The Pitch
Ovulona by bioZhena shows when pregnancy can occur. A senior research scientist at a big pharma company, I became an entrepreneur to commercialize a breakthrough diagnostic technology for women and their physicians. We discovered the technique when we couldn't get pregnant. My biologist wife decided that we should be qualified to try and help ourselves, and she was right – about the right time prerequisite for conception. The 3-day fertile window came out of the private R&D. As did our son and our daughter.
Watch this video clip about what we have and what, besides me, a gynecologist says about it. Here you'll see one of the older prototypes before miniaturization. The public will be offered a small, feminine and supremely user-friendly product, not a clinical prototype.
See my YouTube channel profile (the profile, not the shorter video)
Nobody else determines the fertile window of just 3 days (see a sample record from a pilot clinical study). The existing products – ovulation prediction kits and monitors - cannot tell you that today is your first fertile day and you are likely to conceive a boy (vs. conceiving a girl on the day of ovulation). The old techniques lack accuracy – because they don’t do it right. We do, and I have several patents and patent applications covering our technology.
I moved the venture and my family from England to the U.S., having taken a voluntary separation from my pharmaceutical employer - that's how I got my first venture capital. Later on I realized that our discovery goes well beyond the accurate anticipation and unique detection of ovulation. That’s because of how we do this. We monitor folliculogenesis, the process that causes menstrual cycling. Much in women’s health revolves around folliculogenesis – from teenage to peri-menopause. Hence our slogan: “Ovulona™ in the bathroom cabinet of every woman!”
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See Business Plan Assumptions and see Business Plan Summary Financial Projections
Our technique had to be patented, which is an expensive proposition, so it was fortunate that my new patent lawyer proposed to defer a portion of the costs until we raise capital for the new company I founded.
Impact
Worldwide use of the bioZhena technique is a must, so that the current imbalance in global population explosion can be rectified – the rich “developed” countries turning geriatric while the developing countries’ populations continue to explode. More on this dichotomy between the Pill-popping wealthy populations and the others is in my blog http://biozhena.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/seven-billion-people--after-half-a-century-with-the-pill/ . Only the richest country of them all manages to have the infertility epidemic while at the same time suffering the most among the industrialized countries with the public health problem of unplanned pregnancies. We have the technology with which to help solve both these US healthcare problems.
Trying to conceive or the frustration of sub-fertility and infertility in 2010/2011
Why people cannot achieve pregnancy
If this FundaGeek project were not to succeed - if your funding of the deferred costs of patent work did not happen - our situation would be harder as further development is predicated on company financing. For more about the technology, and about the impact of your support, see the project document so titled, below.
What We Need & What You Get
We need to raise money to pay the patenting items as follows.
Total accrued contingent fee to date (October '11 $19,019.50) $19,000.00
Balance now due (October 2011 statement $ 4,479.14) $ 4,500.00
Estimated patent maintenance and related fees soon $ 2,000.00
Estimated cost of a new filing soon $ 5,000.00
Contingency $ 1,000.00
9% fee to FundaGeek ($3,150) rounded up to 10% $ 3,500.00
Total rounded up amount to raise $35,000.00
This is in the context of having been promised a $6 million financing but this has not yet reached the stage of the Letter of Commitment. Another potential source is a large Asian firm that has requested a joint venture proposal.
In any such situation, the intellectual property will play a major role.
For more on this, see below “How the goal, pledges and rewards have been arrived at”.
Other Ways You Can Help
Please help me to spread the word about this project. Please connect, link or follow me on the social networks and send more potential backers our way. And, I am always interested in finding good people for the budding - small but strong - team bioZhena. Thank you for your support! I hope to speak with you one day and reiterate my appreciation.