The transition from a cleared medical device to a commercialized product is one of the most perilous phases for a MedTech startup. While founders frequently anticipate the technical and regulatory hurdles of early-stage development, they often underestimate the "commercial valley of death." Success in the modern healthcare economy requires more than a functional prototype and clinical validation; it requires an exact blueprint to navigate the complex organizational structures of health systems, ambulatory surgery centers, and value analysis committees.
A primary pitfall for early-stage innovators is the discrepancy between clinical data expectations and real-world market entry. Founders naturally possess an unwavering belief in their technology to secure funding, yet this can inadvertently lead to an overestimation of rapid adoption and an underestimation of institutional purchasing complexity. Mitigating this pressure requires integrating strategic commercial leadership early in the timeline—often months prior to receiving regulatory clearance—to properly align the market profile and build institutional momentum before the product officially launches.
Choosing the right commercial framework depends heavily on the disruptive nature of the device itself. While traditional hiring mechanisms or independent distributors can be effective for incremental or transactional product categories, highly disruptive technologies and high-ticket capital equipment demand a deeper, more execution-focused partnership. Implementing a modern, fractional commercial model provides seed-stage companies with a capital-efficient method to engage veteran industry strategics, reassure investors, establish clear operational ROI for hospital administrators, and build a lasting culture of advocacy within clinical environments.
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In the medical device space, engineers often look at the "valley of death" as the difficult phase of raising money to move from a prototype to regulatory submission. However, there is a second commercial valley of death. This is the period after you get your official clearance from regulatory bodies (like the FDA), where companies frequently run out of money because they cannot figure out how to navigate complex hospital networks, get approved by purchasing committees, and turn clinical interest into consistent sales revenue.
Think of a hospital's Value Analysis Committee as a strict gatekeeper panel for the hospital's wallet. Years ago, if a doctor liked a medical tool, the hospital bought it. Today, a formal committee made up of administrators, finance staff, and doctors must review every new product. They analyze whether the device is truly better than what they already use, if it reduces hospital stay times, and if the financial cost makes sense against the hospital's annual budget.
"They underestimate the complexity of introducing the technology and actually getting it through the gauntlet of introduction to whether it's individual hospitals, health systems, ambulatory surgery centers, or even privately owned labs and institutions." — Ryan O'Mahoney
"In this modern day, and the economic climate, and the power that administration has... the clinical is not enough." — Ryan O'Mahoney
We want to hear from you. Have you encountered the commercial valley of death in your own medical device journey? Do you have specific regulatory, commercial, or operational topics you want us to unpack in upcoming episodes?
Drop us a line at podcast@greenlight.guru with your thoughts, questions, or guest recommendations. We read every email and look forward to delivering the personalized insights you need to confidently bring your innovations to life.
This episode of the Global Medical Device Podcast is brought to you by Greenlight Guru, the only dedicated medical device success platform. Moving successfully from innovation through the commercial gauntlet requires total synchronization across your entire lifecycle. Greenlight Guru's modern Quality Management Software (QMS) ensures your documentation, design controls, and regulatory submittals remain audit-ready and airtight during pre-market development.
Once cleared, seamlessly transition your clinical data collection into the real world using Greenlight Guru's Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solutions. Together, their QMS and EDC ecosystem empowers MedTech startups to de-risk their commercialization process, satisfy demanding institutional purchasing committees, and scale safely worldwide. Learn more at www.greenlight.guru.
Etienne Nichols: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Global Medical Device Podcast. My name is Etienne Nichols. I'm the host for today's episode. Today I want to talk about that valley of death and most medtech founders, they, they may have incredible technology, but they die in the valley of death.
And it's not the one you're usually thinking of for this audience. Maybe we're thinking of that time before submission or clinical trials, but in today's economy, we're actually talking about pro, prototype and global scale from getting your device cleared with the FTA and then onto the market.
And in today's economy, grit isn't enough. You need a precise plan to navigate that C suite, international borders, value and value analysis committees. So today we're going to look at the exact mechanics of how to bridge that gap, moving beyond why and maybe getting into the how of the market development and distribution in 2026.
And with us today to help talk about that is Ryan O'Mahoney, who is a. He's a commercial acceleration and strategist specializing in paradigm shifting medical technology. He's a founder and principal of Catalyst Ventures and former global Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Precision X Ray.
Ryan spent his career helping accelerate the adoption of breakthrough technologies across surgical robots, advanced imaging modalities and minimally invasive innovation.
He's held leadership roles at global giants including Stryker Endoscopy, if you've heard of them, Hologic startups like Exact Robotics and Cision Vision. He's successfully launched disruptive first to market platforms and developed go to market strategies for emerging technologies across the United States and internationally.
And today, through Catalyst Ventures, Ryan partners with founders, investors and medtech innovators to help bridge the gap between invention and real-world commercial adoption, which in building the systems, the strategy, the momentum required to bring transformative technologies to clinicians and patients worldwide.
And I know that's a long intro and I hope you'll forgive me for that, but I'll just go one step further because when Ryan and I first met, he described,
well, what we he said. His words was I have a Navy SEAL team who can help you get to market. And I think that is the line that I would use if I were getting rid of the entire thing.
That's what I would use. But anyway, Ryan, great to have you with us. How are you Doing today.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, Etienne, and thank you so much for that mouthful and the informative introduction. Really happy to be here. Happy Friday.
And hopefully some of my experience will help some founders or some organizations through this forum.
Glad to be on episode 453, I think, and great work for all the information you're bringing. I know most of these back and forths are your questions and then an expert or somebody sharing their expertise, but I think what's interesting recently, now that I've gone through a large majority of your podcast, is maybe collecting this information because there's a lot of these and collecting it and condensing it to, you know, whether it's chapters of a book or something, you might be onto something bigger outside of just the podcast.
So, yeah, nice work. Thank you for this.
Etienne Nichols: You may be hitting around about something that I've been kicking around myself, so. Yeah, well, maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that offline. But to your point, you know, I do want to get into some of the discussion questions.
There's a lot of information out there and you, you see all of this all the time. You see cool tech, and I know you've worked with a lot of different scalable businesses and you're constantly evaluating that gap in your mind.
What's the biggest lie founders are currently telling themselves about their go to market strategy?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, yeah, and I'm really, I'm happy about that question. I think it's, it's more. So, it's not necessarily a lie. I think that founders have to have this unwavering belief in the technology that they're representing or have created, and they need that in order to raise funding and to really generate momentum with the technology.
The challenge around it is that that belief, I think, ends up having an underestimation and an overestimation.
And what I mean by that is I think there's an overestimation based on clinical data that's available now, procedural volumes, and because of that, they forecast very high. And this is how we get high valuations, is how we get investment.
And it ends up putting them under the gun quite a bit because they underestimate the complexity of introducing the technology and actually getting it through the gauntlet of introduction to whether it's individual hospitals, health systems, ambulatory surgery centers, or even privately owned labs and institutions.
So I think it's not necessarily a lie, but an under and an overestimation that puts them in a difficult place and creates pressure that we at Catalyst and I think a lot of other people are starting to recognize can be alleviated with introduction of the right commercial leadership team earlier on in the process to start to introduce the technology, maybe even before clearance.
Etienne Nichols: So yeah, you're kind of getting onto the next thing that I'm curious about because when you talk about the right time for something like this, when you're talking about commercial strategy, a lot of people, I think they think, okay, we'll talk about that once we get the regulatory side cleared up. But when does the commercial strategy or when do you need to be pulling in that commercial expertise?
Whether it's someone like Catalyst or someone else, when does that really need to happen?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, and that's also an excellent question. And you know, now going through your podcast, I really, really fully understand all the different elements that come from and I can kind of see the founders perception and a CEO's state of mind where they go. We've accomplished so much.
We got from a prototype; we've gotten through the hurdles of a clearance.
Now let's just sell the **** thing and bring on somebody that's worked in the industry. They'll bring on people that they've worked with and let's just get this to market.
And I don't think it's always as simple as that. And I think the earlier and obviously there's too early. I think as you're getting towards final stages of FDA clearance, within, you know, a few months of the expectations, I think bringing on a commercial strategist, somebody that's either been an executive in that role or an organization like ours, can start to align the technology and the introduction because I think what you find is that and iterations are so important in startup, right? You go in one direction; you have to make some tweaks and changes.
And there's a lot of acronyms for this in the commercial world and acronyms for everything these days. So, there's an ICP and there's different profiles of who you think the end user might be and that might shift and change.
So, it's important to get a head start on that and to get the momentum so that when you do have the clearance, you can start to build that momentum. The analogy that I'll continue to use probably throughout today is I think one of the hardest parts after you get through the clearance and you get to the stage of actually trying to generate revenue and introduce the technology is getting the momentum of getting the train out of the station.
It takes an immense amount of effort and strategy to get that locomotive moving and then building on that.
So yeah, I'd say a couple months before clearance would probably be a good scenario. Understanding that you want to reserve capital, you don't want to hire a full-time person right away, but maybe some of these modern structures might be beneficial earlier on.
Etienne Nichols: Well, I can see, I can see several advantages if you were to bring someone in who's worked with many different organizations, not just someone who is doing this for the first time necessarily.
But you mentioned a couple different ways of doing this. One of them may be bringing in a commercial strategist from the outside, maybe in a fractional way or whatever. We talk about different methodologies here, but what are some of the different benefits besides just, you know, driving sales and revenue generation?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Right. Oh, perfect. Excellent point. And so, what I found in my experience with both our exclusive engagements and also some of the fractional work that we've done is that founders and their initial business partners, I think, find themselves between a rock and a hard place often where and every founder seems to walk this difficult, delicate line where they're trying to do everything because they don't want to continue to take on more investment and dilute their equity and kind of continue to make this challenging.
So, they're bootstrapping the founders, making calls to clinicians, if it's a clinician-based technology or based on having an engineer create it, and then the business partners making introductions and you're trying to sell it, you're trying to raise, you're doing a million different things.
I think what bringing on a commercial expert earlier can help do is it gives confidence to not only investors, it kind of changes the trajectory of where the company is because now, you're bringing somebody on, whether it's fractional or consulting capacity, or even a full-time capacity. If the investment's there, investors feel more confident that revenue is coming, that you're taking steps in that direction, that it's turning into a more formal, traditional organization and they want to capitalize on that value early, before it starts to snowball and actually generate revenue because then the valuation is going to be higher. I think it also opens doors to the exit, the final component of maybe why a lot of people create their startups.
You can engage industry strategics if you bring on somebody that's worked at some of the major, major med tech companies.
And so, I think you can potentially get investment from investors, but also strategics will start to look at you a little bit more seriously because they say this isn't an invention anymore, this is commercial.
And so those are things that I think maybe founders don't recognize. They just think bring on commercial when it's time to sell and they can bring them on sooner to help with some of the other activities as well.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I think that's a good point. And that's getting that perception out there, maybe changing things, that's, that's a big deal. And I, I can just hear founder’s ears perking up a little bit when they think oh, they're going to take me a little bit more seriously.
I have this strategist on board. I can, that makes a lot of sense. I can see that.
You mentioned the go to market strategy. I'm curious if there are different.
Well, I know there are different approaches. We've discussed it briefly. But what if we could discuss some of the traditional go to market frameworks versus the newer approaches, maybe some pros and cons of each.
I know, I'm trying to think if there was somewhere in the headlines, I think it was Stryker was changing some of their go to market strategy. And we don't have to get into that necessarily, but just, just what are the different go to market frameworks and strategies out there?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Right. Yeah, yeah, perfect. And so, you know, I soft launched catalyst ventures about three years ago.
the time I thought I was onto some revolutionary structure and, and process and over time as, as we've come to, to communicate and as we continue to go to the trade shows and, and, and recognize this little niche within this larger medtech industry, the more I recognize the traditional frameworks and kind of the people who've been doing some of the modern approaches, which is what Catalyst does as well.
And so, and I think there's a, a technology and a time for each of them and there are benefits to each of the approaches.
So, the traditional method is let's raise some money and let's bring on a commercial team, maybe a small team, full time hires.
And the challenge of that is if the proper framework hasn't been established and set up for the right momentum and you're starting from scratch; you'll bring on market development specialists that specialize in starting from zero and build.
But that still takes time. It takes time for them to understand the product, the call points.
You have to pay recruiters a portion of their income, their salary and all of that takes time and takes a great deal of resources before you really see return on investment.
So that's the traditional path which is kind of expensive but if you've raised great funding, that's, that's fine, that'll help over time. That's a good strategy, I think. And you have a lot of control with that strategy, right? These people report into your company, and you could talk to them as often as you'd like. Then you have the other side, which is consultants.
So, you, you get to use their endless experience and success to help guide you. And so, they, they'll help make some introductions for you, and they'll do so on either a fee basis or portion of equity as an advisor.
And you know the trouble with that. And it makes sense, it's great to get years of experience to help you. Really shortens timelines. But the accountability, the actual execution might not be the same as if you went with this other option, which is distribution.
And so, investors typically love distribution because they say these people have been selling this product into this market, in this geography, in this country, whatever it is, we don't have to pay them salary, we don't have to train them because they already know the space, they know the procedure.
Just give it to them and then we'll make the money from this. And it cost us next to nothing.
The challenge of that is it eats into your profit margin. Understandably, they have to be paid something, but you also, it kind of puts you in a difficult place in terms of control.
And so, distribution usually makes some level of commitment of how many things they can sell. And you kind of touch base maybe on a quarterly basis. If, if they're a newer distribution and they want to really give you updates, maybe it's a monthly basis.
So, for me, different technologies can benefit from these different models and something like a spine or a titanium screw for a basic procedure that's a new bioabsorbable, or if it's a different type of suture or anchor that's very similar to what's being used, but maybe has a cost effectiveness to it or a more simplicity of use.
Those can kind of be brought through a distributor and because it's a similar product.
But when you're bringing disruption, something completely new or capital equipment that's expensive for a hospital to acquire, you really want to have ownership of the entire process.
So, I think distribution is difficult in that way.
I think consultants will give you great advice and open doors but won't see through the execution.
And I think what we've seen in the modern day, this new fractional shift in idea, is that you can have a committed partner that actually does the deliverables with you and for you and also has that experience in that space.
And in this way, they're fighting with their reputation and yours to make sure that this gets adopted.
And you know, I thought it was revolutionary when I soft launched in 2023.
And every day a new consulting firm or a new expert who's either retired or driven and entrepreneurial is, I think, pursuing similar pursuits with slightly different backgrounds to help companies.
So, there's a lot of resources to do it and I think all of them have their own distinct advantages. But this is like a new hybrid approach which I think for early seed stage companies is really, really beneficial to conserve capital and have maximum impact on adoption.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, anytime someone has a new idea and someone else is doing it or done it, I just look at it as validation. There's nothing wrong with that. That's fantastic. And when I advise medical device companies, there are certain non-negotiable, non-negotiables I look for.
You know, obviously it has to be helping an unmet need, it has to be safe and effective. There's lots of different things because I'm, I'm on the earlier side of things.
But I'm curious, when you look at these medical device companies that you're working with, especially startups and advising them, are there any non-negotiables that you're looking at before you would tell them even think about placing a hire, doing, doing these different things?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Absolutely, yeah. And you know, I think when we reverse engineer why we got into this field and why we do what we do, you from the engineering side or me more from like the sales and leadership side, I always circle back to that because we have a passion and a commitment to help patients. Right. To make a difference in people's lives.
And we do that through helping clinicians deliver that care.
And we step that back by creating innovation that creates value to help the clinician to help the patient. And then we kind of go back through everything.
So, I think the framework when you're creating a technology that, that I look at and I wish I could take credit for it, obviously we all shuffle around what we've heard and learned over the years.
This one I distinctly remember who kind of taught me this process.
Brian Allen, who I worked with. Shout Out Brian, a wonderful executive leader.
And so, Brian said to me, when you look at a technology, you have these three pillars to consider.
And this is almost like in Monopoly. It's your pass go type situation. This doesn't even mean adoption's gonna happen. Profitability, you're gonna reach the curve and the technology survive. It's a pass.
Go and get started.
And so, what he said is, you want clinically, something that really Makes a profound difference.
How are we changing the patient and their experience? What is this doing to really help them? Could be the changing of the staging of cancer and there are many other deliverables.
So, what does it do for the patient? And I'll tell you, probably through our lifespan, this has changed drastically.
And initially, years ago, I think maybe even before I got into the industry, if you played golf with a clinician and they liked you and they liked the technology and it made sense and they liked it for their patients, they marched into the C suite and they said, we need this, start buying it.
And the C suite listened just based on clinical validation.
So, in this modern day and the economic climate and the power that administration has, the clinical is not enough and or often is not enough.
So, the next aspect that we look at is a technical component. And the technical component is what does this technology or what does this do to actually enhance the practitioner's experience?
What can they do differently or better than the status quo? Because when you're introducing a technology in any form, it has to be better than status quo because you're adding cost, you're adding complexity, you're adding potentially a learning curve. It has to help the end user deliver their care.
So, it has to make a difference for the patient, has to make a difference for the user.
And then the last bucket is you have to get through this gauntlet of value analysis and administration and get to purchasing. So, you have to have some form of return on investment or economic value that makes it difficult for administration to say no and push it into the next budget cycle.
So, if you have those three things, then I think you can pass go and you can start looking at scale and growing the organization. That's kind of what we look for when we're partnering with, with founders and their technologies.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah.
A lot of companies let's assume they have all of those different things. I could see them getting stuck in perpetual pilot programs, you know, trying to pilot out to this place, to that place.
How do you structure those early-stage partnerships so it's a clear Runway or a clear path to those multimillion-dollar purchase orders, rather than just something, you know, we're trying to, trying to pilot in these different ways.
Any thoughts there?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it makes me laugh and smile because I think the enthusiasm really becomes contagious.
And when you're an early-stage founder, if someone's even willing to trial your equipment and believes in it, you get excited, you tell your advisory board, you tell your investors, and now you've also Raised the pressure because now all eyes, I think communication internally is really important. How you communicate with your investors and your advisors, making sure that they're aware of what's going on, but also kind of controlling that narrative.
Because just because someone agrees to trial doesn't mean it's going to lead to a purchase. I mean, some of the most, some of the best health systems in the country, Mayo Clinics, Stanford UTS, the NYU, all, all of these Sloan Ketterings, they, they really love to look at technologies and to do trials and to publish and to be on the cutting edge of what's going on.
But that doesn't mean that they're going to purchase it.
So, I think it's important to find the right partners very early on, earlier the better that actually have belief and understand how to navigate with administration. You have to really empower the clinician outside of their belief and wanting to trial it successfully doing so, but then that you will help support them navigate getting things through administration as well.
You are there to do that with them and you have that experience. I think that helps give confidence. Because the last thing a clinician wants to do is go through all this effort to bring on a product and then to get stonewalled by administration.
Now they've wasted this time to try and do it, they've wasted your time. And you as an organization have wasted resources in both your personnel, disposable products, timing and potential hazards that could come from an early product that maybe still needs some fine tuning.
So, I think managing expectations is critical.
You need to find the right partners that believe in it and believe in it commercially, not as an experiment or just doing a trial for the sake of publishing something.
And then you have to initially say what are the next steps? What are we trying to actually discover and reach through the trialing of this product?
Let's lay out those parameters. And then what are the next steps once we meet each of these criteria, to then move it to administration.
Because what I found is that there are major health systems in the US and globally that they want submission of proposals before you can even introduce the product.
So, let's say you have a hundred-thousand-dollar product before you can even trial it to see if it works and it helps.
They need to put it into budget, which means you might not even get a chance to trial for years.
And then they use it and then they still put it into budget for another year or two.
So, these are the nuances and the complexities that cannot sometimes they're not foreseen unless you have an expert telling you and sharing this with you.
Etienne Nichols: Curious if we can get into the brass tacks of how that's even done? Because if you're talking to those Kols, I imagine you're talking about the clinical superiority of this or that or the other, your product.
How do you change that conversation? Because that's a totally different mindset to get into the operational ROI for the hospital administrator. And I would imagine hospital budgets are tighter than ever.
So how do you. How do you thread that needle?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Right. And it's a difficult one. And that's why. That's. It's a really great question. Because, you know, clinicians are founded on the idea I just want to do what's best by my patient.
Etienne Nichols: Right.
Ryan O'Mahoney: And I want to use whatever innovation is going to help me deliver better care. That's the foundation of what they're doing.
So. And now you're telling clinicians to have this new modern mindset where you're saying this is a business and you need to have return on investment. It's not just delivering care; it's delivering care that makes sense for the hospital and having to fight that battle.
So, I think giving them the confidence that you have done that, that you have a commercial expert to be arm in arm with them through the process to be able to push back on administration and say ahead of time, you know, doctor, so. And so, we're arming you with these tools so that when we conclude this trial, we can move through administration swiftly to then get this purchased.
And I think it's having those conversations early on to align administration and also to align the clinician on what the next steps are. And for me, you know, I've been obsessed over my career with accelerating sales.
And the best way to do that is not just being excited that you got interest and trying to rush things, but rather getting the right people involved early on from the hospital level or the surgery center or the laboratory side.
This way nobody's blindsided by what's going on, and it puts everybody at ease.
I think previously a surgeon could just march in with a new probe or a new ablation wand, and they would say, okay, it's okay. You can use it. And now that's a real big no, no.
So, if you have virtual meetings and you do demonstrations and you see clinicians at trade shows, you do all the right things.
You have to inform administration. I advise it, and they're going to try and push back and say no.
But I like to get them involved in a virtual meeting early on so that they feel that they're a part of the introduction of the technology and then they'll go out of their way to advocate for it with the clinician because they've been included from the start.
And what you'll see is that actually really increases not only the timeline for acquisition and revenue generation, but also it really helps build your advocacy program within the institution and that helps spread word of mouth because administration and clinical are involved and on the same page from day one.
Etienne Nichols: That makes sense, now When you talk about how to do it, you might be able to explain to a founder and you know how to do it. You've led teams in what I would maybe call gladiator territories. But how do you recruit and train for those specific, like the, the high intellect, high grit, the.
That hybrid really required to sell in these complex high capital equipment sections?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, excellent question.
And, and so I'm sure a recruiter probably would speak to this a little bit better, but I put my, my spin on it.
And, and I think what you'll find is that, you know, people put categories on, on salespeople, associate sales reps, sales reps, managers, and, and they try and categorize them and so that they have SDRs, they have AES, they have business development people. Some are known to be hunters; some are known to be cultivators and grow business.
And I think the hybrid, as you mentioned, is the best one.
But I think to get to that hybrid status, it's very much built on two principles, which I really, it took me longer to understand.
But Hologic's principles and their core value is working with purpose and passion.
And I think that really means a lot to me in terms of who I look to hire, how I hire, and how I manage talent.
And so, I look for somebody that is determined to make an impact and a difference because they believe in the technology.
And maybe they have an internal story that a family member maybe suffered from something or that they have a purpose to deliver something that they believe in. Because when you wake up in the morning with purpose, you don't say, let me hit the alarm clock.
You say, I need to talk to another clinician because I can save a life or I can change somebody's life, and I'm determined to do that.
And then I think those individuals are not only going to be excited about building the business and starting from scratch but also expanding and cultivating their business. And that makes for the best company.
I think we look at companies often these days as disposable layers as you build and grow, unfortunately and we say that teams that start the company in the seed phase might not be the same teams to grow the company in series A or B or C.
And I think there's absolute truth and relevance to that.
However, if you can keep your founding team, they serve as such an inspirational backbone for the next group that continues to come on and expand the business.
And so, I think one of the really important criteria outside of that purpose and passion is building the right reward systems and culture to reward and acknowledge what everyone does in the organization.
I think recognition is really important to everybody, and it's important to talk to the people that you work with and understand what they want to accomplish. Some might be monetarily driven; some might be purpose driven.
And understanding that really makes people feel excited about what they're doing and really drive the culture and help expand the company. So those are going outside of, have they worked in this space?
What's their track record of success?
How many years have they worked at what company?
I kind of prioritize some of these things first, and then secondarily we'll look back a little bit further into some of the other things.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I love that you called out the founding team because they can bring such passion and it just can change everything.
And then when they're gone, you know, you can.
You still be very effective, but it almost becomes a little bit more mechanical or transact. Can be.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, so, yeah, absolutely true. And that's the thing. I mean, I. My father's a retired lieutenant from the fire department in the city, and I've always valued this comment that he made because in the fire department, you go from lieutenant to captain to chief.
That's kind of the hierarchy. My dad really loved being a lieutenant because he would go into the fire with the men, and so, he would know firsthand what was going on. And he had a passion for that, for understanding and then being able to report that back to the higher ups.
And so I think when you have that initial group that went through the fire, that done the hard work, that learned the lessons, and they have battle scars and you bring on the next group and these people can coach and help them to grow, it only helps them have more advantage and a bigger jump to being successful, as opposed to just starting from scratch and trying to use their old processes from another company and then just applying it to a new company that they've added to.
So, yeah, I really like to try and keep the core team, if you can.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, that's A great analogy. The getting and getting through the fire together. Love that. And you mentioned some of the battle scars that those founders experience. I'm curious, maybe this would be my last question, just for time's sake.
What would you recommend or are there any avoidable mistakes that founders and companies you witness during your time working with startups that they make constantly so that they can avoid having some of those battle scars?
Ryan O'Mahoney: Right. Yeah. And you know, I'm sure you can probably comment on this from, from your side also. Right. I, I mean, I, I listen to the podcast of the five key things and when you need to bring on different individuals to help them avoid the pitfalls of, of early launch and FDA clearances.
It's the same for from the commercial side when you're launching and selling, where I think one of the fundamental things that gets overlooked is the timing of your hires.
And so, I've seen companies that, because of pressure from the board and where they're supposed to be in their commercial launch and adoption, hire people in hopes that the people will catch up and it'll get to where it's supposed to be.
And now you're going through this tremendous cash burn way too soon.
And there's not the initial momentum to really help set people up for success.
And what that cultivates is a culture of pressure and not lack of enthusiasm, but rather you want to have this great foundation to then have people join, have pipelines built, have your sales processes in place, have trials established in each of key geographic regions, whether it's domestically here in North America or having the right partners internationally. You want to start with that foundation so that when you bring people on, they can sprint and go and expand.
I think I've seen companies bring on, whether it was in robotics and we were bringing on field service engineers and clinical specialists and hiring market development managers all over the country.
I think when you bootstrap early, you should try and get to a point of generating revenue and understanding the process in the cycle and really having that down to a very strong place where then you can use that and help everybody else succeed.
And then, then it becomes this momentum shift. Everybody's happy and excited to share what they're accomplishing as opposed to dealing with this pressure from the top because things were over promised and you're burning through capital too quickly.
Etienne Nichols: Yeah, I think that's a good answer. You know, early, early hires can be, it can make or break you. One person told me early on, he said, hire slow, fire fast, and keep a lawyer on retainer. I Thought that was last part. Okay.
That's interesting.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, it is very interesting. I think I've heard some similar things.
Etienne Nichols: Right, Good advice.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Absolutely.
Etienne Nichols: Well, where can people go to find you and learn more about what you're doing? Ryan.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, and, and thank you for this opportunity to this forum. Again, this is awesome and I always love our conversations. I think I learn and you know, I'm happy to share and hopefully somebody learns from this as well.
So right now, I guess LinkedIn is probably my best bet.
And I do have a website that we are underdeveloped that will be launching very soon. So, we'll be able to share that at some point.
And, and then we're going to actually release a case study from one of our engagements that, you know, we were able to help an organization kind of go from invention to commercial success within a six-month time period.
And we also help them win Time Magazine Innovation of the year. So, we are proving concept and excited. I mean there's no company that we don't want to speak to.
So, anybody out there that has some questions or wants help, happy to have a strategic call and see how we can help and how we can partner to ensure their success.
So yeah, stay tuned. We'll have a website and some good things happening very soon as we get to more of an official launch stage.
Cool.
Etienne Nichols: Awesome. Well, we'll put the in the show notes, we'll put your LinkedIn so that people can easily find you and check out what you're doing and really appreciate what you're doing to help the industry because this is one of those valleys of death.
So, if you're successful, that means a lot of more companies are going to make it through. So that's exciting.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Yeah, thank. Thank you, Etienne. And I mean again, a pleasure. Happy Friday. Enjoy this this weekend and the fresh air in the mountains and I'm sure we're going to continue to speak and help one another.
So, thank you.
Etienne Nichols: Great. All right, those of you who've been listening, thank you so much for listening and spending an hour with us or however long it's been. Really appreciate it. And we'll see you all next time.
Everybody. Take care.
Ryan O'Mahoney: Cheers.
Etienne Nichols: Thanks for tuning in to the Global Medical Device Podcast. If you found value in today's conversation, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you've got thoughts or questions, we'd love to hear from you.
Email us at podcast@greenlight.guru.
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