This founder believes Ukraine is the place to soft-launch a prosthetic knee  

As the war rages on in Ukraine, a founder from Northern Virginia is raising money to launch her prosthetic knee technology in the country. 

Sarah Malinowski, 27, is the founder and CEO of Seamless Transition in Rosslyn. She’s developing prosthetic knees that resemble the curvature of human ones to mimic natural movement, unlike the standard prosthetic that allows for limited motion and can cause pain. 

In 2023, Malinowski met with staff at the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, who asked if current wars still cause lower leg amputations. She didn’t immediately know the answer, but decided to meet with refugees in Poland to learn more. After an old friend got her across the border to Ukraine, where she spoke with hospitalized warfighters, she quickly learned the necessity of what she was building.

“It was a weird, unfortunate, right time-right place,” Malinowski told Technical.ly. “But if this is a way that we can help them, then I’m all for it.”

Although she registered the product in the US with the Food and Drug Administration, Malinowski, who started Seamless Transition in 2022, is planning a soft launch in Ukraine later this year. 

To make it happen, she’s raising $250,000 starting in June.

For Technical.ly’s latest edition of How I Got Here, Malinowski outlined her inspiration for Seamless Transition, reasons for soft-launching in a war-plagued country  and advice to fellow founders. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

How did your career begin? 

I have my undergrad in mechanical engineering, and while I was doing that bachelor’s in Minnesota, I was working at a prosthetic clinic. 

That’s what inspired me to do this prosthetic: All these people came in and kept telling me all the ways that it didn’t work, even though they were wearing the top-line things. As the engineering student, I was like, “This can be fixed. This is the 21st century.” 

I worked in industry for about a year, and then I want[ed] to do what I’ve been so passionate about doing. I started my master’s degree at George Washington University in biomedical engineering, and dedicated the thesis to the design of this prosthetic.

What was your first job in tech? 

During my undergrad, I did internships at a foundry in Minnesota, in the small town of Le Sueur, and we did aluminum castings. 

It was really cool to see the manufacturing side, which definitely helps me now when we’re talking about manufacturing this device. I know hands-on what goes into creating these types of products. 

How did your company start?  

The inspiration came from when I was an undergrad, meeting these people. I’ve always maintained that passion. 

Then, when I came to GW, I was actually doing interviews. I didn’t even know that customer discovery [was] a thing you do in business. I just thought, “Let me interview some veterans.”

One of them told me, “Hey, you should check out the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship, you should talk to one of the mentors. You should get involved.” 

I started meeting with Bob Smith, who’s now the head of that department, and he helped me all the way through the idea phase. I got about an entire year to get the idea and concept really molded before I jumped in and started doing the design and research on my master’s thesis. 

I went through their pitch competition, their new venture competition, where I won $27,000 — that was a great start.

Where are you now with Seamless Transition? 

We have the initial prototype completed. We have the MVP, which is great. What we’re working on doing is a soft launch in Ukraine. 

We have all of the computer testing data. We are FDA-registered as a Class II device, 510(k)-exempt. It doesn’t have any claims on it yet because we haven’t done any clinical trials on it. 

In Ukraine, we’re unable to do anything that would be FDA-approved, as far as we wouldn’t be able to submit it for approval because it’s not in America. But we would like to do small-scope testing in Ukraine [to confirm] all of the numbers that are true on the computer are true in real life, donate those 10 [devices] to those people for their time, and then continue a sale with that hospital that helped us — [potentially] giving them a discounted price, that kind of thing. 

The goal would then be to have contract manufacturing in Ukraine. That way, we’re not having to pay for the tariffs and the shipping, and keeping it as low-cost as possible for the Ukrainians.

Why Ukraine?

The initial people that I talked to and met back in my undergrad, when I was first meeting all these amputees, 90% of them were veterans. 

That really kind of hit a soft spot with me, with both my grandparents serving, a lot of great uncles serving. 

It hit a soft point where they would come to me and they’re crying and saying that they can’t go on a walk with their daughters in the woods. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is too much.” 

[My ancestry’s] originally from Poland, so I went to Poland [and] thought I would interview a bunch of the refugees. 

When I touched the ground there, I was at the airport, and one of my friends calls me and he’s like, “Hey, I was actually in Ukraine for the past six months teaching them medical skills. Why don’t I help you? I have a great family. You can see [if] they can help you get into all these hospitals.”

The next day, I was on a bus, and I walked across the border into Ukraine. That is where I met the family that has been so nice, and met other people at hospitals. 

What else does your day-to-day in this job encompass? 

It’s the beginning process of raising money [for this soft launch]. I feel like this is the point of a startup that no one likes to talk about. 

So it’s me, and I have a COO named Ash Asher. We have so many things to do all the time. I am trying to get our slide decks ready for the raise, and want to make sure that we have all of our verbiage correct. 

I’m just going through all the stacks, making sure it makes sense in English and Ukrainian, making sure that the hospitals understand what we’re asking from them and what they’re receiving from us — and being very clear on those things. 

It’s a lot of jumping from hat to hat and switching what my role is for the day, but always maintaining connections with people. That’s something almost every day — having quick touchpoints with certain people, just making sure they know that I haven’t forgotten about them, that it’s going to take me a little bit longer than it would if I had a team of 20 people to get this raise started. 

What advice do you have for fellow founders, specifically in medical technology?

Meet people. Meet other people who are in the same space that can either sit with you and cry about the same things, because it’s all very hard, or people who might inspire you or give you some contacts. 

There are hard days and there are really great days. Sometimes it’ll be at noon, and you feel like you’re on top of the world, and at 5 p.m., an email comes through, and now you’re staying up until midnight trying to fix it. So it’s a lot of high highs and low lows, but it’s all worth it.

What else is coming up with Seamless Transition? 

We’ve also applied for the SBIR with NIH. With that, our partners, if we get it, would be George Washington University along with the Walter Reed facility. That would be huge for us here in America. 

We’re trying to get to market in Ukraine, but we’re trying to solidify all those testing and regulation requirements here in the US through that. Having those partnerships with Walter Reed and GW would be crucial for that.