Announcing Outcomes Rocket MedTech Podcast with Paul Grand: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody, Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket. I’m so excited you tuned in again today. I have the privilege of really welcoming a guest that you all know very well. His name is Paul Grand, a good friend of mine and also the CEO of MedTech Innovator. You’ve heard a couple of episodes on the podcast with them in the past and actually maybe three episodes Paul, I think we’ve had you on. And so as we embark on covering different verticals inside of health care, I kept thinking to myself, You know, I’m missing the boat here on not covering medical devices. And I sat back and I didn’t have to think too long about who was going to cover that vertical for us. And so today, I’m really excited to introduce Paul Grand- as the new co-host of the Outcomes Rocket, but specifically the host for the MedTech podcast with Outcomes Rocket. So Paul, I want to, first of all, say so excited that you decided to do this with us, and I want to give you a warm welcome to the podcast today as a host.
Paul Grand:
Hey thanks, Saul. So I’m happy to be back, both as a longtime listener of the Outcomes Rocket. As you know, I do a lot of my morning runs listening to Outcomes Rocket with a new broadcast like every day, there’s always content that fills my morning and then, you know, it’s one of those like, you know, I love it so much I joined the company kind of thing, you know, I just love the Outcomes Rocket, love talking with you. You’ve been a good friend of mine. And yeah, I couldn’t be happier than to now be here as a co-host.
Saul Marquez:
And that’s so awesome. And it’s exciting. And really, you know, obviously like personally, am in the medical device space. I follow it very closely. And, you know, we’ve had a lot of episodes around Med device, but we haven’t given it the focus that it needs. You do such a nice job with what you do at MedTech Innovator, with these companies that are starting in the initial stages, but you also work with a lot of the strategics. And so you really cover the entire lifecycle of a company in the partnerships that you’ve made. And so talk to us a little bit about what your plan is for this podcast. Who’s it for and what people should expect?
Paul Grand:
Yeah, that’s a really good point, Saul. You know, Medtech is definitely different than pharma, right?. It’s different than health tech. You know, Medtech, although I like to think of health tech as a subset of med-tech, and sometimes people think of it the other way around, you know, these are all different. There’s a lot of different nuances to these spaces. And as you said, we work really closely with a lot of strategics so we understand from the big company perspective what they’re looking for ultimately in technologies that they want to either acquire or they want to see as part of their overall offering. And it’s definitely, as I said, it is a very unique space. So what I’m hoping to do in this podcast is educate the listeners out there, whether they’re health care leaders at a health system, on the customer side or payer, whether they’re a clinician who’s delivering care, whether they’re innovators themselves who are on this journey and they’re trying to figure out how to be successful or any of the other key stakeholders that are out there, regulators and so on. I’m trying to let them in on the mindset of these different stakeholders, so I’m going to focus on interviewing innovators so we can talk to them about their journey, about what’s driving them, the things that are keeping them up at night, the things that they’re excited about, why they’re doing what they’re doing and why frankly, you can accomplish these things with devices in some cases that you can’t with a drug or another solution, or maybe a digital solution. But whatever it might be, we’re going to focus on what’s driving the innovators, what they’re excited about. We’re going to talk to some of the other stakeholders and from their perspectives. So I’ll be reaching out to people on the regulatory side and talking to them about the things that, you know again, that they are really excited about. You know, I mean, we talk about things like cybersecurity and what does that mean for devices these days? You know, I’ve got a webinar I’m doing later today on that same topic. So like, you know, these things are happening constantly and they’re shifting and there are executive orders by the president that affect our industry and how is that trickling down to the innovators and all the other stakeholders? So we’re going to do all that kind of stuff and we’re going to just try and let people into the mindset of the people who are really driving change in our industry.
Saul Marquez:
Paul, that’s fantastic. I’ve been a fan of your work and your approach. Actually, we co-hosted one, we co-hosted an event on Clubhouse for Diabetes. That was a lot of fun, and I got a feel for how you moderate, and the way that you do it is really smooth. The way that you dig into the tough questions has always been really fun. Folks, you’re going to enjoy Paul. You’re going to enjoy how he covers this vertical. I’m super excited about it. Paul, first of all, it’ll be available to everybody one time a week, and it’s the same channel that you listen to the Outcomes Rocket so none of that changes. Paul, I want to dig into why you’re doing this. Why did you decide to speak on behalf of this vertical?
Paul Grand:
So for me, I’ve wanted to have a podcast for a long time and the reason I’ve thought about that, it’s, I think, kind of a unique way to get in people’s heads when they’re not looking at the screen necessarily, and they’re out there and they’re, you know, whether it’s taking a walk or making your lunch or whatever else shaving, I don’t know whatever else someone’s doing in their day. It’s when I listen and I found it to be a really interesting medium and similar to the way that radio is interesting. But you know, we’re so dynamic here, and I’ve always thought that it’d be a really good way to kind of share these stories. And that’s something that, you know, MedTech innovator, we’re really focused and you know, we’ll talk more about what I do, maybe in a minute. But you know, we’re focused on helping innovators. We’re focused on helping them in their journey to be as successful as they can be with these products they’re developing. And I feel like the stories of the innovators themselves don’t get shared enough and that it’s really, you know, while we’re obviously we’re all patient-focused, we’re all trying to solve health care problems. But, you know, to understand the thinking of an innovator is really only possible if you’re talking to them, right? If you’re getting to know them. And like I found, for example, we worked with the FDA several years ago on a project that they have called the Experiential Learning program, where they send FDA reviewers out to meet with either manufacturers and get to know how they work. You know, get them out of the FDA offices and get them out in the field, and they also send them out to meet with innovators. It was really interesting after the fact to talk to some of the regulatory professionals who said, Wow, you know, this is just so eye-opening. I mean, I was talking, I was sitting there with this guy, and he told me he hasn’t taken his salary for two years. And, you know, I couldn’t even wrap my head around that. Like she’s like, we always think that industry is just trying to make money. And now I understand that it’s the passion that’s driving him. And so it’s so educational to everybody to kind of just understand what’s driving these innovators, what was their founding story, things like that. So I’m really excited to share those, and I think this is just the perfect medium for it.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. And yet, you know, there’s a lot of those examples where there’s the story behind that false belief, that story behind the story, and it sounds like you’ll be uncovering a lot of that on the podcast. Why should they listen? You know, why should outcomes Rocket Nation listen and how is it different than everything else that’s out there?
Paul Grand:
You’re like, I think if, as I’ve told you before, you know, I’m a long-time listener, I think Outcomes Rocket is different than other podcasts. You know, I’ve listened to dozens of health care podcasts. I’ve got a rotating list and Outcomes Rockets always up there, you know, in my top five or so. But the point is that I am a listener. I am sampling what’s out there and I think there’s a gap. Yes, there are lots of people who do tell stories about companies and what they’re doing and why. There’s a lot of that. What I’m going to try and do here is dig into, as I said, kind of the things that are driving these innovators. You know, why are they doing what they’re doing? What are some of their unique challenges and what are the key milestones that they’re excited about? And I think those are some of the key areas that you know anyone, whether you’re an innovator yourself or on the outside that you can, by getting into that mindset, it really helps you understand how to interface with that person because not everyone is an innovator, right? You might be a clinician, you might be a customer, and so on, and to kind of understand what’s driving them. I think that you know what they think their value proposition is that’s a key area. And even being able to understand that particular nuance, the value prop, you know, I’m asking people about what the value proposition of their product is and listening to how they articulate that can inform people quite a bit. Even if all you do is just listen to that one part of the podcast, I think you’ll get a lot out of it because how they answer that question will help you either understand that company better, but maybe even reflect back on yourself and how you fit into that value proposition. So whether you’re the patient, the caregiver, the payer, and so on, the manufacturer, maybe he’s partnering all those people. If you kind of think about your own value proposition in that context, I think it’ll help quite a bit because you’ll hear a lot of different answers and you’ll hear a lot of different ways in which people see themselves as adding value to the health care system and improving outcomes, which ultimately which, you know, we’re all about here on the Outcomes Rocket, right? So I think if you can just listen to a lot of those like I had the pleasure and the privilege as a venture capitalist for 12 years to listen to, I think it was like 10000 pitches or something over the 12 years. And certainly, since I’ve been at MedTech Innovator, that number has gone way up and it’s pattern recognition. I get to hear these people over and over and over again, and it just starts to sink in and I think. I’m hoping with this podcast, the MedTech podcast on the Outcomes Rocket, I think we’re going to be able to give the listeners if they just listen to all these, they’ll start to have that same kind of appreciation for all these different value propositions, and I think they’ll learn quite a bit.
Saul Marquez:
Love it! Well, you know, and the nice thing is that Paul’s approach is so unique, by the way. So, you know, every single year through MedTech Innovator Paul interacts with these med device companies or early startups to give away, I’m telling you give away a million dollars plus in non-dilutive funding. It’s just incredible. So, Paul, I want to park there for a second. Tell us about that and why you do that and then wrap it up here with kind of an invite to everybody listening To your show.
Paul Grand:
Thanks, Saul. My company is called MedTech Innovator. I started it while I was a venture capitalist, and as I said, I’ve been a venture capitalist for 12 years. And the biggest thing I was trying to solve when I started MedTech Innovator was a disconnect between innovators and what they were doing and what the manufacturers in the market were looking for. And I saw all these innovators who were working on interesting things, but they were making mistakes. And because they’re so diverse in their geography and they’re not all in Silicon Valley, they’re not all in Boston, you know where a lot of the big companies are or Minneapolis, they’re all over the place and they were getting, you know, really bad advice, frankly, from people who have, you know, their heart’s in the right place. And they’re writing of some small checks and they’re saying, Hey, you’ve got to quickly get to the market as fast as you can, and then you can iterate after that. Health care takes a long time, and there’s not a lot of room for lots of iteration. And yes, you can make improvements, but those take a long time and a lot of money. If you go after the wrong market or if you haven’t done the right studies, you know you’ll never be successful and there are so many failure points. So I started MedTech Innovator as a program when I was a venture capitalist to connect up entrepreneurs with experts and strategics in the industry who probably are going to be their partner or acquirer someday anyways, to give us that kind of early opportunity to make an impact on these companies when there’s still time because I hated sitting there across the table from someone going, God, if I met you a year ago, I could have fixed that problem. So I started MedTech innovator to meet people a year earlier in their journey, perhaps or maybe even two years earlier than I would have normally, and surface them. And we use the competition that you mentioned before as kind of the carrot that gets people to say, Hey, I can win first place in 50 grand and this program or one hundred grand in this other program or whatever it might be. And so people apply partially to try and get access to prizes, and the prizes are the end, as I’d like to say, it’s kind of like the icing on the cake because the program, the accelerator program that we built after that, that we’ve been running now since 2015, the accelerator is a very intense mentorship program where you can still run your company wherever you are. You don’t have to move or relocate, but we give you the opportunity to work very closely with the strategics and whether there are people who are running a product or they’re head of, you know, sometimes it’s like the senior vice president of business development for J&J, whatever it might be, that’s your mentor. That’s the person who you’re meeting with weekly who’s giving you, you know, your bouncing ideas off them. And you know, we do that. We have 27 corporate partners at this point. So we have somebody in almost every vertical and we’re able then to give really good advice and good direction to these early innovators. And of course, at the end of it, as we said, there’s a competition with prizes. Actually, our finals competition is on September twenty-ninth. I’m super excited about that. It’s going to be in Minneapolis. So for any of you who are out there, if you just go to if you go to the MedTech conference, you’ll be able to learn about that competition and the conference we’re going to be at. Also, MedTechInnovator.org is the other place my company. But the point is I’m super excited about this opportunity to bring our listeners into this journey and to get them into my mindset, which is, you know, working closely with these entrepreneurs. I want to give our listeners here that same kind of insight and give them the opportunity to be part of this journey. And what I’m hoping, you know, at the end of every one of our episodes, I keep calling out that you should go on to LinkedIn, find a link to the episode on LinkedIn and join in the conversation, because we’ll actually have, you know, a place that people can comment. And they could say, Hey, that was really great. I really learned a lot or I’m, you know, I’m kind of confused about this. Why are you doing it this way? Or I could help you. I’d love to have you be, you know, have your technology at our clinical site, whatever it might be, I’m hoping people engage that way interactively. And that’s again part of what this is all about, right? Just trying to bring these innovators to the people who need to know about them and vice versa. So that’s what I’m hoping to do here. I’m super excited to be here on the Outcomes Rocket and I’m going to grow as part of this too. In this process, you know, continuing to share these stories, I learn every time I have one of these conversations. The last thing I’ll say on this Saul is that the joke I kind of have you know, here at the company is like, I’m having these conversations every day anyway, I might as well just like record them, and that’s kind of what I’m hoping to do here at Outcomes Rocket is let everybody into those conversations.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome. Yeah. And you know, Paul, you brought up a good point. The invitation to connect. And I think that’s something that frankly, I haven’t done a good job, you know, as inviting people to have those discussions. So I’m excited to have you on to bring your interactive perspective. You’re like the ultimate connector and networker. And so I’m excited to have you here to bring a little bit of the flavor that you bring. And with that, it’s an invitation to everybody. As Paul said, to discuss some of these topics, many of you, if not all of you follow us on LinkedIn. We got over fifty-one thousand followers on there, but the engagement level is not as high as I think it could be, and that’s because I’ve never invited you to chat there. So, Paul, I think that’s a great opportunity for everybody to get to LinkedIn, get to the page, and have a conversation. We post all of the episodes that we do there. Now we have Outcomes Rocket, Outcomes Rocket Pharma, Outcomes Rocket Nursing, and now Outcomes Rocket MedTech and more to come. But super excited for Paul to join us on the MedTech Outcomes Rocket MedTech podcast. So an exciting journey here. I am super excited about it and I think everybody listening. I think you’re in for an amazing treat with Paul on our team. And so with that, I want to thank you Paul, and certainly want to thank the listeners for continuing to tune in and some exciting MedTech episodes with Paul coming up soon. Thanks, Paul.
Paul Grand:
Thank you, Saul. Looking forward to it.
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