Applying What I Learned Leading Tech Companies to Medical Device
Laura Yecies is the CEO of Bone Health Technologies and has a fascinating career arc. Laura had an extensive, and successful career working in tech in the Bay area, before crossing over into medical device. Coming up primarily from the marketing and sales track, she held positions of increasing responsibility, including becoming the CEO of several venture-backed companies, in both the tech and medical device spaces. In this episode we discuss her tech experiences including what she learned that applies to medical device, her move into medical device and how she prepared to do so, how Bone Health is poised to tackle a big problem, and what it’s like to be a female entrepreneur.
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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. Well, we all like to think our markets are unique, and that were so specialized that it would be extremely difficult to change industries with without starting at the bottom and learning everything on the way up. So is this true? Well, we're going to hear from someone who did it and made the change from the tech industry to medical device. Laura Yecies is the CEO of Bone Health Technologies. And she's my guest today. Laura has a fascinating career arc. She has an extensive and very successful background working in the tech industry in the Bay Area before crossing over into medical device. She came up primarily from the sales and marketing track. And she earned VP and general management positions at several tech companies, including two you probably will recognize, Netscape and Yahoo. And that really helped prepare her for becoming a CEO at at several companies both in the tech space and on the medical device space. One of those companies on the tech side was actually sold to Apple. So we spend the first part of this episode going into her tech experience, because it's really different from what most of us have experienced and what most of us know. And quite honestly, I wanted to hear more about it so we can understand what she learned. That applies to medical device. We also discuss her move into medical device, including how she prepared to do it, and how our company bone health is poised to really tackle a big problem. And we also discuss what it's like to be a female entrepreneur. So here's our conversation. Laura, welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. So you've had a fascinating career. And it's much different than what most of our listeners have in that you've spent a lot of your career outside of medical device in the tech space, because most most of our listeners are hardcore medical device people. So can you kind of walk us through your journey in technology, and then we'll move over into medical device.
Laura Yecies 02:55
When I when I graduated from Business School, the PC revolution was frankly just starting. And while they weren't in wide use, my husband had actively used PC for his analysts work. This was early days of Lotus 123. It was kind of magic. I wrote my thesis and WordPerfect had, you know, an 86 micro processor to floppy disk PC. And I was, frankly, just really excited about what technology could do. And so when I finished business school, and I knew I wanted to work on marketing and global business, I was just excited to be able to do that in the tech world. And it so happened that we were coming to California, my husband was going to go to Berkeley law school. And so I sought out a role in tech, and was really fortunate to start at a very foundational technology space and a great company, which was Informix software, Informix main relational databases. And I was there for six years, four years in marketing two years in sales. And in addition to kind of learning the ropes about my job role and being product management, communication. And then sales. Databases are one of the most fundamental technologies. Every product contains a database, even ones that you don't really think of that way like email. your inbox is a essentially database Summary File. It's a report. And so that was really fortunate. I, you know, work for another small database company afterwards. And then this next revolution of the internet was happening, and that was very exciting. And I also felt like this was going to be transformative, and I wanted to be at the heart of it, and I was fortunate enough to get a role at Netscape. And so I started working there in 97. And they say You know, being in a growing company and growing industry is a great way to grow your career. And that was just such a exciting time, I ended up taking on more and more responsibility. I started off in a marketing role, then I lead international products. And then I was promoted to run the browser division. So I was managing a team of about 230. Mostly engineers, but also marketers QA, UI, project management, we did some business development work, I found that to it was just really exciting and experience. And I saw the power of being able to touch so many people, we would create a new version of a browser. And you know, within weeks, 10s of millions of people would get that. And so some, you know, key features that, you know, I remember working on like tab browsing, were transformational, and we'd get so much utilization and attention. And so was it was the excitement was
Patrick Kothe 06:01
the excitement that you felt due to the impact that you're having? Or is it because you're growing in your career, and you had all of these different functional areas, you had a lot of personal growth, too.
Laura Yecies 06:12
It was really both, it was both and they were additive. When I got that promotion to run the browser division, and, and we had some really big technology issues going on at the time. That was shortly after the Netscape six release, that product was not well regarded, technically, and we had some major cleanup and changes to do. I just made some changes to the team, we changed some approaches, you know, it was really a matter of figuring out who I could really count on to help me make some of those technical decisions, digging into some of them myself. So that was really thrilling to be on that very rapid, or steep part of the learning curve. But also, knowing that we were working on a product that so many people were using, you know, it was funny, so I mentioned tap browsing. So that was a feature that, you know, was very innovative. In the Netscape product, we were the first ones to have that. And, you know, I worked on that feature. And I remember being in a mentoring session at Dartmouth was talking to aspiring students who were looking to get into technology. And I was talking about this impact. And I said, and they all had their laptops open, and they were taking notes. And I said, How many of you how many tabs do have open in your browser right now? And, you know, none of them could imagine that you ever didn't have that? Right? You know, once you, you know, like, imagine not having GPS, or no, not having some of these key features. So that part was very exciting to not having email. So, you know, interestingly, I had email on my first tech job. So in ADA, and informatics, we have email, it didn't have all of the features. It didn't have a graphical user interface. It was the Unix mailer. But we used to a lot. And, you know, I just thought it was such a productivity enhancer. And then, you know, I found myself working on email oriented products, and similar products like sync and share and other note taking apps, other productivity tools, you're really getting into the heart of how someone is getting their work done. And to do a good job of to develop really excellent products in that space requires a tremendous amount of empathy and sensitivity to how people are working. What do they want to do? What would save them time? Where do they want to save time in their task, you know, what user interfaces, so I really enjoyed those kinds of products enjoy working on the database to which was much more of a back end enterprise type tool. What was interesting about that is when someone would be implementing a new database system, and they don't just like wake up and for their health decide, you're going to take a risk and rip out this reservation system and put in something else. They're usually doing it because there's a business change. For instance, a bank in Brazil was working, they would have a mainframe base, hierarchical system that they would use to make underwriting decisions. And for competitive reasons, they wanted to be able to do underwriting in the branch and make decisions in the branch. Well, then you need the system in the branch. And so that hierarchical mainframe database is able to be in a branch office, kind of in, you know, in a remote location. Remember, we're talking, you know, early 90s here, it's a technology change, but it's a business change. And so that business changes sort of the corporate version of some of the productivity or user interface work that I was talking about at a consumer level. After Netscape I went to Yahoo, where I ran yahoo mail, I had a brief stint at an email analytics startup, which did email search before all the common email tools had search, that company was acquired by Seagate. And then I was at checkpoint, where I ran the zonealarm, consumer business as well as running marketing for the enterprise business. And checkpoint was a great experience, I really actually find security products to be super interesting. Marking security products of all the tech work I've done reminds me a bit of medical, just because of a lot of the marketing is around efficacy. And it's difficult to assess that and you need objective experts, checkpoint had had and still has a great CEO, the founder of the company, he's in Israel, I wasn't going to be CEO. And after a number of years there and various marketing general management roles, I was ready to spread my wings, got my first CEO role at sugarsync. And it was a turnaround the this was the end of our Wait, the markets were crashing, the company didn't have any more money, I had to recap it bring in money. The team was down to you know, very small group. But we had a great technology. And with the emerging world of mobile devices and greater use of laptops and netbooks, it was pretty clear that there was an exciting opportunity. So I was thrilled to get that up the chance to be CEO there. And we built that company to you know, 10s of millions of run right. And over 6 million users. And your sugarsync still exists. It was acquired by Jay to global. And it's was kind of like a premium, more highly featured Dropbox or Box type solution. And when I left sugarsync, I joined a company called catch catch actually started off its life with the idea of being a medical software company doing note taking for remote or home health care workers. And with the growth of mobile, they saw the opportunity to have a general note taking application. And the company was competing with the likes of Evernote. I was brought in the CEO had left, I developed some partnerships. And we actually were acquired by Apple. So the catch team became the core of the Apple Watch team led by one of my engineering directors from Netscape,
Patrick Kothe 12:52
there must have been a really high point of that section of your careers selling selling a company often selling off and having
Laura Yecies 13:02
was very exciting. As the first time I had taken a sale process all the way through, I was able to get actually two excellent offers prior to the JJ global acquisition for sugar sync. For variety of his reasons, the board decided not to sell. So I had sort of gone through the process of getting the interest, which is hard. But then a catch. I took it all the way through to a close and Apple is a very demanding acquirer. So I learned a lot from that process. I had been in I had been on the buy side. So when I worked at checkpoint, I was in the leadership team when we did a couple of big acquisitions, including another public company. So I had some familiarity when I was at Yahoo, we looked at buying a few companies and evaluated them. But yeah, that was that was very exciting. And for me, it was not a retirement level exit. But it was a chance to take a pause and think about what I wanted to do. And I had never been a founder. So I worked with a couple of college colleagues to start a company. But shortly into that process, we some family health issues, everyone's fine. But it really put me in close touch and gave me a lot of visibility into the state of the tech world and healthcare. And I had always been somewhat interested in healthcare. I grew up in a family of doctors. Both my parents are doctors to my siblings, you know, aunts, uncles, cousins, and by that point, two of my sons had actually become doctors. And so it was around me and I was interested in helping people in that way. So I started taking classes I took bio and Chem at Berkeley actually did that while I was working kind of after checkpoint. So I start toying around with the idea of doing something more hands on clinical. But then at that time, I saw this convergence going on of healthcare, and, frankly, software. And I mean, there's always been software in healthcare, but the role of health tech, just really changing and digital applications to improve health and devices, you know, the Apple Watch, it was clear from the beginning, on the inside, that they had health aspirations as something that you have with you all the time. And so I realized that that was, that was my path. And you asked about how important it was, to me that things I worked on could be used by a lot of people. And that's one of the exciting parts of what we're doing of, you know, health technology is the chance that an application or device instead of, you know, curing one patient at a time, or treating one patient at a time, can literally help millions of patients. And there are some big problems out there where we need to help millions, you know, and low bone density is one of them, actually.
Patrick Kothe 16:10
So you entered into the medical field, with with, with another startup in the concussion space or in the TBI space.
Laura Yecies 16:20
So when I made this decision to get into health tech, I started actually, with some consulting work, I consulted with a genomics company, a company, the MS space, start to learn the lay of the land. And then I joined sync thing, which is, as you say, a diagnostic for neurological conditions, primarily conduction caution. And it was super interesting to me the combination of a problem that is not well solved, you know, I had sons who played football, you know, I was well aware of the lack of accurate diagnostics for concussion. And, you know, could we use technology to improve on that, in fact, neurological diagnostics in general, need more precision. And then the, the VR part was very exciting, too. So that was, that was a new technology for me. And, you know, we grew that business, we brought on over a dozen sports teams, we had the PAC 12, I did a partnership with a pharma company, we got into, oh, probably over a dozen major health systems, as well as working with a number of specialty clinics and concussion. And then the board and I, you know, had a Parting of the Ways in fall of 19, around strategy and fundraising approaches, and so, so I left, but that company is still around, and they're still working on building their business. Think it was tough in the early days of COVID, especially selling to sports, but you know, the concussion diagnostic problem still needs to be solved.
Patrick Kothe 18:05
I also had a startup in there, and the others to do a couple parts of that. One is the diagnosis of the concussion. The other is the tracking of the concussion to see when you're when when you've resolved. And when it's safe to go back to play or back to work or back in back to military service. pretty complex issue because you've got a lot of different people that are involved in that pre concussion phase, the post concussion phase, whether whether someone is healthy and and, and how you diagnose it, and then how you get that information to assure that that's it's safe for that patient.
Laura Yecies 18:44
And I think there's, there's more you can do in terms of rehab than people realize, I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. You know, people being told to sit in a dark room, and then they get depressed and anxious. They should be doing like cardio. And if they have vestibular ocular issues, you know, those, those can be helped. So I agree with you. It's a very interesting space, I think, a lot of opportunity to improve care. I mean, there's millions of concussions per year.
Patrick Kothe 19:15
And it's it's that that old adage, when you've seen one concussion, you've seen one concussion, there are they're all different. So let's talk about what you're doing right now with bone health technologies.
Laura Yecies 19:28
One thing I learned at sink, think think is your diagnostics are super interesting, I think intellectually, in the tech world, diagnostic companies, you know, there's a lot of complexity, like you said, around one concussion, how many you seen, but the business models and diagnostics are harder, unless there's a big data play. And, you know, the next question as soon as you diagnose someone is what can you do about it? Yeah, people want to do something about got it right. With bone health, what I what I realized when I was introduced to the company, is you have huge numbers of people, so 44 million Americans. And by the way, it's not just an American problem, there's literally 200 million people in China 12 million in Japan with low bone density, until they get to the advanced osteopenia. osteoporosis stage, there's really no recommended therapeutic. So the possibility of a safe therapeutic to use in that window, and hopefully prevent or significantly delay osteoporosis was incredibly exciting to me, that my initial thought when I saw this is, alright, if this thing works, this is just a homerun. I mean, we can get this out into the market clinically, it'll be a good business. And so but it seems like it's too good to be true, right? vibrating Bell, so that I was a little bit skeptical. And I started talking, you know,
Patrick Kothe 21:03
I dug in, though, because I thought this is such an important problem. Let's Let's go to the problem for a second. Laura, what is what is the problem that we're trying to solve here?
Laura Yecies 21:13
Are bone health is is critical to our overall health, right? If your bones fracture, you can't be mobile. If you're not mobile, all kinds of other bad things happen. It can be a source of pain, dysfunction, so fractures are the problem. osteoporosis and osteopenia give you a higher risk of fracture. And hip fractures can kill you 20% of people die, don't survive a year from hip fractures. Somewhere around another 40% lose their independence, spine fractures. So vertebral compression fractures, which happened from osteoporosis are very common. And they're incredibly painful and debilitating for people. We have the phrase little old lady, of course, men can get osteoporosis too. Women get it earlier, and they live longer. So they have a bigger impact. Well, they're little because they shrink and posted, the shrinkage is because the vertebrae are, are compressing. And I mean, it can cause other health problems like even breathing and digestion, because you've compressed down. So these fractures are just very, very significant in terms of mortality and morbidity. So the fractures happen because the bones become weak, fragile, porous, our bones have essentially almost like a I think of it as a metabolism 25% of your bone cells turnover every year, you're building bone and losing bone at the same time. And when you're young, that balance is favorable, where you're building bone, and you reach a peak somewhere in your 30s. And then it gradually switches and you start to lose bone. And for women, this net loss of bone immediately in the postmenopausal period goes into hyperdrive. So there's something about the hormonal change, where the osteo class, which takeaway bone cells get very, very active. So women can lose up to 20% of their bone density in the postmenopausal period. And then, you know, the decline slows, but you're there at this low level. Men also lose bone. What happens there though, is their bone density peak is higher. So then as they lose bone, you know, they tend to get osteopenia and osteoporosis 10 or more years later than women. But these are all averages. And so if you're, if men are on, you know, hormone therapy for prostate cancer, they're going to lose bone. If you have multiple myeloma, you're going to lose bone. Anyone who had a lot of steroid treatment, maybe for inflammatory conditions or asthma, a lot of people lose, lose bone undiagnosed celiac or nutrition issues. It's there, these other contributing conditions. But it's, it's a problem even if you for many women, even if you don't have these conditions, the average American woman develops osteopenia in her late 50s and osteoporosis in her 60s, and the medications that we have, they're helpful and you know, if you need them, if it were prescribed to me, I would take them but people are very worried about the medications. They've had, you know, some serious side effects. And in any case, they're generally not recommended to use when you have osteopenia. Unless there's some particular risk profile. So, you know, here you are, you're in your late 50s, you get diagnosed with osteopenia. And then what? Right, your doctor says, well make sure you're getting enough calcium and vitamin D and exercise, you might already be doing that. Or, you know, maybe you exercise, but you know, you have bad knees, so you can't do high impact exercise. So you're kind of like just waiting for the other shoe to drop without, you know, a lot of good options. And I think this is there's a lot of concern about this, people want to stay active longer. And also, many of us have seen the impact of osteoporosis. So my grandmother had osteoporosis, she, she got very short thing, thankfully, she didn't break a hip. But when I was in college, and my last year of high school, I had a summer job in a nursing home where my dad was medical director. And pretty much the patients were there because either they broke their hip or they got Alzheimer's. So I knew in my gut how serious it was, and was really interested in trying to, to work on this problem.
Patrick Kothe 26:16
So once the problem was identified, it's obviously a large problem, expensive problem, and emotionally a large problem, as well, as people are losing their lives losing losing a lot of their functionality due to bone loss as well. So when you started to look at or when a group started to look at different ways of solving the problem, how did the technology that that you've guys that you have developed? How did that come about?
Laura Yecies 26:45
Okay, well, I was before I joined the company, but it has been told to me, so I know the history. So our founders are three medical device experts with slightly different but I think almost the optimal combination of experiences to to work on this. So Dan Burnett runs a medical device incubator, he has founded, I don't know, dozens of medical device startup. So he has a very broad experience kind of in general, and how to get these devices started, how to bring them to market. And one of his colleagues in the incubator, Dr. Shay mangrum, he is a pm and our doc spends most of his time as a practicing physician, although he you know, he is involved with the incubator and with bone health technology. And he frankly saw the problem in his practice. So he's in a practice that focuses on spine. And he was seeing patients coming in debilitated from these fractures. So he was really motivated around finding a solution and read about the vibration plates. So there is a body of research, funded originally by NASA. Well, there's research before the NASA research, but the human research was funded by NASA, where they evaluated the use of whole body vibration, the hope was to improve bone density for astronauts. So you lose bone at extremely accelerated rate, I think more than 10 or 15 times the rate in space, because your bones aren't don't undergo any force in the zero gravity environment. So NASA did this research on whole body vibration. And the net of it is that whole body vibration improves bone density. And they did this research because there was a body of evidence prior to that, at the cellular level, and in animals showing that vibration, improved density. I think they proved it in long bonds and sheep and farm animals and things like that. Because it's essentially mechanical stimulation, it's mimicking exercise. He saw these publications on the whole body vibration, and thought, you know, is there a way to do this, that's more practical because the these whole body vibration platform as well, they're clinically effective. they've not been a commercial success. They're very expensive. Even in the clinical studies, compliance wasn't great. So they got great results from the compliant people, but relatively low compliance. There was the kernel of a potential device there, or the foundation, but not really a what he thought was a practical or commercial success. And I think they tried a number of form factors. I think they tried chairs and other things, but came up with the idea of the belt and the belt, I think is really a key insight because, first of all, you can incorporate it in your daily life, so easily. strap it on, go for a walk, walk the dog do your errands. I use it. Well, I'm using my standing desk,
Patrick Kothe 30:06
can you describe what the belt is and where it fits and size
Laura Yecies 30:11
fit? Yes. So there's a vibrating pack, it's the size of maybe a couple decks of cards. That that's on the sacrum. And then it's contained within an adjustable neoprene belt. That's why so it fits snugly. And you adjust, it needs to be, you know, reasonably tight, but it's comfortable to wear. And you power it on. And a couple of cool things is it has a fit sensor to make sure you haven't on in the right place and with the right tension. And then we have something that's also unique around calibration. So imagine one day you put the belt on and you're wearing, you know, a parka, and another day you're wearing running shorts, you know, the vibration could be dampened. So we measure the actual vibration transmitted. And we do that with an accelerometer, the hip, so it's more than just the vibration, it's precisely calibrated for the person for their physique, and for how they put it on in that day. And then we time it. So the in our clinical trial, we're delivering 30 minutes of precise, you know, frequency and amplitude of vibration. And that is similar to what was studied on the whole body vibration platforms.
Patrick Kothe 31:36
So it's meant to be worn once a day for 30 minutes, correct. And for an extended period of time forever, what's the what's the duration,
Laura Yecies 31:46
it's really forever. If you use it for a few years, you won't lose the benefit you gained. But you won't get continued benefits. So you can think of it like exercise to build your bones. If you do it for a year, you get that benefit for a year, if you lost, you know, a couple percent less bone than you would have lost if you were a couch potato, you have that bone in your physique, but you have to keep exercising, to continue to have benefit. So that's why it's so important that it be really comfortable and pleasant to use. And in fact, in the clinical trial, most patients report that it actually feels good. It feels like a little massage
Patrick Kothe 32:31
a device like this, I'm sure you had choices of whether to take it as a medical device or not a medical device. What What did you what was the conversation like about classification of device and whether you wanted to make it a device or not?
Laura Yecies 32:46
You mean class one versus class two? Because we are in a plastic path? Yep. This was an active discussion when I joined the company. So I think it's a good question to ask, because of our safety profile, we do have the option to be class one. But I felt strongly, especially when I start to see our early research and our early clinical data. I mean, frankly, it's why I joined the company that we had, you know, a lot of possibility here for very clinically effective device. And I wanted to put us through the process of proving it and to generate, you know, robust clinical evidence in, you know, well designed trial, and to not be something that people might look at as a gimmick, you know, I think there is potentially Skepticism on devices. And we are really optimistic that this is going to be effective. And I would like I just think we'll have a much stronger positioning with patients to be able to say, we've done the research and an independent organization, the FDA has reviewed it, I spent almost a year consulting at Achille interactive, doing you know, variety of commercial marketing business development functions. And I saw there the the power of an FDA clearance to separate that product from the other brain trainers. You know, when I was at Achille we felt strongly that our product was unique was better was different and deserve that, you know FDA classification, and that was meaningful to both clinicians and patients. And that experience really stuck with me. I think there's a completely different kind of product, but it's very analogous where people are looking for alternatives to medication, things that are safe, however, before they invest their time and money, really want to be sure that it's worth their time and money and that it does have proven efficacy. So that was our decision process. One other detail, of course, is that there's a possibility of reimbursement by generating that level of proof. And I think that's important, especially for this market, you know, we're talking about older people, fixed incomes, our product is not going to be priced super expensively or aggressively, even. So I think reimbursement is important in terms of getting the utilization and distribution that we hope for.
Patrick Kothe 35:32
You've made a major transition going from Tech into into medical, and there's a lot of differences. I'm sure there's a lot of similarities too. But when you think when I think about tech, I think about something that's very fast paced, very iterative, you can you can make changes on things very quickly, medical devices isn't quite like that. It's, you know, it is fast paced, but the changes are slower than they would would be in tech is that kind of an accurate description of what your what your experience has been.
Laura Yecies 36:10
Um, I don't know if the changes are slower, but they're chunkier. So certainly, for instance, we're in, you know, the midst of this clinical trial, and we've learned things through the trial. And there were some things that we were allowed to change, right, we could make an amendment to the trial and make some improvements in our protocol. But the device itself, we can't change. So we are already at work on, you know, the next gen version, and it's not going to go into the trial, because that's not possible. But we're still advancing, it just comes out into the market, I think in more step functions, but I think the, the angle of the curve can still be steep. I also think there's, you know, a big range of how have different types of devices. So, you know, if you have a surgical implantable device, that you're going to change more slowly there. Right, and there's much more risk, it takes more time to conduct the trials, you have to go through more phases of those trials as as appropriate. And then on the other extreme, you have, you know, pure kind of software, disease management apps, wellness apps that I would argue, iterate as quickly as any other tech product. And I think with sink thing, or bone health technologies, were somewhat in the middle, but it's still pretty rapid.
Patrick Kothe 37:55
with with with a product, it's a little bit different, because the product has to go through all the testing and has to get do all your verification validation of the of the technology before it's allowed to be put in, put into humans. So making a product change is a pretty major thing. We're in the tech side of things, if you want to change a feature, add that on, you can do the development work and do your do your work to make sure that it is it is buttoned up. And that's not going to cause cause any issues. But there's not a regulatory lag that you're gonna have to wait for. There's not
Laura Yecies 38:27
a regulatory lag. But I've certainly worked with enterprise software companies that go through a pretty heavy validation process before they put in new software. I may, we talked earlier about relational databases, you know, you do a database upgrade, you can take your whole business down with that you can take down your reservation system or your e commerce system. So those companies will do some pretty heavy duty validation. Typically, it's just not by an agency. It's a little bit different.
Patrick Kothe 39:00
So when people think about changing from Tech to medical devices, think about that, as a many people think about that as a as a major change. Did you view it as a major change? Or is it kind of an iterative change for you?
Laura Yecies 39:13
Some parts of it are major, and some parts are iterative. So the whole business side where, particularly if you have a product that requires reimbursement, so I mentioned that we're very interested in trying to get reimbursement for the Austria boost device when we're on the market. But we can sell without reimbursement, especially kind of for the early adopters. Well, if you have a new heart valve stent, if you don't have reimbursement, it's pretty much dead in the water, right? Because it's not just the stent that has to be paid for it right? You need the anesthesia, you need the O or you need the hospital stay. So those businesses if you You don't have a good handle on? Is something going to be reimbursed doing the work at the right point in time having the right experts, you might have no business, right? I can't think of a tech product that's like that, where you have such a black and white business outcome based on coverage. I mean, that doesn't mean it's easy to justify the economics of your product that is dramatically different. The regulatory piece can be significantly different. I think when you get to other core parts of sales and marketing, what problem are you solving, explaining the technology to all the different audiences? understanding their needs? What's the right language to use? Who are the decision makers? I find that to be very similar. And then on the product designs side, I have experienced a lot of similarities. You know, we talked before before the recording started about workflows and productivity tools. And so for instance, at sync think our product would be heavily used by the athletic trainers, they would be sort of in the product. Let's say they were baselining, hundreds of athletes. And so every detail of that workflow had to be smooth. So I mean, that's very similar in terms of what are the key skills and what success looks like how to do a good job of that, too, when I was working at sugarsync, or catch or Yahoo mail or Netscape, and then on the integration side, connecting with the EMRs, or lab systems, whatever. Other technology systems, yeah, that's very similar to some of the other integration work and systems integration and projects that I worked on earlier, my tech career. So I think different parts of the business are more similar and more different.
Patrick Kothe 42:06
You mentioned earlier about education. And you've got you've been to some of the finest schools in the world, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, and Stanford, Berkeley. How important do you think education is, in general, and specifically, as you've gone back to learn more about medical devices, that the reason why you went back in is because you were searching for something or searching for greater knowledge in the medical space,
Laura Yecies 42:34
I was very much interested in the opportunity to learn. And that's, I think, my most fun part of many jobs I've been on is learning the technology, learning the product, learning about the patients or that business. And so the chance to learn about something where there's a really depth of knowledge to gain was, was really fun for me, I've just always been very interested in in learning about healthcare, even before I was working in the field, you know, new technologies, new approaches, which is reading about them in the business press, they would always catch my eye. I was very lucky to get to go to these great schools and be exposed to wonderful professors and other students. You know, you can get a great education. Now it's becoming more democratized. And so those, those places don't have a monopoly.
Patrick Kothe 43:30
So you've been a very successful entrepreneur, you happen to be female, a lot of issues that come up with diversity. I've been in this business for a long time. And I've got four children, as you do, and I've got grandchildren as you do. I have never once been asked how I do at all. How do I balance my work life? What do I do with my kids? When when I'm traveling? I've never had to had to have that question or never had that question asked of me. And yet it's asked of females. Let's talk a little bit about the difference between males and females as being a CEO.
Laura Yecies 44:12
Well, obviously, the works the same, right. It's a hard job. And in startups, it's hard to be with limited resources. You have to hire people, you have to raise money. So it's hard for everyone. And I feel like I mostly in my life have had more advantages and disadvantages. So I don't think much about well, how it could have been or would have been easier or harder. And I think even being female, some things were harder, maybe some things were easier. Maybe I was able to get attention for things that I wouldn't have. But did I get turned down or not considered and fundraising pitches because of that? It's really hard to know. It's It's so hard to tease it apart. I I have been asked those kinds of questions. In fact, when I was being interviewed for my first CEO role, one of the partners in the VC firm that was on our board, asked how old my kids were? And was I going to be able to do the job despite that, and I can recall that conversation. And in my mind, part of me wanted to just tell them off, say, you know, you have no business asking me that question. Look at what I've accomplished, while I had young children. So the answer to the question is what I've been able to prove. But I didn't do that. Because I wanted the job, I was really interested in that job. And what was the point of blowing it up? Or I mean, getting that guy angry. So those questions should not be asked. And those I think are becoming less common, I hope. But there's now the more insidious things that we're understanding. So you know, there's well regarded, you know, published research that women entrepreneurs, when investors ask them questions, they're more kind of downside questions like, what would make this fail? Or, you know, how will you avoid running out of money? Or versus, like, How can this be a billion dollar market? How can this be big that's asked of men, and you know, those are more subtle, and we tend to not notice them. I think things are gradually improving. There are more examples of successful women CEOs. I was fortunate that I saw examples earlier on in my career. So when I was a checkpoint, and thinking about being a CEO, I had women who were CEOs that were friends of mine, or in my social circle, and I saw them be successful. I grew up, my mom always work, she's a physician, my aunt's worked, my grandmother actually worked as a teacher. So I always knew in my gut that it was very doable. And fortunately, my husband grew up similarly. So his mother was a teacher, and then she became a lawyer, and she became a professor. So, you know, we went into the marriage very much with the idea of, we would both be working, and we would both juggle, and you know, you mentioned business trips, business trips are challenging. And so we would, you know, try to juggle between our business trips and try to not be away at the same time. And we were lucky that if we had to both be away at the same time, oftentimes his mother would come help, or, you know, we would we would figure it out. I think my kids were more independent as a result. And I'm proud of their accomplishments, too. Without us. I don't think unduly hovering.
Patrick Kothe 48:03
So I think things have gotten somewhat better over the past 10 to 15 years. But we've I think we've got a long way to go. Oh, yeah,
Laura Yecies 48:13
I was at this medical device conference, the LSI conference, great conference. Very few women presenters, I didn't count. But I want to say less than 10%. mean, it was a noticeably low percentage of entrepreneurs and investors in the medical device space, were much worse than what I've seen in software. Do you have any idea why? I'm not really sure the reason I haven't been in the industry long enough, I think to have known the roots, but it's certainly true. And I've spoken with other women like at that conference, and they're like, Oh, yeah, it's always like this.
Patrick Kothe 48:53
So there's a lot of successful female people in the tech field. There's a lot of successful females in the in the pharmaceutical field, we've got ways to go within the medical device field. I would assume that part of that is just having visible successful females. It's because there is some pattern matching that goes on on as well. So just to can you continue to build and provide opportunities for females to be successful. is is that one way that we can we can help out?
Laura Yecies 49:27
I am convinced visibility matters. Yeah. I even shared the example of myself when I was thinking of being a CEO. I knew some other women and that was inspiring to me and encouraging to me. So yes, I do think giving visibility to the women that are there the successes that they're having. You know, there have been some exits. Look at a Lydia. outset went public, that's a female CEO. You know Lydia's in women's health. I don't think it's A female CEO, but there's a female CEO. So I definitely agree with that. And the investors see that. So to the extent that they are pattern matching and in an unconscious way, biasing against women entrepreneurs, the more they see those exits and that data, they'll pattern match in a better way. To the extent that there's bias in the investment community, I think it's mostly unconscious. So So I do think that the visibility helps there.
Patrick Kothe 50:38
think part of it is, you know, like anything, first thing you have to do is recognize that there's a problem. And when I go to meetings, and when I interface with people at some of these conferences, and you look around, and it's everybody that looks like me, a white male, that's a problem. And that that's the that's the first place you have to start is you have to start to say, Hey, we have an issue here. How do we solve that issue, and part of it is recognizing some of these things that we talked about these biases that we talked about the the questions that are asked the questions that are inferred some of these things when you start off, and let's kind of talk about this right now is you're in a, in a in a business right now, and you need funding. And there's a lot of funding out there for cardiovascular companies, there's a lot of funding out there for, for orthopedic companies. And for those types of things. Women's Health, and your your business right now is not only women's women's health, but a lot of it is considered to be women's health, when you start to dealing with osteoporosis. And the amount of investment going into that area is probably also not as great as it is in some of the other areas as well.
Laura Yecies 51:52
It's not, although it seems to be on the uptick. There seems to be I'm hoping it's not a fad or a flash in the pan. There's certainly a lot of discussion around it. There's some dedicated small funders. So I'm hoping that that's changing this disparity that we talked about the lack of diversity, you know, our health outcomes are have disparities. And they happen to have similar patterns to this lack of diversity. So I think it's really meaningful, and really important to change it. Well, I
Patrick Kothe 52:31
really appreciate the conversation today. Laura was really fascinating here, everything coming through the tech side migrating into medical device, some of the other issues that we discussed on, on on being a CEO, and this diversity issue we've got, are there some messages or a message that you'd like to leave with the listeners today?
Laura Yecies 52:55
I guess I have a couple I would say this, especially in the device world, is to think about the full experience of the patient. And I think there's a tendency in the device world to have kind of the narrow the specific device for the specific problem. But that problem fits within an overall, you know, disease condition or patient condition. And it was interesting for me to be at this medical device conference and hearing a lot of presentations and a lot of great innovations and specific inventions. I think people needed to think more broadly. That was my general thought. And then I would say on the more entrepreneurship personal side, startups are very hard, right? It can be lonely, or have a lot of resources, ups and downs, a lot of challenges. They're thrilling too. So you really have to be passionate about, about what you're doing. So you know, look for something where you where you can be passionate. And I feel very fortunate that I'm getting to work on a problem that is personally meaningful to me, it's meaningful to my family. And it's meaningful to 10s of millions of people, you know, in the country. So I'm really optimistic and hopeful. I'm excited that we're going to be able to make a difference there.
Patrick Kothe 54:16
Thanks to Laura for sharing your thoughts. I hope this conversation opened you up to seeing how importing knowledge or practices or lessons from another industry can lead to some really big benefits. A few of my takeaways, first word describe product claims for the osteo boost product and there were some really good things that she said there. She wanted to put the company through the process of proving it. She had some great insights into why having extensive product claims we're going to be great for the reimbursements. side of things. But more importantly, she wanted to generate robust clinical evidence through a robust, robust clinical trial to make sure that her customers know the value of the product that they're that they're buying. She said, No, she didn't want it to be a gimmick. And she wanted to make sure it was worth their time and money, really a long term view of not just getting a product on the market fast but getting there correctly. Secondly, she talked about similarities between tech and medical device. And I thought that this was this was really an interesting conversations and challenge some of my preconceived notions as well, the discussion we had on product development and enhancements. And she said that it's pretty much the same except that medical devices chunkier. And it really makes sense that, you know, we, we have some regulatory issues that make it a chunkier timeframe to bring a product out, but it's still the same type of process. And when she described validation for the software product, and how it can crater, a company or crater, a full product, it really starts to make sense that validation is important from a regulatory standpoint. But if you're not in a regulated, regulated market, it's critical for the product itself. And finally, when we had our discussion around diversity, I thought it was really interesting that she sought out someone who was successful, and that's who she modeled after. And now she becomes the model. And the more people that are successful that we can point to, the better off, it's going to be, it's not going to be an anomaly. It's going to be something that's commonplace, which just makes the flywheel Go, go better. So first step, obviously be successful, and then become a model for others. And that's how we're going to improve, improve the industry. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device, podcast and Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, 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
