Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Evolving Your Capital Strategy as You Grow: Interview with Efemoral Medical CEO Christopher Haig
Episode Date: September 3, 2025In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Christopher Haig, co-founder and CEO of Efemoral Medical. Efemoral is developing bioresorbable scaffold technology for peripheral arterial... disease. Chris has over 25 years of experience in cardiovascular devices, holding leadership roles at strategics including Guidant Corporation and Abbott Vascular, and driving growth at startups such as Calypso Medical and QT Vascular, where he built commercial infrastructure and launched multiple products ahead of its $55 million IPO.In this interview, Chris shares how bioresorbable scaffold technology found new life for peripheral arterial disease — and the lessons on matching tech to significant needs and choosing trial sites for lasting data.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device and health technology founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.Second, if you want to peek behind the curtain of the world's most successful startups, you should consider a Medsider premium membership. You’ll learn the strategies and tactics that founders and CEOs use to build and grow companies like Silk Road Medical, AliveCor, Shockwave Medical, and hundreds more!We recently introduced some fantastic additions exclusively for Medsider premium members, including playbooks, which are curated collections of our top Medsider interviews on key topics like capital fundraising and risk mitigation, and 3 packages that will help you make use of our database of 750+ life science investors more efficiently for your fundraise and help you discover your next medical device or health technology investor!In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members also get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost, including the latest Medsider Mentors Volume VII. If you’re interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, if you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Christopher Haig.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I think I did go back, you know, several years and looked at my pitch deck, you know,
five or six years ago and looked at it now and it's obviously changed.
It's not very, I mean, device is still the same, but the actual pitch has changed quite a bit.
Just on the feedback you get, like you said, you've got to listen to the questions that are asked
or the comments that are made and people maybe who didn't invest for some reason, you want
to know, you know, would you tell me why?
I mean, I'm, you can learn as much from, you know, somebody telling you no or somebody telling
you yes.
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, Scott.
In this episode of MedSider sat down with Christopher Haig, co-founder and CEO of Ephemoral Medical, leading development of its bioresorable scaffold technology.
for peripheral arterial disease.
He has over 25 years of experience in cardiovascular devices, holding leadership roles at
Strategics, including Guidant and Abbott Vascular and driving growth at startups such as Calypso Medical
and QT Vascular, where he built commercial infrastructure and launched multiple products ahead of its $55 million IPO.
Here are few the key things that we discussed in this conversation.
First, match technology to a problem the market can't yet solve and protect it early.
Ephemeral redirected bioresorable scaffold technology from the coronary space,
to peripheral arterial disease, what outcomes were inconsistent and physicians were open to new
solutions. By proving feasibility, refining the design, and building a strong global patent
portfolio, the company created both clinical relevance and a defensible market position.
Two, in clinical trials, prioritize patient follow-up, not just enrollment speed.
Ephemiral chose Australia and New Zealand over traditional European pathways, not only for regulatory
fit, but also because patient compliance in these regions ensures the long-term data
their device requires, a factor just as critical as enrollment timelines.
Third, treat each funding stage as preparation for the next.
Angel Capital can launch a company but reaching later fundraising rounds and attracting institutional
investors, requires disciplined governance, clear milestones, and organized data.
Use the early stage to build credibility and generate proof points so that when larger capital
is needed, you're already operating at the standard institutional investors expect.
All right, before we dive into this episode, I'm pumped to share that volume 7 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 Pristine
Surgical, Don Crawford, co-founder of Safion and current CEO of Corvista Health and other proven
medtech 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
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forward slash mentors.
All right.
Without further ado, let's dive in the interview.
All right, Chris, welcome to Medsider Radio.
Appreciate you coming on.
Scott, it's a pleasure to be here.
Looking forward to the conversation.
I know our paths should have crossed many, many times over and out, but glad to at least kind of make this connection to happen.
And I think it's going to be going to be a fun conversation, right?
Definitely looking forward to learning a little bit more about your personal journey in med tech as well as the company,
Femmerol. So with that said, I recorded a very short bio at the outset of this episode.
Doesn't probably do your background justice. So let's start that.
Let's give it, if you can give us kind of a two-minute elevator-style kind of overview of your of your med-tech career,
kind of heading into ephemeral. That'd be great.
Sure. How can you do that, Scott?
I started with a company called ACS, right out to business school.
ACS was at the time one of the Lilly companies,
as part of a Lilly medical device and diagnostics division,
which would then spun into Guidant about a year after I was there.
So I started a guidance, worked in a number of different commercial positions
and marketing and business development and sales,
then had an opportunity to work on a kind of a flagship product for Abbott called
their Zomax drug-loading coronary stents.
So I moved to Abbott vascular, and there are kind of early stages of the vascular business for Abbott.
That was before the acquisition of guidance.
And then went through that acquisition process and kind of went through the integration.
And as you guys probably know, that's a whole history that could be told.
I won't tell it right now about that deal of Boston and Abbott acquiring guidance.
At a certain point, I want to do something a little bit earlier stage.
So I took a position up in a different area in radiation oncology up in the Pacific Northwest, did that for a couple of years.
but I really missed interventional cardiology.
For me, my passion is interventional cardiology devices, peripheral coronary.
I came back to the Bay Area and worked for another startup.
About 2007, I guess, or 2009, I came back to the Bay Area.
And did that for several years.
We had a number of different specialty balloons.
I was the first commercial person into the company.
Got to work with a lot of really smart doctors and engineers.
We end up selling some of those assets and actually going public
on the Singaporean Stock Exchange.
And then once we did that,
I was kind of looking for my next gig and wanting to do something, you know,
even earlier stage, you know, maybe looking for a founder opportunity.
So I got a call from Lou Schwartz, who is my co-founder here at Ephemoral,
and he told me about this idea that we'll talk about today.
He was working on.
Lou's a former colleague of mine from Abbott Times, a very smart guy,
and somebody had always had a lot of fun working with.
And if I ever had an opportunity to work with them again, I would jump at it.
And this is my opportunity.
So I left my previous company to focus on this full time and been having a great time ever since.
And that was back in, what, 2018, 19 timeframe?
So about seven to eight years into the...
That was actually, I made the transition in 2017.
So Lou is a very smart scientist physician, but not a business person.
I'm more of a business person.
And so our skill sets are very complimentary.
And so I left my previous company.
It was a little scary because, you know, we had no money in the company.
It was truly from the ground up founders, you know, situation.
And so we raise a little bit of money.
You know, we put some of our own money into the company to get started.
actually the first funds were from myself and from Lou.
We raised some more money, kind of friends and family money.
And then we put together a team.
One of the nice things about having been in the industry for a while is I know a lot of people.
I was also in a part of marketing that was kind of in between, I would say, I guess people
will call upstream marketing and working a lot of engineers and then focusing on what customer
needs were.
And so I was able to develop, I think, a pretty good network of subject matter experts that
are relevant for our project over several years.
And so once I teamed up with Lou, I started making phone calls of these people that had very specific domain expertise that's relevant to our project and reconnected with them and then pull them into our project here and then been having a blast ever since.
So that was I started to 2017, which sounds like a long time ago.
It does feel like a ways.
These paths for medical device companies can take a while, as you know, I'm sure.
But we're having a blast.
Yeah.
They are never fast.
you know, or never short, I should say, right? Time seems to fly by quickly and fast,
but yeah, the duration is certainly not short. But Chris, you mentioned ACS. Like you're part of the,
you know, I think most people listening are kind of familiar with the term the PayPal Mafia,
right, in the world of technology. You're kind of part of the original ACS mafia, it sounds like, right?
Yeah, but Mafia in a good way. In a good way. I mean, I'll put a plug-in for ACS and
guidance as a whole. I mean, it was just a remarkable company. Again, I know this is not a
podcast about that that particular piece of history. But it was foundational for me. I met,
you know, all of my key sort of personal and also professional key contacts, you know,
during that phase. I learned so much during that phase. Had an opportunity to travel the world
and meet incredibly smart physicians, work with great engineers and some of the great, I would say
great business leaders that I've worked under. You probably know some of the, I won't name names here,
but, well, I could, but you probably know many of them were examples for me as I think about even today,
some of the lessons that I learned early in my career still translate to now.
Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
Certainly those types of opportunities, right?
Oftentimes you sort of fall into them, especially earlier on in your career.
And in retrospect, kind of look back at how much you, you know, they're learning sort of like all originate from those type of experiences.
So with that said, let's get into the EBSS system, right, the ephemeral vascular scaffold system.
Tell us a little bit more about kind of maybe the high level need you're addressing what the device is, how it's different.
And maybe explain that as if like I'm not in the cardiovascular space for those that may be in ortho or spine or somewhere else in the device arena.
Yeah.
So just, you know, it's sort of high level.
You know, I started my career working on mostly coronary devices, either balloons or stents or guide wires.
If you're familiar with the coronary space in stenting, you'll probably know that if you have chest pain, you're going to go into a cath lap, you're going to get a modern, metallic, drug-alluding coronary stent.
And you'll be fine the rest of your life.
They're incredibly effective, very safe devices.
I would argue one of the greatest medical device inventions over the past 25, 30 years.
I mean, it's just remarkable the patient benefit you get from a modern metallic drug-eluting stent.
If not 90 to 95 percent of interventions are done with that technology, if you have coronary artery disease.
I transitioned a little bit later, you know, some of the other companies into the peripheral space,
which is basically it's the same disease as we age, the plaque and our arteries builds up and it reduces the blood flow
to whatever is downstream from it.
But the thing that was a little strange for me
is that if you have the same disease in your leg,
the outcomes from stenting or ballooning
or whatever intervention you would choose
are just not very good.
They're not very durable.
So the need for a reintervention
with a peripheral disease
is much, much higher
than for a coronary intervention,
which is kind of like,
well, what you wonder, why is that?
I think there are a couple of reasons for that.
One is if you have chest pain,
it's a little scary.
You go to the doctor right away.
you don't kind of wait around and you probably get treated, you know, when the disease is,
you know, fairly straightforward. If you have pain in your leg, it's something you maybe shake off
a little bit and you said, oh, I'll deal with it later. So by the time it gets so bad that, you know,
you need intervention, the disease is more advanced. That's one reason. I think the other reason
is that from an engineering standpoint, when you want to engineer a device to treat the heart versus
the leg, the motion of the leg is a lot more complicated. You think about the bending and the twisting and the
torsion and, you know, stretching as opposed to the beating of the heart. So actually making a
device that can hold up over time in a leg is a bigger engineering challenge. So our goal here,
and working with Lou, you know, who's a vascular surgeon, he treats these patients surgically,
but also minimally invasively, is that he just doesn't have a good device to offer his patients
that have clotication, which is that debilitating pain in the leg that's caused by narrowing of
the femoral popatial artery, you know, the plaque buildup. He just doesn't have good
So if you go into a cath lab and you see a physician treating a patient with femoral palpateal disease, they might use the balloon, they might use a stent, they might use a drug-coded balloon, they might use a drug-coded balloon, they might use a drug-coded stent, and I think that's a lot of different choices. And I think that's indicative that there's no one option that really works better than anything else. And so our goal and challenge here is that can we make a peripheral intervention as safe and as durable as a coronary intervention? That's really what we're after in a femoral.
Got it. And talk to us a little bit about the device itself, right? It's a bioscaffled, right? So in essence, it's sort of reabsorred. It's deployed inside a, you know, diseased artery, but then sort of, you know, is sort of reabsorbed over time. That's right. So one of the interesting differences about coronary and peripheral interventions is that, you know, for coronary interventions, as I said, almost everybody gets a stent. Periphering interventions, the physicians are trying to avoid the use of a stent. I mean, stents are used, but they're looking for reasons to avoid the use of a stent. But I think everybody
knows that the acute outcomes of stents are usually much better than balloons or other devices.
So the question is, is can we have a device that's going to have a good acute outcome,
but then doesn't leave a permanent implant over time that might cause a complication down the road
in a year or two or three or even five years because many of these patients live long after.
So the idea behind the ephemeral device is you want a stent or a scaffold to be very strong when it
goes in has to be high radial strength because many of these arteries have a lot of recoil.
They're filled with calcium. And you know that from your fast wave, you know, work. And so if you
don't have a really strong device, you can deploy a stent or a scaffold in there. But the vessel
will kind of recoil a little bit after you implant it. And so that means you've kind of lost some of
the real estate you've gained, which is, you know, does cause in many cases the need for a subsequent
procedure down the road. It may not be right away, but it may be in a few months time. So what we want is a
device that's very strong. The way that you get that in a stent design is with a balloon expandable
design. I don't want to get too much into the weeds of jargon here, but the stents that are
used today for the femoral popatil artery are self-expending nitinol stents, and they're used because
they're flexible. They can accommodate the bending of the leg without breaking, but they don't
have a lot of radial strength, and so you don't get a lot of what we call luminal gain. It means
actual gain in the size of the blood flow when you implant them. So what we've done in our
concept that Luke came up with is how do you make a very strong scaffold or stent that has high
radial strength that's balloon expandable, but make it long because it needs to be long in order
to be clinically relevant because many of these lesions are much longer than what you would treat
in a coronary artery. The challenge previously is if you have a rigid balloon expandable stent
that's in a long lesion, as soon as you sit down or bend your knee, it's going to break.
It's going to fracture.
It's going to kink.
You just can't do that.
So the way that we got around that issue is that we have a series of short, independent,
when I say independent, I mean unlinked scaffolds that are cramped side by side on a single
balloon, and they're delivered together.
And when you expand them, they foreshortened by design.
And those areas are foreshortening, they create these scaffold spaces between the adjoining scaffolds.
So when you remove the balloon, you deflate the balloon and you remove it, you've got,
you basically paved the artery with a series of short scaffolds that are very strong, that have high radial strength.
But the overall system is flexible because the inner scaffold spaces allow the artery to bend, even though each individual scaffold does not bend.
So that's the key sort of design input there.
I'll pause just to see if there are any questions because there's some other features of the device, but that's the key sort of design input that Lou his insight came up with.
Yeah, and I think, I mean, even if you're not overly familiar with this or you're probably tracking to a certain extent, right?
The goal here is that, as you mentioned, Chris, to deploy scaffolding, right, that's robust enough
to create more luminal gain, right?
But also allows for flexibility due to the kind of dynamics in these vessels in the legs.
So I know, I think that's a really healthy overview.
We could probably, you know, you and I could probably get into the weeds here, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, ideal outcomes in the periphery versus the coronary, how those kind of pendulins kind of swing
and then they come together and et cetera, et cetera.
But for the sake of time, I want to get to some other topics.
and really dig into kind of your learnings and really kind of the journey of the company so far.
But give us a sense.
We're recording this in mid, let's call it mid-20205.
Where's ephemeral at right now in terms of its kind of lifecycle?
Yeah.
So we are in a first in man trial that's ongoing as we speak and several sites across Australia,
New Zealand.
We've enrolled as of just today 36 patients in our first in human trial.
Back in April, we revealed the long-term results, the first 20 patients from our trials.
So we've been enrolling for a while, and some of those patients,
we actually have six-month or longer follow-up on.
Those patients that have just short-term follow-up, we haven't revealed all those data yet.
But so far, as we'd hoped, all the results are, you know, excellent so far.
In other words, there's been no acute complications.
And of those patients, a long-term follow-up, we actually have a subset of them.
We do an angiogram and some intravascular imaging at six months, not all of them, but many of them,
because we study very carefully what's going on, not just clinically with the patient,
but what's going on visually inside the vessel.
I'm happy to report that none of the patients have needed any kind of reintervention.
There's been no restinosis.
There's been no complications of any sort, you know, knock wood.
Clinically, the patients are all doing well.
The walking score is improved and it's held up over time.
So it's gone about as well as we could have hoped in this early clinical series.
So that's on the clinical side, you know, where we are happy to Dave into more details.
And then on the IP side, we have now 20 issued patents across different features of the device, across different geographies.
So I remember when we forgot our first patent, I thought it would never come.
But, you know, once it's kind of the thing where you invest, invest, invest, and you hope eventually you'll reap some benefit.
And now we've actually got a pretty nice portfolio in place protecting our device.
Sounds like it.
Sounds like the moat is getting broader and deeper, right?
We hope so.
We hope so, yeah.
So we've had some nice success.
And, you know, we focused on the key job, obviously the U.S. and Europe, but also China, India, and Japan have been areas of focus for us.
Got it. Very good. Very good. So kind of in the throes of some early clinical work, and I would presume at some point, kind of the, you know, an IDE pivotal trial is in the future. I don't want to.
Yes.
Certainly don't have to commit to a time frame, I guess, for the purposes of this conversation, but I imagine you're probably staring that down at sooner rather than later.
Well, what we're doing right now is we're in the process of raising our series B, which would fund the,
the work getting to ID approval. So you're right, we are a PMA device. It's a drug combination
device. It's an implant. So we're on a PMA path. There's a bunch of animal work we have to do,
GLP animal studies. We've already had a pre-sub discussion with FTA, so we know what the roadmap looks
like for that. As you know, there's a lot of device testing, a lot of drug testing we have to do
maybe or maybe not some more clinical, you know, investigation. But we do like expanding our
clinical footprint because we just think it develops the evidence base and the confidence the
devices is going to help patients. So really the kind of timing for us is, you know, we'd like to
within the second half of this year, remember early next year, close our series B to fund all the work
getting to ID approval. And then from there, we, you know, raise another round, a clinical round
to fund the clinical trial itself. You're listening and don't get to the full write-up on Medsider.
Website is ephemeralmedical.com. So e- and then femoralmedical.com. So E-F-E-M-O-R-A-L-M-M-M-E-M-E.
willing to it in the full write-up on Medsider. And if you're new to Medsider, those write-ups
are really kind of, you know, summaries, a lot of the key, the key learnings and highlights of the
interviews here that we have on Medsider. But if you don't get there, again, ephemeralmedical.com
is the website. So with that said, Chris, let's jump to some, I guess, some key kind of functional
areas, right? I'd like to spend maybe the next 20 or 30 minutes kind of covering, you know,
everything from early stage design and development through, you know, how to best think about,
you know, the kind of the Klinreg roadmap to even capital raising. I'd like to touch on a few of
few of these areas. But the first one being kind of early stage development, right? You're working
on something obviously clearly novel, right? It's not just another kind of another iteration on an
existing device. This is something that's pretty sophisticated, especially from materials and kind of
mechanical design perspective. So with that said, some of the earliest, at least in my opinion,
some of the most challenging days of a startup, especially in MedTech, are those earlier stages when
there's not a lot of, you know, capital to be had, right? You're trying to, you're trying to make meaningful
kind of iterations on a concept. So walk us through maybe the early days at ephemeral or even,
even, you know, previous experiences, right, at your other startups. Like, what are your,
what are your maybe key pieces of advice for other, other, you know, first time met tech
entrepreneurs that are kind of going, going through this and trying to, try to take a swing
at something they think should be, should be available, right, in the world of medicine?
Yeah. Well, I just kind of talk from my experience with ephemeral because my previous startups,
I started after the company had started and already had a piece of device design.
So this one, I've had the pleasure of seeing it from the very beginning.
So I think the key thing for our specific area of this, you know,
bi-resorable materials, scaffolds, whatever you want to call them,
is, you know, based on my long industry experience, you know,
starting at ACS and Guidant and having been at Abbott for many years,
this is a field, as you probably know, was pioneered actually by a Japanese company
that's less well known, but most people know about the Abbots,
of the world doing the Absorbed program.
That was actually a very good product.
It just did not get commercial attraction
because it wasn't quite as good
as the existing metal drug-alluding stents.
That's a long discussion,
which I maybe won't get into the weeds of.
But as you probably know,
the first lesson I learned in medical devices
is you need to develop something
for an unmet clinical need,
a large unmet clinical need.
And the challenge, I think, in coronary
is, like I said earlier,
is that the existing technology works really well.
So it's very hard to improve upon it.
to say you can't, but it's very difficult, very expensive, takes a very long time, huge investment.
But what happened during that process of development of the Absurr program is that a lot of
knowledge, tribal knowledge was developed about how to develop and process bierzorable materials,
drug coatings of them, you know, deliver in different considerations of what worked,
didn't work with this kind of material in its tent configuration. So a lot of this knowledge
was available to us when we put company together. We also focused on what we thought was
truly an unmet clinical need, which is on the peripheral side with peripheral arterial disease.
Because, you know, as I said earlier, you know, night and all stents don't really work very well.
Physicians are trying to find a ways to avoid using them. You know, there are drug-coded balloons,
but, you know, all balloons, whether they're drug-coded or not, suffer from recoil, which really
limits the long-term outcome for those devices. Atherectomy is used. You know, some of the
evidence of a thorectomy is a little, you know, depending on what atherectomy are using.
It's, you know, it's not necessarily definitive. So we thought, okay,
we think we actually have a technology in barrage roll scaffolds that's ready for prime time
as long as the right prime time is chosen. And I think that's PAD. And so we came, you know, Lou came
forward with this idea about this multi-segment design. It's fairly straightforward because the delivery
system is just a balloon angioplasty device. You know, we have to crimped device and not damage them
when we're crimping. And so we've got a, you know, a very talented group of engineers who know
about these materials that we put together. And then we did a, you know, a couple of bench tests that
Those look pretty good.
We did a couple of animal studies.
You know, we raised a little bit of money here and there from friends and family and some
other investors.
We applied for a phase one SPIR grant.
We got that.
We applied several times, but we eventually got one and that helped fund some of the early
stage research.
So really looking to kind of move from a concept to a something you can test on the bench
to something you can put in an animal and see how it works.
So that's probably a classic way to start.
That's how we started.
We just came up with an idea and sequentially tested.
it and put together a hypothesis about what we thought would work.
And it did.
And I think everyone's heard of like, you know, at least in the world of medical devices,
right, this unmet need, this clinical unmet need, right?
I mean, it's a phrase that's used quite often.
And rightfully so.
But I think you're used another descriptor that in front of it was large, large,
unmet need because that's so crucial, right?
I mean, these startup device companies, as we kind of, you know, laughed about earlier, right?
They're of long duration, you know, I mean, you're, gosh, approaching, you know,
you're closer to 10 years, right, at ephemeral now versus, you know, versus five, even when I think about like fast wave, right?
I mean, we're, we're getting past the five-year marker here pretty soon.
Right.
You know, still a long ways to go.
And so, yeah, these are long and they require a fairment of capital, which means the market need has to be, has to be large.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Let's talk a little bit how that kind of parlayes into, you know, your, your Clin-Reg approach, right?
You mentioned that, as you thought about building the clinical roadmap for an ephemeral, you're now, you know, you know, you know, I think what 20, 20,
data from the first 20 patients, I think, of the feasibility study about a year ago from
from number one.
We announced the first 20 patients, the long-term data from the first 20 patients in April.
Okay, April.
Okay, so just a few months ago.
Okay, got it.
April this year.
Got it, got it.
So as you, I'm sure there's, you know, you've thought about how do we, how do we basically
design a clinical trial, right?
That's largely meant for regulatory purposes.
You could probably use a lot from even the work at Absorb, you know, that you touched on previously.
So what do you think over some of the keys to your success, right, designing it?
a good, a good clean reg program for ephemeral?
You know, based on the regulatory requirements to start a clinical trial around the world,
U.S. was probably not available to us early on just based on the amount of evidence that the FDA
would want for even, you know, a first and human trial.
There has been some discussion about trying to get more first and human studies in the U.S.,
but it just, you know, it hasn't panned out for us, but that's okay because we do look around.
I mean, typically in the past, a lot of companies like us might have looked at Europe as a possible
location for early stage clinical trial. But Scott, you're probably aware there's been some changes
to the medical device directives there in Europe governing, you know, not just commercialized,
but pre-commercial products. And so when we looked around, we decided we settled on Australia,
New Zealand, which we thought would be excellent locations for our first in human studies. So
what this came down to was, you know, the regulatory ability to actually start an early human
trial with not a lot of pre-clinical or clinical data. We did have some, but not the FDA would
want, for example. So number one was the regulatory barriers made it possible for us. The second
equally important feature was that there are some world-class investigators in both of those
countries that do excellent work. Of course, everything is in English so we don't have to translate
documents, we don't have to worry about communications. And then in a trial like ours is it's not
just about the implant, it's also about the follow-up. And so one of the things that I've experienced
here at ephemeral, but also in some of my previous companies, is that culturally, the patients in
Australia, New Zealand take their consent in a clinical trial very seriously. And so even if they're
implanted with our device or a device and they feel good, they still do come back for their follow-up,
which is very important is we're gathering data about the performance of the device, not just
short-term, but also long-term. So there's a real compliance in terms of the, you know, the steps
to gather all the data because it requires a collaboration from industry.
the physicians, you know, the regulatory authorities, and then also the patients. They're all really
very important components. So for us, Australia and New Zealand were really a good fit for us.
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 2020, 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 an 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 inhuman 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 market,
sign up for our investor waitlist at Fastwavemedical.com for.
slash invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Now let's get back to the conversation.
Yeah, no doubt. It sounds like. And I would love for there to be sites maybe a little bit closer to
home, you know, closer to close to the U.S. It's a long trip. It is long, long, long trip.
And it seems like, you know, at least the kind of the growing geographies, right, for at least
cardiovascular device companies are kind of Eastern Europe, right? Tbilisi, Georgia.
And even now, Uzbekistan, I would argue is kind of is definitely an up-and-comer.
And then, you know, as you just mentioned, Australia and New Zealand,
kind of a hot geography, right, for running some of these early stage companies.
I'd love to love for one to kind of pop up in, you know, Central or South America that has, you know.
Yeah, I've heard of some countries in Central and South America,
but they seem to change sometimes year to year.
Yeah, it does.
And we had, I won't name names, but, you know, my previous company,
we did some research in a Central American Caribbean country and had a hard time with a patient
and follow up just because if the patients felt good,
but then they thought, well, why would I want to go back for another, you know, investigation?
Right.
So that was kind of tough on the company because you count on not just the acute, but also the follow-up data in your process.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
Like central, at least from my perspective, I would agree.
Like central, South America, it just feels a bit more disparate, right, and kind of more ever-changing.
So hard to, you know, hard to like kind of, especially with follow-up, right, hard to really
kind of allocate or allocate resources or something that may change.
There can be some world-class investigators, depending on where you go, as long as you partner
with the right to the individual.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think one of the points that you mentioned, even just kind of describing kind of your thought
process for ephemeral is really the follow-up, right?
And how important that is for a device like this.
I just think sometimes, and it may seem obvious, right, in retrospect, but sometimes when
you're making these decisions about which geography to choose, like things like that, you know,
can kind of get lost, right?
You know, sometimes.
And that's so, so crucial because the reality is if you enrolled 20 patients and you lost
10 of them to follow up, that is like, that gets super expensive really, really fast.
It only, only adds to the timeline, right?
To kind of get to the next clinical milestone.
So really good points.
And isn't it interesting, like, how fast the pendulum sort of swung out of Europe, right, because of NBR?
I mean, it is like mind-blowing, because that used to be, you know, the de facto place, right?
That's right.
Almost every single U.S. startup would begin, right?
is, you know, go to go to Europe first, get a C.E mark, use that data or parlorate that data into
into an ID, an IDE trial here in the U.S. But yeah, wow, how the times have changed.
Yeah, it is, I mean, you know, maybe things are changing again. I mean, we keep monitoring,
you know, the environment there. And I'd love to be doing clinical work in Europe.
But it's just that we've had such good success in Australia, New Zealand, but we just
would keep, you know, keep going there.
Yeah, yeah. And there's such great interventionalists, right, and operators in Europe.
But it's just, it's kind of sad that there's, hopefully things will kind of, I don't know,
hopefully the pendulum will swing back.
I've heard the same kind of rubblings.
Yeah, that it's, you know, that it's swung too far and needs to kind of move in the opposite
direction again.
So, yeah, we'll see if that comes to fruition.
But I'm hopeful that it will, especially for a lot of the, a lot of that ecosystem, right,
that's been built out there.
Yeah.
And I'm also hopeful that there will be an opportunity in the future for a company
of ours to do a first in human in the U.S.
So it just, fortunately, it's not quite the case yet.
But I'd be doing, you know, trial work here as well.
Yeah, 100%.
I feel like it's it's gotten better for sure, especially with with EFS programs.
But yeah, just, you know, a little bit, a little bit faster pathway.
I think I think that would be a big win for a lot of, a lot of U.S.-based companies for sure.
Let's chat a little bit about your fundraising journey, right?
You mentioned that you're in the, you know, hope to close a series B by the end of this year or early next year.
But these projects, right, take a lot of a lot of capital, especially for a novel technology with, you know,
that requires a fair amount of follow up, like your, the EBSS device.
So talk to us a little bit about kind of what you've learned raising capital for ephemeral maybe
and maybe frame that up with like, you know, what you knew, what you know now versus maybe what you
wished you knew kind of like five, ten years ago.
Well, the way we funded ephemeral so far is probably not the way we're going to fund it going
forward.
And let me just explain what I mean by that.
So far, we've taken equity capital all from heightened that way with individuals through
angel investors, which, you know, through this stage we can do, you know, we've raised a little over 10 million in equity so far.
We've also gotten a couple of non-dilutive SBIR grants, which have been very helpful.
A couple million in total, you know, between those two.
We've just applied for a third grant, which I'm hopeful maybe later this year will come through.
We'll see.
We're a PMA device, you know, path company.
So the early stage, what we've kind of gone through, we're still in right now, I think you can, you know, if you have a good idea, you've got the right network, personal network, but also professional network.
You've been around a while like myself and Lou have, my co-founder.
you have a network of people that, you know, hopefully you can convince to get you started,
you know, put some money in and get you through the early stage. But going forward, our capital needs
are going to be much larger, you know, getting ready for, you know, getting the ID, you know,
these preclinical studies that are GLP are quite costly. You know, this device building and testing
is going to be costly. You know, my anticipated sort of type of investor going forward for series B
will be more like an institutional investor. I don't know who it would be yet. We're talking with
the number of energy parties. It could be a strategic, could be a family office, it could be a
VC. But I think as we go forward when our capital needs increase, we're more likely to have,
you know, institutional investors as opposed to, I mean, we still obviously will, you know,
our existing investors will have the right to invest in subsequent rounds. But I expect the bulk of
the funding going forward to be through institutional funding. And what, when you think about raising,
because I mean, $10 million plus is no easy feat, right? And you've been able to make that happen with
basically a group of high net worth angels. And so when you think about that experience raising a
pretty significant amount of capital, any tips or advice, right, for other, you know, other entrepreneurs
kind of in that, you know, seed to series A kind of range that are trying to do the same.
Yeah. Well, it's very labor intensive, you know, because you're, you know, sometimes getting checks
of $25,000, you know, so those, I mean, those do add up, but it's, there's, you know, there's a lot of,
you know, discussions you have to have and a lot of documents going back and forth and so on.
So the other thing, of course, is you have a lot of conversations which you get a no.
Or actually, for me, the hardest is neither a no nor a yes.
It's just sort of somebody who says they'll get back to you, but you don't really know where they stand.
And so you don't really know, am I bothering this person or they interested or not?
So I actually prefer a clear answer one way or another because it allows me to act, you know, efficiently and not waste my time or their time.
But I think, you know, if you're going to fund the company this way, one lesson that, you know, I'm glad that, you know, I had the career I have so far because I've made.
made a pretty wide group of contacts over the years who've known me for many years that
trust me. I mean, for somebody to put their heart in money in your company, they've got to not
just trust you, but believe in the opportunity and your ability to bring it across the finish
line. So, you know, that kind of trust builds over time, you know, the people who know me or
know Lou over time. We also have quite a few physicians that have invested, which are, I think,
quite helpful because they're knowledgeable about the space and know what the other devices that
are out there and their limitations. So the fact that we have physicians invested in us as a strong,
what's the word I'm looking for, sort of signal or indicator. Yeah. It's a signal, if you will,
that an knowledgeable person is willing to, you know, put some risk capital into this company.
Obviously, it's, you know, it's risky. You never know. Most startups, you know, don't pay back their
investor, you know, sort of interest. But it really just takes a lot of, a lot of conversations,
you know, that happen, you know, when you're in the company,
but a lot of these relationships, you know, started well before the company you started.
And then also be, you know, just kind of have thick skin.
You're going to be talking a lot of people who either will just won't be interested
or won't really be clear on whether they're interested or not.
I just used to that, right?
And talk to a lot of different people and constantly be expanding your network
and talking to more people.
Yeah, yeah.
You're going to feel like you're repeating yourself a lot, right, having the same pitch.
But hopefully the goal is you're, you learn a little, right, from each pitch
and kind of, you know, what, what methods?
messages resonate with certain, you know, certain folks and certain, certain audiences.
I think I did go back, you know, several years and looked at my pitch deck, you know,
five or six years ago and looked at it now. And it's obviously changed. It's not very,
I mean, device is still the same, but the actual pitch has changed quite a bit. Just on the feedback you get.
Like you said, you've got to listen to the questions that are asked or the comments that are made.
And people maybe who didn't invest for some reason, you want to know, you know, would you tell me why?
I mean, you can learn as much from, you know, somebody telling you no,
is somebody telling you yes. So those are all important lessons.
100% yeah i literally was just looking pulling a slide from an old old pitch deck myself just earlier today and i was like
gosh well how have i how i've been updated this slide right it's been sitting there i've been using it over and over again
it's amazing like how many times like you look at something you know 100 times and it's like you finally
see it you're like oh yeah i should update that a while ago but uh yeah part part part for the course but yeah
you mentioned kind of just the um sort of the signals right the indicators and and sometimes i um i
hear other investors kind of look at a company that hasn't been hasn't raised a a seed round or a series a
from like a name brand fund or maybe it has sort of a, you know, a sort of a disparate sort of
cap table, if you will, and they kind of almost scoff at that. And I actually think the opposite.
If you've been able to raise a significant amount of money from, I would say, pretty influential
stakeholders, rather than the high net worth individuals that invest in the tech were like physicians,
I guess in your case, right? And especially if they've invested multiple times, right, over the course
of, you know, several years, that's a really, really strong indicator that you're doing something
right. They're not going to keep writing 50, 100,000 dollar checks, right?
multiple times over. And so I actually think that's a, that's a really, that's usually a really,
really strong, strong signal that the, that the, that's on to something. And I was, it was interesting.
I mean, this, this topic reminds me of a conversation I had with Brian Lord, who was on the podcast,
maybe a year ago or so, something like that, he's the CEO of Pristine Surgical. I'm not sure if you
know Brian, that really thoughtful guy. And we're talking about how startups sometimes when you,
when you, when you sort of move on to like this institutional stage, right? The aesthetic of your
cap table might not be ideal. Because I think anyone's goal running a device stuff,
up is like raise a seed around from a name brand VC that invest at that stage. Then you're
Series A, like it's a couple more like name brand BCs. And then Series B is, you know, you're getting
into, you know, maybe more more gross stage or later stage capital. And the reality is like,
that just rarely happens. Like rarely, rarely, rarely happens. You sort of have to, you know,
scrap and get by in those earlier stages, making a progress, try to be as capital efficient as possible.
So you can get to that, you know, get to that spot where you can, you know, begin to maybe
attract, you know, different, different types of investors.
And that's certainly been our experience.
Yeah.
I guess my, you know, I'm rambling a little bit, but like maybe the take home is like, again,
don't, don't, don't, don't, if you're, if you're in that position, don't worry so much
about the aesthetic, right?
You made it, you made it this far.
Hopefully you're in a good, you're in a good position, not knocked down a couple
milestones and you're on to something, move on, right?
And don't, don't let.
And eventually, I think what will speak loudest is the quality of your data.
In our case, you know, clinical data could be other, you know, kinds of data,
depending on the company.
But that ultimately, I think is what this.
subsequent investors are going to look for first. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. I want to transition to
kind of commercial and like engagement with strategics, right, which are, you know, kind of,
I would say very much kind of in your warehouse. Let's start with commercial, right? Because
And you even touched on this with some of the other startups that you've been previously.
You kind of came in and served in a little bit more of a commercial capacity. Even though
Ephemeral is very much a clinical stage company, are there some learnings that you've kind of brought
with you, right, from all of your commercial experience over the years?
It's a good question. I mean, I would definitely acknowledge,
the fact that in this kind of company that's highly technical in an earlier stage, it's unusual
to have somebody with a commercial background leading it. I can only lead it because I've got
such a great network of, you know, team that we put together that they're the subject matter
experts, whether it's polymer science or stent design or trial, you know, clinical trial
design or, you know, what having drug coatings, if you will. So the benefit for me having
that commercial background is having the high bird's eye view of kind of soup to nuts from
the beginning to the end, eventually, eventually, you know, you've got to not just build the device
and make it work, but you've got to think about what the exit is, you know, how users are going to
use this ultimately and how it's going to get adopted and what is the competition going to be.
You know, all the different pieces I think are important.
Obviously, the engineering part is important, the scientific part is important, the material
science is important, but to be able to put together the whole picture of what's it going to
take, not just to develop a device, but to create a data set or an experience that will lead
to, you know, a successful exit for investors, I found that, you know, having that commercial
experience and seeing the, you know, kind of the full gamut of what it takes, because ultimately,
you know, depending on when you exit, you know, hopefully it's a good exit, but depending on
when you exit, you've got to paint a picture of what the kind of adoption is going to be once
it gets commercialized. What's it going to compete against? You know, how are you going to price it?
What kind of claims you're going to make, you know, what kind of commercial organization do you
need to put in place to be successful. So having that commercial experience allows me to tell
that full picture, but those areas where I don't have the technical expertise, we've got amazing
people on our team that have that. So they can really complement my knowledge in a very effective way.
Yeah, my hunch is you're fairly technical in your own right. Even though maybe you've got a lot of
experience commercially, but you strike me as someone that knows the details, knows the details as well,
but maybe not necessarily going to. I spent a lot of time around smart people and
engineers. Right, right. But you know what's interesting about this topic is like earlier in my
career, I always looked at startup CEOs. You know, this is 15, 20 years ago now. And most of them
were, I would say, more kind of commercial CEOs, right? Even at earlier stage startups. And I
always kind of thought that was kind of strange, right? It's because, you know, most of that work
early on is very engineering heavy than at some point, obviously you get into clinical phases. But
I think there's a reason for that, right? I mean, typically a well, a really well-rounded, more
commercially minded CEO can not only kind of paint that story as, as you know,
mentioned, right? And I understand kind of the full life cycle of a company and where it's going,
where it's headed, sort of the market appetite, right, for hopefully an eventual liquidity event,
but even more so be able to raise capital, right? Because that's sort of the lifeblood,
lifeblood of any startup is to be able to, you know, to attract, attract investment. And so
I had James with conformal medical on, gosh, just probably a couple months ago. We were talking about
this very same, the same topic because I think he came into conformal, maybe around the same stage
as where you're at now, ahead of their IDE trial.
And I think the board actually wanted, if I'm kind of paraphrasing here,
but the board wanted a more commercially minded CEO because they thought a lot of those
skill sets would transfer in order to enhance enrollment in the pivot, which I think is smart,
right?
I mean, because that very much is a sales process, right?
Of like, you know, winning over physicians, winning, you know, getting them excited
about enrolling in the trial, et cetera.
So, yeah, it's good stuff.
But I'm looking at the clock.
I know we don't have a lot of time.
I love I'm here.
And I want to get your take on M&A, right?
Because you've been a part of a couple startups in your past that have,
had successful exits in various ways, whether it's through a pureplay M&A or, you know,
IPOing on the Singapore market, I think, with tri-room as you mentioned. So when you think about
engaging with strategics, whether in the form of maybe investment or maybe a potential exit,
any words of wisdom or things that you've learned over time that you're now applying at
femoral? Well, I don't know if there's ever, you know, kind of a cookie-coder answer, every
situation a little bit different. But I would say that, you know, the strategics, they're definitely
all looking for new stuff. You know, you don't have to have a perfect data set before you go out
and talk to them. You should get to know them. You should build a relationship over time,
build a relationship among many people at Strategics. For a couple of reasons. One is,
strategics, you know, I won't name names here, but, you know, you guys probably know a lot of the
companies that might be interested in companies such as ours. They often have a business unit
dedicated to peripheral utilities, but they may have a venture firm that also, you know, is active.
And so they kind of work together, sometimes separately, maybe have different relationship.
You kind of have to know how they work together or separately, get to know both.
They may be complimentary.
They may be different.
The other thing that is also the case is people and strategic, they change jobs.
You know, maybe they were a leader in one area and they switched to another area.
Maybe they leave the company.
And so you need to have ongoing contact points with multiple people because sometimes some of those relationships you have may get broken, if you will,
just some transition over time.
And I've started this journey at ephemeral in 2017, eight years ago.
You know, there have been some transition in some of the strategic relationships I've had just over the years, which is fine.
That's normal.
It's not to be, you know, no surprise about that.
But, you know, that's why I think it's, you know, you think about the long game.
You know, think about building that relationship with multiple people and multiple different departments in the strategics.
Also think about, try to understand what their strategy is, what they're looking for.
but also being able to differentiate your device,
why you think is relevant for their portfolio.
They may be kind of wrapped up
and looking things one way,
but I think if you're really good,
you can kind of shift their perspective
into thinking about the world as you see it.
You know, as an entrepreneur,
you often have to kind of look around corners
and see things that are not there.
You've got to be able to kind of, you know,
have that, you know, the typical thing
people say about Steve Jobs
as he had this reality of distortion field around them.
You spent time and he would say these outlandish things,
but the more you spend time you spend around
and the more I believe,
and you agree with what he's saying. And I think that's a characteristic of very successful
entrepreneurs of being able to kind of get people rallying around, you know, a vision of the future
that doesn't exist yet. Yeah. Such a great point. Such a great point. I'm glad you brought,
I'm glad you brought that up because it doesn't come up, I think as often as it should maybe
in these particular interviews because I think I heard a, I can't remember where this came from,
but someone described kind of a startup CEO is like, you're telling a story, right, that doesn't
exist yet. And you've got to have enough conviction or confidence in that story, right, to convince,
to convince others to come along with you. And so I think that's, it's easy to talk about like this,
but very hard to keep telling that story when, you know, other people aren't necessarily
believing it yet, quite yet. And there's a balance. You don't want to be making outrageous
claims. You know, you don't want to be, you know, sort of non-credible, but you also don't want
to undersell yourself either about what you really think that, you know, your device or your
company can accomplish. Yeah, yeah. So true. I mean, we're not talking about making, you know, wild,
wild kind of like infomercial type of claims by any stretch of imagination. But, but yeah, there is a very real
kind of hard reality, right? Especially if you're earlier, or like in your case, right,
a very pretty novel technology, right? And oftentimes I can imagine, especially probably five years
ago, like, it was just hard to get people that wrap their heads around this. You know,
obviously you've come a long way. We did have a challenge early on because people remember the
coronary experience with scaffolds. So we had to somewhat overcome that. I think, you know,
we don't get some of those questions anymore because people see our data now. But there was a period of
time where people thought, well, if other people couldn't do this, why do you think you can make it
work? And I think now we've got evidence to back up our claims. Yeah, the other point I think that
was really, really important that you mentioned earlier is just the sheer number of contacts that you
should be making at these strategics, right? It's not just, you know, a handful of people in business
development, right? Oftentimes you need to go, I wouldn't say like really, really wide, but decently
wide, right? Across, across the organization. And as you, as you, you know, rightly point out,
a lot of these folks, you know, they'll have various career transitions. Maybe they move on to a different
company. Maybe they moved to a different, you know, a different division within a metronic,
within a Boston scientific, what have you. And so the evolution of that and making sure you're
tracking against that is really, really important.
Very important. Yeah. With that said, I want to leave a little bit, a few minutes here for the
rapid fire portion in the interview. But again, for everyone listening, ephemeralmedical.com
is the website, E, like the letter E, and then femoralmedical.com, all one word, ephemeralmedical.com.
We'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider, as well as Chris's LinkedIn profiles.
so you can check out his background a little bit more detail. But with that said, Chris,
questions are rapid fire nature. If you want to expand a little bit, feel free to. But first one on
the target, take us out to mid-20206 a year from now. What are you most excited about looking out
that far? Well, Scott, we're in the process of expanding our trial right now. In fact,
Lou, my co-founder, chief medical officers in Australia as we speak, and opening three new sites,
we're going to be enrolling a number of new patients. We're going to be, in fact, just, you know,
hot off the press, I just learned. I don't have any details yet. But we've made a 100,
millimeter scaffold that just got implanted today. It's the longest by reservable scaffold ever
implanted ever by any company. So that's one of the key advantages we have with our multi-segment
design. We can make very long devices. We'll make longer than that. But so far, this is the longest
ever implanted. So that one for me is pretty jazz. And I'm looking forward to seeing how the long-term
results from the long scaffolds turn out. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, that's long. That's long, too. That's
awesome. That's great to hear. For scaffold, it's pretty long. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, since
this is co-founding the company, you know, back in 2017, 18 kind of time frame over the past,
you know, seven, eight years or now, what's the most like surprising or unexpected thing that
you've learned? I don't know about surprising. I mean, maybe this is more of a, shouldn't be
surprising, but so it's maybe a comment on me than anyone, but the fact of founding the company,
it's just an incredible thing you can have found a company. You can just basically create something
that didn't, you know, exist before, put your heart and soul to that and raise money for that
and build a device, you know, this sort of basic fact of capitalism, you just see it front and
center if you're a founder. You know, if you're working for another large company, you know,
that step has already occurred. You're kind of, you know, joining a ship that's already sailing
in a certain direction. But as a founder, being able to create something anew, you know, putting all
the legal framework in place, putting all the initial team in place, you know, creating device for the first
time, seeing it tested on the bench and animals is just, there's nothing like it. Yeah.
it's hard to go back to anything else, right?
Once you've,
when she tastes it.
That's good, that's good point.
Let's say we're in the Bay Area,
your neck of the woods,
and we just had a dinner with a small group of met tech entrepreneurs.
What's the one lesson that you think they really need to understand or take home
in order to maybe see eventual success with their venture?
Well, I said a couple things already.
One is you've got to focus on a large unmet clinical need.
If you're focusing on something that's a niche or, you know,
something that's already been addressed well by existing technology,
I think you're going to struggle.
you've got to have, well, in my case, you know, having that existing in, you know,
sort of incorporated network was very important in our fundraising and my ability to attract
our engineering talent, knowing the right people to choose for our team. And I think you've got to be
prepared for some, you know, a lot of, a lot of sort of negative feedback. You know, people say that,
you know, they like what you're doing, but they're not going to invest. So you've got to be
relentless. You've got to be tireless. You've got to push through. But if there are areas where
you get some feedback on your device that's maybe not quite as performing the way you want it to,
you've got to think clearly about how to incorporate that feedback and make it better.
So don't get too tied or too in love with, you know, a single version of your idea,
even if you've got that sort of big picture of what it can be eventually,
because there are going to be people along the way, they're going to have good ideas that are worth incorporating.
And, you know, you should listen to that.
Yeah, yeah, finding that signal to the noise.
So, so important, kind of a skill set that kind of only learned, right,
hearing a lot of feedback, right, and adjusting and tweaking over time.
So, all right, last question.
Take us back to maybe your late 20s, early,
30s, you know, your career is, you know, kind of taken off at that point. Anything you
whisper in the, in the ears of the younger, younger version of Chris at that point.
Network, network, network, spend time around smart people. Eventually, you know, if an opportunity
like this comes along, don't, don't miss it. Take a leap. Yeah. That's good stuff. All right,
Chris, again, everyone listening, you made it this far. Highly encourage you to check out the
company's website, ephemeralmedical.com, as I, as I just referenced a few minutes ago,
Ephemerlmedical.com, we'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider. But Chris,
thanks a ton for coming out of the program. It was great to finally meet you.
Enjoyed it. Nice to meet you as well. Take care. And I'll have you hold on the line, Chris.
But for everyone listening, thanks as always for your attention until the next episode of MidSider
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
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