Surbhi's Testimonial

My name's Surbhi Sarna, and I'm a Cal graduate— go Bears— finished in 2007. And I'm currently founder and CEO of Envision Medical, which is a medical device company focusing on women's health, and in particular infertility and ovarian cancer. When I was 13, I was writing a paper on Emerson in my bedroom, and all of a sudden I felt such a sharp, pang of pain in my side that I could barely get myself to the kitchen where my mom was and utter the words, Mom, my side hurts, before blacking out. It took 6 months for them to give me a diagnosis of what was happening, and at the time they told me complex ovarian cysts. But could they treat it? No. Could they at least tell my mom whether or not it was cancerous? No. So it was at that time, at 13, I decided that Women's health isn't where it should be, and I began to address that issue. And everything I did from then, I thought, how does this apply to women's health? Every class I took, every piece of research I did, when I went out and got a job, always, you know, I was working cardiovascular but thinking, how does this apply to women's health? Where DraperU comes into this equation is that I like the idea of having exposure to people who have done this, right? So if I can't get the experience myself, if I don't have the experience myself already, What's the best way to do it? First, go out and just try, and second is listen to other people's experience. I came to DraperU for a lot of reasons, and one of the things I was expecting was to meet a very inspiring group of people. And when I first thought that, you know, I thought Tim Draper, of course, and many of the speakers he's going to line up. But another thing I found is just the people here. They're so innovative and optimistic, and I love being around that energy each day. I was a little further along when coming to DraperU, And that gave me the opportunity to pitch to Tim. And I have to say that that was one of the most exciting days I've had since starting this company because later that same afternoon, I was holding a board meeting where all my investors were flying in to decide whether or not I met the requirements to get the second half of my financing round in. But it just so happens that that day Tim says, does anyone wanna pitch me? And I'm thinking, oh, I have to drive, pick up my investor from the airport. I'm gonna spend till 10 PM with them. but there's no way that I can let this opportunity go knowing he's alone. There's no one else with him. So I go up to Tim, I ask him, hey, you know, has anyone come up to you? Are you free to listen to my pitch? And he says, yeah, sure, let's go out to lunch. And I say, well, I have a deck. And he says, oh, you have a deck ready? And I say, yeah, if you don't mind looking through the slides. So there I am, and that just happens to be the day that Tim had one of his associates with him as well. And then there was a few students left over. So there I was, completely not ready for it, a brand new deck. That turned out to be a good decision, but it definitely added to my stress and my excitement that day. Tim saw something in me and saw something in the idea. I'm very blessed for that, and is now an investor in Envision. During that pitch, I told Tim what was going on later that evening, you know, my board meeting. And so the next morning he asked me how it went, and it was great to You know, tell him that it went really well and I closed the deal, and, you know, he got excited along with me. So I thought that was a really special experience to have had. If everything goes according to plan, which nothing ever does, in 5 years I see myself with this product on the market, taking 25%, displacing 25% of the procedures that's done today, garnering revenue of $45 million, and I'm working on my, my next product. For the company, which will be an ovarian cancer diagnostic device.