Nordic Life Science 1
n its current phase Sidekick has to hire people w
ho hit the ground running, people who solve problems and do not create them, as well as adding talent that brings experience and skill sets that are missing from the organization. “My main advice would be to realize that you don’t know everything and that it is extremely important to seek talent that fills in the knowledge gaps and expands your network “I FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT IN THE COMING YEARS NO DRUG WILL BE LAUNCHED TO and reach,” says Arnason. The company today has around 60 employees, most of them in Reykjavik. However, the local talent pool is drying up and the logical step is to have a presence where they have access to a deeper pool of specialized top talent, says Arnason. “To put this into perspective, Barcelona’s Nou Camp Stadium can seat about 25% of the total population of Iceland.” The company has set up a presence in Berlin, for example, and are already building a team there. Berlin is a very logical move for a digital health innovator like Sidekick, and Germany is taking the lead on advancing the wider adoption of digital therapeutics in Europe. “The city also ranks second to London as the top startup location in Europe, especially in life sciences and digital transformation. Brexit has made a dent in London’s appeal, and the pandemic has highlighted that top talent is extremely mobile and is increasingly gravitating to places where quality of life is high. Barcelona also featured highly on our list, but Berlin made more sense since most of our European collaborators are located in central Europe and anything we can do to reduce the time spent on planes, trains and automobiles is of high importance,” says Arnason. When it comes to financing, Sidekick received early support from Iceland’s Technology Development Fund. “This was crucial in getting the company off the ground,” Arnason says. “The Icelandic startup scene is maturing, with the government putting entrepreneurship high on the agenda – including establishing a fund-of-funds to help facilitate growth,” he adds. When Gulli joined the company, the product itself was already on the market and the business model was being born. The co-founders and the legacy team had created a stellar product. “The next phase on the journey was to raise our Series A and scale our business, which can be extremely tricky and there are certainly growing pains involved,” he says. The Series A fundraising was oversubscribed and the company raised USD 20 million. It was led by Asabys Partners and Wellington Partners, with participation from existing investors London-based Novator and Reykjavikbased Frumtak Ventures. “Sidekick is growing fast, and anything that we can do to minimize growing pains, especially related to scaling up our teams on both sides of the Atlantic, is extremely important,” says Arnason. MARKET WITHOUT A DIGITAL COMPANION, I.E. A DIGITALLY DELIVERED CLINICAL TREATMENT THAT AUGMENTS PHARMACOTHERAPY TO BOOST HEALTH OUTCOMES .” GULLI ARNASON The pandemic has certainly cast the spotlight on digital health, as well as accelerating the wider adoption of digital health solutions across the healthcare landscape. “This trend will continue to gather pace when we have managed to get the pandemic under control, but it has also slowed things down on other fronts, made it more difficult to set up our Berlin office, and complicated the rollout of our product in new markets. However, the silver lining is that in the long run COVID-19 will advance Sidekick’s mission of bringing healthcare into people’s homes.” Patients are ahead of the curve, willing to adopt and use digital health solutions, while some other healthcare stakeholders are behind the curve he adds. “But the gap is narrowing, and we are seeing US-based health and medical insurance giants emerge as partners. We are also working on exciting projects with hospital operators in Europe.” NLS