Prof. Zack Cooper

Posted on 18th August 2012 by Svetlana Dotsenko

Prof. Zack Cooper is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and of Economics at Yale University . Prof. Cooper is a health economist and an expert in health care policy. He received his PhD from London School of Economics in 2011.

In his speech at the Healthbox accelerator kick-off in Boston on Thursday, August 16^th, Prof. Cooper spoke of the need to shift from selling individual health care products towards selling health outcomes (a service). An example of such approach would be switching from selling a drug to selling a package to treat cancer patients. In the future, companies would be delivering the result, rather than selling a particular product.

Richard Dale

Posted on 14th August 2012 by Svetlana Dotsenko

Richard Dale (@rdale) is in the process of launching Big Data Boston Ventures, a new micro-VC fund focused on seed-stage big data companies. He was until recently a principal at Sigma Partners, and before that was a co-founder of Phase Forward. Richard is mentor at Techstars, a tech-oriented business accelerator program, MassChallenge, a large startup accelerator program in Boston, as well as Healthbox, a health and technology oriented business accelerator program.

Mr. Dale has emphasized the importance of taking ownership over the business project, as opposed to excessive reliance on mentors’ advice:

“My motto is, if you’re not the smartest person in the room about your company, you’re in trouble. Your mentors have different background and expertise, but how many hours a week does an entrepreneur spend thinking about his or her business? Forty? Eighty? More like a hundred? And how many hours does the mentor spend..? Running your own business is part of the fun.”