Tim DraperFounder and Managing Partne, Draper Associate · I back the ideas that look crazy first

🧬4 MIT grads who could've taken high-paying jobs & chose to solve a life-threatening problem instead

21 Feb 2025 · 1 min

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Four MIT graduates founded a company to tackle tick-borne illnesses instead of taking lucrative jobs. They discuss why people don't remove ticks properly, how doctors respond when patients find them, and the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in tick-borne diseases.

We are a team of 4. We're recent graduates from MIT. So 4 MIT students.
Is that going to be a problem down the road when one of them just decides to bail? You know, and all that stuff happens that normally happens with entrepreneurs.
The stories we're getting from people who have been personally affected by this are really driving us. We could be doing anything, and frankly, we could have really well-paying jobs, but we chose each other and we chose this problem.
Is it standard consumer behavior to remove the tick and keep it? Or do people typically throw it away? That is, yeah.
That's what inspired it. I am a healthcare provider and I get calls every single week from people who have found a tick and say, I found a tick on me, what do I do with it? And my answer typically is, is nothing. I'm going to treat you just in case. But that's also contributing to this antibiotic resistance issue.