Customer Discovery is Vital - How to Do It Well
Daniel Powell is the CEO of Spark Biomedical, a startup company that developed, and as in the process of launching, a neurostimulation device to provide patients relief during opioid withdrawal. Daniel and his team have developed a solution, based on a proven technology. Daniel discusses Spark and some of the challenges they faced including product and technology, reimbursement, business model, clinical, and regulatory. We also discuss the product development process, specifically customer discovery. Daniel shares how in the past 25 years, in two separate industries, he has been involved in customer discovery in large and small companies and how his philosophy was shaped based on different systems he was taught, but modified, based on his hard-earned experience.
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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. I'm excited about today's guest, Daniel Powell. Daniel's the CEO of Spark Biomedical, a startup company that developed and is in the process of launching a neuro stimulation device to provide patients relief during opioid withdrawal. Obviously, this is a big problem. And Daniel and his team have developed a solution based on a proven technology. We're going to hear more about Spark and some of the challenges they faced and how they were overcome. But a lot of this episode is devoted to the product development process, specifically customer discovery. This is an area that can lead to smooth launches, or product disasters. Product development, and product launches are never perfect. But doing customer discovery, and doing it well will increase your probability of success. I'm happy to have Daniel join us because in the past 25 years in two separate industries, he's been involved in customer discovery, both in large and small companies, and has shaped his philosophy based on different systems he was taught, but then he modified them based on his hard earned experience. Here's our conversation. Daniel, thanks for being with us today.
Daniel Powell 01:50
Thank you, Pat. I appreciate it.
Patrick Kothe 01:52
So we all have a story about how we navigate the early parts of our career. But yours is pretty unique. Because you started outside of the medical device industry. Can you share how you got started in the early part of your career?
Daniel Powell 02:09
Sure, absolutely. I had a boss once told me I took the scenic route, but that was okay. I was I'm a business major from Texas a&m and got an accounting degree which then you know, you have to go what was called The Big eight became the big six accounting firms, this four of them now, that was the only career path. And it just didn't match my personality or for me. So I like technology, I was really into that. And I kind of found this merging with information technology, and information systems. And so went to EDS, Electronic Data System. Ross perot's old company, and then on to KPMG, where it became a consultant doing cybersecurity, enjoying it, enjoying kind of the mix of information and new systems and that, but really, I was just enjoying learning new stuff, the moment the woman I learned it, I just want to go do something else, then
Patrick Kothe 03:04
what kind of stuff what kind of stuff was interesting on learning side.
Daniel Powell 03:09
I loved learning about hacking. Just to show you we had a, we had a security lab with all the different operating systems and all the different kinds of servers. And so we could kind of create mock boxes. And I feel like fell in love with the idea of putting a honeypot out on the network. So it's a vulnerable computer there are people in security is really hard to sell. Because, like, you know, when insurance works, I ran my car into a wall, they paid for the fender to be fixed. Insurance is worth it's worth investment. In security, especially in those days. You spend all the money and you don't know if you got hacked or not only you only know when it really went bad. You don't know how many times it saved you. Also working for KPMG I got to see many companies, not one. So I got to see an oil company in a food company and you know, whatever transportation company versus just one industry. Strangely, never had a gig in medical, actually. So I went through a midlife crisis at 26 and decided I need to open Internet gaming cafes, because that was all the rage. as anybody knows, always say that was a fantastic way to lose a lot of money. So I kind of found myself figuring out where to go with this entrepreneurial endeavor that failed. And I swore I'd never be an entrepreneur again. I just was gonna take the paycheck. It just didn't work. Now, I look back. I didn't do any homework. I just thought like I know about computers and I like computer games. So I'm gonna open a retail store. Horrible strategy, right? I didn't. I didn't go to industry trade events. I didn't teach myself how to be a store owner. Heaven forbid I've been slightly successful and still been doing that today though. So maybe it's best I've just washed out. I was looking for a job. And that director of electrical engineer for neuromodulation neuro stem medical company used to come in and just Like hang out and play World of Warcraft in the store, and we became friends, he's like, you know, there's an opening in our software department. And so with no background in medical, but a lot of it and building websites and apps and things, not apps back then, but software, I got hired as a software analyst at St. Jude Medical. And that was my intro, and I fell in love I, they sent me down to training. And I trained with all the sales reps. And I always loved medical too. I mean, like, I loved biology, and I thought, just studious enough to be a doctor, or anything like that. So it wasn't ever in the cards. I used to always buy the little skeletons and take them apart and glue them all together models, I had all the different sets that year, the nose, eyes and stuff. So when I started learning how electrical stimulation interrupts the neural pathways, blocks the the gate control theory of passing the signal up and down the spinal cord I was just in. And that just changed everything. I just ate it up and found home. So that was I was 19 years ago, I think. So it's really my second career.
Patrick Kothe 06:11
So the first part of career, I always find that interesting, because we're kind of searching for what we want to do. But we're learning a lot about ourselves. What did you learn about yourself in that first five years? prior to getting into medical?
Daniel Powell 06:28
Yeah, I mean, I learned, I learned I had a lot to learn. I mean, I would go through and Okay, well, maybe I'm gonna be a database analyst because I like data. And maybe I'm gonna be this and your test and be like, yeah, it was your absolute correct, I was search, searching for who I would grow into professionally, I learned that was a really bad manager, I got my first management gig. And I, again, just sort of, I didn't really have training, and not knowing how to really properly coach people, give them feedback, manage the schedules, or you know, all those in conflict. So that was, that was kind of that awareness of, I'm not good at this, and I need to learn it.
Patrick Kothe 07:07
I share kind of what you're saying, if you're not trained. And no one gives you a pathway to learn these things. You're just floundering, you're just you think you you think it's the next step that you're going to do something okay now and manage people, but no one trained you how to do it, you're just not going to be good at it. And
Daniel Powell 07:30
America, in American businesses, as a whole, are horrible at this, you just promote up the lead guy who has been there longest or lady and it's like, No, you got to train them, or they might not be their skill sets. But she made management seems so important, because it gets more money and more status, people skip out on their career track that they're personally wired for. And you've probably seen this over and over. And the technical engineer wants to be the manager engineer, and they don't have management skills, and they should just not have gone down that path.
Patrick Kothe 08:02
Well, let's talk a little bit because you work for KPMG is pretty, pretty big company, what kind of training was there was just technical training.
Daniel Powell 08:12
Prior probably the best training, they that really got me to where I am today actually was from KPMG. And that was user needs elicitation. So you're gonna go into a client, and you're gonna listen and hear what they're not telling you and figure out what the real problem and pain is and begin to solve it. And I think there was other training, there's management, training, some and technical training, but I really being able to go in and do a brand new business that you don't really have any background in and just start to absorb and listen in. And I had pretty good mentoring and pretty good examples that were pretty high in group. So what was really good,
Patrick Kothe 08:54
let's shift gears a little bit and go go into your medical career, because you spent a lot of that in marketing. But 15 plus years of that is has been in marketing.
Daniel Powell 09:06
I came in as a software analyst, we were hired to interview that marketing product manager that I would be working with on the other side. And I asked him all the questions on eliciting requirements. And he said, he was like from some big fancy firm, kind of kind of like a KPMG. But just sort of the road consulting stuff he was throwing down. I was like, that's not how you really do user needs like it was. It's a cute graph. But remember, I was kind of, even though I'm giving my feedback to the Vice President, and I was like, cute graph, but like Can he really couldn't really figure it out. I had also one invention of the year because I figured out how to do something with a stimulator that everybody said couldn't be done. And I just kept asking people too, I found an engineer. Well, you could do it this way. I had a little street cred from that. And they decided to give me the job. So they did offer to him and he turned it down. Just to be honest. They, they offered me the job. Suddenly I was in marketing. And two weeks later, we were launching Deep Brain Stimulation in Europe. And next thing I know I'm in the field launching a brand new product globally overnight, it was a really cool experience.
Patrick Kothe 10:15
Were you trained in marketing?
Daniel Powell 10:17
No. Accounting, just the opposite. My wife was the marketer, you know, she was always the creative, where I naturally had the skills was upstream marketing. So requirements elicitation meet the user needs doing an analysis of the market. I'm not near as strong at the downstream marketing voice to the customer, communication branding, but I had a respect for it. That's probably what helped us being married to a lifetime marketer and everything I had a healthy respect for those skills and, and then partnered well with those portions of the marketing department.
Patrick Kothe 10:49
What types of medical devices? Were you marketing? When you started with down that track at St. Jude?
Daniel Powell 10:58
So it was deep brain stimulation and neuro stimulation, so we put wires inside people's brain to help their Parkinson's and a central tremor.
Patrick Kothe 11:07
So that was, what 2007 2010 somewhere in that range? Yeah.
Daniel Powell 11:13
2006 to 10.
Patrick Kothe 11:16
So at that point, what was going on? was it was it a new technology? Was it something that was mature,
Daniel Powell 11:22
we were second in the it was a 30 year old technology, Medtronic LED, and then we were second in market, I had the pleasant experience of being at a company that went under an FDA warning letter. So warning letters are so destructive, the new product development because you stop everything, and you start fixing the back stuff. And we had problems and Kappas and all the different things to clean up for the FDA. So after about three, four years of absolutely no new product development, when we had the world's worst Deep Brain Stimulation system, it first launched in Europe and we're getting our rigors kicked in by Medtronic, I survived about eight reorg and layoffs. And I watched all my friends get fired and their careers destroyed and they moved their family to Plano to be there. And then they get laid off. And just finally hit a point in time, it is time to move on. And there's a great opening at cyber ronix, which did Vegas nerve stem for epilepsy, and went down there and ended up running global marketing for a couple years. And we got to do full branding exercise I wrote and I had a really good right hand person, actually a whole team of them. That really we got to do some cool branding and cool, cool downstream marketing and rework everything. So it was like, like, in one year, I did like five years worth of marketing efforts. So it was really fun Crash Course. This is the ironic, we had an investment in a German company doing a regular neurostimulation I saw it and I said that is ridiculous, and it will never work. So the irony here is I'm CEO of a company doing a regular neuro stem that I mocked about six years ago.
Patrick Kothe 12:57
We're all smart, aren't we?
Daniel Powell 12:58
Yeah. I also thought you'd never be able to order a pizza off your phone. I was like, That's ridiculous. So I do miss a lot of a lot of trends in the industry.
Patrick Kothe 13:08
I remember the first time I saw somebody marketing bottles of water. I thought, boy, that'll never work.
Daniel Powell 13:15
Exactly. Marketing. So
Patrick Kothe 13:17
yeah, marketing. It's a misunderstood thing. And quite honestly, I think that there's a lot of room for better training within the medical device industry and for marketing. I think there's some great sales training, there's great engineering, there's great, great quality. I don't think there's that we're as good as an industry as we could be in marketing. You were absolutely correct. It is the tail end, it's
Daniel Powell 13:43
the first to get laid off and downsized and it is just the budgets I we would hire people from outside industry. And they're like, wait, what's your budget? We can't do anything. We're like, we know.
Patrick Kothe 13:55
But if so I spent a lot of years in marketing as well. And I've gotten got my opinion, I'll share in a second. But what did you like about marketing? What was what was what was fun about it? What was career enhancing about it?
Daniel Powell 14:10
I loved being the interface between the customer and engineering and I got to work with engineers who are brilliant in solving this problem, and then go out and work with physicians and the sales force. You know, I just really enjoyed that. And it was very fulfilling to hear the input, take it back, realize it into a product and then launch it and these doctors are like you listen to me, there's something really cool about when you're winning. And I've had a lot of dog products that were you're just slugging it out. Then every once while I gotta you know you hit a real winner that you've done everything right and it's so rewarding. That I always told people you spend like 90% of your time doing stuff that's not fun for that 10% when you launch the big product or get the when it's this maybe all roles are like that, but the seem like there's a lot you had to love it.
Patrick Kothe 14:58
Yeah, I came up into sales side of things and moved through moved over into marketing. And a lot of times what I felt in sales is, you're, you're like the center of the universe. And when you move out of sales, you realize that that's not quite the case. But when I moved into marketing like you, what I enjoyed most was interfacing with everybody else in the organization. You got the salespeople, you get those clinical, the regulatory, the manufacturing, finance everybody you're interfacing with. So I always looked at myself as a hub of the wheel from that standpoint, because I was the one who was interfacing with everybody else, not, not every one of those other functional areas was interfacing with everybody. The other thing for me that was important is I got to spend time with customers. And I got to see the realization of what we're doing as a, as a team as a company, taking it out and benefiting the patient. So I got the I got I got interaction with everybody throughout throughout the company.
Daniel Powell 15:59
Yeah. And you get to learn so much more about the business. It's fantastic.
Patrick Kothe 16:04
That being in marketing for that many years, did that prepare you for being a CEO?
Daniel Powell 16:11
But yeah, it really did. The other thing that prepared me for being a CEO, though, was the warning letter, and seeing all the things that could go wrong and picked it into getting a higher respect for portions of the business. So same thing, I may not know manufacturing, but it became apparent to me that if you cannot reliably manufacture something every day consistently, it doesn't matter how good the quote unquote design was, it's like no, this, this is an entire portion of the business that has to function just as important as inventing the product. But yeah, like having an appreciation for sales and how difficult it is, and, and having their appreciation for regulatory process. And between the two. And the warning letter really was a eye opener. And I would say for my career, I try to appreciate what I don't know, and not just dismiss something as Why don't you just get it done, you know, it's just a mole, just get it done, you know, or something like that. And it's like, know that there's a process support them learn it, I, we have a manufacturing facility, outsource but sits in Orange County, and to Juana and I visited twice, going across the border, seeing them hand building our device, sat at the table built one myself, just just so I have a respect for it. Not just assumed the magical cloning machine works and out pops a bunch of our product, but you got to be you got to be willing to figure that stuff out, support it and appreciate it. You don't have to know it. But you have to appreciate it.
Patrick Kothe 17:38
Yeah, I, again, I can empathize with you there to one significant thing that happened in my career is one of our sister companies had a hip implant that had had a problem of billion dollar lawsuit and they took our company and and sold it off, took different pieces and sold it off. And it had nothing to do with the design. It was a change in the manufacturing process. But that change in manufacturing process, even though as you said, you know, manufacturing is should be pretty nailed down. There's one little thing that goes wrong. It can have catastrophic effects for a billion dollar companies.
Daniel Powell 18:18
Yeah, yeah. I do love that my products not implanted anymore. So this is my first class to device it's not implanted. And it's you sleep a little easier at night, not knowing like, Oh, I don't have to cut this out to somebody if it goes wrong. So that's,
Patrick Kothe 18:33
yeah, so So let's talk about Spark. Let's talk about what it is. And let's start off by talking about the need what what is the market need?
Daniel Powell 18:45
There's no shortage of information on the opioid epidemic and the impact and death toll it's had it struggled for coverage, though. It's like everybody knows there's an opioid epidemic. But do we really know how bad it is? There is pride 10 million plus Americans that are on opioids, I can't get off today legitimately prescribed. My mom's one of these people. She's on 40 milligrams of methadone a day for Lyme disease. It doesn't work for Lyme disease, it was mis marketed as a chronic pain drug. She can't stop taking it. So you have this huge market of people who did nothing wrong. What we'll say is they're physically dependent on opioids. They're being prescribed and and to get off and so then you say, Well, why are they still on them to get off, um, you have to go through withdrawal. And opioid withdrawal is a special place in hell. It is brutal. It is. It overrides your your logic and your sense of reason, because you have a malfunctioning portion of the brain, which is your fight or flight portion of brain, your amygdala. And that's the part that says run from saber toothed Tigers when you see him immediately. And if it's malfunctioning, you're not in a position of logic to overcome what you think you're getting. Through its pure emotion, its pure sympathetic system just railed to the max. And then you have the people who have slid from dependence into full blown opioid use disorder or addiction. That's another three or 4 billion Americans. So it's it's a huge problem very costly for the system. And the barrier is withdrawal we call the 800 pound gorilla, right? You just it's, if you cannot pass through withdrawal, you cannot begin recovery, it's in the way for everybody is on opioids. It's not, it's not some it's not 50% is, if you've been on opioids, a long time, you're going to go through a horrible withdrawal. where the idea came from, as some people may remember, in the 80s, it was pretty Vogue to get acupuncture in the knee in the ear for to alleviate smoking. So sensations, a little needle in the ear and you wiggle it every time you have cravings, all these network pathways are the same ones were stimulating just instead of using needles, we're pushing electricity directly onto these branches of the cranial nerves that come up around the ear. The reason the ear is is just it's been well studied where these branches of the trigeminal nerve and branches of the vagus nerve come up to the surface. So you can hit them with electricity through the skin without the need for an implant or cutting or a needle or anything. There's actually studies going back to 1947 for alcohol withdrawals using basically electroshock therapy back in the day, but you're recruiting these same nerves, I would say Here we are in 2021, we have a much more fine, discrete way to apply that electricity. If you feel a little buzz, there's no shocking or anything. It's think of a 10s unit after a few minutes you don't even remember it's on, we're able to modulate the brain drive the production, we believe of endogenous endorphins, which is what opioids replace, and bring down that fight or flight sense. And then there's what we've clinically proven as we can significantly reduce the withdrawal symptoms and improve someone's statistical chance to get through detox, and move on to long term care.
Patrick Kothe 22:05
what's currently being done to go through that that intense period?
Daniel Powell 22:12
Well, you choose one or two paths, you either choose to stay on more opioids, which you will remain dependent on or addicted to, that is the majority of what people do. And so you've heard of Suboxone, buprenorphine, these drugs out there, there are methadone. methadone is just purely an opioid with no pure agonist with no antagonist element to it. So so that's what the majority of people do. Those who don't, there's one and only one medicine called loose Amira that's approved on the market to reduce withdrawal. We call them comfort meds. But otherwise, you're getting, you're getting meds for nausea, meds for pain, and meds for anxiety to try to get through it.
Patrick Kothe 22:59
So with these difficult situations, we tried to get through withdrawal there, there doesn't seem to be a real good solution on doing that. What, what's the percentage of people who make it through withdrawal?
Daniel Powell 23:13
I think if you're going cold turkey without an opioid substitute, I think the average is less than 25%, or a people and it depends on the quality of the facility, which is there's a big disparity across the states, and maybe the quality of the care, and your familiar support, like who you have to support, but it's, it's 25%, we were at about 53% of people finish the study. And but 93% of everybody had a clinically meaningful reduction within an hour. So we're putting this device, also, the challenge of doing the studies, we had to look at other studies and other data points to power our, our results. And so we had to put to match what pharma does, and everybody we had to put people into moderate withdrawal to pull them out. And that's not how you want to practice medicine, what you really want to do is just give, you know, give this to them as soon as they walk in the door before withdrawals kicking in and four to eight hours. And hopefully they never go into withdrawal. So it's not an ideal way to study. It's the way we had to do this step. But our next study, like you walk in the door, here's the system put it on, we don't have to prove to anybody we reduce withdrawal. We've proven that now we're going to prove that our long term retention.
24:30
So what is the device look like?
Daniel Powell 24:33
It's a little flexible earpiece that just goes over the ear. It's real soft and thin. It's a cable that goes down to a little box of batteries that you wear on the belt, carry it around. We try to miniaturize the whole thing and get it up on the ear but first gen discrete components and you don't miniaturize until you know what you're doing so it's not the size of the big iPhone.
Patrick Kothe 24:55
So how long is the patient wearing this?
Daniel Powell 24:57
We didn't know what the halo effect would be in how many hours of stimulation? Well, we know that withdraws five to seven days. So they wore it 24. Seven the whole time. Because we just, we just went with a sledgehammer approach, like we didn't want risk people coming out of withdrawal, because the dude, you know, they put it on for two hours and then at the effect wore off four hours later. Anecdotally, we have like half our patients taking it off at night, sleeping through the night and not having much of a rebound, and they're withdrawn, they'd wake up the morning, get the device on, get feeling better, it really speaks that we're modulating the brain. Well, though, that we have the Halo. And then we'll we'll start to figure out dosing studies are the worst. And this is really about dosing the electricity. So we'll start to figure out what the duty cycle really looks like. And then our hypothesis moving forward is you can probably use this for two or three hours a day for what we'll call protracted withdrawal. So go through five to seven days, you get clean, you then begin treatment, well, you still feel horrible, your body's missing a chemical that's been, you know, given an exhaustion as chemical, making it feel good for months, or years or a decade, and then you've taken it away. So we believe we can continue to stimulate and then help the brain recover and return to a natural state. That's our hypothesis. We hope we prove it. Just because you're detox doesn't mean you don't have a long path ahead of you that was just the first big step.
Patrick Kothe 26:24
Is this a standalone therapy Are you are people doing it in conjunction with other drugs?
Daniel Powell 26:32
Who are labeling says definitely, it's an adjunctive therapy with other care. So you're still going to get comfort matters, you're still going to get some other we allowed non opioid substitute comfort meds. And then if you get completely cleaned, and the standard of care is to get a shot, called Vivitrol, which is 100% opioid antagonists, stays in the body about 30 days. And it basically prevents you from relapse. So instead of using and getting high, and then using, again, getting high, it basically blocks the opioid receptors. So if you took heroin or pills or whatever, it would basically bounce out of your nervous system. So you don't relapse.
Patrick Kothe 27:15
So you just got regulatory approval for this for this device just a couple months ago, right?
Daniel Powell 27:21
January 2, at 10pm.
Patrick Kothe 27:23
January 2 2021 10pm. Must have been a very, very good night.
Daniel Powell 27:29
It was a stressful Christmas and New Year's but yeah, January 2 was good.
Patrick Kothe 27:33
And how old is the company?
Daniel Powell 27:36
We started August 18 2018. So we were two years and four months from start to approval. That is quick. We're proud of it. It was it was a lot of stars aligned. I'm not gonna say we were brilliant at it. But we knew what we knew the device we're gonna make. We knew the clinical, we knew the home market opportunity. Me and the founding partners just meshed super well. And it was just the perfect, perfect selection of people to get this to happen. All right, Tom, this will never happen again.
Patrick Kothe 28:07
Let's let's talk about that, that team that you put together. So what what were the attributes of the people that came in what functional areas did they cover?
Daniel Powell 28:16
So man, the two founders so Alejandro actually has a PhD in neuro engineering and invented the product in his garage because he wanted to make up for migraine. And Naveed it has a PhD in neurophysiology. So again, the engineer who knew this light and just been here in this industry, 20 years, and Alejandro built wearables before trigeminal nerve stem on the forehead for ADHD is what it ended up getting an indication of needs an expert and got his PhD and Vagus, nerve stem and neuroplasticity. And the scientists, the engineer, and I was the business guy. And it was just a great starting place. Because we all had the thing. He had to build the product, we had, Navin had a designer clinical study and get that going. And I needed to raise money, and make sure we had all the pieces in place to get there. And so it worked out real well. And then we added quickly needed a CFO and picked up somebody and everybody that's come on board, I think except for maybe one or two I've worked with before. And with 20 years in the industry, you get to call on the people that were good and the people you've liked working with and so that's been a real key like somebody wants that I was trying to recruit someone, they didn't want to come work for us. It was the first time I got rejected. I was like, but we're awesome. Like we're, we're the people but then Carl came on board as our CFO and just you know was my right hand man I'd never raised money before so he was my right hand man and understanding that and understand the lingo and how it played out. And, and super smart with business model and, and really having somebody who knew how to build a credible business model. I watched I watched investors try to beat them up over and over on it. And he was like, No, I got that right here. Don't get that right here. It was just sit back and smile like I would have gotten. I couldn't even talk to it. I would have gotten roasted. And he was he just crushed it and needed an operations person. And we also needed a reimbursement person and ended up picking up Chris Hanna. His company was going bankrupt. He had take it was a neurosteroid implantable neuro stem company he ran operations took from zero to $50 million. So I was like, yep, you can do this. It's like, and he and I worked together back at St. Jude, great guy. And he happens to teach health economics at SMU as a part time because it used to run reimbursement. So we needed reimbursement and operations and the universe served it up and the only one person in this country that does both and was in Dallas, so worked out well. So good, well rounded team. And we've got sales and marketing just as hitters in that as well. Really held back on hiring, sales and marketing. To we're way, way down the road. Like if, if you don't have regulatory approval, there's nothing to market.
Patrick Kothe 31:03
I think the other thing is you've got a background in marketing. And we'll get into some of this customer discovery stuff pretty deep and in a couple minutes. But I think it is important to get through have someone skilled in customer discovery early on within a company and having the background having someone on the team with that background is critical.
Daniel Powell 31:23
Yeah. And I definitely I still consider myself the product manager. Like we have a product manager, I was like, Yeah, but I'm still sort of the product. Because I love it. And I'm going out in the field, and I'm working on making sales. Right, right with the salespeople and doing doc dinners. Even solo just because the you just don't know if you don't get in the field what what we need to, you know, react and we had assumptions, and many are wrong and a couple of right and we're we're adjusting.
Patrick Kothe 31:53
Startups don't always need everybody inside initially. Were the were the some things or are there some things that you've outsourced?
Daniel Powell 32:01
Yeah, I outsource almost all development. I don't want a big engineering team. They're they're expensive. And then they cost a lot of money in between projects. So you're always doing projects, although we are always doing projects, but I have a great partner. We have most of our development being done by a firm here and, and Katy, Texas called millennium, and they match our personalities. And they actually in there also are part of our manufacturing we've outsourced to so I don't like lots of employees. It's just complicates things. I like contracts with another good firm with its own leadership. And that we can interact with most people can't believe the budget. We did this on we really we all worked from home. And that seemed crazy to build a medical device company from your home in 2018. But about mid 2020 we look brilliant, like Oh, we've already mastered this working from home thing. And it was just but there was in the beginning I was like embarrassed like no, we don't have an office. We just work from home. You know, my dogs walking behind me. You hear someone bark? doorbells ringing and so it felt weird. And then now it's just normal life. So it's like, well, that worked. That worked out real well for us.
Patrick Kothe 33:09
Yeah. So you had in the past that your career you had some regulatory challenges. What did you do for setting up your your regulatory system?
Daniel Powell 33:19
First thing I did was I bought greenlight guru to be our quality management system. So we had a fully validated system of record that walked us through the correct design controls. Alejandro has done remediation as a consultant before, so he he knows as well. So we're like, no, we're doing things, right. We're not want a warning letter, I want to pass audits with flying colors. So we just we follow the put in good quality management system ended up hiring a full time regulatory person when we could afford it. And, you know, just making sure we're just doing everything right. And then our partners have really good quality systems too. So they you know, we can depend on their engineering work and their their background and their testing. Really where it comes down to. Did you do all the design controls? Correct so that the tests really do give you confidence? The products gonna work?
Patrick Kothe 34:12
clinical, outsource that?
Daniel Powell 34:14
No, we didn't. We're a single site. It was pretty controllable. We hired a 1099. Who who ran it, we just didn't need to see our Oh, so we ran it all ourselves and crunched the data is fantastic to the FDA gave us some pushback. And we went back to the data and we discovered more data that we've collected that was even better. We're like, Oh, look at this. So really just good. Good solid work. I'm really proud of it. So what's not published yet, but there's a white paper you can download from our website that has the interim analysis, really proud of it.
Patrick Kothe 34:44
So the regulatory pathway was what
Daniel Powell 34:47
it was a 510 K. We followed an acupuncture device, which we weren't sure if they were gonna say 510 K or go to Nova because one has needles and one has hydrogels. But we were able to 510 k this Might as well been a de novo is actually 510 k pathway ended up being you're getting to try to compare with clinical. Yeah, with, you know, definitely with clinical. And you know, there was a moment where like, maybe we can get this approved without clinical, there would have been the dumbest mistake we ever made. So we learned so much, the product became better during the clinical study. We did it right. We have a randomized control trial with great results and class one evidence so and that really is back to marketing. It's a great marketing piece if you do that. Right. It's, it's great for marketing. Yeah,
Patrick Kothe 35:33
I launched a product. That was they were able to get through with 510 K, with all clinical data. And then when you go hit the marketplace, and your customer says, okay, it sounds great, but where's the clinical data that hamstrings you? It really does. Yep. What's the market size.
Daniel Powell 35:51
So three to 4 million Americans have a diagnosed opioid use disorder and either abusing heroin, fentanyl, or pills. And then there's about 10 to 11 million Americans that are misusing or overusing prescription opioids that just can't dial them down because of physical dependency. So pretty big market
Patrick Kothe 36:13
data. What's the business model? Are you selling? Are you leasing? Are you do you have disposables? What's the business model look like?
Daniel Powell 36:20
why that's such a good question. Because we're kind of figuring that out. As we go. We're testing different models, we're testing distributors, there's no reimbursement, which is definitely an uphill battle. That was probably one of the biggest things we face with a new device, you basically sell it to a doctor and they resell it to the patient, or they write a prescription and the patient buys it from us, which we haven't implemented, we didn't really want to put in all that HIPAA stuff just right now and spend all that money. So we're just selling it through the doctor.
Patrick Kothe 36:48
what's the what's the list price on the device?
Daniel Powell 36:52
I think starter kits 15 $100. But we are playing with the lease model. If you detoxes over and seven to 10 days, do you really need to own the device, when I describe the vision that you keep those for the next three, four months, the system was always designed to go there. And until we have that expanded label indication, we're playing around with some lace models. Luckily, we've labeled it all for reuse. And then the earpieces are disposable. So you peel the back off, they have hydro gel and hydro colloid, which is the medical adhesive, stick it on the ear lasts for about 24 hours and you throw it away.
Patrick Kothe 37:24
That's I assume you are setting things up for reimbursement.
Daniel Powell 37:27
Yes, that is number one priority now is to get that moving. So what it what a complicated world that is an a moving target. So you have workers comp, you have CMS, true government reimbursement, then you have the privates. And so that's almost three different strategies like what is Blue Cross Blue Shield and united? What might interest them? And then what do I have to do to go get on the CMS and, and then you have VA and all their schedules. And all the government says there's really, there's four, four legs to this, that you got to kind of figure out which one you're gonna be good at first?
Patrick Kothe 38:03
Well, it's a fascinating product, it's a tremendous need out there, bring a solution into someplace that has searched for an answer for a long time, is really great. And I really applaud you and the team for bringing this bringing this forward and wish you nothing but success in bringing it getting it adopted, and getting it paid for
Daniel Powell 38:29
I appreciate it, thank you, it's very rewarding to work on it. And the world needs it and we met with so it gives gets us up early and drives us every day.
Patrick Kothe 38:39
So I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into customer discovery, because you've lived through it with many of the different opportunities you've you've been involved with, including this one. So you've spent the last two years and really going through and developing a product but a lot of that was I'm sure customer discovery, but let's just talk broader, a little bit about customer discovery, and I'll just kind of separate in to make sure that we're talking about the same thing. So there's, there's one step of that is identifying a need identifying an idea. And then once you have that idea, that's where I'll refer to that as customer discovery and how you how you go and do methodically using a scientific method to really understand and validate all of your assumptions. So let's let's just take the you know, the kind of the the first step on identifying a need identifying a potential product. Did you did you have processes you know, how did you do that?
Daniel Powell 39:43
I was at a previous company where I met Alejandro Naveed and they wanted to use all the hondros your stimulator that all hidden vented in we have a spreadsheet. I think this will answer what you're asking and I was like okay, what can we chase and we had migraine and we had depression and we had a Stroke recovery. And we had the list because it was like, we have a widget, where are we going to apply it? So that's how I kind of saw this product. And the regular neural stem is just very popular and getting a lot of papers. So there's just like that we can, you know, we can help this we can help that question is, can we help it enough and to be impactful? And one thing that I've seen over and over is, let's go after migraine. Why? Huge, huge market? Let's go after migraine. I was like, Yeah, but it's hard. It's up. So let me outline why it's hard. There's three other neuro stimulators already on the market, there's 82 medications or whatever it is, they keep coming up with better formulations for it. Yes, it's an unmet need. Yes, it's miserable. People who aren't getting migraine relief, are we going to be so special, that we break the barrier? Okay, if not, then we're just one of four neurostimulation products. And now for migraine. And by the way, migraine studies are notoriously difficult reduce number of headaches per month, or whatever you're measuring. It's very subjective. Like anything pain, same with depression, huge problem. tough, tough clinical, to run a lot of subjectivity. When I saw this, I was like, so you're telling me, someone goes from laying on the ground in a fetal position, losing their mind to sitting in a chair smiling and an hour, and they've stopped sweating, and they stopped running to the bathroom, and they got their wits about them. And they're happy. I was like that those I like studies like that, oh, and it's five days, it's a five day endpoint, not a one year follow up. So five days. So we walk there, what do we apply this to look at market size, look at? What does it really mean? That's you got to get, and then sometimes you're gonna be wrong. And that's where you can't price where we're going to go with the conversation, you don't hold on to it. If you're wrong, like, No, I'm gonna make this work. Okay,
Patrick Kothe 41:52
I think that's a really interesting, interesting way of looking at it. Because there's some things where you're out searching for needs, and then applying technology, sometimes you're your cert, you've got a technology and you're searching for needs. One of the problems that you run into as the you know, the old saying, you know, if you've got your hand, a hammer in your hand, the whole world looks like a nail. And that's when you run into, you know, I got, Hey, I got a, I got a device, neural stem device, ECG, I've got, you know, whatever, whatever type of device, and I'm going to go search for a market to look at, you got to do that. And you really have to understand what your product is, and is there a need there. And so if you, if you go down that route, you have to make sure that it's a clear need, as you said, otherwise, you're just going to be noise. And in a crowded marketplace, there's other systems that people have that that are looking for needs true needs, without a product, and then looking for a product that there as well. So let's, let's leave that kind of behind us, let's, let's assume that you've got, you've identified a need, you've identified a need. And now you've also identified a technology that can solve that need. The classic, you know, definition of customer discovery is really kind of in the in this in this phase, and it comes from Steve Blank and, and Eric Ries work in the Lean Startup methodology. That's really where where this customer discovery stuff, and it's just, it's fairly recent 2010. But it's really questioning all the core assumptions that you have. And it's questioning the different customer types that are out there as well. And it's using a scientific method to validate all of your, all of your assumptions. So let's talk about that a little bit. And how you get prior to 2010. I know you've got experience that way too. But it's it's a similar mindset that you have to have in really running down everything about an idea.
Daniel Powell 43:58
I got my training from pragmatic marketing, it's a, an amazing upstream marketing program out it was back when I took it didn't just teach the elicitation, but dropped it into a framework of the rest of the business and all the others projects to solve, so that you just didn't sit there and there's one little vacuum looking at one, you know, task mapping process or whatever. But you started to think of all the different components. Right? In this process, I will wrap in I believe in rapid prototyping from low fidelity to high fidelity. And I don't need more than seven or eight people on a prototype normally to go rogue that's broken, that's broken stop using it. I got I know what six things I have to fix before I can even get a better answer. So a really mean usability and rapid prototyping and then and then real world Vout validation is key. I'll throw out one other thing that I discovered along the way, especially if you're in a competitor market, so I had a deep brain stimulation system and Metro I got a deep brain stimulation system. And so I had to figure out what to fix to compete. Because we were losing their implant was a little smaller than our so since that goes in the pectoral region of the chest, that's a big deal, like how much smaller that and then you walk through all the features I really like conceptually, the Kanto model, K and O, which says, What are my must haves to be in this ballgame and say, I was always having to fight the engineers or argue with management for the budget, get this product into a competitive winning position. And I really liked this model, if you're working on a competitor product. So you go, you map out what are the must haves, what are the nice to haves, and it's fits in this graph. And I never admit I've never like super formulated it. They're just conceptually always drove. And they have a performance line going through the middle. And this is really useful to explain to engineers that you don't understand. On this performance line. There's other things that are measured. They their download time is 20 seconds, and ours is seven minutes, like so I don't need to get it to five minutes, I need to get it into a competitive range. So it lets you map out again, those type of measurements, basic features, must haves, nice to haves. And then it has this one part that I love, and it's called wow factors. And you put 234 ideas that are Hail Marys in it, and hopefully one of them becomes a new must have, and future generations because you've taken the lead. And I always run into people who are like, well, how much more money is that gonna make? I don't know. I know, I need like three well, features that nobody has. And I don't know which one's going to be most popular. And I can go try. But customers lie to you. They all Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'd have three patients a week. And that's no problem. And then, you know, a month later. Now, I don't have any patients on equip.
Patrick Kothe 46:56
Oh, that's a that's a really interesting way of looking at it. As you go through that you're talking to a lot of different customers, how many customers you talk to? And how many do you need? And and when is it too much.
Daniel Powell 47:09
I have talked to over 107 ones, but it was a three year project. And you know, you're just continually engaging and you know, you go conference, and you can talk to 20 docs and you're hitting it, you tend to know a lot, I get about eight to 10 people. But it depends on how diverse your crowd is. So like we sell into pain, where doctors have a bunch of pain patients on high opioids, and we're saying selling into behavioral health, where Addiction Recovery facilities have patients addicted, and they're definitely nothing the same. And in part of the requirement discovery, like I'll share like you, the pain doc tells the patient, I'm gonna sell this to you and the person up front is gonna wring you out. And you have this consultation. The person going into rehab we discovered along the way, like what was the journey of the patient? What's the workflow? They pay their money over the phone, as their insurance is taken to pay for rehab. And at that point in time they go, well, would you like to spend more money for spa therapy, you know, so that people go into Florida? Like, yes, I would like a back rub every day? And would you like equine therapy? And would you like a private room. And that's where it's sold. Because by the time they show up to the facility, they don't have a credit card and they're not in a buying mood. They're pretty miserable. And so the entire sales process needed to be discovered, not just the design inputs, and drove in. I was like, okay, how's that gonna look? And where's the product going to be and starts to dry packaging and distribution decisions like, well, we kind of need to have it on the shelf. Once you're in withdrawal, it's too late. So you're the affects your logistics plan and your collections plan. And you're, you know, okay, well, doctors don't like paying for expensive things, put it on the shelf, and then hope to sell it. So you got to give them terms so they can make their money before they pay you.
Patrick Kothe 49:00
Yeah, I think it's a really good point. Because many people think that customer discovery just involves the product, the product being the hardware, and that's not the product, the product is everything, and everyone who is involved with that technology. So it's it's not only the people who are using it or implanting it, but it's the people in supply chain. It's the payers, it's the GPOs. It's the people in the stockrooms. Each one of those has some interaction with your product. Yeah. And every one of those could end up making or breaking you. Every one of those those groups could put a big fly in the ointment.
Daniel Powell 49:46
Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And we ran into that we're like, Okay, well, this, this type of nerves in this type of setting, they're like they're, they're not trying to sell you gotta sell because it's cash pay. So I have to have a sale. person in the office all the time. Well, that's, that's not scalable. So the answer's no. How do I, you know, and we're solving some of those problems I videos, the more videos the better you make your training, you make your sales pitch repeatable, so we have all those in development like, like, help help the doc sell.
Patrick Kothe 50:17
A lot of times, you know, we we talk about our successes with, with, with different programs that we do, but we also have failures. So we launched products and when we do the analysis at the end, when they don't work, we say all boy, I missed on that in customer discovery. And I've had that experience in the past have you have you had it as well,
Daniel Powell 50:39
I have it with this product. We're halfway through development. And we had a rechargeable battery on it. And we're like, this is a freakin disaster like the like, and the battery was draining so fast. We had to buy USB battery chargers, and then by everybody fanny packs and the clinical study so they could wear the stimulator and their USB charger and have it charging holiday. So that didn't run because we also didn't know whether it needs to last 24 hours. So halfway through the project, we ripped it out put double A batteries in I was like double A batteries. They're everywhere. Just I was like, like idiot proof of this that we can't have a non charged battery caused us to lose a patient. So yeah, and I was it was a pain customer
Patrick Kothe 51:22
needs. It's it's customer needs. It's something that that you didn't document or didn't think of when you started the project. Yeah. And I think that that's that's also something that's pretty interesting is customer needs document doesn't start, and you put it away. It's something that evolves during the process. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Daniel Powell 51:45
Yeah. Again, design is iterative. It should be if it's you just never get it right the first time. And so as you iterate as you do love it, as you go out and have interviews, and then do interviews and discover nuances, things change, then you have prototypes, things change on the world building. And then that's the beauty of clinical studies. If you do need them, you're going to learn more, and hopefully you have time to pivot. And, yeah, that documents gonna live and grow. And then sometimes it's gonna have ideas and hypothesis on it that you're like, I think this needs to be looked at more, but I don't know.
Patrick Kothe 52:22
So how do you when you identify those areas where you've got an hype hypothesis? How do you validate that hypothesis, hypothesis or throw it out? Well,
Daniel Powell 52:33
I think this is where you need to have customers and you walk in it goes back to you're gonna tell them what your solution is, let's say your prototypes that you need to go validated to they hear you correctly. Did they? And I love this one. Well, I could do it. But I don't know if other people would be able to understand that. Like, don't tell me what you think other people can do. A Doc, doctors love to do that. I mean, me, I'm everybody. I'm special. I kind of have my own way of doing this. Like, I know, we're all specials, but could you just answer the question, you get wrong answers a lot. Because they project what they think other people's behaviors. And they're also not trained in doing this where you hopefully are, they're not thinking about the company and everything. They're just sort of answering. So you do have to wait at herb Keller, the CEO of Southwest Airlines say, everybody, the customer's always right. And sometimes they know what they're talking about. That's the opening line in his book knots.
Patrick Kothe 53:33
That's that's really, really interesting, because I think we also have to understand that sometimes we're listening for the answers we want to hear. So sometimes we're our own worst enemies when somebody says something, and we say, Oh, that's it. I'll move on to the next question.
Daniel Powell 53:54
You validated made me feel good. Moving on. Yeah.
Patrick Kothe 53:57
So how do you how do you prevent that from happening? Or how do you get valid feedback as opposed to what you what what someone is telling you they think you want to hear or what you want to hear.
Daniel Powell 54:10
We spent the first four months trying to kill this business once started it because we're like, like, is this really gonna work as much, but I mean, really willing to not go forward? We didn't have to make that we wanted this work. We're hopeful. But we we went into this because we'd all seen failed startups. I mean, they're all over the place. And I mean, you're watching them go down over and over in our industry, and I was like, how do we not be that? And one of the strategies? Yeah, we're really willing to walk away from it. And we really just did not, did not assume we knew how this was going to work out. That's what
Patrick Kothe 54:50
once you point out is it's one of the challenges of being a startup CEO on one hand, you want to project we're going to get Through this, we're going to solve it, we're going to have the grit to stay with it and perseverance. And on the other hand, there's things that come up that come at you. Early on, when you're a startup, where you really have to question, Is this a? Is this a stopper? is this? are we wasting our time here? Can I take my resources and go on to the next thing, that's going to have a higher probability of success.
Daniel Powell 55:28
We got about two or 3 million in the bank that was not to be touched. And we're running clinical trials, what are the clinical trial fails, and I was like, I think I just gave everybody their money back. Like, here's your pro rata money back, like, I'm not gonna sit here and keep burning money use it was on the table. We knew the product worked. We knew the clinical trial was great. We knew we were all professionals that did class three devices. This was class two, and we still barely by the skin of our teeth got through the FDA, not because anything we did, because they didn't have a single addiction specialist. They accepted I probably the worst clinical study as evidence to compare against us as a competitor. That's been that they've been written up by NPR and lambasted for ever accepting that study. And they were they used it against us. And we're like, you're on record for this. And this is this binary event that either was CEO of a successful company, or I was shutting it down. And when I said January 2, that's a Saturday night on a holiday weekend at 10pm. I get their approval, because that was the day that you have a timer, they had 90 days to do it. And they'd already stopped and messed with the timer in weird ways, and already cost us an extra four months. I mean, imagine the their routing stuff through and signing it at 10pm on a holiday weekend. Because that was they took every bit of their time, and they burned it up. And it is very, very worrying. I mean, you haven't had a project. We're in this, we got this in the back of my mind. I mean, CFO we're making contingency plans, like, How much money do we have if this goes bad? Yeah, it was some really stressful, stressful, stressful days. And I, I will say I went raise my voice timer to go on calls with FDA. I'm like, this is people's jobs and careers. And there's like this huge need, like we're doing everything right? What do you want,
Patrick Kothe 57:29
kind of going back to the development and some of the issues you just raised there. So as a startup, you've got a finite amount of money, you're going to raise money and raise it against a plan. And the plan. So you know, generally what people do with plans as they plan it. If as if everything's going to go right. Sometimes you'll put an iteration or two in the development side, some people forget that. And then when they go to iterate all of a sudden, they're, they're out of money. So tell tell, talk to me a little bit about this customer discovery portion, and setting expectations with investors.
Daniel Powell 58:10
Well, just to say we're on rev F of our board. So that's what we're planning on Rev. C. And we were on Rev. f.
Patrick Kothe 58:20
So thank you my board. You're not talking about board of directors. No.
Daniel Powell 58:23
printed circuit boards. Yeah. Thank you. Printed Circuit Board. Yeah. So money budget. Yeah, everything cost twice as much and took twice as long. I am lucky, my CFO padded that budget. We actually were within $1,000 of our budget of our 2020 budget. I think he waited to pay a couple bills just so he could brag. But you know,
Patrick Kothe 58:43
I want to stop on a second because we hear this so off. It's kind of you know, one other thing. Oh, yeah. Cut Cut takes twice as long costs twice as much. Is that true?
Daniel Powell 58:55
Yes. Things will go wrong. Things will go wrong. You've never anticipated something. And actually raising money was probably the least of your worries. It's you get you got humans involved. You know, you have one of your engineers just doesn't do it. Right. whatever they're building you got our first clinical study was set to open. And we get a call from like IRB approved contracts and everything and we get a call from, I won't name the place but the university was a university hospital attorney. And they were like, you cannot run a clinical study here. And I got on the phone and I'm like, oh, excuse me, like this has already gone through legal and she goes No, no, no, you don't understand. It's not safe here. Or like not safe. It was because they were sending criminals through the behavioral health system. And she was like, we we have multiple assaults, especially on females. You can't run a clinical study here. something bad will happen when like oh my gosh, like thing. Like actually it was like thinking the lawyer she wasn't being a an attorney blocking She was like, saving our company. So I do think of, you know, any number of those things.
Patrick Kothe 1:00:05
Thanks so much for this, you know, the discussion on customer discovery, I think it's one of the things that, as an industry, we can really do better. And I liked the approach that you took, and some of the wow factor stuff. I thought that that was really, really interesting. There's other people that have other systems and lean startup method and things like that there that they're utilizing. But I think there's a difference between customer discovery and big companies and small companies. Did you see it different?
Daniel Powell 1:00:37
Yeah. Well, in big companies, you could just be checking the box so that you know, the stuff goes and you're so insulated from failure, there's not as much on the line, especially if it's an existing product, or small company, it's so many, so much more unknown. And we all have any, any safety net if you're wrong.
Patrick Kothe 1:00:57
What I've seen, too, is that the small company is going to do all of that validation, because they're, their life is on the line, the big company sometimes gets fat, dumb and happy. And you know, I know my customers, I know the application, and I'm not going to go and double check. assumptions that I had,
Daniel Powell 1:01:18
when you got a lot more politics going on. So that's just about the schedule, or sales or whatever. I worked for a company that was a really kind of had it had some problems. And one of my employees is like, this place is going to fall apart fast. They'll be out of business. And I was like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It'll take me years to figure out it would take them seven years of doing everything wrong, before it catches up with them. I mean, it's really fascinating. And you're over here, just passionate and believing we need to fix this. And then you have a record quarter of sales. And it's like nobody believes you. And it's like this, these cultural problems are going to come to roost eventually. But it takes a long time. Because you said you get momentum, fat, dumb and happy. Get the infrastructure manufacturing's working. Yeah. You make a lot of mistakes for a long time. Or one bit.
1:02:13
Daniel, thank
Patrick Kothe 1:02:13
you so much for spending the time with us today. It was really an interesting conversation. But I'd like to take you back to your 26 year old self. And think about you've been in the industry now for going on 20 years. And you weren't you didn't come from the industry. But think back to somebody who was like you were back when you were 26? What would you tell them? If they wanted to make medical device a career,
Daniel Powell 1:02:43
I'd absolutely encourage it. I just absolutely love this field. I just didn't know anything when I was trying my really entrepreneurial. So I didn't have YouTube or anything that you can study and learn so much on on your own. But there was something invaluable for me actually. Getting training, getting training in product, product marketing, elicitation getting getting to go those pragmatic marketing classes when I was first moved over into marketing, and then getting to really see how everything works, and really absorbing it. And I didn't really get good at that till I was my 30s. So I don't identify with super successful young entrepreneurs because I was not one. I was unsuccessful young entrepreneur. And then I turned around one day, and I learned everything about this business and all this insane so much. And when it was time to be a CEO, I was like, I think I got this. This is my first time as CEO. I did go Google, what does the CEO do? I will admit it. And I will tell you what a CEO does, sets the vision, number one on boards the right talent to execute the vision number two, and number three, make sure money's in the bank. And I was like, Okay, I know what my goals are this year. This is my responsibility. I got amazing partners and we support each other and we treat each other with grace and, and forgiveness. if something isn't perfectly things happen. We have kept blame out of the company pretty pretty well and kept a positive work environment actually learning real skills and how to apply them helped us tremendously. Then go down the entrepreneur route.
Patrick Kothe 1:04:20
What do you like about working in the industry,
Daniel Powell 1:04:23
you get to help people and get paid for it. As you know, we have our baby product for babies born depend on opioids and I get to help babies. That's so cool. So there's just something back to your point earlier being in the field. I remember the first patient I saw after the ice watch their surgery, watch their head get cut open a deep brain stimulator lead was driven into the middle of the brain, madam and recovery while they while they were awake on the table, actually, and watch them sign their name their Parkinson's sign their name for the first time in 10 years and they're crying and you're crying in the dark. like kind of crying over here, like this is so amazing. Like, if you see, that's the beauty of being in the field. And that's why if you are in the field and other people aren't, you have to bring those stories back, you have to bring that experience back to those people who don't get to see firsthand, but I love it.
Patrick Kothe 1:05:17
Wow, that was a lot of fun to do. Daniel had some great information, and a lot of good tips, and a lot of good stories on on his journey, and a lot of good things in that customer discovery area. So a few of my takeaways here. First of all, I really liked when he talked about wild factors, not only the nice to haves, the need to have, but the wow factors and bringing those in. And I like that it was not just just one, but multiples, because you may not get one and all of a sudden, now you've got zero, and addition that you don't know which ones are really going to pop with your customers. But most of all, I like it because it forces you to stretch, it forces you to do things that you wouldn't normally do. And to see how far you can take it. And that's that's where the real gold is for for your customers. So I really, really liked that wow factor. Secondly, he talked about fig, still figuring out his business model. And that's what startups do. startups are temporary organizations that are looking for product market fit, having the humility to say, Hey, we haven't figured it out yet. Well, that's what good CEOs do, is they have that humility, and they say, we're still trying to get this thing figured out. Because product market fit is what you need to have in order to scale the company. So product market fit is really it means you know, you've found a good market. And you've developed a product that can satisfy that market. And, and that's what he's trying to do because the product is the hardware but it's also the the offering that you have and the market, you really have to understand what is your market, he explained that it may be the doctor may be the patient, it may be you know leasing, and may be sales, all of those things are yet to be determined in this early commercialization. And finally, the last thing is make sure whatever feedback you're getting is real. It has to be real. Don't delude yourself that you're hearing. You know the things that you want to hear. Dig deeper every time someone's given your feedback. Keep going back to the why and why and why. Just keep digging deeper and deeper. That's how you're really going to get to the real information that's coming back because if you build your build your house on sand, you know what you're going to get in customer discovery. You really have to understand the real needs of the customer and get the true feedback, not what you want to hear what they think you want to hear. Thank you for listening. Please spread the word and tell 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
