Moving a Technology Out of a University and Into a Company

Written By Patrick Kothe
 
 
 
 

Chris Idelson is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at ClearCam, a company dedicated to developing technology to improve surgeons visual field during minimally invasive procedures. In this episode we discuss what a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. program is like, the importance of hands-on education, how the NSF I-Corps program has informed his view on product development, IP development and ownership in a University, how ClearCam is helping to solve a common problem with laparoscopes, and what universities can do to better educate aspiring medical device developers. 

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.

Patrick Kothe 00:31

Welcome! Medical Device technology can come from different sources. Sometimes it comes directly from a clinician, sometimes company people make observations during a surgery or during a procedure. Or sometimes someone notices the technology and another field that can be applied in ours. And sometimes the ideas are born or developed in a university. Our guest today is Chris Idelson, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at ClearCam, a company dedicated to developing technology to improve surgeons visual field during minimally invasive procedures. I've known Chris since his days as a PhD candidate at the University of Texas, and even helped out as a mentor to a team he was a member of and you're going to hear more about that in our conversation. Chris has an interesting story to tell about developing an idea and technology inside the university and transitioning it into a company. In this episode, we discuss what a medical engineering PhD program is like the importance of hands on education, how the National Science Foundation iCore program has informed his view on product development, IP development and ownership and a university. How clear cam is helping to solve a common problem with lapper scopes. And what universities can do to better educate aspiring medical device developers. Here's our conversation. Chris, you played lacrosse in college? Why lacrosse? Why did you choose that sport? And what did you learn that you're applying in your in your life today?

Chris Idelson 02:23

I always found it to be just really great healthy related exercise where I could also apply myself played other sports growing up. Lacrosse was the most fun I had it was something I kind of just wanted to continue with, I guess into college, where I continued to be the hard effort player. And you know, beyond that, you don't you don't need to look at my stats, there's not much there. And then I even played a little bit, you know, past College on some club teams and whatnot. Again, good exercise. You also get really strong just in general sports, but especially a sport like lacrosse fast pace, strategic and team related, you know efforts, work ethic all that stuff ties in to things like that when you're pushing yourself.

Patrick Kothe 03:10

So you chosen the field of medical device and engineering and medical device. Some people find their path early in life, some people that comes to him a little bit later. When did you know that medical device engineering was in the cards for you?

Chris Idelson 03:28

I was in a buddy's basement is like a sophomore in high school. He had made this big thing out of connects and I randomly commented on it and thought it was interesting. We talked about it said I want to be an adventurer when I grew up. And he said You mean an engineer. And continuing through high school I really liked math and science and was competitive at it. I was starting to think maybe dentists because I'd grown up next to a dentist for 21 years was a great guy. Maybe it's maybe I do want to be a doctor i i started pre med like 80% of biomedical engineers and after chemistry, I quickly realized that wasn't the path for me. And it really well on Chem one.

Patrick Kothe 04:06

It didn't have organic yet. No,

Chris Idelson 04:09

no I did not. Chem one I actually like aced it. And then Chem two it was a steep, steep rapid decline that you know, maybe this just isn't for me. But I still love the rest of his biology, physiology, all that stuff. Even though they were difficult. They're really they're difficult and fun type of challenging way. And I was really engaged intellectually by it out of undergrad I applied to which is a small school in the east coast called the Catholic University of America and Washington DC. Got my undergrad and BME two years at the National Institutes of Health which I would call is my first real growth period. I had two Rockstar engineers I actually got to work under at the NIH. Dr. Cohn Chen and Rob Britta, Dr. Roberta. And that was really interesting period for me, interestingly enough, so they had pulled my application out because it was one of the Few engineers to apply. A lot of times it's someone with medical either background and or direction. And I hadn't really anticipated going that path. And they said lacrosse was actually one of the reasons outside of being an engineer, like clearly, you know, active guy interested in health to some degree. So that was actually a really curious thing that I found out after starting. And then it applied to some jobs before then and after then wasn't getting a lot of technician cell jobs, which aren't, aren't bad. It's not what I was looking for. And then I started grad school at Virginia Tech for my PhD in Biomedical Engineering advisor, Dr. Christopher Islander, he and his wife and family moved here to Austin invited myself and a couple of students to come along. my now wife and I moved out to Austin to come along for that trip, I made a transition to mechanical engineering, but still delve deep into the medical device world worked on a couple of projects during that PhD, and one of them happened to be the startup company clear cam that we're doing now.

Patrick Kothe 05:58

So let's go back for a second. So you had your training, your undergrad training, and then you moved into a position at the NIH? Was that the career track that you thought? Or was that a transitionary? thing? What were you thinking at that point, taking a taking that job at an NIH.

Chris Idelson 06:16

So a lot of the roles I had applied to right out of undergrad I wanted to do r&d device development. At that point, I was pretty well set that's at least where I wanted to start. I had not gotten the type of opportunities that I was looking for. So I figured NIH would be a great transition type thing and go out and get a little bit I wouldn't call it industry in the traditional sense, but it's certainly not quite as academic as school. I had always thought it'd lead me into industry, though. And I've said like three things in my life, you know, I don't want to go to grad school, I have no desire to I never want to work on an imaging project. I did fun, MRI paper and undergrad. And then after that I was like a snitch, not for me. And I've never lived as far west Texas. And so far I've done all those things. You know, you make plans, God laughs and roll with the punches and be flexible and all that stuff.

Patrick Kothe 07:03

What were you doing at NIH, what types of things what types of projects were involved with

Chris Idelson 07:09

clinical research and metabolism and body composition is where I also found out I was, you know, when you're 20, something years old, you can eat whatever you want, and some people can and things don't change. And I was fortunate that but the dietitian after doing a study there was like you might want to, you know, change things, otherwise things in 10 years might not be as easy as they are today. But I really tried to focus a lot on being one of the technical people there. Fortunately, learning from two technical people is really great. Usually, it's it's much more clinical focus medicine focused. So this is really interesting opportunity for me, hands on a bunch of devices from or I would call medical devices, for sure. But also call them instruments as well, kind of like bio tools, the thought that comes to mind, they have these really cool, massive room colorimeters with about 20 instruments hooked up to this massive room that basically measure energy expenditure and a bunch of other things. So participated in supportive clinical research research from a technical perspective, small things like EMGs, up in temperature buttons up to those massive intense rooms that they have.

Patrick Kothe 08:11

At some point in time you said, Okay, I've had enough, I've learned enough here now I want to go and expand my horizons. And as you said, you now move and get an advanced degree. Why did you do that? And what what were you trying to accomplish by doing that

Chris Idelson 08:32

I was looking for something that was going to accelerate my career. I'd still been applying to other jobs, for r&d and device development, things like that, and just wasn't seeing those opportunities come through. It's I can look back and think, you know, maybe doing a technician role would have enabled those opportunities, maybe they wouldn't have. But the pathway was, you know, I was walking out of off the NIH campus one day talking to Dr. Chris Ryan Linder, who was at Virginia Tech at the time, describing some project that I was kind of trying to I'll call it design work to a degree for for my role at NIH. And you know, at the end of conversation if I recall correctly said You know, I'd love to have you come out for the weekend when you know, the their their prime candidates are invited to come see the space and kind of been a Don't Look Back situation since since then, I suppose.

Patrick Kothe 09:26

Tell me about a biomedical engineering program. What what is what does it look like? So you've got an undergrad degree, and you're coming in? Is it classroom work? Is it lab work? Is that tagging on to somebody's ongoing project, developing your own project teaching? Give me a crash course and what grad school is all about?

Chris Idelson 09:45

Yeah, it's smattering of all those things. So so the biomedical engineering program at Virginia Tech is really interesting. I was only there for a year unfortunately, before it transferred with with Wilander but they have this clinical rotation that they do with Wake for force which is, of course, a strong school, especially in the in the medical domain. I'm a big believer in hands on it's just it's maybe my personal way to learn. Theory is great, basic academic, you know, pursuit is valuable for for the community and whatnot. But I'm just more of an applications guy hands on project. That's how I develop skill sets and learn best. So I tried to do all the coursework I could that had projects like that, things that were, tinker and learn. And then outside of the coursework, usually, you have research of some sort do have master's degrees that are just coursework, I often suggest that you know, only do that if you just care about the letters at the end of the name, employers are a little bit more like, okay, you can take more classes, what real value is, that, to me, is what I've heard, I should say, because I don't have a master's degree. All in all it was is hands on as I can make it. So kind of, you know, something that speaks out to me about that whole process, especially graduate school is you're going to get out of it, what you put into it.

Patrick Kothe 10:58

So you don't have a Master's, you have a PhD?

Chris Idelson 11:00

Yes, I just did the straight to PhD path, because I knew at some point, in the future, I'd want to teach a PhD is kind of, oftentimes a checkbox needed outside of maybe another type of certification.

Patrick Kothe 11:13

So I'm just curious about PhDs because some PhDs can be accomplished in a short period of time, and sometimes they languish, what's the difference? What's, you know, how do people move through a Ph. D. program?

Chris Idelson 11:28

So it's a loaded question, because that'll depend on the person, the project, that department, the university, the resources, like every project will have, anywhere from zero funding to infinite funding kind of thing. I'll give you my take from what I've seen, and from what I've heard, a PhD that is actually granted to the students, you know, someone's earned a PhD, and they've done it in like two or three years, there's a couple of things that come to mind. One is some places will just say, you know, you put in a lot of work, but this is not working out. You're finishing up your project time to get you out of here. It's akin in my brain to kind of like kicking the student out, but you know, giving them a little bit of credit for the work that they've done. Some students finish it in short, in short periods of time, because they had a master's degree that built on that same project. So they've already got a solid foundation, they built their momentum, everything's clear and concise and not quite as exploratory as maybe brand new projects. People will also kind of jump around, I've worked on four projects. During my time in grad school, it started in Virginia Tech on one project, you know, had some funding when I got there, but the funding wasn't really up. So I pivoted to another project for in Bryan Linders lab for a novel air purification device, which basically was a maskless mask. And, of course, COVID, two years ago, I really wish somebody had funding that when we were working on it. And after that I worked on you know, I actually hope we get a chance to talk about Ichor at some point, because you and I, you know, spent some time working on that intrauterine technology for the ICORE program, or within the ICORE program. And then finally, this windshield wiper for a laparoscope to turn into clear cam.

Patrick Kothe 13:02

You mentioned different projects, and they can come from different different places. Explain to me about the PhD program, you have to have a project and you're presenting on that project that at the end, and it's so tell me about how those projects get started.

Chris Idelson 13:24

All manner of ways. There are some students who actually can can obtain their own funding for their own project. The one that comes to mind there's this really competitive fellowship from the NSF is highly competitive, you get a really, really good stipend. I've heard that students with that stipend, it's easy for a professor, you want to go work for a professor and work on your own project. And you come with, you know, four years of really competitive funding and a lot of momentum behind you as a budding academic or scientists or whatnot. There might be more flexible to letting you pursue something at least in the first year or two. But usually those projects are going to start from from a professor or a collaborator. collaborators can be from industry, collaborators can be from the academic world. Industry could be broad, right? It could be whatever field you're in for us, of course, a clinician focus problem is the is the top top one. You have an instant collaborator, someone who can offer I wouldn't say full validation, but N equals one at least is better than N equals zero.

Patrick Kothe 14:28

Funding let's let's talk about funding because it seems like you don't have a project unless you have funding. The undergrad thing you pay your tuition and the school is responsible for for educating you. With a PhD. It's a little bit different, isn't it? I mean, are you paying tuition? You mentioned stipends, how much is you know something's coming back to you. So let's talk about the funding piece and how it's different than what you would encounter with an undergrad program.

Chris Idelson 14:55

Like an undergrad program. You can get outside support and funding or grants and loans and all that stuff. For the most part I haven't ever heard of, or at least I definitely don't know of anyone who has gotten a PhD or is in a Ph. D program and doesn't have some level of funding, I wasn't guaranteed funding for every semester, I got kind of will say some stars aligned. And I managed to have funding every semester, some of it from Grant in the early days, some of it from the ICORE program, they're allowed to fund emails, or their entrepreneurial leads for at least a little bit. We'd get some awards here and there from internal or external, you know, mechanisms. And then TAS sort of teaching assistants. That's how I actually I probably was funded at least 50% of my time through through TAs. Ta roles. If I

Patrick Kothe 15:46

recall, were you paying tuition to the university? So I

Chris Idelson 15:50

believe if you're, if you're a TA, or an RA research assistant, usually you are, I don't know what the proper term is gifted, but basically, the money for tuition comes out of some other, you know, mechanism that they have. TAs are supported, at least at University of Texas, from my experience, you have a vast majority, if not all your tuition covered. And then a reasonable stipend for you to pay rent and you know, eat your groceries eat food.

Patrick Kothe 16:19

So let's talk about the projects a little bit. And and what are you trying to do with those projects? What what what types of things are you doing? Are you giving birth to a technology? Are you developing product? What types of projects do people work on?

Chris Idelson 16:36

Again, it's going to be really broad, depending on the person, the professor, the university, all that stuff, everyone's got some kind of specialty and to leverage, I actually found this really great combination with with Wilander, because he's all about translational stuff, I've always wanted to work on a real problem, and try to develop a real solution that would really be used in real life, that I don't think that's that's always the most common scenario, from what I've seen and experienced. A lot of professors do like solving real problems, but often enough, that's more from an academic and intellectual standpoint, contributing information and findings to the scientific community, as opposed to developing, you know, I call it a product, I don't think that many professors out there would consider their projects as products or developing products. There are some that certainly have that same bug, and they can apply it in this academic setting in an in an academic manner. And it's this interesting fit, I think we see more of that nowadays. And then we did five years ago, and certainly longer from longer back. But I've always been really geared up for those types of projects. That's I would say what I worked on was early stage concept, proof of concept type of type of work.

Patrick Kothe 17:47

Graduate student index industrial complex is interesting, because you mentioned you want to work on real projects, but then you've got some real things that are happening too. And funding is extremely important. And sometimes you run into a lab, that's not necessarily the highest priority isn't developing a technology, it's the highest priority is to continue to have funding. And there's kind of a push pull between those two things, you definitely need the funding. But in order to be trained properly, you got to be working on something. That's that's real. And that's substantial, because you just don't want to have that perpetual project just because it's funded. Did you run into that with with different programs that you've been involved with?

Chris Idelson 18:39

Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, yeah, I could jokingly say, it's like, it's my first real bootstrapping was was in an academic lab. I remember the very first, the very first show proof of concept exploration rounder came in from across the street. He said, I have this idea, and we've been talking to Dr. reoccurred this John acre at this point. So it had this idea, here's a straw. Do me a favor, cut it up like this, tape it together. And let's just like see what happens. And that was the first prototype that got us any level of momentum was this Slurpee straw that, you know, scissor here, scissor there and tape it together in a certain way and oh, look at it clears droplets off the lens really effectively. And I remember thinking like, My mind is blown. You know, I gotta, I gotta I gotta step up my game.

Patrick Kothe 19:25

I remember seeing that prototype, by the way. Yeah,

Chris Idelson 19:29

it's we've come a long way since then, of course, we couldn't couldn't get that one. You know, we'll say product ready, but we had to pivot like we do 1000 times. But that's that's kind of one example, I guess. Yeah, obviously, try to go for as much money as you can. We kind of with that project. A lot of it was more award based. The NSF I Corps program. I think it was the most funding that we got for any of my projects was through that pathway that I said that I contributed to.

Patrick Kothe 19:58

Well, let's Talk about iCore. Because it's it's a very interesting program that a lot of people are not familiar with. So Ichor is a program. And it's more a method for identifying customer needs, and figuring out whether there's a need for a product and whether there's going to be product market fit. And it's not only looking at the product, but it's looking at the kind of the whole ecosystem for it. So the program is, is administered through NSF National Science Foundation, what you described earlier, happens all over the place, somebody's got an idea. And they're going to work on a prototype, and they're going to start to develop, develop something. And that's fine. But as you start to, in your own mind, say, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to build this, I'm going to continue to fund this I need now I need to get to this level, I need to get to this level, what happens many times is you forget about the customer. And you and you get into your own head and start saying well, I I'm developing this product, and you really don't know the marketplace and what the problem is. So I core is really kind of stepping back and saying, let's forget about the prototypes, let's go out and talk to the marketplace and understand what's going on in the customers mind is so with that kind of as a background. Explain to me how you got involved in iCore. And what your experience was, like,

Chris Idelson 21:40

I remember thinking, Okay, well, this is this is good, it's valuable, you know, they I think they gave us a little bit of funding to kind of get you in the door, I also really thought that, you know, I was hopeful, I think is a better phrase that we're going to learn something of use there. And I don't know about you, actually, I would love your take on Ichor. Because I know from your background in industry, you might be viewing it very differently from what I've heard from other people that that industry background, that I think it has some really strong value, I'm not gonna say it's perfect. But I think it is really strong value, especially for those coming from an academic background. It is a crucible, if nothing else, to kind of really forge the team and to get a team to understand the right way to validate that that product market fit. As you mentioned, there's so much research that goes out into the world and is funded by you know, federal programs that just sits there on the shelf. And or may be built into a startup that fails because they didn't validate the customer need, right? So it's got some strong value, I preach it to every undergrad and grad student I come into contact with every team I interact with outside of clear cameoed. And given advice or mentorship or whatever. I always push that you should you should do this. It's going to be grueling. And the phrase I heard most recently from some guy within, you know, from industry, who is doing it with a team, he said, it's a beat down, man. And there are some aspects that you just, you know, just bite your tongue and get through the session. But I really personally found it valuable. It's an entire chapter of my dissertation. Got a lot of value out of it for for building the company, I mean, going to pitch and talking about how we talked 220 People in seven weeks, it's instantly tells people that you're serious that you've done your due diligence, and that you can you know how to learn more if you have to. But I would love to hear what your take is on Ichor. If I might ask a question.

Patrick Kothe 23:36

I think Eicher is a fantastic program. So they'll just tell listeners, I was a mentor to Chris's team on on one of the one of the projects, and what the project entailed in terms of ICORE is basically you need to talk to 100 Different people without bringing your product out. And basically to find out what their needs are, how they're solving a problem currently, what happens when there's a problem? And there's there's not a solution out there. You know, what are the pains associated with that? How significant is a problem who's involved in the problem, it's not just the person that using it, but it's within the ecosystem within our space. It's like talking, you're talking to doctors using it. But it's the nurse, it's the ordering people. It's a value analysis committee, it's the C suite people, it's the patient, it's the caregiver, and all of those people within an ecosystem unless you're talking to them. You've got some blind spots. So it's a matter of putting your prototypes aside and start talking to the customers. I'm a huge believer in this I have been throughout my career because I've lived the pain of not doing it correctly and thinking that I knew everything. So this is a way to force people who are not familiar with this concept and it's typically going to be university people that are inside, inside the, you know, the walls of your state you that don't have that ability or haven't been exposed to that gathering of customer information. So I'm a huge believer in it. And I've met her a lot, a lot of different teams and talked to a lot of entrepreneurs. And that's advice that I give all the time to put your product away and start falling in love with the problem, don't fall in love with your solution. So this is kind of a formal way of doing it. And as Chris said, it is rigorous, and it's rigorous, and that you have to talk to these 100 people you've got, you've got coursework to do. Every week, you're getting together with your team, you have five days, you know, a three day session, a two day session where you're flying out somewhere and meeting with with other teams and getting instruction on that and doing interviews. So it's a hard core program. But what it teaches that coming out at the end is I need to focus on my customer, not about me, I need to bake, make sure that not only am I talking to the person who's using the product, but everybody that's involved with it, as well. So that's that's kind of a systematic way, way of doing lean methodology of development. And like I said, I'm a big believer in it. I'll just give you our experience. When we went through this. We went we went through it with what 50 or 60 teams. And there were teams from best Universities around I mean, we ut MIT, Stanford, NASA had teams, Georgia Tech, all kinds of teams, and they had ideas anywhere from, you know, better drones, more battery life on things, how to get payloads into space, labs on a chip, all kinds of different different technologies. And the first time that we went out there out of these 50, or 60 teams, and they started and spent one afternoon talking to customers, blindly just talking to customers, out of those 50 or 60 teams, more than half of them came back and said the next day. We don't know what we're doing. We wish the

Chris Idelson 27:25

magical thing.

Patrick Kothe 27:28

We don't know our customer, we don't know if we've got a product. And these are these are the brightest people in the country who are worth going down the road with prototypes. So that

Chris Idelson 27:38

endears on this too. Yeah,

Patrick Kothe 27:41

absolutely. So so that's my, that's my soapbox on the program. I'm I'm a firm believer in it.

Chris Idelson 27:47

I love it. I couldn't I couldn't add to it. That's, that's you took every word out of my mouth. That's awesome. I'm glad. I'm glad you're a fan.

Patrick Kothe 27:55

Yeah, and it's good from the university perspective. But it's the same thing if you're inside a company, and a lot of our listeners right now are inside large companies. And if you don't take the time to go out and fall in love with the problem and not just develop your own thing. What I find extremely interesting is the larger the company, the less they want to go out and talk to their customers, because they know their customers. Oh, yeah, we've been in this market for years. And we know every but not for your new product. And what's changed out there. So getting the discipline of putting away your own preconceived notions is important with any product, any size company that you're working with.

Chris Idelson 28:38

Yeah, the the phrase that that so I went through it with Ryan 100, Doug, and John, Doug SoClean, John eager mentioned, and Chris Rhonda mentioned the cofounders of clear cam. And one of the things that we ported over, I think from my core is that that phrase of intellectual honesty is abundantly necessary. I probably annoy people in the company with how much I've talked about talking to the customer, even when we think we don't need interesting, you know, but it couldn't hurt to talk to a couple of people, right, is validate this theory, at least a little bit. And it's something that we really take seriously. It's not that I have to push them on, it's that I'm this constant, you know, what's the angel on the shoulder type thing, just talking whispering in somebody's ear, you know, we should should just talk to a couple of people, nothing wrong with it.

Patrick Kothe 29:24

The other interesting thing about about this is it's important for you to do it at the start of a project. But it's important for you to continue to do it because things change. We just went through a couple of years of massive change. Well, how is your product changed in terms of how it's used within a new ecosystem within a hospital, things have changed within a hospital, how things how things happen? Have you gone in and revalidated all of your assumptions? Because typically with a with a development project, let's say it's a three year develop meant project, you did all that work upfront. And if you don't go that revalidate that throughout the time, you may end up three years later and find that all of your assumptions or some of your critical assumptions have changed. So it's important for you to continue to be on top of that, too. So we talked about a little bit about clear cam, let's let's let's let the listeners hear what clear cam is all about and how that project you know, kind of moved from the lab into accompany

Chris Idelson 30:30

clear cam. In a very brief version, it's a windshield wiper. For a laparoscope, laparoscope is used during forming minimally minimally invasive surgery called the prostate up stick, you know, it's basically looks like a long metal tube has a mount up top where you can put a digital camera adapter, and you can basically perform minimally invasive surgery inside the body without having to open up the cavity and do open surgery. bunch of reasons why that's great. A lot of times when the scopes inside the body, debris of some sort, you know, fog will generate or blood or tissue or something will bump into the lens or splatter on it, after using cautery. And things like that. And up until today kind of thing. Most most solutions that are effective and the gold standard for sure, you got to pull it out of the body, wipe it off on, you know, some kind of sponge or surfactin. Or, or basically some people call it the carwash and it's called clarify and reinsert back into the body. There's a handful of reasons why that's less than ideal. And what we did was we designed something that can fit around the scope bar, on top of the scope, go into the trocar ports that they use to access the abdominal cavity and clear off the lens quick and easy.

Patrick Kothe 31:41

So this was a project that you had inside, inside the university. Right?

Chris Idelson 31:47

Yeah, it started in a course, medical device manufacturing and design. And it was one of the projects. So they went out and sourced a bunch of questions and whatnot or problems sorry, from local clinicians, Johnny crew came in and he said your surgeon it, I think it was at that point was still ascension. And not necessarily Dell seat, if I recall, got this problem with the laparoscope lens was one of the things I signed up for what we came up with. And that semester was not the solution, although it is framed in a shadow box and clear came as the you know, the first failure so to speak. And it looks it looks exactly like a proof of concept should look from there, we kind of went through a lot of iteration, we got really involved in a lot of the regional say, organizations or events, competitions, there are a bunch of groups out there, especially linked with with UT but not just with UT, that are out there to help support innovation, especially in Austin, almost surprising in what you see in the in the clinical and medical domain. And we kind of started to build this company out, we worked part time with some some really smart, I'm gonna I'm gonna call them the real engineers, the real development engineers, and the early days regulatory support, and eventually formed the company. About a year left on my PhD, we formed the January 2008. Team. Later that April, I think we participated in this really great program called the rice business plan competition, specifically largest student led competition, it's as real as it can be, which is really a nice relief. And then we went out there, we won fourth place in money. And that catalyzed our round of fundraising. You know, the joke is like it was it was a couple of months too early. But that's kind of the sweet spot where you want to be first startup is doing everything, you know, we're we're a couple of months behind or in advance and whatnot, and should never be just perfectly content. And then I finished up that you're in January of 2019, we push forward. We had our first hire that year for full time engineer had an intern. And you know, first first lab, I was sitting by myself in basically a closet that had pressurized air and water and a table. And then we would just steadily grown from there to a larger closet, and then a couple of actual rooms. And now we have our own place that we're renting now.

Patrick Kothe 34:08

So let's go back to the prototype development and the idea development. So you took it through Ichor, you understood the problem a little bit had did some prototype development. And you're inside of university at that point. And the thing about people inside the university is they don't own their intellectual property. The university owns what you're working on. So what did you do at that point? Did you did you work through patents with the university or what was what was that like,

Chris Idelson 34:36

by the time we had finished up at UT and we're called exit velocity and had our own place form and whatnot. And I graduated, I think we had three patents that we had filed at that point and the university filed those patents. Yes, sorry. Do we have to disclose some inventions The process usually works with an invention disclosure. Got to make a make argument, there's got commercial value for something like this, it's valuable to protect basically, for that that rice business plan competition, we established an option, an option letter option agreement, I can't quite remember the phrasing.

Patrick Kothe 35:14

The option agreement basically says that there's the university grants an option for you to own this patent in a period of time, and you need to get funding, you need to have a company and get funding. So you've got the option to have that for a period of time.

Chris Idelson 35:34

Option to license right now. Yeah, no university is never going to great very rarely will University ever give up ownership. But yeah, so it's kind of soft, right. But it's, it's the first step towards making it real. And eventually, you know, we had so myself for Islander in ego, we're all co inventors of this stuff before, before, we really had a chance to work with Doug on this. And so we kind of had a little bit of conflict of interest with the startup and being able to negotiate because we technically could, you know, we could win on both sides. So, So Doug, was, you know, the guy who did the full licensing negotiation for the licensing agreement, but we had a really great experience. Sometimes you hear, you know, war stories about how things didn't quite go the way the startup thought it would go, or the university thought it would go, and it can get messy, but we've had really good interactions personally, with that entire group.

Patrick Kothe 36:28

And just give some general things. In general, when a when a company comes in, and they're licensing the IP, so I'm going to license these three patents. And what happens is, the company will negotiate with the university and they will pay generally, they're going to pay a royalty, yeah, that's where many of these works work out, where we're going to pay a royalty, to the university, based on sales, and that royalty could be three, four or 5%, of what of what your revenue is. And whatever that negotiate, let's say, it's 5%, and it's 5%, royalty, the inventors on that patent, typically, and most universities will get a get 50% of that 5%. And the university keeps the other 50% of that 5%. That's, in general, what you see with some universities, I don't know what your deal is, but that's kind of a general general statement. The reason why I bring it up, it's, it's interesting, because you talked about conflict, and if you're an inventor on the thing, you know, if there's a license there, that there's some ability to monetize what you what you invent it, by and by being in the university and university is deserve some too, because you only you're using, you're using the facilities and everything that that they provide. So it's a good sharing, and whether it's, you know, 2550, whatever it is, it needs needs to be shared. But a lot of times, if you're a university professor, and you're spinning out technologies, you're not going to form a company, you know, a lot, a lot of university professors, they want to stay university professors and, you know, being a full time medical device, person. That's, that's not in the cards, some people do. And, and some people, you know, just say, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take my take my licensing fee, and you know, somebody else can work on developing the product. And at some point in time, you know, maybe SEC sees some coming back. Other people say, I want to own a whole bunch of this thing. So not only am I going to take the 50% of the 5%, but I'm going to form a company around this because I believe in it, I'm going to go work there. I'm gonna go do it. And a lot of times, that's graduate students who helped to make that transition possible. It's taking the project, even though University professor may be in on the deal, the university or the grad student is going to be the one that transfers that technology out of the lab into the company.

Chris Idelson 39:16

No, it's certainly one of the more common situations if it happens, right? Yeah.

Patrick Kothe 39:22

So you form a company, develop the team, you've got the team, you licensed, licensed the technology, and then then start, you exit the university and you start the company. So when you get into the company, and you went in, as a founder of the company, as well, as you know, working on on the engineering and technology development. Were you prepared for that job? When you walked out of the university?

Chris Idelson 39:52

I think I was prepared for the job that I had to do. If you asked me to come out of the university and start doing what I do. De No, that'd be silly of me to think that, you know, there are a lot of new things that you learn in the startup. And I'm about to sound silly saying the obvious, but you'll learn a lot by doing it because you have to wear 12 different hats, I didn't learn about marketing or regulatory stuff, or quality systems, which I think actually, we should talk about that at some point, that was one of the newest things that that I was exposed to right away. And it's not that it's impossible to learn how to do that stuff. In my opinion, you know, anyone with the right work ethic and, and a little bit of, you know, time and time to invest, like, you can learn a lot of this stuff, it's not wildly proprietary, the technical stuff is about as proprietary as you can get for the for the IP, that's something that, you know, I read a patent, and it takes me three times to really understand everything I read. But yes, I mean, there's, there's a lot that I would not have been prepared for. And that's, that's, you know, part of the reason why I wasn't CTO right out of the gate was because that was a better fit for Ryan Linder to be a part time CTO, while I kind of got my feet underneath me really, really established that I could handle things like that, right, because the rest of the founders and other employees would be taking, you know, the risk of putting me in that role. And there's nothing unreasonable, you know, especially in hindsight, but but even then it didn't seem even remotely unreasonable to have a pathway like that. So I'm fortunate to have co founders that, you know, had the sense to do something like that, it actually enabled me to do things more effectively, in a faster pace, as opposed to, I should say, with mitigated risk,

Patrick Kothe 41:35

I get a lot of people coming out of university, call me up, say, hey, I want to work in a startup. And my comment back is often you can go into startup and you can be successful. But my advice is to go work for a big company a little bit and learn some of the basic things that are important within the industry. And then you could jump into a startup after, after you learn a few things. That's typically what I do. But at the same time, you can be successful in a lot of different ways. It just made maybe a little bit more painful learning.

Chris Idelson 42:10

Yeah, here's the actual type of again, I my brain goes to glutton for punishment, maybe.

Patrick Kothe 42:17

But it's also you know, it can affect the timeline of a of a startup because you don't know what you don't know. It can affect the, the investors, because you may need more money, because somebody's a little bit slower on the uptake of some of these things. And it could affect your probability to success and the risk associated with the deal. But if you've got some mentors in there that can help you look, look around the corner, that's going to be an important way to help mitigate some of that risk.

Chris Idelson 42:51

Yeah, reminds me of that phrase, again, intellectual honesty, I didn't I remember, there was a conversation where we need to get to this milestone, and I had to look Doug in the eyes, and I was like, I'm not the guy who's gonna be able to do that I can, I can sit here and get much better at, you know, CAD design over the next three months, and then maybe I'll be I'll be ready to really do what you need. But if you want to do it today, or next week, we got to go hire someone. And that was an easy conversation. I mean, it was an honest conversation. And it didn't bother me at all. If that was the answer. The only thing that matters is making the company successful. And so to your point, it's it's gap analysis, it's awareness of what you don't know, you don't know what you don't know. So find people who do know what you don't know. We worked with a part time regulatory adviser, he I call him regulatory basic general advisories. He's done a heck of a lot in his career, and I bug him as often as I can with miscellaneous, one off questions. It's one of those things where Yeah, I think it points emotional honesty, gap assessment, filling those holes, and then that enables the team to really push forward.

Patrick Kothe 43:52

Chris, where where does the product stand right now, tell me a little bit about where you are. In the development and sales process.

Chris Idelson 44:01

We were very fortunate in some timing. We got FDA clearance to class to 510 K pathway in February of 2020, a couple of weeks before the world shut down. And man was that for I hate to say the word fortuitous timing, just good. The timing worked out. It's how I maybe should say, we were in humans are first human case, I think was August of that year. Having a surgeon CEO certainly probably helped knock a couple of doors down that would have been really difficult during COVID. They were there were some places they were doing 00 laparoscopic surgeries. So finding the right place through the right network was was really fortunate for us to start making some learnings and momentum kind of performed a little bit of a clinical pilot is the the phrase that comes to mind at first, you know, went out into 40 to 100 surgeries learned what we could you know, what are the what are the obstacles from a usability standpoint, from a design standpoint or whatnot, and to do an assessment of how things look, figure out how to how to kind of you know, throw in some fixes along the way, you know, messaging of the training, things like that. About six, six or eight months ago, we were at like about 1000 cases today. So we're probably somewhere between that one and two, we are doing a really big push now for from the sales side, all saying So kind of in that clinical pilot mode, want to sell a couple of 1000 units in prove out a model for scalability. Margins are a big deal. So implementing some some adjustments to reduce cost of goods is massive. And that's what our most recent sprint was, if it looks good, we're always sprinting, of course, but the most recent one, focused on cogs and better margins in showing scalability. It's certainly the big focus, teeing up some potential new product lines, some adjacent actually all adjacent, some still involved with lens cleaning, some may be a little bit different, but still in that in that same operating room with the same customer segments. So it's the most engineering bandwidth we will have had for a while I'm really excited. Of course, with that comes expectations. So the team will work their butts off to deliver I'm sure.

Patrick Kothe 46:03

Chris, is a product of a standalone product, or are you partnering with the manufacturers of the different scopes?

Chris Idelson 46:12

standalone product. So one of the interesting things that we've had to kind of work around is when you're working with somebody else's technology, you have to adjust to theirs. And as you mentioned, multiple, you know, OEMs out there with these scopes. And they all have their own manufacturing tolerances and their own specs and being able to fit each one was a little bit tricky. So we started out figuring, you know, let's go after, you know, three, three main players try to fit with their five millimeter scopes, we can scale up to 10s later and do all this other stuff. So we had to have six skews, they have a zero degree and a 30 degree is the most common ones used in laparoscopic surgery in terms of the lens geometry, lens angle, and all five millimeters and even the five millimeter diameter is little bit different from one to the other. So do you need a new Oh, like a different size Oh ring for a different manufacturer. So anyway, six skews in the team put in a lot of effort. Our manufacturing and Process Engineer right now. We spent a lot of time over the past year, and a couple other teammates along the way have certainly contributed a lot towards towards what we have now which is a reduction to two skews to meet the broad spectrum. Everyone's life gets a lot easier manufacturing certainly a streamline purchase EQ it's just the whole supply chain stuff. It's it's a really good positive win for the team for what we've we've got prepared to kind of use in the field over the next couple of weeks actually is when we'll be throwing that out there, which is awesome.

Patrick Kothe 47:34

As long as it hits the customer expectation.

Chris Idelson 47:37

Yes, that's I mean, step one can't sacrifice that.

Patrick Kothe 47:41

So Chris, thanks so much for great conversation, really, really appreciate it getting inside the lab inside University and and discussing how to bring technology out of it. So you've had an interesting journey through education and out into a start up and I'm sure you've learned quite a bit looking back on it. What would you do different what what other things? Or? Or what topics would you like to learn more? What procedures do you think could be streamlined? What could be different about that educational journey that you went through, though, make it more impactful as you entered it into industry?

Chris Idelson 48:28

Understanding pace, being very different from academic it wasn't something that I felt I had to adjust to but I have seen other people need to adjust to it in a different fashion. You know, every day the stakes are higher and startup no matter what.

Patrick Kothe 48:43

After ashes burning? Yeah,

Chris Idelson 48:45

I seriously it's it's it's big, regulatory, and quality are the two big ones that come to mind. There aren't a terrible amount of educational material in this in a typical biomed or mechanical or just genuine general academic background, or

Patrick Kothe 49:03

that's shotsfired quite honestly, that's shocking to me. That's a really shocking to me, because wire. Yeah, it's something that's, that's so embedded within development programs of medical device that should be a major part of your education.

Chris Idelson 49:17

I completely agree. And so living in the quality and quality management system has been really valuable. You know, something we've looked at recently it was it was an E QMS. We haven't needed an electronic QMS but but we recently decided that we do for a couple of reasons. And so we checked out some of the some of the more well known companies and so seeing all the stuff out there has been really interesting. It's sometimes considered very dry but it can still be really intellectually engaging in maybe a strange way. Anyway, long story short, I think that that's that's my hot take on the on the academic learning that the opportunity that I hope students can take advantage of that and of course, hands on skill sets, not just just in the, in the in the math and the theory and all that stuff together. Aren't you got to figure out how to apply it if you want to do device development.

Patrick Kothe 50:04

I am excited for Chris, his development as a technology innovator, builder teams. And as a leader, it's great to witness someone who's successfully launched their career and medical device, and has done so with a growth mindset. A few of my takeaways. First, he discussed intellectual honesty, personally, and as a company personally said, you know, basically know where your limitations are, when he came into the company, he wasn't prepared to be a chief technology officer. So the team picked him up until he was ready to do so. So he put his ego aside and said, This is what I'm capable of doing, I will grow. But here's where we are today. And they use that same intellectual honesty, when they're talking about product development. And Chris Cook talked about, you know, let's keep going back to our customers, and making sure that we know everything, we validated everything, so that that's a tenant that they use throughout their throughout their company. The second thing was funding is a key driver in education. And if you didn't pick up on it in this conversation, you should, especially if you're trying to pull some technology out of a university, because the way that projects are funded, affects whether someone is going to work on them or not. So it may not be the best technology, it may be the best funded technology that gets worked on in a university. So if you're looking at technologies and looking to licensed technologies out of university, make sure that you understand the customer need and not just that it's developed at a university, because funding was a key driver in whether that project was worked on or not. The final thing was the business plan competition that Chris mentioned, and he talked about the rice business plan competition. This is an excellent comp competitive program, where people will go in front of VCs, funders, other entrepreneurs, and pitch their their ideas. And it's a competition with money involved. These student competitions are an excellent way to teach these students that customer need is a key driver, but also business as a key driver. You have to be able to monetize what you're doing and going through not only a technology assessment, but a business assessment at these competitions is an excellent way for them to really learn a lot more about our industry. And as Chris mentioned, that was the catalyst and winning that money. That was a catalyst to start this company. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word until a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind

 
Patrick Kothe
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