Friendship – Kevin Christopher (middle, right) and Konstantin Yepifatsev have formed a friendship
Kosta is investing in Quantiscope
Cookeville – In 2017, Cookeville’s Konstantin (Kosta) Yepifantsev was in the market for a patent attorney.
He wanted to protect himself, his businesses and the technical ideas he introduced as president of Home Caregivers. Kevin Christopher was in Cookeville in 2017, as well and had just recently opened his intellectual property law firm. He was looking for clients.
Was it by chance or by fate that the two would meet?
Fortuitous is how Christopher describes the meeting.
It wasn’t long until Christopher secured Kosta’s patent and the two were on a journey together. They became friends, colleagues, business owners, athletes and community servants.
In each, they drove one another to success.
What is their next drive?
According to a release, Kosta is becoming the first “individual angel investor” in Christopher’s startup Quantiscope, which launched in late 2022 to commercialize technology out of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
The company uses “deep tech AI tools” in computer vision for drug discovery and bio-manufacturing applications. The goal is to simplify data interpretation and decision-making through AI-driven data analysis and improve disease and drug research.
“It launched in 2022 through the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) technology accelerator and was recently accepted into Novo Nordisk’s Bio Innovation Hub Greenhouse program for promising early-stage technologies,” according to the release.
As reported in the Upper Cumberland Business Journal, Christopher relocated Quantiscope from Cookeville to the Altitude Lab Incubator in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The pre-seed launch comes just in time, according to Christopher, and the company’s soul is in the Upper Cumberland.
“We bootstrapped in stealth mode out the gate to advance our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) MVP as far as possible without liquidation,” said Christopher. “Now that we’re officially raising a pre-seed round, it’s important to me to have an investment connection to Quantiscope’s Cookeville roots. While the innovation originated out of Cambridge, the soul of the company launched in Cookeville.”
Christopher said the duo, like the company, is mission-driven.
“We’re enabling better, faster and safer therapeutics and being mission-driven in that way comes from what you witness in your community and among the people you care about,” said Christopher. “I want to see rapid responses to the next COVID, in the same way, I want to see the expansion of rare disease research and development for people in my community; the Quantiscope phenotypIQ® platform was built to address these goals and more. I couldn’t ask for a more aligned investor than Kosta, who continuously goes above and beyond in the community to impact change, whether through his own business, supporting nonprofits, or as an investor in disruptive startups like mine.”
Kosta said he is proud to help local startups grow.
“I’ve been fortunate to be in a position where I can help promising Upper Cumberland startups launch and grow,” Said Kosta. “As an investor, I can help build this community in unique ways, for instance by influencing R&D investment at TTU or hiring of young professionals. Being an investor in a company like Quantiscope also gives me an inside look at how rapidly technologies like AI positively disrupt industries, in their case the pharmaceutical industry. And at the end of the day, I can say that I’m making a bet on saving lives.”
What’s next for Quantiscope?
The company will soon begin beta tests on its “MVP” and continues to “seek and expand partnerships around future application areas of its platform” and will be featured and present during the 2024 MIT AI Conference Feb. 28.
What’s next for Christopher and Kosta? The two will do what they always do, push the limit.
They are planning several endurance events in 2024, starting with the Napa Marathon in March where Kosta will be vying for a qualifying spot in the Boston Marathon. You have to burn off steam somehow. With the stress of a high-growth enterprise, the two friends and colleagues choose fitness.
As we know, they love a good challenge.
Photo provided.
Copyright 2023 The Upper Cumberland Business Journal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Other stories you may want to check out:
