An Interview with the Co-Founder and COO of NAMBAYA

This week, for our series of interviews with young entrepreneurs, E-HUB sat down with Ludwig, Co-Founder and COO at Nambaya.

Nambaya is a health tech start up from Munich, providing platform solutions for health monitoring and are currently looking for Series A funding. There are two platforms with which different kind of analysis are done based on the ECG. There are 24h (or longer) measurements and their software then analyses the measurements. One of the software is medically certified and one more on the lifestyle side. With the lifestyle version stress, sleep and resilience (and many more things) is measured, whilst the medical platform is more along the lines of a traditional ECG. With the life platform the autonomous nervous system can be monitored by measuring the HRV, which is how they can see exactly how the body reacts to different stressors in real life.

EHUB: What is the vision behind Nambaya?

LUDWIG: We want to make health visible through knowing your own numbers and thus body. We objectively define health in numbers. Where are you currently? Where do you want to go? What are the steps to take? A unique product on the market so far is a small sensor (18g light) with which Nambaya creates scientifically based performance and sleep analyses. Meaningful health values such as heart and respiratory rate, heart rate variability, description of the situation and activity behavior are measured, evaluated and analyzed over 24 hours in order to put the current status quo in terms of health into figures.

EHUB: When was the moment you realized your idea really had potential?

LUDWIG: Nik (our founder) had been working in the health industry as a consultant for many years when he realized that medicine was always focusing on illness and never on the healthy body. This is when he started to do some research into this and discovered that with new technology, you could easily monitor a person’s vitals and most importantly their central nervous system through an ECG – Recorder.

EHUB: Have you always been an entrepreneur or wanted to become one? What was your biggest inspiration or key driving force to become an entrepreneur?

LUDWIG: I don’t think becoming an entrepreneur is something you write down when you are a little kid in kindergarden. Some people have this thirst in them to not want to live with the status quo. Some become rock stars – some entrepreneurs.

EHUB: What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur? Main challenges? Any challenges specific to the tech industry? Any relative obstacles in Germany or Europe?

LUDWIG: Favourite aspect is definitely being able to work on something you truly believe in and are extremely passionate about.

There are many challenges. Mainly regulatory – data protection for example. But there are many obstacles in the healthcare sector.

EHUB: How do you see the future of healthcare? What are the big trends in the sector?

LUDWIG: Personalization is a big topic in health care but there are many big trends starting from digitalization of patient records to AI.

EHUB: How is Health Tech changing the patient experience? Why do you believe it brings a superior value to the traditional healthcare sector?

LUDWIG: We believe that many of the process that used to be tiresome and not very widely available (e.g., long term ECG) will become commodities within the sector. Patients will be able to undergo a lot of test without their GP having to approve them. This will give back a lot of time to overcrowded ERs and to doctors to actually treat illness.

EHUB: Digital Health is the new trend in Tech, oftentimes start-ups in the health tech industry fall under the radar of big pharma companies like Roche or Siemens which are very strong in the diagnostics field. How do you see yourself differentiating Nambaya from its competitors? Do you consider merging as the next step or would you prefer to seek the path of independence?

LUDWIG: We don’t think like this. The only thing we can control ourselves is our product and the work we do. Everything else surrounding us is out of our control and it will only give you countless sleepless nights.

EHUB: Innovation is never sleeping, how do you ensure that you are on top of the game and also are able to protect your technology from being copied?

LUDWIG: The answer here is similar to the one above. Focus on being the best at what you do and making your product more user friendly and just generally better. And then the rest will always be a step behind.

EHUB: Do you believe that use of technology will completely disrupt the traditional healthcare sector?

LUDWIG: Absolutely – but it is not going to. It already has!

EHUB: Can you describe a typical day? Anything you can share that helps keep you focused and motivated?

LUDWIG: There is no typical day! We always start the day with an all hands in the morning. This way everyone knows what’s going on from management to interns. And the rest is free flow….

EHUB: How do you generate new ideas?

LUDWIG: This is a tough one. I think most ideas start up as mere thoughts. The important thing is to never think that a thought is stupid or wrong. Go speak to someone about it that knows more about it. And then you start forming an idea out of it.

EHUB: Any comments on attracting talents to join your team or developing partnerships?

LUDWIG: Probably one oft he most difficult things for a start up at our stage. Once you are well funded people will come. The way that has worked best for us is through personal connections. We are still at a stage where the team is what makes the organization. Therefore, if people know who we are makes paycuts etc. easier.

EHUB: What has been your proudest or most satisfying moment so far?

LUDWIG: There are many but I think the best one was our first report generated via our own platform. Seeing all the ideas finally coming to fruit was amazing.

EHUB: If you had the chance to start over, would you do anything differently?

LUDWIG: To be honest this is quite tough to answer. It’s the steps we took that lead us where we are now. Therefore, changing any of them wouldn’t have brought us here.

EHUB: What advice would you give to someone wishing to start their own business? Any skills you believe an entrepreneur should have?

LUDWIG: I’d answer this the same way as the question if someone is born an entrepreneur. There is no one skill. I’ve seen founders with the most incredible backgrounds. The only thing is – don’t be afraid!

EHUB: What additional skills do you think are necessary now to develop as an entrepreneur during the pandemic/ongoing challenging times?

LUDWIG: I think fundraising has become more difficult; not being able to meet potential investors etc.

EHUB: How has the pandemic changed your business? In what ways? Benefits? Challenges? Long term? Day-to-day business? Has the pandemic increased the opportunity for growth of the health tech sector?

LUDWIG: Being in health we are a net – benefiteur. But many of our projects have been pushed back and postponed.

EHUB: How do you believe the pandemic will reshape the entrepreneurship world?

LUDWIG: As a historian I think that this is something the world has already been through. Big crises are also huge opportunities. There still is soooo much capital lying around and so many massive problems in the world that need fixing that I think entrepreneurs will live on.

EHUB: What do you think are the industries that most benefited from the pandemic? Are you implementing some of their ideas/ characteristics into your business?

LUDWIG: An easy one here are the video conference companies, so not really.

EHUB: What’s next for Nambaya?

LUDWIG: We are currently preparing our next funding round. So, this will keep us busy until the summer.

THANK YOU LUDWIG FOR YOUR TIME AND INSIGHTS!

FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT THEIR

WEBSITE

INSTAGRAM

FACEBOOK

YOUTUBE