AsiaTechDaily - Asia's Leading Tech and Startup Media Platform
  • Topics
    • AI & Big Data
    • AR & VR
    • Blockchain
    • Clean Technology
    • Content & Games
    • Cybersecurity
    • Enterprise & SaaS
    • Gadgets & Electronics
    • Health & Bio
    • FinTech
    • IoT
    • Transportation & Logistics
    • Marketplaces & E-commerce
    • Ecosystem
    • Robotics
    • Investments
  • Deals
    • Private Equity
    • Venture Capital
    • IPO & Markets
  • Interviews
    • Startup Investing
    • Fundraising
    • Product Launching
  • MORE
    • Events
    • Startups Advice
  • Submit an Article
  • Forums
  • Jobs
  • REGISTER
  • login
No Result
View All Result
AsiaTechDaily - Asia's Leading Tech and Startup Media Platform
No Result
View All Result
Home featured

How Dr Bechara Saab, CEO & Chief Scientist of Mobio Interactive Raised $2.4M To Make Healthcare Effective And Accessible To Every Human

 664 total views,  16 views today

Be one of the first to comment
AsiaTechDaily Writer by AsiaTechDaily Writer
PUBLISHED: January 11, 2021 UPDATED: January 14, 2021
in featured, Fundraising, Interviews
0
Bechara Saab
15
SHARES
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Bookmark(0)

Please login to bookmark

No account yet? Register

Dr Bechara Saab is the CEO & Chief Scientist of Mobio Interactive. Mobio Interactive (MI) is a digital therapeutic and performance enhancement company empowering better living and faster healing. MI blends science and design with internally developed technology that remotely and objectively measures mind and body data (typically via computer vision enabled psychobiometrics). By partnering with medical and academic institutions worldwide, MI tests its digital therapeutic through multi-centre randomised controlled trials. By doing so, MI is able to develop an effective and clinically validated product that is accessible to everyone.

Until 2017, Dr Saab was a Principal Investigator at the Zurich Neuroscience Centre. His laboratory at the Psychiatry Hospital focused on understanding molecules and neural circuits that give rise to the motivation to explore. This avenue of research has shed light on the mechanisms underscoring the intimate relationships between exploration, efficient learning and cognitive disease. At the circuit level, the importance of curiosity for healthy living may parallel the beneficial effects of mindfulness that MI delivers to its customers through the digital therapeutic, Am Mindfulness.

In an exclusive interview with AsiaTechDaily, Dr Saab says:

The best advice I ever received was from my father when I was just 10 years old. I remember it vividly because it was a conceptual shift in my understanding of the universe and the human brain. “Remember,” he told me, “there is not one person out there that can be your hero, there are only certain aspects of any one person that you may strive to emulate. Your actual hero, the person you most want to be, is a composite of many role models.” This advice has led me to seek out mentorship from all types of people. Having mentors is the key to success. Just ask anyone that ever succeeded.

Read on to know more about Dr Bechara Saab and his journey.

Bechara Saab

Please tell me about your personal background and What motivated you to get started with your company?

Dr Saab: My career has been in academia, recently at the Zurich Psychiatric Hospital. After feeling I had already made enough of a contribution to basic science for a lifetime, I endeavoured to do something more meaningful. We started Mobio Interactive to help restructure the global healthcare economy to serve the needs of every human.

What is your current main product, and can you share any previous product pivot story to the current product?

Dr Saab: Am Mindfulness. It is the first meditation app shown to outperform placebo in clinical trials. It is currently the only meditation app that personalizes to each individual according to an objective measure of stress performed without a wearable.

How much money have you raised in total so far? When was the recent funding round? 

Dr Saab: $2.4M. Most recently, $1.8M in a Seed round that closed 2020 Q3.

What were the internal decision processes in determining when to begin fund-raising, and what were the logistics for this? And how many investors have you met so far, and how did you meet these investors, and which channels worked best for you?

Dr Saab: We waited until we knew that we had a robust business foundation that could scale. We’ve met with hundreds of investors, most of whom would not have been appropriate for our company for one reason or another (i.e., didn’t fit all three: scope, ticket size, location). We probably had about 10 investors that looked at us seriously, and about half of these participated in the Seed. We meet most investors through our ever-expanding network. Shout out to OBIO, SOSV and WeWork Labs for key introductions. 

What are the biggest challenges and obstacles that you have faced in the process of fund-raising? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? 

Dr Saab: The greatest challenge – by far – was bringing the previous investors and incoming investors into alignment. As we now turn our attention to Series A, we aim for the entire process to be more transparent.

What are your milestones for the next round? And what are your goals for the future?

Dr Saab: We are working directly with our potential Series A investors to define core milestones that would trigger their investment. Some obvious milestones are ARR, clear demonstration of product-market fit, IP defensibility, and because we are in healthcare, regulatory approval, and reimbursement. Our goal is to become the largest provider of digital therapeutics on earth. 

How have you attracted users, and with what strategy have you grown your company from the start to now?

Dr Saab: We are currently a B2B company. Therefore, our population of product users is highly correlated to our clients’ number and size in healthcare (insurance and pharma, and large multinationals). Eventually, we will directly engage in healthcare products, as resources and the business models allow.

Which has been the best marketing software tool for the growth of your startup, and why? 

Dr Saab: For us, it is the product itself.

How do you plan to expand globally?

Dr Saab: Partners, partners, partners.

What are the most common mistakes companies make with global expansion?

Dr Saab: It is not having a local partner.

How are you handling the COVID-19 outbreak and what does it mean for your company’s survival in the future?

Dr Saab: While the pandemic has disrupted some of our clinical trials, our work situation has not changed much. We have always worked efficiently remotely from many corners of the world. Being a digital healthcare company, COVID-19 has helped accelerate the adoption of our products.

What are the most common mistakes founders make when they start a company? 

Dr Saab: Probably either not securing enough cash or not starting off with the right team. A group of people that covers all the company’s core needs and enough funding to reach important milestones is essential for success. For this reason, Mark and I waited until after Avetis joined full time before we started seriously seeking Seed funding.

What are the top-three books or movies (TV series) that changed your life and why?

Dr Saab:

  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks. This book, along with others by Sacks, motivated me to become a neuroscientist
  • Positive Disintegration, Kazimierz Dabrowski. This book, along with 15 years of studying the brain, showed me that destruction could be a growth form
  • Thermodynamics or any second-year chemistry textbook. Within, I discovered that temporary assumptions could simplify complex problems to the point that part of a problem can be solved relatively easily, and when re-assembling these partial answers, the original assumptions can be removed to reveal a full solution. And as the saying goes, “what works for thermodynamics, also works for life”.

How do you keep yourself motivated every day?

Dr Saab: As a teenager, I realized that if I do one thing every day that has a good chance of making me smile the next day, then most mornings, I’ll have something to smile about.

What are the top three life lessons that you want instilled in your (future) children?

Dr Saab:

  • There are more differences between the individuals in any given group than differences between any two groups
  • The variety within our behaviour is what makes us most similar to our neighbours
  • Do one thing every day that has a good chance to make you happy the next day, and then you’ll rise each morning with a reason to smile

What would you like to be remembered for?

Dr Saab: It doesn’t matter. However, what I’d like to do more than anything else in my life is help establish, first on a planet other than earth, a novel system of government that is more resistant to corruption than anything the world has experienced thus far.

You can follow Dr Bechara Saab here.

Tweets by Am_Mindfulness

Are you looking to secure investment for your startup or a keen startup enthusiast, keep an eye on our interview section.

Follow Asia Tech Daily to know about the innovative startups and how they are revolutionizing the ecosystem.

What's your thoughts?
+1
0
Upvote
+1
0
Clap
+1
0
Clap
+1
0
On fire
+1
0
Meh
+1
0
Clap
+1
0
Tags: Bechara Saabdigital therapeuticsfounderfounder interviewMobio Intractive

Related Posts

featured

The Business Of Succeeding Online

January 20, 2021
featured

Dable, A Korea Based Leading Global Content Discovery Platform Raises US$12M In Series C Round For Global Expansion

January 14, 2021
Johannes Siebers
featured

How Johannes Siebers, Co-founder and CEO of Holidu Raised $48.8M To Build A Search Engine For Vacation Rentals

January 14, 2021
Joey Chung
featured

Joey Chung, Co-Founder And CEO At The News Lens- An Independent Digital Media Startup In Taiwan With 14M+ Readers

January 19, 2021
Kimberly Yao
featured

Kimberly Yao, CEO And Co-Founder Of CloudEats- A Pioneer Cloud Restaurant Company In SouthEast Asia

January 12, 2021
Luis Valente
featured

Luis Valente, CEO & Co-Founder Of iLof- An Intelligent Platform For Precise, Patient-Centric Drug Development

January 11, 2021
0 0 vote
Article Rating
Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please login to comment
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

FREE NEWSLETTER

No Result
View All Result

TRENDING POSTS

  • Art Shaikh, Founder and CEO of CircleIt- A Virtual Time Capsule Right At Your Fingertips!

     8,029 total views,  5 views today

  • How Max Chizhov, Co-Founder And CEO Of iFarm Raised $4M To Build An Indoor Farming Solution Provider In Today’s Urban Environment?

     4,680 total views,  4 views today

  • Vietnamese e-commerce startup Lozi secures new round of financing led by Vulpes Investment Management

     4,111 total views,  2 views today

  • How Mathijs Eefting, Co-Founder And CEO Of Moteefe Raised $25M To Build An E-Commerce Platform Providing Infrastructure, Customization, And Global Fulfillment For 5000+ Retailers?

     3,603 total views,  9 views today

  • Egor Melnikov, Founder And CEO OF ARNA Genomics – On A Mission To Save Lives From Cancer By Developing Innovative Fluid Biopsy Technologies

     3,458 total views,  3 views today

  • Andrew Luong, CEO and Co-Founder of Doorvest- Own High-Yield Rental Homes Entirely Online!

     3,261 total views,  3 views today

  • How David Eberle, Co-Founder And CEO At Typewise Raised $1M To Build A Next Generation Smartphone Keyboard?

     3,161 total views,  3 views today

  • How Yoyo Chang, Co-Founder, CEO and President at KodyPay Raised $2.3M To Revolutionise Payment Experiences?

     3,025 total views,  1 views today

  • Indian Startup Ecosystem – Exclusive Year End Analysis – 2020 – All You Need To Know!

     2,977 total views,  5 views today

  • Sean O’Sullivan, Founder And Managing Partner Of SOSV – A Global Venture Capital Firm With 1000+ Portfolio Companies And $800M+ Assets Under Management

     3,187 total views,  2 views today

COUNTRIES

  •  Australia
  •  Austria
  •  Bhutan
  •  Brunei
  •  Bulgaria
  •  Cambodia
  •  Canada
  •  China
  •  Dubai
  •  Europe
  •  Finland
  •  France
  •  Germany
  •  Hong Kong
  •  India
  •  Indonesia
  •  Ireland
  •  Israel
  •  Japan
  •  Lithuania
  •  Malaysia
  •  Mexico
  •  Myanmar
  •  Nepal
  •  Netherlands
  •  New Zealand
  •  Norway
  •  Philippines
  •  Poland
  •  Qatar
  •  Russia
  •  Singapore
  •  South Korea
  •  Sweden
  •  Switzerland
  •  Taiwan
  •  Thailand
  •  Turkey
  •  Ukraine
  •  United Kingdom
  •  United States
  •  Vietnam

More from our network


  • ktd

  • atd

  • itd

  • ktt

  • kgd

  • kpp

  • ktp

  • kpoppost

  • ustechtimes

Copyright © 2020 AsiaTechDaily.com| About Us | Seed acceleratorTerms of Use| Privacy Policy| Cookie Policy Contact : press@asiatechdaily.com |

No Result
View All Result
  • Topics
    • AI & Big Data
    • AR & VR
    • Blockchain
    • Clean Technology
    • Content & Games
    • Cybersecurity
    • Enterprise & SaaS
    • Gadgets & Electronics
    • Health & Bio
    • FinTech
    • IoT
    • Transportation & Logistics
    • Ecosystem
    • Marketplaces & E-commerce
    • Robotics
    • Investments
  • Deals
    • Private Equity
    • Venture Capital
    • IPO & Markets
  • Interviews
    • Startup Investing
    • Fundraising
    • Product Launching
  • MORE
    • Events
    • Startups Advice
  • Submit an Article
  • Forums
  • Jobs
  • REGISTER
  • Login

Copyright © 2020 AsiaTechDaily.com| About Us | Seed acceleratorTerms of Use| Privacy Policy| Cookie Policy Contact : press@asiatechdaily.com |

wpDiscuz
0
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x
| Reply