Manish Chand 0:06
Um, we're going to discuss for the next 3540 minutes or so how to build a med tech unicorn, and we're going to try and do that from going from a great idea to scaling, implementing, and then ultimately getting to unicorn status, if, if that is going to be the case. So I'd like to start perhaps with with Mark. I want to start with you. You are arguably one of our jewels in the crown of British med tech when it comes to inventing scaling a device which is used all around the world. You have a unicorn valuation. But what on earth possessed you to decide to build a device and go up against one of the biggest monopolies in health tech when you took on Intuitive Surgical.
Mark Slack 1:02
Yeah, but, I mean, it's the easy answer to that. One is, if I knew, then what I know now would never have started, yeah. I mean, it's you're more ambitious than you realize the problem is. And the second answer to that was, I was asked that question at a big Congress and they said, How's the little company like you from Cambridge can to cope against Johnson and Johnson to Medtronic. I suppose that's interesting, how a little company from Cambridge, United Kingdom, cope against these people. I said, suppose they have to look at our track record. I said, what have we done in the past? We discovered the proton, the neutron, the electron, the double helix, the jet engine, etc, and we've made a deck of it. We got a laugh from that. The first thing when you get an idea like that is make sure that you have the right group of founders. And I think we were particularly blessed in having five people with completely different skill sets, but who worked together. We didn't always work as well together. One is in this room at the moment. We used to fight like L in the beginning, and when we had our personality color profiles, then we realized we're identical. So I suppose that explains this. But if you get the right founders together and they have complementary skills, you're well on the way to to making a success at that point and be mature and honest enough to listen to the differences that are raised at those times.
Manish Chand 2:20
So Dan, you and I have worked together over the years in a number of projects and in and out of University College London. You have a great idea. How do you turn that great idea, firstly into a business and not just a university project or a hobby, and then perhaps, Tanya, how do you take that business and turn that, what scale that and turn that into a proper business, rather than scrapping around for funding and and trying to get a sort of foot on the ladder? So Dan, perhaps you can, you've been through that journey. Great idea, great idea. Spin out business.
Danail Stoyanov 3:01
I think, as Marc says, you know, team is key. So I think the first thing you do is make sure that you've got your tiger team set up so you've got the people that are going to be able to take this idea forward. And then, you know, you've got to validate that this cool tech that you've been beating, that you've been creating, actually has some sort of market value and can be a product, and that's very different to doing academic research. So figuring out whether this product is going to be revenue generating, figuring out whether this product has a good fit in the market, whether your customer is actually going to enjoy that product, it's a very different problem than kind of doing the the original Tech Research, and then you quickly realize that the tech research is actually just a very small part of then turning this into into into a company and into a business. So I would say, start with the team, and then really figure out how that technology is going to turn into a product, and what that product really is going to be, and maybe the technology bit is a very, very small part of what that product actually ends up being.
Tanya Ridding 4:10
And I think building on that, as your company develops from your core team, you need to be continuously assessing the talent that's in that leadership team, planning ahead for future milestones, making sure that you are hiring fit to stage rather than simply talent alone, you could be the best executive, but if you're not right for that company, and that time, ultimately, there's going to be a mismatch.
Manish Chand 4:37
So with that, and of course, in your experience, you've seen health tech industry change a lot over the years, the founder, the founder, the CEO. And when does the founder CEO need to step aside? Or do they not need to step and I'll come to you first, and then mark, perhaps you can elaborate.
Tanya Ridding 4:58
I. So it's a tricky one. You know, by all accounts, there have been Medtech unicorns that have been found as CEO LED. However, post 2021, that has got increasingly challenging, and there is a need to bring in professionals, professional CEOs. And I think the inflection points are when the company scale to a point whereby it's no longer within the founder CEOs capability. It could be that the company is transitioning from a tech LED product development phase into an early commercial phase. It could be investor LED. It could be that in coming into a new round, investors are pushing for a more professional management team. So it's really assessing those, those different inflection points as the company grows, and if it reaches that, identifying that there is a need to step aside and bring somebody else in. So mark your experience.
Mark Slack 6:08
I think it's Steve Jobs that question. He'd give you a fairly solid answer, that some people can be pushed aside prematurely. And I think you've got to really understand what to see es role is if people want to move them aside, because the board won't always have a full understanding of what they bring to the party and what their skills are. And if you've got a well functioning executive team, I think you should leave your CEO alone. I mean, if you take intuitive our opposition, as example, Gary has just done, after 23 years, he's done a fairly good job as the founding CEO. So I mean, I find it. I find it because you can then get into a spiral of having too many CEOs in a row, and that's not good for you either. So I think it's a matter of carefully evaluating the team. An insightful CEO will, at some point themselves decide to step aside if it's if it's not working well. But I mean, in our company, we almost certainly changed our CEO prematurely, and that wasn't good for us at the time. And and of course, the other thing is, you must have people in the business that understand your business properly. And med tech is one, having moved from an academic medical career to an entrepreneur and a business person, Medtech is hard to understand. Health is difficult to understand, and your people must have an understanding of the subject, because otherwise you can make some terrible mistakes. And at the end of the day, it's the patient on the table that we're looking after, and therefore it brings in a whole new ethical standard.
Manish Chand 7:39
So how did you find your transition, Dan, because you, you know, we worked together on some aspects of touch surgery, when Medtronic acquired touch surgery, or digital surgery, was called at the time, how did you find that into moving into Medtronic? Did you feel as though this is a different set of skills now that I need to perhaps work on, or is it something that you felt comfortable with. I mean, I found that, yeah, I mean, I feel more and more distance from patient. I still operate once a week, and I'm a high volume Da Vinci surgeon, but I feel like I'm moving away from that and developing a different set of skills, perhaps more like Mark. Did you feel that when you stepped out of UCL?
Danail Stoyanov 8:19
Definitely, I think, I think, you know, the the initial bit after an acquisition is obviously excitement and and then you start figuring out the reality that from being in an organization of 120 people, you're now in an organization of 100,000 people. And so that demands some change. So your, your kind of, your daily routine changes, and, you know, you kind of almost learn a new language. You know, I felt being part of Medtronic that I was suddenly learning corporate American. So the phrases, the terminology, the expectations, everything, everything has a change. I wouldn't say that it's dramatically different, but it feels different and and, of course, the the team size, the team profile, the types of people that you're working with, your time zones change. You know, from working in a in a team that's based in London, suddenly you might have team members that are in Israel, in the US, in Asia, and so, yeah, there is a, there's definitely a big, a big impact and a big change. And also the the speed with which you're able to make decisions changes. So as the team scales, things start to slow down, actually, because you're working with more stakeholders. So there's, there's a number of kind of very interesting experiences, I think, in making that transition.
Manish Chand 9:43
And how do you see that, Tanya, when you're looking at putting together these teams, and you get a company that comes to you and says, right, we need to put together this team. How do you see founders and academics fitting into that business environment? And when do you, I suppose, in your opinion, when do you. Have to bring in that professional team that will take it from a great idea to a great business.
Tanya Ridding 10:06
I think if you kind of look at it from a Gina Whitman visionary and integrator, you want to retain the vision, the mission, the subject matter expertise that a founder CEO has, you want to retain that within the business. You want to bring in a professional CEO that can execute, that can grow the business without stepping on that vision. But likewise, I think, with the CEO on board, sorry, the founding CEO on board and keeping that vision within the organization, you've got a winning combination. So I think that it's really marrying innovation with execution at scale.
Manish Chand 10:55
Okay, all right, let's move away from the team. Let's go back to the product ostensure, when I was designing the latest implant for for our company, we didn't really have competitors, because either you have a stoma bag or you have our solution, which is an implant, no continent, stomer implant in robotics. At the time when you were deciding to take on intuitive there was really only one. In fact, there was only one robot. But and I think Tanya and I have spoken about this as well. How do you get your message out there when everyone robotics is synonymous with Intuitive Surgical, when you start, how do you get people talking about CMR. How does CMR join the conversation?
Mark Slack 11:44
So I think in Medtech, I alluded to it earlier, you've got to remember that at the end of the day, it's the patient that counts. Number two, we are moving into a new world where, in the world of medicine, people talk more about value based medicine and evidence based medicine, and there's a lot of concern about things that purely make money. So you have to have the proposition. And we had the situation where, in the world, there are millions of people getting open surgery, which is a disgrace, and it's because it's difficult to do laparoscopic surgery. And so that's what we took on, was to build a robot that would enable more people to do keyhole surgery and therefore scale a product. Now intuitive is a big company, yes, market caps sitting around about 200 and it's done that of a 4% share of minimal access surgery, which is a 40% share of surgery. So the market is enormous, and it would be bizarre to think that a single company can actually dominate it all, and we are already starting to show differentials. There are certain clinical areas where we will demonstrate clear superiority, and there'll be areas we will be equivalent. And I don't think you ever get to have a single robot that will totally dominate surgery from top to bottom, and they'll have levels of differential skill and and that's what we're seeing now. So, you know, we've just been very honest. We've followed an evidence based framework, a value based framework, and all our strategies, like research and and so on, have followed very clear guidelines. Somebody, one of the earlier sessions was talking about the expense of research, and that's fine if your drug is going to get you 20 billion a year afterwards, but no med tech company in the world has got those depths of pocket. So what we did was introduce a different way of doing the research, which is more affordable but still ethical and producing, and in the nice early value assessment done recently, we are the company that got the highest level of evidence, and so it's following principles to what Dan said. I still like to keep my contacts with my academic colleagues, and I think academia and industry just have to learn to work together better, but I think it's a real role for them to partner.
Manish Chand 14:03
So we talk about this thing in healthcare of getting it right first time, and that's a big campaign, as you know, in the NHS, and I suppose one could take that to building the company as well. What happens if you go down this journey, Tanya, and you don't do it right the first time. Is there a way back? Can you remodel the company? Can you come out with a different message, or do you have to get it right first time?
Tanya Ridding 14:29
Think it's better to get it right first time. It comes down to, I think, forward planning. You you want to be looking at the upcoming milestones, be planning for the key leadership positions that you need within the organization at least 12 months before that milestone comes around. You don't want to hire too late. You don't want to be scrambling for talent. But equally, you don't want to hire too safely. You know, a friend of a friend or a former colleague, without assessing the talent that's out there, because that person might be right for right now, but that's quite short sighted. They may not be right for the next stage of the business. So I think that forward planning, that continuous assessment, that is how to get as close to getting it right the first time as you can. That said, you know, things don't always go to plan. It's recognizing that. It's pivoting, you know, not, not, not dwelling too long on the decisions that have been made, not falling into the trap of the sort of sunk cost fallacy, but recognizing when a change needs to be made, and being willing to make that change and to execute on it.
Manish Chand 15:50
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, from personal experience with my surgeon's hat on sticking to robotics, that there have been some robot companies that perhaps didn't get it right first time, and I think they've struggled after that. Once you get a reputation for, well, this doesn't work, or it's not reliable, it's inefficient, it's too expensive, whatever that may be, you get a bull reputation. I think it's difficult to come back from that. And I think some of your competitors perhaps have struggled with that Mark and in the past where they've perhaps had a good product. Maybe the message was wrong, but they got a bad reputation amongst the surgical community, and that was it.
Mark Slack 16:26
Really, yeah, I mean, I think in going back to medicine again, you've really got to be very sure that your product is safe and your product works well, and I think you'll be very careful about how fast you scale it. And I think we had openly admitted at one stage of our company, when we had a new CEO, there was an attempt to scale the company massively, where we should have been consolidating and perfecting and, and, and so that's important. So it's, it's quite a tight balance, because sort of obviously got the burn rates in the background. And, you know, you can run out of money, and building robots is particularly expensive, we've phrased about 1.2 billion. But, you know, company as big as Johnson, Johnson has spent somewhere in the vicinity of 8 billion building a robot. So you know that burn is terribly important to cope with. But personally, I feel you get your product right. You know you follow it correctly. So you do all the right animal work, and you do all the right cadaveric work. And so that you, as we, follow the thing called ideal. So before you go to a human you know what the capabilities of your system are. And then, of course, obviously, it's perpetual improvement. You know, we made the decision to go five millimeter instruments, because everybody else has got eight nine. And there's a reason everybody's got eight, nine, because it's bloody difficult to make a five, but ultimately, the engineers did pull that one off, and we have a beautiful suite of instruments, but at five, they have an advantage then and yeah, and then, obviously you've got to rely on your marketing colleagues quite strongly as well, and have the right group. Because it's, as Dan said earlier, academia is one thing, but there's a different side too. Said needs to be respected.
Manish Chand 18:04
And we talk about differentiation. Dan, how do you differentiate your product, particularly when you've got such a strong force in the market? How you differentiate your product? And I think that becomes perhaps easier with software rather than hardware, but sure, surely differentiation is, is the key here.
Danail Stoyanov 18:22
I think, I think we're not yet there to be able to say that. So I think differentiation definitely has been the driving force behind some of the digital features that people are trying to integrate onto the robotic platforms, right? So you can differentiate with instruments, you can differentiate with software, you can differentiate with various capabilities. So I think there's going to be plays in all of those areas, and they are important, but I don't think we're quite there in terms of knowing which of these bits are going to have an impact on patient care. And so I think that's kind of in the end, if the trials come out and patients are being affected positively by the technology and by the features that a particular system has, I think that's the kind of proof in the pudding.
Manish Chand 19:06
Okay, so let's, let's take a scenario. You got a great idea, you got a great idea. It moves out from an idea towards a business. You're then scaling that business. You don't have immediate funding issues. Is it better to concentrate on excelling in one area? And when do you diversify and say, let's add X, Y and Z to this? Or do you just tunnel vision excel in one area?
Danail Stoyanov 19:37
I would say that there isn't a perfect answer to this. So I think I heard a phrase some some months ago, you got to kiss a few frogs before you find the prince. And so, you know, it's really good to be very focused and to be laser focused. But at the same time that one of your Americanisms, it is actually but so it's really important to be very focused. But at the same time, you have to be open minded that you may have to pivot at some point. So we all know that intuitive started by going after heart surgery, but ended up having success in neurology, and have then, you know, branched out and are now in all sorts of specialties. So I think being open to a pivot, and kind of being thoughtful and strategic about it is something that's really, really important to the business. You know, having depth in a particular area, having focus in a particular area, may be the thing you need in order to become successful in that area. But it may also be, you know, a bad thing for you, for your company, to do, if you're not strategically taking opportunities to pivot the right time.
Manish Chand 20:41
How did you do all that mark? Because, I mean, you're a gynecologist by trade. You know, you would have obviously had a higher level of expertise in that, then using your device for all surgery, or, I
Mark Slack 20:53
think, more than that. I was a mineral access surgeon, so I understood mineral access surgery very well, and we as a group, the founders, made a decision to build a robot that would replicate how you do minimal access surgery. And we know what the results for minimal access surgery are across all the specialties, because it's been around for 35 years, and we know how much better it is than open so if you build a robot that can means you can place your tro cars where they normally go and your procedural steps follow what you normally do. You already are walking in with a huge amount of insight. And then, of course, so we knew all the specialties we could do, and we'd done 300 and something cadavers before we started, so we knew the positions. But then as you start moving in, you do start to see things that differentiate. And we were talking earlier within in us, one of the things is pediatric surgery, the robot really does fantastically the smaller the space. And all of a sudden you start to find, you find in the chest, you do better because our instruments are smaller and go between the ribs more comfortably. And so you just start to see, and obviously at that point, you'll start concentrating a little bit more, maybe on those areas. But, you know, we set out to build a soft tissue robot that would do everything from the mouth to the pelvis, and that's effectively what we've done. In order to make it safe, you have to have certain so you've got to do the research. You've got to publish it. And we actually created a registry at the get go. So I knew every time a patient had a complication, or we had a death or anything, I knew what had happened, when it happened, and what the cause was. And to date, we don't have any directly attributable to the robot. And so that level of knowledge is such a reassurance.
Manish Chand 22:38
But I like the way that you frame that as well, because my initial question deliberately was that there was one player monopolizing and dominating the market. But actually the market was a very small portion of surgery. So you look at it as though the market is all of that non robotic, non laparoscopic surgery, which is the vast majority around the world, and you enter that market, I think the same for us at ostomy is that we knew there were 10 million people with stomachs, 10 million people that have got bags, and those 10 million people spend two and a half $1,000 a year on consumables. So if we can get into that market, we'll give the implant away for free, but we'll take that consumable market, and that's the way that you framed it. And so how important is it? Tonya, then for one to really understand their market, is a bit of a silly question, really, we all know the answer, but, but what are your thoughts on understanding that market, getting a market access report, knowing your geography, knowing your your your knowing your where your device fits in that market.
Tanya Ridding 23:46
Yeah, because it's, I think it's not just about the technology. The technology can be excellent, but it's the technology in the right place at the right time. So you need to understand where that's going to fit in amongst the current standard of care, the size of that market, the appetite for that market. You know, look for indicators regulatory or coverage, fast tracks or workflow shortages. You can identify these indicators in the market that your technology is, is getting into the market at the right time marrying, I think tech talent and timing is what's critical.
Manish Chand 24:27
Okay, well, look, I'm sure everyone wants to talk about the F word, and that F word is funding. In this case, how. How does one go about? Dan, we'll start with you, and I know how much you love funding pitches, but how do you approach the right investors? Put your pitch together, and how are those rounds different as you progress? Because an early round is clearly going to be very different from what Marc is involved in in his last round, for example.
Danail Stoyanov 25:00
It, yeah. So, I mean, first of all, I think Mark is probably a better place to speak to this. But, um, I think the, you know, not over raising is something that's important to me. So I think think about how much you actually need to get you to the milestone that you want to hit before you need to then raise, raise more money. So I think that's a one, one important learning that, that I've had, the more that you're in the business, the more you will have knowledge and know who to approach, and you know what the different funds invest in. So I think that comes with with experience and and then again, the team. You know, I was very fortunate when I first started being involved in commercialization of research, to have, you know, a CEO that was outstanding at fundraising. So he was flying around the world and being at all the right places, meeting all the right people in order to give you those opportunities to, you know, to raise, because you don't always know where it's going to come from. And so I think having being very active in that space is important. Putting yourself out there is really important. And then it's kind of really having a vision for how you want to run your business. You know, do you want to raise hundreds of millions, which is going to put you at a particular valuation, which is going to require a particular team size, or do you want to keep things quite small and practical and really focus on the product. You know, the different strategies. Yeah.
Manish Chand 26:25
So mark the pitch itself. What would your advice be on getting that pitch right? I mean, clearly, clarity, making things straightforward, passion for the project. You know, what would you say the key drivers of putting together that perfect pitch
Mark Slack 26:41
when things differ at every stage. In the beginning, you know, we gave hundreds of talks to people, you know, just trying to get that initial money and trying to excite them and giving them the vision and so on. I mean, I even took a kissing a lot of frogs, yeah, well, I took a billionaire's widow art for lunch to try and raise some money. But half three hours, well, I was looking for money. She was looking for a husband. So that one didn't, that one didn't work out either. But it is, it requires an enormous amount of of tenacity and to go and give the same pitch over and over again. But the one thing, when I did series D, I actually presented it much more like I was doing a grant application for a research fund, and I set out the story very neatly and etc, and then the business colleagues helped me with the vision of what the size of the market could be. And if you tell a good story at the end of the day, and that's what people take, I was always struck a little bit in series D, looking at some of the people and wondering whether they fully understood what they were funding. It's an it's when you're an academic in that field, it's an interesting,
Manish Chand 27:45
but that's interesting. I mean, do you really do investors, and do they really need to understand on that level of detail? Surely, that at that point they're investing in you broadly, the product, the team, there are so many aspects to it that they're not going to necessarily understand the money you shy of.
Mark Slack 28:01
I mean, we had a great story. You know, the world needs mineral access surgery. You know, hugely, still, too many people are being operated with all the bad complications with open surgery. And we presenting them with the mechanism of increasing the amount of mineral access. Story it, it adds well, and you know the size of the market? Yeah, yeah.
Manish Chand 28:22
Tanya, your thoughts on trying? How do we as perhaps, academics, clinicians? How do we make it sound simple? What would your tips be on we're presenting, we're here at a conference like this. We're meeting investors. How do we get our idea across?
Tanya Ridding 28:42
What academic and founder CEOs have is the vision they have, the narrative, the storytelling. It's something that's often deeply personal. Mission led they know that space, this is their their baby. They've invested years into developing that baby and the story that they craft the narrative around that it is compelling to investors, particularly at early stage. It's when you get to slightly later stage rounds it shifts from simply being, you know, is this a moving story to is this a viable long term business proposition? Is this something we want to to invest significant sums in? So are those early stages, the storytelling is the key component.
Manish Chand 29:33
I mean, I've been with you. We've been in see our UK offices together, pitching back in the day, trying to explain some very complicated hologram way of trying to pre hear surgery. And I remember looking around just thinking, These people have not got a clue what we're talking about.
Danail Stoyanov 29:52
And they've didin't fund us,
Manish Chand 29:53
Didn't fund us, yeah, but, but I suppose what I with ostabee is. Is quite straightforward, really, because you got a bag on your colostomy, on your stoma, and we're offering you not to have bag instead. So, I mean, that's pretty straightforward, but sometimes products can be complicated, and I think getting that, getting that story and that passion across, but also explaining, I think that that's quite an art.
Danail Stoyanov 30:20
Yeah, definitely. I think it also depends who you're explaining too. So I remember getting seed investment. I think having that crisp, clean, clear story is really important at later stages, or, for example, speaking to strategics about the investment there, it can be much more complicated. You can talk about how you're going to fit to fit to the market, how you're going to develop a product portfolio, how you know all of the nuances and complexities of how your technology is going to fit within a big, multinational organization. So I think you know, pitching to, you know, really, really think about how you're pitching to the person you're pitching to. So if you go and pitch the soft bank, you better have a big story of how you're going to dominate a particular market. If you're trying to get seed investment to get your business off the ground, your pitch is probably going to be very different.
Manish Chand 31:10
Okay, we've got two minutes left each in your two minutes, start with you, Dan, we'll come back down this line. What's your advice? In Touch, surgery sold to Medtronic from near a billion dollars. So how did you make that happen?
Danail Stoyanov 31:30
Well, firstly, I didn't make it happen in a jean and Andre made it happen. I think you know, that was the timing was good. We had a we had a really excellent team had a big vision of what we could do. And, you know, before we pivoted towards surgical AI, we'd created a very strong brand. So touch surgery was a really strong brand, and, you know, had millions of users on the app for surgical education. So I think the story was right, the tech was right, and the timing was right. So that was, I think that was the key to our success.
Mark Slack 32:03
Okay, Mark, you know, I think it also comes back to when you're building a med tech company, is who you take advice from as well, and there's only a small percentage of clinicians and so on. Have a real vision of where the future is going and or what will work. And you can see all the scandals over the years where people have willingly gone on using things. So from my side, from the medical side, I have a group of people that I trust, that I can take advice on, who I think are proper visionaries that will give you or be able to take your ideas and work out whether it's reality or nonsense. And I think that's really, really very important in med tech and finding out who those people are, because they are in medicine, as you well know, people who always see the game quite a few years ahead of the game, and that's what.
Manish Chand 32:55
But that could be difficult as well, though, because you can be the one person who sees ahead of the game, but if you're the only person that's seeing ahead of the game, and how are you going to take people with you on that journey?
Mark Slack 33:07
And that's where you that's where it's the important thing is having a group of founders that actually work well with each other. I mean, you know, my colleagues have heard to probably the annoyance by now. You know, I started complaining about vaginal meshes 25 years before it became a problem, saying it wasn't going to be a good idea, and nobody would listen, and people did laugh at you. However, that thing came to help me when you were doing the robotic because some leave was saying, well, he got that one right, so possibly he'll get this one right as well. No being a visionary for in medicine, for the people that are is a very lonely place.
Manish Chand 33:43
Well, they say that those that are good are able to hit targets that other people can't hit. Those that are geniuses are able to hit targets that other people can't see. So I think that there's a fine line, I suppose, between good and perfection in that Tony, from your neutral point of view, what would your advice be in. Got a great idea, moving out of the business and your last sort of bit of right, this is what you need to do to get to that unicorn status.
Tanya Ridding 34:11
Yeah, so I think to Marc's point, alignment is critical. Talent alone isn't enough. IQ alone isn't enough. You need to have a team that is aligned. You're in this together. You're on this mission. Everybody's laser focused on the on the outcomes. And as you add to that team, it's assessing that fit to stage. Is this person going to be right for right now? Is this person on board with what we're trying to achieve right now, in this moment? They could be excellent, but if, if they don't fit in that stage, it's going to derail that mission. So ensuring that everybody is a cultural ad, a team ad, and everybody is on that same path together, I think that's that's really crucial.
Manish Chand 34:54
So I think we've, we've heard some some important themes there. I think timing team. Technology. Any other tees, transfer, transfer. Well, look, I hope that stimulated some thoughts with you the audience. So thank you very much for coming to listen to our post prandial session after lunch. Please try and catch us as we're around. If there are any questions that you do have, but again, thank you to my panel. Thank you Dan, thank you Mark and thank you Tanya. Thanks.
Manish Chand 0:06
Um, we're going to discuss for the next 3540 minutes or so how to build a med tech unicorn, and we're going to try and do that from going from a great idea to scaling, implementing, and then ultimately getting to unicorn status, if, if that is going to be the case. So I'd like to start perhaps with with Mark. I want to start with you. You are arguably one of our jewels in the crown of British med tech when it comes to inventing scaling a device which is used all around the world. You have a unicorn valuation. But what on earth possessed you to decide to build a device and go up against one of the biggest monopolies in health tech when you took on Intuitive Surgical.
Mark Slack 1:02
Yeah, but, I mean, it's the easy answer to that. One is, if I knew, then what I know now would never have started, yeah. I mean, it's you're more ambitious than you realize the problem is. And the second answer to that was, I was asked that question at a big Congress and they said, How's the little company like you from Cambridge can to cope against Johnson and Johnson to Medtronic. I suppose that's interesting, how a little company from Cambridge, United Kingdom, cope against these people. I said, suppose they have to look at our track record. I said, what have we done in the past? We discovered the proton, the neutron, the electron, the double helix, the jet engine, etc, and we've made a deck of it. We got a laugh from that. The first thing when you get an idea like that is make sure that you have the right group of founders. And I think we were particularly blessed in having five people with completely different skill sets, but who worked together. We didn't always work as well together. One is in this room at the moment. We used to fight like L in the beginning, and when we had our personality color profiles, then we realized we're identical. So I suppose that explains this. But if you get the right founders together and they have complementary skills, you're well on the way to to making a success at that point and be mature and honest enough to listen to the differences that are raised at those times.
Manish Chand 2:20
So Dan, you and I have worked together over the years in a number of projects and in and out of University College London. You have a great idea. How do you turn that great idea, firstly into a business and not just a university project or a hobby, and then perhaps, Tanya, how do you take that business and turn that, what scale that and turn that into a proper business, rather than scrapping around for funding and and trying to get a sort of foot on the ladder? So Dan, perhaps you can, you've been through that journey. Great idea, great idea. Spin out business.
Danail Stoyanov 3:01
I think, as Marc says, you know, team is key. So I think the first thing you do is make sure that you've got your tiger team set up so you've got the people that are going to be able to take this idea forward. And then, you know, you've got to validate that this cool tech that you've been beating, that you've been creating, actually has some sort of market value and can be a product, and that's very different to doing academic research. So figuring out whether this product is going to be revenue generating, figuring out whether this product has a good fit in the market, whether your customer is actually going to enjoy that product, it's a very different problem than kind of doing the the original Tech Research, and then you quickly realize that the tech research is actually just a very small part of then turning this into into into a company and into a business. So I would say, start with the team, and then really figure out how that technology is going to turn into a product, and what that product really is going to be, and maybe the technology bit is a very, very small part of what that product actually ends up being.
Tanya Ridding 4:10
And I think building on that, as your company develops from your core team, you need to be continuously assessing the talent that's in that leadership team, planning ahead for future milestones, making sure that you are hiring fit to stage rather than simply talent alone, you could be the best executive, but if you're not right for that company, and that time, ultimately, there's going to be a mismatch.
Manish Chand 4:37
So with that, and of course, in your experience, you've seen health tech industry change a lot over the years, the founder, the founder, the CEO. And when does the founder CEO need to step aside? Or do they not need to step and I'll come to you first, and then mark, perhaps you can elaborate.
Tanya Ridding 4:58
I. So it's a tricky one. You know, by all accounts, there have been Medtech unicorns that have been found as CEO LED. However, post 2021, that has got increasingly challenging, and there is a need to bring in professionals, professional CEOs. And I think the inflection points are when the company scale to a point whereby it's no longer within the founder CEOs capability. It could be that the company is transitioning from a tech LED product development phase into an early commercial phase. It could be investor LED. It could be that in coming into a new round, investors are pushing for a more professional management team. So it's really assessing those, those different inflection points as the company grows, and if it reaches that, identifying that there is a need to step aside and bring somebody else in. So mark your experience.
Mark Slack 6:08
I think it's Steve Jobs that question. He'd give you a fairly solid answer, that some people can be pushed aside prematurely. And I think you've got to really understand what to see es role is if people want to move them aside, because the board won't always have a full understanding of what they bring to the party and what their skills are. And if you've got a well functioning executive team, I think you should leave your CEO alone. I mean, if you take intuitive our opposition, as example, Gary has just done, after 23 years, he's done a fairly good job as the founding CEO. So I mean, I find it. I find it because you can then get into a spiral of having too many CEOs in a row, and that's not good for you either. So I think it's a matter of carefully evaluating the team. An insightful CEO will, at some point themselves decide to step aside if it's if it's not working well. But I mean, in our company, we almost certainly changed our CEO prematurely, and that wasn't good for us at the time. And and of course, the other thing is, you must have people in the business that understand your business properly. And med tech is one, having moved from an academic medical career to an entrepreneur and a business person, Medtech is hard to understand. Health is difficult to understand, and your people must have an understanding of the subject, because otherwise you can make some terrible mistakes. And at the end of the day, it's the patient on the table that we're looking after, and therefore it brings in a whole new ethical standard.
Manish Chand 7:39
So how did you find your transition, Dan, because you, you know, we worked together on some aspects of touch surgery, when Medtronic acquired touch surgery, or digital surgery, was called at the time, how did you find that into moving into Medtronic? Did you feel as though this is a different set of skills now that I need to perhaps work on, or is it something that you felt comfortable with. I mean, I found that, yeah, I mean, I feel more and more distance from patient. I still operate once a week, and I'm a high volume Da Vinci surgeon, but I feel like I'm moving away from that and developing a different set of skills, perhaps more like Mark. Did you feel that when you stepped out of UCL?
Danail Stoyanov 8:19
Definitely, I think, I think, you know, the the initial bit after an acquisition is obviously excitement and and then you start figuring out the reality that from being in an organization of 120 people, you're now in an organization of 100,000 people. And so that demands some change. So your, your kind of, your daily routine changes, and, you know, you kind of almost learn a new language. You know, I felt being part of Medtronic that I was suddenly learning corporate American. So the phrases, the terminology, the expectations, everything, everything has a change. I wouldn't say that it's dramatically different, but it feels different and and, of course, the the team size, the team profile, the types of people that you're working with, your time zones change. You know, from working in a in a team that's based in London, suddenly you might have team members that are in Israel, in the US, in Asia, and so, yeah, there is a, there's definitely a big, a big impact and a big change. And also the the speed with which you're able to make decisions changes. So as the team scales, things start to slow down, actually, because you're working with more stakeholders. So there's, there's a number of kind of very interesting experiences, I think, in making that transition.
Manish Chand 9:43
And how do you see that, Tanya, when you're looking at putting together these teams, and you get a company that comes to you and says, right, we need to put together this team. How do you see founders and academics fitting into that business environment? And when do you, I suppose, in your opinion, when do you. Have to bring in that professional team that will take it from a great idea to a great business.
Tanya Ridding 10:06
I think if you kind of look at it from a Gina Whitman visionary and integrator, you want to retain the vision, the mission, the subject matter expertise that a founder CEO has, you want to retain that within the business. You want to bring in a professional CEO that can execute, that can grow the business without stepping on that vision. But likewise, I think, with the CEO on board, sorry, the founding CEO on board and keeping that vision within the organization, you've got a winning combination. So I think that it's really marrying innovation with execution at scale.
Manish Chand 10:55
Okay, all right, let's move away from the team. Let's go back to the product ostensure, when I was designing the latest implant for for our company, we didn't really have competitors, because either you have a stoma bag or you have our solution, which is an implant, no continent, stomer implant in robotics. At the time when you were deciding to take on intuitive there was really only one. In fact, there was only one robot. But and I think Tanya and I have spoken about this as well. How do you get your message out there when everyone robotics is synonymous with Intuitive Surgical, when you start, how do you get people talking about CMR. How does CMR join the conversation?
Mark Slack 11:44
So I think in Medtech, I alluded to it earlier, you've got to remember that at the end of the day, it's the patient that counts. Number two, we are moving into a new world where, in the world of medicine, people talk more about value based medicine and evidence based medicine, and there's a lot of concern about things that purely make money. So you have to have the proposition. And we had the situation where, in the world, there are millions of people getting open surgery, which is a disgrace, and it's because it's difficult to do laparoscopic surgery. And so that's what we took on, was to build a robot that would enable more people to do keyhole surgery and therefore scale a product. Now intuitive is a big company, yes, market caps sitting around about 200 and it's done that of a 4% share of minimal access surgery, which is a 40% share of surgery. So the market is enormous, and it would be bizarre to think that a single company can actually dominate it all, and we are already starting to show differentials. There are certain clinical areas where we will demonstrate clear superiority, and there'll be areas we will be equivalent. And I don't think you ever get to have a single robot that will totally dominate surgery from top to bottom, and they'll have levels of differential skill and and that's what we're seeing now. So, you know, we've just been very honest. We've followed an evidence based framework, a value based framework, and all our strategies, like research and and so on, have followed very clear guidelines. Somebody, one of the earlier sessions was talking about the expense of research, and that's fine if your drug is going to get you 20 billion a year afterwards, but no med tech company in the world has got those depths of pocket. So what we did was introduce a different way of doing the research, which is more affordable but still ethical and producing, and in the nice early value assessment done recently, we are the company that got the highest level of evidence, and so it's following principles to what Dan said. I still like to keep my contacts with my academic colleagues, and I think academia and industry just have to learn to work together better, but I think it's a real role for them to partner.
Manish Chand 14:03
So we talk about this thing in healthcare of getting it right first time, and that's a big campaign, as you know, in the NHS, and I suppose one could take that to building the company as well. What happens if you go down this journey, Tanya, and you don't do it right the first time. Is there a way back? Can you remodel the company? Can you come out with a different message, or do you have to get it right first time?
Tanya Ridding 14:29
Think it's better to get it right first time. It comes down to, I think, forward planning. You you want to be looking at the upcoming milestones, be planning for the key leadership positions that you need within the organization at least 12 months before that milestone comes around. You don't want to hire too late. You don't want to be scrambling for talent. But equally, you don't want to hire too safely. You know, a friend of a friend or a former colleague, without assessing the talent that's out there, because that person might be right for right now, but that's quite short sighted. They may not be right for the next stage of the business. So I think that forward planning, that continuous assessment, that is how to get as close to getting it right the first time as you can. That said, you know, things don't always go to plan. It's recognizing that. It's pivoting, you know, not, not, not dwelling too long on the decisions that have been made, not falling into the trap of the sort of sunk cost fallacy, but recognizing when a change needs to be made, and being willing to make that change and to execute on it.
Manish Chand 15:50
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, from personal experience with my surgeon's hat on sticking to robotics, that there have been some robot companies that perhaps didn't get it right first time, and I think they've struggled after that. Once you get a reputation for, well, this doesn't work, or it's not reliable, it's inefficient, it's too expensive, whatever that may be, you get a bull reputation. I think it's difficult to come back from that. And I think some of your competitors perhaps have struggled with that Mark and in the past where they've perhaps had a good product. Maybe the message was wrong, but they got a bad reputation amongst the surgical community, and that was it.
Mark Slack 16:26
Really, yeah, I mean, I think in going back to medicine again, you've really got to be very sure that your product is safe and your product works well, and I think you'll be very careful about how fast you scale it. And I think we had openly admitted at one stage of our company, when we had a new CEO, there was an attempt to scale the company massively, where we should have been consolidating and perfecting and, and, and so that's important. So it's, it's quite a tight balance, because sort of obviously got the burn rates in the background. And, you know, you can run out of money, and building robots is particularly expensive, we've phrased about 1.2 billion. But, you know, company as big as Johnson, Johnson has spent somewhere in the vicinity of 8 billion building a robot. So you know that burn is terribly important to cope with. But personally, I feel you get your product right. You know you follow it correctly. So you do all the right animal work, and you do all the right cadaveric work. And so that you, as we, follow the thing called ideal. So before you go to a human you know what the capabilities of your system are. And then, of course, obviously, it's perpetual improvement. You know, we made the decision to go five millimeter instruments, because everybody else has got eight nine. And there's a reason everybody's got eight, nine, because it's bloody difficult to make a five, but ultimately, the engineers did pull that one off, and we have a beautiful suite of instruments, but at five, they have an advantage then and yeah, and then, obviously you've got to rely on your marketing colleagues quite strongly as well, and have the right group. Because it's, as Dan said earlier, academia is one thing, but there's a different side too. Said needs to be respected.
Manish Chand 18:04
And we talk about differentiation. Dan, how do you differentiate your product, particularly when you've got such a strong force in the market? How you differentiate your product? And I think that becomes perhaps easier with software rather than hardware, but sure, surely differentiation is, is the key here.
Danail Stoyanov 18:22
I think, I think we're not yet there to be able to say that. So I think differentiation definitely has been the driving force behind some of the digital features that people are trying to integrate onto the robotic platforms, right? So you can differentiate with instruments, you can differentiate with software, you can differentiate with various capabilities. So I think there's going to be plays in all of those areas, and they are important, but I don't think we're quite there in terms of knowing which of these bits are going to have an impact on patient care. And so I think that's kind of in the end, if the trials come out and patients are being affected positively by the technology and by the features that a particular system has, I think that's the kind of proof in the pudding.
Manish Chand 19:06
Okay, so let's, let's take a scenario. You got a great idea, you got a great idea. It moves out from an idea towards a business. You're then scaling that business. You don't have immediate funding issues. Is it better to concentrate on excelling in one area? And when do you diversify and say, let's add X, Y and Z to this? Or do you just tunnel vision excel in one area?
Danail Stoyanov 19:37
I would say that there isn't a perfect answer to this. So I think I heard a phrase some some months ago, you got to kiss a few frogs before you find the prince. And so, you know, it's really good to be very focused and to be laser focused. But at the same time that one of your Americanisms, it is actually but so it's really important to be very focused. But at the same time, you have to be open minded that you may have to pivot at some point. So we all know that intuitive started by going after heart surgery, but ended up having success in neurology, and have then, you know, branched out and are now in all sorts of specialties. So I think being open to a pivot, and kind of being thoughtful and strategic about it is something that's really, really important to the business. You know, having depth in a particular area, having focus in a particular area, may be the thing you need in order to become successful in that area. But it may also be, you know, a bad thing for you, for your company, to do, if you're not strategically taking opportunities to pivot the right time.
Manish Chand 20:41
How did you do all that mark? Because, I mean, you're a gynecologist by trade. You know, you would have obviously had a higher level of expertise in that, then using your device for all surgery, or, I
Mark Slack 20:53
think, more than that. I was a mineral access surgeon, so I understood mineral access surgery very well, and we as a group, the founders, made a decision to build a robot that would replicate how you do minimal access surgery. And we know what the results for minimal access surgery are across all the specialties, because it's been around for 35 years, and we know how much better it is than open so if you build a robot that can means you can place your tro cars where they normally go and your procedural steps follow what you normally do. You already are walking in with a huge amount of insight. And then, of course, so we knew all the specialties we could do, and we'd done 300 and something cadavers before we started, so we knew the positions. But then as you start moving in, you do start to see things that differentiate. And we were talking earlier within in us, one of the things is pediatric surgery, the robot really does fantastically the smaller the space. And all of a sudden you start to find, you find in the chest, you do better because our instruments are smaller and go between the ribs more comfortably. And so you just start to see, and obviously at that point, you'll start concentrating a little bit more, maybe on those areas. But, you know, we set out to build a soft tissue robot that would do everything from the mouth to the pelvis, and that's effectively what we've done. In order to make it safe, you have to have certain so you've got to do the research. You've got to publish it. And we actually created a registry at the get go. So I knew every time a patient had a complication, or we had a death or anything, I knew what had happened, when it happened, and what the cause was. And to date, we don't have any directly attributable to the robot. And so that level of knowledge is such a reassurance.
Manish Chand 22:38
But I like the way that you frame that as well, because my initial question deliberately was that there was one player monopolizing and dominating the market. But actually the market was a very small portion of surgery. So you look at it as though the market is all of that non robotic, non laparoscopic surgery, which is the vast majority around the world, and you enter that market, I think the same for us at ostomy is that we knew there were 10 million people with stomachs, 10 million people that have got bags, and those 10 million people spend two and a half $1,000 a year on consumables. So if we can get into that market, we'll give the implant away for free, but we'll take that consumable market, and that's the way that you framed it. And so how important is it? Tonya, then for one to really understand their market, is a bit of a silly question, really, we all know the answer, but, but what are your thoughts on understanding that market, getting a market access report, knowing your geography, knowing your your your knowing your where your device fits in that market.
Tanya Ridding 23:46
Yeah, because it's, I think it's not just about the technology. The technology can be excellent, but it's the technology in the right place at the right time. So you need to understand where that's going to fit in amongst the current standard of care, the size of that market, the appetite for that market. You know, look for indicators regulatory or coverage, fast tracks or workflow shortages. You can identify these indicators in the market that your technology is, is getting into the market at the right time marrying, I think tech talent and timing is what's critical.
Manish Chand 24:27
Okay, well, look, I'm sure everyone wants to talk about the F word, and that F word is funding. In this case, how. How does one go about? Dan, we'll start with you, and I know how much you love funding pitches, but how do you approach the right investors? Put your pitch together, and how are those rounds different as you progress? Because an early round is clearly going to be very different from what Marc is involved in in his last round, for example.
Danail Stoyanov 25:00
It, yeah. So, I mean, first of all, I think Mark is probably a better place to speak to this. But, um, I think the, you know, not over raising is something that's important to me. So I think think about how much you actually need to get you to the milestone that you want to hit before you need to then raise, raise more money. So I think that's a one, one important learning that, that I've had, the more that you're in the business, the more you will have knowledge and know who to approach, and you know what the different funds invest in. So I think that comes with with experience and and then again, the team. You know, I was very fortunate when I first started being involved in commercialization of research, to have, you know, a CEO that was outstanding at fundraising. So he was flying around the world and being at all the right places, meeting all the right people in order to give you those opportunities to, you know, to raise, because you don't always know where it's going to come from. And so I think having being very active in that space is important. Putting yourself out there is really important. And then it's kind of really having a vision for how you want to run your business. You know, do you want to raise hundreds of millions, which is going to put you at a particular valuation, which is going to require a particular team size, or do you want to keep things quite small and practical and really focus on the product. You know, the different strategies. Yeah.
Manish Chand 26:25
So mark the pitch itself. What would your advice be on getting that pitch right? I mean, clearly, clarity, making things straightforward, passion for the project. You know, what would you say the key drivers of putting together that perfect pitch
Mark Slack 26:41
when things differ at every stage. In the beginning, you know, we gave hundreds of talks to people, you know, just trying to get that initial money and trying to excite them and giving them the vision and so on. I mean, I even took a kissing a lot of frogs, yeah, well, I took a billionaire's widow art for lunch to try and raise some money. But half three hours, well, I was looking for money. She was looking for a husband. So that one didn't, that one didn't work out either. But it is, it requires an enormous amount of of tenacity and to go and give the same pitch over and over again. But the one thing, when I did series D, I actually presented it much more like I was doing a grant application for a research fund, and I set out the story very neatly and etc, and then the business colleagues helped me with the vision of what the size of the market could be. And if you tell a good story at the end of the day, and that's what people take, I was always struck a little bit in series D, looking at some of the people and wondering whether they fully understood what they were funding. It's an it's when you're an academic in that field, it's an interesting,
Manish Chand 27:45
but that's interesting. I mean, do you really do investors, and do they really need to understand on that level of detail? Surely, that at that point they're investing in you broadly, the product, the team, there are so many aspects to it that they're not going to necessarily understand the money you shy of.
Mark Slack 28:01
I mean, we had a great story. You know, the world needs mineral access surgery. You know, hugely, still, too many people are being operated with all the bad complications with open surgery. And we presenting them with the mechanism of increasing the amount of mineral access. Story it, it adds well, and you know the size of the market? Yeah, yeah.
Manish Chand 28:22
Tanya, your thoughts on trying? How do we as perhaps, academics, clinicians? How do we make it sound simple? What would your tips be on we're presenting, we're here at a conference like this. We're meeting investors. How do we get our idea across?
Tanya Ridding 28:42
What academic and founder CEOs have is the vision they have, the narrative, the storytelling. It's something that's often deeply personal. Mission led they know that space, this is their their baby. They've invested years into developing that baby and the story that they craft the narrative around that it is compelling to investors, particularly at early stage. It's when you get to slightly later stage rounds it shifts from simply being, you know, is this a moving story to is this a viable long term business proposition? Is this something we want to to invest significant sums in? So are those early stages, the storytelling is the key component.
Manish Chand 29:33
I mean, I've been with you. We've been in see our UK offices together, pitching back in the day, trying to explain some very complicated hologram way of trying to pre hear surgery. And I remember looking around just thinking, These people have not got a clue what we're talking about.
Danail Stoyanov 29:52
And they've didin't fund us,
Manish Chand 29:53
Didn't fund us, yeah, but, but I suppose what I with ostabee is. Is quite straightforward, really, because you got a bag on your colostomy, on your stoma, and we're offering you not to have bag instead. So, I mean, that's pretty straightforward, but sometimes products can be complicated, and I think getting that, getting that story and that passion across, but also explaining, I think that that's quite an art.
Danail Stoyanov 30:20
Yeah, definitely. I think it also depends who you're explaining too. So I remember getting seed investment. I think having that crisp, clean, clear story is really important at later stages, or, for example, speaking to strategics about the investment there, it can be much more complicated. You can talk about how you're going to fit to fit to the market, how you're going to develop a product portfolio, how you know all of the nuances and complexities of how your technology is going to fit within a big, multinational organization. So I think you know, pitching to, you know, really, really think about how you're pitching to the person you're pitching to. So if you go and pitch the soft bank, you better have a big story of how you're going to dominate a particular market. If you're trying to get seed investment to get your business off the ground, your pitch is probably going to be very different.
Manish Chand 31:10
Okay, we've got two minutes left each in your two minutes, start with you, Dan, we'll come back down this line. What's your advice? In Touch, surgery sold to Medtronic from near a billion dollars. So how did you make that happen?
Danail Stoyanov 31:30
Well, firstly, I didn't make it happen in a jean and Andre made it happen. I think you know, that was the timing was good. We had a we had a really excellent team had a big vision of what we could do. And, you know, before we pivoted towards surgical AI, we'd created a very strong brand. So touch surgery was a really strong brand, and, you know, had millions of users on the app for surgical education. So I think the story was right, the tech was right, and the timing was right. So that was, I think that was the key to our success.
Mark Slack 32:03
Okay, Mark, you know, I think it also comes back to when you're building a med tech company, is who you take advice from as well, and there's only a small percentage of clinicians and so on. Have a real vision of where the future is going and or what will work. And you can see all the scandals over the years where people have willingly gone on using things. So from my side, from the medical side, I have a group of people that I trust, that I can take advice on, who I think are proper visionaries that will give you or be able to take your ideas and work out whether it's reality or nonsense. And I think that's really, really very important in med tech and finding out who those people are, because they are in medicine, as you well know, people who always see the game quite a few years ahead of the game, and that's what.
Manish Chand 32:55
But that could be difficult as well, though, because you can be the one person who sees ahead of the game, but if you're the only person that's seeing ahead of the game, and how are you going to take people with you on that journey?
Mark Slack 33:07
And that's where you that's where it's the important thing is having a group of founders that actually work well with each other. I mean, you know, my colleagues have heard to probably the annoyance by now. You know, I started complaining about vaginal meshes 25 years before it became a problem, saying it wasn't going to be a good idea, and nobody would listen, and people did laugh at you. However, that thing came to help me when you were doing the robotic because some leave was saying, well, he got that one right, so possibly he'll get this one right as well. No being a visionary for in medicine, for the people that are is a very lonely place.
Manish Chand 33:43
Well, they say that those that are good are able to hit targets that other people can't hit. Those that are geniuses are able to hit targets that other people can't see. So I think that there's a fine line, I suppose, between good and perfection in that Tony, from your neutral point of view, what would your advice be in. Got a great idea, moving out of the business and your last sort of bit of right, this is what you need to do to get to that unicorn status.
Tanya Ridding 34:11
Yeah, so I think to Marc's point, alignment is critical. Talent alone isn't enough. IQ alone isn't enough. You need to have a team that is aligned. You're in this together. You're on this mission. Everybody's laser focused on the on the outcomes. And as you add to that team, it's assessing that fit to stage. Is this person going to be right for right now? Is this person on board with what we're trying to achieve right now, in this moment? They could be excellent, but if, if they don't fit in that stage, it's going to derail that mission. So ensuring that everybody is a cultural ad, a team ad, and everybody is on that same path together, I think that's that's really crucial.
Manish Chand 34:54
So I think we've, we've heard some some important themes there. I think timing team. Technology. Any other tees, transfer, transfer. Well, look, I hope that stimulated some thoughts with you the audience. So thank you very much for coming to listen to our post prandial session after lunch. Please try and catch us as we're around. If there are any questions that you do have, but again, thank you to my panel. Thank you Dan, thank you Mark and thank you Tanya. Thanks.
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