#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer, Founder & CTO, SweatID
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Discovering New Technologies to help Athletes Optimize their Exercise, Recovery
As part of her work, Dr. Chelsea Monty-Bromer was working with a team of researchers to develop new technology to assist veterans with prosthetic limbs. The result of that work was new technology that became the basis of her company, SweatID where she is the Founder & Chief Technology Officer. We spoke with Chelsea to learn more about SweatID’s product, her experience raising capital from public and private sources, and her experience navigating intellectual property systems here and abroad.
Tell us about your background. What led you to SweatID? What does SweatID do?
I have a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and joined the University of Akron as a professor in 2009. Shortly after I arrived there, my research group was approached to develop fabric sensors for prosthetic limbs. We were funded by the Wright Center for Sensor Systems and Engineering (WCCSE) and the overall goal was to try to prevent prosthetic sockets from sweating. We collaborated with other faculty at Akron, who were working on a cooling device, and our sensors were to monitor the conditions inside the limb and assess when to turn the cooling device on. Unfortunately, that cooling device required too much power, so the overall solution was not going to work. So we had what the National Science Foundation (NSF) likes to call an “orphan technology.” Our fabric sensors worked great, we had a patented, functional technology, but we didn't really have anything to use them for. We wrote a bunch of grants to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NSF to try to get funding to explore alternative uses for our technology. Nothing was gaining any traction until we did the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program.
Through I-Corps, we started talking to people about using our sensors in health care and athletics. We stumbled upon a group of triathletes outside of a gym who were all very excited about fabric sensors to monitor for sodium loss while they were exercising. That discovery led our team to start focusing on the athletic monitoring applications of the technology, starting with sodium loss during exercise. That’s the focus of the first product we intend to bring to market—a fabric sensor in an armband to monitor sweat as athletes are exercising and tell them how much sodium they're losing and how to properly rehydrate. Our fabric can also be functionalized to selectively monitor a lot of different compounds released in an athlete’s sweat and we have the IP protected for a variety of different electrolyte and biomarker sweat monitoring.
Thankfully, we received funding from the NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/ Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, which has allowed us to get to the point of commercialization. We were doing body testing when COVID hit and so we didn't finish our original Phase I award. But we were given a second Phase I award and we've now completed all of our body testing. Since then, we have started raising private capital and are hoping to go to market at either the end of Q2 or beginning of Q3 this year.
You mentioned a few different aspects of your journey raising capital. Can you reflect on that experience and what policymakers should know when trying to support founders who might be in a similar situation?
Raising private capital is definitely more difficult as a woman founder in Ohio—not a place traditionally thought of as a “tech hub.” There is not much investment capital here and what’s here isn’t as easy to raise. In my experience, the investors in Ohio are a little bit more risk averse. If you're on a coast, investors are more used to putting money into a company very early and being comfortable with the fact that they might only see growth or traction in a small fraction of the companies that they invest in. In an area like Ohio, with a much smaller pool of investors, they wait until a company is much further along and is a much less risky investment. That requires getting creative in how you fundraise and means that a lot more founders in these regions look to publicly funded grants to get to commercialization. We also work very closely with all the universities around us and I think it's a much more collaborative effort—to find ways these institutions can support the growth of innovative companies in their regions. We need policymakers who find ways to support an influx of people and capital into Ohio through policy and their advocacy because we're doing things that are just as exciting as on the coasts. We just happen to be located in Ohio.
Could you tell us a bit more about your experience with the SBIR/STTR program and getting funding from the government? What worked, what didn’t work, what could work better?
Without the SBIR/STTR program, we would not have been able to get the capital that we needed to grow. To get venture investment in Ohio, we would have needed to be closer to going to market. That meant the only way we could make it to this point was through SBIR and STTR funding.
Another thing that we struggle with in Ohio, beyond just accessing capital, is finding the information and connections in the public funding system that would allow us to explore new opportunities. Our technology would have a lot of great military applications. But understanding who the right connections are, in the military funding apparatus, or even understanding that each of these agencies has its own vocabulary that you need to know, makes it harder to submit a successful funding proposal. For example, it's a very steep learning curve to learn how the Air Force wants you to talk about something compared to how the NSF wants to talk about it. That makes it very difficult for younger, resource strapped companies in Ohio to secure funding from multiple public sources. I think if policymakers were to work on breaking down some of those barriers between the different agencies, and having them talk to each other more or having more of the same funding requirements, it would be very helpful for startups like mine.
Do you have any thoughts on your experience navigating the patent system? What should policymakers understand better about your experience as a startup founder?
One of my biggest takeaways is that it’s difficult to understand the rules around what you can say about your invention, when you should say it, or who you can disclose your invention to before you have filed for patent protection across the globe. This can be a challenge for everyone—including university professors who may have better access to IP resources. We're lucky at the University of Akron that we have a very good relationship between the tech transfer office and the faculty. So we had a pretty easy time negotiating the IP and tech transfer agreements. But when you're a new member of a faculty, you're trying to publish as much as possible and you want to get your ideas out into the world. On the other hand, since I’m also focused on innovation, I have to think about what I can disclose before I apply for a global patent. If I present my research in the U.S., or at a conference somewhere else in the world, that could prohibit me from seeking patent protection abroad and mean I’m limited to filing U.S. patents. It’s hard to understand the complexities of international patent law and I do not think young faculty realize that. I think that's something we should start teaching people in graduate school, as well as just making that type of information about IP systems more accessible.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
One of the things that has been on my mind a lot recently is the issue of data privacy. I want to understand how we can responsibly navigate this issue as a startup. We want to be respectful of people and we don't want to ever put their data at risk. But this is particularly tricky for a startup like SweatID because the data that we're collecting is so new—no one has ever had it before, or collected it through a commercial product. We have the ability to really make a lot of strides in understanding a person’s health and sharing information with them about how they think about their health. But right now there are no clear rules or information as to what our obligations are with that data.
There are a number of data privacy compliance regimes out there. And it’s often unclear if and how this type of data is subject to those rules. Since the data we have collected up to this point has been through controlled testing phases, we haven’t reached the stage of needing to go through the process of checking our exact compliance with the various state and other data privacy laws that are out there. But we’re very quickly approaching the point where we will have to do that and I don’t even know where to begin to make sure we are compliant.
The last thing I’ll mention in this space is that since Roe v. Wade was overturned we’re very aware that we are collecting data that may provide insights into the sodium levels at different parts of women’s cycles and pregnancies. We don't want women to stop coming into the lab and testing with us. How do we make sure that we're being good stewards of that data—making sure we’re meeting our compliance obligations—while not putting the women in a position where that data can potentially be used against them? I think a lot of startups are facing all kinds of questions in this space and policymakers should provide reasonable, uniform guidance that allows startups to innovate and protect their users.
What are your goals for SweatID moving forward?
We have raised $750,000 and before we go to market we are looking to raise $250,000 more. So our immediate goal is to raise that bridge round and make our first purchase order so we can launch in late Q2 or early Q3. From there, we want to use our early revenue to grow the business to either other biomarkers or other sectors that may have applications for this technology, such as the military. We're really excited about the launch this year and to use that momentum to scale from there.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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