Web3, NFTs, and Decentralized Science: The Most Important Topic That You Don't Understand (But Should)
Scott Pantel 0:06
Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for what? No doubt will be an interesting session.
I have my esteemed colleagues here, Omar khateeb. Henry pack, Scott Pantel, it's a pleasure to have all of you here. And today I will play the role of the guy that doesn't know a lot about the subject we're about to cover. And I don't have to act. Okay. But all joking aside, one of the things we like to do at the summit is we like to introduce new technologies, obviously, we'd like to introduce new leadership. And these two gentlemen here are represent both of that they're on the cutting edge of technology, they support medical device companies that are innovating, but they also are innovating in their own individual ways. And so we started talking about this concept.
Omar Khateeb 0:55
I don't know, a couple months ago, it all came together. And what we have prepared for you today are things that exciting an educational session, where I believe that we're going to lay out kind of the framework for what we're talking about here, then we'll get into some questions. And at some point, hopefully, we can open it up to q&a. So again, welcome. I hope you enjoyed your lunch. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Omar. Absolutely. Well, thank you all for joining. I'm really excited to be here. And, you know, before we get into it, we want to kind of do like sort of a quick, high level introduction as to like what all this means, I think it'll provide better context for the audience, you can ask questions, Henry, and I joke, because we're trying to bet like, who's gonna end up standing first, because you both prefer standing, but since I'm talking first I'm gonna I'm gonna beat him to it. But for one thing that I want to sort of acknowledge and say, you know, thank you to Scott, because I think he puts on such a fantastic event. You know, my background is that, aside from being like a new expecting father, and with a wonderful wife, who's here as well, you know, I spent the last 10 years in surgical robotics, AI, predictive health, formerly in med school and decided to drop out and I was in SAS for a year, and I missed a med device so much that came back and more specifically, this conference, I just wanted to acknowledge Scott for, you know, putting something on like this, because it's what makes this industry great. So we can just kind of give a round of applause for that.
Scott Pantel 2:23
If we look at all the companies today, on planet earth, 70% of them that are billion dollar, unicorns, so on and so forth, they all utilize network effects to get where they are. And 70% of the market cap and value that you see in the in the market today came from network effects. What does that mean? If we look at where the Internet came, right, if we think about these different phases of what what web one and web two, think about it, the 80s and by the way, if you guys want to close your eyes to imagine this, I highly recommend it. Just listen to my voice. It's very good. In the 80s, we had PCs, personal computers, you had a desktop, he had some programs on the desktop, and then he had a database, right? Get to the 90s When I was a kid, right? Internet, right? Windows 95 comes along. AOL online, remember the little yellow envelope that comes out? Right? So we had the web, the web, right web browsers, we had websites, we had the internet, right? And servers, physical servers that were in the room, right? We get to the 2000s. Right. And that's where things start getting really interesting. So these companies I mentioned. Say Uber, Airbnb, the things that talk about network effects, where, again, the value of the network keeps doubling and growing in value. But in terms of the computing power, we went from a huge room that had an entire computer, and the network was limited to that room to what we have in our phones, right? This fits in our pocket. But the network on this is global, right? Things are getting smaller, getting cheaper, getting faster. But getting more powerful is what web 2.0 was about was mobile phones, social media apps, and the cloud. Right? The playbook for web 2.0 was network effects. You have a smartphone with a good connection. And that enabled user engagement, content creation and media digestion, at scale. 2005, there's 1 billion Internet users worldwide 2005. 2019 that was 4 billion. Of those 4 billion, 3.9 were mobile phone users, and 2.5 were smartphone users. Now, how many? Any anybody want to throw a guess what that number is? Today? Just three years later? How many mobile phone users do you think there are in the world smartphone users? 2000? thought 2019 was 2.5. Anybody want to throw a guess? 2.6 2.6. Thank you
Omar Khateeb 4:33
no, it's up to so I can't find how many internet users are. But through all the datasets I looked at there 6.7 billion smartphone users. Okay. So things are getting faster and faster. Which brings us to web three. Web three is about VR, AR, so Virtual Reality augmented reality and the Internet of Things. It's about blockchain, which Henry is going to talk about in a moment, right and artificial intelligence. The last thing I'll mention about this
take it from there is that what I just described to you about where we came from where we are today. These are old protocols. This was a world designed so that two computers can share information in a static way. Web one was like static images, static pages. Web two is about social media and connection, right? Web 3.0 is about what human beings have historically tried to do forever, which is control things. This is about the first time that we have protocols where human beings, artificial intelligence and machines can manage and coordinate activities in both the physical world and the digital world at the same time, and please keep in mind that I didn't use the world word real world, there's no such thing as a real world anymore. These two things are becoming the same thing. And they're blending because we're all technically a walking version of a singularity. We have these phones that are enabling us, right. And the last thing I'll mention is that when I talk about AR and VR, we think about these things as toys, right? But it's much more than that. And that's why we think about the Internet of Things and blockchains and NFTs because 50% of our brain is visual, right? There's a reason why even some of the investors in here who are like 60 years old, 70 years old, are using emojis to communicate, it's faster. We're visual animals, right? 70% of the receptors we have there in our eyes, it takes us 1/10 of a second to look at something visual and get all the information about it. So web three is about extending our imaginations and ideas into these different modalities to control these activities between us, AI and computers. And with that, I want to hand over to Henry to talk about what blockchain is what cryptocurrency, what NFTs are and after that, we'll get into a lot of fun q&a.
Henry Peck 6:45
Yeah, I'll keep it brief. Thanks, Omar, I think a really nice introduction to the type of technologies you've seen through the internet. Real quick. I'm a I'm at a company called Altoida. I am director of marketing it's a neurological disease diagnostics company that uses an AR platform to extract data from smartphones, so very familiar with a lot of these protocols. I'm also a digital native and early crypto adopter NFT collector, early GameStop. investor for any of you guys who are part of that is true by the early game, all things, all things kind of fun and emerging in the internet. And I've taken a lot of that energy and knowledge into healthcare now partnering with folks like Omar and innovative leaders in the space like Scott, to try and help educate the leaders like all of you in our industry, so that med tech can lead in this new technology rather than falling behind. So when we think about web three, from a practical perspective, you know, Omar touched on a lot of the the tools and technologies that are there, I just want to baseline with some quick terminology. And if you get one thing from this panel, hopefully you can now go home and talk to your kids, nephews, grandkids, whatever it may be in the terms that they're using. So the blockchain is kind of the global infrastructure that we're talking about. Everything is built on chain, as we would say, which enables transparency, access, and a ledger such that when something happens, anyone who has access to that chain, whether it's a transaction, whether it's communication, can see because it's been validated by the different blocks that surround it. So as opposed to traditional internet, where if you open your phone and do something on Facebook, maybe you buy something, you know, only they have that data. If I'm in a blockchain environment, and I purchase something using something on that chain, and I'll get to currencies in a moment, then that transaction is traceable. It's public. And it's been confirmed by all the other eyes that are watching that system. And so probably the most popular application of blockchain technology has been in cryptocurrency, creating tokens, things that live on the blockchain, things like cars that drive on those roads. And those currencies are traded like assets, they fluctuate in value, they can be used to transact and those are things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, newer blockchains with coins like Solana, Cardano, right, AVAX avalanche, as they call it. So there are many, many different chains. And one thing that's important to remember is that the cars that drive on one road don't exactly drive on the other road. So if I build something into the Ethereum blockchain, and I want to purchase something that lives in the Solana blockchain, those are different roads. So there are ways to move between, but understand, you know, Ethereum is the name for the entire chain, and the token the Ethereum coin is what drives on those roads. And so we think about that coin, an asset like a currency is fungible by nature, meaning if I have one Ethereum and Scott has an Ethereum, and Omar has an Ethereum coin, they're all worth the same. But non fungibility means that each one of those tokens would be unique and therefore have their own unique intrinsic value that special to that token, and that's where you have the term NFT's non fungible tokens, and we've heard about these we see pictures of monkeys selling for millions of dollars and little you know, crypto punks, as they call them the emoji looking guys, but what's happening there is that each of those tokens just
Like the Ethereum coin as a token, those images are linked to a token. That's the visual representation of that token that lives and transact on those roads and holds its own value. And when I've talked to people, and they've asked, you know, kind of why, why do these things have value? Why are people paying millions of dollars for these pictures? I always kind of equated I've been living in the Bay Area for the past few years. And if any of you guys have been in San Francisco, you know, it's phenomenally expensive to own real estate there. I imagine it like if an alien came down and looked at that house, they were like, Why is that house worth millions of dollars, it's tiny and small, and you know, who would want to live there? But what you don't see is the value of the land, the real estate, the technology, infrastructure, the schools, the history, right, all of that stuff. And I think that's what NFT is, what you see in the news is a picture of monkey sells for millions of dollars, you don't see what that key is giving you access to what gate, it's actually unlocking the community behind it, the resources, those people have access to the network and all the things that that key gives you. So again, an NFT, just like a coin or a currency, they are both assets or tokens that move on a blockchain. And then a DAO is the last one, I want to cover a decentralized autonomous organization. Think of that like your company. Rather than being built where you have a lot, you have a board that makes decisions in a closed room. And then individual employees or people that work there, they receive salary that's determined now and you're back there, and they don't know how decisions are made. But decentralized autonomous organization is a company essentially, that is built using smart contracts on the blockchain. So voting, governance, decision making communication, it's all built into the blockchain, rather than in traditional environments. And so these companies have become outstanding vehicles for a lot of the things we're going to touch on in financing and building community in in, in investment opportunities and in healthcare applications.
Scott Pantel 11:49
That's great. So by the way, they've explained this to me about five times and it's starting to starting to really hit me right now.
Omar Khateeb 11:57
Scott, so something I do want to want to share because Henry is absolutely right. And, and a lot of my education actually came through through Henry on on this, and we we've known each other for many years now. And so I was excited to you know, for us to collaborate on on the med techs, first NFT project, you know, so when it comes to fungibility, right, it's something that can be transacted in the physical world, like, here's $1. Right? So this dollar is the same as the dollar that's in your pocket right now. Right? Do you think this is fungible? Yes, right. Until I tell you that this dollar is not fungible. Because I at home, I have an official certificate and a letter from Warren Buffett saying that this is the first dollar he made when he was nine years old investments for his company, this has now become a non fungible asset in the real world. So again, on face value, a picture of a monkey with his eyes bulging, is now worth $2 million, until you realize what's actually authenticated behind it. So
Scott Pantel 12:53
That's great. Okay, so I'd like to we have a group of med tech and healthcare innovators here. So and I applaud you all for being here, right? How does all how can this all start to even relate to health care? How does health care tie into this? It's interesting, we're learning but why should we care with respect to our industry? What are some things we should be thinking about?
Omar Khateeb 13:18
Sure, let me set this up. And Henry, I want you to drive this home more. So I, to Henry's point earlier, we do these things, because we need to as an industry get better about getting ahead and thinking about how these technologies impact what we do. So perfect example of let's say an NFT. And blockchain has that. Look, I'm a patient like everybody else in this room, you know, it's a royal pain for me, is when I leave, let's say Kaiser, and I go, let's say with a different, you know, insurance company, I go to my wife and I moved from Silicon Valley to SoCal. And I have to regurgitate all my patient information over and I'm 35 years old, I remember what if you're 50 years old? What if you're 60? What if you're stressed out you forget, and that happens. There was a something when one of my family members has Hashimoto, Hashimotos thyroiditis, right. I forgot that. What if I have that on an NFT that I'm able to transfer? It follows me from hospital hospital? And let's say that NFT expires, right. So next year, there might be some new things in my patient data, right? So I'm gonna have a new NFT, or a new token for that. What do I do with the one from 2022? Well, what if as a patient, I say, Well, you know what, I don't need this. So I'm going to loan this out and get paid by these med tech or biotech companies who want access to my data. And I'll give them this NFT and they can use use it for however they want. But I want Henry to kind of take it take it further now.
Henry Peck 14:39
And it's a good it's a good tee up. I mean, patient data ownership is obviously one of the bigger problems in healthcare and you know, a lot of people will roll their eyes the interoperability is not there yet. You know, how could you possibly bring technology like this to a system that still runs on Epic? I think part of the thing to understand here is that in this Web 3 world, we are now kind of moving the needle with a lot of a lot of these things, it's not all meant to kind of, you know, land slam dunk, make it into the industry tomorrow and change everything, but it's kind of continuing to advance things. And so in patient data ownership is, as Omar said, I'll give an example in genomics. And you guys ever used 23andme, to sequence your genome, right? Congrats, you got robbed. And what that means is you got kind of hosed by 23andme, you gave them money to take your genomic data, give you some interesting insights, of course, but then turn around and sell it to Roche and make a ton of money. So in a world where we can apply web three to kind of cut out that middleman individuals can organize themselves in a decentralized autonomous organization, a DAO that would send you a genomic sequencing kit, your genome would be linked to the NFT that you've purchased and hold, and therefore the token of that DAO has inherent value.
And by sequencing your genome, you've now created a genetic database that that DAO can use to transact with pharma companies and individuals that hold that NFT or the governance token of that DAO can receive compensation for it. So basically removing a middleman in data aggregation and data storage and data sale. As Omar said, there's a ton of other applications to beyond just patient data, which is a really messy landscape, let's even take kind of the research aspect where you have patients trying to participate in clinical trials and, you know, looking to engage depending on regardless of the wearable device they have, if you use Apple's kit to do this, or Fitbit to do that, if you can create a decentralized framework by which clinical trials can be selected agnostic of that device, you then open up the landscape for more to participate, you can use these technologies to realign incentives in industries like pharma, where drug development is, you know, historically owned holistically by the pharma company, you could have patients be you know, kind of the drivers of drugs of med tech of therapeutics of interventions, all these things. So, you know, when I think about web three, and where this technology can apply, and decentralized science and healthcare, in med tech, it's you know, about it's about the fundamentals are changing, ownership, changing the ability to fundraise and finance things, and changing the way that we think about compensation and engagement to work. And there's a whole bunch of other applications in investing, you know, fundraising vehicles to purchase things. And I know there's some fun examples of DAOs that have bridged into the physical world and the real world or the physical world and the digital world. There's a DAO called constitution DAO this will be my last thing to pass it to you. And you may remember in the Constitution was like up for sale. So a DAO formed where individual people bought the token of that DAO to fill a treasury to try and buy the Constitution. And they got really close, you got to very close and there are now DAOs popping up all over for these types of things, DAOs that want to buy golf courses, DAO that want to buy NFL football teams, you know, there's a DAO right now trying to buy the Denver Broncos. So this idea has also been applied in med tech and healthcare. There's a DAO called vitaedao, which is fundraising and investing in longevity biotech, a DAO called psyDAO. That's fundraising and investing in psychedelics. So it's only a matter of time before individuals in med tech start getting smart and saying, Well, you know, beyond the traditional venture model, which I know is a big thing, you know, a big theme of a lot of what we're seeing now, beyond the traditional venture model, there are opportunities for individuals with passion and influence with regulators, whether their patients need advocacy, and, you know, there's a lot of value they can bring beyond capital to pool and use decentralized frameworks to invest.
Omar Khateeb 18:29
Something I was gonna mentioned, like to Henry's point. You know, when we hear things like this, it's like, oh, I don't think that's does anybody know, the world's largest hedge fund? Anybody know? What is? Its its, its Wall Street bets on Reddit. That's the world's largest hedge hedge funds, right? Because that's what happens when you start pooling mass mass amounts of people who's gonna throw in like 1000 bucks. 2000 bucks. $10,000. That's literally the world's largest hedge hedge fund at this point. So you talked about timing, like we're getting close. Healthcare, notoriously, we're a very, very slow moving industry. So like, make some make some bold guesses here. How close as an industry, are we actually embracing and implementing and like really doing something with these ideas? Yeah, and compare that to other industries, if you can? Oh, no, absolutely. I think I think a good good example is the project that we launched, which is the Mad device club. So you know, for me, I'm focused on sales and marketing. There's a very famous meme maker called the Mad device rep on Instagram was a huge following of eight 9000 extremely loyal, dedicated sales reps, right. So Henry, I decided, like, if we want to do a community based NFT, we should do it in collaboration with the mad device rep. So that's how it started. Then, as you guys saw, probably this week, we released a press release. We're very excited about it. But we partnered with Scott and LSI. So LSI is an official partner with that, right? So now you have somebody who's an innovator and product, somebody who's focused on sales and marketing, the most prolific meme maker industry.
Pulling together a community of very passionate driven sales reps who are looking to change things. Here's something interesting that I didn't predict this happening this soon, we have yet to launch and mint. We're going to be doing that maybe in a week or two. As of last night, 27%, 27% of the people who are on that waiting list are physicians. So what happens when you have a decentralized autonomous organization or even a channel where the people who are holding NFT our sales reps, but also physicians, and the world's best, you know, life science market research company, right? What are the kind of possible is what ends up happening? And I think those are the things that that we have to start considering. And we kind of want you to take it further and also like to predict, Yeah, don't hold me too. These.
Henry Peck 20:48
I think, you know, one thing in terms of firstly, kind of, like look at other industries, so you're already seeing some really natural applications of this in, in fashion, for example, that's become a big area where fashion and and you know, kind of ownership of assets, you're seeing the the value of things that we see in the real world, right, this suit in the real world versus the things that you put on your avatar in the digital world, equate in value, or at least have some of that value. And that's, you know, bleeding a little bit into this Metaverse concept, which, of course, comes with its own bag of worms. But the that is, you know, fashion is an opportunity gaming is an opportunity as well, where you can, you know, basically reward for time and have assets that are generated through those games. In med tech, where I really think the I think the innovation will first start in financing, whether that is financing innovation from universities getting things beyond tech transfer, using NFTs as forms of movable IP to, you know, to increase efficiency and scale there and kind of flipped some of the processes that were used to with patients being an afterthought to patients being the driver. And that is coming now, it's happening vitaDAO that was made investments already. So there are, there are there is IP in biotech and medtech that is currently owned by a DAO. So it's happening, I think the you know, in terms of what comes to market with patient ownership of their own data, probably like three to five years, I'd say is when you'll start to see individuals be able to have like a healthcare wallet, where I have, you know, multiple tokens and assets that are serving as a movable ledger of my own data. And then also where I get really excited too, is I think, just the way it's gonna change work in med tech, you know, in in the web three model, employment becomes very different. You know, you think about a DAO was your company, your early investors can be rewarded with NFTs that fluctuate in value, your workers can be compensated with the token of that Dow and contributors to a DAO, tasks can be assigned more easily, you can have more fluid employment dynamic. So I think it'll help scale expertise in our industry in a very short timeframe, where if you have companies that are leaning into these technologies, you can have core contributors from a variety of different pockets, scale access to the type of experts that you have in this room, people can be more easily compensated, and then work becomes more fun.
Omar Khateeb 23:09
Something Something to consider also, like, you know, Henry's correct, like about the about the funding mechanism. So we look at the music industry, one of the things that we always hear is how artists get screwed over by these labels. A lot of artists are saying, well, I'm not going to do this through I'm not gonna release my album through label, I'll do it through an NFT project. And I think Tory was a Tory Lanez he was the fastest to platinum because he sold a million of his NFTs to his music within an hour, right? So let's translate that to the event to the venture world. I met tech world on one side. And again, this is why this is one of the honestly reasons why I wanted to come back to med device. I love this conference. And this conference does a great job of really projecting ahead of the future. We didn't talk about this until just a month ago,
Mr. Wiel who's giving the keynote on equity crowdfunding, that's a new funding mechanism, right. Another one is, let's say a decentralized autonomous organization who buys an NFT. And rather than a, let's say, a third or fourth time founder in medtech. Instead of going raising money from venture capital, they say, Well, I'm gonna raise it from this group of med tech sales and marketing people because aside from them, just giving you their money, this is a network these are people that I can I can lean on to go to market. The other side is that and I want to be kind also to the venture firms. There are some great ones in this industry, but as an example, every venture firm every VC has to you know, do a song and dance and jump through hoops to raise money from LPs or limited partners. Here's an interesting example and maybe I'm projecting here for which Sonder capital is is a is a firm that I respect a lot mainly because they have actual operators there so like Jay Watkins legend our industry Fred Moll legend our industry there's other people. So if Sonder capital said you know we can raise money from our LPS but we also want to start an NFT and raise money from the med tech community. I would buy into that NFT all day. Yeah. So what happens when you give
people, different modalities and channels to get money to do these different things. Because again, think about the world that I just described, you know, from PCs, to 1,2, and web three, we're ending up with more and more channels, right to do things. And that's why, if I'll give you a prediction, the economy is going to probably go up 10-20x. Because think about the world that I just talked about, Henry, I keep mentioning this. There's the physical world and the digital world. There's a physical world that I live in. But then there's multiple digital worlds that I personally live in. There's the Twitter digital world, there's a Facebook, digital world, there's the LinkedIn, digital world, all those things there, they take a certain amount of time, energy money for me, right. So those are the things I think they're gonna happen.
Henry Peck 25:43
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the challenges, I suppose that we face too, like one obviously, we know healthcare moves slow. One unique challenge, I think, for our industry is that as compared to other industries, like in the high tech space, in general, that are becoming more distributed by nature, right, a lot of that talent has been has been distributed. I think that is one big challenge that this space faces where like, a lot of med tech talent is still really concentrated in some major hubs. And so decentralization does open the opportunity to bring in talent from all over. But you're still kind of you are, it's going to take time, I think before some of that talent is dispersing and leaning in on that. Whereas, you know, your your Minneapolis hub, right, where you have all of that talent, all those companies concentrated. You know, there's a proven model for IP to market that's very kind of entrenched in some of those spaces. So I think decentralization presents a really new, a new way to think about it. But one that might be met with some resistance, long run.
Scott Pantel 26:42
I really, I love the tie in to what David Weil is going to be talking about tomorrow, Father of the Jobs Act. And he'll be here tomorrow talking about various items, but one of them is this, this idea of raising money from the crowd. And if you thought about raising money from the crowd a couple years ago, you might be scoffed at or told that you absolutely don't want to do that. And now people are definitely waking up to the opportunity. We talked about the community, letting people get in on things, your your, your your investors can become your ambassadors and ultimately become your patients. And it's all about community. And so I love the tie ins there. I think it's going to be really fascinating if we took some questions, but I don't want to get I don't want to get too far down the road. Unless you'd like to do that.
Omar Khateeb 27:25
Let's do it. Yeah, let's, let's see some questions. But just just so people have some something to kind of look at, when we talk about the equity crowdfunding, here's one that I could not have predicted and no offense to this company. But I like what they're doing. So there's a orthopedic company called Monogram, they do 3d printing orthopedic implants. So it's not something like wildly new, this company raised $23 million through equity crowdfunding, I saw their YouTube videos, I saw on Instagram, which is like, Hey, be an investor early on in this company, you know, $500 $1,000 $2,000, right, they raised $23 million.
Scott Pantel 27:59
Yeah, and I'll point out to you see a lot of a lot of folks from new folks, new entrants into our industry here. And frankly, I'm getting involved in helping support this ecosystem, where we have five companies here that are doing Reg A+, well that are embarking on or close to doing Reg A+ capital raise. And monogram is a great example of a company that's had a lot of success. And so when you look at the scale of, you know, look at that chart, and a couple of years ago, it's eh I don't know about it, then I need to start thinking about it. And then here we are, it feels like we're getting to the here we are moment really, really quickly. And so I think it's a, it's a really, really interesting tie into what you guys are telling me
Omar Khateeb 28:37
Paul Paul LaViolette, who, so Paul LaViolette was mentioning about the importance of being agile, and then starting to invest earlier and earlier. And I think the reason for that is that VCs can get in at an early stage company, obviously, there's a lot more risk, but you have a lot more upside. Because if you wait till later on, when the companies are proven out, there going to be other vehicles to fund and the founder is not going to have a reason to come to you if only if the VC is only providing just funds and nothing else. Yeah, maybe maybe jump jump into some questions.
Scott Pantel 29:06
Let's go to some q&a. But there's one here I like how can VCs and investors use NFT. So we already talked about that? A little bit. I think again, it we already talked about it. Okay.
Henry Peck 29:17
Somebody wants to know more. We can talk about it.
Scott Pantel 29:19
Somebody's got to have a question. Yes, please. Burke.
Question 1 29:23
Thank you this startup company, we live on the leading edge of technology. I really appreciate it. One thing I struggle with fundraising mechanisms from the layperson, if you will, as a life science company, our struggle and how we educate that individual, invest in the company as a layperson, and understand the risks they're taking. If I were to embark on a journey On the other hand, venture capital has an outsized control of capital right now. And they take out all the big returns early. And then the layperson doesn't get to participate. So I'm struggling with how to and I'm curious what your thoughts are?
Henry Peck 30:21
Yeah. It's, it's still a really Oh, I can start on you, you start, you start Oh, it's, you know, I don't want to I don't want to glaze over that it is high risk, right? I mean, a lot for everyone, you see, making a ton of money in crypto, there's 10 more people losing a ton of money, right. So it is still super unregulated. There are very few controls, it is hard for anyone to learn and manage. And historically, it's required a working knowledge of like the, the tools and technologies that you can even use to transact with that environment like if you know, the ability to set up a wallet to generate currency to then move it and just all that knowledge is has been hard to obtain. Now a lot of innovation is happening is a whole swathe of companies that are kind of building your foundational Internet tools for web three, the things that are going to help individuals kind of who have less of a kind of crypto native bent, come into this space, and we're already seeing that again, you know, for the like with the NFT projects we're doing, we've built out a crossmint ability so that you're able to mint the NFT just using a credit card, right so you don't have to go create a wallet, get you know, Solana, then do all this stuff like we've we've removed that technical barrier. On the fundraising side, I think something to also kind of just maybe frame a little bit these DAOs most of them in practice kind of function like benevolent oligarchies. So for example, scientific, the best way I can think about it is like the scientific investment ones that I've spoke about VitaDAO is an example that invests in longevity, biotech. It is not just you by the token, and then IP comes, everyone raises their hand, yes, no, and a majority wins. There are committees of experts and kind of a governance framework such that there are elected officials who hold expertise, whether that be in based science and research in fun and fundraising and safety, regulatory, that way, they're making sure they cover all their bases, and individuals with token can assign votes to those kind of validated entities. So some of those controls are being built in. And this is something I just wanted to bring it like one thing I love about the spaces, really smart people like yourself are asking these questions, and it's forcing new models, right, those first dowels, it was just pandemonium. It was like, buy and do that and then just see what happens. But now as we bring this technology into new spaces, and it's highly regulated environments, like healthcare, people are thinking through these things more actively and critically, and putting vehicles in place to prevent the individual investor. You know, even if you buy a token, and you make an investment, and you don't really know what you're doing. First of all, the power of the community kind of self corrects for a lot of that, but there are controls built in such that things are vetted and looked at properly.
Omar Khateeb 32:55
And now, you know, and so it's a good point about thinking about the layperson. But here's the thing, we said the same thing, you know, so I, in a former life, I was in med school, I was smart enough to drop out, though. Sorry for the doctors. But, you know, the same thing was said about, like, patients getting educated about their own health, right, there's, there's issues with that, but the lay person is getting, they're ending up with more disposable income. And now think about it like this, a lot of people aren't, you know, traveling for work. So they're safe, they have extra money to spend. The pandemic was a great boom for the economy, because people spend more time at home and they're spending more money, the lay person is looking to get rich. And you know, it's not it's not a zero sum game. There's ways for people to invest. And so just like the layperson might say, Man, I keep hearing about this Gamestop company, let me throw some money into this, right. They know the risks that they're taking, what this is going to force to Henry's point. And that was the purpose of this panel is that very much like philosophy, it's not about just how you think it's about how are we going to act? Right, what different actions you're gonna take. It's gonna force us as med tech companies to say, we need to get better, which I've been harping on this for eight or nine years, we need to get better about marketing. How do we tell a story better? How do we educate the public? How do we educate investors? Right? Because by doing that, right, it opens up all these new avenues.
Scott Pantel 34:11
And I think that, again, take take so a salesperson is a layperson, right. But they also have money. And they know how to look at things and pool together just like anybody else. Weak. Social media works, because we use tribes, Amazon works because we use the Amazon tribes to say this thing got 50,000 reviews, and it's five stars, it's probably pretty good. Right? So we use our own tribe to say, "Yeah, I think we're going to invest in this" and rather than one person spending all this time researching and making a decision on something, right, we start distributing the work and saying, okay, you know, I read these articles, someone's read these articles, blah, blah, blah, between me and let's say five other friends who are lay people we say, Yeah, this is good investment. Each of us are gonna throw 2000 bucks in it. Right?
Henry Peck 34:57
I think we also have to break down just last thing we have to break down the get rich quick narrative with crypto that's big, that's been a big, one of one of the biggest problems in the space is like individuals, again, all you see is what's in the news. And so you think it's like, all or nothing, I'm gonna, you know, make it bigger, it's all gonna go to zero. And the reality of the space is, it's not really like that, you know, some of these really early projects are like that. And if you, if you do your own research, and you want to be in that space, you know, again, there's a high level of technical fluency. But again, for the most part, the things that we're trying to sell here, and the idea of bringing this into healthcare is not a get rich, quick scheme. It's meant to be, you know, building and growing collaboratively and collectively, so that I think, just what you mentioned about telling the story.
Omar Khateeb 35:40
Last thing, I just want to point because I remember, Sir, your name again, Bert, I remember you because you asked, in my opinion, one of the best questions last year, which you asked, and I think we should ask it again, digital surgery panel, I think so that which is is it going to be someone within our industry, or from outside the industry that's going to come in and actually get us away from the old razor razor blade model? No, the world does not like change, it's very, very painful, until not changing is more painful than changing, right? And so with these new things, we have no idea what how they're going to influence things. So I think that's the other other way that this can catalyze those kinds of changes, including in the business model.
Scott Pantel 36:17
And that's great. And just to to follow on to that because I think it's a really important question as well, Bert, if I'm sitting here, and I'm considering going the traditional VC route, or maybe going this new route, and now I'm thinking about those potentially unaccredited investors and and that's precisely one of the things that David Wield is going to, he's going to add to what's been shared here today and talking about why we include not exclude. And there's a lot of philosophical elements to that. But I think please, if you can make it tomorrow, you'll you'll get some more detail on that
Henry Peck 36:46
Something something and we'll go to this question. This gentleman, it's just something to think about. Let's say you're raising money, what would you prefer? Or I'll give you two scenarios, would you prefer to raise $4 million from a VC? Or would you prefer to raise raise, let's just say, two or $3 million, and your investors, or let's say, 500 people who work and sell within the space and the specialties that you're trying to get to? And so now you have a sales force and marketing force that does not work for you have people who believe in what you're doing that are going to proliferate that message? I would go that with a ladder every day. The gentleman back here? Yes.
Question 2 37:26
Developing a drug delivery platform. I'd like your comments from the sales marketing standpoint, I'd really like to come in in terms of applying digital twin digital supply chain tracing authentication,
Omar Khateeb 37:41
I'm going to mention Yes. So the question is about applying these digital technologies to like supply chain authentication. I'm gonna mention one thing, and then I want Henry to take this because he's, he knows a lot better than I do. On the authentication side, one of the big, big, big problems in the pharmaceutical world is authenticating what drugs are real because there's a lot of counterfeit. These modalities, these technologies make it a lot easier because again, I mentioned in web 2.0, we had cloud web 3.0, we have the blockchain, which means everything's living on a public ledger, you cannot manipulate that. Right? So I think authentication in the pharma world is going to make it a lot easier, which means that we're going to have more efficacious drugs, which means that, you know, they're going to do what they're supposed to do, especially in the parts of the world where they need these the most, me living in the United States. If I don't get like antibiotics, I may not die in a week. But if you live in the third world, and you don't get the right antibiotic that's been authenticated, let's say it's like a cheap knockoff, you might die in a day. Right? And then your your family is going to die as a result of that. Yeah, that's kind of a grim example. I know.
Henry Peck 38:43
It's super happy, super fun. So whoever give me a light. I think when you talk about digital twin, I'd like maybe a little more follow up there because digital twin, I think in say, like clinical trials, for example, is a super exciting avenue. Can you have a new digital twin? Yeah, you can basically rather than doing like match studies, and you can create control groups using you kind of simulate responses to something and create control groups using a digital clone, if you will, of an individual from their data. So I think when we have access and ownership to these data's being able to own and monetize a digital twin that's batched for a purpose like that could be super exciting. I think the logistics side though with Blockchain is much more limited last by the technology and more by the infrastructure it's playing in. The other thing I'll call out to you is, you know, again, when we think about chains and things that are on chain. You're only as good as the roads sometimes. So if you guys heard of gas fees, that term mean anything, I didn't play that earlier. But it's you know, again, when you transact in the crypto world, there is a monetary fee associated with buying cryptocurrency or purchasing an asset. And Ethereum, which is a very, very popular chain for developers is remarkably high gas fees you know, hundreds of dollars that can be to purchase an NFT, just in fees that you pay. We're building on Solana, which is a much lower gas fee environment and same thing with Avalanche and Cardano, which are slower, just so they know. I you know, 1/20 1/30, it can be depending on the type of asset you're moving. But the reason I bring that up is that I think you will see an uptick in, in uses for the kinds of things we're talking about, once the scalability of the chains become more efficient, and the energy consumption is more efficient. The time the blocks that requires the time it takes to make those transactions are more efficient. So there has been like an ecosystem limitation and also just a blockchain limitation.
Omar Khateeb 41:03
Questions, who's got the next one?
Question 3 41:10
You're betting on basically, you're going through a proof of stake kind of mechanism or consensus to try to make this way better in terms of efficiency for the transactions and for you to be able to make it more commercially available.
Henry Peck 41:24
Yeah, I think there is all kinds of yeah, I think it's a good point, right? And it's kind of the way you owe it how how fast and efficient is enough to start, you know, to say like, that is where we are. And that's what we're building. And and there have been people who have had kind of had questions around like, Okay, well, everything gets built on Ethereum of now, when we are no longer using that really, as a utility chain, does it become worthless per se, the way I kind of think of it is lik, your like Bitcoin and Ethereum are like your gold and silver, they're really more reserve tokens. And the blue chip NFT projects that were built on on chain for Ethereum will likely hold value for a long time. That's my prediction. I think you're seeing a lot of developers who are smart contract developers build and Solarity, etc. They are moving to these newer chains, because it's easier to kickstart it's easier to test ideas, it's easier to find people.
But I don't think we, I think it becomes less about the there will be an inflection where it becomes less about the incremental differences in efficiency and speed, and more about the types of individuals that are native to that world. So for example, if you know if many artists are putting their visual art on chain in one environment that may see a lot of uptick in a certain community, whereas in healthcare, we may be more focused on a chain that's optimized around patient data ownership, and that's what you're seeing, you know, being built there. So I think it's kind of it might become more community forked. Think about like, even even we can use it in med tech and healthcare. It's an example like you profile the behavior of different physicians a lot right. Obviously, a lot of KOLs are on platforms like LinkedIn but you know, where a you know, where interventional radiologists may convene and have conversations might not be the same social media platform as the med tech business development guys are and your folks people. So I think you're seeing like you'll likely see that with Blockchain as well, where different communities will find different environments that make the most sense for them and start convening and building there.
Omar Khateeb 43:28
Is that I can is it Dr. Luis Almodovar. So just just to kind of get us that is Good eye. It's like yeah, and I hope you don't. Hes going off. Saying this. So. So here, so I don't work for their company. And we literally just met last night, but I want to use them as an example. So they have a very interesting technology, which is for suturing. They have roller base suturing, which I've never heard of in my life, but it's really the first time there has been any innovation in surgery in the last 100 years. Again, my background is I went to medical school. My father is a general surgeon I study surgeon surgery history very closely, right. So as they're looking at it, and their company's called Ergosuture, Ergosuture who Ergosuture as they look for funding. And I could be completely wrong about this. But because it's not SAS related, so on and so forth. Maybe some VCs investors, they don't get as excited about it. Right? So 5-10 years ago, Ergosuture would have a difficult time maybe raising money. I don't think they will because what they have I was really impressed with and I loved it. But let's say they say okay, we have some venture firms, we're going to come fund us, but every surgeon we show this to they lose their mind because they love suturing and this is this is this speaks to a huge, huge pain. Why don't we just do a DAO and issue an NFT where these 1000 surgeons who have attended some of our webinars everything they can buy that NFT they have special access to a community of surgeons who are going to focus on this new way of suturing called roller-based suturing. Right? And they raise money that way and they go to equity
Henry Peck 44:59
All right, I was gonna say this could be, again, this is a example that was not discussed. So do not take any of this, you know that way. But I think the one of the things in one of the nuggets in what Omar said there is, imagine a community of surgeons, using decentralized protocols to fundraise and invest, you know, the same way that a venture capital firm, they're excellent capital allocators, and they add value in their network and those types of things. Now, this surgeon DAO, that's investing, they can add value as key opinion leaders. If patients pool their money and invest, they can add value in regulatory discussions, clinical trials, right, that kind of recruitment and building patient registry. So I think that's one of the exciting things too, with decentralized investing, perhaps is that you build communities that have intrinsic value beyond just the money that providing
Unknown Speaker 45:49
Bert. There's other questions.
Henry Peck 45:53
Come join us up here we are Bert.
Unknown Speaker 45:57
I don't think i know enough to be up there
Question 4 45:59
it would be embarrassing.
Do you feel like the NFT concept could proliferate into all patient data. So if you're a manufacturer, you collect this data, but it comes with an ownership to that patient, you're capitalizing it, that's great. But that patient is either going to get something they're going to be able ttell you I actually want you to share that.
Henry Peck 47:11
Yep. And there's a lot of models, you can you can employ for that where there can be kind of a, you can create a company that functions as a central DAO that for that, for that application provides the imaging, you need to you need to if you provide the vehicle by which the data is collected, like when I mentioned that the genomes DAO that provides genomic testing. If you provide that. And then the DAO owns that data, the DAO was able to transact with a company that maybe wants that data in the startup environment or the manufacturer of some hardware data sharing. And then again, I don't want to get too much into what they call like the tokenomics of how the token would increase or decrease in value. But if you have a governance token for that organization, and that organization is able to use cryptocurrencies, as the modality for having those kinds of transactions, you can increase the value of the currency for all those that hold it. So not just the NFT for storage, but me as an individual with my genomic data sequence, I can hold this gene and known token for this organization. And as those sales are made, if I if I'm on the platform, I can choose, yeah, Roche can see it, j&j can't sure use it for clinical trials, but not for this, you know, I have that ability, that customization because it's valuable in high, you know, and that high volume. But the monetary compensation to me could come in a variety of ways, whether that's an increase in the value of the token that I'm currently holding, you know, direct kind of dividends back to me, there's tons of models you can use to set it up. And these are still being, you know, flushed out and thought through by really, really innovation, innovative people in the space. But what you make you make a great point, which is that it can proliferate, to so many use cases, wherever there is data being generated. Patients can have a cut of that in web three, it gives you the ability to control access to monetize access, I think, you know, I don't speak for everyone, but at least for myself, and a lot that those I've spoken to, I don't really mind, these organizations having my data, I know what they I know, they want to innovate with it. I know they want to use it to get better. I just want to be compensated for it, or I want to be invested in what's being generated from it. And I think that's kind of the missing layer there that web three enables is giving me the ability to, you know, selectively monetize it or not monetize it to allow myself to be invested in what's developed on top of it.
Question 4 49:30
Or perhaps demand sharing, agreed.
Henry Peck 49:35
Yeah, absolutely.
Omar Khateeb 49:38
I mean, small, small examples that, you know, these things stay the way they are, and stay locked up until the demand is there. So small, like small example. LinkedIn is a social platform like everything else. LinkedIn has dashboards where I can see data, right? Well, it wasn't, you know, they were locked. They were locked up and they were compared to other social platforms very strict about plugins what third party apps can get get into it. But because people demanded it because either it's they changed or they left the platform. Now, there are other platforms like, for example, shield app that provides 10 times better data analytics on LinkedIn for me, because it plugs into LinkedIn. And LinkedIn had to compromise and do that. Because either they allow that, so that I can have my data and do what I want with it and get better clarity on it, or I leave. And now on the monetization side, like it was just kind of coincidental. But like, even a few weeks ago, there was a marketing company, because based on the audience that I have, and the amount of content I put out, wanted to just pay me a one time fee, just to get access to my shield app to get the analytics of impressions, clicks, earn media, those kinds of things.
Scott Pantel 50:49
So, if we want to get involved, I applaud you guys, again, for having the courage. We talked about courage this morning to get up here and talk about these things that are out there. And I applaud the folks that are here that are taking it all. And I think we all have an advantage. The people in this room are my, for sure me sitting here getting educated on some things that I think in a year we fast forward to a year we're going to be having a different conversation about the things that we're talking about right now. If we want to get involved, people want to get involved, they want to stay connected with you guys with with respect to what you're doing. How do they do that?
Omar Khateeb 51:19
Yeah, I think yeah, the number one place where one you can see Henry myself and also the Mad device Rep, and Scott and LSI, we're we need to add them as well, is if you go to Maddeviceclub.com, that's the website where we talk about the firt, you know, it's the first medtech NFT based project, you can sign up, it's not going to guarantee you that you're gonna be able to mint an NFT. But at least you'll get the information to get you'll get the education and see the progression of that community. And he means that because there's a limited number, there is Oh, yeah, thank you. Yeah, there's a limited number, there's a limited number. So maddeviceclub.com Just go and enter your your, your email, and you will start getting the information and updates from us, which will include, you know, when we get to when we're going to mint, but also functionality updates from the community, you get to see in real time. So you guys heard what we're doing now with it in six to nine months, we'll see what kind of functionality utility that NFT has.
Henry Peck 52:12
Yeah, and I think, you know, maybe more broadly to kind of bring it back. It's nobody was like born knowing this. And I think there's this misconception that everyone in the in the crypto space is, you know, this young person sitting in their basement, you know, their parents computer, and they bet people have no idea what's going on in being involved in a lot of the projects I'm involved in, in the web three space. It's a really healthy mix of people that are innovative and forward thinking across all generations across all disciplines. And you know, a lot of functions, there's opportunity for, you know, whether you are an engineer, whether you are on the business of partnerships, sales, marketing, community design, there's, there's so much that is happening in this space, I really encourage everyone to kind of try and do a little, you know, do a little bit of research and go down some of these rabbit holes where there's awesome content where you can learn and form opinions. And I think again, just the last thing I would say is, I think we're moving finally, from the time when it's thinking like how can I get rich off of buying NFTs to how can NFTs and web three more broadly, enhance my business and augment what I'm doing today. And that's where I hope we get to in healthcare is like using these technologies as accelerants rather than things that we are afraid of, and shunning and kind of don't touch with a 10 foot pole.
Omar Khateeb 53:24
And I would say, you know, to Henry's Henry's point, something that I criticize our industry about is that we emulate our customers like every industry very closely. So our customers are very skeptical and dogmatic about things, you know, physicians. And so are we the one things that we don't do, though, and Henry knows where I'm going since I've like I ranted to him about this so often is that we don't embrace this concept of continuing education. Right? You know, and this is the purpose of this panel, which is when you have new education gives you a new way to think philosophy is not about thinking it's about what actions are you going to take. So take advantage of what you can call the second Gutenberg revolution, you have access to podcasts audiobooks, when you're sitting in your car, waiting in line, start getting exposure to this information, start thinking about it go through mental exercise of saying, Well, if we had to raise money through an NFT or do this, then what would that look like? Ask better questions, and you'll get better answers. And I think as a result of that, you'll start taking different and more important and effective actions. If you know that
Henry Peck 54:21
And talk to us. Tell us why we're tell us why we're wrong. Tell us why hit us up. We're happy to have conversations.
Omar Khateeb 54:26
Fight with us on Twitter. We're both on Twitter, just Yeah. Call us out. Don't be afraid. All right.
Scott Pantel 54:32
Well, this has been terrific. I think we should give these guys some recognition for getting up here. And I know they're going to be around for the balance of the event. Thank you guys for being here. We talked a year ago about doing some things like this. Here. We are doing it right and we'll come back in a year.
Omar Khateeb 54:49
No other place that we could have done a talk in the sandals, LSI and we appreciate it. We appreciate what you do for the medical community and the investment community and it's my pleasure. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Thank everybody for joining us.
