Engaging Clinicians in Venture Investing — How Can We Bridge the Gap? | LSI USA '25

Paul Slosar  0:05  
Well, thank you all for attending this symposium. I'm My name is Paul Slosar. I'm joined by four Well, joined by three. All of us are physicians. To the two to my left, to your right are physician founders, myself and Brandon are physicians turned venture capital. Everyone here is a clinician. There's nobody who went straight, at least to my knowledge, from medical school to B school or to VC school, if such a thing exists, but Henry Peck, who obviously is the energy behind this meeting, reached out to me, is my first meeting for LSI, and said, I'd love to have you join us, and by the way, I'd like you to moderate a panel. And so he put together this group. None of us have met before. We tried to get together, but people are busy. We've managed to string it together. But what I'd like to do first is have everybody introduce themselves, and then I'm functioning as the moderator as well as a participant. So we'll try to keep this pretty casual engaging. And so lemme just start with Ali, maybe you could just introduce yourself. What brings you here to the conference and what you're up to? 

Ali Golshan  1:32  
Yeah, my name is Ali. I'm an interventional radiologist. I've been in practice for over a decade. Got a couple clinics and surgery centers. We do primarily outpatient vascular with some embolization of wound care. And I have a startup in the superficial, venous and pelvic embolization space. And really just to support friends and meet with colleagues and business development, et cetera. We're not raising right now, but just a great call. Just a great conference to meet people and get together. 

Karen Cross  1:45  
Karen Cross, I'm a plastic surgeon by background, but I'm also a PhD scientist, so never envisioned myself in business as an academic surgeon, but here I am. I'm the CEO and co founder of MIMOSA Diagnostics. We are the first portable medical imaging technology for skin health or skin imaging, we actually look at the angiosomes of the skin and is skinny reperfusion injuries, mainly for wound care, pressure injuries, ICU monitoring for when you switch your ECMO lines, FDA cleared reimbursement code commercial. So again, not my, not the usual story, and not wearing I thought I would be but really loving this part of the journey I'm at LSI also just to be back keep people for our future investment warm, as well as some strategic partnerships and therapeutic partnerships.

Paul Slosar  2:32  
Branden 

Branden Rosenhan  2:33  
Awesome. Brandon Rosen, I'm a critical care physician, been a serial entrepreneur and turned into and started a small venture fund five years ago. And so we're in our second fund, and soon to be going to our third. So, you know, I say that I've been kind of on both sides of the table, in terms of being a founder, raising from venture, and now being on the venture side, looking predominantly we love technology, with PhD providers, PhD PhD experts, getting grants, non dilutive capital. And then we want to support, of course, physicians and their endeavors. And then I've worked full time as a critical care physician, in addition to the fund and my startups, until like this month. So yeah, that's I'm excited to be here. That's why I'm so smiling. Yeah. And so Paul slosar, I'm orthopedic spine surgeon. I practiced in the San Francisco Bay Area for 28 years. Was fortunate to be in the Bay Area, worked with a lot of venture and private equity firms, just doing due diligence, project based work, assessment of technologies, landed a couple of opportunities as advisor and even a chief medical officer role, and over the course of the 28 years, was associated with four companies that have exited. I had a knack for it, and I ended up going back to business school. I spun out of the bay area just two years ago, stopped practicing just two years ago, and co founded a venture capital fund. And our aim physicians Capital Fund is the is the name of the fund. Our goal is to try to address the issue, which is essentially the issue of our symposium today, about the relative absence of physicians and healthcare professionals in the venture ecosystem. And so we're appealing to not just physicians as as investors, but we're aiming at anybody along the healthcare continuum, because it's as all of us know who are here. It's complicated. A good idea doesn't always mean it's market viable. So today, what I'd like to do with this panel is explore one thing in very distinct, you know, contrast, I think, you know, if, if you look around the room, I presume there's physicians here, I know a couple are here. There's there's investors here, I presume there's founders here. But I'm going to try to draw a distinction with our panel from physician advisors, kind of project based consultants who might do due diligence for a venture firm. From actual general partners, limited partners, the relative paucity of them. So what I like to do is first ask Brandon, you know, why is it? Do you think Brandon that physicians are not a typical part of the venture ecosystem compared to maybe finance or technical you know, professionals? A great question. We start off training, which takes years and years and a decade to actually have a profession that where we get, you know, we get a salary that we can start paying off our loans. So I think we're busy. I think that we don't know this space very well, and we certainly don't understand, you know, how venture works. So that's, that's what most physicians I'm going to keep it simple. It's, we work hard. We have decades of training, and, you know, we're busy with practices. We're busy working. I mean, I was working, you know, 50 hours a week when I did my startup. And not everyone wants that. So it's hard work. It's hard work as a physician to transition to whether it's consulting, whether it's a startup, or whether it's on the investment side or venture side, and lemme turn to my founders and say, do med tech or Now I read my LSI program tech, med companies. I'm not sure how everything falls out. Do companies really want or benefit you as founders from physicians in the venture ecosystem. And maybe I'll start with Ali.

Ali Golshan  6:25  
I mean, it kind of depends on the individual. Yeah, if you have someone who's invested before been an early stage advisor for is well connected to industry, or is involved in early stage clinical trials and designs, et cetera, et cetera, they can be extremely helpful. Otherwise, they can be helpful as a potential customer, to give you insight. But you know, there is diminishing value in some advisors versus others, and I think that, like you all were saying, if it's someone that's seasoned and got into it later, or if they did an integrated MD MBA, or had a startup before they got into med school, I think their journey of familiarity with Medtech and venture starts earlier. So they might start at an earlier age, but you have to look for something unique. What do you think? Karen,

Karen Cross  7:08  
yeah, I mean, I think you know, back to what we were talking about in the beginning. You're, you're training to be, I was training to be a surgeon, so spending hours at the hospital, but also building my network. And it takes some time before you kind of get out there and people understand who you are, and then maybe the strategics start to bring you in and say, Could you give us some advice about x, y, z? So it does take time, if you're not connected into the business community. I didn't come from a business background to get exposed. You know, I never would have envisioned I'd be at a conference like this, for example, as an academic virgin, and I said that at the beginning. But then once you get exposed, you know, you can provide a lot of value. I think you can provide your opinion on whether this is a value piece of technology to the healthcare system. And people find you. They will find you if you put yourself out there, yeah,

Paul Slosar  7:57  
yeah. And the other, the other topic I want to kind of expand on a little bit is, you know, what are the barriers that exist in terms of clinicians and venture and how can we address these? I'm going to make an assumption. The panel, I hope, will not disagree with me, that we all kind of think it's a good idea in medical delivery, care, med technology, you could maybe make an argument against in pharma, do you really need physicians in that kind of granular space? But in terms of the the actual venture ecosystem of medical technologies, I think Brandon mentioned it before, some of the structural barriers that I see is just number one time. You know, most of us as patients don't want our physicians distracted by, you know, the potentially consuming aspects of venture. You know, there's a lot of work and very little return, you know, unless there's, there's an exit, which tends to be many, many years after the work begins. Literacy, you know, physicians have, and I have one of my other questions, but I'll throw it up now. You know, physicians are often given a reputation of not being very good at business, per se, and I'm not sure that that is necessarily accurate, but by the same token, most of them only get exposed to single investment opportunities, you know, the single check idea and and the last thing is awareness, right? They're not at meetings like this, unless they have a company that they're founding or are transitioning into, into the space. But maybe Brandon is as you as of now, as a physician turned venture capitalist, you could expand a little bit about how you talk to colleagues, physicians, or just healthcare professionals about venture and encourage them to lean in? Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's easiest to give a little bit of of how I got into this space. I think you're right. Time is a huge barrier. And then I think physicians are in their sort of their island. And you a lot. Of them want to work with themselves or with their partners, and so to get the business the business experience, you have to branch out of your out of your network. And so for me, it was a matter of spending more time. The barrier is also not just time in terms of when you have outside of clinical but what you're going to read and what you're going to spend your time. I mean, you wouldn't got an MBA. I mean, you're running businesses. And, I mean, I have to be honest with people when I tell them physicians, I'm like, I couldn't read the New England Journal of Medicine cover to cover every week because I started learning venture. I started watching listening to podcast. I started, you know, my own company, and started learning about patents. And so you know, it takes physician willingness and then an improved network, and then the ability to, you know, raise ways, raise awareness, start to make small investments with Angel groups, work with other people. There's enough now physicians interested that you can engage in that community, but you got to want to do it. And, you know, everyone has a great idea. I say about probably 80, 90% of physicians have a great idea, but you got to execute on it. It's really hard to do. Yeah. Well, what a great segue. You might have looked at my cue card here, but So now, as I pivot to my physician founders, is it your opinion? I'll start with Karen. Now, are entrepreneurial physicians potentially better venture capitalists, and when you as a founder are approaching funding sources, be it you know, syndicates, be it individual investors, do you find that physicians or healthcare professionals represent a an opportunity or a challenge?

Karen Cross  11:36  
Yeah, I think it's it's both, but we'll talk about the opportunity. So it's it again. The thing I learned very early is that it's not enough to have an idea. The ideas are great and they're they're innovative. But how do you become an entrepreneur and they're, they are different. Entrepreneurship is about adoption. So your technology can fit within the healthcare system. It's adding value to the healthcare system, but you also understand what value you bring. So I think you know, just differentiating that first, what's innovation? What's innovation, what's entrepreneurship, as I started, and again, I don't have a background in business, and I really, I don't have any business family members, but I put myself really when I realized it was going to build a business, I said, I have to learn about this very quickly. So my colleague, my office, was sort of long winded answer, but my office was close to the ICU, and there was an ICU doc in there who was managing 3 billion in PE assets. And I said, Why do you do this? Do you know, talk to me about this? And I started to learn from him, and I realized, Wait, hold it, I'm running my own business right now. I know how to run a business. I mean, I'm Canadian, and people think it's socialized healthcare. No, we run we run big practices, and we run big business. And I started to learn from him, and I realized, wow, I can add a lot into into both the VC world, but I learned a lot on how to take investment, how to protect the investment. So I think you know, the answer is, yes, there's opportunity. The challenges are a lot of times again, at the beginning, physicians or clinicians don the difference between an idea and innovation and entrepreneurship. So the challenge then becomes, there, well, you have this great idea, yeah, but how do you get it adopted? And I'm not sure to say about that, but I think in the beginning, I was a bit naive on how we were going to get here.

Ali Golshan  13:13  
The checks that I got from physicians that were sizable were from entrepreneurial physicians. So they were either people that were in this AI surgery center. They were an outpatient practice, outpatient Cath Lab, which is a business with often double digit million revenues and single million digit profits. Or they were part of a startup and had an exit before, so they had already kind of demonstrated the bug of being an outlier amongst physicians and being entrepreneurial. Or they were entrepreneurs that weren't necessarily entrepreneurial physicians or but were adjacent to health care innovation, or had a colleague that they could do due diligence through. And I think that if the person knows you, that's one degree of comfort. If they know the technology, that's another degree of comfort. And I think more and more physicians in some niches of medicine, like cardiology, interventional radiology, surgery, are starting to go out into ASCs, etc, and they're starting to have to manage businesses. And even though some practices are getting consolidated into physician employment, there are still other practices where people are shifting to entrepreneurship. And if you look in those silos, they've already kind of demonstrated that comfort. They're more likely to take a leap.

Paul Slosar  14:16  
Yeah, yeah. And there's, there's this may not just apply. You know, physicians are humans too, right? They're not just a completely different species. They may act like it occasionally, but, you know, I don't think that the issue about, you know, financial literacy, risk tolerance, etc, just applies to physicians. I think they get, we get molded, after a while, into being sole decision makers. We make a lot of decisions without a lot of CLA we might talk consult, but ultimately, we all have individual responsibilities, and if we don't understand something, I think there's often a tendency to pause and revisit and revisit, and which I believe carries over. I don't. That's completely unique. But I do think, As Brandon mentioned, by the time physicians get out and get capital that they might be able to deploy into venture, they're often, you know, well into the their their, you know, later to middle career years due to do the financial strains of training. But there's also, like a subcategory of physicians as it pertains to their specialties. You know this idea of of breaking down investors, and you might look at just people as investors, of not having a monolithic thing, it's an investor, a founder, etc. You have to kind of break that down, right? That that these are people, and if they're doctors, what kind of doctor are there? And maybe brand new could you coming from the intensive care unit, primary care, I would offer. It's more unusual in my experience to see docs from primary care versus the surgical or interventional specialties that tend to have a perimeter universe of surgery centers, entrepreneurial experience, MRI centers, physical therapy. You know there's this exposure to other revenue streams where primary care docs in the ICU, you're not running a business adjacent to the ICU. So I wonder if you could maybe break down how you view when you're talking to potential investors in your fund who are physicians. Do you have a different playbook, either by what specialty they are, their financial literacy, maybe their risk tolerance, etc. How do you kind of size them up before you take the meeting? Yeah, honestly, it's what I've told entrepreneur series. It's pretty straightforward. You go and ask everybody, right? So, I mean, there isn't, you know, going back to your other question to tie this in, is there's not much of a difference between those on this side of the the, you know, the the stage, and those of us, because is venture, you know, we're money managers, right? Which means I have investors. I raise money frequently, right? And they'll it's not different from what they're doing. And so when you go raise money from physicians, which I did for my first startup, and I had like 50 investors, right? Probably 30 of them physicians. So I didn't distinguish between who was a surgeon and who wasn't. I said, I actually want a hand surgeon. I want an orthopedic surgeon that has spine. I want a nephrologist. I want, and that's how I approach it. And anyone else that came to me to say, the more investment we get from physicians, the more we get different ideas out of disciplines. I'm not sure if that answered or gave some important insight. So all physicians, you know, honestly, like, for me, it's surgeons, in the way I think about it too, is no offense if there's any pediatricians. But like, when you're raising capital from, you know, high net worth people or physicians that have a great salary, even if they're not like net high worth because they just came out of fellowship. Usually, a physician that's interested in the stuff that goes into a venture group or goes to raise money, depending on the stage, can typically make a $10,000 investment if they're wanting to get into this. So you kind of start small, and then you work your way up. And then there's physicians that have larger practices later in their career, and they can write a $50,000 investment. So everyone, just like I tell entrepreneurs, go, you ask everyone, and the more you ask, the more chance you're going to get investments. So I'll kick this now over to Ali, a lot of physicians who are the entrepreneurial type. And Karen mentioned this too. You know, industry has a way of finding the entrepreneurial physicians. And entrepreneurial physicians finding industry opportunities. Physicians are often interested in being part of a company, advising, engaging. Sometimes they ask for pieces. You know, opportunities within the company which they should be reimbursed, however, is appropriate. But do you see? You know professional investing, you know strategic venture investing as an opportunity for physicians to get exposed to more advisory opportunities to see more companies. You as a founder, obviously, as a physician, you don't need a ton of help, maybe, if it's completely outside of your area of expertise, but there are a lot of companies who are, you know, who are physicians are absent, in my opinion, way too long in their life cycle before they get some real input. So do you see of venture capital as an opportunity for docs who are trying to get in, dip their toe in the pool, a way of entree into this universe? Yeah,

Ali Golshan  19:32  
I think if you take the approach of teaching courses for strategics, getting on the podium, investing and advising, then you kind of approaching it from multiple angles, and so then you bring a lot of value to the venture firm or the startup as a potential advisor, because you're a key opinion leader. You have contact with strategics, you have contract with capital. You're adept at doing due diligence on deals, and you have a podium presence that then I think you bring multiple value. Your streams, rather than just saying I'm a small check or, Hey, no, a guy at the strategic and then you're also looking at things from multiple angles, like, I have a couple of buddies that are just close friends from back in the day, and they'll email me to look at a deal. And now that I've invested, I've started, I've advised, I've spoken on the podium. I know how to look at the different, you know, boxes on the risk strata, and I can tell them relatively quickly, you know, from a clinical perspective, like, would I use this or not? And I have a surgery center, I buy stuff, I know what it costs, I know what I get paid for it. So I'm not living in a place where I'm not making the decision of what the purchase and what the reimbursement is. So I can check a lot of those boxes. So I think the more of those boxes you check, the more value you bring as an advisor.

Paul Slosar  20:40  
And from a personal perspective, getting back to the to the physicians Capital Fund, very similar to what Ali is mentioning, and I believe Brandon and I have had similar conversations. I see opportunity for founders, for companies that do not have you know physician leadership or physician founders, but are aiming in med tech adoption to tap into ecosystems, and I don't want a fund of just doctors, right? I mean, that's another problem, right? We need people who can look at deals, Surgery Center, supply chain, do the due diligence on the intellectual property, financial analysts who has experience running a hospital system, would this fly? What are the barriers being able to see around corners? I think the most difficult aspect of in my experience, of with various companies in Medtech is that adoption into the workflow, inserting yourself into inserting your product into the healthcare delivery system in a way that both raises the outcomes maybe improves cost efficiency opportunities. It's very difficult to get a company far down the runway without some input from from physicians or other people along along that health care chain. I want to come back to something that Karen mentioned earlier about networking, and I think physicians are terrible at networking. I mean, you all, whoever you know, well, anybody who's at this meeting is good at networking. But that being said, Our colleagues are awful at it. And I have my own reason. I have my own thoughts about why. I mean, we do get inundated with human contact all day and all night and in the ER, but maybe you could talk a little bit about how you see building out a network for physicians who either wanna get into investing, wanna get into a parallel opportunity in medicine, like business, and how you use your network to build your company.

Karen Cross  22:40  
Yeah, yeah. And the first thing I'll say is a physician is willing to write you a check into your company. It's really a form of a compliment. They believe you have something, and they're willing to take their hard earned money and invest it into you for something different. So just to sort of set that stage on the networking side again, the first way I started was with strategics. So when they realized I had expertise in wound care, I was doing a lot of limb preservation and salvage, I got invited into advisory boards. So the first way I started was through advisory boards. I started medium size. Then I started, you know, global multinationals, and I just looked at, you know, what are you doing that got to help me just understand business and that piece, the second thing I did is there are physician groups that do group investments, and I found them, and in Canada, it's a group called Halo health. And I said, Okay, how can I get more involved here? How can I first get involved with companies and give them advice? So then I said, Okay, let's give you advice about how to take your product to market, yeah,

Paul Slosar  23:41  
and then on an educational level, not just self promotion, yeah? Exactly. Doctors like that, of course, yeah. They don't want you just promoting your thing. They want you to educate them. Then they'll take you seriously. 

Karen Cross  23:54  
Well, I think it's just really like helping them understand, like this product. You know, have you thought about this area of medicine, because this would fit really well. And have you thought about this? Because there's a workflow problem here, so it's just really giving them some advice. And then I took the next step and said, Okay, now, how do I invest so you can start slow, you know, again, I didn't understand the space as well, and now I feel very comfortable in it. And that was sort of, personally how I started, and clearly also invested in myself and but yeah, there are people who can help you. And I think networking is really important. We do it in medicine, we find our colleagues, we learn new techniques. It's the same thing in business. You just have to have the courage to ask questions and be curious,

Paul Slosar  24:40  
yeah, and I'll have Brandon touch on this too. But I think that one of the key opportunities with physicians and maybe anyone who has, you know, a very specialized occupation, who may be blind to. The investing side in the equation, they kind of get approached people with high net worth for single check investing. I have, we all have, I think, and you know, it's it, when you do the math, it's just kind of, you know, no offense, but it's just, you know, it's really dumb like to write a single check. It's one roulette chip on the table. And when I just speak to that to physicians about because they don't understand what adventure is. They don't get it that it's a pool of money that goes into 1518, companies, whatever the fund raises. You know that number one is just kind of a basic definition that helps them. But the second thing that I'd like maybe Brandon to touch on is the opportunity of from an education perspective and a network perspective, what are things that people who are looking in venture, you me, you know others, Ali said he's never going to be in venture. Maybe. Karen well after but, but how do we educate our peers? Is that a good way? And how do we encourage them to, you know, look up instead of looking down in terms of their network, opportunities of business, if they're interest, yeah, again, it's, you mentioned networking. You mentioned education and learning. I mean, in in raising money for me now, as I go to larger, larger investors and family offices, we're targeting a bigger fund. You know, the old adage is, if you ask for money, you get advice, and if you ask advice, you can get money. And so, and then what you also need to enter. So you go and you listen to people. If a lot of you are probably entrepreneurs, you're raising money. I don't know if there's a ton of physicians in here, but you go and you listen, and if you're going to physician, potentially investors. Again, you know, we're sort of egotistical. We think we know what we're doing, especially in the healthcare space, whether it's just this device or this AI component of some other product. You ask a lot of questions, learn, build that network around the physicians, and then you can get, you know, interest. And again, physicians like education, you know, it's not boredom. But I mean, you know, I joke that a monkey could do critical care, because you only can have, like, five or six therapies. So after eight years there, I'm like, Okay, what else do I want to learn? What else do I want to do? And so as entrepreneurs, you should do the same thing. You should go to the investors, and you should say, Listen, let me listen. Let me teach. Let me learn. From you other potential investors, CFO people, we brought a CFO and an experienced distributor partner on our fund, right? There's three of us physicians in our fund and one operator, and we needed that fourth tire on the car to really deliver what we needed. And so it's the same thing for you entrepreneurs. You listen, you go get it, lots of a lot of advice, and you build that network relationship. And again, I don't know if it answered the question, but yeah, no, there's no, no answer. Ali, do you have any, any comments about the best way to bring healthcare professionals? And I'm using, you know, the broader definition, because there's a lot of people who are in the healthcare delivery chain, into venture and, and maybe, you know, less, into the idea of of single check investing.

Ali Golshan  28:09  
Yeah, I like, like you were talking about going to groups. I have a colleague who has funded several startups and on several exits, and a lot of his money comes from a couple of groups, ortho, Gi, pulmonology. They know each other. They trust each other. They can do diligence the deal. And then instead of getting one check for $1 you get one check for $50 or, you know, whatever the multiple is. And it sort of makes the approach simpler. You can go to Angel groups as well, but anytime you can get in front of a large group of individuals that have already worked together in the past, that trust each other. I think it's shotgun approach, and then also going to, like you telling docs to come to these conferences, go to their conferences. You know what I mean? Learn their ecosystem, their environment, their language, etc. Know what their pain points are like, if you're trying to invest in things that they care about. From a clinical perspective, they might be more excited, because then you're not only taking their money, but you're potentially providing them a solution, or enabling them to be part of the solution where they think there's a shortcoming, you know, speaking their language. I think Same difference. You know, listen both ways. Great,

Paul Slosar  29:15  
great. Anything to add on that. Karen,

Karen Cross  29:17  
just cross pollination. We need to start to see more of that in the networking where the two worlds are crossing over.

Paul Slosar  29:23  
Yeah, and, and I, in the context of the company, I was the Chief Medical Officer for which was an 11 year run. It was a very disruptive technology. I was on the podium quite a bit on the on the spine circuit, as it were. And so I had a lot of, you know, engagement with societies. And the challenge I see to getting physicians literate in the financial side of it is that the societies kind of prohibit or frown upon, and I'm, you know, any any opportunity to introduce. Yeah. I mean, unless you want to talk about their RV use, right, and what your, you know, your qualities are, right? The stuff that has no, no application, no one even understands either of those numbers. But when you try to say, Hey, I'd like to bring a symposium, you know, no commercial aspect to it, to a physician academic, which is where they congregate. They need the CMEs. They need their medical credits. You can't get on. It's very difficult. You have to cloak it. I'm getting better at cloaking my my talks, and I'm not just Hawking. I don't even mention my fund at that. I just say to your point, hey, it would be good if we explained, like, what's the difference between being a an entrepreneur, a founder or an entrepreneurial physician who might lean in and advise companies, just kind of breaking the ice. So I don't know if, if you have any experience trying to break into the professional societies, the medical society, 

Branden Rosenhan  30:54  
I love that you brought that up because Ali said it perfectly, you, you know, so like, again, go to their societies. So society, critical care medicine I just came from, and they actually did a really nice job of bringing in an early day for physician entrepreneurs. But there were a number of entrepreneurs, you know, operators, engineers, that came even if it was like, here's my alpha or, here's my beta device. It's like, you know, it looks like this. It's not really going to be like this. It's going to be like this. And, I mean, I had dinner last night with one of the, one of the the founders that came to that conference. And now there's significant interest on both ends, right? Like Us is investing him as needs, needing advisor. So I love that you guys, like, really hit something and nailed it. That if you leave here, you know, we only can remember three pearls. Remember that that go to those other conferences. Look at what your space is. There's cardiovascular conferences. You've probably been s, I r, s like, right? And so there's that that's an incredible opportunity, I don't know about, you know, maybe this is something for you, is to go to now orthopedic conferences and say, look, let's have an Innovation Day, before, yeah. And let's bring in all these orthopedic operators, experts, engineers. So, I mean, you guys already nailed it. So I just over, I just talked too much about it. 

Ali Golshan  32:09  
The society meetings tend to be a little more conservative, sure. And so sometimes there are these conferences that are had by just the old school guy that knows everybody that matters. And you go, and you're like, holy smokes, like all the luminaries are here. It's a chill weekend. No one's bothering them. Dude, sit down and have a 30 minute conversation with the guy that invented the thing and the other thing and the other thing, and like that kind of access is not reproducible. And if you want to know what those conferences are, just like, find me or somebody else online and message me, and I'm happy to tell you where and when they are, and the dues are cheaper, and the hotels are nicer, and there isn't, like, 10,000 people running around trying to figure out what CT scanner they want to buy. Those are the like, the gems, the society meetings, I think are, like, a reasonable way to get the pulse. But, you know, they're very distracting, and they're very distract everybody. Heavy hitters are coming to those anymore because they don't care. Or yeah, semi retired. They're doing their thing. They're coming for their buddy that their pals with from back in the day. Out of respect, the little gentleman's are the ones to go to.

Paul Slosar  33:07  
No. That's That's great advice. I'm we can this is an open conversation. If anybody from you know the audience has any comments or questions, you know the mic is open, feel free to jump in the one of the, one of the things that that I'll pick up on is, is that the, you know, the docs are often averse to being approached. You know, they get inundated with new widgets, new drugs, new this many sign many who's have signs on the door, no reps, you know. And even they like to bring lunch, the staff gets upset. But I think that idea that they're there, they create a wall, presents a challenge to anyone who is, who is trying to approach docs, unless you're offering them, you know, an equity opportunity in your company, right then they might, might take the meeting. But in terms of of trying to get physicians into the investing world, which is what very much I think all of us are the founders benefit. I think as long as, as as Ali said, they don't get too many Bossy Pants doctors involved. You know, with with physician founders, they have a little bit more, but they can also be helped by other physicians or other professionals in the healthcare stream. Most of the companies, as I said, that I see, have this, you know, gap, or they might have a physician who's ancient and you know that they they brought on because it's somebody's, you know, dad that they knew and not in the in the mix of it anymore. I think those of us who are trying to in, I'm personally trying to increase physician autonomy, restore some agency to them, because a lot of them are burning out and it's no good. And I think personally, venture investing is an opportunity. Opportunity to do something in parallel to still practicing. You can be a limited partner in a venture fund. You don't have to have any responsibility. But if you want to lean in and say, Hey, I'd love to do help with the due diligence on that deal, learn the trade. I think there's a great you know, they, they tend to gravitate towards that opportunity. They're not usually super hands off, and they're risk averse if they don't make the decision like I think paradoxically, even though it's not mathematically sound reasoning, the single check investment is, is typical. You know, they're very used to signing their names, right? So, okay, I did my own due diligence. I talked to a couple people. Versus the venture ecosystem, where you can call three different venture firms. You do the full intellectual property analysis, competitive landscape. You have documents, you have term sheets. You know, single check investing doesn't appear. So I think that physicians have an opportunity who want to get involved in venture if you make the number approachable. You know, a lot of venture firms on the coast where I came from, the minimum investment, you know, might be $250,000 that doesn't fly for most physicians, except, you know, a few so on a more democratic basis, trying to make it more accessible, but also giving them the idea they can be doing something in parallel to their medicine that may have an opportunity. Maybe somebody like Karen calls and says, you know, I'm the CEO. I need a CMO. I need a fractional CMO, right? I mean, there's, there's opportunities, I think, in this ecosystem, to feather in docs who are interested and and might be good additions to the team. So we're kind of winding down, as I said, if anybody has any comments or questions, jump up. We'll pause, but maybe I'll just let kind of each person leave you with whatever you know, kind of thoughts in terms of how they view the physician clinician ecosystem of of investing and, and, and what, when they think it's a good idea, a bad idea, and, and how should we move forward? 

Ali Golshan  37:01  
Just find the docs that have been successful entrepreneurially and clinically in your space, and ask them what they think of your idea. And like you said, listen, and if they have something to say, positive or negative, if they have nothing to say, then, well, whatever. But if they have something positive or negative to say, and they seem interested or engaged, then, you know, engage with them further a conference. Conferences, etc, get to know them, see if they're going to be a pain or they're going to be added to value, and if it makes sense, then they'll offer or you can just ask

Paul Slosar  37:30  
Karen

Karen Cross  37:30  
Yeah. So again, as an academic surgeon with a full scientific lab, just want to highlight that Academic Surgeons or academic clinicians can be investors. You just declare your conflict of interest. So if anyone is an academic in the room or is listening, you just have to be like conscious of your bias. I think, just ask questions, be curious, put yourself around people who are in the space. And again, my friend and colleague, he taught me a lot. In fact, I got a big book about entrepreneurial finance as a gift one year for Christmas. 

Paul Slosar  38:02  
Yeah, being a doctor, being a doctor, you actually read it,

Karen Cross  38:06  
and I actually read it, because why? You know, again, it hit me when I think I put on 15 arms, I did eight craniofacial cases that were over 14 hours as a trauma plastic surgeon, and while I was running the lab and the company and everything else, and I said, You know what? We're kind of bored. I want to grow, and this is what I want to grow into. So you can find those clinicians that are like that. In fact, I think there's more that are coming that are just saying, hey, like, I want to challenge myself. We went into medicine because we like to evolve, not because we like to stay still, not true for everyone. But I'll just say, find those people who are looking to grow and evolve and get them interested, let their appetite. And I mean, you'll, you'll have them invested for life in lots of ways.

Paul Slosar  38:49  
All right, that's hard to follow. Good luck. 

Branden Rosenhan  38:51  
So I think a lot of our viewers, if I can, I'll do this in 10 seconds. If I can expand your network, talk to your cousins, they know a doctor. And so if you're trying to raise capital, you know, from funds that are physicians, it's hard, but from a lot of individuals, get advice, but you got to go around the corner. You can't just look at the wall and say, I can't get raise money. I can't raise money. Go around the corner, ask your cousin, your neighbor, which doctors they know, and you got to work hard from there. Sorry, it's 20 seconds. 

Paul Slosar  39:20  
Oh, we're down to eight, yeah. And so I will leave it that the idea that you touched on that that continuing to evolve. I think in many ways, physicians get to a point and they get out of school after, you know, 100 years, and then their job often is the same job for the next 30 years. It might be the same clinic, might be the same desk, and many of the people in this room by 40 or 50 have had three or four companies. They've had three or four roles. They've continued to evolve and challenge. Our challenge is all front loaded, and I think there is a certain aspect of boredom or failure to evolve that I hope this opportunity. D allows them. So if you have people, friends, family, individuals in clinical care who want to lean in, have them reach out to any of us. I mean, we're clearly very approachable and and we'd love to have the company. So on behalf of our panel, I want to thank you all for attending and hope it was productive.