NSF I-Corps Program

Recognition

🏆 Accepted into the NSF I-Corps Program — National Science Foundation (2023)

I-Corps is the National Science Foundation’s customer discovery program, built on the Lean LaunchPad method. Teams apply, and the ones selected spend the program interviewing potential customers rather than building.

We were accepted in 2023 with the breast cancer screening device.

The premise is deliberately uncomfortable for engineers: you are not allowed to pitch. You go out and ask clinicians, patients, and buyers what their actual workflow looks like, and you let the answers break your assumptions about who the product is for.

Running I-Corps alongside the Hollomon Health Innovation Challenge and the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge in the same stretch was a lot, but the customer interviews were what sharpened the medical device pitch more than any slide revision did.