How we beat out multi-million dollar companies to win 1st place at AIMED

Earlier this year, our small startup went head to head with some strong incumbents at the largest AI in medicine conference in America and ended up winning first prize for our computer vision algorithm (https://ai-med.io/aim-news/aimed-global-summits-vitrix-health-triumphs-at-aimed19-shark-tank/)

Honestly, I couldn't have been happier during this time but it really got me reflecting on how we brought down such large players. Our team was only around 6 people and all of us were under the age of 25 yet we were able to go toe to toe with the top AI companies and still come out on top. I thought I would write some takeaways I had from this experience.

This is well known but you can move much quicker as a startup. If you see an opportunity with fast growth, double down ASAP and don't look back.
Funding != Success. Some of the companies we competed against had raised their series D round and had a large number of employees. However, with all their money, they were not able to create anything of value since most of their senior staff were far removed from their customers. If you see someone in your space with loads of cash don't be afraid because it's possible they aren't using that money effectively.
Size = bloat. This goes hand in hand with the point above but when I spoke to employees that were working at the companies we were competing with, most of them lacked the foresight into what value their platform bought. Because of this most of them really weren't working to their full potential and this reflected on the quality of the features being released.
Finally, Niche down! Our computer vision algorithm only focuses on gum disease but it is damn good at it. The others we went up against all had wide product offerings and honestly did not do a great job in either.

Those were a few takeaways but if you want to read more about how we built our AI algorithm you can read it here!

https://quixoticnomad.blog/how-we-won-first-place-at-the-biggest-ai-in-medicine-conference/