Afore funded him, flew him to SF, then watched him scrap the plan in a week. They didn’t flinch

Mohammed Khambhati was an SUTD student when he learned that Afore Capital, a San Francisco pre-seed firm, had invested in his startup, Makeable.build. The excitement of receiving funding led Khambhati to drop out of university and move to San Francisco. However, the news of his departure was met with anger from his family, who could understand their concerns. Despite the initial setback, the company's valuation grew to US$1 million after securing additional funding from Afore Capital.

Neural Drive, Afore Capital's initial investment, was a low-cost wearable device designed to help paralysed stroke patients communicate through brain signals and eye blinks. The idea originated from Khambhati's experience as a Singapore Civil Defence Force medic during a life-threatening encounter with a patient's son. This encounter inspired Khambhati to pursue the development of Neural Drive, which received SGD92,000 in grants for clinical trial work.

However, despite these successes, the team struggled to find a partner willing to run a clinical trial in the US due to the high costs, which led to the decision to pivot to Makeable.build.

Khambhati and his co-founder, Raymond Ng, initially stayed in cheap housing in the Tenderloin, a high-crime neighbourhood in San Francisco, for the Afore Capital's Founders in Residence programme. They spent the first week visiting 93 hospitals, clinics, and rehabilitation centres in search of a partner willing to run a clinical trial.

The high costs and lack of interest from potential partners led to the decision to pivot to Makeable.build. Khambhati rejected the notion of no market, stating that the need was real but the challenge was finding an affordable route into the US healthcare market. He emphasized the importance of making progress, even if it was small, in order to avoid the trap of feeling that partial wins were not enough.