Episode 272 | Mike Monovoukas, CEO & Co-founder at AcuityMD | The Future of Medtech Commercialization: AI, Data, and Smarter Growth

Speaker A: Medical innovation starts with medical discussion, talking about the future. What comes Next with Project MedTech?

Speaker B: Hello everybody, I'm Lindsay Deneen, Director of Marketing engagement at Project MedTech, and welcome to another episode of the Project MedTech podcast. If we can help you in any way, or you would like to suggest a future guest, you can email us@infoorojectmedtech uh.com if conversations like this are helpful. That's exactly why we bring people together at our signature events, the Midwest Showcase, the Startup Symposium, um, and Coming to America. For more on our events that include networking, education and pitch competitions for startups, check them out@www.projectmedtech.com. we even have sponsorship options if your company is also dedicated to accelerating medical technology to impact patient lives. So reach out today to get involved. The Project Mentech podcast is proudly sponsored by Ward Law. Wardlaw Office, LLC is a boutique law firm specializing in the practice of, uh, patent and trademark law. They are committed to providing inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses of all types with personal and professional services and are flexible to meet your unique needs. It is their goal to both educate on how to secure valuable patent and trademark protection and to provide high quality services at rates affordable to independent inventors, startups and small businesses alike.

Speaker C: Today's episode of Project MedTech is brought to you by Wheelhouse DMG Performance Marketing for Privacy First Industries like MedTech and healthcare, every Wheelhouse client experienced record growth in 2025. That's the result of more than a decade building the data infrastructure, measurement systems

Speaker A: and domain expertise that healthcare and medical

Speaker C: device marketing actually requires. Find out how every Wheelhouse client experienced record growth in 2025@wheelhousedmg.com without further ado, let's dive in.

Speaker A: Okay, Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker C: Hey, Dwayne, it's good to be here. Good to see you again.

Speaker A: Yeah, you as well. I know we were talking, you know, when we just hopped on here. Um, I had thought I had done podcasts before. I know we had met previously. Um, uh, uh, we've had your dad on one of our other podcast series, I think at one point in time. Um, Although to be honest, I was blanking on what company he was with at the time. It might have been Olympus. I know he went to Zimmer at some point. Regardless, finally, 270 some episodes in. I finally had in the podcast. I'm, uh, familiar with your platform, but let's maybe just give the listeners an introduction into who you are, your background, um, and what you're doing at Acuity md.

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks, Wayne. Big fan. Of the great work you're doing as well. And 260 or so podcasts in that. Super, super exciting. So I'm, um, thrilled to be here. Um, my name is Mike Montevoukas. I'm the co founder and CEO of Acuity md. We started the company back, oh, right around the start of COVID um, with, you know, my, my background. You know, my first startup was a medical device, um, that we were, you know, uh, trying to go through FDA and do a clinical study on and raise capital for. And you know, that that startup failed. Uh, and the biggest lesson I took away from that experience was, you know, how valuable it was to, you know, when you pitch a product, especially to, you know, a prospect, you know, whether it be for a study or even a commercial prospect, um, you know, it's easy to fall back into the, the trap of pitching features and benefits. It's much harder, you know, to build that empathy with the end, um, user. What they care about, you know, what outcomes they're experiencing, what they're publishing on, all the stuff that's unique in the healthcare environment. Really tailor your product around what they're experiencing in this dynamic, you know, healthcare environment. And so, you know, what I took away from that experience, that failed startup was the power of data, uh, and really to um, put it in the hands of frontline, uh, folks innovating and commercializing medical technologies so that they could build closer relationships and build more empathy with their end users. That, uh, leads to better products, that leads to better sales cycles, that leads to more technology in the hands of the right providers, uh, so that they can treat patients, uh, better. So that was my first startup. Fast forward to, uh, starting AcuityMD. Really wanted to build a platform that harnessed data about the US Healthcare space to start, um, but also could connect to existing, um, customer data that each of these companies have and really empower their frontline with insights, um, about their prospects, about their customers, so that they can engage at a much deeper level and build empathy at a much deeper level. Uh, so that's how we started with Acuity md. We're about six years in now, and a lot has happened in these six years. We had Covid. Um, we've got this wave of consolidation, um, in the provider space. We've had access getting shrunk and more challenging for MedTech, uh, field reps. We've had, um, obviously AI and the big sort of, uh, explosion in capabilities now with the LLMs. So a lot of really exciting stuff over the years. Uh, our company at this Point. We work with over 500 medtech companies, 16 of the top 20, uh, by revenue and we just recently raised our Series C. So, uh, closed an $80 million series uh C and are well capitalized and really investing in the AI platform to bring the medtech industry into this new age with, with LLMs and data.

Speaker A: Wow. Congratulations on the fundraise. That's super exciting and m, you just love to see the progression of things. I'll circle back on uh, the fundraising front because I'll have some questions there. Um, let's keep going on what Acuity MD is, um, and maybe talk about it from an initial perspective and then how you've grown it over the years, how people are interfacing with it, that sort of thing.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So even from the, from the beginning we had this kind of thesis that, you know, there's all sorts of messy and uh, fragmented market data that describes the health care landscape, describes hospitals and what procedures they do, what outcomes they do, you know, who owns the hospital, who practices at the hospital, you know, data that it describes, the individual physicians they're practicing, uh, their clinical practice, their referral networks, their procedural volumes. There's all this kind of data out there in the ether, um, about the healthcare space, medical device relevant information as well. Um, and companies struggled harnessing external data to drive kind of commercial strategies, uh, and insights, but they also struggle with their internal data as well. And you can think of these companies, I mean you've been in the industry, some of these businesses have tens of thousands, if not millions of SKUs, right? They have such a variety of different products that they go to market with the complexity underneath all of that. And then you layer on where they're contracted and where they're not. You layer on all the different business units they sell through. You layer on each of these products has different indications for use and can be used in different clinical settings. And so the complexity of just the internal data that these companies have is, is, you know, is a Goliath. And so, you know, where we started the, started the company around, how do we integrate both market data as well as first party customer data into an ontology that could describe how medical device companies go to market, um, so that insights would be immediately available so that, you know, sales leaders could guide their teams towards quota so that sales reps have the resources they need, um, to hit quota and build those close customer relationships that I described earlier. And so marketing teams could figure out how to size and segment the market and where to expand into new uh, market areas. All of that is premised under kind of a well modeled data set that combines both third party data, external data with first party internal data. So you truly see a 360 view of the market of the customer. And so that's always been, even in the original pitch deck, um, you know, original customer pitch deck that we put together, it was always around, hey, you have all this messy internal data, there's all this messy external data. How do you combine it into you know, a universe that makes sense for your go to market process and you know, how you uh, how you, how you build and sell products

Speaker A: makes total sense, um, uh, um, of what you've done there. Um, and you know, commercialization is without a doubt the hardest thing a med tech company has to do. I've always said that like um, even, even going through regulatory, when you're going through it seems like a daunting task but you know, ah, at the end of the day the FDA's mission is just to keep people, it's just to make sure you're putting forward a safe and effective product. They're not there to deter you from going to market. Commercialization is hard because you can do everything right and the timing's just not right or um, you know, that specific hospital just has other things going on. They're not ready to evaluate your thing and you can easily wasting time there. So it's a hard thing. The more tools we have to help companies do that appropriately I think is really awesome. When you mentioned your client base, you know, it very much sounds like people are engaging through your platform at all levels. Right? Um, the big behemoths, the early stage companies. As you're building this product, but as you're revolutionizing what AcuityMD is gonna look like in the future, how do you take into account the needs of these companies that are at different stages of commercialization?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great question. Um, you know, I think we've always been a mission driven company since the start. And our mission is to accelerate adoption of medical technology. And that's the guiding light that drives what we do and how we build our roadmap, uh, on the product side, the types of customers that we like supporting. And so um, all of these companies, big and small, share that mission as well. They have their own innovative technologies they want to bring out to the market as effectively as possible. And so obviously the needs of a five person scrappy startup that just got, you know, is just starting to, to get, you know, commercial ah, versus a multinational 10 business unit strategic are very different. Um, right. The data that they have access to is very different. Right. One has been in market for dozens, if not a hundred years and has relationships and channel partnerships and you know, has deep customer footprints that they can leverage and have data that has been generated on, whereas the other is, you know, first to market. And so um, and building all that for scratch. I think the overarching um, goal is how do we make it easier to bring new products out to market and how do we make it uh, less risky? Um, so that when you're going through the fda, whether you're you know, established player or um, you know, an innovator, how do you de risk some of those decisions that you make early on with the commercial understanding baked much earlier on in the product development cycle so that when you do get to be commercialized, you know, you do get that approval. A lot of those decisions have already been kind of thought through and made so that you know, you understand your channel, you understand your ideal customer profile, you know where to place reps, you know, which accounts to prioritize first, you know, which kols to engage first. If you can make those, if you can bring all those decisions up, uh, in the process it really de risk that launch and that's consistent for a larger company as well as a, as a, as a high growth uh, innovator. So you know, the needs are obviously different. Larger companies have more data, they have more complex permissions, they've got existing processes that they're, you know, that they're um, that they're using to, to, to prospect and you know, call plan and you know, manage the salesforce. Whereas new, newer businesses can kind of build this, you know, as they go. Uh, but the underlying need of we, where do I go first to launch this product and how do I derisk this product launch and um, how do I show up in the right way in front of the customers, consistent across, you know, across all those uh, segments.

Speaker A: And um, talk to me about the incorporation and the. You have been through a lot. Um, right. Starting a company during COVID is an insane piece, um, which I can sympathize you with, sympathize with you on that. But um, the one piece that's really interesting is we're also going through this AI tidal wave, um, of just new capabilities. And as a software company, we've seen companies just completely go away because AI can do what that software was specifically done to do. We've also seen software companies go to the next level who can properly incorporate AI into what they've already built. How big of a discussion point was this for you internally at Acute emd? And what are you doing now to, um, take this new shiny toy and incorporate it into what you were already doing?

Speaker C: Yeah, AI. Ah. And this kind of recent. It's really only been the last three years. Um, it's the biggest technology shift of our generation. I don't think we'll see a bigger one. Um, and, you know, there's a lot to unpack with, you know, how it's affecting other software companies and, you know, challenges and opportunities there. We stay focused on our customers and, you know, I think. And even in deploying AI internally for our internal operations, um, you know, there's a lot of work that goes from prototyping something and, you know, versus actually getting it integrated into the business processes that, you know, know, the company relies on. Um, and, you know, uh, our thesis since the beginning and it goes back to kind of that data, you know, that, that data mapping that I talked to earlier about sort of combining first party and external data into a holistic platform. The reason we did all that is, you know, and even before AI, we had this, you know, we had this theory that everything should be distilled down to a user's context and a company's context. So, for example, you know, Medtronic might have a certain M. A business unit at Medtronic may have certain competitors in the market segments they play. And that's context, right? That's context about the market and the dynamics of the market. Right. A sales rep who sells in that business unit, you know, is constrained to a territory of accounts or geographies that they sell into. They have a certain quota they need to hit. They have a set of accounts that they, you know, are contracted to sell into versus greenfield accounts that they need to, you know, go through VAC or, or activate. All of those are bits of context that are internal to the company, that are relevant, um, to help the rep sell and help the rep succeed. And then you layer on all the external context who the competitors are, what procedures are going on in that account, what the referral networks look like, what products that account is using today, all these external bits of context, right? So each user can essentially project onto the same ontology of the universe of medtech with their own context. It's specific to them and what they need to do to succeed for their own personal goals, but also for their organizational goals. We've always been really focused on how do we assemble context for the user. So when they log in or use or interact with an UM experience in AcuityMD's platform. And it's personalized and it's hyper personalized to what they care about and what their company cares about. And so thinking about what that means in an AI age, we already had a lot of the ingredients to train the agent or to really harness the agent and the LLM around what each user and organization cares about. So as opposed to, you know, you sort of open up ChatGPT or Claude for the first time, it doesn't really know a lot about you. And yeah, you can teach it skills and you can, you know, you can, it'll learn memory over time. You can give it, you know, integrations and connectors, but does it actually know who you are and who, what your goals are and what your organizational goals are and what the data that you care about is? It takes a lot of work to encode that into the LLM. And we have a shortcut because we've been investing in that, you know, context layer since the start of the company, since before the AI agent. It's just a matter of delivering that context to the LLM at the point in time. And so it all comes down to understanding the context of the user and the goals that they're trying to achieve within the organization. Um, that leads to a really rich AI experience so that you don't have to go and tell the LLM a million different things about you and what you care about to get value out of it.

Speaker A: Yeah, it makes total sense. I mean um, it almost feels like I know a lot of these, um, um, different uh, like OpenAI and Gemini and Claude are now having um, uh, you know on ah, Gemini they're called gems, right, where you can kind of build these specific profiles that you want to have um, that give some of those memory because that's always the limitation with some of these to your point is they don't have memory. So um, that's super cool what you're doing there. Um, what was, what did you do before the first startup? Like what's your, what's your background? I'm curious on this.

Speaker C: Yeah, so um, you know the other job I had, so I've worked at a few startups. I started my own company. I worked at a healthcare, um, you know, data startup here in, in Boston. Um, you know, and was the first sort of business hire there and raised you know, till series D. Uh, that company was called uh, Patient Ping. Uh now they're Bamboo Health. So they were acquired. It really got to me, um, how the Company, uh, how an enterprise software and data company was built in the healthcare space or ground up. Awesome experience. Um, outside of that, I worked in management consulting. So I spent about six, uh, or seven years at Bain Co. Advising large biotech, biopharma and medical device companies, um, on commercial strategy and, um, execution. So a lot of commercial work, uh, from that experience, where I got to interact firsthand with larger companies and how they, you know, would generate a strategy of like, hey, we want to focus on this segment of provider or on these new products that we're launching. And a lot of friction trying to actually operationalize that with the front line, um, because, you know, the folks in home office or corporate would learn all these analytics, they'd come out with a strategy and they try to push it out, um, you know, to their team. And you know, the best tools they had were really static, you know, spreadsheets or dashboards, which really, you know, you lose a lot of fidelity in the data, but you also lose the, the feedback loop back from the sales team about, hey, is this even the right thing to do? Like, are we noticing some new shift that we should capitalize on? So that really, that, that experience really led, uh, led me to understand a lot of the problems in the bigger enterprise as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm always curious about that. Right. Because, um, where I originally started with that was I kind of want to talk about, um, fundraising and what you've learned through that process because you've been very successful in the various fundraisers of QDMD. I know you mentioned the, ah, uh, $80 million Series C, but it'd be good, uh, to layer in the previous rounds before that. Um, but, you know, you very clearly had a good understanding of the market. You had a, you had a startup that had raised capital as well. Right. That you mentioned had failed.

Speaker C: Uh, our first startup, we couldn't even get.

Speaker A: You couldn't even raise capital for us. Okay, nice.

Speaker C: Yeah, we spent, you know, we paid legal fees and patent filing fees out of our own pocket.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, okay, Right on. Um, so, so good. You've had a good, good, uh, um, uh, lesson on a lot of things. Talk to me about. But, but, but raising this amount of capital has had to be a new experience for you. And so just, just walk me through those learning experiences of, um, raising the seed round, raising the Series A, the B, the C, the different challenges that has, has kind of presented themselves at different levels. Right? Because, uh, I think there's, there's different stages, like when you're raising from when you're raising seed stage capital, there might be a lot of different places you can get capital. It could be angel groups, it could be vcs, it could be family offices. But as you get further downstream you definitely have more validated business model. But the people who can write checks into that company now become a lot different and kind of reduce. And so, you know, walk me through somebody's learning experiences. I think it's just fascinating to get, you know, real world feedback from an entrepreneur that's going through it.

Speaker C: I think the biggest learning or lesson, um, has been to align at every stage of the company's, you know, trajectory to align the cap table around your long term goals as a business and your long term aspirations as a business. Um, I think having a cap table that's aligned to the maximum outcome, you know, your mission, our mission out of qdmd, um has always been paramount and that's caused us to slow down fundraising, that's caused us to defer fundraising, that's caused us to accelerate fundraising. That's really been the defining UM filter for us as a company is to find people who are aligned, uh, with my vision as a CEO and with our mission as a company. Um, and I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs get a term sheet and think about it in terms of the numbers, the dilution, the amount, the valuation board seat and I think all of those are sort of secondary um, to is this investor actually fundamentally aligned with what we're trying to do with the business long term? Are they going to try to push us into a new vertical? Are they going to try to pressure us to sale, to sell, you know, five years in, um, you know, for us, you know, starting the business, we wanted to build the biggest possible business in pursuit of our mission as possible.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: We wanted to stay independent as long as possible, um, you know, to chart our own course. And we needed investors that, that believed in that, um, and, and, and also jived with that, that vision. And so I think that's the number one lesson learned is to like make sure your cap table is aligned with your long term vision. And, and don't, you know, and that is actually, you know, even more important than the specific terms of each fundraise. Obviously the terms are important. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to say that entrepreneurs should sell all of their business, you know, if they find a like minded investor. Um, but when push comes to shove and you know, you're dealt with challenges or opportunities, it's much easier to have the Flexibility and be on the same page with your investor group and your board. And I'll give a great example around our recent series C where you know, we, we sort of, we didn't need the round, like we were well capitalized, growing at a really fast clip, um, and you know, kind of in sort of post product market fit growth mode. And I kind of, you know, I kind of went around the horn with our investors and you know, say hey, There's a huge AI opportunity for us. We have this data and ontology. LLMs are thirsty for that context. To your point earlier, like they, the difference between a C answer and a minus answer is unlocked by context. That you feed the LLM at the right moment in the workflow or the right moment in the user experience. And data is a core foundation for that. Um, we have this awesome AI opportunity in front of us. It's going to look very different than our core platform. There might not be features and buttons and charts and modular packages. It might look like a very different type of business, credit based, more fluid, um, just a different, you know, and we're going to have to build you know, a ton, we're going to have to invest a lot to see that end state out. But I think it's the right thing for the business because the, the world of opportunities has just opened up and we can be the company that brings MedTech into this, uh, into this LLM and AI age using our context layer. And I, you know, basically circled the wagons. I was like, hey, this isn't going to be like a slam dunk. Like it's going to take a lot of work. It's going to be a long term, you know, execution path. It's uh, going to take a lot of upfront investment and we're going to say no to a lot of things that used to be on our roadmap, um, that are no longer, you know, they're incremental features. We want to go for the moonshots. And the resounding answer around the cap table is like, how much money do you need? Go, go, go. It wasn't, well, you know, you have a great business, you know, let's look to sell in the next couple years because we need returns and yada, yada, yada. It was long term thinking. Um, and I think you know, had we aligned ourselves with different investors earlier on, we would have been um, you know, more challenged to, to recognize that opportunity and capitalize on it. Um, and I think every sort of company that was founded before 2023 is sort of dealing with this. How hard do I lean into? AI question. Um, and the ones that are able to fully commit, I think are the ones that are going to be successful. And the ones who have cap tables and boards that enable them and, you know, allow them to fully commit are the ones that I think will be set up in the long term to succeed.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes, makes, makes total sense. I love the tie there, um, where you kind of pull that together with your Series C. Is this current cap table re upping investment? Was this a new investor that was brought into the fold? I see how you navigated your current cap table, but how did you navigate a potential new person coming in and what that looked like and how that changed dynamic and focus and culture on the board?

Speaker C: Yeah. So Stepstone and Atreides were the two largest, uh, investors in this round. Both were on our cap table already. Um, you know, sort of both, both investor groups, um, you know, essentially, you know, doubled and tripled down their position with us, all existing investors, ah, invested in the round. We did bring on some new money as well. Uh, I think it's always important, healthy to bring on new investors with, with you know, every round of capital, bring new, you know, perspectives to the table, new relationships. Um, new advice for me as a CEO as well. Um, but for this round it was investors who had smaller positions in the company wanting us to go further and faster.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. Mike, as you've grown, you grow organically. You've also grown by taking in more capital. Um, how do you manage culture within the company and the team? Because so from the outside world. Right. Um, raising a Series C is very exciting. Wow. Qdmd just raised $80 million. That's awesome. They're bringing in some new capital. They're gonna grow faster, they're gonna work on something else faster. Right. There's a lot of assumptions that can be made. There's also assumptions for your internal team which sometimes positive and sometimes uncertainty. Hey, what's going on with this new capital? What's gonna change about this? As a CEO, you want to keep that team growing in the same direction. Kind of walk me through some of those things you've dealt with just from an organic growth perspective, but also with bringing in that much capital.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think independent of, uh, the capital raise, our philosophy to raising any round of capital. I probably should have, you know, led with this. You know, in addition to finding investors who are aligned with your long term has always been to, um, you know, never build a business model around subsequent rounds of capital. Right. So for every round of capital that we raise, you know, our base case plan is for it to be our last round of capital. Um, and, you know, if we recognize the market opportunity or have, you know, additional investments in product or commercial, that can accelerate us, you know, in our. Obviously, our metrics are still, you know, good. Then, you know, then we'll go out and raise. Right? We'll capitalize on it. So never raise money when you need it. Raise it when you know, it unlocks something bigger. Never raise capital when you need it for your core business. Raise when you. When it unlocks something much bigger or the flexibility to do something much bigger. So that's how I've always run the business. And I think, um, from an employee standpoint, obviously, I can't speak to every employee, but we've taken a pretty disciplined approach to how we allocate that capital. Um, you know, where, you know, we gives us opportunity to make bets and to try things out that may totally fail. Um, I think that that mentality is something our team has largely embraced, um, and is really important in today's age where, you know, the AI world is moving so quickly. You know, a lot of the soft. A lot of right now, a lot of our software is, you know, AI generated and approved by humans, obviously with humans in the loop. Um, but you can just build things so much faster. And so the bottleneck is no longer, you know, the product specs and the engineering time. It's more, you know, is this the right business problem to focus on? And what do our customers say, uh, and how does it solve c. Customer problems? And so having many more experiments to run and, you know, being judicious about what you kill versus what you give oxygen to is. Is something I think our team has done a really good job embracing. Um, so that's one. One thing. The other. The other piece is, I think having a mission and, you know, for folks that are, you know, that are in med tech, um, I think they. They sort of intuit this because they're in the industry. But for software businesses and AI businesses, I think the whole premise of a mission is kind of like, you know, it's kind of. I don't know, I don't want to say the word bs, but, you know, you know, it's. It's just different for us. Our mission is so core to what we're doing that it inspires a lot of sort of collective, uh, energy towards that goal that allows for us to be aligned and in sync and think about the big picture. And so I think the mission is, um, something that's really helped sort of quiet the noise around any capital raise. Because our mission hasn't changed. Right. It's the same mission we've been marching on. Now we just have more firepower and can experiment more aggressively and can try different things out and, and build for the long term, um, as opposed to, you know, getting, getting excited by shiny pennies.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, that's, that's, that's. It's really helpful. I, uh, think one of the other questions I want to ask you, and this is, um, what I find this super interesting. You're probably over it at this point, but I met you first. Um, and, um, we were talking at an early stage at Project MedTech of like, hey, can we use AcuityMD's platform, uh, for our companies to kind of talk about, hey, they have some commercialization opportunities as they grow here. It'd be good to have access to some of that data, uh, that sort of thing. Uh, ultimately, you know, we decided that, hey, we want to make, we want the startups to, to get their own Acuity MD license. And so they did, and we've gotten to see some of that system from there. But regardless, it's not where I'm going with this. You, um, come from a med tech family, which is really cool to me. Um, but like I said, I met you first, and then I happened to be at LSI one year. I meet this guy, he's got the same last name as you. I'm m. Like, you know, Mike? He goes, that's my son. I'm like, oh, very cool. The next day, uh, I sat down next to him at the bar and he's having a drink with his wife. And I'm like, hey, I'm Dwayne. She goes, oh, I work for Boston Scientific. I'm like, oh, very cool. She's like, oh, I'm his husband. I'm his wife. And I was like, wait a minute. So this is just like a big med tech family going on here. And then I thought to myself, how cool dinner conversations may or may not be, or you get sick of. But yeah, talk to me a little bit about, um, what it's like having parents in the med tech field. Um, and was that helpful growing up? Did it, did it sway you in any way to get into this industry? Um, because some people are like, I'm out. I don't want to do, you know, I don't want to be in MedTech. And others are like, this is pretty cool. I Got to watch my mom and dad be in medtech growing up, so it definitely influenced me. So I'm curious from your perspective what that's like.

Speaker C: You haven't mentioned, uh, my brother yet. My younger brother, whose Twitter handle is literally at the medtech guy. So he got that.

Speaker A: I did not know.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think he's had it for ten years. Um, and now an orthopedic surgeon. Uh, he's a resident right now, um, but worked in med tech for a long time. Wow, super cool. Transitioned into, into, into medicine. Um, yeah, I mean, dinner tables were, uh. So my dad and brother both have engineering minds and engineering background. They would constantly. We have like way too many 3D printers than any family should own. Um, and they'd constantly be like, prototyping and napkin sketching and talking about different parts of the anatomy and how to treat different conditions. And so they were very much on the engineering side. And you know, so it was awesome to, to grow up around that and, you know, obviously got exposure into the bigger kind of business problem, you know, legal and regulatory and you know, um, uh, you know, quality, you know, world through my mom as well. So, uh, definitely a topic of many, you know, dinner table conversations. I, uh, think it's an industry, uh, for me. I didn't study medicine in college. I studied finance and public policy. I've always been drawn to industries that are heavily regulated. Um, and I think medtech is an awesome industry because it touches the patient. There's high power technology at play to benefit the patient. The story of medtech in big arcs is really the story of the evolution of the practice of medicine. Right. Like medicine is like advancements in medicine are bottlenecked by the technology that surgeons and clinicians can use to treat, um, diseases and treat and care for patients. And so I think that interaction around, you know, it's a technology, uh, industry that partners so closely with, uh, with medicine to advance how patients can be treated through better and better technologies. And I think that interplay is fascinating, right? If you think about, you know, kind of the evolution of, you know, laparoscopes and robots and now, you know, we're talking about autonomous robots, right? It's just like, fascinating to see how technology is evolving as the practice of medicine is evolving. It's kind of the symbiotic and very messy at times world, right? And I think for me as an entrepreneur, my, my biggest fear, uh, and my biggest concern as, um, a patient of the healthcare space and someone who has family members who are paying. Everyone's a patient Right. Um, is that it's becoming harder to innovate, and it's becoming harder to commercialize. And the industry is chronically underserved by, you know, vendors, uh, you know, that focus on entire, you know, they treat pharma the same as med tech, the same as, you know, other, uh, B2B businesses, the same as distribution businesses. And so it's an industry that's chronically underserved from, like, the bigger service providers. Um, but at the same time, it's becoming harder and harder to, you know, innovate and sell and more competitive and more red tape and harder to break through the noise. And that, to me, is like, I don't want to, like, not even a blinking red light, like, the house is on fire. Like, if, you know, think about, you know, like, all these big advancements from open to laparoscopic to robotic, like, and seriously question if that happened today, like, would people have actually been able to make the leap, or was it something about the environment back then that made it easier and obviously didn't happen overnight. And nothing in medicine does. But I just think the practice of medicine and technology kind of evolved symbiotically towards progress, and it's just becoming harder to make progress because it's becoming more expensive to commercialize, becoming more expensive to go through the regulatory process. Um, and that, I think, is a big issue that needs to be solved. And with Acuity md, our mission is to accelerate adoption of medical technology, and we're starting in commercial, um, but hope to play a role in solving that problem enduringly for the long term by taking a very focused approach on the industry.

Speaker A: Love it. Um, awesome. Uh, final two questions. Uh, first one is if there was a, um, company that is international to the U.S. uh, looking to. They've commercialized in their local market, wherever they are, or a different market, they're looking to come to the U.S. what. What's the first piece of information or advice you would give them about, uh,

Speaker C: commercializing here in the U.S. oh, that's a good question. So this is like an intern. They're already commercial internationally. They're FDA approved to come to the US and they're trying to figure out how to commercialize. Ooh. Uh, I think it really depends on, um, the dynamics of the company. Do they have direct sales reps? Do they have a distributor salesforce? I think my general perspective is for smaller companies that are, you know, that have an innovative technology, um, that they're trying to, like, you know, kind of, you know, get the embers going of. Of A commercial engine there is no replacing having, you know, someone full time focused on commercialization.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker C: And you know, even for our own business, like the idea of, you know, having a reseller. I remember one of our first, uh, you know, we, we were interviewing for sales, um, leaders very early on in, in the company's history. And one of the uh, the candidates that we were interviewing, awesome credentials, like had worked at some great company, really awesome individual. But one thing he said, you know, kind of really bothered me which is like, you should engage your resellers like very early. I was like, dude, we're a 20 person company with like a rapidly evolving product that we like are thirsty for that frontline feedback so that we can make the product better, um, and so that we can build those relationships. And you know, what are we talking about resellers? Like we gotta like figure out our go to market motion before we can, you know, scale it to third parties. Um, and I think there are elements of that as well in, in med tech. And I'm not saying that every company needs to hold themselves to this rule, but I don't think there's any beating the learnings from having someone on the ground trying to sell your product and then feeding those learnings back to R D and back to marketing and back to the rest of the organization. So that would be my number one piece, is to, to find someone full time that is, you know, core goal is to, is, is to break ground in the US and commercially. Um, now you gotta enable that person. They have to be successful. You have to hire the right person, you have to give them the right resources to succeed. You know, ideally, um, um, you know, with insights and information, um, that they can use to kind of tailor your product and technology to the needs of the ideal customer profile. But I don't think anything beats having someone on the ground, you know, because you learn so much from that frontline experience that's useful to grow and scale. And then you can, you know, go nuts with hiring reps and 1099s and you know, distributors. But nothing beats that initial learning that you get from interacting with the market and feeding that back to other parts of the organization.

Speaker A: I totally agree with you. We hear so many even companies in the US who aren't commercialized yet saying I have a big distribution agreement coming up and that's how I'm gonna, you know, grab market share. And it's like you haven't sold anything yet. You know, uh, you, you need to go out, sell and live at that place until you can figure out, well, does the nurse grab for this product when it's on the shelf? Why don't they? Um, I mean there is so much to learn from there and I think if it's a person who is full time on your team, it's the, it's the only way to do that initial step. Uh, so I love that kind of feedback and I think that's really good tactical feedback. I asked this question of a lot of people on the podcast. Um, and a lot of times, you know, people will kind of go to like how the US market is maybe different than a single payer healthcare system in Europe or something like this and, and how that affects certain things at a large scale. But I love the tactical advice like that. Right. I think it's just a big deal that people oftentimes overlook as if it's like the product's just going to sell itself. Um, uh, second question is, do you have a book or two, non fiction, fiction, whatever you want to give that you would recommend to a listener? Um, listening in the podcast and I say non fiction or fiction because we've had a few folks now give some fictional books that are really good from a lessons perspective. And I think it's the tendency though is for most people to give you know, a non fiction book. But I'd be curious if there's a book that you read that you thought, wow, this was so helpful in my personal development, business development, whatever it is.

Speaker C: Oh boy, put, put me on the spot on. Um, you know, my reading style is typically to um, I don't love reading business books or you know, like kind of self help type books. It just like a lot when you're already just in it every day. Like I definitely enjoy, you know, escapism with my, you know, my reading like Stephen King, like some stuff that's out there. Um, I will say like my, I have it on my desk. It's literally on my desk every day. Biodesign, you know, textbook by um, you know, Josh Macauer and team. You know, like that, that book is incredible. Yeah, um, yeah, it literally walks you through every step of the process. Um, commercial or you know, innovating in med tech. And I think, you know, there's so much domain knowledge that seems inaccessible even for someone who grew up around the industry. Seems inaccessible about, you know, how do I take this idea and bring it to market or how do I even know if it's a good idea or what are all the steps I need to go through and milestones that I Need to prove, like there's just so much um, context that you need to be an innovator in medtech. And you know, I really appreciate uh, folks who democratize that and make it accessible to the masses through education, through, you know, knowledge sharing. Um, so that's, you know, that's a book. Uh, I'm trying to think of any other, any other ones recently that I, you know, kind of, kind of flip through. That's, that's what I'll, that's, that's what I'll go.

Speaker A: I like that, I like that one.

Speaker C: Um, are you, I just think you Darwin in Moscow. That was a great book.

Speaker A: Very different.

Speaker C: I don't taught me anything about, you know, entrepreneurship or leadership, but it was just good books. I always enjoy the historical fictions that take you back into an age that, you know, we forget about.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The, you mentioned Stephen King. Are you a, uh, a horror film type of guy, scary movie type of guy or, or, or just enjoy Stephen King books?

Speaker C: I do both. I do enjoy my favorite genre for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Not like I haven't caught up on the latest ones with you know, a three year old at home and you know, obviously a lot of uh, a lot of stuff going on. But yeah, you know, definitely I've heard really good things about um, a new one that just came out I think like a Obsession it's called.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: It's like the classic already. Yeah. So, yeah. Some point. Want to watch that?

Speaker A: Yeah. My, my horror film watching has gone down significantly. We have a five and a three year old. But um, it was so funny. I, I was talking to someone the other day because I think I saw um, the scary movie comedies. They just released another one of these and the first time I watched one of the scary movies I thought I was like, this is, this has ruined some of my favorite horror films for me because it made light of um, of um, some of the scenes um, within there. Uh, but uh, nonetheless I, I see advertisements for them but I haven't, I haven't caught up on a lot of them either. Um, Mike, thank you so much for doing this. We're going to include a link to uh, your LinkedIn in the show notes. We're going to include a link to Acuity MD's website in the show notes as well. So depending platform they're listening to up or down and inch, you'll see that there. Um, we'll also have some of the recent press releases uh, from Acute emd, uh, regarding the series C. So, um, thanks for joining me. Today. And thanks for sharing some of your journey, your knowledge, what you've learned. It's, uh, going to be super valuable for folks listening in and also just talking about commercialization and the difficulties of it and how you're trying to make that a little bit easier for, uh, companies, uh, to strategize around.

Speaker C: Thanks Wayne. It was great chatting with you. Thank you for the opportunity and um, thanks for all your support along the, along the way. Awesome. Keep up the great work with the podcast. It's great.

Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Hi, I'm Freddy Coffey, Director of Marketing at Jumpstart. The Project MedTech podcast is proudly sponsored

Speaker C: by Jumpstart Inc. Jumpstart's Trailblazer accelerator helps

Speaker A: Ohio's most innovative early stage health tech startups fast track their growth with tailored advising from serial entrepreneurs, non dilutive funding to fuel their journey, and unrivaled access

Speaker C: to a network of experts, resources and investment opportunities.

Speaker A: Whether it's improving patient outcomes, advancing digital health, or reimagining care delivery, Jumpstart provides the high impact services and critical resources

Speaker C: to bring big ideas to life. Learn more@jumpstartinc.org startups.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening. At our core, we at Project MedTech are networkers, educators and consultants. We meet you where you are to bring value and to create impact. We care deeply about helping Ventech companies succeed right from the start. The route exit for providing consulting and fractional services, hosting impactful industry events, and of course, sharing incredible guest insights like the ones you heard today through our podcast. Please reach out at any time. If we can be of assistance, check out our website at www.projectmedtech.com or email us at uh, infoorojectmedtech.com.