On January 11th, 2018, at 29 years-old, Liya Shuster-Bier was diagnosed with stage 2 primary mediastinal b-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare form of cancer.
The news came as she was caring for her mother, who, just months earlier, underwent a double mastectomy.
Three years to the date of her cancerversary (and now in remission), Shuster-Bier launched Alula — a radically honest platform for cancer patients, caregivers and survivors, built by someone who’s been there.
With $2.2m, the startup’s mission is to make cancer “less lonely.” The Hustle recently spoke with the impact investor turned entrepreneur to find out more:
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I’ve been dealing with cancer for 5 years. I was a caregiver for my mother, who had breast cancer and have done 800 hours of chemotherapy and immunotherapy myself.
Over this time, I found that care drops off when you leave the hospital.
I had a very supportive set-up — my husband is a Harvard-trained doctor and my best friend is an oncologist — but still felt lonely during the process. If I felt like this, I knew how hard it must be for others.
What I noticed is that we built technology to honor the most important days in our lives, like a wedding or becoming a parent. We use technology to galvanize an army of love for these moments.
But we don’t have the same technology to galvanize us on the hardest days of our lives. This is what Alula is meant to provide.
No, but during my years in finance I did a lot of impact investing. I worked on social impact bonds to deal with poverty and education. I always look for new ways to invest in the community.
Having gone through the lived experience of cancer as caregiver and patient, there are many things that can be made easier:
We currently receive affiliate revenue from the products we curate but — by the spring — will be buying certain products wholesale and selling through our website.
Moving forward, we plan on building strategic partnerships with hospitals and cancer treatment centres across the country to help them build tech that picks up where hands-on care drops off.
There are 17m patients diagnosed with cancer a year. If you take the immediate family of ~5 people, that’s 85m people affected and doesn’t even take into consideration friends.
Further, cancer survivorship is on the rise, meaning all of these patients will need support long after they’ve entered remission and beyond.
We are building a platform for the entire lifecycle of cancer, from diagnosis and treatment, to recovery and (sometimes) bereavement.
We’ve certainly discussed other health crises but addressing cancer is the priority.
While dealing with cancer, I had to make a call of how much of my experience to reveal. At first, I didn’t want to reveal any of it. That I was bald, weak or fearful. It made me very lonely.
I had conversations with people wiser than me and they said to “lean into my vulnerabilities” and that, by doing so, I wouldn’t feel so lonely. They were right.
I need someone to help me figure out how to keep my succulents alive for longer. They aren’t easy!