eMerge win will fuel EVQLV’s growth toward building a future of personalized medicine

By Riley Kaminer

There were 110. Then there were 25, and 5. But then there was one: EVQLV. And so was the South Florida-based biotech startup’s trajectory at the Startup Showcase at this year’s edition of eMerge Americas.

“It meant a ton to be able to present EVQLV at the largest tech conference in Florida,” co-founder and CEO Andrew Satz told Refresh Miami. “It was great to get the word out to the local community about what we’re attempting to accomplish, and winning was an added bonus.”

It’s unlikely you’ll bump into Satz at a networking event around town – rather, he prefers to keep his head down and build. eMerge, Satz explained, offered a welcome opportunity to meet fellow entrepreneurs and see how he and EVQLV (pronounced “evolve”) can help.

“The entrepreneurial path is lonely and torturous, and being able to be around other entrepreneurs who are at different stages was a good opportunity.” Satz added that he has become active in the Endeavor network for the same community-building purposes.

By winning eMerge’s startup showcase, EVQLV won a $520,000 investment from Medina Ventures, BIP Ventures and Florida Funders. Satz told us that these funds will form part of the seed round the company has started raising, bringing it two thirds of the way to its overall goal.

“Our main hurdle right now is that we have a lot of demand, and there aren’t a lot of people who can do what we do,” said Satz. Closing this round will enable EVQLV, which currently has five full-time employees, to hire the staff necessary to work through the two dozen customers on its paid waitlist. A portion of these funds will also go toward marketing, business development and sales efforts – in addition to customer success.

Since early 2020, Satz and his team have been on a mission to merge machine learning, computational biology, drug development, and software engineering to transform the pace, cost, and scale of antibody discovery. Their ultimate vision is much broader though: “The goal is personalized medicine.”

He acknowledged that we may be one or two decades away from this vision, but we’re on the path. “Medicine is made for the disease, it’s not made for the person. What if we could design a medicine just for you to fight cancer or the hundreds of other diseases that antibodies can treat? That’s the future we’re working towards.”

Satz has been active in the artificial intelligence space since 2006, so he’s been through his fair share of hype cycles. Still, he’s surprised that more people don’t use AI nowadays. “I often talk to people that I would expect to use AI that don’t use it at all. But I encourage people to use it. It’s kind of like not using the internet back in 1995.”

In his opinion, this hype cycle – spurred by the rise of LLMs and consumer-friendly GenAI tools like ChatGPT – has reduced some of the skepticism people have had about AI. “People are willing to try it out a bit more now.”

So what advice does Satz have for entrepreneurs hoping to win next year’s Startup Showcase? Don’t overlook storytelling. Satz credited the help of mentor Michael Gaenzler, a pitch coach organized by The VMT through eMerge, for helping him level up his pitching prowess.

“Story crafting and storytelling are probably some of the most undervalued skills an entrepreneur can have,” Satz said.

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Riley Kaminer

I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.

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