Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Building Clinical Evidence Around Your Target Market: Interview with Teal Health CEO Kara Egan

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Kara Egan, founder and CEO of Teal Health.Teal Health is the company behind the first FDA-authorized at-home cervical cancer screening wand.Before founding Teal, Kara worked in healthcare and software investing at .406 Ventures and Emergence Capital, and held product and marketing roles at Zendesk and Stitch Labs.  In this interview, Kara discusses building support and follow-up into at-home screening, how Teal expanded its comparative clinical study to support broader market adoption, and how healthcare incentives, reimbursement, and institutional trust shape new care models.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device founders and CEOs and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you’re ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Kara Egan, which includes a link to ScottBot — an AI version of host Scott Nelson trained on every Medsider interview and playbook. Feel free to ask ScottBot any questions you'd like!KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(02:49) - Kara’s background in health technology investing and software that shaped Teal’s consumer-first approach (05:14) - How Teal turned the traditional Pap smear into the first FDA-authorized at-home screening product (07:30) - Turning at-home testing, telehealth, and clinician follow-up into a single care experience (13:48) - Raising Teal’s first $1M with mockups and consumer-grade design (22:17) - Teal’s comparative study that matched physician-collected screening with 96% sensitivity (23:40) - How asking women what they actually wanted changed Teal’s view of the market opportunity (32:05) - “Take off the healthcare hat” — Kara’s framework for fundraising, incentives, and commercialization (41:48) - What investors actually care about beyond the company’s mission

When I went to go fundraise, I just found a designer who could make a mock-up of like what it could be, right? And I do think for us that was really helpful because my investors were generalists, right? And they were kind of like, this has a consumer great appeal. Like if we had shown just a really rudimentary prototype, it wouldn't have kind of like gotten people to lean in. Like, oh, this is cool. This is amazing. So even from the get-go, we just used a designer. to say make a realistic looking product ad, basically,

that showed not only a device, but they'll be an unboxing experience, because that was always going to be a part of it. Welcome to MedSider, where you can learn from the brightest founders and CEOs in medical devices and health technology. Join tens of thousands of ambitious doers as we unpack the insights, tactics, and secrets

behind the most successful life science startups in the world. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. Hey everyone, in this episode of Medsider, we sat down with Kara Egan, founder and CEO of Teal Health. Teal Health is the company behind the first FDA-authorized at-home cervical cancer screening wand. Before founding Teal, Kara worked in healthcare and software investing at 406 Ventures and Emergence Capital and held product and marketing roles at Zendesk and Stitch Labs. Here are a few topics we explored in this conversation.

First, what does it take to build trust and support into at-home care experiences? Second, how do you decide when broader clinical evidence is worth the added cost and complexity. Third, who will be economically impacted by your technology and how do you solve for that? And last, how to investor priorities shift between generalist and health care focused funds? Before we dive into the full episode, if you're a med tech founder or CEO preparing to raise capital, you should check out the MedSiter fundraising cohort. This four-week live workshop combines small group sessions with real-time feedback to help you sharpen your investor story, build a targeted investor pipeline, and run a focused fundraising sprint instead of a never-ending

slog. Over the month, you'll walk away with an investor-ready narrative in deck, outreach scripts that actually get responses, a refreshed LinkedIn profile, a simple content plan that keeps you on investors' radar, and a repeatable system for running your raise. You can join the waitlist at medsider.com forward slash fundraising cohort. Again, that's medsider.com forward slash fundraising cohort. All right, let's get to the interview. All right, Kara, welcome to Medisider Radio. Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. It took us a bit to get here, right? But I'm definitely looking forward. forward to the conversation. I recorded your bio. I'll be at a very abbreviated version at the

outset of this interview, but let's start there. I want to hear it from you first. Like, what's the one to two minute kind of like elevator style overview of your, your background before taking on the CEO role at Teal? So my background is I started my career investing in health tech. And so that's sort of where I like first had a passion for what really telehealth could be, right? It was over 20 years ago. And I think it was still like so early that telehealth could. be a thing. But that's where my deep passion for that came about. And then I went to business school and used as a transition to work at a couple different tech companies. And for me, that's sort of where like deep down I learned. Like I was an entrepreneur. Like I'm a builder.

Like I liked it early. And even my first VC job was really we were building a firm for the first time. And so there was like that kind of like that energy. But then I went back into investing. So I worked at a couple different tech companies and then went back into investing on the tech side. And so I think I've always kind of like looked at the world, especially as an investor, about kind of like, what can you learn from this company that you can translate to this company? And the same thing being like, what can we learn from this market, that we can translate to that market? And how do we kind of take like the best of all of these experiences that I experienced myself as,

you know, a consumer of health care, as somebody who's worked in technology and as somebody who like understands health care? What are kind of the best things we can take from each? And so what kind of brought me back to Teal and starting one. Women's Health Company is really a combination of all of my background, but a piece of it was actually Zendesk where we worked as a customer support software. And it was like, how can we create a customer journey that's so tailored and engaging for an Etsy shop owner that's selling a $20 product, but yet I've never had that kind of engagement and touch points and connection with a health care

provider or, you know, whether it was like whatever I was going through at the time. And so that's kind of how it all came to life where it was like, hey, let's take all this technology that we're seeing and let's apply it to women's health that just needs more of everything. You've got this mix of like software experience plus a lot of venture experience and now building a healthcare startup. It looks like I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile now, which we'll link to in the full write-up on Medsider, but it looks like you've been kind of hit the ground running at Teal back in early 2020, the magical time of March 2000, March 2020, which all of us remember. For those that aren't familiar at all with Teal and kind of what you're building, tell us a little bit more about the Teal wand.

Maybe explain this as if I'm a freshman in high school and I like, I kind of don't, I don't know, I don't know how patients normally get this sort of like diagnostic. Like give us kind of a high level overview in simple terms. Sure. So Teal has created the first FDA authorized at home cervical cancer screening. And so the cervical cancer screening is what we colloquially call in the U.S. the PAP smear. And so it is a screening for cervical cancer. And what's really amazing about screening for cervical cancer is it's entirely preventable through screening.

So the way that we screen these days, even though we call it a pap smear, is HPB. HPB is a pre-cancer. And so we can actually detect it before it ever becomes cancer and manage it that way. And so it's a really important screening. But the way it's done today is it's done in the doctor's office with your feet in stirrups and an archaic device called the speculum. that kind of pries you open and allows a doctor to scrape some cells off your cervix. And so it's, yeah, I feel like you've been like, granted.

And you're like, I am glad I don't have a cervix. And I've never had to experience that before. Exactly. So that's how it's done today. But the problem is bigger than just the experience. The problem that we have in the U.S. right now is we have a healthcare crisis, right? They're not enough providers. And so one in three Americans can't access preventive care.

and that's where this cervical cancer screening typically lives in your annual visits. And so if you can't access preventive care, you can't access this screening. And so we have close to one and three women currently behind on their cervical cancer screening. And as I said before, it's completely preventable through screening. And so what Teal allows you to do is just collect it comfortably and privately from home. So I know this is like audio, but happen to have a wand here. But so it's just the ability to collect your own sample. And we give you everything that you need in the box to send it back to the lab.

We ran, and I'm sure we'll get into it in more detail, but we ran like a clinical trial, and we show that we had the exact same accuracy as the doctor's office. So from a clarity of like what you can do now, it's like, hey, we're using the exact same test that you use in the doctor's office. We have the exact same accuracy as if it was done in the doctor's office, but you can just comfortably and privately do it from home. And so our goal is just making sure that women know to get screened for cervical cancer, whether through teal or in the office, but it's really important that we catch back up.

I love the device that you just showed. I know if people are listening to this, right, but we'll try to maybe capture a screenshot of this or something like this. But like great box. So just to recap, if I'm, let's say I do have a cervix, right, as an example. And I'm interested. Someone told me I need to go get a PAPSMEA, right? Maybe it's my primary care position. I don't want to go through like the standard.

I just, I order this online. Yeah. It shipped to me. I do it at home, then send it back. And how long does it typically take to get results back? Yeah. So it's pretty quick. So the way it works today is you would go to Teal.

You would get to a short eligibility and registration. Then you get matched with a. clinicians. So we are both a kit and a telehealth platform that supports screening. And we support screening in terms of getting you the kit, but we also support screening in terms of sending your reminders to make sure you send it back in, as well as if you have an abnormal result. We'll meet with you again to explain what that means and refer you into any in-person triage that you might have. So you really kind of supported the whole way. We always say like you might collect privately, but you're never alone, right, when it comes to like working with TIL. So

that's how it works today. If you send it into the last. We kind of have expedited shipping, so it'll get to lab and call it three days and you'll have your results back in two. So call it five days from collection. You should have your results. Okay. So within a week or so. And is this something that, right, as of right now, is it, is it covered by insurance? Tell me a little bit more about that. Oh my gosh, this is the best part. Okay. So today, if you have insurance at Nessigna, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, or United, we bill for the telehealth portion and then there's a $99 kit fee. If it's cash, it's $249. However, we got on the Health and Human Services guidelines.

And so as of January 1st, 27, anyone who falls the Affordable Care Act, so all private insurers have to cover at home screening with no cost sharing. So free to all women. So no co-pay. So it's a preventive care code. So no co-pay, no hitter deductible, no co-ins. Wow. Those are some nice.

Yeah, pretty nice tailwinds. It is. It is. It's fantastic. And again, I think I think everyone knows we have a problem, right? One in three women are behind is something we can't wait around to figure out if people want to cover it or not cover it. It's better for everybody. And we actually found all, not all insurance, but all of the major ones actually came to us before the guideline change to say, how do we roll this out. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah, it's still, this is a little bit of a side tangent, but it still amazes me how many people in that are building, or that just involved in healthcare in general, scoff at the idea of like going direct to patient, right? Or like, even if you technically aren't direct to patient, having some sort of, patient-facing aspect to your business. And I'm like, look, you do realize like how difficult it is just to get an appointment, right, with pretty much any provider. Like, what do you think people are

going to do, especially with LLMs, right? Like, do you really think they're going to wait around? Like, no. I mean, they're going to, they're going to go find answers themselves. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, yeah. So it's definitely. And like the front door is changing. I mean, this is like the best part about telehealth, right? Like that you really can address these care gaps with providers that, you know, maybe don't live there, but are licensed. there. Like it's so important to go direct consumer. And I mean, what we think with Teal is also like, it's so important, even if you're selling in through a provider, depending on what you're offering, it is a B to B to C stale. And if you don't know how to talk to your patient about why she

wants, in our case she wants to do the screening and make her feel like compelled to take action, it won't matter whether it's direct consumer or if it's through a provider or a payer or a health system. Like they're not going to do it. Right. Yeah, 100%. I'm looking at the website right now, which we'll link to in the full write-up on MedSiter, but it's gettel.com, G-E-T-E-A-L.com, just as it sounds, getttel.com. We're recording this in Q2 of 26 for someone that may be listening to this, you know, three or six months down the road. Give us a sense for kind of, you know, where the company's at, like, today

and maybe what's planned for the rest of the year here in 2006. All right. So, sorry, I'm, like, pausing because I'm just thinking, like, I probably don't want to talk about fundraising. I guess maybe from a from a state. No, sorry, I was more saying it's like it's what do we have like, you know, as where you mentioned, you're also fundraising. Like, you know, you're telling your story all the time and it's pretty cool. Like Teal in like, you know, within eight months of coming through the FDA, right, had launched

in direct to consumer. We had launched 50 states. We had gotten on the American cancer screening guidelines, gotten on the healthy and human services guidelines. Like we've really like done a lot. What do we think is coming up? just continuing to reach more women. So I think like, you know, getting, making sure that, you know, there's the health and human

services requirement that you cover, but we still need to go to each payer and make sure they know how to bill and know how to pay. And so making sure that's like set up working with more provider. I mean, we were surprised at how quickly providers did want to be a part of this. It's actually like really encouraging to realize how much they do believe in patient preference and understand that their patients want better experiences. And so another great thing that happened was ACOG, which is Lean College of OB-Gyns,

just formally endorsed patient collect and at-home collection. So, like, they're all kind of coming. So for us, I think, finding ways to engage with more populations and health systems and partners to just really get TEAL as broadly as possible. So that's probably the goal. Yeah, those are some big ambitions, right?

I mean, we really have six months left in the year, but it sounds like it's, you know, raising more, raising more awareness generally for broader access and then, you know, continuing to work with with payers to ensure that those, you know, any friction that may exist is removed from the kind of the process. So with that said, let's maybe spend the next half hour so kind of going back in time and learning a little bit more about your journey building the company over the past, you know, six plus years now, you know, and obviously I want to tap into your previous learnings as well, right? Before TIL as well. So first question I've got kind of is more related to kind of that early stage kind of product

development, which I think is arguably one of the most difficult because you don't have typically a lot of capital, right? You don't have a lot to show, right? To be able to raise like that seed capital, which, you know, there's not a lot of investors at this at that stage anyway. So give us a, you know, when looking back at those early days, you know, where there are a few things that stood out in terms of how you kind of work through that inner process with, you know, relatively, I would imagine relatively little resources at the time. Yeah, I wonder what you consider little resources. We'll find out.

So for us, I have a co-founder who created the first prototype as part of Stanford Biodesign. And part of Teal is just like listening to women, right? Like what would women want? And it was just something that we were never going to use, right? Like it was a great prototype of what conceptually could be. And so I would say for me, one of the first learnings was, you don't have to be. to build everything, you can just kind of like mock it up, right? And so I raised a million dollars to basically, so that's where I'm like, maybe it's a lot, maybe it's a little. I would argue it's

like somewhere in between. But we raised a million dollars to redesign the whole product with idea. So like kind of like break it down. What does it really need to do both in terms of making a woman feel confident to use it herself and then also confident in like the quality of collection that it's going to do. But we didn't really stop there. We kind of like also step back and like, what is every part of the experience that needs to change, right? If you were only thinking about the device, you might not think about like a telehealth support or platform. You might just say this is going to be in the doctor's office and they're going to use it there. Right. And so we can all of the problems associated with getting screened. But when I went to go fundraise,

I just found a designer who could make a mockup of like what it could be. Right. And I do think for us that was really helpful because my investors from were generalists, right? And they were kind of like how it and back to like this has a consumer great appeal. Like if we had shown just a really rudimentary prototype, it wouldn't have kind of like gotten people to lean in to like, oh, this is cool. This is amazing. So even from the get go, we just used a designer to say make a realistic looking product like ad, basically, that showed not only device, but the unboxing experience because that was always going to be a part of it. So I guess what I would say is with the very limited funds, we basically just like made it up, right?

That was like $500. And then, you know, we raised a million and did more than just the IDOs with that million. But we used a lot of it to redesign the product and make sure it was something that really worked. Did you say, who'd you work with? You said IDEO. Oh, IDEO. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're kind of like the leaders in consumer centric design. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So it's interesting that you mentioned, like, just producing mockups, right? Because I think a lot of folks in more traditional med tech say, like, I actually need to build a thing, right? which don't get me wrong. Like, that's important too, but sometimes your thing

could scare a lot of people off, especially if you're pitching to, like you said, a more generalist audience. And typically at pre-seed, seed stage, it is more generalist audiences, right? And so I think it's interesting that one,

not only that you went to a mockup, right, to kind of give them a better feel of what this could be, right, and kind of selling the future, but also, also that unboxing experience, right?

And kind of gives a sense for like what, not only what the product could be, but what the experience could be, right, for the, for the end of use. So I think sometimes just easy to gloss over some of those what seem like more straightforward things to do, right? But like super, super important to try to get some early traction from an investment.

Yeah. And I feel like now it's probably even easier to do things like that with like cod design. Right. It's just like tries again, make it. You know, it's just like it can just build something for you that you also can kind of like iterate there. Yeah. You know, what would it look like this? What would it, you know, what if it said that?

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty much easier. Yeah. $20 a month, you know, Cloud Pro subscription will go a long ways these days. Same thing with the, with GPT, you know, five and a half is actually pretty quite, quite good. So with that said, one follow-up question when it comes to kind of like early stage design iteration, obviously this is being, you were designing this for home use. Anything kind of like interesting

or like, you know, challenges or maybe things that you kind of went through designing it for, specifically for home use, right? Like, because that often, you know, comes with some, maybe sometimes some more difficult challenges, but maybe some, different obstacles to kind of think through because, you know, this is not a physician using it at home. It's a lay, it's a lay consumer, a lay patient. Yeah. I think we did anything particular. I mean, we've just always kind of taken a slightly different approach. So I remember when we were making the instructions, I was just like asked my head of Clin Reagan call, I'm like, can you use color? And she was like, what? And I was like, can you use color? And she was like, of course.

I'm like, well, I've just never seen any instructions with color. They're just always these like big, like, you know, foldouts of black and white with 5,000 things. And so I just know the FDA might be like, oh, colorblindness. Everyone has to be like, I don't know. And she was like, no, it's just no one's ever cared about marketing, right? Like no one's ever kind of thought about that unboxing experience. And so I think for us, we always went into it with an unboxing experience more about kind of like how does a woman feel when she like starts to do this.

But I do think it's equally important when you're thinking about really guiding a woman through the process and making sure she like has everything she needs. And so for us, we did spend a decent amount of time. Sorry, I keep like showing it. Like at least you can see it. In the box, kind of like, even like the colors and the wording here is supposed to like make you calm. Right. But then we have like no color on the box because it's like this should feel a little bit like,

not like clinical, but like now we're getting into medical, but every single thing is laid out in the order that you will need it. And we also wanted the box to be something that you could kind of prop on whatever style bathroom you might have, right? I am fortunate to only have one bathroom in my house and it has a pedestal sink. So I was a great candidate for like, what is the smallest workspace that you would have, like, you know, whether it's on the back of a toilet seat or, you know, maybe you want to do it in your bedroom. But like, did you have everything stable to be able to just kind of do it right then in there?

Yeah. So I think that we all thought about it first from just like a consumer experience. But I do think we did then lay everything out to make sure there were no questions when a woman was going through. her own. Yeah, that's super interesting that you, I mean, those are just some of like the unique challenges, right, designing a product for home use is like thinking about like, look, I mean, everyone's bathroom's not the same space wise, like how much space wise in terms of like total bathroom space, right, versus space to actually set a box, you know, when they're doing this doing this test. So like super interesting. But that I'm laughing because hearing your comments about

like the instruction, the IFU, right? It's like it's a running joke, right? Like at least with, with my team of like how bizarre like these I, these traditional IFUs are, because I don't know if I've met a physician maybe over the past 10 years that has actually read an I if you. Maybe that's partly or maybe that's mostly due to the fact that they're terrible to read. Like who's going to read this thing, right? I mean, they're ridiculous. And so like I 100% feel the same way. Even if it's like a device that's used in like a cath lab or an OR, like no one reads these things because they're terrible to read, you know.

It's so funny. Ours aren't even terrible to read. But whenever we were doing kind of like pilot studies where we'd bring in like friends of, you know, the team, it was always the doctors that like didn't read anything and like kind of messed something up and we're like well it said right there oh i didn't read that and you're like okay whereas actually most of the patients like who are not doctors were like i'm going to read this right and they never have them kind of like tripping over the same simple things where it'd be like they wouldn't put their name on the vial and they're like it's pretty clear you should put

your name on the vile you know but of course it was always the clinicians the doctors that were the ones too yeah so maybe maybe the take home is if you're thinking about an if you don't be afraid to actually make it readable. And actually, like, good instructions, right? Yes. Yes. It's funny. It's never ending.

Like, when you were talking about your team, like, I feel like our team, we had this thing. Like, everyone has taken their moment being in charge of the IFU. Like, you know, that song was like, this is the song that never ends. Like, we were like, this is the IFU that never ends. Like, we're just always adding it, iterating something, you know, like finally it ended. Yeah. The naming convention is like, you got to have enough digits, right?

Because there's so many different iterations. of the IMDU. Exactly. I'm right there with you. Let's transition to Ray Klin, right? Because first of its kind in-home diagnostic tests for cervical cancer. And so I think that obviously is very, very cool. But I also don't want to underappreciate what it took there, right, to get authorization from FDA.

And so maybe let's start out with the clinical study first, right? Was that required as part of the regulatory? Okay, it was. Yes. Yes. We were an in-vito diagnostic. Okay. even though it's like the actual thing is a sample, you know, like a med device sample

collection because it's a cervical cancer screen because it's being run on the Roche Cobas HPV, it required a clinical trial and understanding. And tell us a little bit about that because it was, if my notes are correct, I think it was like you did, you compared to in clinic testing versus at home testing? Yes. Yeah. So the way it worked was it was a comparative study. It was a 16 site nationwide clinical trial.

another thing we cared a lot about was making sure that it mapped really closely to the U.S. population because this is something for everybody, right? And we needed to make sure everybody could do it, liked it, what have you. And so the way it works, it was you would come in and you would be given the, and it's funny, you really just had the instructions in a bag with the wand, like you didn't have a lot of stuff. I mean, you had the vial and stuff. But it was not a beautiful unboxing experience. And so they would go in and they were supposed to do that with like no additional help.

So like what does it look like to do it at home? So no doctor walked them through anything. They just kind of like went into the room. And so then they would self-collect. And then the doctor would come in and do it through the standard of care way with the speculum and the stirrups. And so both samples would then get sent to the lab and run on the exact same Roche Cobas HPV tests.

And then you compare to see how they perform. Okay. And so what we found is we had the exact same accuracy, which is called the sensitivity for sin 2 plus as the doctor, which was 96%. So match them exactly at a very high rate. Okay, got it. I'm assuming you worked with FDA on that trial design. Yeah.

Lots of, I mean, this is one thing that I really do think was helpful when we think about advice for others. We did a lot of Q-subs or pre-submissions, or whatever you call them, to make sure we got a right. Like, what do you want to see? And is this going to be enough? And in the beginning, they actually were like, because, again, I think most people were thinking this was going to be for the underscreened community, right? So like, how do we get them

and they're, and they might look a little bit different. And so we were, they were like, hey, why don't you just do it only in an enriched community, meaning like people who are, so in that world, it was people who are coming back already with a high risk HPB result. But we knew we wanted to go to everybody. So even though they said we only need to do that, we also expanded it out to the whole deck pop, which again, because our data was so strong, allowed us to come through as a general indication, as opposed to just for kind of like people who are behind on their screening. Was that decision largely driven from kind of being able to kind of, I guess, tell that story once you did have, you know, authorization to sell it? Like, hey, look, this is not just for

this very, you know, relatively niche, you know, or small segments. Very strongly, again, having listened to women, right? Like, I think people were like, oh, only people who aren't coming into a health system will use an at home. And you're like, how have you asked any, woman, how she feels about that screening, right? Like, she would prefer a different way, right? And so I think for us, we just always knew, like, you know, when people ask us, like, why teal? Like, I really genuinely think there were certain things that had to happen, right? Primary HPB became the de facto way to screen. That allows vaginal collection and cervical collection to be able to get done. So there were things that from a science perspective that were important, science and regulation, I would

say, that were important. But the other big thing is, like, we understood that the market was everybody. And I think no one cared to do this when they thought the market was a group that was disengaged from their health, right? And we always knew the market was everybody. Yeah. I think it's something that like a lot of, a lot of founder CEOs, maybe, I don't want to say gloss over, but the pigeons hold themselves by designing the study just for regulatory approval, whether it's, whether it's a class two or a class three device, regardless, right, of what classification of the device is. But, and I get that, right, because sometimes, there's, you know, other, there's cost implications, there's timing implications, et cetera.

But, you know, you might be, you know. It's hard to go back and start it again. Yeah, yeah. You just get typically one swing at the, at the plate here. And if you want, if you know, if you, if you have strong conviction around reaching or marketing to a broader audience, you know, maybe sometimes it's worth more effort, more cost up front, right, to do that, to do that sort of work. So it's an important takeaway.

Yeah. I think the other takeaway having listened to women, and we pulled this out of our clinical trial, too, which was really interesting. We mapped almost like exactly to the U.S. Census data, like in every way. I think people make assumptions about who's behind on their screening, right? And so, yes, of course, if you're uninsured, like the rate was higher, like 40% were under, like behind on their screening. But it did not matter how you cut the data one in four or more or behind on their screening. So whether you were in an urban setting, whether or not you were high income, whether or not you had like employer-based insurance or on Medicaid, like it did not matter one

and four or more have been behind on their screening. It's a problem everyone faces. How often are you supposed to get screened? Yeah. So you're supposed to get screened now every three to five years. As a screening got better. So this is the other thing. I think people are always like, oh, but isn't, I'd rather perhaps to me, you're like, are you sure?

Because it's 52% accurate, right? Like there was a reason why you had to get screened every year when that was screening. It just wasn't very good. Once we got into HPV as the reason why people have cervical cancer, the screening, like the sensitivity or accuracy just got. so much better. And that's why it can extend out three years, five years between. Got it. And it looks like your team got breakthrough designation in kind of mid-20204. What kind of laddered up to that decision to pursue breakthrough?

Hey, everyone. Let's take a quick break to talk about Fastwave Medical, the company I co-founded and lead as CEO. We're developing next generation intravascular lithotripsy or IVL systems to tackle complex calcific disease. Over the last few years, we've closed a series of oversubscribed funding rounds bringing the total investment in to FastWave to over $50 million. Corporate interest in the IVL space is growing to, the $900 million acquisition of Bolt Medical by Boston Scientific in 2025, and Johnson and Johnson's $13 billion acquisition of Shockwave Medical

signal a lot of attention on emerging IVL startups like FastWave, and we're making serious progress. In addition to recently receiving our ninth patent, we've successfully completed peripheral and coronary feasibility studies and are gearing up for pivotal trials. If you're interested in investing in the fast-growing IVL market, head over to fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest.

Now, let's get back to the conversation. Well, it's funny. When I started this, I knew nothing about any of this stuff. And it was in COVID when everyone was like, oh, just go for breakthroughs. They're giving them out, like, candy. And I'd look back and I'm like, it is so insane because I backed like when I would be the run

doing these Q-Subs or doing these submissions. I did not know what I was doing. And we submitted for one before we had even like design the device, IDO, right? Like, it was just, it made no sense. And they were like, do you have any data? And we're like, oh, data. That's what you're looking for. Interesting. Yeah, I'll be just one minute here. We'll be right back. We'll be right back to you. But I think we just always have our mind and we wanted the breakthrough, right? And even though, again, it was years later that we built the right data set to do it. But we did intentionally, I mean, we probably would have

even without the breakthrough, but we had an interim analysis, right? So we could look at the day, don't we, you know, blinded persons look at the data and say whether or not we were on track. And so the data was just so good at the interim analysis that we were able to submit for the breakthrough at that point. So that was fantastic. So then by the time the study was done, we already had it. Since getting breakthrough designation, has that helped in other kind of unexpected areas of the business, having that? Not yet. I mean, I think it helped obviously with the FDA. Like the whole idea is like you're at the top of the pile. I think, I mean, it probably did in ways in rooms that we're not aware of, right?

Like the whole point of the breakthrough device designation is it has like importance to public health that it gets, you know, a faster track if, you know, it's eligible to get through. And probably that did lead to, you know, the health and human services knowing that this is important to like public health and that we have to have like policy that reinforces, including patient collect and self-collectin at home. So probably, but no one's ever come back. I mean like that was because of the breakthrough. And then the other place that changed.

for us. And actually, I should look back up. We wouldn't, it's not grandfather, so it doesn't totally matter. But once upon a time, the breakthrough came with CMS reimbursement. Because the whole idea there was basically like, hey, payments everything, right? So it's one thing to have a great solution. But if everyone's not able to immediately take advantage of it because of payment, then it's challenging. And so the whole idea is we need to break it through the FDA and into market faster. That wasn't a part of it when we were there. That would have been fantastic. And so that would be the other place that they, it was going to Congress at some point to see whether or not they wanted to add that back in. I don't know if they did because again, we wouldn't have been

grandfathered it. Got it. Did you see timelines improve with your Q-Subs because of having breakthrough or not? We were already in trial. So the Q-sub wasn't, it was after the fact. Okay. Got it. Got it. Before the fact. It's funny when you're talking about, you know, back in COVID and the FDA is giving out breakthroughs like like candy. I'm remembering that like that Oprah meme where it's like, you get a breakthrough. You get a breakthrough. I don't know. I know, like, but I didn't get a breakthrough. They're like, yes, because none of this makes sense. Like, you wrote it without, without the benefit of even a claw. Maybe now I would have gotten through. But no, it was just me trying my best to hack together what I thought would be a fantastic

breakthrough device. No, that's funny. That's good stuff. Let's talk to it. Let's talk about commercialization, right? Because you're obviously in full on commercialization mode now as we're recording this. Any sort of non, non-obvious lessons or maybe just interesting insights that you picked up on commercializing kind of in this capacity, right? Where it's obviously a consumer play, but there's also this B2B to C kind of aspect as well, right? So any interesting learnings that you can maybe pass along to other CEOs that are kind of are commercializing with the similar sort of framework? Yeah.

I mean, I always think about it. And I think it does come from being an investor's side or already knowing the healthcare ecosystem, like that idea of like whose pocket are you taking from, right? Like, and so it's like the patients, the providers or the payers. and it's like rarely are all three of them happy, right? So like, for example, with KoloGuard, if you're doing KoloGuard, which is not home kohlorectal screening, you aren't going to get a kulposcopy, right? So the kulposcopists aren't happy because you're now shifting their revenue out.

So I do think one of the things that's helpful for people to think about is like, who's willing to pay, who's willing to partner with you? I don't know, I often say to people, like, I think when you're in health care, you're in health care because you genuinely care. Right? Like you're like, I would do this even if no one was ever willing to pay for it. I believe it should be out there. Like you care. And I think one of the things that's important when you're thinking about healthcare and like how you actually navigate in the system is I'm always like take off the health care hat and just put on a business hat. Like I know it might seem ruthless and might seem whatever, but these are businesses at the end of the day. Right. And did I make more money? Did I lose money? Did I save money? Did like just really just think about it in terms of like money transacting. And like how can you make? as many people either make money or save money and be happy that you exist with them, then not. Just because it's better isn't going to be the reason always, right?

If the reason why it's better is because it saves a bunch of money because no one has these other expensive treatments, maybe. But otherwise, just really trying to think about everyone's incentives. And again, a little more aligned to business and money. I know it's like always feels wrong, but that's how it gets done. And I think the sooner you acknowledge that versus fight that they're going to. going to do it just because it's better for women? Like, it's just not the same. I don't know if what's the question, I feel like answering it. Yeah, no, no, no, we're talking about commercialization and

interesting insights. And I think that's like so spot on because the easy path for most of us, especially when it comes to like economic considerations is, oh, I've got a CPT code, right? Or my end customer is going to make more money. But sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there's other like decision makers, there's other stakeholders involved, right? And maybe maybe even it's other referral patterns that that are impacted because someone else is making more money as an example, right? Or benefits economically. And so thinking about sort of the layers, right, to this is like so crucial because it's easy to forget when you're, you know, when you're in the weed, it's kind of solely focused on what's my end user, who's my end user and how they're going to benefit

from this device or diagnostic. And so for us, we've always been thinking about it in terms of getting it fully covered, right? And when we say fully, we mean preventive care code because it is a grade A preventive screening and it should be covered with no cost, no cost sharing. So that's great. And so we've always had that angle. And then we've also always had the angle of like, how do we make sure that these other channel partners back to the B2B2C like have their piece or make sense in it? And so that is something that we think about when structuring our approach to CPT codes. I want to touch on kind of the behavioral psychology aspect as well, kind of this commercialization story because if I'm maybe considering a pap smear, right, and I've never heard of

Teal that I hear someone tells me that. I go to your website. I'm like, kind of sounds like nice, right? I don't have to like go schedule an appointment. I mean, I don't want to do the saddle thing, you know, or the straps and like I can just order this like an everly well diagnostic or something like that. Seems pretty cool. However, it's it's cervical cancer, right? So it's like, do I want to put my trust into the hands of this new startup, right? That looks like, Totally. Looks credible, but I don't know. How have you kind of overcome that sort of that, whether you want to call it education or like credibility gap? Like how do you, what approaches have you taken there? I think it's always a work in progress. Like for us, luckily, it's 66 million

women who need to be screened. So there are plenty that are ready to go today. There's going to be plenty that need some additional education. For us, the FDA was really important, right? Like I know it's like under attack over these various years, but women need a thing they can trust. I mean, all people, patients, sorry, I always just like refer to women because that's our patient-based. But people need something that they can trust. And so for us, like, it really mattered to get the clinical trial. It also really matter. Like, we are really lucky. Like, it is the exact same accuracy, right? And we always thought about that because like, even just a little bit different is a little bit different, but back to kind of like, you have to say it the right way,

right? Like, you can't say it's the same if it's not the same. And so we did often think about kind of like, how do you build, like before we got our full results, like how do you make sure somebody feels confident? And I just think it's something that just happens over time. And I think we'll also learn like what influences what, right? So like I do think the way that people are engaging with their health is different these days. And so for so to say it more clearly, we've always been trying to engage the right stakeholders that we believe holds trust. So the first being FDA, the second being the American Cancer Society, right? So the American Cancer Society adding at home collection in Teal was the only one to their guidelines and like calling out like teal is has the same

accuracy and like great patient engagement like that is their research based on all the research that's available highlighting who they think is good so that's like again so then how does that show up on the website like which groups are like agree with that working with ACOG right so ACOG is leading college of OB-guines they just officially endorsed patient collect last week so you know now the providers are comfortable and talking about it. But then I think the last one is just back to like people are learning about health in different ways. And it's kind of like word of mouth, right, hearing from other patients. Like I think that especially in women's health, like so much has been dismissed in the doctor's office that they feel a lot more validation coming from a traditional

channels such as online, social media, TikTok. TikTok. I can't forget about TikTok. But that's just kind of hearing you riff on that answer, just coming and coming back to kind of like the societies, right, like the core kind of professional bodies. How difficult was it getting them on board, right? Because this is, you know, I think going back to your comment around how this, you know, who this impacts, right?

Kind of from a tertiary perspective, you know, what was critical to kind of like, you know, kind of pushing some of those partnerships or support, I guess, through the finish line? I think just as we were saying, like when we were designing teal the wand, we thought about all of the pieces that have to come together to help a woman get screened, right? Like just the physical experience is not enough. It's also you have to find a doctor's appointment. Like, how do we ease that?

The same was true when we approached the market from a, you know, as you said, like these institutions and really thinking like what mattered to them as well. And so one of the main things for them is just adherence. So it's like, are you screening? But then the other thing is when you have an abnormal result, doesn't want to know what to do with that result, right? Is she going to get back, like what's the pathway, the clinical pathway, back in to make sure that she does her coposcopy or her biopsy, right? And so we designed that, right?

Like in our flow, if you have an abnormal, we are meeting with you, we are writing that referral, we are checking in with you and like navigating you to make sure that you're following up on it. And so that was really important to them. So I think when they like heard that we were thinking about all the pieces, it wasn't kind of that traditional consumer like, oh, women can just do it on their own. Like get out of the way. No doctor involved. We're like, oh, no, no, no. Like a clinician is involved. Like this, a clinician has to be involved. This isn't like a COVID test where you may or may not decide to like stay at home or let your like work know that you have COVID. Right. Like no, you need to know what you need to do with those results. And so I think it gave them a lot of comfort that we had thought about that flow. I mean, obviously the first step is accuracy. right like every doctor and so so I think for us it was a combination of what got them ready was one they all know there's a problem right that one in three number is a problem for every doctor but these doctors are overworked overstaffed there's massive care deserts they like they are living and breathing the problem and they care about it but they can't fix it and so they know there's a problem they cared that it worked accurately and then they cared that it was like thoughtfully designed so that no woman kind of like screened but fell out of the process yeah I can imagine that latter aspect might have been easy to overlook, but the fact that you did think about kind of what's next, right? Like a diagnosis is delivered, you know, are we going to leave these people just sort of hanging there, right?

Yeah, I can imagine that was pretty beneficial and kind of, you know, helping to establish a lot of trust with those societal bodies. Let's use the last maybe five minutes or so talking about fundraising, right, which, you know, maybe we'll have a little bit more time because I'm especially interested in your thoughts here considering your extensive background as an investor. So one would think, oh, curious, she's invested before. Like fundraising should be, be, she was an investor. She sat on the other side of the table. Funer reason should be super easy for her, right? I presume that probably wasn't the case because raising, raising money never as easy. But give us a sense for kind of what benefits that you took as a former investor right now CEO,

raising capital. What was like especially helpful kind of making that transition? Yeah, I know. There are so many times where I'm like, oh my God, we expect like founders to know so much. Like it's like you're like creating something net new and innovating. And then it's like, oh, also do you know about like payroll and equity management? And you're like, how was I supposed to be? You know, like all of these things. It's just so crazy what they expect. And I think my point is on that is they also expect founders to know exactly how they want

a slide deck to look exactly how they make their decisions, but they don't share how they make their decisions, you know. So I think the things that helped me having been an investor before was one, a network, right? I can access most people or I have a friend who can access most people or like former colleagues or, you know, network. So I do think like that is obviously insanely helpful. Then I think the next piece was knowing how to craft the story and the way that they like to hear it. I actually think it is still hard for me to do that back to what we said in the beginning.

Like I think entrepreneurs and healthcare in particularly like, we just care. Like it's hard to not want to talk about the thing that we're really doing. but I think investors are like, honestly, you could just give me like six numbers. I don't even necessarily even need in theory to know what it is, right? Like, because they're kind of a little more numbers driven. Like, what's the market size? What's like the cap? What's the channel?

You know, it's like just answer these things. Like you could literally pull out the topic and it might not matter. And so I think for me, I actually do still struggle with that. Like I know that that's what they want, but I can't help but like want to tell the story of teal and women caring. And it's like, well, what's the number that shows women care? You know, like 20% month over month growth. That's it.

Like you don't need an anecdote really. Like we say they do, but they don't. So I think I know what they want, but I still struggle to do it. There's like too much passion, you know? Tone down the passion. Passion feels, I guess, maybe passion probably feels more desperate, whereas like, you know, like just showing the numbers is like, oh, blah, blah, blah. It speaks for themselves.

Right. But yeah, I think that. Yeah. It's really important, though. I mean, to hear it from you, especially that, yes, be passionate. but don't lose sight of the fact that these are investors, right? Like they're investing their money and they're going to expect not only a certain return, but they're going to ask a lot of questions about how they're going to get that return, right?

And so being prepared to kind of adequately, you know, answer those is, don't decide of that because. I also think it was always helpful. You know, you're going to get nose that are random. And then you're also going to get nose that are good where they've like told you something about really what the next stage is going to think about, right? And I feel like for me, I'm trying to remember what it was in the preseed to the seed. But it was like, if I was talking to a generalist, they were worried about FDA, like how you're going to get through the FDA.

If you were talking to someone who was like health care, they're like, of course you're going to get through the. Like they're like FDA is not like easy. It's like, but as long as the numbers are there, you're also just going to get through the FDA and that's going to be fine. So they were all commercialization. I think that was the thing that they really cared about. And so it was interesting where from a company standpoint, like you're wholly fixated on making sure you get through the FDA. But in order to be pre-prepared for the next fundraise, like what are you doing to ensure you have an answer? answer to your point. Do you have an answer for commercialization? You have an answer for how the

channel is going to view you, even if you can't sell into the channel yet. But like having had, you know, conversations or a pipeline lined up of people who have like validated that this is of interest to them is helpful, even though that wouldn't be like what you'd be focused. It's like not like, I mean, I was literally doing that three years before we were through the FDA, right? Like that pipeline's arguably irrelevant. But, you know, you need to do it because the fundraise cares to know, in this next one, like, do you know these answers? Yeah. Like when you think about kind of your years as an investor and sort of those in-between periods between when you first took a pitch from a, from a founder or CEO, maybe had a follow-up conversation a year later even, right? Are there certain founders or CEOs that

stood out because of their follow-up during those periods of time? Or do you recall, like, what stood out to you or what set some of those founders or CEOs that, what set them apart, right? What was distinct, like, caused you to lean in and be like, wow, this is a company or a person to watch. I think it's a combination of execution. Like, did you do what you said? And if you didn't, is there a reason why you didn't? So I think like consistent execution, consistent delivering on what they said they were going to do. That's kind of like the data points that you're collecting. I do think I could be wrong. I think we all, there's a few things that I think we tell all, as a VC, we tell all entrepreneurs. And then when you talk to entrepreneurs or even people who are successful,

like one of our investors is this company called forerunner and they're fantastic. But it was a forerunner event that they had and they had some other investor who was like, we ran an analysis on the top 40 Y Combinator companies, like top most successful. Like Y companies like all the big tech names that you ever know. And they're like 39 out of 40 had only one term sheet at the A or the B. And it wasn't like one preemptive term feed. It was like they had one term sheet. Like so even these stars that you think are stars like.

Like, it's hard. To your point, like fundraising is always hard. Right. And so it was like, it was very reassuring. You're like, it's hard. It's always hard for everyone. But it's also this reminder that I think people, like, I feel like I talk to so many entrepreneurs who are like, oh, like, oh, my investor.

And you're like, guys, we, we, yes, in an ideal world, you love your investors. You've been building a relationship for years after year after year. But like back to that stat. Like, maybe the one term sheet they had was from somebody they built a relationship years over years or it could have been from somebody random, right? And I think that there's like that added. I watch and I often tell people. I'm like, they tell you that, but that's not how it goes.

Like, it's like you get the term sheet. You feel lucky to have it as you should because it is always hard. You only need one. Like I think this idea that you constantly are like keeping them up to date. Like I think loosely, but I'm not sure that's how the deals really get done. I think there's like there's like a momentum to a deal. So like I think it's like keeping them up to date so you have a pipeline of people to go talk to. Maybe that's it.

Like that you're not old. I don't think it's necessarily that you're just like plodding along. Like most people act because there's urgency. Yeah. Like you're in a process and they're going to go and they don't want to miss it. Yeah. Good insights kind of behind the scenes, insights, right?

There's that yes, build a pipeline, but don't forget about the fact that you need to create some urgency around that process too. But I also think for me, one other thing also, it's like I always have like my favorites and I go to them first. And like,

it's usually when I'm the worst at presenting what I'm doing. Like it's like I'm not ready. I'm like, hey, like, I want to come to you before I actually fundraise. So, like, in this last one, I was like, hey, we're going to fundraise in Q1. Just want to let you know. And so I'm, like, talking them in December, right? We didn't even have some of, like, the best things going for us, which is, you know, the guideline change. And, like, I ended up kicking off the fundraise in April, you know?

And I'm like, they're already kind of like, no, I don't know for the right fit. And I'm like, oh, my God, imagine if I went to them now, you know? So I feel like it's always that interesting challenge where you're like, you're supposed to go to the ones who, like, first and give them a first peak. but it's usually like your least ready story. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. I know we're running short on time. I want to get to the rapid fire portion of the interview. A couple rapid fire questions for you.

But before we get there, again, everyone, make sure you visit getteel.com. So just as it sounds, get, T-L, T-E-A-L, get-teel.com, especially if you're a female, this is a technology that you may even be interested in yourself, let alone you probably have friends and family that could find this extremely interesting. So, yeah, highly encourage everyone to visit the website.

We'll link to it in the full write-up on MedSider. But if you rapid-fire questions for you, Kara, we talked about what's ahead over the kind of the next call it six to 12 months, but I want to get to the one lesson that, you know, you think every health care or med tech, you know, kind of regardless of kind of the segments of health care you're in, what do you think that one lesson, another founder's CEO really needs to understand in order to see any sort of semblance of success at their startup? I mean, I think we alluded to it earlier, but I think it has to do with like understanding the business of the business, right? Like so how, how.

How are you? Like, what's the business of the health ecosystem that you're selling into? Like, do you understand their incentives? Like, really kind of make sure that those are aligned. And equally important, that same idea, what's the business of a VC? Right? Like, they want fast growth. You know, there's just certain things that it's not all, not all businesses that are going to be great are good for VC. And so like understanding kind of like what is like or do you want to be a huge multi-billion dollar company with rapid growth that's going to burn through some money? Like, great, go to VC if you have kind of like a slow. stagnant path, but I think understanding the different businesses and kind of like their motivations and incentives allow you to go in like speaking the same language. Yeah. So critical, right? Because it's, I think for everyone that has an idea that they can't get out of their head, they want to do it.

And you're just, you can lose side of the fact that like, look, is this even, is this an idea that can actually turn into a sustainable business? And then two, is even a venture backable business, right? And so those are so oftentimes so different. But all right, last question I've got for you. take us back to maybe, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years ago even, would there be anything that you'd whisper in the ears of the younger version of yourself? When I was reading your questions, this is one that I'm like, I'm going to answer totally differently,

which is I'm not sure I would tell my younger self things, but I think we need to tell more older selves things, right? Which is when I started Teal, I was like 39 to 40, right? Like I had been a VC. Like, it was like, if you just had asked me, I probably, even though this is like where I'm meant to be, I'm meant to be building businesses. Like I probably going to stay in VC forever, right?

Like I just think we need to tell more people like, it's not too late. Like I think people often think like they're set down their path and they're like, but I've already put in all the hard work to be X like to totally miss like go for something different. Whereas like I feel like your younger story. I'm sure most people are like, I tell myself, just go for it. It doesn't matter. Like try to start that company.

But I'm like, I would also say do it at 40. Do it at 45. Do it at 50. You know? I just think like you're wiser, you're smarter. you know what you're building. But I think a lot of times there's like more responsibilities at home, right? There's more like financial security and like what you're doing this way. But it's not too late. I know I know so many people who are stuck in careers that they don't really love, you know,

and you're like, you've got a long way ahead of you two. If you think about, you know, I'm 20 years from the start of my career and 20 years from like the end of my career, right? Like you're at the midpoint. Yeah. You want to commit to the one that you don't love. Like, okay. Yeah. Why not? I love the way you spun that question, though. Like what would you tell? maybe the older version of yourself, right? Kind of reminds me of probably a lot of people that are listening. I've heard of like the, I think it was Bezos with the, that, where at least he's kind of known for like this regret minimalization framework, right?

When he first started Amazon, it was like, would I regret not doing this if I was, you know, 70 or 80 years old? Something like that. I think is the remember. I remember that story anyway, but yeah, but that's a, that's it. You're like, you're far from 70 to 80 when you're at 40. So you have time to regret that decision if you don't do it. So easy to say, but I say this so seriously, you're exactly right. I mean, it feels like, I mean, especially if you're listening to this, you've got an idea or maybe a startup that you want to work on. It's not too late. I mean, there's so many stories of like people seeing their first kind of really big win, I guess in the world of startups anyway, quote unquote, late in the game. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, it's a. Yeah, I think we like glorify these. You know, it's like, I grew up in the time of like, what's his name? Zuckerberg. Right. It's like, oh, I haven't done this by 26. Like, that's the age you're supposed to do.

that's the anomaly, right? Actually, once you, if you follow Instagram, once we finish this, anyone who's listening, we'll just start getting reminders that, like, you know, Walmart was started at whatever, McDonald's. I mean, I get that thing all the time. I'm like, exactly. They were 50, you know, like, go watch. What's her name?

Documentary, which is super interesting. What's her name? The one who's like best friends with Snoop. Oh, Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart. Thank you. Yeah. She's like reinvented herself like 20 times, including like when she was like 70.

Like, it's crazy. Oh, yeah, after she went to like whatever the white collar prison thing was. And now, and now like everyone kind of knows for her as like, oh yeah, she's like, she's like homeboys with the Snoop dog, right? Like that's the lady. Yeah. I know. Exactly.

Totally reinvented herself. Now just like, comment is a commentator with Snoop at the end of like so many things. I have to remind my kids of like she was like the YouTube like cooking shows. Like she was kind of doing that like a long time ago. Like that's what she was originally known. You know the trailblazer. Yeah. If you haven't seen her documentary, it's pretty interesting because even the jail thing.

She's like, why are we talking about that? It was two years of my life. Like, like, it's such an interesting perspective. She's like, okay, like, not ideal. Yeah. She's a great one to study for sure. All right, this has been a lot of fun. I know we're a little bit over, but I can't thank you enough for covering out some time to do this.

This is fun. Like, great, great technology, great business. I'm going to be super fun to kind of watch what you and your team do over the next several years. I know. We've got women love it. Again, I can't remember if I, like, even said of some of her traditionally, like Lily's pricing, you didn't name any stats. But it's awesome. I mean, like, women just love it. Like, we're business people. Like, we're 98 NPS. Like, that's insane with the thousands of women using it. Like, it's, it's just so cool. And it has all of these, like, really amazing tailwinds from, like, policy from providers. Like, it's, it's pretty cool to know that we're built something that women want, but we're building something that's going to solve this really big problem in the U.S. And huge tailwinds. I mean, obviously great, great product, like huge need, right? Because who wants to go do this at a clinic, not to underappreciate kind of the value of going and do it.

Yeah, totally. But you don't, ideally, you're not doing this test there, right? Especially you can do it at home and it's, you know, the same, the same, you're on par in terms of efficacy and results. So it's like, it's like, fun about a product, but yeah, great tail wins. Yeah. So congrats on getting this far. And it'll be fun to kind of watch what you and your team do here in the future.

But again, for everyone, I'll have you hold them in the line. Cura, but for everyone listening, you made up this far. Appreciate your attention, as always, until the next episode of MedSider goes live. Everyone, take care. Hey, it's Scott again. One quick thing before you go. You see, I love bringing you insightful conversations with the best founders and CEOs

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