paper and making things. Once the two of them grew up, she formed her own media relations business, Forte Communication, while Vincent became a doctor. As a GP, he often had to ask female patients to give a urine sample, which usually involved handing the patient a 21 mm internal diameter universal container to provide a mid-stream sample. A regular response to this request was 'for heaven's sake doctor, how do you expect me to pee into that?' says Giovanna.
Women would frequently experience urine spillage onto their hands, the toilet bowl and the bathroom floor. Aside from the unpleasantness - and that's before the patient tried to get the urine mid-stream - there was also a risk of environmental contamination, which could render the sample useless for analysis. It is estimated that contamination affects around ten per cent of all urine samples.
The situation piqued Vincent's childhood inventor tendencies and led him to create a design based around a funnel. 'He put it in a drawer and forgot about it,' Giovanna recalls. That was until the day an envelope arrived promoting the inaugural Medical Futures Innovation Award in 2001. Vincent submitted his design and won the Medical category award. It was then that he approached Giovanna and asked her to help take the product to market.
Giovanna admits they were quite naive about the Peezy. They thought that because the product was such a good idea they simply had to get in touch with a manufacturer of paper products and it would license the Peezy. 'I must have tried about 20 or 30,' Giovanna recalls, but none was interested. Instead, they decided to employ their own designers, while taking out patents for the Peezy in a number of countries round the world. By 2004, they'd been through three sets of designers: each was very enthusiastic, but the Fortes felt they all made the product more complicated than it needed to be. At that point, they realised they would have to do the project themselves.
The design they settled on was more-or-less the one originally produced by Vincent, with additional engineering from the company's most recent designers. 'Being a doctor, Vincent understands the process,' says Giovanna.
Ready for investment
At the end of 2005, after doing the rounds of private investors and funds, Giovanna found her way to the London Technology Fund, which put her in touch with the gateway2investment (g2i) programme: 'I rung them up and they invited me to go to one of their seminars.' Giovanna was impressed by the event and the team on hand, which included specialist advisors from Grant Thornton, investors and industry experts. 'I liked it because people were listening and taking it seriously,' she says.
G2i is part of a range of intervention initiatives supported by the London Development Agency (LDA) to assist London's technology entrepreneurs and is delivered by a consortium including Grant Thornton, Library House, E-Synergy, Quo-Tec and the Innovatory.
Until this point, the company and product had been funded privately by the Forte siblings, who had borrowed to finance it. 'We had both got the bit between our teeth, we knew there was a market for it,' says Giovanna. The interest shown by g2i helped to reinforce and validate that belief.
After in depth meetings with the g2i team, Giovanna attended g2i's four day Investment Readiness Workshop programme. Although not a fan of courses - 'sitting in classrooms is anathema to me,' she admits - about an hour into the first afternoon session, Giovanna became hooked. She now feels she learnt more about raising funding and business in those few days than she had in the previous 17 years.
At the end of the course, the attendees had to vote on the product most likely to get investment. The Peezy came second. Following the course, g2i referred Giovanna to the E-Synergy early growth fund: Funnelly Enough was looking for £150,000 for the first round and got approval for up to £100,000. 'We ended up with £75,000 and matched that with funding from private investors,' she says. Some of the additional investment came from the board and the rest from friends and family.
Perfecting the product
The funding has been used to research the material used in the Peezy, to make sure it's absolutely right for the product. The Fortes had to undertake microbiological research on the material, Plantic, to ensure the urine wouldn't be affected in any way that might lead to contamination. In the meantime, Vincent has been trialling and testing the device. He's made 24 pilot Peezys by hand which have been tested with his staff and by Giovanna and associates in London to make sure they have the right shape and level of user friendliness. They found that they do.
The plan is to make a couple of thousand units and carry out clinical trials to find out how much the Peezy will help reduce contamination of urine samples. There are roughly 100 million urine samples a year in the NHS: if ten per cent are contaminated, that's 10 million that have to be resampled at a rough cost of £8 each. Funnelly Enough already has a NHS Trust signed up to carry out the clinical trial.
As part of its ramp-up, the company has also taken on an interim director of sales development. Giovanna was introduced to Richard D'Silva of marketing and selling consultancy Vision Match during the g2i process. 'He's been making phone calls and warming people up,' says Giovanna. Response has been enthusiastic and D'Silva has succeeded in securing letters of intent from several major distributors.
Funnelly Enough now plans to start manufacturing the Peezy in September and expects to be selling it shortly afterwards.
'We've got to the point where we know how the Peezy is going to be made and we know exactly how we're going to get to market. We've come a long way really,' says Giovanna. She credits much of that progress to her g2i experience. 'All the different companies [in the g2i consortium] played the part of mentor. If I had a problem with something, they would just say 'come in and spend a morning here'. The advice I got was absolutely invaluable. I don't know of any other scheme which offers that.'
Giovanna Forte was talking to Billy MacInnes of Webster Buchanan Research