Training & Supporting the Next Wave of Entrepreneurs Through Mentorship and Capital | LSI Europe '24

Joe Mullings 00:05
A privilege to be here again, as always. So let's run down the panel first, and this is going to be about supporting the next wave of entrepreneurs and what the market should look like. We've got a really interesting blend, as mentioned, of operators, investors, as well as technologists. So

Ashley Seehusen 00:24
Ashley, yeah, my name is Ashley Seehusen. I am a venture partner at SANTÉ Ventures. I'm also the CEO of SANTÉ Xelerator, which is our seedling fund, so early-stage investment. I should say I've spent most of my career as an operator, so I'm newer to venture, but I've sat in the seat of trying to raise money and have been an early entrepreneur myself.

Adam Rosenwach 00:47
I'm Adam Rosenwach. I'm the Chief Business Officer of Deerfield Catalyst, which is Deerfield's medical device incubation arm. I started as a musician—a very long story—transitioned into being the finance operations guy of Karidia, a medical device incubator spun out of already, and CB and CHF Solutions, a bunch of things. And yeah, like Ashley, I mainly identify as an operator, but recently I've leaned over more to the capital side.

Gal Noyman 01:20
Hey everyone, I'm Gal Noyman. I'm a partner at LionBird, a Tel Aviv-based early-stage digital health fund, investing in companies targeting the U.S. healthcare system. So if Adam was supposed to be a musician, I was supposed to be a psychologist once upon a time, but moved to the operator side as well as to business executive and product roles in companies focusing on artificial intelligence in healthcare. As a fund, I would say we meet founders a lot from the early days of ideation, and we really like to support our founders throughout this period. So excited about this panel. Hi.

Shai Policker 02:03
Everyone, I'm very happy to be here. My name is Shai Policker. I have been in med tech, working in med tech for the last 25-plus years. I started as an operator and still spend most years as an operator. In the last eight years or so, I'm the CEO of MEDX Xelerator, which is a medical device venture studio incubator. We create companies typically based on unmet needs presented to us by strategic partners. A couple of months ago, we closed on our next fund, Edge Medical Venture, and started investing from that as well. We are based in Israel, with a new office now in the U.S. as well, helping companies throughout this continuum of development, from inception through commercialization.

Joe Mullings 02:53
Awesome. All right, so let's jump into it. I think in order to set the stage, because in our prep for this, we couldn't quite define or agree on what an entrepreneur in med tech today is. So if we're going to define the emerging next wave, Gal, take us in with your definition of entrepreneurs. It applies to med tech and probably this group here today.

Gal Noyman 03:17
First and foremost, I think an entrepreneur is a builder, right? So it's someone who is resilient, up for the challenge, and is able to multitask in parallel, thinking about commercialization from Day Zero, not just after you have FDA approval, from the clinical side as well as from the scientific side. I think most and foremost in med tech, we see entrepreneurs that come from all different backgrounds, whether they're business executives or clinicians. So these are founders.

Joe Mullings 03:56
So does a founder have to also be an entrepreneur? Can an entrepreneur be in the top 15 or 20 hires in that emerging tech company? Because that's what you do there at MEDX.

Shai Policker 04:10
Yeah. For me, an entrepreneur is mostly a state of mind. It's this kind of crazy hunger to move things forward, create something, and make it successful, you know, whatever it takes. Sometimes you get founders that are entrepreneurs in spirit, and that is when it can work. If they are not as hungry as they should be, then you know, this is one reason for them not to be successful. So I think the subject matter expertise is important, but really that entrepreneurial state of mind is, we found it to be the most important thing. Adam?

Joe Mullings 04:57
And Ashley, this next question is for you in particular. The current model, as we see it, feels like the same model it's been over the last 10 years or so. Just to go back that far, is that model optimized today with the rate of acceleration of technology, the investing environment, and the acquisition or exit environment? So Ashley, let me start with you.

Ashley Seehusen 05:21
It's a big question.

Joe Mullings 05:22
Move my seat so I can stare you down on this one.

Ashley Seehusen 05:26
Yeah. I mean, I think we can always innovate in our model and make it better. I think that, you know, having good bones—so really understanding the problem that you're trying to solve and making sure that you're solving the right problem—is key. I didn't introduce myself as I'm also an associate director for Stanford BioDesign Faculty Fellows Program. So I'm a big believer in going through the process, understanding what the problem really is, and then really understanding who your stakeholders are, and then talking to a lot of stakeholders. So having those fundamentals really figured out, I think, is key to then start building the team, etc. And I think we're still innovating and getting better at that. Not all ideas are worth pursuing, and I think we need to be really honest with ourselves about when something is not worth pursuing, and be honest with our entrepreneurs that we mentor, give money to, etc.

Joe Mullings 06:18
Are you seeing the financing model change the selection that you make as an investor with entrepreneurs? As we see more private equity riding up into venture land on the investment portfolio, we're starting to see the build-to-buy model come out. We're starting to see venture kind of pull back on 510(k) products and only swing for the fences. So has the founder of the past, that unicorn barn find that we all seem to romantically build a thesis around, is that realistic today?

Ashley Seehusen 06:50
No, I mean, I feel like the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world—that is not a realistic expectation as a founder, as a CEO, etc. If you're starting something, you should really understand, have the personal awareness of whether you are here for a time, and then you need to hire somebody to take it to the next level, etc. How long can you take this? Be really honest with yourself, be honest with your board, listen, learn, and adapt. Adam?

Adam Rosenwach 07:20
So first of all, I'm with Shai on the definition of entrepreneur. It is a state of mind, and I think the initial founders and employees not only execute but also help set the direction of where that company is going. That entrepreneurial mindset also applies to financing and how you're building the company, the pathway to exit for that company. So I think it's time that capital, as well as entrepreneurs, become more entrepreneurial in how we look at fundraising and what we're building. You briefly mentioned this build-to-buy model. I'm a huge believer in it. There's a complete mismatch of incentives when VCs want to put as much money into a company as possible, while strategics don't want to spend as much money as possible on an acquisition. Why aren't we working together to find ways to bring in the right amount of capital for a set acquisition price to bring progress in our industry and give young entrepreneurs the chance to build something, to really build a track record? I think it's time for all of us to start thinking a bit more like that.

Joe Mullings 08:35
Why young entrepreneurs? I know a bunch of older entrepreneurs. They're good too.

Gal Noyman 08:40
They're great.

Joe Mullings 08:43
Busted your shoes. Shai, when you think about the MEDX model and the build-to-buy model, and then the founders usually ideate a technology, generally speaking, engineering-wise or clinically wise, they come with a potential problem, yet we burden them with also having to raise money. Generally speaking, that's another unicorn. The number of CEO searches that I get requested to do say they have to be able to raise money. Is that realistic?

Shai Policker 09:15
No. And I would even challenge your first statement that the entrepreneur will have to come with the right problem because in many cases, they don't. We see—and I would take the risk of saying—more than half of the founders and managers in our companies are entrepreneurs with the right spirit, learning machines, great people who came to us with definitely the wrong problem. But we saw their ability to develop technology; they were great execution people with a lot of knowledge. We had to help them adjust and fit their talent to the right problem, which in many cases is posed by the strategic that wants you to build a bill-to-buy. This is the kind of matchmaking that you would need to do as an investor. Now, raising money is exactly the same. When you are solving the right problem and working with a strategic partner, suddenly it becomes easier—not easy, but easier—to raise your early-stage funding because you can demonstrate that there will be somebody waiting for that on the other line, even though the line is long and torturous and all that. So I think this is part of our work. It's not just to provide capital; it's to really steer the entrepreneurs in those multidimensional directions.

Joe Mullings 10:45
Gal, for you, you are especially focused in the digital domain, whether it's device or bio as well. We're seeing for the first time in device, I think in the history of device, we've been hyper-focused on things that typically serve as an episodic point of care. Generally speaking, now we're starting to pull technologies coming in from outside that had nothing to do with medical devices—AI, ML, large language models—and now creating this torrent of data coming in that perhaps you don't need to be a medical device vet on. How do you think about the entrepreneurs there that come in with no med tech experience or life science but are data scientists and are leading the company?

Gal Noyman 11:34
That's a great question. So first of all, I want to say two comments. It's important in software to have teams, right? We see multiple founders. The best thing to do is have people with different skill sets that tap into both the business and the clinical because you can't sell a digital device if you only speak ML and you don't speak the language of science. You just can't; you won't convince the strategic, for example, on the other side. So I think it's really important to have people speaking different languages. Now, I think what's exciting about the new wave of founders that we're seeing now is that if in the beginning of digital health or med tech, the people we saw were focused on symptoms, diagnosis, and improvement, now because we have founders that actually came not only with a tech background but also with experience from the early healthcare companies, they have a much broader perspective, and it really helps them in the building and creation of the companies. So I think you need to have, when you're looking at the best founders, those that speak the language or know how to tap into their co-founders that are speaking that language of science but at the same time are talking that language of tech, which is their moat, which is what makes them, in essence, special.

Joe Mullings 13:18
Ashley, so you looked up to your right when I said that about the data side coming into device and moving away from episodic. So do you have an opinion on that?

Ashley Seehusen 13:27
I always get a little bit overwhelmed when people start talking about their data plays because it's so overwhelming. You think about a physician or a nurse who's looking at all these different new, incredible, awesome tools for diagnosis and monitoring, etc. But really, how much can they actually process, and how much is actually useful? How do we take it from this overwhelming data set to useful information that helps them make decisions and is actually actionable for them? So I think it's something we're still figuring out how to do and how to do well.

Joe Mullings 14:00
I don't know if anybody saw that YC event. I think it was earlier in September, about Brian Chesky, who's from Airbnb, and he talked about the shift right now where venture comes in, especially this is maybe also for you, Shai, but also for my investors. There was this talk of a founder would come in, create a technology, and he or she would build that technology to a critical mass, and then the VCs would come in and say, "Listen, you've got to make this scalable, and you need to go out and hire people to manage these functions. Just hire the good people and give it to them to run." Historically, organizations have not done a really good job of that because those managers tend to manage across, up, and not execute down, and they're not that founder mentality. There's a push now for this founder mentality to come back in. You see it with Nvidia. We start it with Jobs, and again, everything can happen once you. But your thought on allowing a founder, the right founder, or the right founding team, to not hire professional managers but to push that technology through to that exit. So Adam, I'll start with you on that one.

Adam Rosenwach 15:17
Well, I'm biased because it's really interesting. Now that I start thinking about founders and CEOs, historically, investors always want that CEO and that person that's going to build out a team and blah blah. This idea of a founding team is strangely not so common in the stories that I see. I don't know if you agree because you see a lot more than I do. At Karidia and Deerfield Catalyst, we're four partners. I'm business finance, Marc Galpin is intellectual property engineering, Zor Engelman is engineering clinical, and Howard is an MD and clinical. Everyone invents except for me; that's fine. But if you have that team, the idea of staying, say, even through the pivotal trial, I think investors should start getting more comfortable with because historically, they haven't. They've always said, "Hire someone." We've hired people. It's gone well maybe 25% of the time—that's a problem. So another mind shift that we might want to think about is the idea of letting people grow and hire on teams that support them through exits in the company. There are examples in med tech of people who did that. Josh Maher did it from the beginning to the end. It's a few others. But I'm a big believer in this idea of staying for the long haul, from beginning all the way through.

Joe Mullings 16:43
Does the founder set a pace in the early days and set a culture in the early days that then once the venture team comes in or the investors come in and say, "Build a scalable, professional organization," and they start to isolate that founder and lose that secret sauce that got them to where they are today?

Adam Rosenwach 17:05
There is a compromise here. It's not black and white. Founders can have a deeper understanding of how to build culture and how to scale. That is absolutely possible if we can meet in the middle and bring that founder energy, that passion that only the person who started this company has, then we can all win together. But we have to meet in the middle. The founder needs to understand this.

Ashley Seehusen 17:32
I think part of it is finding the right team, right? Finding those people that can come in, companies already established, but come in with that entrepreneurial spirit and really get on board with the culture of the company instead of trying to change everything. You can make something professional without messing up all the special sauce that was there before. So I think, you know, doing lots of interviews, I always believe in trying before you buy, and having them come on as a consultant for a couple of months to really understand who they are and do they fit into the culture of this company. Because you can, I think, continue that entrepreneurial spirit. But if you hire somebody who's only worked for big companies, or they tend to be a little bit more conservative in the way that they look at things, they don't have that entrepreneurial spirit. It can be really painful for the team that's already there.

Joe Mullings 18:24
That's already been established in that culture of living out on the fringe all the time, and then the discipline of pulling them back into the middle. Shai, you've had to move and shift leadership there at MEDX, sometimes acquisitions and setting it up with professional managers.

Shai Policker 18:40
I think, like Adam said, this is not something that you can build based on a recipe. We do our best to start from a diverse funding. I like what Gal said before about that. I mean, people talk about the value of diversity. I don't think there is any other area where that is more diverse and calls for more diversity than medical devices. You need a biologist, you need a software engineer, you need a mechanical engineer, and you need an electrical engineer. They need to work together. So when we build those companies, we try to start not with just one founder but with a team that will bring as much of the required capabilities going forward. One of those, at least one of those founders, needs to have the ability to operate and have a look at commercialization and reimbursement and things like that. It's not always the case, so sometimes we do need to add talent later on; sometimes we need to do replacements. You know, this is a torturous road that requires changes along the way. Founders that embrace that and have the mental flexibility to learn—first of all, to be a learning machine and learn all the time—and recognize when they really need that extra talent, this is not something I can bring from myself. This is a great entrepreneur. This is when they think about the company or the venture as something that is bigger than themselves, and they so much want this to be successful, even at the expense of them losing some power. These are the ones that will be successful at the end. This is what we're looking for.

Joe Mullings 20:26
Gal, your thoughts on that? Is the construct that comes in and the playbook, do they get gaslit sometimes by the VCs coming in that they should build out this construct because that's the playbook?

Gal Noyman 20:38
I think that from our perspective as a fund, you know, the best founders are coachable. And they're connecting to what Shai said—they care about the company more than they care about their responsibility or what they're meant to do there, so they can play with others. When you think about the playbook, at the end of the day, as the company is hitting product market fit, they are going and looking for that head of business development; they are going and looking for that VP of sales to take it to the next level. They are consulting with the reimbursement specialist. The best founders don't, in my opinion, at least in digital health, they don't need me to tell them that—they're doing it themselves. Then they come to the VC and say, "Do you mind? I have this candidate for head of business development. Do you mind interviewing her? Do you mind interviewing him?" That's my role. I'm in the back seat, and I'm supporting where they ask me.

Joe Mullings 21:45
As the financing models evolve, right? So classically, we were primarily in the venture side or the strategics coming in, but that build-to-buy model, I want to go back into that where you already have a determined buyer. You might be using their clinical team as well as their quality team or quality system, and so you're trying to conserve cash there, and you have a predetermined number that you're going to exit on as long as you hit your deliverables. I mean, that's a really interesting opportunity. Do you change your decision on the entrepreneur on that one? And how much do you change it? Does it change your scorecard in some ways?

Ashley Seehusen 22:21
I think they need a different skill set to manage that because they have a lot more of that professional coming back at them or that they have to deal with. So having some experience in bigger companies is a good thing, or having taken a company a little bit farther is a good thing because, again, they understand who those players are. They understand how to speak that language and make sure that they're sort of meeting the things that the strategic needs. So it's very helpful.

Joe Mullings 22:46
Do you design governance into that early to make sure that that entrepreneur CEO is not having to contend with the buyer in advance, or do you step in as a venture person and help run that interference as required? Because I've seen it happen with some big strategics and robotics built personally on a number of fronts, and there was more time they probably would have been better off spending money raising than dealing with the politics of the large strategic.

Ashley Seehusen 23:15
Yeah, I think it's a case-by-case thing. It depends on who the strategic is, who your entrepreneur is, who you are, and how all those things play together. I think just being mindful of how you set that up and making sure that everybody's needs are met, but also that you have the right team around the table is really important because I think you're absolutely right. Sometimes that money is really hard—hard money, tough money. Reality, it's tough money. Sometimes having the wrong investor is worse than having no investor. Adam, you and I have had many conversations around build-to-buy. So your thoughts on that, on the founder, entrepreneur, and the build-to-buy? Can I have 10 entrepreneurs as my first hires?

Adam Rosenwach 23:55
I think so. Typically when I think about build-to-buys, these are more technical problems. You don't need a visionary; you need someone who can brainstorm, say, 10 different ways we can solve this problem. But it's going to be usually an incremental improvement off of a major business of a strategic. So preferably that person understands how to function within a more corporate environment and is a much more structured person in terms of finance and deal-making. I think that that person should completely stay out of that, and it's the capital's responsibility—the people providing the capital's responsibility—to manage the strategic because at the end of the day, this capital is not venture capital. This build-to-buy—you’re not going to get a 10x on your investment; you'll get a 3x with a much lower risk. It's a new model that's going to require new players.

Joe Mullings 24:53
And where do you think—any prediction on where that plays as a percentage? Is it five percentage points today? Do you see it growing over time? Make a prediction.

Adam Rosenwach 25:01
I could see it going up to 15-20% with the way—with the amount of acquisitions. Although there has been an uptick in acquisitions recently, and there's been an uptick of major investments recently, it would make sense that there will be more of these strategics that are more cautious to go for these huge pie-in-the-sky ideas and acquisitions and want to focus more on bringing in more revenue from their big revenue generators.

Joe Mullings 25:30
Shai, with that in mind, and I want to get your response to that, but I also want to ask, does that change the profile of the quote-unquote entrepreneur? Does that allow somebody who spent 20 years in a corporate environment to come in, in a build-to-buy model? Does that open up the candidate pool, if you will, and close it down in certain areas to Adam's point?

Shai Policker 25:51
First of all, I have to say my experience is slightly different than what Adam describes. When we have those relationships with the strategic that it's really like a build-to-buy, you cannot disassociate the founder or the leader from the strategic. The interaction is not just about capital and milestones; it's about sometimes the small details of how do you really make that best fit what the strategic wants. At some point, 95% or 99% of the discussion is very technical with a large team of the strategic, and sometimes you can be in the room; sometimes you can support it, especially in the beginning when you know the people more, and you can be the bridge. But after a while, when things go well, this is between them. They can work very nicely. We've seen that. If it's not the case, if you cannot leave the entrepreneur alone in the room with the strategic, you would have a problem. You cannot guard them all the time.

Adam Rosenwach 26:54
On the finance side, that's when I separate. On the technical side, no, then I think they absolutely should be talking about strategic. I'm with you.

Shai Policker 27:05
I have to say that I don't see a major change here. Sometimes we don't know in advance that it's going to be a build-to-buy. That's one thing. So the founders we are just—these are the founders that we found. But I don't think that would change dramatically what we are looking for in most cases. This is where I agree with Adam: the kind of capital planning of the company is something that we help with. We will help; we would help with if the entrepreneurs can do it or can be independent, that's great, but it's really not a requirement. We can definitely support it. If it's something that is becoming a build-to-buy, yeah, it should still have the most important qualities are the same. It's this kind of, you know, very focused on the target, learning all the time, communicating, understanding, knowing what you don't know, and admitting it, and being flexible. These are the things that you need in any— even if you need to commercialize and do an IPO eventually.

Adam Rosenwach 28:13
When we say build-to-buy, though, I definitely do not mean a strategic investment. I think it's important, like, we show a big difference here. A strategic coming in and saying, "Hey, this is something that we would acquire," and they have like a right of first negotiation, whatever, is one thing. I think that's more the traditional model. I think that actually a lot of VCs want that now, although I am not sure sometimes why, but that's a whole other conversation. The build-to-buy model is, I think, a much more technical one that controls really the price of acquisition and the amount of capital. But there is a ton of interest now by most VCs to invest in something with a strategic that's lined up with it.

Joe Mullings 28:57
Gal, your thoughts on that?

Gal Noyman 29:01
It's a question. If you're talking about venture formation or partnering with a strategic early on, I think looking from the lens of LionBird, I would tell you that a lot of the founders wouldn't take the dilution. A lot of them that I know are, especially as we see the flow of talent coming from other software domains now into digital health, they're hungry. They want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg and go, go, go show them reality. Because, you know, they just want to try. I one-touching med tech. I definitely see the potential. I think there are a lot of playbooks that are already written, and founders don't need to work so hard when we're talking about reimbursement, when we're talking about going through the clinical trial, when we're talking about setting up distribution or whatnot. It does make sense. The question is always, in my opinion, do you have to compromise the quality of the talent of the entrepreneurs in these types of companies? The answer will probably be, it depends. It depends on the space and the strength of relationships, by the way that you're bringing as a venture builder to what you're offering these founders.

Joe Mullings 30:32
So we're inside the last couple of eight minutes here. So real quick question. If we think about a build-to-buy, a large amount of the risk is mitigated on the creator side, and hopefully the risk is mitigated to a certain extent on the buyer side. As you know, an organization that's built more than 900 startups, I know the talent shift occurs when there's an emerging tech startup that doesn't have to worry about funding. Karl or Sally from J&J will look at that kind of startup now, whether or not they're entrepreneurial enough for that. Come back to, I don't know if it was yours or Adam's, is then it's an execution play more than a wing-walker play. So as an investor, do you start to look at the talent differently and become more inclusive of somebody who sat at a 20-year company out of St. Jude when the technology there is an execution play?

Ashley Seehusen 31:37
I think the answer to most questions is, it depends.

Joe Mullings 31:42
How to pick a side key on.

Ashley Seehusen 31:46
I think it opens up more doors, more opportunities for different people and being creative. I think, you know, it's all about the individual who's sitting in front of you and what do they bring to the table? What do they need help with? Are they coachable? Can you bring a team around them that supports them in ways that they know they need, in the ways they don't know that they need quite yet? And how open are they to that? I think, you know, if you take it from that perspective, sure, it opens up who you can consider for those roles.

Adam Rosenwach 32:15
There's also making a deal with a strategic, and they say, "Hey, we want this person from our strategic to run this." And then there's, "Oh, this person from J&J went to Joe and said, 'Hey, I want to do my own thing. I'm sick of this.'" This is more like corporate-ish stuff, and that person's a great hire for this sort of situation. The former, where it's just someone who's getting assigned to a project, I think we're going to run into a lot of the corporate issues, and it could be very hard for them to be an entrepreneur.

Ashley Seehusen 32:44
I think it depends on who that person is. Okay, we've had some experience there, and, you know, again, I think it can be really hard. You have to have a really good relationship and be really honest with your feedback. But I do think you can make that work, but they have to know that this is going to feel different, and you played at your strengths, but then you also need to be open to all the other things you don't know about, and you're coaching them in a different way than you're coaching somebody who has, you know, who's an entrepreneur but doesn't have all the corporate experience and all—like putting all the things together. It's just a different coach.

Joe Mullings 33:17
So going down, starting with you, Shai, got a couple of minutes left. There's a 24-year-old engineer. She gets out of school, out of university, with her master's degree, and she's an entrepreneur. You know, she sold lemonade, she walked dogs, she painted houses, and she has no interest in working for the system, but she comes to you at 24 years old. What is your advice to her?

Shai Policker 33:41
So usually we would actually give them—these are like, you know, students right out of school. Sometimes we would work with them as, you know, they would be doing some engineering work in some of our companies and then say, "Well, I want to start my own company." Our advice would usually go to one of those large corporations or even like a mid-sized company: get the experience and the structure and all the quality regulatory, you know, you know, white hair a bit, and then come back. You will do a much better job at that point compared to now. But sometimes you cannot stop them, and that's what they want to do. In those cases, you just have to coach them more and give them more support. Sometimes they would succeed. I mean, I can show you examples again. This is such a very colorful world, but let's say for the unknown 24-year-old, do a few years in an operational company; it will help you. You will learn a lot from that. You will make fewer mistakes in the future, even though I hope you come back to me afterward, but that would be my advice.

Joe Mullings 34:55
Michael, you want to add to that or challenge it?

Gal Noyman 34:59
I think that typically, this is just the beginning, right? You need to have an edge, and you need to have some experience. Probably I would say something similar in the sense that you need to go and experience the world and get the domain knowledge, which in our industry is critical, and then go do what you want. You can take up a management position if someone will let you—amazing. I'm more than happy to, especially with female founders, I'm more than happy to mentor from time to time. But especially in today's market, you know, you need more. We see incredible teams. It gives me a lot of hope. We see incredible teams with a lot of experience.

Shai Policker 35:46
It's about—it's like what Ashley said in the beginning. It could be a Mark Zuckerberg, right? It could be a 24-year-old, amazing model business. It's a high-risk bet. I prefer to take a much, you know, much lower risk bet.

Adam Rosenwach 36:06
We have one in this room, Eddie, who joined Karidia. We were then—how old are we? 22? 23? Eddie's absolutely entrepreneurial. He started as an engineer. He had a project he came in with; he worked on a bunch of projects. Eventually, he spun out for a bit with our ventilator that we founded during COVID, and he came back, and now he has more of a leadership position in our new companies. I think that is, if an organization is capable of doing that—of starting someone, spinning them off—they come back at a higher level and keep doing that. That's a great way for an engineer to grow and learn.

Joe Mullings 36:50
Ashley, bring us home on that one.

Ashley Seehusen 36:51
You know, I, Shai, I'm with you. Sometimes, like, you know, go have the experience, see a project from beginning to end. But I also feel like you can do that in a small company too. In a small company, you can stick your hand up and say, "Oh, you want someone to go, you know, interview regulatory consultants? I'll absolutely go do that!" and learn. So it's all about how much you're learning. You know, what's the experience that you're gaining? Like you might not go out and be your CEO the first time around; that's okay. That's appropriate. But if you can start putting all the pieces together that will make you a great CEO the second, third, or fourth time around, like absolutely go for it.

Joe Mullings 37:27
So clearly, we've got a lot of pathways to entrepreneurs in startups in medical devices, in the changing acceleration of technology now in med tech. I'd like to ask you to thank our panel for offering their insights and advice on it. Thank you.