Company founder Erika Poole competed against 14 other entrepreneurs during yesterday’s contest, held during the Tech Council’s Early Stage Symposium in Madison. Each was given 90 seconds to make their case before being rated by a panel of investor judges on their business and presentation. Once all the pitches were finished, attendees were able to vote via text for their favorite.
Spectacle Health has a platform to assist people with enrolling in Medicare plans. Poole yesterday emphasized the complexity of the federal health insurance program, noting eligible people need to choose between dozens of different plans.
“If you want to make an informed choice, you’re going to have to manually compare 6,500 data points to pick a plan that’s high-quality and meets your needs,” she said. “Our solution is an online, direct-to-consumer marketplace that asks you a few simple questions, and recommends some plans and gets you signed up for them.”
Poole noted 11,000 Americans are aging into Medicare eligibility every day, giving the company a potentially “huge” market to tap into. The company would receive a commission for every customer it signs up through its platform, she added.
“It doesn’t matter what payer, what plan we sign them up for,” she said. “The rate’s still the same.”
The company is seeking $500,000 in funding from investors to continue developing its platform and plans to launch next year.
The overall winner of the competition was Dirac Labs, a Madison-based startup using specialized sensors to identify underground mineral deposits. And the second-place finalist was another Madison company called Sygmatic, which has a foreign language learning platform.
See more coverage from the Early Stage Symposium here.
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