Meet
Corinne Vargas
Investment Opportunity : Seeking $300K in pre-seed funding
At a Glance
Company SMARTCharts
Year Created 2018
Mission Enable all rehabilitation patients to achieve their maximum potential after life-changing diagnoses. SMARTCharts is an EHR add-on that creates AI-powered, patient-accessible care plans for therapeutic rehabilitation
Target Markets/Audience Outpatient rehabilitation: Hospital Systems, Private Practice Groups, EHRs - Rehabilitation Specialized
Website mysmartcharts.com
Background:
What makes Corinne unique?
Corinne is a founder who has experienced the pain points she sets out to alleviate with SMARTCharts. After starting her career as an actuary, she became a speech-language pathologist and realized that lengthy, jargon-filled rehabilitation documentation wasn't helpful for care providers or patients. Using her unique background, she devised a way to automate speech, occupational, and physical therapy notes to "storytell" a patient's rehabilitation journey through pictures and graphs. As a patient, clinician, and family member, she wanted to make data accessible and motivating. Corinne earned a Master of Science in Speech-Language and Learning from Northwestern University, a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from the University of Illinois-Champaign and a Bachelor of Science in Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education from Utah State University. SMARTCharts is a proud Techstars 2022 company, was selected as a 2022 Prime Innovation Challenge Winner and the 2022 Grand Prize Winner of Techrise.
“Being a woman founder is both an asset and objectively a liability. We all know the stats on funding being divided based on gender, and it's hard to ignore the reality. But I also know that good ideas can succeed, and luckily, past experience and adversity fuel me to push that much harder.”
The Problem:
What Corinne is trying to solve
Therapeutic rehabilitation is the unpinning of our health system. It includes speech, occupational, and physical therapies and supports babies to seniors with diagnoses including stroke, autism, cancer, and dementia. However, patients in rehabilitation often struggle to understand their progress due to complex and hard-to-read progress notes. SMARTCharts solves this issue and is an electronic health record (EHR) add-on product that translates complicated progress notes into an easy-to-understand rehabilitation story. By turning goals into accessible images and graphs, the platform helps care teams and patients track their progress, make data-informed decisions, and stay motivated. SMARTCharts aims to be the industry standard for care rehabilitation teams to understand rehabilitation progress. The team continues to utilize machine learning to establish population norms, progress expectations, and essential health alerts for patient care. The platform aims to empower patients to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Q&A
We sat down with Corinne to talk with her about how she got her start as a founder, what her seed funding stage has been like, and how GET Cities has helped.
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
I distinctly remember two moments that led to my career taking an unexpected turn from being an actuary at Deloitte to delving into the world of entrepreneurship. The first pivotal moment came when I worked in a Deloitte India office. During this trip, I realized the importance of effective communication in helping professionals advance their careers. This experience led me to pursue a degree in communications, setting the stage for my experience at Northwestern University. While in graduate school for speech-language pathology, I noticed a common struggle – the documentation process for clinicians was generally unstructured and time-consuming. Not only was it unhelpful for patients because it was a LOT of jargon and complicated notes, but it was also cumbersome to therapists and care teams trying to decipher information quickly and make crucial decisions. Driven by a desire to simplify the process for myself, I automated my notes in Excel. I transformed them into visuals that were not only informative but also personalized for patients. Little did I know, this marked the unofficial inception of my entrepreneurial journey with SMARTCharts. Flash forward many years, a fellow clinician tapped me on the shoulder at a conference. She asked what the graphics on my computer were. I told her they were my client reports, and that was the moment I realized this tool could help so many more people. Today, SMARTCharts has become more than just an Excel sheet showing progress; it has become a solution for progress documentation, patient storytelling and data management for speech, occupational and physical therapists.
How did you come up with SMARTCharts?
One particular experience etched in my memory involved an 80-year-old stroke patient who could only utter the word "football." When a patient is limited to just one word, our focus is on maximizing what they can express. For him, it was emotions. Using my Excel visuals at Northwestern, I demonstrated to him how he conveyed different emotions with just that single word. The impact was profound, and he teared up during the session as he was able to finally recognize he was making the progress I could see so well with my trained eye. This emotional breakthrough became one of the many patient interactions I had, and the catalyst for the creation of SMARTCharts.
What was the most challenging aspect of starting your own company?
Simply put, funding. Our situation is not unique; it's a classic chicken or egg dilemma – you need funding to kickstart your venture, yet investors assess your potential based on traction; all the while, healthcare providers judge product viability based on secured funds. This creates a complicated juggling act, particularly in the healthcare B2B industry, where significant funding is needed to access providers of scale. The integration process poses a substantial barrier to entry, demanding costly security certifications and ongoing testing. In the case of SMARTCharts, our approach has involved seeking out providers and early adopters who were willing to collaborate with us during the building, validation and product iteration phases. This required finding evangelists at every healthcare level, from individual clinicians to small clinics and now health systems, as well as a leap of faith from each partner to believe in our vision and see the future benefits of the product. Our team continues to navigate the challenges of securing support and resources in an environment where integrating with large systems poses significant hurdles to entry.
What milestones are you most proud of?
Releasing our integrable product in November 2023 marked a significant milestone for us, opening doors to over $2.5M in opportunities. We're currently progressing through due diligence and pilot phases with three organizations, and the excitement is high as we plan the next steps with more than 10 additional organizations. Our focus is on helping as many patients as possible on their journey to recovery as quickly as we can.
What type of support system have you had and what has that meant for your founder journey?
I've been lucky enough to collect a dedicated crew of advisors, peers, and investors who have supported me to keep this "ship" afloat. They have come from MATTER, Techstars, Techrise, and GET Cities -- a quality crew of Chicago-based groups that have been invaluable to my growth as a founder and the development of SMARTCharts. Additionally, my friends and family are just the best. They may not get what I am going through daily, but they always show up when I need them. They are an unbeatable cheering section and emotional support group. Collectively, this group has provided me with late night "you can do it" conversations, early morning "suck-it-up" pep talks, and a sounding board for every good/bad/crazy idea I have had. I have had just about every conversation you can have about a company that is quite literally your dependent. What has it been like trying to raise in Chicago and what has your experience been like overall in the Chicago tech space? While Chicago has made notable strides, there's undeniably more ground to cover. Conversations with fellow founders reveal that despite raising substantial rounds, the percentage contributed by Chicago investment firms remains relatively modest. Personally, navigating the fundraising landscape in Chicago has been challenging, even with support from many local angels and TechStars Chicago. Despite these hurdles, I'm optimistic about the evolving landscape and the potential for continued positive momentum in the Chicago entrepreneurial scene.
What is unique about being a woman in the entrepreneurial space?
Being a woman founder is both an asset and objectively a liability. We all know the stats on funding being divided based on gender, and it's hard to ignore the reality. But I also know that good ideas can succeed, and luckily, past experience and adversity fuel me to push that much harder. I look forward to the day when gender isn't a statistic that deviates between entrepreneurs.
What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring women entrepreneurs?
A key piece of advice I'd share is to consider having a co-founder, and here's why: First, it provides you with a built-in support system – someone in the trenches with you every day. Secondly, it eases the workload. Managing everything solo can be overwhelming, especially as your business grows. Having a co-founder can alleviate some of that stress. Another valuable tip is to seek out someone a step or two ahead in their founder journey whom you genuinely connect with. Ask them all the questions, even the uncomfortable ones. Inquire about their experiences with thoughts of going bankrupt, moments of wanting to quit, and instances of feeling lost. Forge a strong connection and leverage it to the fullest extent for guidance and insight.
What made you want to participate in the GET Seed Founder cohort?
I found the program to be an exciting opportunity, particularly the alignment with organizations and communities dedicated to assisting founders from historically excluded backgrounds. The connection to supporting founders on their journey to the next stages adds an extra layer of significance and value to founders working on getting their product to those who need it most.
What has been one of your favorite memories from being in the GET Seed Founder cohort?
During one of the founder dinners, I was able to reconnect with Steven Shaw from Verizon. Despite not seeing each other for months, our conversation picked up as if we just chatted the day before. We were able to share my SMARTCharts experience with Verizon and talk about how corporations can contribute to startup exposure. I vividly remember laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes as we shared some stories with the group. During that same dinner, I was able to introduce Steven to my cohort member Tamika, who has a cell network-reliant product, hoping they could establish a valuable connection. It was a memorable blend of laughter, networking and fostering potential collaborations
What would you say is the most valuable tool, connection point, or piece of wisdom you have gained from being part of the Seed Founder cohort?
Cohort meetings and dinners provided insights into how my fellow members qualify venture capitalists and navigate the funding process efficiently. These honest conversations and practical exchanges allowed me to grasp what strategies other founders employ, providing valuable tips and steps for execution.
$2.9M pipeline, including Chicagoland healthcare providers.
Paid Pilots support 2,200+ patients and 60+ providers
Clinicians save 30%+ in rehabilitation documentation and communications time (increasing productivity, patient care and reimbursement metrics)
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