Please join us in welcoming Vijay Rajasekhar, MD to the Intuitive Ventures team.

Vijay has been collaborating with us since Fall 2023 and officially joins us as an Associate. We asked him to tell us more about his career journey and this is what he shared…

Vijay Rajasekhar, MD, MBA :

I am incredibly excited to join the Intuitive Ventures team. I've spent the last 16 years actively involved in healthcare innovation across medtech, biotech, and digital health services, including several FDA approvals and 2 IPOs. I look forward to bringing those experiences towards investing in companies and founders that will bring new treatment options to patients across major categories of health.

Academia

I grew up in a small town in the Mojave Desert with limited educational resources. I felt lucky when I was accepted to Stanford as an undergraduate, gaining exposure to so many new disciplines. I completed my Undergraduate degree in Human Biology, and I pursued a Minor and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I ultimately completed a joint MD/MBA program. Despite my curiosity and many years as an academic student, I fully believed in the ethos of Mark Twain who said “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”?

While at Stanford I leveraged being in Silicon Valley to find opportunities outside the classroom to engage in industry.?My first exposure to startups and venture capital was through a program called the Stanford Mayfield Fellows Program , where I was mentored by dozens of venture capitalists and CEOs, who have been instrumental in giving me an aperture into the world of company building and investing.?

During medical school, I took a gap year to pursue the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign Fellowship, which focuses on needs-driven innovation to create and incubate companies within healthcare, adopting design principles from the d.school . Our interdisciplinary team of four fellows identified and evaluated over 100 unmet clinical needs in neurology and ultimately conceived of an idea that became Cala Health , a non-invasive neuromodulation treatment for patients with essential tremor, which has since gained FDA approval and is currently in commercial stages. Biodesign has been foundational in my perspective on how to evaluate early stage opportunities in healthcare, how to define clinical needs and create transformative solutions.?

Operational Experience?

Through the Stanford Mayfield Fellows Program, I was introduced to a company that was an early stage medical device therapeutic company called Intersect ENT , which was working on changing the treatment paradigm for chronic sinusitis by reducing the need for repeat sinus surgeries by stenting open the sinuses and providing local drug delivery.?

While a medical student, I continued to help design Intersect ENT’s second product, Propel Mini, a drug-eluting dissolvable stent for chronic sinusitis, which gained FDA approval in 2012. This role gave me a fantastic view of how successful venture backed healthcare companies are built from start to finish and also gave me insights into the fundraising process, clinical and regulatory strategy, R&D, and ultimately the impact venture capitalists can make by supporting entrepreneurs achieve their vision.?

During my MBA program I started working with The Foundry , a medical device incubator, to help in the early stages of FIRE1, a heart failure management startup which is now in human clinical studies. I was able to put my biodesign and medical training to use and go back to first principles of physiology to assist the partners at The Foundry evaluate new opportunities for monitoring heart failure. Working with The Foundry, I was able to see firsthand how a small group of innovators are able to consistently create major breakthrough companies, improve hundreds of thousands of lives, and create significant returns for shareholders.

After completing my MBA, I joined biotech Myovant Sciences , a spin out of Roivant and Takeda, as its third employee, where I was responsible for helping design and run the HERO study, a phase 3 clinical study of relugolix for prostate cancer, while also assisting the business development team in evaluating new assets in women’s health for endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and assisted reproduction. Not only did Myovant give me the opportunity to see how to design and successfully run a large phase 3 clinical trial, but it also provided exposure to interacting with the FDA, rapidly scaling a team, and the inner mechanics of how a company goes through the IPO process, all lessons applicable to building any successful healthcare company, whether biotech, medtech, or AI.?

At that point, I felt it was time for my own Founder/CEO journey and I was selected for YCombinator with an idea around helping patients with chronic diseases. I recruited a team, built a digital health software solution, fundraised, and launched DailyDoctor, a product to remotely monitor high-risk patients between their local doctor visits. Through this experience I learned how to sell into health systems, build and operate telehealth clinics, manage credentialing and billing infrastructure, and evaluate and build the right team and software tech-stack to empower digital health solutions. When DailyDoctor ultimately didn’t cross the proverbial chasm to scale, I experienced first hand what happens to most startups - the need to wind down.?

Operator Turned Investor

During my own entrepreneurial journey, I began angel investing in healthcare startups, across medtech, biotech, digital, and AI. I've enjoyed helping other founders and started to explore roles within healthcare VC as a natural continuation of this passion. Through my network, I was connected to Intuitive Ventures and was impressed by the team, their vision and mission, and the quality of their growing portfolio. As such I am incredibly honored to join the platform.?

In this new chapter, I’m quite excited to help founders from the other side of the table.