Driver
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Driver (driver.xyz) was a clinical-trial navigation startup for cancer patients, co-founded in May 2015 by radiation oncologist Dr. William Polkinghorn (formerly of Memorial Sloan Kettering) and his Harvard Medical School classmate Dr. Petros Giannikopoulos. It combined an app matching patients to clinical trials with its own automated tumor-sequencing machines in San Francisco and China. Backed by Li Ka-shing's venture firm (lead investor) and Nexus Venture Partners, it partnered with the National Cancer Institute and more than 30 cancer centers including the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, and employed about 85 people across San Francisco, Shanghai, New York, and Boise.
02 / Driver FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Driver shut down in late 2018 after running out of money, about six weeks after its high-profile public launch. Its big direct-to-consumer bet failed: the product cost $3,000 upfront plus $20 a month out of pocket, hundreds of patients tried the app from April 2017 but nearly all did so on the company's dime, and only a very small number ever paid. The hospital partnerships brought prestige but no revenue, and the planned revenue streams from employers, insurers, and drug companies never materialized. When a new funding round failed to come together in fall 2018, the company had no path forward; the CEO said, 'we ran out of money,' and regretted not prioritizing revenue much sooner.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
Driver ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
On October 16, 2018, the company laid off all of its approximately 85 employees.
- 02
Operations ceased about six weeks after the September 2018 public launch events in Beijing and at Howard University.
- 03
The founders said they were working with the board and investors to monetize the technology Driver had developed.
- 04
For the small number of paying patients, the CEO said ensuring continuity of care was the top priority, though issuing full refunds would be difficult without resources.