Revolutionizing Healthcare Supply Chains with Luká Yancopoulos, CEO of Grapevine Technologies

In this episode of "From Lab to Launch" by Qualio, host Meg welcomes Luca Yancopoulos, the CEO of Grapevine Technologies. Grapevine Technologies is a platform that revolutionizes the healthcare supply chain by connecting buyers with trusted wholesale suppliers, offering lower prices and a seamless online ordering process. 

Luca's passion for improving healthcare supply chain inefficiencies was sparked when he founded a medical supplies distribution company, Pandemic Relief Supply (PRS), during the COVID-19 pandemic, which delivered over $20 million in critical supplies.

During the podcast, Luca discusses the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare supply chains, highlighting the outdated practices and inefficiencies in the industry. He explains how Grapevine Technologies aims to address these issues by providing a marketplace for medical practices and hospitals to connect with suppliers and optimize their supply chain.

Luca also shares insights into the challenges and opportunities in the healthcare supply chain industry for 2024 and beyond, emphasizing the increasing demand for change and transparency.

Listeners can find more information and updates on Grapevine Technologies by visiting their website (www.gograpevine.com) and following them on LinkedIn.

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Music by keldez

Transcript

Meg Sinclair: 0:24

Hi, everyone, and welcome to From Lab to Launch by Qualio. I'm Meg, your host. Thanks for tuning in today. Before we get started, we love it. If you rated the podcast, it's easy to do and share it with any of your science and nerd friends, we know you have some, if you'd like to be on the show, please leave, please see the show notes for an application. We'll get connected that way. Today we have Luca Yankopolis, CEO of Grapevine Technologies on the show. He and his team built a platform to uproot the old way of obtaining medical supplies by connecting buyers with trusted wholesale suppliers. This gives buyers access to lower prices and a seamless online ordering process. His passion for improving inefficiencies in the healthcare supply chain began when he founded a medical supplies distribution company in the middle of the pandemic, Pandemic Relief Supply, or PRS, which delivered over 20 million in critical supplies. We're going to dive deeper into the supply chain of life saving products in this episode. So let's jump in. Welcome luca, we're glad to have you here.

Luka Yancopoulos: 1:30

Thanks. I'm, I'm glad to be here. And I'm a big fan of the show. Listen to the last two releases. I don't know if there'll be the most recent two once this one comes out, but Phil Wagner and John Abbott. Uh, so that was pretty cool. But yeah, glad to be from fan to now interviewee. It's kind of a cool, cool upgrade for me.

Meg Sinclair: 1:47

From lab to launch, from listener to interviewee. Here we go. Exactly. Yeah. So let's kick it off with your backstory, um, behind Grapevine Technologies and what made you want to start this company?

Luka Yancopoulos: 1:59

Yeah, for sure. Sure. So. I was actually focused on, uh, renewable energy, uh, research when I was last in the lab, and I was in the lab pretty much every summer of my high school career, and then through college, and I was actually working in a lab on, uh, new sort of nanotechnology for sequencing the human genome at the time that COVID broke out and COVID sort of set me on a path of first understanding problems that existed out there in healthcare supply chains. And more recently, you know, trying to solve those problems, uh, you know, sort of head on.

Meg Sinclair: 2:41

So thinking of the traditional supply chain, can you paint a picture for us of how COVID impacted that and changed what that supply chain looks like

Luka Yancopoulos: 2:49

now? Yeah, totally. So I know it's, I think everyone saw it probably in the news. It was on the news every single day. And I definitely heard a lot about the sort of failures of, you know, supply chain failures amidst the pandemic. Um, but obviously, you know, Covid, at least to me, was a catalyst for something that was on a crash collision course for a long time. Uh, these healthcare supply chains haven't changed much in the past 30 years, and the people sort of running them and engineering them have not changed. In the past 30 years. And, uh, you know, a lot of the practices and that sort of pace of moving products from manufacturer to end user there, they're what McKinsey would say is 30 years behind that of something like fast moving consumer goods or product categories that you and I may be familiar with in our own personal lives. So you've got, you know, inventory sitting on shelves, right? of warehouses for over 180 days before it ever, you know, even gets moved. You've got, um, you know, things thus, as a result, sort of expiring on shelves and then being thrown away. Um, you've got things being redundantly shipped from A to B to C to D all the way before it goes to the customer at Z. And all these things pile up and ultimately all these things drive up the cost of medical supplies for medical practices. And as a result, the cost of health care go up for people like you and me as patients. So it's, it's, it's a pretty interesting sort of problem to engage with. It's something that, you know, I really didn't see myself getting involved with until the pandemic. Um, like I said, I was focused on renewable energy. That was my passion. It was the biggest problem. I understood that our generation would face. And I like to think that, you know, if you take the biggest problems that, you know, your generation faces or that people may face across borders and whatnot, and you aim to solve them, you can reach commercial success. And that's, you know, a lesson that my dad taught me. And it's something that I believe. And that's why I was studying renewable energy. It's why I was in the lab doing what I was doing at the time. And it's You know, now what's led me to, um, you know, supply chain engineering with grapevine. Yeah. I think there's

Meg Sinclair: 5:04

some impacts there. If you're helping to manage the supply chain, be more efficient and reduce that waste, you're probably making some strides there in renewable energy, right? By conserving resources.

Luka Yancopoulos: 5:15

Totally. Totally. You wouldn't believe it. So I'll give you a little anecdote about like the waste of resources. And of course it drives up costs, but the waste are just like resources and energy, um, in healthcare supply chains. We, when we first got started, we were basically just looking at, um, import records, the U S customs and border protection agency publishes everything that comes through our ports, which is pretty cool. And, you know, cross referencing the import records with the FDA medical device registrar to find, you know, FDA licensed importers of supplies. And that's what we were really doing, you know, during the pandemic, that's how we got our footing. Um, sort of finding those suppliers and connecting them with those in need. We sorta in doing that, we were purchasing products from those importers and bringing them into our own warehouse and reselling them. And our biggest customers were actually resellers who would buy them from us, uh, buy those medical devices from us and resell them to people like McKesson. We did, you know, hundreds of thousands of, of different. Um, 100, 000 of revenue, ultimately that wound up in McKesson's warehouse, and it got not only sort of marked up and passed along to four to five resellers before it actually reached McKesson and then the end user, but it also got shipped redundantly from New York to California, from California to Denver, from Denver to Massachusetts, from Massachusetts. Back to McKesson where it's split up 50 ways and going all over. And I mean, to me, that's like you said, an unbelievable waste of resource, an unbelievable waste of manpower and thought. Think about the people involved in those processes just to move it back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, wasted energy. And ultimately, you know, one of the, one of the many, uh, sort of variables that drives up the cost of the medical supplies. It's just wasteful sort of thinking.

Meg Sinclair: 7:06

Interesting. Um, just the widespread impacts the supply chain can have as we saw during the pandemic. So with grapevine's platform, you have to connect both the supply and the demand. How are you handling your go to market strategy and what's working so

Luka Yancopoulos: 7:21

far? Yeah. So I'll tell you what we started with and where we're going because I know we got a lot of entrepreneur sort of listeners and then, and then I'll tell you what, where we've ended up and what's going right. We started with thinking if you can solve, like basically there are problems. At the top of the stream. And if you think about just like a stream, right? Like in your mind, pretty between mountains in a valley, right? If you've got a big blockage in your stream all the way at the start of your stream, it's going to damn up. You're going to get, you know, no water flowing down to the little village at the end of that stream. Um, So our initial sort of project was to solve the inefficiencies upstream, basically between importer and, you know, end user, um, really by trying to build, you know, AI based software to automate the processes for, uh, suppliers and importers. Uh, the processes of customer service of logistics coordination, you know, warehousing, what can be done with, with software and so on. And, you know, suppliers were sellers. They want to sell product. That's what they're motivated to do. And the idea of getting, you know, uh, a nitro boost engine brought into their vehicle. That's been the same vehicle for 20, 30 years. Wasn't that attractive or appealing to those supplier type businesses. Um, the only thing they basically wanted to use Grapevine for was to sell supplies and to get access to new customers who wanted to buy their supplies. And... You know, in a lot of cases, those suppliers just being who they were importers, the first person to touch, you know, the products having avoided all the inefficiencies that would, you know, come after them in the supply chain, um, they were able to offer significantly lower prices on products. So that's where we built out what would become, you know, this sort of marketplace component as opposed to an automation toolbox for suppliers, but a marketplace in a way for these suppliers to connect with an active and hungry sort of customer base. Um, and we really started building more and more for buyers, and it's a, it's a lesson that, you know, Jeff Bezos has said a million times, but I guess it just doesn't stick, even for an entrepreneur who's read, you know, several books about him and by him, you know, you've got to focus on the customer, you got to focus on the person who's going to put money into your system and doesn't sort of flinch at the idea of putting money towards whatever it is that you're giving them. And healthcare buyers and medical practices. It is. are buying supplies and they definitely want to spend less on those supplies. So we've transitioned over the last few months into focusing more and more on the medical practices. Um, building, you know, not only a place for medical practices to connect with, you know, hundreds of vendors and purchase from the mall, compare prices and optimize their supply chain, but also a toolbox that automates a lot of the job that an office manager or, you know, an owner of a small medical practice might have historically taken on. It might have taken them 20, 30 hours a week. So, um, yeah, so we've been focusing more and more on building value at the end of the supply chain to basically it. motivation for the suppliers to engage with our platform. Fortunately or unfortunately, we built the A. I. Automation toolbox for suppliers and now buyers were in the process of building it for buyers. But it's funny because, you know, I think one day we'll be able to cure the supply chain of its ailments. Um, once sort of the whole supply chain sort of finds in a grapevine. But until then, we're really focused on and building for medical practices and hospitals.

Meg Sinclair: 10:59

I imagine that's got to help the smaller practices. They're so few and far between those smaller independent doctors and smaller organizations. A lot of them fall under a larger hospital umbrella. So I imagine this helps them keep their doors open, um, by keeping the costs down. So

Luka Yancopoulos: 11:15

yeah, great. Absolutely. We work with, uh, uh, dermatology practice in upstate New York here. Not, not too far. I was there a couple of weeks ago and 25 percent of their expense. When it comes to like their entire business's expense, um, is actually on medical devices and medical supplies, which is crazy. So every dollar they charge, they're essentially, you know, having to mark that up to cover their, you know, overhead. Yeah. Crazy.

Meg Sinclair: 11:44

What issues or trends do you see on the horizon for 2024 and beyond for healthcare supply chains? Given that we're a couple of years out now of the pandemic.

Luka Yancopoulos: 11:54

Yeah, I think for the first time in probably, I mean, I don't know, since probably the term supply chain was coined, um, healthcare leaders are actually looking for change in, in their, their medical supply chains. I think that historically people, uh, have had the mentality and I've actually been told this by owners of businesses. That, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it because changing things carries risk and risk in this industry is life and death. So, you know, people haven't felt a reason to change, but when the lack of change or the lack of evolution to, you know, for a better system, um, actually becomes a matter of life and death as it did become during the pandemic, that's when you see people sort of willing to change. So. There's, you know, huge, huge opportunities. Um, I think when it comes to, you know, for business leaders like myself, but also, um, a lot of motivation for healthcare leaders, those at hospitals or medical practices. To seek out change in their supply chain processes. And the numbers sort of show the same trends in the last year, you know, adoption of software, everything from ERPs, which, you know, I think are a little bit outdated systems to marketplaces, to trying new vendors, all of these things are, you know, really evolving at a faster and faster rate. Um, and which is exciting for a business like mine, because it means we've got an opportunity to, you know, stake out a little, a little piece of this market. And. You know, hopefully provide really valuable, uh, and meaningful change to, to medical practices. Yeah.

Meg Sinclair: 13:29

And I imagine the very sexy hot topic of AI comes into play there too, for supply chain and how that helps.

Luka Yancopoulos: 13:35

Totally. Yeah. It's a word people love to throw around and it means a lot of different things. So it's, it's interesting. Great.

Meg Sinclair: 13:44

On founder's perspective on the show. Can you tell us what keeps you up at night and what's your most excited for in the future as an entrepreneur?

Luka Yancopoulos: 13:56

I, uh. I would say the thing that keeps me up at night is, is that, you know, I, I always believed, and I've already said it, um, on the pod so far, but I've always believed that, you know, if you create meaningful, positive change for people that make their lives better, um, you know, commercial success inevitably follows. And while I still believe that's true, and I think it may take a lot of time to, to have people sort of appreciate that value and, you know, adopt it. Um, the thing that sort of keeps me up at night is probably, um, you know, the fear that it will take too long to help people sort of see the value that you've created. For us, it's as, you know, stark as night and day when we try to synthesize a value proposition to, you know, medical practice sort of leadership, um, to make it an obvious choice. But yeah, I mean, the way that we're now sort of pitching ourselves to these practices is. We can lower your prices on medical supplies by 90 percent and we'll pull up their Henry Schein account And it has the same product same brand same manufacturer and then we pull it up on grapevine same product Whatever and it's got like another, you know It's literally one tenth of the price and it's got you know 10 extra locations that can ship from to reduce sort of stock outs and back orders and we've got all these other things that we do You know, at grapevine that add value, but to me, you know, trying to quantify it for mathematics sort of nerdy people, and a lot of them are, uh, when it comes to leadership in that in, you know, health care, um, but quantify it with sort of numbers. To me, it's like an obvious thing. If you could save 90 percent with, like, pretty much the same process in place, like, why wouldn't you switch yet? We hear time and time again, sort of resistance to that. So That's something that's a little bit disheartening or scary to me is like, I know that we can provide value, but can we get to a point where it's, you know, appreciated? It's adopted. It's, you know, people aren't scared of it. Um, and that's sort of, that's sort of what we're working on now is, is figuring out a way to marry it. their fears with, you know, the opportunities and the better future they can have on grapevine, not just sort of cost savings.

Meg Sinclair: 16:10

Dollars and cents usually speak pretty loud and clear, so I wish you the best of luck there.

Luka Yancopoulos: 16:15

Definitely for businesses, you know? Yeah.

Meg Sinclair: 16:18

Yeah. Um, speaking of business problems, we've heard that, uh, funding is the number one business problem for many companies in life sciences. How are you financing your startup? And do you have any advice?

Luka Yancopoulos: 16:33

Yeah, we got pretty lucky in, in a lot of ways, um, we had a, a first sort of startup that was, you know, like I said, we were a part of the problem in healthcare supply chains. We were purchasing supplies, warehousing it and then reselling it. you know, causing increased product prices and whatnot. Um, and that was a company we started called PRS medical. You, you mentioned it in the introduction. We did 20 million of sales revenue in, you know, two years, actually, while I was at college and, um, we started winding it down towards the end of my senior year and we're able to, you know, pocket a fair amount of change that we used, uh, to bootstrap grapevine and right about the time that we were. Um, you know, I was actually graduating. We're looking to sort of launch grapevine. We won the president's innovation prize from the University of Pennsylvania. So that was another quarter million dollars of non equity funding, which is great. There's all sorts of student programs that, you know, we applied to to try to get this non equity funding. And if you're in a lab and you're a student or a grad student, I definitely I definitely Definitely encourage you to look up these products or projects and competitions and whatnot. Cause you can like make a lot of sort of money to start your own business without giving away equity. Um, by leaning into these things and then, you know, also government grants to that, you know, that's a big opportunity that we didn't, you know, see as much success with, but it's, it's a cool thing when you're trying to save lives or have meaningful, positive change in the world. Um, you can get a lot of funding in that way, but after we sort of work through the university competition circuit and, and raise some money that way, um, those same networks actually introduced us to funding partners, angel investors and venture capital partners. Um, and we, you know, ended up rolling it all up to raise 1. 6 million as far as, yeah, I mean, moving forward and trying to raise money in the market that is out there. Now, obviously, it's challenging and I haven't tried. I've reduced our spend and cut back on our expenses to sort of give us an extra runway because I don't want to try to raise money in this market. So I can't speak to what it's like out there right now, but if you do have, you know, if you do have some capital and you're able to run your business now, I just recommend sort of toning back your spend just to wait out this, this cold period, this ice age and going back to it when, when things are a little more optimistic and, you know, funding partners are more, uh, aggressive. So that's our plan. We got just over a year's worth of runway. And we do have at this point, you know, angel investors and venture capital partners who see their investments as, you know, somewhat of a sunk cost where I do think they would be happy to sort of continue funding us. So the best investors are the easiest ones to work with the people who've already given you money. And have something on the line to lose. So,

Meg Sinclair: 19:21

yeah, well, congratulations on your award for you and your team and your, uh, fundraising. Um, that sounds great. I'm glad you've gotten to get off the ground and have that, uh, PRS to get you kind of bootstrap started. Um,

Luka Yancopoulos: 19:36

Yeah, that's great. Pretty good. It all sort of worked out.

Meg Sinclair: 19:40

Yeah. So switching gears back to you, Luca, if you could go back to the start of your career, which maybe for you hasn't been too long ago, and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be knowing what you know now? Stick to renewable energy?

Luka Yancopoulos: 20:00

Who knows, maybe. Especially in the world that we're now living in with, you know, all sorts of I don't know, trade issues going on, and there are opportunities for re inflammation. No, I wouldn't say that. Um, I got a piece of advice probably a year ago. My brother, I've got an older brother who's two years older than me. He is nothing like me, but also everything like me. We live very different lifestyles. He's not an entrepreneur. He basically does everything in his power to spend as much time outside as possible. And as little time sort of in the office or building, you know, commercial ventures as possible. So he gave me some advice when we were gardening a couple of months ago. That's really stuck with me. It's the idea that the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. And the second best time to plant a tree was today. Um, and to me, you know, the way I sort of analyze that is just, sometimes doubt might paralyze you. And sometimes joy or happy things will pleasantly distract you. And you won't always sort of be productive or do the right thing or be proud of what you did yesterday. And there will definitely be moments when you realize that you should have done things differently. But the worst thing you can do is relish in regret. And instead, you know, try to turn that regret into motivation. And, you know, I think for the trees you did not plant 30 years ago, you should be inspired to plant more today, even if the seeds you sow fail to grow, or even if you'll never know what comes of it. It's the greatest feeling to try to give life to something beautiful, and that's what we're aiming to do here at Grapevine. We're trying to, trying to get it to grow, so. That's probably the best answer I've gotten thus far. Yeah.

Meg Sinclair: 21:42

And where did the name Grapevine come from, if I can ask?

Luka Yancopoulos: 21:46

Yeah. Um, so the name Grapevine sort of came from which, hold on, let's, maybe we'll have Grant edit this part out. Let me think about which way I want to answer it. There's a few different, uh, sort of stems of where the name Grapevine came from. The sort of primary or most obvious one that our sales guys are saying constantly is Grapevine. Like, heard it through the grapevine, you know, the song. And I think to some level, that's sort of true when we got started in this space, there was, I mean, and there still is a total lack of transparency across the industry, people buying or purchasing from McKesson think they're buying and purchasing McKesson products. They don't know that 70 percent of the products they're purchasing were actually bought from another supplier in the United States warehouse. McKesson, all these things sort of marked up. They don't know that there's, uh, you know, a better person to buy it from. They can cut out the middleman and with him. His markups and inefficiencies. Um, but there's a lot of he said, she said sort of B. S. At the pandemic when we were getting involved. A lot of people promising things they didn't have or speaking of sort of rumors and supply chain and we manage a lot of data and try to dissect that data to best understand supply chain. So I mean to me getting to the truth of the rumors that be in the non transparent. Uh, you know, health care supply chain. That's that's a huge part of what we do here at grapevine. So if you hear it through the grapevine, you know, it's legit. It's not something he said. She said sort of bs. It's that backed by data and government data at that. And that's how we ensure sort of quality of both products, but also, you know, quality delivery of sort of vendors and partners as you build out your supply chain network on grapevine. So, you know, That's that's probably the biggest thing. Um, but also we like the idea of, you know, grapevine being, you know, in the way that they even look, it sort of looks like a network diagram and, you know, delivering sort of fruits of labor to those who are involved. Uh, those fruits being little grapes. I think grapes are fruits or maybe I don't know what grapes are. Fruits. We'll go with fruits. I think they're fruits. Yeah.

Meg Sinclair: 23:55

Yeah. I like that double meaning. I think both work.

Luka Yancopoulos: 23:58

Yeah.

Meg Sinclair: 24:00

And the song is a classic, so you can't go wrong there. Yeah.

Luka Yancopoulos: 24:03

Free marketing all the time. I was in a Chipotle like two weeks ago and they were playing it. And I free marketing, baby.

Meg Sinclair: 24:10

Lovely. You'll have to get the rights to that song somehow. Yeah. So our last question is more of a fun one. We like to ask our guests. You may have heard it before. If you're a listener, if we ran into a book at a bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, in what section would we find you?

Luka Yancopoulos: 24:30

So you probably the fact of the matter is you probably find me in like the nonfiction business area and I read like a ridiculous amount of these sort of startup books because I figure there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of mistakes that have been made by entrepreneurs before me and if I can, you know, read those mistakes instead of making them to learn those lessons, that'd be pretty valuable and save me a lot of time. So that's where I, that's where I've been the last couple of years. But where my heart really lies, if my heart was on its own in the bookstore doing its own thing, it. Um, where my heart really lies is, is in the sort of fantasy sci fi sort of area of the world. So anywhere from, you know, as far as, I mean, yeah, like, I really like like Brave New World all the way to, um, The Golden Compass or whatever books, I think they're called Golden Compass. Um, but yeah, so like weird fantasy stuff is really, oh, I love Lord of the Rings. Love Lord of the Rings books. You know, the movies were okay. I watched the movies as a kid, but then I was... Inspired to read the books because the movies were pretty good. And then I read the books and they were amazing. So that's really my, my, my dirty pleasure, but I've gotten less of it, uh, than I'd like in the last, you know, four or five years because I've been so focused on.

Meg Sinclair: 25:43

Well, summer's not over. Maybe you can get some fantasy summer reading in.

Luka Yancopoulos: 25:47

Exactly.

Meg Sinclair: 25:49

Terrific. Well, thank you so much, Luca, for joining us on From Lab to Launch today by Qualio. Where can our listeners go to follow along and connect with you and learn what you and Grapevine are up to?

Luka Yancopoulos: 25:59

Totally. Yeah. Um. I would say, you know, our website is probably the place to start, www. go greatvine. com. And our LinkedIn page is where we're posting sort of, you know, every and any updates that we've got, whether it's sort of new features that we release every couple weeks, or, you know, industry reports, we've got a big industry report, uh, that we're releasing based on all the data that we've been accumulating, uh, tracking and organizing for the last couple years, so. Check us out on LinkedIn and check us out on our website. Great.

Meg Sinclair: 26:34

I will be following along on your websites to hear what comes through the grapevine. Thanks so much, Luca.

Luka Yancopoulos: 26:42

Thanks, Meg.