May 14, 2025 · 36m · the-pitch
This App Detects Strep from a Selfie…What?!
Dr. Therese Canaris · 11m spoken Jesse Middleton · 5m spoken Elizabeth Yin · 4m spoken Josh Muccio · 3m spoken Jenny Fielding · 2m spoken Paige Finn Doherty · 2m spoken Charles Hudson · 1m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Pediatric emergency physician Dr. Therese Canaris pitches Curie DX, an AI-powered smartphone diagnostic platform for remote throat infections, on The Pitch. Although investors admire her clinical expertise and technical validation, they unanimously decline to invest due to concerns over parallel B2B and consumer execution, high valuation, and aggressive financial projections.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Josh holds 10.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Josh as informed peer 2.5 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 1.6 Josh pushing back 3.6
speaking balance: gold is Josh, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:46 Investors push back on on-the-spot target change
Paige Finn Doherty and Elizabeth Yin openly clash over whether a founder should compromise and re-forecast their target raise amount on the fly at the negotiation table.
Hardest push from Josh ▶ 16:47 Jesse Middleton deconstructs patient mathJesse Middleton refuses Canaris's $6M revenue projection by breaking down the unit economics, pointing out that 10,000 tests at $100 only totals $1M.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:01 Dr. Canaris explains De Novo regulatory realityDr. Canaris corrects Jenny Fielding's assumption that the FDA De Novo pathway is cheaper and quicker, explaining that novel devices lack predicates and therefore require more capital and time.
Josh holds their own ▶ 29:12 Charles Hudson distinguishes presentation from substanceCharles Hudson provides clear domain insight to the host on why VCs cannot simply coach a founder out of core strategic flaws when the fundamental execution plan itself is misaligned.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Josh as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Josh pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing the Investor Panel | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Josh Muccio introduces the investor panel before Dr. Therese Canaris delivers her opening pitch on Curie DX. The dynamic is introductory and purely presentation-driven without friction. | |
| Camera Guidance and Technical Feasibility | 2 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Investors inquire about image capture mechanics and regulatory classification. Dr. Canaris directly educates the panel when Jenny Fielding assumes the FDA De Novo pathway is faster and cheaper, clarifying it is actually the opposite. | |
| Accuracy Benchmarks, Prior Capital, and Use of Funds | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Dr. Canaris breaks down diagnostic accuracy benchmarks against rapid swabs and clinician baseline averages, then details her $4M use of funds and non-dilutive grant pipeline. The panel asks straightforward clarifying questions. | |
| Multi-Disease Pipeline and Post-FDA Enterprise Scale | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Elizabeth Yin presses Dr. Canaris on why she is launching direct-to-consumer when she has only completed two B2B pilots. Canaris defends the shift as a necessary mechanism to acquire training data faster and bypass lengthy healthcare sales cycles. | |
| Debating Revenue Projections and Sales Prioritization | 3 | 2 | 3 | 7 | Jesse Middleton interrogates Canaris on her financial projection of reaching $6M revenue with 10,000 patients, demonstrating mathematically that at $100 per test the volume only yields $1M. Canaris is forced to adjust her rationale by adding B2B contracts to the forecast. | |
| Investor Deliberations and Rejections | 3 | 2 | 2 | 6 | The investors sequentially pass on investing, converging on the critique that Canaris is attempting too many parallel initiatives across DTC, B2B, and FDA trials without picking a single focused go-to-market path. | |
| Host Intervention and Re-Forecasting Debate | 5 | 3 | 3 | 6 | Josh Muccio interrupts to ask if Canaris is open to raising a smaller round, triggering immediate debate among the investors about whether founders should re-forecast live. After Canaris departs, the panel analyzes the gap between coaching pitch mechanics versus core strategy. | |
| Post-Show Founder Update and In-Home Validation | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | A collaborative post-pitch update where Josh checks in on Canaris's app launch and she shares an anecdote about diagnosing her daughter with strep throat at home using Curie DX. |
Statements from this episode (24)
CurieDX has partnered with eight physician practices covering 40 states
“Just in the last three weeks, we've partnered with eight physician practices covering 40 states to pair telehealth with our app.”
CurieDX has raised over $1.5M in capital and submitted two patents
“We've submitted two patent applications and received over 1.5 million in non-dilutive and investment capital.”
CurieDX is raising $4M to reach 10,000 patients and secure FDA clearance
“We're now raising four million, which helps us reach our first 10,000 patients and get the strep product through FDA from a screening tool to a diagnostic.”
CurieDx charges small practices $10,000 annually for 500 patient uses
“So we are starting as a B to B SaaS, so subscription model, where small to medium practice, either whether it's primary care or urgent care, 10,000 dollars a year, that would get about 500 uses.”
CurieDx Plans Clinical Trials for FDA Diagnostic Approval in Q4 2025
“The intention is to go through clinical trials, which we're planning for in Q four of 25, go through FDA and get approved as a diagnostic.”
CurieDx's strep diagnostic is 88% accurate, beating physician visual evaluations
“The rapid swab that you traditionally do at the doctor's office, the one that comes back in 15 minutes, that's about 95% accurate, so it's good, but it's not perfect, and, ah, the, you know, physicians are 64%, so we are around 88% right now accuracy”
Advisors say enterprise health organizations evaluate strategic partnerships at 10,000 users
“We have advisors at Amazon One Medical and also Care First Blue Cross Blue Shield and feedback that they've given us is when we get into the 10,000 user range, that's when they start paying attention and looking at strategic partnerships.”
Canaris: CurieDx Proof-of-Concept UTI Model Achieves 88% Accuracy
“And we have, just on the proof of concept model, we have 88% accuracy on that.”
CurieDx will pivot from direct-to-consumer back to B2B in Q3 2025
“The intention is direct to consumer for the relatively short period, around six months from now, so like Q three of 25, we start pouring efforts back into the B to B component and slowly build up that urgent care and small to medium practice customer base.”
Jenny Fielding passes on Curie DX over multi-model approach and FDA complexity
“I think with multiple business models, a four million dollar raise, which is, you know, quite high for me as a pre-seed, and the FDA path, I think that's going to be just a complicated one for me to get my head around, so I think I'm out.”
Hudson: FDA clearance always takes longer and costs more for startups
“We've done a bunch of FDA things. Always takes longer. Always costs more money.”
Hudson: Hardware startups need $7M–$10M to complete FDA clearance
“I assume a hardware company takes seven to ten million dollars to get the thing done.”
Charles Hudson passes on investing in Curie DX
“So I'm not in now, given the current state of the product and the tech.”
Elizabeth Yin passes on Curie DX over parallel execution strategy
“I think echoing all these points, it's like too much, all in parallel in one race, so I'm out.”
Jesse Middleton passes on Curie DX's current raise structure
“And so I just think that if it changed, we may be interested, but in the current raise, it's probably not a fit for us.”
Paige Finn Doherty passes on Curie DX's multi-variable $4M raise
“If that's something that you are open to considering, I think we should continue the conversation, but the four million dollar raise with many variables is less of a fit for us.”
Dr. Canaris: CurieDx could raise $2M for sales and fund R&D via grants
“So, since Josh asked, yeah, if we were to do something on the order of two million, would that sound more like in range? And then what we would accomplish there is just sales, and we leave R&D stuff for federal grant funding.”
Elizabeth Yin: Founders must have contingency plans if they cannot raise full target
“I don't think you necessarily present all, you know, several plans, but you should have like a plan in mind for if you cannot raise X, you should be able to do something with Y. I a hundred percent agree with that. If the company is down in the water because y…”
Middleton: Founders' biggest grant mistake is taking misaligned funding
“The biggest mistake we've seen founders do is Take grants that don't fit in their existing plan.”
Middleton projects CurieDx will make $500K annually, rejecting founder's $6M estimate
“The financial part, she needs to button up, because my math is she'll make 500,000 dollars a year in the next two years, not six million.”
Hudson: Investors can coach presentation, but not what founders build
“You can coach people on presentation, on answering questions, I think it's hard to coach people on, like, the thing they want to build.”
Middleton invested in Vital Audio despite founder rejecting consumer product model
“I invested in Vital Audio because of the show, and I will tell you that he is dead set on going B to B, and I would love for him to offer a consumer version of this product, and he just really doesn't want to do it.”