This post originally appeared on Tech In Chicago. Visit Tech In Chicago to listen to more interviews with Chicago’s top startup founders and venture capitalists.
Star Cunningham is the Founder and CEO of 4DHealthware, a startup that provides artificially intelligent "nudges", SMS and email messages, to patients with chronic conditions based on data collected via 250 wearable devices like bluetooth glucometers and activity trackers. Medicare now reimburses healthcare providers $40 per patient per month for every 20 minutes spent managing care outside a doctor’s office and 4DHealthware interactions count. Star has raised $770,000 to date and is on the verge of becoming the 12th African American woman ever to secure more than a million dollars in venture funding for her tech startup. Before founding, 4DHealthware, Star was at IBM for about 10 years.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
- Why Star decided to found a company after working in big business
- How she landed the first partnerships in healthcare
- The power of nudging people in the right direction
- The future of wearables and artificial intelligence
- How to get more diversity in tech
- The importance of getting young black girls into tech
- What she thinks about diversity quotas
- When founders should start thinking about diversity
Selected Links From The Episode:
- IBM Smarter Planet
- Seth Kravitz, Founder of Technori
- Black Girls Code
Favorite Book:
- Entrepreneurs Are Made Not Born by Lloyd E. Shefsky
- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell
- Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
