Bigfoot Biomedical, known best for its grassroots approach to building an artificial pancreas for Type 1 diabetes, is emerging from hacker mode and raising some capital. The startup just brought in a $3.5 million bridge convertible note, and is looking to raise between $10 million and $15 million in a Series A this summer. They’re still courting new investors.

Bigfoot’s already Frankensteined together a working prototype of an artificial pancreas, which serves as a sort of amalgam between continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump. The Bigfoot device gauges a diabetic’s insulin needs with a smartphone app and automatically delivers a dose – allowing the patient or the care provider to skip the step of continuously monitoring the CGM. Rather, all of this data is monitored on the cloud.

“We have about 30,000 hours of realtime experience with this system,” CEO Jeffrey Brewer told MedCity News, as it’s being used by one of the founders’ children.

Bigfoot is, after all, led by a trio of top-notch talent – who also happen to be fathers whose children are Type 1 diabetics. There’s Bryan Mazlish, the founder, a former Wall Street trader that built a smartphone app whose algorithms decipher the appropriate insulin levels a patient need based on data from CGMs. His son is using the device. Mazlish is joined by Brewer, the former president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Lane Desborough, the former chief engineer of insulin delivery at Medtronic.

“This is a solution coming from the community, for the community,” Brewer said.

An artificial pancreas is a class 3 medical device, and will require premarket approval from the FDA. Brewer wouldn’t comment on forthcoming trial or device design, but that the startup’s collaborating with the FDA and is working on streamlining its now-clunky Bigfoot prototype. The consumer device will be elegant, simple and intuitive, he said, with some of the technology built in-house and other parts licensed from external suppliers.