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Nurse dynamic duo Anthony Scarpone-LambertBSN, RN, and Jennifferre MancillasBSN, RN, RNC-NIC set out in 2020 to build an online resource and marketplace they felt their healthcare community desperately needed.

With staffing low and burnout higher than ever, the pair built Lumify Care, the startup behind the uNight Light, a hands-free device to illuminate a workspace while decreasing patient sleep disturbances. It went viral, and they’d sold thousands of units within a few weeks.

Scarpone-Lambert was finishing his degree at the University of Pennsylvania when Lumify won the 2021 President’s Innovation Prize and landed in Y Combinator . Coupled with an educational component and a nurse-focused social platform, uNight Light became their flagship product.

The founders have been busy expanding Lumify’s offerings. The startup raised a $1.25 million seed round with participation from Y Combinator, Flare Capital, Gaingels, Fresco Capital, Crista Galli Ventures, and individual investors, like Philly founder Mark Switaj of Roundtrip.

The nurse-led startup evolved, recently launching the Adni marketplace app, the community marketplace for healthcare pros, by healthcare pros.

Meet the nursepreneurs behind Adni, Anthony Scarpone-Lambertand Jennifferre Mancillas, and learn about their transformational experience of going from nursing student and NICU nurse to co-founders of this nurse-led startup.

Talk about ADNI, formerly Lumify, and the need your company is providing nurses.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: Adni is the most holistic marketplace for healthcare workers. Jennifferre and I are registered nurses, and what really frustrated us was the lack of easy access to the gear and resources we needed. And we also spent a lot of money every year on out-of-pocket expenses for them. Our solution is one platform that combines everything healthcare workers need into one convenient marketplace, including gear, scrubs, shoes, stethoscopes, and things like continuing education, wellness, resources, coaches, and more. And we help healthcare workers save on out-of-pocket expenses because employers provide our marketplace as an employee perk or loyalty. This loyalty program helps healthcare workers save money.

How did you two meet, and how did you start Adni?

Jennifferre Mancillas: Anthony and I met in the fall of 2019 at a hackathon. This particular hackathon was about 200 different nurses, and Anthony and I were on the same team. But it was collectively all of the energy of folks and nurses specifically wanting to solve problems within healthcare. That was the inspiration and catalyst for the beginning of our company, and then COVID happened, and it was a big catalyst because there was a spotlight on nursing and the lack of resources and tools we needed. And we began our journey with a hardware product that was a wearable light for healthcare workers to more easily see in the dark when nurses are caring for patients. It was such a great product for so many people, and it went viral within the first couple of weeks, and we sold over 5000 units, and it grew from there. But in our conversations with other nurses, organizations, and brands, we realized there needed to be a central place for healthcare workers to access those niche products, gear, and resources. And then, the company evolved into Adni, a marketplace built for healthcare workers..

Initially, you were Lumify, and then you became Adni. Why the name change?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: We started Lumify specifically with the wearable light, like illuminating healthcare. So when we expanded to the marketplace, we wanted to choose a name that signified our evolution from being a single product to not being a platform for healthcare workers. Adni is actually short for the Latin word adnitor, which means support and lean upon. So our new slogan is you can lean on us for your gear and resources. Most of it was just branding and wanting to showcase that evolution to our community. The Lumify light still exists within Adni. So it still exists. It’s just now within our broader ecosystem.

Adni began as a side gig. How long did it take for it to become your full-time career?

Jennifferre Mancillas: I worked clinically as a nurse while Anthony was still in nursing school. But I left bedside in May 2021 when we got the invitation to be part of a business accelerator out of Silicon Valley, and one of the caveats was that we were full-time. So we didn’t have much time to go ahead and think about what was next. It was just like a ready, set, jump, and go. Anthony had a couple of days to pack up his life and moved across the country from Philly to California to do the program with me. It was definitely a whirlwind of 2021 for us.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: We were working on the business for the first five months and launched on January 22, 2021. So from January to May, I was finishing my last semester of nursing school, and I graduated. Then we got into Y Combinator, and Jennifferre worked clinically and built Lumify. It was a crazy process, balancing nursing school and clinical and working clinically while running our business. It’s had its pros and cons. The pros were we were bringing our product into the clinical setting and having all of our nursing friends and colleagues wear a product, taking photos of them, and getting user feedback. The con was trying to balance it all, especially because working clinically is already so mentally taxing, and then it was challenging to have a business on top of that. It was a privilege because we could start our business and have income and nursing while we were getting our feet off the ground.

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Did either of you have previous entrepreneurial experience, or did you learn on the fly?

Jennifferre Mancillas: Nursing sets you up to be gritty, lean in, and find answers. And so we utilized that skill set. But I did a lot of work with innovation in the clinical sense within the organizations where I worked. But as far as founding a company and growing, this was all a learning experience but so rewarding.

Did it take a lot of time and money for you to start the company?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: We spent a lot of time and put down some money to create our prototype and things like that. We were super fortunate because I was finishing my last semester of nursing school. Since I was still part of a university ecosystem at the University of Pennsylvania, we could get a lot of funding early on for starting our business from pitch competitions. Any grants we could apply for, we went for it and pitched and just tried to sell our idea as much as possible to the point that we won a grant for $150,000 from the University of Pennsylvania. We were the first nurse team ever to do it. It is called the President’s Innovation Prize, and it was helpful to fund that first inventory order, get our website off the ground, and go full-time comfortably.

What was it like for you to go from being a nurse to having it as a side gig and now running Adni full-time?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: Going from nursing to being a full-time founder has been wild, but Jen said it best. Although we use different skills every day, as an entrepreneur, many of those skills are very synergistic with what we learn. As nurses, we always go back to ADPIE, which is the nursing process. The nursing process is the entrepreneurial process. You’re assessing a problem, diagnosing it, planning how to solve it, implementing it, and then evaluating how it went. And that is what you do every day as an entrepreneur. So I think those fundamental nursing skills do align well with entrepreneurship. It’s about having empowerment in yourselves. The hardest part has probably been imposter syndrome and often being the only nurses in this tech space. I was the only nurse there when I worked at We Work in San Francisco. And sometimes that feels like imposter syndrome because you have that sense of like, can I do this? Do I have the skills to be a tech entrepreneur to start a company? But I think it’s just about believing in yourself and remembering that nursing prepares you for this role.

What are some of the biggest challenges you’re encountering?

Jennifferre Mancillas: Initially, it was folks underestimating us. A lot of conversations we’d have with either different engineers or investors. How are you going to do this if you’re just nurses? And the questions that we were asked, or folks not championing us beyond the single light product that we had and thinking that was kind of good enough for us nurses to accomplish. And be pushing past that blockade and being like, “No, we, we know that we’re capable, we know that health care workers and nurses deserve more and better and easier access to the gear and resources they need. And we can solve that.” Overcoming society’s perceptions of what nurses are and what they’re capable of that’s been one of the biggest challenges to date. But here we are, and we are doing it. We are doing well. And we continue to grow and continue to show society at large the role is super versatile. We’re capable of so much.

the-adni-marketplace-app

The Adni marketplace app, the community marketplace for healthcare pros, by healthcare pros

What are the rewards of starting the Adni marketplace?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: The biggest reward for us is building something for our profession and for a community that we care so deeply about because we are nurses too. We are seeing healthcare workers reaching out and using our products or saving money on our platform. Being able to hear from our community and have built that community along the process has been the most rewarding part and keeps us going when the entrepreneurial life is chaotic. Things are breaking, or we have a bug and must deal with this trademark issue. Constantly going back to our community and having them along this process has been the best gift. We’ve made so many friends and connections through that process.

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How are you getting the word out about the app?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: One of the biggest has been working with different employers and community organizations that have used our marketplace to support their community of clinicians. And our mission is to ensure that all healthcare workers have the gear and resources they need to excel. We have been so fortunate to have so many incredible partners that have helped us spread the word, whether they’re the brands that sell on our platform or the employers or community organizations that provide the platform to their community of clinicians. The second has been through our Agni family, our creator community. We work with 80 incredible healthcare creators that have championed our product and mission and helped us spread the word about who we are and what we do. And that community has been the biggest champion for getting the word out on social media. We also love doing Instagram Lives and things like that. We’ve interviewed hundreds of healthcare workers who have started businesses and launched on the Adni marketplace. We do weekly Instagram Lives with these folks to share their stories and continue to share that message of healthcare workers building for healthcare workers is so powerful.

On the app, you have a point system on the marketplace. How does that work?

Jennifferre Mancillas: Many folks are familiar with a reward program with many of the platforms they interact with. And it’s similar to that. So every time healthcare workers make a purchase within Adni, they earn points they can later redeem as discounts on future products or services they’re meeting. So pretty straightforward, but it’s great because folks can go ahead and see how many points they’ve earned. And they get excited about how much discounts and savings they can get on that next item they need. For example, if they need a new pair of shoes because theirs are about to be given out, they can use the points as a discount. So it has been a great feature; many people have loved it and are excited about it.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: You can shop for all your nursing care resources in one place. So streamlining all of your purchasing in one place will earn you more reward points and save more money. And this is also how employers help offset out-of-pocket expenses. Their staff gives them those points as a loyalty perk or a way to express gratitude to their clinicians.

You did a lightning talk at the HIMSS Conference. Can you want to talk about that?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: The lightning talk at HIMSS Conference was in collaboration with BD and the American Nurses Association. It was sharing our story and hopefully inspiring other healthcare workers that we are natural innovators and entrepreneurs and showcasing that Jennifferre and I didn’t know anything when we started. We didn’t have some crazy tech background, or we didn’t have some MBA or anything like that. We just started and went for it, and fell on our faces many times and learned and stayed gritty. And in that lightning pop-up, hopefully, I inspired other healthcare workers.

From your perspective, what is technology’s role in shaping nursing?

Jennifferre Mancillas: Especially for this newer generation that is filling in these roles within healthcare, technology has been embedded in every way they have accessed and shared information and interacted with one another. And pulling that into the clinical space within hospital systems is so important because it maintains a sense of what people aren’t familiar with and comfortable with and provides access to education, tech, and information at your fingertips. So I think that’s a big reason hospitals need to get on board with incorporating more technology and platforms like Adni into how they interact with their staff that is onboarding into their systems.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: In healthcare, we’re facing many issues within our workforce, retention challenges, burnout, and the list goes on. It costs healthcare systems billions of dollars and technology to solve these challenges. Adni is trying to help healthcare workers feel valued and supported to increase retention. There’s a lot of technology out there, and seeing that implemented will ideally help to solve these challenges..

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What advice do you both have for nurses with an entrepreneurial mindset?

Jennifferre Mancillas: We hear a lot, and it was also true for us. They say getting started is the hardest part. And that’s so true. And everyone can have ideas, but until you have action behind them, they’re just ideas, and they don’t have an impact. They have the potential for what they can become. So just knowing that you’re capable and jumping full force into the process is the most important part. And leaning on your resources because there’s a lot that we don’t know, and there’s a lot that we do know. Being able to utilize either folks in your network or reaching out to those that aren’t in your network but have special knowledge in a particular area you lack. And they’re great about finding answers. So I would suggest broadening your network of folks and jumping in and getting started. Adni is always here to help if you have a question. We are more than willing to help you through the process and get you set up selling within our platform.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: It can be as something as simple as a side hustle for nurses, which I think it’s so important, like launching a digital product on Adni or launching anything like whether it’s a resume template, or a cover letter template, or just being a coach and supporting other healthcare workers and offering that as a service. The options are endless. And I think it’s empowering when nurses can have passive income outside our traditional jobs. And it opens your eyes to how much is out there. And the opportunities in nursing are so endless. So that’s what we’re trying to champion on the Adni marketplace, with healthcare workers launching their businesses or products and creating this ecosystem of healthcare workers supporting healthcare workers. Get started and use your resources. And believe in yourself. I know that sounds so cheesy, but you lose so many people that want to start something, but they just never do because they never really take that leap. And I think that’s the most important part.

You are both very busy on this journey. So how are you keeping a healthy work-life balance?

Jennifferre Mancillas: My family is important to me, so setting aside time when I get up, then I help my kid do all the school stuff before he leaves and then dedicate time. I will have dinner with my family and make sure that happens. It’s a lot of hours, and you are up before people work, and then you have the day working. And then I do the bedtime routine, and I’m working again. But I think just grounding myself and my family and making time for them within the day gives me a sense of balance. But it is a lot of work. But that’s how I try and balance work and life within this chaotic journey that we’re on.

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: I would say, just like in nursing, when you’re constantly triaging, something that I am prioritizing a lot of different patients and tasks. For me, it’s all about just triaging and what tasks I need to do. And you’ve never done with the list of tasks as an entrepreneur because you always have so much going on. So I have been improving, prioritizing, and triaging as much as possible. So that at the end of the day, I can still find time to have time to hang out with friends and do things outside of work. And remember that there’s life outside your business, too, because it’s easy to burn out as an entrepreneur with just so much going on all the time.

Is there anything else important you’d like to add?

Anthony Scarpone-Lambert: Over 50% of the businesses on the Adni marketplace are founded by healthcare workers, which we’re super proud of.

Renee Hewitt
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