Danielle Wilder’s entrepreneurial journey began with a tragedy: The loss of her dear friend, Ian, to an accidental overdose. Sadly, his death may have been prevented. “He wasn’t alone,” she told us, and he actually owned naloxone, better known as Narcan, the nasal spray that can rapidly reverse opioid overdoses. “But no one nearby had it on them when it mattered most,” she says. “That single gap — between access and presence — cost someone I loved their life.” To spare others the same suffering, Wilder used her medical background to design a durable keychain case for carrying naloxone without stigma. nCase Technologies was the result — and the company is already living up to its founding mission, Wilder says.

Editor’s Note: nCase Technologies has been named to The Story Exchange’s 2026 list of 15 Brilliant Business Ideas. Here’s our lightly edited Q&A, with Wilder.

How is your business different from others in your industry?

nCase turns naloxone (Narcan) from something people should carry into something they actually do. Opioid overdoses don’t tend to happen near medicine cabinets – they happen in bathrooms, cars, dorms, bars and alleys. While the U.S. is distributing over 30 million doses a year, only about 10% of people actually carry it. We offer a solution that solves common barrier to carrying it, while also protecting the medication and making sure it’s easy and fast to administer. Because in those moments, every second counts.

Tell us about your biggest success so far. 

The fact that this actually saves lives. We ran a pilot program with 120 participants to test whether our case changed real behavior, not just attitudes. The results were more decisive than we expected. People using our case were over 4.5 times more likely to carry naloxone regularly, and 87% reported feeling meaningfully more prepared to respond to an overdose.

But the statistic that matters most to me came afterward. Ten percent of participants said they used the nCase they were carrying to reverse a real overdose. Four of those individuals had never owned naloxone before joining our pilot program. Those are lives that would almost certainly not have been saved if this product didn’t exist.

We’ve had other markers of progress. We’ve won Arch Grants, which are given to promising early-stage startups, and raised over $250,000 to date. But none of them compare to evidence that something we built directly changed outcomes in the real world.

What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?

Building a stable, affordable supply chain in a moment of extreme volatility — particularly around manufacturing costs and tariffs.

We’re producing a physical product that needs to be durable, precise and low-cost. Over the past year, uncertainty around trade policy has created sudden cost swings that directly threatened our ability to price the product in a way hospitals, universities and harm-reduction organizations could afford. We addressed this head-on by redesigning both our product and our supply strategy.

Supply chain resilience is mission-critical for us. If our costs spike or our production stalls, fewer people carry naloxone, and the consequences are real.

Have you experienced any significant personal situations that have affected your business decisions?

Starting this company with my fiancé, who is an engineer, has fundamentally shaped how I make decisions. From the beginning, it has meant every idea had to survive two very different lenses: Clinical reality and technical reality. I couldn’t fall back on “this feels right medically” without proving it could be built, manufactured and scaled. At the same time, he couldn’t optimize purely for elegance or efficiency without grounding it in how emergencies actually unfold in the real world.

That partnership has made the business sharper and more honest. Decisions get stress-tested early. We argue through tradeoffs in real time — cost versus durability, discretion versus accessibility, design versus clinical use — and those debates have consistently pushed us toward simpler, more resilient solutions.

What is your biggest tip for other startup entrepreneurs? 

Don’t let great get in the way of good. I came into this as a perfectionist. In medicine, precision matters and mistakes have consequences, so my instinct was to wait until everything was airtight before moving. What I learned very quickly is that startups don’t reward perfection. They reward momentum.

That shift was uncomfortable at first. You can’t optimize something that doesn’t exist yet, and you can’t save lives with an idea that never leaves the whiteboard. So my advice is simple: Move faster than your comfort level, learn aggressively, and accept that some things will break along the way. You can clean up later. The real failure is waiting so long to get it right that you never get it out into the world at all.

How do you find inspiration on your darkest days?

I think about the people who are still alive because this exists. I think about the pilot participants who used naloxone they were carrying to reverse an overdose. I think about the four people who had never owned naloxone before, who only had it because of us — and who ended up saving someone’s life. When things feel heavy or slow or uncertain, that’s grounding in a way nothing else is.

And, I think about my friend, Ian, and about why this started in the first place. That loss doesn’t fade, but it gives direction. On the hardest days, it reminds me that quitting would be the only truly unacceptable option.

What is your go-to song to get motivated on tough days?

Maybe this is a cliche, but “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence + The Machine. It’s all about the feeling that even when you’re exhausted, you keep moving forward. The song reminds me that pushing through discomfort is part of building something that actually matters, and that the work only moves when you do.

Who is your most important role model? 

My mom. She’s a physician who built and ran her own medical practice for years, and recently sold it. Growing up, I watched her do two hard things at once: Care deeply for patients while also taking full responsibility for building something sustainable from the ground up. She showed me that being a physician doesn’t mean staying inside narrow lanes. You can see a broken system up close, decide it isn’t good enough, and take ownership of fixing it. I also learned from her that credibility comes from doing the work, and that impact isn’t just about intention — it’s about whether what you build actually lasts and serves people well.

Instagram: @ncase.tech

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