Women's Entrepreneurship Day Founder Spotlight: Corinne Vargas
In honor of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day (November 19), Chicago:Blend is featuring two local tech founders who we met through GET Cities Chicago’s Seed Founder Cohort. For our second spotlight, we’re introducing Corinne Vargas, CEO and Founder of SMARTCharts, a patient-first, clinician-driven productivity app serving care teams in speech, occupational and physical therapy. An actuary turned speech-language pathologist, Corinne’s entrepreneurial journey was shaped by her experience supporting her mother, who had suffered a brain aneurysm and stroke. This inspired Corinne to create a tool that would support, inform, and motivate patients and their families.
Q: What does your company do and what motivated you to launch it here in Chicago?
SMARTCharts is a healthcare application that transforms speech, occupational, and physical therapy progress notes into patient-friendly visuals. Think of us as "Google Analytics" for rehabilitation care teams. We create patient-accessible visuals that motivate patients to achieve their recovery goals quickly and enable clinicians to make data-driven decisions easily.
Born and raised in Chicago, I couldn't imagine launching SMARTCharts in any other city. My entire professional journey has been deeply rooted in this vibrant city, and I've witnessed the unparalleled strength of its people, networks, and sense of community. Chicago's diverse and dynamic environment provides an ideal backdrop for our innovative approach to healthcare, ensuring that our impact is both effective and far-reaching.
By utilizing technology to empower patients and clinicians in the rehabilitation process, SMARTCharts is not only excited about contributing to the advancement of healthcare but also proudly representing the spirit of Chicago's innovation and resilience.
Q: What are some recent wins that you're really proud of?
2023 has been an exciting year for us. We've launched our new product, grown our team, and gained visibility.
Earlier this month, we released our SMARTCharts Enterprise product, allowing us to serve clinicians and patients who use the most prominent electronic health record (EHR) systems. We've secured our first health system pilot, grown our pipeline by 5X and identified market channels with inbound interest in direct partnership with rehabilitation EHRs.
Our team has grown in both size and expertise. We've added key industry experts to our leadership team and as advisors. With the new talent, we've grown our partnership opportunities by 3X and increased our knowledge, learning from some of the best, including a healthtech founder, a physician turned data scientist, and healthcare sales experts.
Finally, we were honored to win several competitions over this past year, including the Prime Health Innovation Challenge and, notably, Chicago's very own TechRise 2022 Finale.
Q: What has the fundraising journey been like for you?
Not easy. Given the long-tailed nature of healthcare sales and the regulations associated with the industry, showing traction and getting an enterprise product to launch seemed impossible. Those hallmark metrics needed for VC investment were just out of reach for SMARTCharts in the early days.
However, this year, we hit some key milestones – specifically, launching the EHR-integration-ready product and securing hospital system pilots, but as we all know, 2023 hasn’t been an easy year to fundraise. To date, we’ve found our way to funding by telling our story in competitions and securing grants.
Q: What advice would you give to other women who are thinking of launching their own companies?
Make the ask. I spent a lot of my time early on in my founder journey waiting to ask for the introduction, the mentorship, the feedback, the funding answer, the help…the list goes on. In retrospect, I think I wasted a lot of time and perhaps lost opportunities.
One of my mentors recently reminded me that “no” is the second best answer to “yes”. I can honestly say there are no truer words – get out there, make the ask and if it’s a “no” be thankful you got to an answer and move on.
Q: What "ask" would you like to make to the Chicago:Blend community?
Boldly stated, funding. We are actively raising a bridge round to support our (Chicago-based) pilot opportunities and prove product-market fit with the largest rehabilitation organizations in the country. We’re actively looking for investors of all levels and partner organizations to help us reach our mission – to help all rehabilitation patients get better faster.