Lessons from Bringing New Tech to Developing Countries and Pro Basketball with Assaf Barnea, CEO of Sanara Ventures

Today we welcome Mr. Assaf Barnea to the show. He is a former pro basketball player in Europe and currently the CEO of Sanara Ventures, a healthcare innovation fund backed by Phillips and Teva Pharmaceuticals investing in digital health and medical device technologies.Sanara invests primarily in early stage digital health and bio convergence companies. He offers his insight and outlook on bio convergence in the future.Assaf also shares experiences as the co-founder of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation’s Tech Emerge Initiative, which is a unique acceleration platform that connects healthcare startups from around the world with leading corporations and hospitals in emerging economies. He talks about the work done in India, Brazil, and now Africa. Truly inspiring and life-changing work. In his career, Mr. Barnea co-founded CardioSense, a medtech startup company, served as CEO of Kinrot Ventures spearheading its acquisition by Hutchison Water in 2012. He spearheaded business development at Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, where he oversaw the establishment of WaTech, the Entrepreneurship & Partnership Center for Water Technologies, where he received the Cleantech Group’s Innovation Hero Award.A unique highlight in Assaf’s story is basketball. At New Jersey’s Seton Hall University he and his team won the Big East championship against Georgetown in 1991 playing against Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning. He played professionally in Europe for years and shares some parallels between athletic prowess and entrepreneurship.We’re excited to have him share his perspective and advice for entrepreneurs on today’s show.Show Notes:www.SanaraVentures.comhttps://www.techemerge.org/Assaf on LinkedInMusic by keldezQualio website:https://www.qualio.com/Previous episodes:https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcastApply to be on the show:https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8Music by keldez