Reliable Cough Data for COVID19 and Tuberculosis Research - Iulian Circo of Hyfe

One of the most common symptoms associated with COVID-19 is probably the cough. Now, what if you could quantify that more than giving a simple description about it? Well, that’s what the cough tracking app Hyfe does, and co-founder Iulian Circo is here to tell us what it’s all about. 

Initially working in the humanitarian sector in various countries, Iulian shared his experiences working in war zones and high-intensity environments and how he was drawn to making a similar impact, but this time in a different sector. Now, he’s founded and currently advises many organizations and startups that are geared on making an impact in the world in so many different ways. Iulian also talks about his entrepreneurial journey, Hyfe’s use cases, and the significance of technology, especially in healthcare and new fields like acoustic epidemiology. Apart from that, Iulian said that this generation is ready to make an impact, and so now is the best time to turn your idea into a reality.

With Hyfe, it is an artificial intelligence algorithm that tracks cough in real-time. To date, they have over 140 million samples collected from all parts of the world. Now, that’s impressive. They are undoubtedly and proudly the market leader in this space thanks to the wide range of their user demographics which has resulted in an extremely diverse and unbiased data set. It’s a really interesting episode you won’t want to miss.

Iulian’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “In critical environments and extreme environments, technology is a lifesaver, and it's definitely a multiplier for people trying to get things done.” (5:42)
• “Humanity will always prevail.” (14:19)
• “Where we are, there's no playbook. So, what we do is we have to discover basically where the market is and where the value is.” (28:21)
• “Running a business, and running a startup… that's a very healthy attitude to have, to always be very rigorous in deciding, what is the metric that moves my needle?” (37:07)
• “I don't think there's been ever a better time to do it, and anybody who is thinking about doing that should absolutely do it right away.” (44:33)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• The nonlinear evolution of Iulian’s career (3:01)
• The lessons Iulian learned from his time in the humanitarian sector (11:35)
• Hyfe and how it works (15:41)
• The cough tracking space with and without Hyfe (29:09)
• Iulian’s advice for aspiring entrepreneurs (39:11)
• Mistakes Iulian’s made that he wants you to avoid (45:04)