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n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 25 INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP Continued on page 45 Continued from page 26 adds. According to the company, 4.7 billion people around the globe (out of a population of some 7 billion) lack access to medical imaging. Few would bet against the 56-year-old scientist and "swashbuckling" entrepreneur (according to Forbes magazine) who pioneered next-generation DNA sequencing while still a grad student at Yale when he started CuraGen Corp. in 1991. e native New Havener also has business in his blood: His family started Laticrete International, a Woodbridge manufacturer of tile and stone installation products, where as a boy he went on sales calls with his father. CuraGen was one of the pioneering companies in the genomics industry. In 1999 he took it public; a year later CuraGen had a market cap of $5 billion — larger than that of Amer- ican Airlines. And a year aer that (2001) Rothberg had made Fortune Maga- zine's list of the 40 richest Americans under the age of 40. Rothberg resigned as CEO CuraGen in 2005 (four years later it was sold to CellDex erapeutics for $94.5 million) to devote his energies full-time to 454 Life Sciences, a company that had been born five years earlier as a CuraGen subsidiary. e idea for 454 came when Noah, his second child, was born in 1999, and had to be sent to the neonatal ICU for breathing troubles. Noah turned out to be fine, but Rothberg was frustrated that doctors did not have a rapid test to ensure his son did not have an inherited disease. Rothberg brought to market a machine for massively parallel DNA sequencing. Rothberg ceded control of 454 in 2007 when it was acquired by Roche Diagnostics for $155 million. (Roche shut the compa- ny down six years aer that aer subsequent-generation sequenc- ing technologies rendered 454's underlying technology noncom- petitive.) But there were more sci- entific breakthroughs, and more companies, in his future. I t was another family medical crisis that illuminated the brainstorm that would later take flight as Butterfly. His young daughter had been diagnosed with a rare disease known as tuberosclerosis that required frequent monitoring via ultrasound scans. Over the course of multiple visits to the radiologist Rothberg became increasingly curious about the technology used in ultrasound imaging. For one thing, traditional ultra- sound scanners were room-sized, non-portable and very expensive — anywhere from $60,000 to $250,000 for a single unit. Beyond the limitations of the hardware, Rothberg was struck by the disconnect between the actual diagnostic procedure and the interpretation and administration of clinical care to the end-user — the patient. "e person operating [the ultrasound scanner during the procedure] was a technician and not even allowed to talk to the patient about the diagnosis," Roth- berg explains. With Butterfly iQ, Rothberg discovered a way to shrink the technology so it could be used with a mobile phone — thus tak- ing it out of radiology clinics and into doctor's offices anywhere — and to patients worldwide. Butterfly iQ's single probe delivers a two-dimensional image using an array of 9,000 micro- machined sensors fitted onto a tiny chip. It comes with a mobile app that interprets ultrasound images using artificial intelligence. "Butterfly is changing the very nature of the physical exam, and empowering the primary physician who's dealing with the patient, can talk to that patient, and empowering them to look into that body and diagnose," Rothberg explains. at technology, its potential universal application — and not least of all Rothberg's track record — have attracted rarely matched attention from the investment community. e company's most recent Series D financing round last autumn brought to $360 million Butterfly Network's total investment to date. Funders have included Fidelity and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. at brought Butterfly Network's paper valuation to a stunning $1.25 billion. Also last fall, the company began shipping to more than 20,000 medical professionals who reserved devices in advance. It costs $1,999, plus a monthly fee ($35 for individuals) for the soware that makes the images crisp and the device usable in tandem with a smartphone. is fall Rothberg is taking Butterfly iQ around the country — and around the world to a medical diagnostic marketplace primed for this kind of breakthrough product. " We have at least a quarter-century of built-up demand," Rothberg says. "At [trade] shows people come up to us and say, 'is is the most exciting medical breakthrough in 25 years.'" "I had never had product-market fit," to match Butterfly iQ, Rothberg says. "We'll sell more ultrasounds in our first 18 months of production than the rest of the world did [sell traditional ultrasound machines] in the last 50 years." But that's only part of the story. "We're just getting started," says Rothberg of Butterfly iQ. "Now we're as good as a $60,000 or $100,000 [ultrasound] machine; in a year we'll be as good as a $200,000 machine. And in three years there won't be anything as good." In terms of re-envisioning and reinventing technologies, soware and hardware capable of trans- forming medical science, Rothberg has been down this road before. An earlier "lightbulb" evolved into a company called Ion Torrent, which developed and in 2010 We'll sell more ultrasounds in our first 18 months of production than the rest of the world [sold traditional ultrasound machines] in the last 50 years.'

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