"Ideas are worthless in a start-up, you have to focus on doing"

Rosendo Garganta has been good at entrepreneuring since he was a little boy: he’s from a family of health entrepreneurs. In 2012, he founded Devicare, a medtech start-up to improve quality of life for chronic patients that aims to be an industry leader in self-monitoring and home care for chronic illnesses. They currently have two lines of business, one for self-monitoring of lithiasis, like for example kidney stones, and the other for self-monitoring of oral anticoagulant treatments like Sintrom® and Aldocumar®. 

Why did you want to be an entrepreneur? 

Because it’s the only thing I know. In my family, we’ve all been entrepreneurs for generations. On a small scale, but with our own, solvent businesses in Cuba and Catalonia, always focusing on technology and/or health. So it was my natural path. I guess when you are raised in this environment you don’t consider anything else. I’ve always wanted to have my own company.

What is the most important strategic decision you’ve made so far? 

The most important strategic decision was probably to bring the CSIC microsensor technology to the market, which was still very green but is now allowing us to develop medical devices for self-monitoring of many chronic diseases and to become an investment-worthy company that is attractive to venture capital firms and big pharma.

What is the best advice you’ve ever got? 

I couldn’t say. I’ve been given lots of good advice over the years and I’ve read even more. But if I have to choose one thing, it would be what Nolan Bushnell said (founder of Atari): “The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer”. This quote always reminds me that ideas are worthless in start-ups and that I have to focus on doing: managing the team, the projects, the processes, the financial side and the clients.

And now what? What milestones do you want to achieve in the short term? 

In the short term, we want to close a round of Series-A investment, the first after the seed capital round with our 3Fs (family, friends and fools). With this investment we hope to do a good launch of our business units on the national market in 2016, and prepare to export to international markets starting in 2017.