One rainy evening in 2000, at the end of a busy day in his surgery, GP Dr Vincent Forte mused with his sister, Giovanna, over the number of women patients who had berated him that day for requesting a urine sample – and giving them a standard universal container to do it in. “They all complained,” he worried. “They said that the idea of delivering a sample into such a narrow bottle could only have come from a man. I’m fed up. There must be a solution to this.” Giovanna replied “You were always making things when we were children, so make something. Go on, sort it out.”
Rising to the challenge
So Vincent spent a few hours cutting up bits of paper and sticking them together in funnel shapes. He made one that he liked, that worked with the universal container that his female patients didn’t like. Pleased, he called it the Female Freedom Funnel. Then he put it in a drawer and forgot about it.
From idea to reality
Fast-forward to 2009 and Peezy is a disposable, hygienic and elegant mid-stream urine collection device for use by women when they deliver a urine sample for analysis. It is selling in the NHS and private sectors, with agents generating sales in Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East. Now, moves are afoot to enter markets in the USA, Australia and Eastern Europe.
Peezy eliminates spills and splashing, resulting in cleaner toilets in medical settings, improved infection control and better patient care. It also reduces the number of contaminated samples and therefore retests required, which, according to the NHS Purchasing and Supplies Authority (PASA), can lead to a saving of over £2 per patient experience.
Getting started
Back in 2000, however, all this was just a twinkle in Vincent’s eye, until some months later he received a piece of direct mail from a new organisation called Medical Futures, which was looking for ideas from NHS clinicians for a new scheme designed to help develop those ideas.
Vincent remembered and found his Female Freedom Funnel and entered it for the Medical Futures Awards. With Medical Futures’ encouragement he had it patent-protected and was invited to the announcement event in London, which he attended with sister Giovanna.
Vincent’s invention won the Innovation category of the inaugural Medical Futures Awards, and Nicola Horlick presented him with a contribution of £1000 to his patent costs from AstraZeneca. Then he turned to his sister and said: “I need to make sure women get to use my prize-winning funnel. Will you help?”
Funnelly Enough is born
Giovanna Forte is an entrepreneur who, in 2000, was running her own successful PR business from an office in London’s Soho. Her business-to-business clients included brands, designers, educational institutions and architects. When Vincent came up with the Female Freedom Funnel she knew he was on to something.
Together, the duo incorporated Funnelly Enough and settled on the name of Peezy for Vincent’s novel mid-stream urine collection device for women. They also agreed parameters for their product – it had to be flat-packed, flushable and user-friendly. Little did they know that one of these criteria was to cost them, and their future investors, more than they had bargained for.
Giovanna spent one or two days a week searching out manufacturers and distributors for Peezy. She also spent a long time looking for a mythical ‘industrial agent’ who would see the implicit value of their product, wave a magic wand and establish it within an eager marketplace. She didn’t find one.
Never without help
Over six years of part-time, stop-start research and development, the Fortes paid a number of people to help them realise Peezy. Corina Fletcher, a highly talented paper engineer, came up with some incredible and ingenious paper funnels that sprung into shape, but they didn’t work with the universal container.
They commissioned a product design company to fine-tune the design and were presented with some breathtakingly expensive paper research and drawings. They contacted urology-related medical device manufacturers and distributors throughout the UK; however, most companies rejected the concept because they had their own ideas. Others simply weren’t interested.
The Europeans were more open to ideas, but all had highly complex and prohibitive non-disclosure agreements. In parallel with all this activity, the Fortes were paying patent costs and fees, and, by 2006, were demoralised – and broke!
An opportunity almost lost
Out of the blue, one of the contacts the duo met at a Medical Futures event got in touch and recommended the Gateway to Investment (G2i) website, where Giovanna found information about a seminar on how to seek and find ‘early growth’ investment. She registered, attended and subsequently received a phone call from Mike Bowman at E-Synergy who had co-presented the event with Kevin Davey from venue host The Innovatory.
Mike invited the Fortes to E-Synergy, where they talked through the product, the business and market cases and realisation of the business plan. He recommended that Giovanna attend a G2i investment readiness programme, which she did. The first, rather dull morning, however, revived in Giovanna an aversion to ‘classrooms’. At lunch time, she collected her coat and headed for the door. Luckily, she stopped, reconsidered her options and returned to the programme.
At the end of the day, all participating entrepreneurs were asked to vote on the ideas in the room: Peezy came second to a clever computer programme. Giovanna eyed the software inventor, rolled up her sleeves and pledged that Peezy not only would come top by the end of the course but that it would secure investment, too.
Learning what it takes and a first investment
The investment readiness programme was a turning point for Funnelly Enough. It detailed exactly what investors were looking for and how to deliver it. The presenters were all experienced entrepreneurial business people who’d “been there and done it”. The line-up provided impressive and thought-provoking material that, used carefully and with diligence, could help short-circuit the fundraising process for the assembled delegates.
The programme culminated in a presentation to an array of ‘Angels’ at Stationers’ Hall in the City of London. The Fortes made their case in the allotted few minutes. Just a week or two later, they secured their funding from the E-Synergy Early Growth Fund, with matched investment from E-Synergy Angels.
Since closing the first investment round in September 2006, the Fortes have travelled a long and winding road of research and development (R&D), blind alleys and ‘challenges’. Luckily, their investors have stuck with them and, in some cases, have contributed, advised and mentored.
Mistakes and unexpected solutions
The most time- and investment-consuming mistake was the founders’ belief that Peezy should be flushable. The team and its contractors worked tirelessly over 18 months to achieve a corn-starch polymer product that looked and worked beautifully. On achieving this, 1500 were made for trials with one of the major private hospital groups.
These corn-starch Peezys almost universally cracked and split when removed from the packaging. Enquiries with the material polymer manufacturer revealed a continuing programme of R&D and, despite having collaborated closely with the corn-starch company, Funnelly Enough was only at this stage informed that no guarantees would be given on consistency and quality of the material for the foreseeable future. Knowing this at the start of the R&D process could have saved Funnelly Enough and its investors over £100,000.
After very swift and focused consideration, the directors agreed to opt for a traditional synthetic polymer that is already established and accepted within the healthcare market. Within three days, Alexir, Peezy’s manufacturer, produced examples of polyethylene and polypropylene units, made with existing manufacturing processes and tools, Amazingly, the company was instantly back in business with an even better-looking and -functioning product, which, it transpired, hospital facility managers were far happier to use.
Lessons learned
Crises like this are inevitable when the day-to-day management team may not have direct experience of key issues facing its business. While between them the Fortes have proven track records in management and medicine, they experienced a sharp learning curve in manufacture, materials and marketing to the medical world.
In Giovanna’s opinion, this is where the G2i scheme comes into its own. “Support from E-Synergy and G2i has been invaluable,” she says. “We have always had access to experience covering manufacturing, patent law, materials and business growth. In my book, E-Synergy is proof that equity partners, in the true sense of the words, really do exist. It’s a whole different ball game to the more cynical ‘vulture capitalist’ approach of so many VCs.”
With a fine-tuned and highly effective product now being manufactured in the UK and sold to its intended markets, the opportunities and challenges that face Funnelly Enough now are no less difficult, but are different, and E-Synergy continues to mentor and guide. Indeed, it has introduced the company to external non-executive directors who have experience of manufacturing medical devices, and who are very much involved.
“Our board and management meetings are hugely constructive,” comments Giovanna. “Our directors are happy for us to be creative and entrepreneurial, but they also serve as a safe pair of hands to make sure what we plan and execute is ultimately practical and efficient. We are acutely aware that we would not be here today, with such a successful product, were it not for our investors and the people who helped to secure that first round.”
What’s next?
Fortunately, the current financial climate is not expected to affect the Peezy marketplace, as urine sampling is not related to economic adversity. Funnelly Enough is close to completing its fourth round of investment funding. A direct sales campaign is now in place and relationships have been forged with key medical and healthcare leaders and opinion-formers. Giovanna is also starting to use one of her key strengths in developing and applying a comprehensive and highly targeted marketing and PR strategy.
Peezy recently won two prestigious accolades at the Design Week Awards: Best Industrial Product and Best of Show – over the Apple MacBook Air. It was also been shortlisted for the D&AD Design Awards.
Funnelly Enough received investment funding through the E-Synergy Early Growth Fund and continues to raise money for sales and marketing development.
A final word of advice
“To those who seek investment I would recommend schemes like G2i,” says Giovanna. “Do your research, evaluate the people involved and assess how their experience and expertise can benefit you. Then exploit it. Don’t be afraid of giving away chunks of your business but try to make sure that those chunks go to people who can add value. There’s no point in owning 100% of a company that can’t achieve anything. There’s a lot of experienced goodwill out there if you look. And if it has deep pockets, so much the better.”
www.funnellyenough.com
Gateway to Investment
Gateway to Investment (G2i) is an investment readiness programme to help small businesses with high growth potential raise the money needed to fund their expansion. The programme provides companies with the knowledge, advice, tools and resources to help them understand their businesses from an investor's perspective, and connects businesses to the right investor. Since 2006 more than 35 companies have raised money – totalling more than £30 million – through the programme.
www.g2i.org