Cardiovascular surgeon Meghana Helder was once on call during Thanksgiving week, when she saw four patients who presented with aortic dissections. An aortic dissection is a tear in the wall of the largest blood vessel in the body: the aorta, which carries the entire body’s blood flow. It’s a dangerous condition with an 80% out-of-hospital mortality rate.
The surgery to fix aortic dissection requires draining the entire body of its blood. To make this process safe, the patient is cooled to low temperatures. It’s a long operation that puts patients at very high risk. Importantly, this surgery is distinctly different from all other heart operations, which can be done at normal temperatures and with continuous blood flow.
Surgeons are often left attempting to make the operation safer using creative techniques and devices that are not meant for this purpose—and they still are faced with the risky but critical portion of the operation in which blood flow must be entirely stopped.
Helder’s startup, Octin Health, was the 2026 MN Cup Grand Prize winner this September, pitching the Elika Device™, which allows for continuous blood flow during these operations, relieving surgeons from the need to cool and rewarm the patient’s body. Elika Device™ thus reduces the length of the operation and makes it safer.
The MN Cup is the country’s largest statewide entrepreneurship competition; the competition is now in its 22nd year and over 2,800 Minnesotans applied to participate. The multi-month experience includes mentorship, educational workshops, and networking via Minnesota Carlson’s Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship. For the most successful entrants, the competition culminates in cash awards.
Octin’s MN Cup winnings total $76,000 in non-dilutive funding, including the $50,000 Grand Prize, $25,000 for the Life Science/Health IT Division winner, and a $1,000 Audience Favorite award. “We are on a mission to make aortic operations safer,” says Laura Walter, Octin’s Chief of Operations. And the mission is underway!
The Road to the MN Cup
Octin applied for the MN Cup last year but had focused too much on the product and not enough on the business to make it through the competition. “Second time’s the charm,” Walter says. In fact, this year, Octin earned direct advancement to the semi-finals because of their win at Healthcare MN’s Walleye Tank, a life science pitch competition for emerging and established medical and life science companies.
The team has been refining their pitch, resulting in a top-notch performance at the MN Cup. But it’s not just the win that hits home. Walter says, “What’s really exciting about the MN Cup is the mentorship and network building, which I think the Minnesota Cup does such a great job at building. They also bring in industry experts to judge and to give you feedback. And that has been so valuable.”
Those experts and mentors help startups like Octin take a critical look at everything from storytelling, to pitch deck, to even the brand colors a company is using. Walter says, “It was really exciting and a good opportunity for us, with where we were at as a company at that time, to enter the competition.”
The Startup Experience
Walter says, “Throughout the whole startup experience, you’re consistently fundraising and being judged, so taking the little bits of feedback and applying it to your business is really important.” Having already applied to the MN Cup once, the Octin team knew they had to refine their pitch and gain more experience.
Now, as Walter describes, “We’ve been fortunate enough to participate in the BETA.MN program, the UCSF Rosenman Rise program, and the MedTech Innovator. I think those experiences did give us that edge—as we were progressing, we were developing what the Minnesota Cup judges were looking for, so we were in a really great spot to have that edge in the competition.”
It helps to have a charismatic founder! Walter shares, “Meghana has such a great stage presence that she can really give a good pitch. It just comes through, her passion around aortic disease and treatment of it.”
The Spirit of Entrepreneurship
Helder and Walter are both new to the startup world, but the rest of the Octin team have not only worked in startups before but have had successful exits. Walter says, “I think everyone gets it. Everyone understands that you have to wear a million hats, that everyone is thinking creatively, and everyone’s pitching in, and everyone is comfortable navigating a little bit of uncertainty.” It is important to combine passion, clinical expertise, an engineering perspective on the health care ecosystem, and regulatory and financial pathways to have a winning company.
Scale Bank sponsors the MN Cup as a way to boost and inspire innovative teams like Octin’s. Minnesota is a creative state, and the MN Cup recognizes, supports, and strengthens that creativity among entrepreneurs. Todd Williams, President & CEO of Scale Bank, shares, “The MN Cup plays an important role in supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses across Minnesota. Scale Bank is proud to sponsor a program that helps connect founders with the resources and support they need.”
From Helder’s initial “light bulb” to now creating an actual product to improve patient and provider experiences with aortic surgery, the spirit of entrepreneurship at Octin acknowledges what all medical device companies must: that lives are on the line.
Walter says, “It goes into practically every single decision that we make. There’s this enormous feeling of responsibility. So, we’re iterating and then we’re testing, and we’re doing it over and over again. It’s not just, does this work? It’s also, is it safe? Is it reliable? Is it intuitive to the surgeon? And can we demonstrate that this will perform the same way over and over again?”
Lessons Learned
Lessons and mentorship from the MN Cup helped Octin paint a realistic picture for the future—something Helder and Walter especially appreciated as first-timers in the startup field. Walter says, “The feedback had us look at things in a more realistic lens. I think that was really helpful for us. We were able to refine some of our assumptions and tell that story a little differently.”
Scale Bank is always looking for ways to improve the ecosystem for small businesses in Minnesota. After Octin’s experience at the MN Cup, Walter shares, “I think a lot of it comes into what we make out of it, right? They did such a good job at bringing people together and helping us build the network, and it’s up to us now to build on those connections and to help maintain that momentum that we’ve received from the MN Cup.”
Beyond the cash prize, which Walter says is a nice cushion as Octin races towards their FDA submission, the MN Cup offers connections to that entrepreneurial ecosystem. Walter says, “It doesn’t end after the competition is done, and I think having more opportunities for companies to continue that connection would be good in building the entrepreneurial community here in Minnesota.”
Author Bio:
Katie Andrews is the Digital Marketing Manager at Scale Funding with 14 years of experience in content strategy, digital marketing, and brand storytelling. She is passionate about elevating brands through compelling content, thought leadership, and authentic storytelling. At Scale Funding, she shares industry insights, highlights business success stories, and creates educational content that helps business owners navigate challenges and pursue growth opportunities.
