In their footsteps: Mathieu Dellenbach

Introduce yourself and your project

I am Mathieu, a doctor by training, and I co-founded Elixir, a support and information platform dedicated to the fertility journey. By fertility journey, I mean medically assisted reproduction in the broad sense. The project is carried out in collaboration with Strasbourg University Hospital. My desire to become an entrepreneur emerged at the very start of my medical residency, notably thanks to the Hacking Health Camp. It is an event I recommend; it has national influence.

When you were a child, what did you dream of becoming?

I wanted to be a designer, I wanted to do design, and it was my parents who steered me towards science. After qualifying in medicine, I was lucky enough to teach at the HEAR (Haute École des Arts du Rhin) on the visual didactics and medical communication course. It was a very rewarding experience, because I really want to find ways of improving the working tools and communication channels of the medical world. This sensitivity to design, to function and to aesthetics is very important to me, especially after having worked with hospital software.

What is the craziest or most unconventional idea you have put into practice in your project?

Everything is a risk; every day you choose your risk. I put my medical career on hold to be a full-time co-founder of the company: that is the biggest risk. On the part that accro funded, the risk we took was to build our project specifically for Strasbourg’s hospital, knowing that we might not be able to reuse it later, or at least that it would be harder. That is indeed what we are seeing today; we have to adapt, but we wanted to do it because we wanted it to be perfect for the first user. We put the question of “how to use it later” off until later, precisely. However, having this part funded by accro allowed us to keep all our documents in-house, which means that today we still have the scripts, the drawings… so it can be developed further.

And did it work?

It paid off for Strasbourg, since both the professionals and the patients are satisfied. Because the IVF department is satisfied, the other departments of Strasbourg’s fertility centre also want videos. Our partner this year, Céline Moutou, has national influence in genetic diagnosis services, and she has started discussions with the Agence de la biomédecine, explaining that this initiative exists in Strasbourg. It has also worked outside Strasbourg, because on our website we highlight the very positive feedback that professionals at Strasbourg’s hospital have given about Elixir. Now, when we approach prospects, they call their contact at Strasbourg University Hospital directly to check the project’s viability with them. Strasbourg has become our quality reference and they speak perfectly on behalf of our project.

This first experience with Strasbourg really made me want to give each client a level of customisation, because as a clinician I know that every hospital works differently.

Your beginner’s mistake?

Have you got two hours? Can I give you a list? How do you say things that haven’t been said a billion times on podcasts? In my view, there are mistakes you have to make in order to succeed and learn. That is the best definition of experience. You need to gather user feedback as quickly as possible. You always want to do more before putting the product in users’ hands. We do not test things with users early enough, even something like the script of the animations. And I would go even further: we did not test ourselves against the market soon enough, to find out how much our clients would be willing to pay for our software. You should try to get feedback from paying users, because their expectations will be different from those of free users.

The achievement you are proudest of?

That 2,500 patients have been able to use Elixir with Strasbourg University Hospital: that is what matters most.

One piece of advice for those who want to get started?

In the context of Tango&Scan, it is to work in synergy with your partner. In our case, Alice Carneau, the partner on our first Tango&Scan, brought a real ecosystem to the project. For entrepreneurship in general, I would say perseverance. It is not even advice so much as a question: as an individual, when you embark on entrepreneurship, do you see yourself as someone who perseveres? When I say that, I feed the myth that “you have to be the best to be an entrepreneur”, which is not my point: you just need to be there long enough. In entrepreneurship, you do not need to be the most intelligent; you need to dare, to persevere, and to have a bit of luck.

Transcribed from the spoken interview.