Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Building Faster by Questioning Dogma: Interview with Future Cardia CEO Jaeson Bang

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Jaeson Bang, Founder & CEO of Future Cardia. Future Cardia is developing a subcutaneous heart-failure monitoring platform designed to capture both electrical and mechanical cardiac signals through a simple office-based procedure.Jaeson brings more than two decades of experience building implantable cardiac technologies across Medtronic, CVRx, EBR Systems, and Abiomed. Drawing on that background, he questioned industry assumptions around miniaturization and invasive workflows — and built a device that prioritizes performance, durability, and clinical practicality instead.In this interview, Jaeson shares how challenging a core constraint unlocked a faster development path, why deep domain expertise matters more than thrift in regulated markets, and how raising capital outside traditional VC can preserve leverage and buy time.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Jaeson Bang.

So we made the size our asset, you know. So another thing is the competitors would talk about the battery longevity. And to me, it's like a gas mileage. Yeah, you're going to get a great gas mileage. You'd be going downhill. Can you go uphill carrying all this load and still get a six-year device? Absolutely not. We can.

So those are the kind of things that we thought about. Do we bring basically the Land Cruiser, you know, Kain type of device for the patients? or do we give them the craziest, the fastest, sexiest motorcycle and drive? 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. in.

Hey everyone, it's Scott. I recently came down with the flu, and I'm still very much on the mend, as you can probably tell about my voice. But with that said, let me tell you a little bit about this particular episode. I sat down with Jason Bang,

founder and CEO of Future Cardia, which is developing a subcutaneous cardiac monitor for heart failure patients. Before founding Future Cardia, Jason spent more than two decades in the implantable cardiac device space, holding clinical, technical, and commercial roles at Medtronic,

CVRX, EBR Systems, and Abiomed. here for you the key topics that we explore to this conversation. First, how do you identify whether an industry constraint is real or just assumed? Second, when is it worth paying more upfront for talent in early stage med tech? Third, how do you decide whether to follow existing regulatory paths or create new ones? And last, when does equity crowdfunding make sense for a capital-intensive med tech startup? All right, before we dive into this episode, I'm pumped to share that volume seven of MedSiter Mentors is now live. This latest edition highlights key takeaways from recent Medsider interviews with incredible

entrepreneurs like Bill Hunter, CEO of Canary Medical, Brian Lord, CEO of Christine Surgical, Don Crawford, co-founder of Safion and current CEO of Corvista Health and other proven med tech founders and CEOs. Look, we get it. Keeping up with every MedSider interview isn't easy. That's why we created Medsider mentors. These e-book volumes distill the best practices and insider secrets from top founders and CEOs, all in a downloadable, easy-to-digest format. To check the latest volume out, head over to medsiderradio.com forward slash mentors. All right, without further ado, let's dive in in the interview. Jay, welcome to Medsider Radio.

Appreciate you coming on, man. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Scott. Appreciate it. Yeah, very much looking forward to the chat and learning a little bit more about your background and what it's been like, you know, building future cardio over the past, you know, five plus years now.

So with that said, I recorded a very short bio at the outside of this episode, but I always like to start there and kind of hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. So give us like a one to two minute overview of your background, you know, before founding the company. Yeah, sure.

My work has been in the implantable cardiac spaces, pacemakers, diffibrators, and neuromodulations, all in the Class III therapeutic side, metronic, CVRX, EBR systems, and a short stint at the AbilMed. So this was a huge experience for me to be at a big company, and then private equity-funded company

and two startup companies. So, yeah, so very exciting. Very, very good. It looks like I'm looking at your LinkedIn profile right now, which we will link to in the full write-up on Medsiter. But it looks like you started the company, Future Cardia, kind of mid-1919 or so. So we're recording this kind of back half here of 2025. So kind of six, you know, a little bit over six years in the making. Does that sound about right?

Yeah. So 2019 was a little weird because I didn't do anything in terms of the company. I was kind of formulating the idea. And the company really started in 2020. Perfect timing right before the pandemic. That's right. Most people kind of remember that, remember that time in their lives for sure. So with that said, Future Cardia, the website is just as it sounds.

Futurecardia.com will link to it as well in the full write-up on MedSider. But again, futurecardia.com is the website. Give us a sense for kind of what the product is, the major kind of needs that you're solving with the device. Sure. So we're going after heart failure, monitoring. So this is a pretty big market right now. Cardiom has been there for a while. Endotronics just got acquired for $1.2 billion.

Vectorios got funded. I've almost acquired, I think, for $500 million. And companies like Fire One Medical is almost $200 million in funding. So very robust and sorely needed space to help these patients. So our focus is instead of doing a deep implant inside a cath lab, inside the heart, we're doing it under the skin, two-minute office procedure, and we're recording ECG and heart sounds, the electrical part of the heart and the mechanical aspects of the heart.

And we're going to do a long-trending analysis and ultimately steer patients away from unnecessary hospitalization. Got it. And those other players that you mentioned, right, I think you listed three or four of them. Are they all, none of them are taking this sort of approach? Correct. The goal, ultimate goal is the same.

You know, all these patients already have heart failure. What do we do? You know, how do we help these patients? They're really sick. Are you sick enough to go to the ER? Are you well enough to wait it out? So this is a universal problem for the entire heart failure patients and their physicians as well. So that is the goal.

How do we monitor them and steer them away from hospitalization? So their approach is deep implant, cath lab, our approach is under the skin, office procedure. got it why haven't any of those companies that have raised you know hundreds of millions of dollars headed down this path right that you're that you're you're developing your device you know where it's a very very very minimally you know they would argue probably their their their procedures minimally invasive as well yours is like minimally minimally invasive right if you if you if you're super minimally invasive right but why haven't they gone down this direction

because it seems you know rather rather obvious right that this would be a better a better offering for for not just the patient right but probably the physicians too. Yeah, and I think what they're doing is the right thing. You know, that is the origination of the monitoring space. You know, you have to do something a little more involved, a little bit more complicated to get things done. And the next evolution is this. And I'm not the only one doing this. Metronic and Boston are also pursuing this avenue under the skin two-minute procedure. So, you know, and as all these companies, including us, as a startup, we can't focus on two or three different projects or probably we can only focus on one good thing

and just stick with it. And, you know, endotronics is a great company and great product. And they've been doing that for almost 15 years. So they can't just one day say, well, we're going to give up and start something new, you know. And they also have a space for that too. You know, if there are patients that could benefit from a deep implant that's more complex and more involved. Got it. I mentioned earlier, we're recording this in early, early Q4 here of 2025. Give us a sense for those that may be listening to this after the fact, right,

three, four, five months down the road. Give us a sense for kind of where the company's at in terms of its life cycle. Yeah. So as an implantable bioelectric company, we were able to achieve human implant, patient implants under four years. So most companies would take them, you know, six, seven, eight, maybe even ten years to do that. And we did 39 patients. So we're getting ready to submit to the FDA.

So we're shooting for the FDA submission probably November, December, maybe even January, so which is really, really big deal. Got submission for 510K clearance? Yeah, 510K clearance. Yeah. Okay, very good. This will make us the second only company in history, second only startup to do this in history, first being transformed out back 15 years ago.

Okay. To do what? Get the FDA submission for the sub, under the, skin cardiac monitoring. Okay, very good, very good. Well, wow, congrats. I mean, that's a huge that's a huge milestone. And perhaps by the time, you know, this is released, you'll have, you'll have, you know, fully, you know, officially submitted for 5TK clearance. Wow, that's it. That's a big, big next step for the company. So congrats on that. And again, before we kind of jump into the meat of this discussion, right, and learn, you know, kind of go back in time and learn about your

journey, kind of getting, getting this far. Again, for everyone listening, it's futurecardia.com, just as it sounds, futurecardia.com. We'll link to it in the full write-up on MedSider. If you're new to these write-ups on MedSider, these are longer form articles that are meant to kind of summarize and highlight a lot of the key learnings that are guests share. We'll link to Future Cardia there, as well as Jay's LinkedIn profile too,

so you can potentially reach out to him. So with that said, Jay, let's rewind the clock, right? And go back in time. Let's start in 2020, right? Because it sounds like that's when the company really kind of started to make more progress. Those are what I consider some of the most difficult times, right? It's because you're trying to build, typically it's hardware, right?

Although I do have some software first kind of founders on the program. But it's hardware. It's expensive. You typically don't have a lot of resources. The company's still very, very high risk to most investors. Thinking back about those kind of first couple years, you know, what are some of the advice, right, that you share now with other founders or CEOs that in your shoes about how to move quickly, how to iterate, you know, fast.

but oftentimes with, you know, like I said earlier, very limited resources. Yeah, oh, that was a tough year. 2019 was also tough because I quit my job and pursuing just almost the entire year full-time, not really having clear direction. So customer discovery, that was a really, really big deal for me, you know, talking to real doctors. You know, when I say real doctors, I'm talking physicians that are seeing the patients all day long every day and in the trenches with them.

So discussing with them what their problems are, what the patients are going through. That really helped me to fine-tune my approach to the future career. You know, because the wearables are very sexy, right? It's simple. Just put it on and get it, you know, you're done. With everything that's that easy, you don't usually get the results that you want.

And we looked at wearables very, you know, sincerely. and coming from an implantable device world, I wanted to see if there's an option for that. Knowing we failed this many times in Metronic and my colleagues at Boston and Abbott, same story. Every year they're trying to do this because it's simpler and easier for the patients

and they just don't work. So again, I try that. And just having this deep, meaningful conversation with physicians and patients that really helped me to fine tune our focus on our product. I got to think your commercial background probably aided in those early, early efforts, those earlier kind of discovery efforts. Absolutely.

And going back to Metronic Days, we were asking physicians and patients, do you want this? Do you want this feature? Do you want it this way? And a lot of them said yes. And after we delivered the product they asked us to build, they said no. We don't want it, including the physicians and the patients. So that really helped me to understand the dynamics, of what the patients and the physicians really, really want instead of checking of the boxes.

Very good. You make it probably sound easier than it was, right? Because I'm not sure if you had background in developing a hardware product like this, right? You know, whether it's a wearable or an implant, going from kind of zero, right, to actually, you know, a real prototype as an example. That's a huge leap, I think, for most people. And so what were some of the key learnings kind of, you know, because it sounds like it was, it was a bit of a technological kind of leap, right? I mean, you mentioned Medtronic had been able to do it. Other strategics kind of had tried, but not had had, had, were unable to make something work. And so it's not like you have, you know, a deep, yeah, prior to us a deep background, right, in developing physical products. So

give us a sense for kind of what that was like in those early years. Yeah. So this helped me, working at CVRX and EBR systems really helped me to understand how to build things efficiently. What I didn't want to do is sacrifice everything for sexiness of the product. I didn't want to go so small while doing that sacrifice the performance. So I wanted to have a balanced approach. And almost like when I look at like Porsche 9-11, everybody thought it was crazy to build a cayenne. You know, that was almost 20 years ago. Everybody said that's the stupidest thing that ever.

heard. And yeah, it's the biggest seller for that brand. And I always thought about that. You know, do I need to go as small as the other guys? Can I make the size an asset? And when we put that into the mission, then everything kind of fell through, right? We didn't have to have this crazy chip that's small, not as powerful as the current existing chip, but smaller. You know, I didn't have, I didn't have to get this crazy tiny battery just to meet that small footprint. So we would have to superpower the device by making a balanced approach to what's already out there. So we pulled a lot of the existing technologies that are stair of the art and was able to make it really fast and really powerful in a super fast, efficient time. Got it.

So it sounds like, and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like other companies had tried. tried to really optimize for the size of the implant, you know, that's underneath the skin. And you said, no, it doesn't necessarily have to be as small, maybe as we previously expected. And by not forcing yourself into that sort of constraint, you were able to overcome maybe some of the technology hangups previously. Yeah, absolutely. So we made the size our asset, you know. So, you know, another thing is the competitors would talk about the battery longevity. And to me, it's like a gas mileage.

Yeah, you're going to get a great gas mileage if you're going downhill. Can you go uphill carrying all this load and still get a six-year device? Absolutely not. We can. So those are the kind of things that we thought about. Do we bring the basically the land cruiser, you know, Kyan type of device for the patients or do we give them the craziest, the fastest, sexiest motorcycle? Got it.

And drive. Got it. So I'm assuming that, you know, one of the counters to that, that approach and why maybe other companies had focused on size was they couldn't they didn't feel like patients would tolerate it right a larger implant and so you know thinking about like and maybe tying this back to you know your customer discovery being close to customers physicians obviously in this scenario patients too but mostly physicians what led you to kind of like really make a decisive decision around kind of this idea that that sizes your asset right as you referred to a couple times yeah so

we talked to a lot of patients including when I was in Europe we used to implant something much bigger in children. And I remember in U.S., we have to put patients sedated, lightly sedated in the cathode lab and all that stuff. In Europe, these are children, you know, 10, 15-year-old kids, walk in, we numb it up, put it in, they walk out. And no complaint, no pain, perfectly fine. You know, these are 100-pound kids, you know, small kids,

and they were able to tolerate it. And when I talked to the physicians, like, yeah, it doesn't make any difference. You know, you can't tell. You can't even find it on these kids, even though they're skinny. So that kind of really helped me to understand the balance between, you know, of course, if it's too big, then it's not going to be beneficial to the patient or the physician. So as long as we bring value to patients and physicians and not waste their time, we knew we could win that space. And of course, there's going to be physicians who says, it's too big for me, Jay.

it's not for me. Perfectly valid reason. And then, you know, I'm not that guy. But for that 95% of the patients and physicians that would benefit from this device, I would be that guy. It's such an interesting point, right? Because I think all of us, myself included and probably those listening, have come across sort of these, I don't want to call them sacred cows, but almost like these things that, like, if you spend enough time in a certain, you know, space or arena, you just assume certain things are the case, right? Like, you know, cardiac monitoring obviously this particular topic, right? It's got to be this tiny little size. It has to be, it has to be so small, so small, so small. But you do a good step back, largely based on your,

you know, your proximity and your discussions with a lot of customers and thought maybe it doesn't have to be that small, right? And sort of, and I think that's so healthy for, it's just a good reminder, right? That oftentimes that's what it takes, right, to kind of, you know, make sort of a leap, if you will, right, from a development standpoint is just to kind of zoom out and, and question, right, a lot of those, a lot of those beliefs that, that seem to be sort of inherent or, you know, already baked into what, what a product absolutely has to be, when in reality it may, may not, right? And it sounds like it's turned out to be an asset of yours, the size. And so with that said, let's, let's transition to kind of your, your clean reg process, right? You just mentioned that

you're on the precipice of potentially submitting to FDA for 510K clearance. You've got almost 40, you know, 40 implants. This whole topic of like getting into patients and trying to map out, maybe you know it's a 5 to K process, but how do you get there, right? How do you, how do you, you know, get real clinical data in a capital efficient way? It can be like a big, a big undertaking, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. And so with other founders or CEOs that, you know, that are in your network or maybe are new to this, you know, new to this role and come to you and say, Jay, how do I, how should I be thinking about, you know, this ClinRag process? What were some of your big learnings kind of building future cardia and especially around

mapping out this roadmap for the company. Again, you know, drawing my experience from Metronic, CVRX and EBR, that was huge. And I advise other companies too on this aspect. So what I've seen is that a lot of the CEOs and entrepreneurs would shop for pricing. That's probably the worst thing you can probably do. Another thing, they are shopping for the answer they want to hear. If you don't have a reimbursement and 20 guys are telling you, no, and one guy say yes and you go with that one guy you probably not going to do well so i learned that very early so i and also i didn't want to reinvent the wheel so i didn't i couldn't as a startup i couldn't afford to hire a young person who's learning this i had to hire a extremely experienced hyper-focused person

that only did this for their entire career so that's what i did we we have a very strong team that only know this, nothing else. And then we also have an external team that understands the regulatory pathways. Nothing's easy in this world. We know that. So we have to accept that fact. The question is how fast you're going to get there, how efficiently, and how correctly. So being a 510K with a predicate, that also helps.

So we know what the predicates did. So we can follow their path and improve it and speed up the process. Circling back around to hiring, right, and identify, whether it's like an internal hire as an employee or even a consultant, right, a team of consultants. You mentioned don't make the mistake of hiring based on price, right? And when it comes to expertise, are you referring to domain expertise in cardiac monitoring specifically? Okay, so it sounds like that was a big.

Yeah, that was a big thing. Also, 510K, obviously. and not cardiac monitoring, because implantable cardiac spaces in general. So if you're an expert in MRI or EKG machine, you're not that guy. You might be for big company, but for me,

you're not that guy. You may be an expert in EKG, but not in implantable cardiac devices. So we were focusing on that expertise more than anything else. Got it. And I'm sure someone, you know, someone with either a Ray Klin background that has that sort of expertise probably isn't overly cheap, right?

But to your point earlier, you made the call around not optimizing for the lowest cost kind of employee or consultant in this case, right? Because that ultimately, if you optimize for that early on, could end up costing you even more. Oh, yeah. Exactly. And so these first, let's call it just 40 patients for rounding purposes, these first 40 patients, were they done here in the U.S.? Or outside the U.S.?

And outside of the U.S.? outside of US, got it. So I think this kind of a first in man exclusively done outside of the US. Got it. And did you, which geographies did you choose for these patients? So previously I would usually go with, you know, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, UK. But these countries become incredibly slow and bureaucratic.

So we got this incredibly great doctors, great patients, and still cannot get anything done for six months to a year. And also on flip side, I didn't want to go to a super easy regulatory process countries. You know, there are some countries that would allow anything. And I didn't want that either. So I wanted a good balance, a top quality physician patients, good centers without the bureaucratic hindrance.

So we went with Czech Republic and Croatia. Okay. We have a very up-and-coming high-profile physician in Croatia and very established physician in Czech Republic. So we wanted to balance out those two dynamics, and we're able to achieve that human implant there. Got it. And did you have those contacts before? Yeah. Okay, very good. So that certainly helped. And I think to your point earlier, some of these geographies, especially in Eastern Europe, they come with this perception of, I don't want to say it's a negative perception, but there's skepticism, right?

But in a lot of cases, and certainly in my experience as well, a lot of the centers in Eastern Europe, if you identify the right ones, are not only really high volume, but they're actually very skilled. They're very skilled operators as well. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Ferrapulse is a great example. And they did at the same center that we did, Boston Scientific. And Ferrapulse and the PI in Croatia, I mean, that's a, you know, grand slam story, you know. And same thing with Czech Republic, Professor Noissel and Vivek. ready. They're an incredible job. They are the first mover in most of our technologies that we see today. Right, right. Yep. So yeah, and I know you touched on this, you know, very, very lightly, but with MDR, those traditional centers, right, in Western Europe, it's just, it's so hard to do feasibility work there any longer because, you know, rerun on the clock 10, 15 years ago is so common, right, to start, start in Western Europe, gather data and then come, and then come, use that to come to the, come to the U.S., but it's becoming increasingly, increasingly hard and more

difficult to do some of that work. It was unfortunate because they have a tremendous, tremendous talent over there and infrastructure, yet they can't do it. Like simple things like a simple testing, the UK physicians just cannot do there. So they banned it completely. So they just fly to the Netherlands and get it done. And like, you know, and some parts of Netherlands, they're not allowed to do it. if you can't do it, just drive one hour north and get it done somewhere else in Netherlands. So these regulations are inconsistent and actually hurting these physicians and the patients. Yeah, no doubt. It is actually really disappointing. And there was such a good kind of first in human feasibility study ecosystem in Western Europe. And so many of those physicians, they grew up

in that world. And so they're very used to working with early stage companies, too. So they know, they know like, you know, when they're using a device for first in human, it's not, it's not finished. You know, it still needs, it still needs work and they understand that. And so it's, it's sad that, you know, that's sort of, that's sort of kind of way, although I am hearing rumblings that, this, this burgeoning effort, right, to sort of pull back on a lot of those changes. And hopefully, hopefully that's, hopefully that's, hopefully that's the case. But all of that said, yeah, Eastern, Eastern Europe, right, is certainly kind of an up-and-coming geography for this, for this type of work. So with all of that said, let's transition to fundraising, right?

Because you've got a very unique fundraising story yourself. I think you've raised what over 18 million, based on my notes anyway. You can correct me if this is not accurate. But over 18 million, I think, in total, right, from a mix of both angels as well as another 10 million in crowdfunding. So that's a very unique story. Not that not raising money from angels, right, or even from crowdfunding, but to do it at this sort of scale is unique. And so, you know, I'd like to ask you a few questions around this. But one, for those listening that kind of have that perception, right, that, yeah, you can maybe raise a couple million in this path, but ultimately you need to sort of graduate to institutional capital.

What would you say to that, to that listener? I totally agree. I totally agree. The question is, how long can you prolong that? That's the question. For some people, it might be a million. Some people is five million. and for me it was 16 million.

You know, we do need venture capitalists. We do need private equity and strategics. The question is how long can you continue your path before they get engaged? So my goal to this was increased value, decrease risk, then become a more attractive acquisitions target for the strategics. So I knew I could raise, you know, about 5 to 8 million on my own. So even though I had an early venture funding offer, I turned that down and went with it.

A month later, there was a pandemic, so it kind of a little damper on. But I still knew I could raise that money on my own. And my thought was that I'd just raise up to $8 million on my own and then increase the value, decrease risk, and seek for venture funding. I was keeping raising during that time. So I said, well, if I can do it,

mine will keep doing it. So that's what I did. Yeah, I think that's a really healthy way to frame that up, right? especially as more and more VC that traditionally came in at, you know, maybe seed series A, those goals posts are, you know, continuing to shift back, right? And they're looking to allocate capital more towards either existing, you know, existing companies that are de-rest or new companies that are further along, right, that don't represent as much as much risk. So there's this, this growing sort of gap or whole, right, for kind of, you know, pre-seed, seed, even series A.

And sometimes, in some cases, series B. And so I love how, I love how you, you, that up, but when it comes to sort of the execution of your approach, whether it's raising from angels specifically or even crowdfunding, are there a few kind of like more tactical tips that you can offer up to other CEOs that are thinking about going down this path? Hey, everyone, let's take a quick break to talk about Fastwave Medical, the company at co-founded and lead as CEO. We're developing next generation intravascular lithotripsy systems, or IVL for short, to tackle complex calcific disease. The IVL market is valued at over $10 billion, but there's currently only one major player. In early 2023, we opened up an investment opportunity

to our community, and within a month, we secured close to $10 million. Then in early 24, we closed and oversubscribed $19 million round in just a few weeks, bringing the total investment into Fast Wave to over $40 million. Corporate interest in the IVL space is growing too, the $900 million acquisition of Bolt Medical by Boston Scientific, and then J&J's, $13 billion acquisition of Shockwave medical signals a lot of attention towards emerging IBL startups like FastWave. And we're making some serious progress. FastWave recently received its seventh patent for our differentiated laser IVL platform

for coronary applications. On the clinical side, last year we completed the first in human study of our advanced electric IVL system with some pretty compelling results. Next up in 2025, we have IDEE trials plan for both our peripheral and coronary IVL platforms. So if you're interested in investing in the fast-growing IVL system, we're interested in investing in the fast-growing IVL market, sign up for our investor waitlist at fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest.

Now let's get back to the conversation. Absolutely, absolutely. And I did quite a bit of an interview with CEOs in the equity crowdfunding to find out what this is all about because this wasn't my primary objective. It was, you know, nice to have approach, you know. My approach to this was treat every investor. equally, whether the guy's writing a $100 check or a $1.5 million check. And that's what I did.

No matter who you are, you have my phone number, you have my email address, you can call me any time. And my investor calls are exactly the same to those who wrote, you know, $200 to $1.5 million and to all those guys who wrote smaller checks, you know, $100 to $200. So that's how I approached it. My pitches are exactly the same on the equity crowdfunding as to it is to a billion dollar venture fund. So that's all right. And I pitched a lot.

I pitched a lot before going to the equity crowdfunding. So that helped. I didn't need to read a node or teleprompter. And it's just in me after several hundred pitches. And when I say pitches, I'm like bona fide investor angel group pitches. So that helped. And yeah, that really worked for me. And I talked to some CEOs that are like, I feel like I'm pitching all the time.

And I ask, well, like, how many are you doing for a week? Like, how many have you done? I think I pitched, I think I've pitched maybe 20 times. And like, but you need to like 10x that, right? in most cases you're going to have to pitch a lot more a lot more than 20 times right 20 is a good number yeah there are a week that i don't think i did 20 but uh there are many weeks that i did a lot more no i'm saying in total i'm in total like they've pitched 20 you made 20 pitches in total yeah yeah no that's a good number a week yeah that's healthy but yeah in total and i'm like no no

you need to be like 10x that right i mean in oh my gosh you got at least 100 a month oh yeah yeah it's a lot It's a lot for sure. I think my, I'm averaging, I used to average about 60 to 100 a month. Yeah, wow. Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you share that data point because I think it's a, it's a healthy realization for a lot of people that don't realize, that don't, you know, have the right understanding of how much, how much work it is, you know, and hopefully ultimately, right,

you can sort of graduate, right, to institutional capital, presuming at good terms, right? And you don't have to, you know, do that as often. but that's often, it's what you experience, right, in those early stages, right? It's a lot of pitching, a lot of those types of conversations. And so when it comes to crowdfunding, though, I guess one other question before we kind of jump to the next topic. But I think, if I remember correctly, you raised on Start Engine, I believe, right? Would you recommend, you know, going on Start Engine?

And again, there's another platform that you would maybe consider in comparison to, or versus Start Engine? I actually started with Republic. Okay. That's a great platform. I really did well on that. And again, I knew nothing about the industry. So I just did it.

And then I left. And they're like, why are you leaving? I said, well, I thought I had to leave. So no, you don't leave unless you're not happy with it. No, I'm really happy with it. I want to stay longer. You can't anymore because you already made an announcement. You know, you can't make that change.

I said, oh, no. And then I went to the starting engine, which turned out to be a great experience. And then I went to WeFunder, again, another great experience. So in my opinion, you know, you do three big ones because that's where the biggest pool of investors are. And if you do well on one, you're going to do all three anyway. So even though I've been on Star Engine the longest, I would highly recommend all three platforms. Okay. Actually, Republic is the one that really got me to that $3 million range, which I didn't, that wasn't even on my radar.

And then after that, I knew that was the benchmark for me. Got it. And I presume that you threw some marketing juice behind each of your crowdfunding campaigns, or no? No, did not. Of course, I spent some money, but not major. I, in past, from 2020 till 2024, almost none. Oh, wow. Yeah, occasionally I've done some Facebook, some Google, and occasionally paid newsletters and things like that, but almost none. So I would say during that four years, I probably raised almost $8 million or so. And I can honestly say I probably spend less than $100,000, if that. Wow.

So how did you, like were there a couple things that worked especially well creating awareness then if you didn't? No, nothing. Oh, wow. Wow. You had that. That's just still experience. So I haven't spent any money this entire time. And 2025, I decided to spend some marketing effort.

It's a mixed bag. I cannot say it was a failure, but I wouldn't consider it as a grand slam either, you know, maybe a nice single. That kind of gave me a perspective as to, and I'm a Kellogg on top of that, and it didn't impress me enough

that I'm going to continue this marketing. When you want Republic, start engine, we funder, other than leveraging their audiences, right, because all three of those platforms have their own sort of investor audiences, what else worked?

Did you do a lot of cold emailing? Largely just leveraged their investor audiences. Okay, wow. And just a straightforward pitch, you know, having a conversation with a friend, having a conversation with an investor, that approach. I thought about my pitch. And I had a lot of people saying,

oh, you should put this incredible building behind you. You know, it's a $30 million facility that we're using. Super impressive. I don't own that, right? How about these machines? these are like state of the art only companies like metronic have it even boston doesn't have it abbott doesn't have it you should put that in the video i'm like yeah but it's not mine either you know and how about these engineers and all these people so i said you know let me just let me just talk

let me talk to an investor like i would talk to an investor just me and maybe some pictures and that's it and just, you know, I'm not a comedian. I'm not a news anchor. I'm definitely not an actor. Just let me be who I am. And my goal is to find a champion, not to persuade a person who doesn't believe in me. So that's what I did. Just straightforward pitch, good lighting, no makeup, and just got it done.

Wow, that's impressive. Congrats for sure. Certainly allow you to kind of get to the stage on, I would argue, a pretty efficient, you know, amount of, amount of capital. Let's fast forward, like, post 510K clearance, right? And you're, you know, maybe on the precipice of launching, you're doing some sort of limited launch and you're going up some, you know, going up against some pretty big players, right? Pretty big companies that are very well capitalized. How are you thinking about kind of that early, those early commercialization efforts? Yep. So goal is not to win.

We're never going to win that battle. That said, we're not selling a couple hundred dollar product either. We're selling a four, five thousand dollar product that can be implanted in under a couple minutes. So looking at the predicates who have paved this way for us, I know the implanting physicians are doing three to five in one afternoon, right? So we're going to utilize that. And for physicians who says, Jay, it's not for me. That is the best answer I can get. Yes, is the, if I was to give 10, if I was to give yes, a score, it would be 10. No, hard no is like 9.9 for me.

So that is the best answer I can get, but we have a lot of physicians who can do this, who is willing to help us with it, and we can bring value to the patient. So we'll never win major medical centers. Even if we did, it's going to take us a year to get in. The contract is unbelievably long, right? But we have outpatient centers that are very fast.

So one to two week contract, we can get in. Very competitive. As long as we bring value to patients and physicians, we can compete in that space. The only thing we're going to lose is on the size, which does not impact implant time or patient comfort. So it's all perception. In exception of that, we can compete in all levels, the ECG, battery longevity, the robustness of the day.

and value to patients. Got it. And so it sounds like you're taking a very targeted approach, not just in terms of sight of care, but also really trying to identify those champion physicians, right? Yeah, already have. Yeah. Okay.

So another good thing is, another good question to ask is, what's the difference between Metronic and Boston device? Not a single EP physician can tell you the difference because we're in a very competitive, ultra-competitive environment where you cannot distinguish one product from another, right? Same thing. What's the difference between a $50,000 Lexus and a $50,000 BMW? They're all great. Not a single person would say, oh, that he made a horrible decision by going one brand over the other. So at that point, it becomes a branding problem. The theme is always the same.

Can I bring value to patients and physicians and don't waste their time? If I can do that, then we have a fighting chance. Got it. And do you envision commercializing with a direct sales force, or are you going to primarily do that through distributors? Eventually direct. I mean, you know, I'm a student of Ray Cohen's philosophy, raise a lot and just deploy and just train the best guys you can. In absence of raising as much as you can, then we have no choice, right? If you have a $50 million to deploy, absolutely. We'll hire the best 50 sales reps and train them way before they launch and then get them out there.

But in absence of that, we got experienced PACER reps that are leaving these big companies because they're tired of working for them. They're not being self-valued. We can utilize that expertise. These are guys who've been there for 20, 30 years generating millions of dollars for their company, yet the commissions are getting cut every year and they're spending more time fighting their own company, right? So we have these guys that are saying, I know, I'm at the prime of my career and I don't want to deal with this and I can bring value to my physicians and my patients and me by doing it this way.

So we got quite a bit of those guys that are raised to jump in. Very good. And so presuming you hit that target of kind of late, you know, what let's call it late Q4, right, for that 5K submission. Will you be ramping up to launch commercially kind of first half of 26? That'd be the plan? Yeah. Yeah, so ramping up is a tough word because we don't have the financial capability to hire all these guys, you know, three months before launching.

But we can train these guys, talk to them, and let them know what we got in the pipeline. So we have about 50 sales reps that are interested. And, you know, let's be very realistic. Not all 50 will jump tomorrow. But I think five, maybe 10 will do it. And then we expand from there. And that will allow us to initially gain traction and bring value to our customers and slowly expand. No different than what Biotronic did or even Edwards did with their initial Taver business.

They hire a whole bunch of stand reps as an independent sales reps and they kind of expand from there. That's the approach for now. Very good. All right. I know we don't have a ton of time left and I want to get to a few more topics, one of which are incubators and accelerators, right? So there's a few that you've been a part of, J-Labs, Startex. Have those been, talk to us a little bit about kind of your experience in those accelerators?

Have they been valuable? And would you recommend other founder or CEOs to get involved in those as well? Yeah. So those are the ones that I mentioned because they were good. And there are bad ones that I also participated, which breaks your spirit, breaks your soul. incredibly clicky, ostracizing, petty. So don't be careful of those. I didn't mention Tampa Bay Wave

because that was a very, very good organization. And TMCX also. So you can tell when all the cohorts are so busy talking about their title. I'm still embarrassed to say CEO, and matter of fact, I rarely say the word CEO. I think you should be a call CEO if you start making money for the company.

and taking your employee's family, right? So, yeah, so when you are in the right organization, right accelerator, the mentality is right, you know. So with StarX, it's been tremendous. The power of the community, we're sticking together, helping each other out. J-Lap's the same thing, TMCX, Tempe by Wave. These were great organizations that really helped. Absolutely, I'll recommend it.

and other organizations that offer their service for equity or you pay them, don't do it. All those are fraud. All those are fraud, all those are scammed, don't do it. But there are other organizations that would pay you to be there. And I think that's a great organization to be part of. It's good, good tips.

I won't ask you to name names, right? But just good words of wisdom that. Well, if they don't give you money and if they take equity, That's a fraud. That's good. Some simple, some simple reminders, right? There are great organizations that need to improve their standing.

So they will actually pay you to be there, right? Perfect. If everything's free, perfect. Anything other than that, it's a fraud. Yeah, good stuff. All right. Last question before we get to the rapid fire portion of the discussion, Jay. You touched on hiring before, right?

And this concept of, you know, really, because it can be tempting, right? especially if your resources and capital are limited, right, to go with a less expensive, you know, consultant or a less expensive, you know, employee. Anything else, right, that you can think of in terms of your approach to either hiring or even identifying the type of talent that you're looking for, right, in those early years, you know, again, whether it's an employee, a consultant, an agency partner. I didn't have the luxury of recruiter and calling up everybody I know. So the ones that helped me were referrals.

So all the people that are hired are referrals. I say that because the resumes are basically fabricated, right? We all know, you know, we all, everybody's top 10 sales rep ever. So you just can't. So we know that's not real. So it's always been referral and can I get along with this guy? You know, can I count on this guy and can I trust him? and can we have a tough conversation?

So that's what I did. And of course, even with that, you still make mistakes, and it hurts to let somebody go. And I've done plenty of that lately. But overall, referrals help me. Can I trust him mentality that helped me? To a point where I rarely even look at the resumes. Yeah, it's such a good point.

And I just something I want to emphasize there too, because it could be tempting to go with. with the, right, the resume or the pedigree, right, that seems to be more impressive. But to your point, oftentimes can be overly exaggerated for sure. But really, in startups, trust in the ability to like work through challenges together, that oftentimes is so, so far superior than someone's, you know, someone that has 10, 15, 20 years at some impressive strategic as an example, right? and to optimize for those two things, right, trust and the ability to like, can I be in the trenches

with this person, right? And get through, you know, get through challenges because you're going to run into those almost on a daily or weekly basis, right? In a startup. Yep. So, and I envision that scene from the gladiator, Russell Crowe, he's the tip of the spear. He's charging the battle as the general. Those are the guys that I really need and I want, you know, the ill general, the sergeants. not so much the guy who's in the back strategizing. We have plenty of those. So we need gunslingers. We need guys who can get their hands dirty,

who can be the janitor, the CEO, and the VP all in one. Yeah, yeah. I'm imagining that scene from the gladiator, right, where Russell Crow is like, you know, going down the line with his sword and strength and on a. That is. That's good stuff. We all want to be, and nobody, nobody's willing.

to do it. I know, I know. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, stand in the, in the back and quote unquote strategize, right, and build fancy decks, but a lot, a lot different when you're kind of in the arena, right, uh, you know, grinding it out. So, with that said, let's jump to the rapid fire portion in the interview, um, jay, but for everyone listening again, futurecardia.com is the website. I highly encourage you to check that out. We'll link to it, as I mentioned before in the, in the, in the full write-up on medsider, but futurecardia. dot com is the is the website so with that said take us take us out a year jay take us to kind of fall time of 26 what are you most excited about about the about the company at that point in time yeah so

fda submission fd clearance and heart failure data i think that will bring tremendous value to the patients physicians and investors so that's our goal uh having some strategic to help us out for the next phase of operation uh we have several companies that we're talking to right now that might be a good fit. So that's where we are. FTA clearance will be this only second company in this space to achieve it. Commercialization, of course, you know, it's very important. But the ability to get the clearance and getting some heart failure data, I think will be the next huge milestone for us. Yeah, not to underappreciate kind of where you've been, but yeah, you're definitely, definitely, things are getting hot in the in the world of future cardia at this at this point,

right? The submission and clearances are usually the hardest period for, uh, our industry, our, our kind. So we're a few. Yeah, exciting times though. All right, since founding the company, what's the most surprising or unexpected thing that you've learned over the past six plus years? Well, that's a tough one. The regulatory process is longer and more painful than I thought it would be. What the FD is asking us in many ways makes sense, but it's also a very cumbersome process. So keep that in mind. You know, you will question your path all the time. And I do. And, you know, I encourage my team to tell me things that they don't like to see. They're not, they don't like.

So those are important. You know, always have good people around you to tell you things that you don't want to hear. And don't shoot the messenger. And a couple of times I shot the messenger. I wanted to strangle that guy. But it wasn't him. It was, you know, it was the circumstances. Yeah.

So, yeah. Yeah. Anticipated on the FDA process to be more complicated than you think it would be. make sure you have a good team that tells you bad news without worrying about things. Good advice. All right. Let's presume we're in your neck of the woods, maybe in Florida. And we just had an intimate dinner with maybe 20, 25 other med tech founders or CEOs. What's the one take-home message that you really hope that they'd understand if they're going to experience any sort of success in their venture?

Yeah. My approach to this is be direct. Of course, with respect, you know. Find the champion. Don't spend your time trying to convince others. You know, there's plenty of people out there that will, you know, be yourself and find the champion that will be living in you. Not so much chase somebody else, you know. And I use baseball as an analogy for this. At least for me, I'm swinging for the fences.

I'm not bunting, you know. So there's plenty of people who's going to discourage you saying what you're doing is the wrong. thing. And it's okay to bunt. You can make a great career as a bunter or a single hitter. And there are plenty of people who are happy sitting on the bench and still make a great career out of that. And that's perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with it. But if you're swing, if you're going to swing for the fences, you're going to strike out. And in effect, all home run hinders are strikeout kings. Just keep swinging if that's your game and don't let the naysayers get in the way. A good healthy way to look at things in the world of startups for sure.

Last question, take us back to your, let's call it late 20s, early 30s. Anything you'd whisper in the ears of the younger Jay at that point? Oh my gosh, so many, so many. Don't be so desperate to move up. Don't be impatient. Don't be desperate. Yeah, that would be it. I think a lot of my mistakes were being so desperate, so frustrated.

Why can this be me, you know, feeling? And I remember watching, reading, I think it was called Iron Man. It's like a bodybuilding magazine. All these guys have big arms, big shoulders, just completely ripped. So why can I be that guy as a 16-year-old kid? So why can I look like that? And later I realized they don't look like that either. They only look like that for about half a day.

So those are the kind of things that, you know, make you wonder what you're doing wrong. But you really aren't. Just take your time. Be patient. Don't be so frustrated and just enjoy what you do. Don't do it out of necessity or fear. And I think that was my biggest weakness early in my life. You know, when I finally said, I think I'm okay.

I think I'm okay without all these. And that's when things start to kick in. Yeah. I think all of us in the world of startups have, you know, have a fair amount of ambition, right? You know, I can tell that you do as well. And that's a tough thing. And early, you know, early in our careers you don't have as much many experiences and as much

wisdom. And we can find ourselves, myself included, right? Really striving, right? And why am I not getting that promotion? Right. Like, what else can I do? And, yeah, in retrospect, and I think it's such a good point to emphasize for those, you know, listening that are younger in their careers, right?

Be patient. Just do the work today. Do the work this week, right? And do really well where you're at now. And that will most likely pan out, right? So true. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's good, good stuff. I was telling my wife, I used to surf a lot in Hawaii, and I watched all this surfing videos. At that time, YouTube was nothing. And I see all this perfect surf, perfect everything, never see a wipeout. I'm like, I really thought that was the way it is. And I was so reluctant to go after big waves. And, you know, now that I see all these guys wiping out, and they're professional surfers, they wipe out a lot. And I'm like, oh, if I'd known.

I know if taken even bigger risk, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, those are the kind of things that just, you know, don't worry so much. Just like I said, just do well and just achieve daily, weekly and slowly, you know, progress. Yeah, and that work, that work will compound for sure. Jay, I can't thank you enough for coming on the program. This has been fun to learn not only about yourself, but also, you know, what it's taken to get to the stage with future cardio. really fun times ahead and I think all of us, myself included, will be cheering you on.

Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity, Scott. I really enjoyed the conversation. Yeah, likewise, likewise. And again, for everyone listening, futurecardia.com is the website. We'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider. But as always, you made it this far. Thanks for your listening intention until the next episode of MedCider 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 of medical device and health technology startups. But here's the thing. I'd be super grateful if you could help me reach even more ambitious doers who share our passion.

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