What does it take to bring a promising idea out of the lab and into the lives of people who need it?
At a recent Female Founders Lunch at the Leslie eLab, we welcomed Nisha Maheshwari, PhD (Tandon ’25), co-founder and CEO of CaroRhythm. A biomedical engineer and NYU Tandon graduate, Nisha is building a company focused on helping stroke survivors through better monitoring after they leave the hospital. CaroRhythm is developing CaroSense, a non-invasive wearable patch that uses light-based sensing to monitor the carotid artery. The goal is to alert patients and clinicians to changes that could signal a recurrent stroke, helping patients seek care sooner and potentially improving outcomes.
Nisha’s journey offers a powerful example of how listening can change what a founder builds. While the team initially explored stimulation of the carotid artery, conversations with clinicians and stroke survivors through NYU’s Tech Venture Workshop revealed a more pressing need: monitoring patients after they leave the hospital. That discovery helped redirect the team toward monitoring. For other founders, the lesson is to look beyond whether a technology could be generally useful and ask which problem the people you hope to serve most urgently need solved. This is often called finding the "hair on fire" problem for your customer.
Another important discovery followed later in CaroRhythm's journey: the physician who sees a product’s value is not necessarily the person who decides whether a hospital purchases it. For founders across many industries, this is an important distinction. Understanding the need for better monitoring after a stroke is one kind of discovery; understanding what would lead a healthcare institution to purchase that technology is another. Founders need to balance solving a meaningful problem for users while accounting for the financial incentives, purchasing requirements, and regulatory constraints that shape a buyer’s decision.
Building CaroRhythm has pushed Nisha to grow beyond their training as an engineer. Bringing the technology to patients has meant learning to tell its story to investors, understand how hospitals make purchasing decisions, and navigate the regulatory pathway—all while continuing to develop the product itself. Through NYU’s Female Founders Fellowship, Tech Venture Accelerator, and Stern Venture Fellows community, Nisha has found support for that transition from researcher to founder. Their journey shows how much founders learn along the way, and how valuable it can be to have mentors and fellow entrepreneurs to turn to as new challenges arise.
For aspiring founders, Nisha’s path is a reminder that you do not need to arrive with every answer. A meaningful problem, a willingness to question your assumptions, and an openness to learning from others can be a strong starting point. Turning research into impact means understanding how a breakthrough can fit into people’s lives and the systems around them. In complex markets like healthcare, that includes navigating regulations, understanding purchasing decisions, and finding a practical path for a product to reach the people who need it—and grow from there.
