B-a-MedFounder is a global crowdfunding platform specialized in medical devices.

CNBC by Dan Mangan | August 18, 2013

Here's a prescription for cash-strapped medical device inventors: Crowdfunding.

A new Web company is taking advantage of the trend of Internet-enabled public funding of projects by offering to connect inventors of smaller medical devices from around the world with people who can give them the cash they need to get off the ground.

"There are people in many different countries that have bright ideas, and they don't have the contacts in order to show them," said Daniel Yachia, co-founder and chief medical officer of the new online crowdfunding company B-a-MedFounder.

"If you're not well connected to big companies or funding yourselves, it's very difficult to get funding for your idea."

"We are giving them a stage to show," said Yachia, a professor of urology at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, who himself holds more than 30 medical device patents.

Yachia founded the site with his brother-in-law's son, Sedat Barokas, who has worked in private equity and investment banking at Turkven Private Equity in Turkey, and JPMorgan in the United States.

B-a-MedFounder is just Yachia's latest venture. In 1996, the medical stent company InStent that he co-founded was sold to Medtronic for $200 million.

Other websites, including MedStartr and HealthFundr are offering similar crowdfunding opportunities for inventors and funders in the health sector. But unlike those sites, B-a-MedFounder is focused exclusively on obtaining funding for smaller medical device projects.

"During the last year, I saw there are lots of problems in getting funding for new ideas," Yachia said, explaining his motivation for creating the site. "The source of funding for venture capital is almost dry for new entrepreneurs."

He said the drought of investor funds is particularly bad for inventors of small medical devices, which often don't require large amounts of money to get off the ground.

"If I have a project and I got to a VC [venture capitalist], the minimum I need to ask for is $5 million, or they won't even look me in the face," Yachia said.

B-a-MedFounder expects that the bulk of the projects seeking funding will be looking for amounts in the range of $70,000 to $100,000. That's what it usually takes to properly bring a concept to the stage where it is ready for a second round of funding with an eye toward marketing the devices, Yachia said.

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