Software & Digital Media:
Almost every business has gone digital within the last several years. Digital media is a powerful tool; when used correctly it can lead to a level of positive ROI considered unthinkable only a few years ago. Some of the new pioneers in digital media are based right here in San Diego, and we are happy to name the finalists in the Software & Digital Media category for the Most Innovative New Product Awards here:
AristaMD for Referral Intelligence Platform
AristaMDs Referral Intelligence Platform provides – Consult-IQ, Referral-IQ and Operational-IQ. Consult-IQ: an eConsult solution facilitating a rapid-response consult between PCP and Specialist. Referral-IQ: automated clinical guidelines for Primary Care Providers. Operational-IQ: analytics of referral patterns and behaviors within the health system.
Founder and CEO Rebecca Cofinas founded AristaMD after 10 years of c-level healthcare experience for one of the nation’s leading healthcare systems, Scripps Health. Rebecca shared some of her insights with us about achievement, innovation, and being a Most Innovative New Product Award Finalist.
CONNECT: What’s your biggest achievement to date?
Rebecca Cofinas: Being the Executive Vice President of Scripps Health is tied with securing Series A funding for my own company, AristaMD.
CONNECT: What’s the biggest obstacle or challenge you’ve overcome?
Cofinas: Balancing the intensity of my career with my family life – I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful children.
CONNECT: What’s the best thing about having your business in San Diego?
Cofinas: 1:1 meetings with my staff while hiking the Torrey Pines trails down to the beach – it’s a great way to get a lot done while at the same time enjoying our beautiful weather and environment!
CONNECT: What’s your favorite go to-app right now?
Cofinas: Uber, hands down. It’s the easiest way to get around when I’m traveling and have a tight itinerary – no need to rent a car or deal with parking!
CONNECT: In your opinion, what’s been the best innovation in the last 25 years?
Cofinas: The pace of innovation has exploded in the last few decades, which makes it impossible to choose, but to name one, the ubiquity of smart phones has changed the business landscape.
CONNECT: What’s your favorite business blog or book?
Cofinas: The Digital Doctor, by Dr. Robert (Bob) Wachter. His book is timely and spot on with respect to the challenges physicians face as the tech world collides with medicine.
CONNECT: What does being a finalist in the Most Innovative New Product Awards mean to you?
Cofinas: Being a finalist in the MIP awards is amazing validation of all the hard work that my team has put in to make our company and product a success.
Comhear for MyBeam
The Comhear Mybeam delivers a fully immersive audio experience through a portable personal device that replaces headphones. The device commercializes a patent-pending algorithm that sends sound directly to your ears precisely the way your body was designed to receive it.
CEO Perry Teevens joined Comhear as CEO in July 2015. Prior to being appointed CEO, Perry was a Comhear investor and board member. Perry chatted with the CONNECT team about his take on doing business and innovativing in San Diego.
CONNECT: What’s your biggest achievement to date?
Teevens: In terms of order of magnitude, being part of a $9B Skype acquisition by Microsoft in 2011 was a big achievement.
CONNECT: What’s the biggest obstacle or challenge you’ve overcome?
Teevens: Nothing in business is more challenging than raising three daughters.
CONNECT: What’s the best thing about having your business in San Diego?
Teevens: Great weather and great talent.
CONNECT: What’s your favorite go to-app right now?
Teevens: Uber.
CONNECT: In your opinion, what’s been the best innovation in the last 25 years?
Teevens: MyBeam.
CONNECT: What’s your favorite business blog or book?
Teevens: TechCrunch.
CONNECT: What does being a finalist in the Most Innovative New Product Awards mean to you?
Teevens: Validation for all the hard work Comhear employees, contractors and partners have put into developing a truly innovative product.
SOCi for SOCi
SOCi is the leading enterprise solution for social media content discovery and page management. Brands and Agencies rely on SOCi’s proprietary content scoring technology together with it’s powerful marketing toolset to manage thousands of accounts with great efficiency and great results.
SOCi’s Founder and CEO, Afif Khoury, spoke with CONNECT about what’s hot in apps and his interesting take on business books.
CONNECT: What’s your biggest achievement to date?
Afif Khoury: Building an amazing team. Our business requires leaders. We have multiple divisions and if I couldn’t rely on others to run their divisions then we would sink as soon as we left the dock. Our technology is amazing, but it is the people that make this company.
CONNECT: What’s the biggest obstacle or challenge you’ve overcome?
Khoury: Doing too many things. It can be the death of any young company. In our case, it was the core of our product: that we could deliver many things in a single unified platform. Now that we have done it, we are reaping the rewards, but there were definitely some dark moments where we weren’t sure if that light at the end of the tunnel was nirvana or a train headed right at us.
CONNECT: What’s the best thing about having your business in San Diego?
Khoury: Loyalty and lack of attrition. My friends in the bay area lose employees, especially engineers, on a monthly basis. I have been with some of the members of this team for years.
CONNECT: What’s your favorite go to-app right now?
Khoury: Head Soccer. My kids go silent when I hand it to them 🙂 For me personally, it’s WhatsApp. I can connect with friends and colleagues across the world in real time. To me, that is the holy grail of technology.
CONNECT: In your opinion, what’s been the best innovation in the last 25 years?
Khoury: Yet to come, and will relate to food production or water reclamation. The world has some very serious problems in these areas, and solutions to them will not only change the lives of hundreds of millions of suffering people but it will shift the political landscape of our planet.
CONNECT: What’s your favorite business blog or book?
Khoury: Green Eggs & Ham. As Sam says, “Try it Try it and you may. Try it and you may I say”. What a great lesson. We reject too many things by their cover.
CONNECT: What does being a finalist in the Most Innovative New Product Awards mean to you?
Khoury: It means I am contributing to the path forward. If you are not innovating you are dying. The status quo is not an option, and I have never been one to stand by the sidelines and let others get their hands dirty on my behalf. This award would be a nice affirmation of that decision to be part of the solution at all times.
Want to meet our Finalists in the Software & Digital Media category? Then join us, and San Diego’s innovation elite, on December 1 at the Most Innovative New Product Awards. For more information on the event and to buy a table or tickets, visit the event page. See you there!