Show Me the Money — How to Create a Brand Story Investors Can’t Resist | LSI USA '25

Stacey Holifield  0:00  
You Excellent. Thank you everyone for being here today. To kick things off, I want to be very clear about what this is and what this isn't. This is not a panel discussion. This is a workshop. And so what I'm expecting from all of you is to actually do some work today. So if you're not here for that, it's won't be offensive, please feel free to head out. Okay, so together, we're going to work on this though, so that we can make some things happen. The goal of this is to actually give you a clear, concise, there we go. Okay, a clear, concise, compelling narrative that you can walk away with. We're going to try to condense, really, what typically takes about three to four months of work into 40 minutes. So again, I'm going to ask you to participate in this. We're going to start with something, if everyone can just stand up for me. Okay, I want you to take a couple seconds think about how you describe your company. What is the narrative? What's the 32nd story that you're telling to investors or to customers when you meet them? Now I'm going to say some words and some phrases, and when you hear the word or phrase that you use that's included in what you use to describe your company, I want you to sit down. We are pioneering, innovating, disrupting transforming. We are groundbreaking. Why to meet global demand, to meet an unmet patient need, to transform patient care. And we're so proud. We're so thrilled. We are so excited about our data, our results, our product. The few of you that might still be standing maybe don't need to be here, because you're probably on a good track to telling your story in a way that's unique and differentiated. The challenge for the rest of you, you can you can go ahead and sit down now, but I might pick on you later. The challenge for the rest of you is that you're here in this really highly competitive environment, and you're all competing for the same eyes and dollars right now, and you're all telling a very similar story. So how do you align but also differentiate, right? There's a challenge. If you're too differentiated, you can't fit into the puzzle, right? People can't identify of where you want to go. We always tell people you want to be a peninsula, not an island. An island is difficult to get to. It seems great. It's overpriced and expensive. A peninsula is unique. It's attached to the bigger group, but it stands out on its own. So when you think about what you're doing, when you're thinking about how to describe your company, think about being a peninsula, not an island. Why does storytelling matter? Okay, this is an extreme and getting very dated example, but Theranos told, she told a great story, and she brought in great investment. It wasn't about science or data. It was about possibility. It was about the potential impact that technology could have. Investors invest in stories. That doesn't mean they don't need data. It doesn't mean the science shouldn't be there to support it, but investors, people invest in stories because there's connection, because there's engagement, there clarity will always win. Confused investors are not going to write checks if it doesn't make sense. If they don't understand it, they're going to be gone before you have a chance to even shake their hand. A great brand story will make you memorable and is investable. So make it simple and make it stick. There are five essential elements of an irresistible brand story. If there was a way to boil this down to three, I would do it because three is more memorable. But we just can't. We just can't get it down that far. We're going to talk about problem, solution, value, vision and call to action the problem, why does your company exist? Okay, we have to focus on a high stakes challenge that investors care about. If you look around this room, 75% of med tech. Startups are going to fail. 75% of the people in this room are going to fail. It's not because you don't have a great product, it's not because you don't have a great technology or there isn't patient need. It's because you can't tell the story, and without the story, you're not going to connect. That's why we're here. That's the problem that we address at levitate, helping you tell your story. What's the problem that you address? How do you clearly define in very simple terms? Make it urgent, make it relatable, and make it backed by data. We're going to start doing some work. You're going to get two minutes. I have some notepads if you need them, you can pull out your phone and do it in your notes. I want you to work for two minutes on drafting a one sentence problem statement for your company. Okay, here's an example that is not good. Current treatments for X are inefficient and patients are suffering. That's really telling everyone nothing. There's nothing new about that. There's nothing unique. 10 million patients suffer from this annually, yet treatment fails 40% of the time, and that's costing the system $5 billion a year, that's a problem. That's a problem that investors want to invest in and help solve. That's the difference. So think about your company. Take a minute, write down something we're going to work through this narrative so that by the end, when you leave here, you have the five elements that you can continue to revise as you come out of here. So I'll give you, I'll give you a second, a minute too. If you have a question, feel free to come up or ask as you work on it. Okay, keep that in your notes. We'll come back to it. The next part is the solution. This is usually where companies are better at defining what the solution is. We often sit in and see investor presentations or customer presentations, and people start by talking about the solution. The solution is about me. Your solution is about you. That's why it comes second to the problem. You have to set up the problem first, help people identify with that, or they don't see any need for the solution, so you've lost interest. So think about, when you talk about the solution, who you are, what do you do? And why is it so unique? You want to clearly define who you are, think about what makes you different from the competitors. Do you have a first and only are you truly first to market, and I mean truly, or can you find something unique that gives you that first advantage, right? You don't have to over complicate it. Keep it simple. Focus on what makes you different. Do not use jargon, right? We don't want to confuse anyone. Keep it super simple. We're going to work on a one sentence company description, a variation of this was probably said at least 10 times today, we leverage AI powered analytics to optimize brain health, cardiology, neurology, whatever it might be. Again, not a great A good example would be, we help doctors accurately detect diagnose and treat debilitating neurocognitive diseases using AI power to analytics, reducing misdiagnosis rates by 60% it's a big difference. Okay, take a couple of minutes. Write down your solution, simplify what you do and why anyone should care about it. Okay, moving on to value number three. Number three really digs into the data, traction and validation that you need to build confidence. This really touches on that. Why should anyone? Why should anyone care? Okay, this is where you've got great metrics, if you've got a case study, if you're going to talk about partnerships or regulatory milestones, this is where you want to include that in. So if I said we work with companies and they secure additional financing. They have successful IPOs, et cetera, that helps validate what we do. One line, value proposition statement. One line, we help physicians, clinicians, radiologists, accept. To achieve this result by doing this,

Stacey Holifield  10:05  
here's an example. We make imaging more efficient, not good. A good value proposition. Our AI driven imaging platform reduces diagnosis time from 18 months down to just seven days, improving hospital efficiency and saving lives. Okay, take a minute write down your own value proposition. Okay, moving on to number four, vision. I think a lot of times, people think we don't really need a vision you know, and what your vision is doesn't have to be the same as your vision statement. A lot of times, companies get caught up on creating the perfect vision statement. This really just focuses on what is the long term impact, what's the financial upside of what you're doing. You want to communicate how big the opportunity is. This is where you can and should address the total addressable market. Explain concisely how your solution fits into industry trends and what the market opportunity is. Big picture vision statement in X years, we envision a world where impact happens. Hey, a no, we will expand into new markets beyond neuro lacks details, yes, in five years, we will be the leading AI driven imaging platform in a $20 billion market, revolutionizing early disease detection. Take a minute and write your vision statement. The final essential element, number five, is the call to action. This is one that just often gets forgotten. We see it again in presentations here, you've taken the time to come here, you've got this presentation pulled together, and that it ends and there's no call to action of what you want your audience to do. This is where we inspire action by talking about, why now? Why should someone get involved right now, address market timing and be very clear about what you need and what investors should do next. We're raising funds to scale operations and marketing that will enhance commercialization. Very vague, very common with FDA approval expected in 12 months and strategic partnerships locked in place, now's the time to raise 10 million to accelerate commercialization. Take a minute and you can write your own call to action. Okay? So what happens now is you have these five pieces that tell a story. So if we lay this out, this is going to test my aging eyesight from the examples that we pulled together, this is what your story would read. 10 million patients are diagnosed with neurocognitive diseases annually, yet treatment fails 40% of the time, costing the system $5 billion a year. We we help doctors accurately detect, diagnose and treat debilitating neuro cognitive diseases using AI powered analytics, our AI driven imaging platform reduces diagnosis time from 18 months to seven days, improving hospital efficiency and saving lives. In five years, we will be the leading AI driven imaging platform in a $20 billion market, revolutionizing early disease detection with FDA approval expected in 12 months and strategic partnerships in place. Now is the time to invest. We're raising $10 million to accelerate commercialization. How many of you are in? It's my fake made up company. I'll take that as a yes. Okay, so now what we want to do is talk a little bit more about the stories that you've pulled together. This is where it takes a little bit of bravery for some of you to volunteer and share your story, and we'll do a little bit of on site critiquing. Is there someone that's just dying to share their story? Love it. You can go next. Go ahead, sir, come on up to the mic. Yeah, you can turn it around. Yeah, yeah.

Audience Question  15:00  
Hello. I'm Raymond Cloutier with Nova approach spine. Every year, over 500 patients go through spine surgery and don't even get the surgery completed because spine surgeons couldn't safely implant the inter body cage, which is a real pain for the patients. So what novapro spine has done is come up with a new inner body that makes it easier to get in with our versatile implant. Our highly versatile cage is designed to reduce the complication rate and increase surgery completion rate. So we expect in three years, the one lift cage by Nova perch mine will be in the hands of a large spine company and become the leading value proposition that will be used to capture market share. So with four deals already in play right now, with four spine companies, we believe now is the time to invest. Now is the time to raise $3 million to fund the inventory and accelerate our commercialization

Stacey Holifield  16:12  
Excellent

Audience Question  16:16  
You take checks, credit cards,

Stacey Holifield  16:21  
I'll take a small cut of that for the workshop. I think that was excellent. There's, I don't how much of that was reworking and revising versus what you already had in place. Okay, yeah, great. A couple of elements of feedback. One, if you say something like it's a real pain that doesn't mean anything to anyone, right? It's so big and broad, how can you take language like that and and scale it down so it has a little more meaningful impact? The other thing to watch for is language, that is, we think, or we believe, everybody knows that. It's your company, it's your product. Of course, you think it, of course you believe it, just state it. It's stronger language when you just make the statement instead of qualifying it. Anyone else have feedback on that pitch? Good? Would you like to go?

Audience Question 2  17:18  
I'm a risk taker. That's why I do this? Well, there are 600,000 patients in United States on dialysis, and when the kidneys fail, you get dialysis, a transplant, or you're no longer around. I'm a kidney doctor, and I've been very frustrated over the many years. I'm in practice with the suffering, the mortality, and the tremendous expenses and the cost that is probably one of the most expensive items in the federal budget, in Medicare, if you do dialysis, you filter your blood three, four hours, 12 hours a week, but your normal kidneys filter your blood. 168 hours a week. 24/7, and that's the reason why normal dialysis with the current devices does not work very well. So we came up with a miniaturized, battery operated dialysis device that you wear. 24/7, it replaces the kidney function in a more natural way. Our addressable market is 600,000 people. We have raised about $10 million in non diluting funding. We have breakthrough status from the FDA and a letter of support from the FDA, and we're going into our fourth human trial, we are raising additional money to complete the development and take this to market.

Stacey Holifield  19:11  
I'm gonna, great job. I'm gonna let you stay there for a second. Okay, you're on the right track. I'm gonna hit you. I'm I am unfortunately direct. So I lost your problem. I still don't know what the problem is. I know people are on dialysis. What is this? What is the problem that you're addressing? It's not that people are on dialysis.

Audience Question 2  19:36  
No. Improve quality of life. Improve quality of life, reduce mortality and reduce cost, huge cost.

Stacey Holifield  19:46  
But the challenge is, is anyone in here not improving quality of life, reducing costs? So what is, What? What? What made you decide to start the company or get involved with the company? What makes it unique and different? Yeah. Yeah,

Audience Question 2  20:01  
that the way we're doing it is not good enough. We have to figure out the better mouse chart, what's

Stacey Holifield  20:08  
the broken what's the broken part?

Audience Question 2  20:11  
Filtering the blood, 24/7

Stacey Holifield  20:13  
Okay, so that's the problem, inefficiency in filtering the blood. 24/7 all of the other stuff can kind of cloud that problem, right? And that problem solving, that problem is what makes you unique.

Audience Question 2  20:28  
I'm not sure I would debate that. I take the liberty that dialysis patient. 95% of people on dialysis are disabled. They cannot go to work. The diet is horrendous for them. Taking a glass of coke or a orange juice is suicidal, right? Pain, sleep, fatigue, you name it. So if I make a longer list of what's wrong with those poor guys, I can talk until breakfast tomorrow.

Stacey Holifield  20:57  
Yeah, exactly. So again, I think it's all there. And what you can do when you have that foundation. These five elements are just the starting foundation of what we call a messaging framework. From there, you're going to build out your patient stories, and everything's going to circle around this patient framework. So I think you're in the right spot with that. Okay, thank you. Another volunteer, Simon,

Audience Question 3  21:25  
first we met yesterday. I love that it's going to be very Africa. Okay, so, Mike, a million people in the US suffer from hydrocephalus. The trajectory of each and every one of those patients, if they're a child, is they will have repeated bouts of hospitalization three or four times a year, but two thirds of the time, that's a false alarm. The shunt may not be failing, and there is enormous cost associated with treatment of these patients. We help doctors manage hydrocephalus patients by allowing the direct monitoring for the first time of brain pressure. Currently they only rely on symptoms to decide whether they should do surgery. Our monitoring system predicts brain pressure information, which speeds up shunt failure diagnosis by 80% and reducing false alarm hospitalization by 50% in five years, we'll be the leading hydrocephalus management company and pushing into new clinical markets for pressure monitoring.

Stacey Holifield  22:34  
Okay, very good. Okay. Go back. Good. Yes. Call to Action. Did you end with a call to action? Probably not. No. Okay. So, okay, one of the things tell me, you said, tell me again what you said you're going to be a leading. What

Audience Question 3  22:51  
leading leading? We will be leading hydrocephalus management. Management

Stacey Holifield  22:56  
got it okay, and go back to your problem. Tell me what the problem was, that you're solving? Yeah,

Audience Question 3  23:01  
a million patients in the US who have a condition for which they have repeated that hospitalization, which they don't need to be hospitalized.

Stacey Holifield  23:10  
Exactly, okay? So this is the key too, to think about the problem that you're solving. Most of you are not actually eradicating disease, right? You're not going to do away with what is you're going to improve the treatment of so make sure, when you're talking about the problem, you're actually addressing that problem. I think that's great work. I don't think you're done though. I do think you need some help, no, only because I met with you yesterday. Yes, I love it. Let's do it. I'll take you as a volunteer, and you can go next. Okay,

Audience Question 4  23:45  
changing the pitch a little bit here. The no pun intended, my voice. All right, here we go. Hi everybody. I'm glad Rosas, I'm the CEO of airflow innovation labs, and I just wanted to share with you that 100 50 million patients are undergoing surgery annually to become healthier, yet 40% of you all will experience respiratory failure from delayed detection of breathing deterioration after surgery, costing the hospital and the United States $7 billion annually. We help doctors and nurses accurately detect, diagnose and treat evolving breathing deterioration in real time using a wearable wireless sensor to the neck, reducing delayed detection by 60% our breathing monitoring patch to the neck reduces hospital stays from 10 days to four days, improving hospital efficiency and saving lives. The bottleneck and the hospitals are bed occupancy and human resources. In five years, we will be the leading patient monitoring platform in a $70 billion market, revolutionizing early respiratory failure detection. With FDA approval expected in three years. Now is the time to raise $5 million to accelerate our development of our commercial product, and we take also all sorts of checks,

Stacey Holifield  25:15  
wires. Venmo, great job. People will have different perspectives on this. I advise people not to spend a lot of time introducing yourself. That was a very brief introduction. It still goes back to people care more about what you're doing than who you are. Make it about your audience, not about you. Nobody cares really what my name is, where I'm from, or where I went to school, you just care what I can do for you, question or pitch, pitch, Okay, you go, and then you're next, okay.

Audience Question 5  25:52  
50% of all blood transfusions are unnecessary and needlessly harm patients. The problem exists primarily because existing coagulation test work poorly. Our company has a device and disposable cartridge, and it's the only platform that determines the treatments that will stop bleeding. It provides fully automated results in approximately 10 minutes, and we know from numerous studies that less bleeding and less transfusion shorten length of stay and decrease morbidity and mortality. As a platform we can modify reagents in the cartridges and go to additional populations, such as trauma surgery, postpartum hemorrhage, assessment of novel anticoagulants and factor levels. We are projecting revenue in year four of sales to exceed $200 million we have validation data in 10 studies. So invest now and receive 50% warrant coverage, as we are starting to discuss with strategics.

Stacey Holifield  26:49  
Excellent, very good.

Audience Question 5  26:52  
I have a question. Okay, thanks. There is someone who some people know of, and some people even put our picture up on the wall, who raised $1.3 billion at a $9 billion valuation, who showed no research data to investors, one VC wrote a check for $100 million with no data, and people have told me, Oh, we won't invest in blood testing now. We call our device a theranostic diagnostic. Tests say something's wrong. We test the therapies and determine which therapy will stop bleeding, and we have data in 10 studies, including plus 19 patents and a study in cardiac surgery at the Mayo Clinic. And people say blood testing, we're not investing in that.

Stacey Holifield  27:35  
So, so your question is, what's your category? Or what?

Audience Question 5  27:39  
Well, I know. Well, on one level, we know the term theranostic is the only term that explains what we do blood. When people do a throat culture for strep throat and they put the pus on an agar plate, they drop antibiotic impregnated disc with different antibiotics to see which therapy works, to make sure you're not giving penicillin for a bacteria resistant to penicillin. That's a theranostic test that describes us. A journal article we submitted. Calls it hemo therapeutic agent Response Testing, because someone doesn't want us to use the bad word, but we're not bad. Yeah, we have data, and we will show it to you. So so we have a challenge, because someone else, right, right, which

Stacey Holifield  28:21  
isn't uncommon. That's a very extreme example of it, but it's not uncommon that we all have to overcome the mistakes that someone else made, right? And that some of that, again, comes down to, how do you take your story now you want to become a thought leader. You might be defining a new kind of category. You might be redefining the category the beauty people spend a lot of time trying to figure out who they are, what they do, right? You could be anything. You just have to be brave enough to get out there and talk about it and talk about it with authority. And sometimes you have to just address that up front, right? You're you have to overcome an unfortunate perception barrier. That's the reality. But the more you say that and tell people and define it, don't hide from it, address it and move on. I'm going to let but you want to go

Audience Question 6  29:11  
to 71 million people suffer from mobility challenges globally. Access to innovative mobility solutions is antiquated, limited and cost prohibitive project, Ironman is creating an E bike version of a walker rollator, providing a lightweight, cost effective between $502,000 that will be available directly to consumers. We provide up to 71 million people with the mobility aid that improves their quality of life by helping them get from point A to point B. In one year, our working prototype will be ready for mass production, tapping into the $2.2 billion market, providing a better mobility solution, much like the electric bike has revolution. The Rex recreational market the tune of 44 billion. We will raise 1 million in seed capital to revolutionize the mobility aid market within one year.

Stacey Holifield  30:10  
Very good. I like the bike connection. You always want to be cautious of what you're connecting to, or if that can turn people off or on. But keeping something simple and having you know, an analogy that you can tie to that creates that connection is very good, good. I don't know if any of you know the skin man we met at the first LSI conference. So

Audience Question 8  30:37  
the way to be introduced, $78 billion is spent each and every year to he to heal wounds. Nobody gets out of life without damaging their skin. Yet many of the products don't work or they're unaffordable. We're commercializing a human skin substitute made from soy protein. The technology heals full thickness wounds with minimal to no scarring, intact hair follicles and sweat glands and at a fraction of the cost. Our goal is to heal wounds with greater fixed efficacy at a fraction of the cost, and patients are left with a much better appearance. And our vision will be to help millions of patients and our military heal with greater efficacy and at a fraction of the cost and with FDA approval on a commercial launch now, now is the time to raise $10 million for that commercial launch, which should happen by June of this year. Thank you.

Stacey Holifield  31:33  
Excellent. We are running out of time. I want to make one quick point before we wrap up. Tone matters. I heard yesterday in the introduction, and this is important for all of you, I heard someone say, this is the most exciting time in Medtech. So if you say that, this is the most exciting time in Medtech, or if you say this right now, right here with all of you. This is the most exciting time in Medtech. It's a very different message. Think about tone when you're delivering go back and do your read through again. I hope this was valuable. I appreciate everyone being willing to participate and be a part of the workshop. QR code will scan to my VR card so you'll have my contact information. If you have any questions or follow up, I'll be around. I'm visible in pink today. Don't hesitate to come up and talk afterwards. Thank you so much.