LSI USA 2022: Scott Pantel, Joe Mullings & Ramin Mousavi

Joe Mullings  0:09  
Well, Scott, I think you outdid yourself. I mean, last year was a home run with LSI. But this year, I sat on that lawn last night with Manny and Chris Velis. And that was really an impressive community vibe. So, congrats for that.

Scott Pantel  0:24  
Thank you. I have a great team supporting me. And the question I've been getting for a while is what's the state of the industry. And I think last night was in today, frankly, in the next three days are a testament that med tech is alive and well. So it's a pleasure to be here.

Joe Mullings  0:40  
And such a mix here. We were just talking about the connectors, the relationships, the relationships from 20-25 years ago, reappearing on stage, and then the new relationships formed as well. So we, what are we got coming next? What kind of counsel can we give Scott on what should we be looking at? And let's enjoy this couple days. But what should I be looking at next year?

Scott Pantel 1:04
Let's slow down. I love the guidance.

Ramin Mousavi  1:08  
No. Well, first of all, I echo what Joe said, I think you did the right thing you continue to do the work that you and your team do, yesterday was really nice. I think it's nice that we are expanding the pool of people who are participating, you have more and more of those who maybe are not that just original profile. And I think, to me, what I look forward, and we have the panel tomorrow, but as we look forward is, okay, if you have a great idea you come in, you find a way leveraging this platform to get the funding that you need, and you get that product past the finish line of getting a regulatory approval. Now what you know, so, you know, and I think that's a whole different world of the companies, you know, call it past Serie C that I look forward to finding ways to bring that to life. And, you know, we have a little small club that we feel that pain when you get to that stage, and it's fun, but it's very different than early stages. So I guess my question to you is that as you're looking at people that we have here, and you do have some of those CEOs and those companies, what do you think over the next three days we can share? That could be a value? And then how do you think we get more and more to see what we are trying to do here? You know, let's start thinking about next year already. Yeah,

Scott Pantel  2:27  
No, that's, that's a great question. I'm going to I'm going to pull something that I heard out of the panel today. And it came from both Paul Jay, and actually, Leslie trigg reinforced it. And that's that it's not easy, what we're doing is not easy. And they also reinforced that it's not only the technology and the capital, which are all obviously critical, but it's the connections to the people that can help get us where we need to go. But ultimately, the thing that came across to me this morning was to not give up that you just you can't staff, you have to be resilient. And if you do, and you have the right team in place, good things are gonna happen. So with respect to what we what I think we should do to build on this is I think we need to do more of the same. We worked really hard this year to attract more investors, the turnout is phenomenal. We need more investors here. We need more strategics here. And so if we can rally the whole ecosystem around what we're doing here, ultimately, I think we're going to help patients, a lot of people ask, you know, what's the goal here? Is it to finance companies, it's not to finance companies, it's to help, it's to advance healthcare and help a patient. But the way to get there is we got to finance the company. So financing the company is just a step to getting to the end goal. So I think we just continue growing with what we have.

Joe Mullings  3:35  
Yeah. And what's interesting as you bring up a great point, especially with Cathworks, right, so I've followed you guys for a long time back and Triventures and with Fitz over in Israel. Most of the people here, they're creating an infrastructure and raising money. And justifiably so. Because if you don't raise the money, you don't get to the commercial activity. It'd be interesting, though, for you, because you don't have anything else to do is to extend that say, Okay, for those who raise the money, here's a side flight. And here's what you have to think about going commercial. Because if you build up your organization, and I see this with a lot of our partner companies who come out of Israel, they are all about the tech. They are unbelievable building tech, especially in the emerging platforms, we're in today AI machine learning, the whole digital side. And they build the tech. Now they get it and they maybe even get it cleared. And like, Well, shit, we got to sell it now. And that is not an on off switch. There's a transition that occurs there. And I'm just curious, do enough CEOs and startups understand that there's something beyond that, and let's count on getting the money. But what are you doing beyond that other than the deck to the VCs? Who said, Well, this is we're going to do with our $50 million round. We're going to commercialize well, how are you going to do that?

Ramin Mousavi  4:50  
Yeah, no, and I think you've been saying this, you know, I think you and I had this conversation, God like a decade ago at ACI but the idea that you have to build something that can be successful, independently. You know, even if you're a VC company, and you're looking to find a way to have an exit, if you build something that can be successful on his own, then people want to be part of that. And then we've experienced that, as you know, we've gone through that in capitalist, I think, to me, it's the, you know, you're always so worried about the next thing, you know, and I know that, you know, having lived through it, you know, when you're in that early stage, I think you just want to find a way to get the funding and move forward. But I do think that having spent a lot of time with my peers, and you know, tomorrow we have a panel of people who live this through with me, people will appreciate if they know that the experience is being shared is real, you know, nobody likes to hear hypothetical. But if you actually share with them, you know, I was sharing with Joe just literally today that, you know, I have never met somebody who has a go to market strategy that worked the first time, you know, I'm looking for that one, the one who gets the first time. So I think if we find and identify the right issues that ultimately a CEO is going to face, what they're going to cross after they get to that stage and bring them to life, that will create, I think, the right momentum, as we try to, you know, share with the world, the panel that we have tomorrow, I got an overwhelming insight from people within our peer group, oh, my God, this is exciting, doesn't get recorded, right? Well, you got to come down in Southern California, if you want to be part of it. And I think that's what we need to kind of make sure we articulate to get more and more of those, I actually believe that that will bring more strategics into the mix as well, because there's a appetite for very, very early stage companies. But then, if you are and having said on the other side of the table, if you're looking for ways to grow your business, you want those later stage companies that do like a revenue stage, I think that'll actually opens up a whole new set of audience that we haven't needed, but maybe we can bring him in more.

Scott Pantel  6:57  
That's right. And I just want to comment on that. This idea of having genuine conversations and sharing what we've gone through. I think this is where those types of things happen. And we learn from each other so that we're, we're better more quickly. And Leslie Trigg, who's obviously the outside is cranking. But you know, listen to her talk this morning, she talked about all the all the challenges and issues that she overcame, but by sharing those with others than hopefully others are more prepared. And I think that's what we're gonna get to your panel tomorrow is we can go through some of these things, we can all get better, we can discuss it and we can improve as a group. So I think it's brilliant.

Joe Mullings  7:31  
And your customer base here and listen, you're doing an incredible service to the to the entire med tech community health tech community. What happens when I get my money here? Right. So I think there needs to be a flight beyond LSI 2022. I think what you've got to do is okay, okay, I got my money. Now. Well, I do want to continue to raise because you're always raising until, but what other developmental skills do I need within my organization? How do I manage the team that got me to clearance or approval, and now they're no longer interested in iterative work, or my culture now needs to move towards a sales culture versus a tech culture. And so there's no university for that right now. And there's really no industry continuum there. So I'm thinking about you, like LSI, for for your dry powder, and then LSI after you get your dry powder, and what should you be learning because you see the generosity of the collective here, everybody cares about it, sitting at those tables last night, I walked around, when I'm listening to all of the stories. And if you can sit there as a new CEO, or an experienced CEO, those stories are invaluable, because the board members have value, but they aren't in the trenches every day, and some of them lost touch with hand to hand combat in the new world, we're in leadership.

Scott Pantel  8:52  
I totally agree. And actually, this conversation we're having now Ramin and I had over lunch several months ago, and fast forward to where we're at today. So I think what we're, I think this conversation, and the panel that you'll be having is the starting point for what we really need to do, which is extend this out, be a little more thoughtful and planned with it. And so, you know, I commit in this meeting or having here and I know that you do as well, that this becomes a starting point, so that we can we can move this forward and keep growing.

Ramin Mousavi  9:19  
Yeah, and look, you've done a phenomenal job. I think you you stuck with this. I remember this being the very first meeting, you know, after pandemic last year, and it was great to have what we had, and I think you've doubled the size. Now this year, you know, you did the actual bigger space. And I think it's what you said, you know, keeping it very authentic. And we've seen that today in the panel, you have people who rather than just sharing all the greats, they're sharing some of the challenges and that's the experiences we can learn from. So I'm pretty confident that if you continue doing that, as you've done the work that your team has done that we can open up that next chapter, which will be very exciting, and hopefully, we can show a few actual success stories along the way. that gives people more reasons to want to be funded.

Scott Pantel  10:02  
That's right. Maybe we'll be talking about Cathworks here in some time. Who knows? Yeah.

Joe Mullings  10:07  
But it is you're right. It's aspirational if I'm here trying to raise a five or $10 million round, but then I can go to a flight later this afternoon about well, I raised it. And here's what I ran into. And here's the train wreck. But here's the glint of opportunity that we went ahead and pull that string. I think that that gives the person who's looking to raise hope. Right, because otherwise, everything's focused on that $5 million raise. And then you get it. And then suddenly, oh, okay, we've got to go beyond that. But where do I learn that from? So I think that's a great service to the industry. So I have a question for you. What was the biggest challenge this year, putting this on versus last year?

Scott Pantel  10:47  
The biggest challenge this year was pulling the investors in. And it's really the challenge that we have, every year. There's this sentiment that investors, that everything is going to come to them that there's not a lot of value, often in them going out. And we worked really hard last year on exposing the event to that investor group. But I would say our biggest challenge this year was continuing to get through to them, convincing them that we had a quality program. And that was worth our time, I'd say we check that box, we still want to grow it. So I would say it's the challenge is really getting the investors attention and getting them here. And we've done I'd say we're at we're at a B+, we want to get to an A, but that that, along with just the general environment, which I have to be honest, yesterday, I was very sensitive to the attitude that people had how they felt about things, and just weather doesn't hurt. But I think people are very, very comfortable. And everybody that I've spoke to has unanimously said last year, we were saying, Joe, you may recall, it's time. And it definitely was time. But now I think it's obvious that it's time that we're all back out here. So

Joe Mullings  11:53  
Ramin, as as CEO and building a company like Cathworks, what do you look for when you come to this show, in particular, this show?

Ramin Mousavi  12:00  
Yeah, I think meeting people that we know, and people that you can meet now and they become good, both friends, and part of your network is definitely a big plus, for me. There's also the idea of meeting, as you know, one of the things that I think you do a good job is you attract a lot of service providers, targeted towards the startups, you know, recruiting firms, and, you know, attorneys and all sorts of, you know, groups, I think this is a great setting to be able to have that informal discussion about the needs in a very pragmatic way, you know, it's not really a commercial setting you can talk to, so I really liked that. And that last part is that, you know, I think we are always in search of good ideas, you know, because my task is to figure out, how do we go from where we are, especially at Cathworks. Now, we are in a, you know, commercial growth stage. So, we are constantly thinking about, you know, right now we're thinking about how do we expand the portfolio? You know, and what is the next thing? You know, I think we are very close to be the go to, hopefully standard of care for for non invasive physiology. Well, how do we make that bigger and larger, because if it's going to be a standalone company, that you do an IPO, we need more than one thing in our portfolio. So I think just the entire ecosystem that's coming together, and I promise I'm not gonna use the word ecosystem, I just did, you know, in a setting that is very disarming, you know, I mean, you know, Dana Point, California, we, if you want to have a disarming conversation, this is a place to be. So that's what I look forward to. And I think that, you know, the fact that you have people who want to be here, you know, I think last night was a testament that, you know, you have these conversations that you hear from people's stories, and then you can actually grab them and have a conversation. That's what drives me and, you know, I, I've known Scott for a long time. And, you know, one of the things that I really admire about him is that, you know, he's said to do something, and then he's relentless. You know, he doesn't give up and goes, and you want to be around people who are like that. So you know, I'm committed as you go ahead, you know, we'll find a way to be a partner all along Jamaica.

Scott Pantel  14:04  
Yes, you've been a tremendous support. And I just want to add, thank you. And I want to add a comment to that. Some of the feedback we get, you know, we have these we have 200 Presenting companies, and you would be surprised how much value they put in the actual presentation versus this. Okay. They value the presentation, they want the presentation. But I think unanimously they value not always before the meeting, but after the meeting, they valued the intangibles, the conversations, tge people they met at dinner equally to that presentation itself. So I totally agree with you. It's about about these variables, these things that you can't really always quantify that we get out of it. And it's a powerful part of the meeting doesn't happen without great people. So thank you for supporting. Thank you.

Joe Mullings  14:45  
And and as I take us out, I'd be I'd be cheating out in this trade. We're going over the other side of the pond this year with LSI two, so you're going big in the UK, would you want to shout out? Oh, that Yep,

Scott Pantel  15:02  
we will be in UK in the UK this year just outside of London and Hertfordshire. In fact, we picked a location based on a real connection I made here through another connection, Nadine, at Proximie. We've been chatting we met last year, she said, I want to help. We have heard loud and clear that our ecosystem, there I go, now we're using the word wants another meeting like this, and they want it overseas. And so  it's a challenging time to plan events. But we're going to do it. We're committed to it. We're going to we're going to put it together. And we're going to work frankly, with the folks that we've met over the last few years to make sure we do it right. I'm just a California boy going over to the UK. But with the right friends, we can do this thing properly. So we're putting a stake in the ground. We want to be every six months, we want to be in the US, Europe, US, Europe, we're going to mix up the venues. So we keep it fun, have a place that people want to go to, but we're committed to it. We think it plays an important role. And you know, we want to get we want to get more companies financed so they can help a patient.

Joe Mullings  16:01  
London baby, it's not a bad spot. Well, gentlemen, thanks so much for taking the time especially you. I've been seeing you're running from dusk till dawn and keep cranking it out. Thank you so much from the community as well for what you're doing.

Scott Pantel  16:14  
Thank you both. Thank you. My pleasure.

Joe Mullings  16:16  
This is Joe Mullings. LSI 2020 to be well