Sean Cheng, Investment Principal at Philips Ventures

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Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket, Saul Marquez is here and today I have the privilege of hosting Dr Sean Cheng. He’s a PhD in engineering and then investment manager at Philips Ventures, A VC portfolio of promising early stage companies includes baby scripts, Zeil My Autonomy to drive the Philips Health Tech Vision. He’s interested in early stage investment opportunities and digital health, medical devices and imaging based diagnostics. Prior to ventures, he drove key strategic decisions for the Philips leaderships on topics including wearables, health cloud, digital transformation and data interoperability. Previously, Shawn held positions at the Boston Consulting Group, the US, FDA and NASA. Shawn also serves on the board of directors of the Professional Center for Child Development Board of Advisors at the Johns Hopkins University and the Advisory Board of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community. Sean holds his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Cambridge in England, where he developed expertise in medical device design simulations and optimisations algorithms. I’m privileged to have him here on the podcast with us today to chat about innovation and how we fund it and how we view it within today’s environment. John, such a pleasure to have you here with us.

Sean Cheng:
Thanks for having me, Saul. And that was a mouthful, but thanks for the intro.

Saul Marquez:
Hey, listen, man, I mean, for the things that you’ve done in your career, it’s like the tip of the iceberg. So certainly going to be a fun talk today before we dive into the nitty gritty of, you know, investments and innovation, I love to find out more about what inspires your work and health care.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, sure. So I think ever since I can remember, you know, health care is one of these professions where it was always going to be a rat race. My my father told that to me when I was very young. People are always going to get sick. And this is something that is near and dear to everyone’s hearts and it’s something that they worry about. So I thought I’d got a very young age looking at health care is something worthwhile doing? Not to say that everything else isn’t because I’m now an investment, but certainly in the health care side, there’s always relevance. And it was something that’s from an impact side, a very worthwhile. And a few years ago, I would say my dad also. It got into a bit of health care trouble, and I was in consulting at the time, the generals consultant and having done a PhD focused on cardiology and the more invasive procedures within cardiology like artificial hearts and all that, I felt I was almost blindsided when he was going in for a quadruple bypass. And I said I should probably realign and come back to the industry a little more. So something a bit more personal more recently.

Saul Marquez:
Wow. And I can appreciate that greatly Sean. And, you know, a mixture of your dad’s advice and life experiences. You just kind of gravitated to the the field then. And I mean, you’ve just done extraordinary work. I’d love to park a bit for a second here on the venture business and and how exactly you guys are looking at your your early stage companies and investments. What exactly are you looking to do with those and how are they adding value to that, to the ecosystem?

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, sure. So I think there’s many aspects of this and I’d love to talk about all of them, but I’ll just spare you that and give you the highlights here. So from a corporate venturing point of view, it’s always been cyclical as an industry. And in the last 10 years, we’ve seen a revival of corporate ventry with new formats and approaches. And this is what we really try to carve out as as ventures. So we started around twenty sixteen and the intent was to create a team and fund that that can provide that early stage reconnaissance as well as know how and working with founders. And so did give you an idea of what was happening in the past. Our M&A folks was dealing with the early stage investments as well. And so they would take a similar approach as an acquisition of, let’s say, a two billion dollar company to a post money valuation of a 10 million dollar early stage startup. And so that combined with a lot of the various functional requirements, like in privacy, security, insurance, et cetera, was really a lot for any early stage company to handle. And so we want to do is provide a center of excellence, as well as a team that can go and negotiate these deals and streamline the process.

Sean Cheng:
And so we were able to reduce deal flow timeline from don’t quote me on this, but nine months to a year, down to about three months. And so that was one of the and the other one is just mutual benefit. So I think we work in a lot of unnecessary terms into the term sheets that we never really exercise. And so knowing that in the future, making a judgment call on how can we help the founders succeed and help them scale up the company’s best is sort of where we really emphasize that those ventures and I know everyone says this, but we we try to be more founder friendly than the typical CVC, which has a stereotype over the years. And so that’s, I think, where where our value add would be bringing in the the resources and channels and infrastructure of Philips corporate, the mother ship, but also being a venture and founder friendly as well. And then we can sit there, work together with the companies over time to help them succeed for both sides.

Saul Marquez:
I think that’s awesome, Sean. And you think about a lot of the things that you mentioned Right. like operational limitations to scale, and there’s so many of them. And then there’s so many blind spots. To have a venture investor like Philips behind you could really unlock a lot of opportunity and help you on that on that front. Sounds like you guys are definitely more more venture friendly. We’ve had a couple of your investor companies, companies that you’ve invested in on the podcast. So you have a little chat beforehand, baby scripts and orbit. So I’d love to hear more about the the focus and maybe chat with us about some of the ones you guys have invested in and how you see the the future of those.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, sure. So we invest with a few intentions. So we have a digital health fund called the Philips Health Technology Ventures, and that is really looking at looking forwards Right.. So we’re not sort of incurring any specific business, but it’s a capability or some sort of future area that we’d like to explore a little more. So even though it’s going to be straight down the fairway in terms of our corporate strategy, there could be something around the corner that that I see now as something interesting. So we. I’m going to invest and I see an analogy would be Philips is going to be a giant tanker, so we were 20 billion dollars revenue and eighty thousand employees, it’s not going to be able to pivot and innovate as quickly as these early stage companies. So we’re looking for those jet skis out there that can sort of look one or the other to help our tanker steer. And so you mentioned baby strips in orbit are two that that are in that area. So maybe just speak a bit about baby scripts. They may fulfill a area that is B2B. They may sell to Obbie Guy as well as health systems and the Phillies brand, which includes Avant and some of the other other child care products, are really selling the consumer.

Sean Cheng:
And we really want to be able to, as we can, become a health care company, bridge the gap between the consumer side and the professional side, which has really been the theme for the last five years in terms of our transformation as we sold off lighting assets and then became a health care company, we see our advantage as knowing the consumer side as well as the professional side as we’re selling into the hospital with the radiology equipment, the patient monitoring, as well as some of the more informatics and it’s assets to that really is our competitive advantage and why I can sleep at night. I work at Philips versus a well capitalized company like Apple or Google, which is just coming from the tech side of trying to break into health care. And so I think that’s that’s an advantage of ours. And so we’re baby services. They sort of help us in terms of that. Just look around the corner. And with what folks are doing in the professional hospital and health side of begi that we don’t play, but we have some natural rights to win. And so what we can do is set our consumer business and go say, go trial, this business model. And if it doesn’t work out, then we we lose a lot of money. Right. So Baby Scripts can help us as a leading indicator and trail these business models to see if that works and if it works out.

Sean Cheng:
And that helps us both on the clinical side, obviously with their expertise. But also, I mean, many folks will think about it. But it is a bottle side Right.. So does the SAS model work more than reimbursement? And does a single one off payment work better then? I don’t know. Manager of the services. So these are all questions that we can answer quite cost efficiently with better investments. And the other company Orbita is of a similar but slightly different in that voice in conversation. AI. It’s a very new field and you guys probably talked about this in that podcast with Bill. But this is an emerging area, even more so within health care. And so I think Philips is rightly identified this in that we’re seeing a lot of use cases internally, both on the consumer and the health care side. And I think, you know, it’s only been accelerated and catalyzed by COVID where contactless control and contactless communications is way more important now. And so Orbitz is really the leading indicator within the voice environment where we can learn from them and then dealing with various constituents of health care. So they sell to health systems as well as industry bodies and also, you know, a med tech firms like us. And so they see pretty much everything. And is the leading edge or the cutting edge, really, of voice within health care.

Sean Cheng:
And so when we look at them, we say, well, we’re not going to go and hire 30 natural language processing voice and integration PhDs that are, you know, very adept at working with Amazon and likes Google home. But we can invest in a company like Orbiter that has those capabilities and at the same time help us kick the can down the road. We’re not committing to specifically Amazon for all use cases or a Google for all use cases, because you you have very different needs. And so I think I read a study maybe. Maybe a year ago where they compared a Google Voice algorithm with the Amazon likes algorithm around notification of medication and so on, and yet sort of which which one was more accurate or not, but one of them was ninety seven percent accuracy and ID. That’s what normal person speaks the medical names, which are pretty jargon. I can’t even pronounce them. And then the other one was around fifty seven or sixty percent. Wow. So different when you know when. Philipps If you look at we want to use a algorithm to do medication management using voice, we wouldn’t want to be trapped with that 60 percent accuracy. So, so we’re allows that flexibility where we can pick and choose the devices as well as the algorithms to go and achieve what we want under the best outcomes.

Saul Marquez:
Sean, I love the the analogy of the tanker and the jet skis and. Yeah, wow, that’s so great. Like I mean, it doesn’t get any clearer than that. Right. you guys are this 20 billion dollar company. Eighty thousand employees. And you’re looking for those jet skis to see around the corner and cost efficient manner. Wow. And then and then you think about Orbita at Right.. I mean, they’re the master of just kind of aggregating this technology to get you guys the broad view, the horizon of voice. I mean, I think that was a great investment man. Congrats on that to you guys, but also to Bill and team over at orbit at Right.. And it’s going to be a big benefit for them to have you guys as a partner.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, we’re certainly excited. And as many will say, the the deals the investment deal is just a first step in a long relationship. You know, we just got married and we’re in the honeymoon period right now, but there’s a lot of work to be done. So we’re very excited to move forward with that company.

Saul Marquez:
That’s great. And so, Sean, tell us a little bit more about how the work you guys do. I mean, you guys kicked off the venture Philips Ventures in twenty sixteen, so it’s been four years. Tell us how some of the work that’s been done has improved either outcomes or business models. And it could be for your customers. It could be for the companies you invest in or patients like happy to happy to dive in wherever you want to focus there.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we carved out the Ventures team and function to serve three purposes and it’s evolved over time. So today we invest out of the digital health fund. At the corporate level, we support our businesses and executing deals at their level, which they would take ownership ultimately, but we help them with that venture friendly execution. And, you know, those deals range from a convertible note with a couple of hundred K to tens of millions of dollars. And then the third area we we invest in is other VC funds that help us provide a look into the local geographical pipelines and provide those insights at a broad macro level as well. And so we’re maintaining those relationships. And so I think, you know, moving forwards where we really want to focus is a few things. So basically, one area is obviously helping our businesses fulfill and those range from the sonic, our toothbrushes and how how that business continue to innovate Norelco Shaver’s coffee machines and to some extent, kitchen appliances as well.

Sean Cheng:
And then on the professional side, patient monitoring, radiology, there’s very specific innovations in those areas where we’re on the lookout for, but also understanding at the corporate level as we combine and merge consumer and health care, which I think is a trend that’s happening in the broader industry in any case. What are those new business models or ways of working or connecting the gaps that are helpful for us? And so we’ve learned quite a bit and maybe just provide a couple of examples where one of our portfolio companies can you speak to and this is ironic and I don’t know if I should be saying this on a podcast, but the the portfolio companies actually have a lot more customer insights than Philips as a big company. And so they actually provide a lot of the cutting edge customer feedback in that Philips shouldn’t be selling the large equipment anymore because customers are more used to the management and service contracts or more subscription based ones where let’s sign a 10 year, 10 million dollar contract for a company to take care of all of the imaging equipment needs of that hospital system versus buying a MRI machine every five years that five million dollars Right..

Sean Cheng:
And so it’s a Cap Ex cost over the 10 year period, the same for the health system, but then spread out across OpEx for the hospital personnel over time and then they get everything taken care of anyway. And so we’re not sort of, in theory, losing that much money or losing any money at all on the on the field side, but also getting more of what’s needed for the customer. And so those insights are where we look to these companies that are experimenting and basically doing the work for the voice of the customer.

Sean Cheng:
So that’s one example, I think on the on the other side, the we sit on the boards of these companies. And we like to take an active role and work with the founders and be present and prepare for these board meetings and and contribute value in doing so. There’s other board members as well representing health systems, financial services, as well as other councils within the health care industry. And these conversations are really revealing around what’s going on in the industry. So, you know, one one for one of the companies board meetings that there was a consultant within the health care industry that was see during the crisis how much financial illiquidity is becoming an issue within the hospital systems and what the hospitals are doing in reaction to that. That’s able to help us really get those insights very quickly and then give that back to Philips internal for us to project our next quarters and how they’ll behave. So, you know, I think that’s also useful in a way we’re learning a lot and we’re still coming along even before year’s end in terms of how we derive value. But I think it’s working in the right direction mean at some point some of these companies will become potential acquisition targets. And this is speculative, me personally. But at this time, it’s a lot of these relationships transfer of insights and knowledge that that would have been a lot more expensive internally. So my personal observation is that for every dollar that these early stage companies spend, CEOs will have to spend five to ten dollars internally to do it. And so this is where external innovation is really, really key and really helpful. And to add on top of that, we spend a dollar on investing in this company externally. And if we do our jobs, that dollar comes back. So it’s really not spending much at all. There’s also a force multiplier here. Right. So you provide, let’s say, of a 10 million dollar series, around two million dollars. The other eight million is coming from other funding bodies.

Sean Cheng:
But you’re getting the benefit of that entire 10 million or so from a innovation lens and an R&D budget lens. You’re spending a dollar and getting feedback back as well. So it’s a force multiplier. And so it’s doubly good in theory. And this is why I think corporate venturing is so exciting and where we can really make some inroads the next few years.

Saul Marquez:
And that is very exciting. I mean, just thinking about the day to day, Sean, that you know, that you spend in and these board meetings getting some of these insights that you could then share with Philips to improve business model innovation. I mean, it is just that’s this is the way to go. I think you guys I think you guys have a really nice structure. And so once you once you derive these insights, then it’s just it’s up to the business units Right. to to say how do we how do we implement what we know now.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s we are eighty thousand person company. So communicating that back is one of the challenges that we, we have to deal with.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah.

Sean Cheng:
I think there’s plenty of knowledge that that we can write down on slides or do internal podcasts or modules or videos and that’s in the works now. We even thought about, you know, like examples. My autonomy is, you know, they have a professional video creation crew. So can we leverage those assets to actually go and do this? And so that’s that’s a part that we’re still trying to educate and understandably are our executives on the mother ship are are worried about different set of priorities than the venture side Right.. So it’s not news that a publicly traded company has quarterly results pressures. And so the mothership tends sometimes to come more short sighted Right., especially on the business side, because they have to make their numbers. And everything in R&D is so slightly longer cited. Ventures is even more far sighted Right.. So there needs to be a lot of reminders and communications around. We’re doing this for the three to five year or even five to 10 year horizon here. And so to ask for quarterly returns is slightly going to be difficult. And so those are the messages that we have to continue touting as a corporate venture capital. And I’m sure my colleagues in the other services are going to be nodding their heads either here this or they are.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Makes a lot of sense. And that’s the and that’s the challenge. Right. But it’s as a strategic company and I mean Philips is very forward thinking. You have to make those bets. You know, if you’re going to be in it for the long haul, you have to make those long term bets. And so as you reflect on the last four years, Sean, what would you say is, is one of the setbacks you’ve seen or experienced that has made you guys even better?

Sean Cheng:
I think it’s about a balance, and this is probably a more specific explanation of what I just talked about. But it’s about a balance of. Satisfy internal stakeholders and proving out the commercial transfer of our investments and then leaving the companies to do what’s right for the market. And so I think inherently as a corporate, we will have our own internal ecosystem. And so it becomes sometimes an echo chamber. I am going to borrow a term from the politics side of things where we tell ourselves what we want and what the customer wants and the early stage companies in our portfolio, as well as those LP positions and funds are really listening to the customers. And so. We have to sort of listen to the venture side more and hear the market’s voice more, and we like to say that we’re actually the only markets driven through decision making within Philips. I’m sure that’s not true, but it’s sort of set for emphasis. But we’d like to hear where the market’s going instead of sort of the internal ecosystem and the echo chamber. And so I think the lesson here is basically we have to strike a balance between the two and sometimes the prioritization, the optimization where we put our energy are going to be split.

Sean Cheng:
And so I think it’s being able to balance that, which is a really, really difficult thing. If you’re a CBC manager and we try our best to do that. And I think we have a lot to work for in the future. But that’s one thing. And the other is reacting to the industry a little more. And I think there’s two parts to this. I truly believe that that CBC, as a sort of investment class, has a role within the innovation and venture ecosystem that can help move the needle in the current climate. Venture Capital argumentatively comes from CBC so the number of companies in Silicon Valley had external R&D arms that then turned into the first, because I think we still can be relevant again in a different way where our strategic needs and insights can really fun the type of company that is not always going to be adhering to the financial returns of the financially driven funds where they’ll have a three to five X return within three or five years, where we could be a little more patient than that. Right. And we say, well, three to five X return in seven years could be also potential for us.

Sean Cheng:
That’s not to say we’re not financially driven, but certainly a strategic angle helps the industry move along where it’s not always about money, but it is sometimes about money. So that’s the second area. And I think the strategic angle is is very helpful there. And the third point or maybe to be is the way that the industry is moving now is more towards later stage companies. And that’s truly the truth, that within health care. And so you worry about the. Yes, absolutely. I do worry about the seed stage companies these days, the pre COVID. It was already a trend where investments are moving towards serious and B and admittedly, we’ve actually moved towards that as well. But I think to fill that sort of valley of death between an internal or pet project and an actual series, a investment, we can really do a lot there as well. So I’d like to focus a bit more there and also perhaps now with money all the time with every company, but certainly with relationships with founders and helping them navigate that until they get to the series where we we come in invest.

Saul Marquez:
Yeah. Now, some great learnings there. Sean, I appreciate you sharing. And and certainly the learnings will continue. And you guys have made some really neat investments. I feel like you’ll you’re definitely doing a fantastic job in the space, you know, getting close to the end here. So I’m curious, Sean, do you have any books that you would recommend to us?

Sean Cheng:
I would say this might be out of left field, but.

Saul Marquez:
I love left field

Sean Cheng:
Never split he difference by because is it Scott Bold.

Saul Marquez:
What was the name of the book again?

Sean Cheng:
Never split the difference it takes. So he takes a very different and unconventional view to negotiations. And I don’t want to sort of spoil things. But he was a hostage negotiator. Yes, exactly right. The decades of hostage negotiation, you tend to have a framework of decision making under high pressure. And he makes the case that everyone can win and know it’s just the start. Right. You’ve got to have that conversation. And it’s not about a win lose. It’s about what the other side wants and how you can work to actually satisfy both your or your requirements. And so I think it’s it’s way more practical than the sort of says in the preamble to the book. But the frameworks and the Fatma’s and all of that stuff that you learn in college and grad school and in his case, Harvard, and so highly recommend that when he provides a couple of frameworks coming out of it that I sometimes use during negotiations through the deals as well, not to mention sort of getting the new lease on the car. That’s been useful. So I do recommend that one.

Saul Marquez:
And that gets applicable anywhere right. even with the kids.

Sean Cheng:
Yeah, yeah.

Saul Marquez:
I love that book. I’m so glad you brought it up. It’s been a while since I’ve read it. Listeners, if you have not had a chance to read, never split the difference. Read it. It’s so good. And I promise you that you probably get like a 20 times return on your investment at the very least within like a month if you if you apply it. And what a great recommendation. Folks go to outcomesrocket.health and in the search bar, type in Philipps or type in Sean Cheng. And you’ll find our interview with Sean and the full transcript, as well as links to the show notes and everything else that that we’ve discussed as resources here on the podcast. Sean, let’s bring it home. Share with us a closing thought and then the best place for the listeners could get in touch with you if they want to continue the conversation.

Sean Cheng:
Sure. Perhaps an open ended one because of the environment we’re in. But but hopefully, maybe listeners through this podcast, five years down the road, they can judge me on whether this has been the true or not. But as we’re coming out of COVID and even entering COVID. And health systems are struggling financially. And a lot of them are sort of breakeven or a little bit loss making as well, and it’s probably exacerbated that the construct of the hospital and health system, I foresee changing more rapidly now. And so this is all driven by a lot of our values at Philips including the QUADRUPLY, which is, you know, patient satisfaction, staff experience satisfaction, lowering costs and improving outcomes. It’s really not fair, honest, been accelerating in terms of that value of basic health care metrics, Right.. And I think coming out of this, that’s going to accelerate. And I think the deconstructive hospital systems as it stands today, will change. Whether that’s going to be a lot of consolidation to larger bodies or dare I say even sort of nationalizing parts of that is TBD. But I see that it’s changing and there’s opportunity for innovation in that area. We’re already seeing payors focusing more and more on direct to consumer and these boring large insurance companies trying to understand, you know, focus groups, right? And what the consumers want. Can we help? How can we get in touch with them? So I think those are the areas that are going to be very, very interesting moving forwards. And I’m excited about that. So so I just to think about that, and when we invest, we’re always looking for obviously what’s happening next three to five years.

Sean Cheng:
And so if you’re a founder entrepreneur out there, I would focus on that direction and then meet the need and meet the funding voices in a couple of years when you’re ready for the seed or series A course. Let’s see if I’m wrong or not. But in any case, you can send the feedback to me. Sean Cheng at Philips dot com. So that’s sean.cheng@philips.com And feel free to provide feedback, and I’m happy to chat. Thank you very much, Saul.

Saul Marquez:
Oh, my pleasure, Sean. So glad we could do this and definitely looking forward to staying in touch. Thanks again.

Sean Cheng:
And you.

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