How Nurse Entrepreneurs Built Lumify and Adni

Before Anthony Scarpone-Lambert, BSN, RN, and Jennifferre Mancillas, BSN, RN, RNC-NIC built their successful nurse marketplace community, Adni, they started with a simple question. How can we make healthcare workers’ lives better?

They started by creating an LED light, Lumify, specifically for bedside nurses to navigate dark patient rooms without causing a disturbance. 

Read on to learn how they went from idea to flagship product to fully-fledged brand.

Q: What Brought You Into Nursing?

Mancillas: My sister had a congenital heart defect, and she was in and out of the hospital a lot when she was younger. She was my older sister who ended up passing away, but we were always grateful for the children's hospital in the area where I lived.  My mom was also a nursing assistant while I was growing up. So there's always a tie to healthcare.

I enjoy two things: solving problems and helping people in healthcare. Nursing has no shortage of being able to do those two things, and so it felt like a really great fit. My journey started with an ADN program, and when I finished that, I started working as a nurse. I got my BSN through an accelerated program while I was working. 

Everybody has their journey and North Star, or their reason why. Being able to be on the entrepreneurial side of nursing, there's room to make a great impact for a large amount of people—and that’s my focus these days. 

Scarpone-Lambert: I was a Broadway actor growing up. I always share that part of my story, because I really do feel like it makes me who I am. Working a full-time job at a very young age, doing professional theater, and going through the cycle of setting a goal and achieving a goal was something that empowered me. 

I was always passionate about the human body and how it works. So when my current theater ended, I went back to regular high school, and I was thinking about my future career options. I kind of stumbled upon nursing. To be honest, I didn't have any nurses in my life directly. But as I started doing more research about nursing, I realized that there were nurses who were CEOs, there were nurses who were running hospitals, and there were nurses in Congress. The more research I did, the more I realized that nursing was a pretty versatile degree. 

I was able to do my BSN at the University of Pennsylvania and was really fortunate to go to a nursing school that championed nursing innovation and entrepreneurship.

Q: Why Did You Come Up With Lumify, Your First Product?

Mancillas: The seedling for the idea happened at a nurse hackathon that we met at. We thought, “How can we make a night shift healthcare worker's experience better?” Also, my background is working in the NICU, and we constantly have to have the environment quiet and dark to help with growth and reduce stimulation. 

Post-hackathon, we went all in on our idea. We tried dozens and dozens of different lights. We eventually created our flagship product, Lumify uNight Light. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we were scrappy and got a super simple product out, and that was the catalyst for everything. 

Q: What Was the Best Part of That First Launch?

Scarpone-Lambert: Before we even launched the physical product, we were just selling pre-orders as our own version of a Kickstarter.

We were DMing reporters to try to cover our story. A reporter working for a Philadelphia newspaper wrote about us. A few days later, while Jen was working and I was in clinical, a New York Times reporter wanted to run a story about us. I took the interview from the hospital cafeteria while Jen sat for the interview in a locker room. It was the epitome of being a nurse and an entrepreneur. Balancing this Hannah Montana-type of double life, living the best of both worlds. 

5,000 units of our product sold, and we sold them as pre-orders. We took the funds from the pre-orders to execute the first bulk order. So, any nurses who want to start a business, we just kind of started. We didn’t know what we were doing at first. 

Q: How Did You Dive Into the New World of Manufacturing?

Mancillas: For that first gen, we did a lot of our own testing. We found a manufacturer by researching online. All the information is out there, you just have to research to find the answers. We found a manufacturer who could make a product 70% of the way there, and we worked with them to make the necessary tweaks and adjustments. 

For the second generation product, we worked more with the manufacturer and had to get drawings so Lumify could be made with some more functionalities. It was a fun process. Like Anthony said, we didn't know exactly what we were doing. We were just trying to get it done, but it all came together in the end, and we were really proud of that. 

Q: How Did You Pivot From a Product, Lumify, to a Brand, Adni?

Scarpone-Lambert: We built our first customer case with Lumify, and we were really passionate about building tools and resources to support healthcare workers. We knew that the light was just the start. We wanted to leverage the momentum from Lumify and wanted to build a community for healthcare workers. 

We sat down for a week and started calling healthcare workers. We had a wall of Post-it notes in Jen's house to document our findings. We were listening to different stressors from the healthcare community. Through those calls and through all those Post-its, we started seeing trends. We saw there wasn’t really one place to find vetted products, tools, and resources by healthcare workers, for healthcare workers. So that’s how we came up with Adni. An all-in-one web and mobile platform for healthcare workers to buy and share their best gear, resources, and jobs. 

Q: Did You Have Mentors, or Was Most of This on Your Own?

Scarpone-Lambert: We were really fortunate to get accepted to a startup accelerator called Y Combinator, which is a three-month accelerator program. You get to join a community of other funds and get mentors and funding. 

We were the first fully nurse-led company to ever be backed by YC. That was a great stepping stone for us, especially because Jennifer and I didn't really come from a tech background. 

Q: What Is Your Biggest Accomplishment So Far?

Mancillas: Being one of the largest workforces in the US, there hasn't been a successful way to create that solidarity and that bit of connection point to make it easier to navigate the profession in the way that we should be able to, and that's what I'm proud of, being able to bring all of those pieces together in a single space that makes it more equitable, accessible, and efficient. I'm just so much looking forward to this upcoming year and all of the ways that we are able to help healthcare workers. 

Scarpone-Lambert:  I think one thing I'm most proud of is that on our platform, over 50% of the businesses that we've partnered with to be in the Adni marketplace, to be on the Adni job board, are companies founded by healthcare workers. There's so many awesome healthcare workers out there.

In 2026, we will work on adding new features to our product that streamlines things that healthcare workers need to do, making it easier. We're really excited that we are launching AI, which is going to help automate some of the administrative tasks that healthcare workers need to do, especially around their credentialing and finding jobs. It’s been a wild ride.

Final Thoughts

Whether you have a simple product idea or lofty dreams to take over the nursing marketplace, both Mancillas and Scarpone-Lambert agree that the best way to approach it is to start now. You don’t have to know what you’re doing now to be able to create something meaningful later.

Right now, Mancillas and Scarpone-Lambert are finding meaning through “building a community that supports healthcare workers.”