Welcome to the MM&M Startup Showdown

Description:

Back for its third year, MM&M’s shark-tank style competition, now known as Startup Showdown, gives health startups and pharma marketers a safe venue for the two to consider beyond-the-pill collaborations.

Health startups remain hungry to connect with pharma marketers to explore Pill+ pacts. And biopharma manufacturers are ever more eager to increase visibility of advances in health tech in order to bring innovative thinking back to their organizations. Aiming to fill this niche, the program gives startups a way to meet and pitch their business models to biopharma and medical device marketers in a live "shark tank" setting.

This year’s program once again features both live and digital components. The web-based entry and pre-judging format enables a wide pool of health-tech firms to enter and present their wares to “sharks” operating in multiple disease states and areas of biopharma and medtech. 

Finalists chosen from among the top scorers then pitch before a live audience at the MM&M Transforming Healthcare conference (May 1, NYC), vying for a package of benefits reserved for those deemed by judges to have the most compelling value proposition.
 
Overview:

The Startup Showdown will proceed in three stages:

1) a qualifying round (MM&M staff vets entries to ensure minimum qualifications are met)
2) a round of online judging to determine the finalists
3) finalists will then be notified and will be required to pitch before the live audience May 1 at our conference in NYC, where the winner will be announced.

Startups whose submissions meet the minimum requirements will proceed to the online judging round (criteria below). List of industry and agency judges to be announced. The winning entrepreneur(s) will take home bragging rights and a reward in the form of valuable feedback from the biopharma industry, an opportunity to be seriously considered for a future Pill+ collaboration, and possibly more benefits.

Contest Entry Eligibility:

Eligible companies are those five-years-old or less and who operate in any area of digital health. As the goal of the program is a pilot or business relationship with biopharma or traditional medical device company, entrants should have a strong desire to work with, and be prepared to explain how their solution could add value for, one of these kinds of companies. This could impact scoring (e.g., a company in the digital therapy category could score more points for relevance than one in the payer administration category).

Entry Fees:

There is no fee to enter, but all entrants must agree that, if they are selected as finalists, they must attend the live conference on May 1 in NYC (at their expense) to make a brief 2-minute presentation to the sharks (who will also be required to attend).

Prizes:

NEW! Digital Honoree
This year’s winners will include one Digital Honoree -- an entrant whose submission garners significant audience voting and engagement on MM&M social channels. The finalists, chosen based on the judges’ online scoring, will be promoted on MM&M’s website and social channels in advance of the conference. The audience will pick their favorite via likes, retweets, and/or shares and mentions. This honoree will be announced at the conference and in any event recaps.

Live Conference winner:

• A year’s worth of mentoring from a select group of judges
• Profile/story on mmm-online.com website
• Contact details from certain sharks
• Opportunity for an on-site meeting at one of the sharks’ home offices to explore a beyond-the-pill pact