Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - How to Decide Where to Deploy Capital in Growth-Stage Medtech: Interview with CMR Surgical CEO Massimiliano (Max) Colella

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Massimiliano (Max) Colella, CEO of CMR Surgical.CMR Surgical is developing Versius, a surgical robot designed to make minimally invasive procedures more accessible across specialties.Max brings more than three decades of healthcare leadership experience spanning medtech and hospital systems. He previously held leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson and Smith & Nephew across Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, and later served as CEO of Evercare Group, a TPG portfolio company.In this interview, Max discusses how to prioritize capital allocation between platform development and product line expansion, when internal processes need restructuring, the importance of having the right culture, and why undertaking market research ahead of launching into a new market is crucial. He also shares his approach to hiring — and on maintaining clear board governance boundaries.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device founders and CEOs and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you’re ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Max Colella. KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(03:08) - An overview of Max's background and the journey that led him to CMR Surgical (06:53) - Why Max chose surgical robotics — and how Versius is designed to differentiate from existing systems (16:18) - How Max restructured internal processes at CMR to eliminate large-company bureaucracy (21:09) - How market research reshaped CMR’s U.S. strategy beyond ambulatory surgery centers (28:48) - Max’s capital allocation philosophy: prioritize system performance and stability before expanding capabilities (32:19) - Max's take on Techmed and the future of robotics (36:36) - Why clearly defined roles between board and management are critical for governance (41:10) - Max’s philosophy around hiring for mindset over skill

So when I stepped into CMR, one of the things that I was shocked to find was the number of processes, internal processes. And that was the outcome or just, you know, everything happened just because at the beginning, all the people came from big companies. And they tend to replicate what they knew. And we ended up in having processes that normally you find in 80 billion revenue companies. I said, okay, you know what? Let's start from there. Let's start to destructured. So processes are important, but the number of processes that we can handle needs to be at the level of a, I guess I said, not a startup, but there's no fault. We need to be agile, nimble and so on. 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 all. unpack the insights, tactics, and secrets behind the most successful life science startups in the world. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. Hey, everyone, in this episode of MedSider, I sat down with Max, CEO of CMR Surgical, the company developing Versius, a next-generation surgical robot for minimal access surgery. Max brings more than three decades of healthcare leadership experience spanning med tech and hospital systems. He has held leadership roles at Johnson and Johnson and Smith and Nephew across Europe. Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

He was previously CEO of Evercare Group, a TPG portfolio company. Here are a few topics we explored in this conversation. First, after you've raised, how should you think about capital allocation? Second, how do you know when a startup needs to restructure its operating processes? Third, how do you design market research to unearth go-to-market insights? And last, what steps can you take to ensure good board governance? Before we dive into the full episode, I think you'll want to check out Medsider courses. These new eight-week courses are designed to help you learn winning formulas for

from world-class CEOs. MedSider courses cover topics like fundraising, device design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, commercialization, and M&A. Each course covers hard-earned lessons shared by the MedTech founders and CEOs who join our program. MedSider courses can be purchased individually or they're included at no additional cost with the MedSider All Access Pass. You can explore Medsider courses at Medsider.com forward slash courses. Again, that's medsider.com forward slash courses. All right, without further ado, let's dive into the interview. All right, Max, welcome to Medsider Radio. Appreciate you coming on.

Well, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Likewise, and I'm glad we're finally able to do this after a couple of reschedules. I think, you know, I was sick, and you've got a gazillion things going on at CMR. So I'm glad we're finally able to do this. So with that said, I recorded a very abbreviated bio on your background, but it's much more extensive than what I recorded. So maybe let's start there. Give us like a one, two-minute overview for those that aren't familiar with your various

experiences in the space leading up to taking on the CEO role at CMR? Yes, with pleasure. So, you know, normally I feel still very young, but when I go into this, you know, I realize that I'm not that young because I must say that I've been around in the healthcare for now 34 years. You know, I saw your buyer and saying 20 plus is, I'm almost doubling it. So I've been 34 years in health care. actually 30 years in the MetTech and four years, I would tell you more, on the provider's side,

which was a fantastic experience for me. So I've been, I started with J&J, Johnson & Johnson. I've been with that company for 21 years. Of course, it was great. It was great career path with many, many promotions in many parts of the Europe and Middle Eastern Africa. So I left J&J after 21 years. I jumped on a very interesting project in Smith & Nephew, another British company. I've been with Smith and Nephew for six and a half years. I've covered in only six and a half years. I cover three regions. Basically, I was first in the emerging market, then I went to Asia Pacific.

And the last three years in Europe, leading MEA and being part of the executive team. And then I took a break. So, I mean, I was really interested in working in a small, company, possibly private equity backed. And that happened to me. So I got an offer from TPG, the US big private equity group, and they were about to take over a health fund called Evercare. And we basically, I know, was in charge as a CEO of the fund and the holding group. We own more than 32 hospitals, more than 200 diagnostic centers, 16 clinics. And it's a It was really an amazing experience for me, first of all, because it was the first time with

private equity. Second of all, because I moved on the other side. So I was, of course, I didn't run hospitals myself, but I was in charge of the holding group and all the CEOs of the hospitals used to report to me. So great experience. Quite successfully, after four years, we ended over to Blackstone. So Blackstone took the control. TPG remained as a minority investor.

And then I decided to basically look at an opportunity to come back to MetTech because it's the industry I belong. I felt like I could have another good run. So I joined CMR two years ago. So it was part of a very well-planned succession planning move. So I came in as a chief commercial officer for 10, 11 months. As planned, I moved to the CEO, Joe, your role in October

2024. And now I've been in charge for 14 months and I'm ready to tell you more, but this is my bigger. That's super helpful. And we're recording this in early 26. You mentioned that, you know, it's been about two years, right, since you joined the CMR team. Tell us a little bit more about like why.

I mean, I'm sure you probably had a fair number of companies, right, that you could have maybe joined and started to build, but you chose CMR for reason. Maybe touch on that and then also, because I'm sure this had a lot to do with it, right? Tell us a little bit about the robot, right? I think most people that are listening in this are at the very least familiar with intuitive, but there's a lot. There's a fair number of players, right?

So maybe touch on on that and how you think about the space in general and where you're maybe choosing to disrupt first. What area you're choosing to disrupt first? Well, the two things are really well connected, because if you ask me, the reason why I chose CMR was because it was robotic. And I have to tell you more. So I've been always a robot enthusiastic guy at the point that when I was in Smith & Nephew, it was one of the biggest advocate for us to enter the robotic market in orthopedics. So probably you know, but after Meiko, Smith & Nephew was the second company entering the

robotic market. I was there. I was part of the project. We made the acquisition. It was a good move for the company. And I remember that, you know, I was I was really passionate about this kind of business. And the reason is that it projects us to the future, you know, the future of surgery overall, because it's not only robotics, it's digital, is the AI implementation. It brings us to really the next level of met tech. And that was the reason why I said, oh, I like this one. I knew that it was a challenging market to enter in and, you know, to challenge the market leader. But nevertheless, I said, I can learn a lot. I can be stimulated by new things. And that was the reason. Now, that's why I said that it's quite well connected to the second part of your question,

because I said, Versus was for me the way of entering robotics with something that is different. You know, I see the market becoming quite crowded, but the reason why I'm very positive about CMR and Versus is because we continue to be very different from all the others. I see the tendency overall of trying to emulate, if not copy, what Intuitive Surgical has done in the last 25, 26 years. In fact, our strategy is completely different. We want to be different, if not. complementary to whatever robotic surgical program is needed around the world.

So therefore, the differentiation of the product, the fact that it is portable, the fact that it basically is the only one which fully replicates the laparoscopy approach, laparoscopic approach, and gives an opportunity to just move robotically whatever have, you know, and adopt robotically, whatever you learn from a laparoscopic standpoint, this differentiation, you know, excites me and makes me believe

that we have a brilliant, brilliant and bright future. Got it. And I'm on the website now, which is CMR surgical.com. CMR, like the letters just as it sounds, CMR surgical.com. Highly encourage you to check it out.

Robot is super, super cool. It's very portable, right? I think most people, when most people think of robots, they think of a pretty large footprint inside the, inside the OR, but versus is definitely not that. Very, very small, very easy to move around, it looks like. But again, we'll link to it in the full write-up on MedSider, but if you don't get there, CMRurgical.com, I highly recommend you check it out.

Max, give us a sense for kind of, we're going to go back in time and learn a little bit more about, you know, your journey and kind of where, you know, maybe touch on some things that you're trying to do different, right, at CMR. But with that said, give us a sense for kind of where the company's focused at in 2006, especially coming off your recent 510K. Yes, sure. It's an exciting year. We have been working on the 2026 plan.

So let me start by saying that we are so pleased about the 2025 results. We do not disclose results. But I can tell you that it was not only a year of transition, but was really successful 2025. We deliver against all our objectives. We grew very, very healthy all over the world. We had successful fundraising at the beginning of the year. Then we got the FDA approval even before, I mean, earlier than what we expected, thanks to the hard work of our people in tech and the regulatory.

They did an excellent job. So 2025 was very successful, and we entered 2026. as you can imagine, one of the main goal for us is to do the right thing by entering the most important and most competitive markets in MetTech, which is US. We are now approaching the first future clients and we are really excited about what's going to happen in the US next. But that is not only the only objective that we have. Of course, as you can imagine, we remain strongly focus on R&D plan execution.

I want CMR to be even more ambitious in terms of future generations and also to accelerate, and this is where we have allocated the $200 million plus dollar that we raised at the beginning of the year, we want to, of course, focus on the US, but also accelerate our plans in R&D. I do believe that by accelerating the plan and by focusing our investments in the right areas, we can continue to, let's say, being perceived as an innovative company and perform well into every market, including the U.S. So it's about execution. If you ask me to summarize what 2026 looks like, I think execution, execution, execution, the plans are clear. People know what they have to do, and now we have just to execute. Yeah, I had a feeling you're probably going

to touch on executing here in the U.S., but you did exactly that. One of the things that caught my attention kind of leading up to this interview and doing some background research is I think again most people that are that are listening to this show know of CMR right um I don't I wouldn't pretend that I'm some expert when it comes to the robotic space I follow it loosely but I always have this kind of assumption that CMR was earlier in in kind of its um life cycle I mean maybe for lack of a better description but I didn't realize that that you guys had done over 40,000 procedures with with versus already so that's I mean that's an impressive feat alone and I'm sure I'm sure is going to, you know, provide a lot of a launching pad right into the, into the U.S.

market here this year. Yeah, we are well above 40,000 now. And I think that we are very proud of the outcomes and, you know, the patient safety. We have our own CMR register and we keep recording all thanks also to the telemetry, but we have a close relationship with the users. And it's not only about the number, but it's also about the fact that the outcome for patients. It's safe and the outcomes are really positive. And we keep expanding in terms of procedures. We keep expanding in terms of countries where we sell. We are now active in more than 35 countries.

And of course, US is not yet there, but we will be soon there. And you know, when people ask me, you know, why this success story considering that was early in the cycle as you said correctly, because the market needs alternatives. I have a huge respect and admiration for what intuitive surgical has been doing since 25 years. I think that is a great company. But at the same time, I do believe that competition makes the market and the industry better. So I think that the market was waiting for alternatives on other things. And as I said at the beginning, the good thing is that we are really,

really complementary. We're not a copy pace of whatever they have used. They have to, they can look at us as a completely different solution to get similar results or to operate in the similar surgical areas. Very good. I think it's a super helpful background and kind of sets the stage for maybe the next 20, 30 minutes where I want to cover some some key topical areas, right, that are core to what you're doing at CMR, but also, you know, pulling on kind of lessons learned, you know, throughout your career leading up to you taking on the CEO role here at set at, at CMR. So let's start with with the first one, because I think it's a nice transition, right, from what we were just discussing, which is, you know, you're gearing up for a pretty significant

commercial launch. You have a ton of experience, as you mentioned, right? 30 plus years now, 20 plus years at J&J, another, what was it, seven or eight at Smith and Nephew, and not just experience in the U.S., but globally. So when you think about kind of what, a couple of the key things that you're trying to kind of instill in the culture at CMR, based on that breadth of experience and other large strategics, what are a couple things, that stand out. And you can feel free to flip that question around, you know, or things that you're definitely avoiding, right, based on things you've learned as well throughout your career. If I try to summarize in a few bullet points or in few words, I would say the key points, the key learning

points for me have been, point number one, it's always about people and talent. You know, you only succeed if you surround yourself and you, you know, fulfill the company with talented people. you can spend all your time in designing whatever strategy, you can have whatever org chart, but if you don't have it, you don't attract the right people, you go nowhere. So people and talent make the difference. Then when I look at my past experience, and I have, again, a huge respect for all the companies that have worked, I'm very great, really great for the experience. but moving to a small company,

no longer a startup, but not yet a huge company. What I try to keep in mind every time is that bureaucracy and internal politics can kill performance. And that is actually the message that I give all my colleagues every day, especially those colleagues who come from big companies,

say, look, you have to bring with you all the great experiences, but you also have to understand, that we cannot replicate it. We have just to adapt and adjust because the environment is different. And I can give you a nice example. When I stepped into CMR,

one of the things that I was shocked to find was the number of processes, internal processes. And that was the outcome or just, you know, everything happened just because at the beginning all the people came from big companies, and they tend to replicate what they knew. And we ended up in having processes that normally you find in 80 billion revenue companies.

I said, okay, you know what? Let's start from there. Let's start to destructural. So processes are important, but the number of processes that we can handle needs to be at the level of, I guess I said, not a startup, but there's no common. We need to be agile, nimble, and so on.

These are my learning. So it's all about people and keep it simple. Keep it simple, agile, nimble, and customer focus. All the rest, you can make. I heard it kind of reminds me of a conversation that Justin Klein had with Mike Mahoney at the MedTech Conference in the summer of last year, summer of 25. And I remember listening, I wasn't there, but I remember listening to the podcast. It was a great interview.

And Mike mentioned, obviously, Boston Scientific's much larger, more kin to J&J and Smith and Nephew. but he said they have kind of a mantra in his leadership team of what stupid rule did you kill this week, in essence, right? I think that's, I'm paraphrasing. I think that's kind of close to what he mentioned. But I thought it was something good, right? And I'm sure the people that are listening to this at Boston Scientific say, well, we still have a lot of stupid rules. But I think the message was it's something active, right, that you've got to pay attention to

and be mindful of, like, you know, on a weekly basis, like being proactive, right, about trying to, trying to squash rules or in your case kind of trying to squash unnecessary processes. So I'm glad you brought that out. Now that you are saying this about Mike, I mean, I worked for Mike back at the time with Jane Jane. So when we were in J&J, maybe I, I'm into it from from my head. Just kidding. But I share, I share is a much more important CEO in this industry. But I share what he said. Yeah. But I don't want to underappreciate like the something i mean it can be it sounds fairly straightforward to talk about but you coming in you know first as obviously uh you know chief commercial officer but the with the plan to take on the ceo role you know sometimes those processes are you know kind of use as security or people

that have been there a while kind of hang on to those processes and it can be kind of challenging right saying oh you know we're going to we're going to we're going to remove a lot of this stuff right and so uh you obviously have the courage courage courage to do that because but i but it's something i don't want to gloss over because especially at CMR, you mentioned it. I mean, it's not a startup anymore, but you also don't want to lose that kind of that agile kind of nimble kind of mentality. So, yeah, anyway, I'm glad you touched on that because it wasn't something that I probably would have expected you to bring up. So with that said, let's touch on another kind of kind of topic, right, which is largely around kind of lessons learned kind of in the similar vein of commercial

execution. You mentioned that you're kind of positioning versus as almost complimentary, I think, is the word you use to other robotic systems, especially intuitive. And taking a step back, thinking about making a splash in the U.S., myself included, but most people would say, like, you're taking out a monster, right? Intuitive is the de facto player in the space, et cetera. So maybe touch on that. Like what's the commercial approach? Give us a kind of a, peel back to maybe the layers of that a little bit to give us a sense

for kind of how you're approaching the U.S. market. Well, first of all, thanks for this question because it gives me the opportunity to clarify that I don't think that we are only complementary. We can be complementary, but we have also a huge market where we can win without be complemented to anyone. So if I look at the US, and please, is the question more about US? Yeah, yeah, maybe let's stick to the US. Yeah. So if I look at the US, I can tell you one thing. So last year, for more than 12 months, actually, We worked hard in getting data information. We worked with best in class firms in order to get feedback from the market, understand the market.

At the beginning, the idea was really to focus on ASEs because of our portability, our characteristic, our features. We said, we want to win ASEs. And this was all about the main objective of our strategy. But during our, say, learning process about US, we learned, we heard that, you know, there is a need in the US of something that, on product, like versus, that could offer, first of all, an alternative overall and also different characteristics for all the hospitals that need those kind of characteristics. I'll give you an example. There are hospitals that have invested heavily in robotics. They get the first one, the second one, the third one, and then they have many others ORs, and then they have many other specialties. And the CEOs of these hospitals, the GM of these hospitals always get requests from

chief of department. They want to start with robotics. And they look at, okay, what should I just keep buying new robots? And some specialties will not really have the number of performance. that will give me a payout or a payback and so on. So we can work with them and have a strategy where, you know, thanks to the features and the characteristics of our robot, they can leverage this portabilities, the modularity, the versatility, and, you know, moving it from an OR to another if they need,

giving access to multiple specialties to the same robot, just moving a robot from an OR to another. And then, of course, is about, outpatient department where spaces are smaller, you know, the kind of needs are slightly different. So what we learned in a nutshell, Scott, is that it's not going to be only about ESCs. Our strategy is going to be a wider strategy. And what we want to do, we want to just go, remain humble, aggressive but humble. I keep saying this to my team.

We need to be aggressive but humble. recognize that the U.S. market is a challenging market, that expectations are very high, and it's also a market that is dominated by the incumbents and it's not going to be easy. So I think that our idea is really to show, first of all, how good is the product, which is I think that this stage of robotics is important to start from the clinical outcomes, rather than fireworks about, you know, marketing tools. You know, one of the things I'm obsessed when I hear about telesurgery, all this stuff, I said, look, first, let's start by showing the surgeons and the patients that the clinical outcomes are simply great and perfect. After that, we can build whatever success story only if we start from clinical outcomes.

Because at the end of the day, we're not looking for a commercial success. We are looking for patient benefits. And the patient benefits and surgeons benefit will bring us to the commercial success. Hey, everyone. Let's take a quick break to talk about FastWave Medical, the company I co-founded and lead as CEO. We're developing next generation intravascular lithotripsy or IVL systems to tackle complex calcific disease. Over the last few years, we've closed a series of oversubscribed funding rounds, bringing the total investment into FastWave to over $50 million. Corporate interest in the IVL space is growing to the $900 million acquisition of Bolt Medical by,

Boston Scientific in 2025, and Johnson and Johnson's $13 billion acquisition of Shockwave Medical signal a lot of attention on emerging IVL startups like FastWave, and we're making serious progress. In addition to recently receiving our ninth patent, we've successfully completed peripheral and coronary feasibility studies and are gearing up for pivotal trials. If you're interested in investing in the fast-growing IVL market, head over to fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Now let's get back to the conversation. I'm glad you brought it up because it's easy to get lost, especially with a newer technology,

right? You're rolling out all these, you know, various features, which I want to, I want to jump into here in a second, newer capabilities, et cetera. And you find yourself, you know, kind of going back to like the core needs, right, which are safety and efficacy, right? I mean, ultimately, that's what physicians care about first and foremost, right? is like what, you know, how, what are the, what's the clinical data, right? Show me that it actually works and it's safe, first and foremost.

And so sometimes I think it's easy to kind of, I don't want to say forget about that, but like, you know, focus on all of the, you know, the newer things and lose side of what's, you know, what's still, you know, important, right, to, to clinicians. So I'm, I'm really happy to, to drill down on this because sometimes I see the tendency in our industry of just, you know, going to the market. and trying to make a big marketing splash with very futuristic things. But only in this specific area, I remain old style. For me, for me, what matters is really are the clinical outcomes

and showing the surgeons and the patients that by using the product we sell, in this case, versus in CMR, we really accomplish that. We give them a better access to surgery. Yeah. And just to kind of circle back to what I mentioned earlier, it's like, you know, you can spend, you spend whatever six to 12 months gearing up for a commercial launch and you're in the weeds talking about, you know, this new feature or this new capability, right? And, you know, when you end up, you know, having discussions with physicians, they always seem to come back to, well, is it safe for my patients? And does it work? Like, show me, show me the clinical data.

So it's good stuff. So. And we went through Scott. It's extremely important. You said there would be people listening to our chat and they know even more than me about robotics. So it's important that the message gets out clear. And it takes time before you end up in having a performing stable system in robotics. This is an inevitable cycle you have to go through. Everyone is inevitably going through this cycle. When you first launch your first robot, most likely is not the most stable, the most performing. You have to learn, you have to collect the data and be quick in assessing and fixing.

And this is where CMR, in my opinion, has done an incredible job. because in comparing to other experiences, in few years, we were able to launch Vesius Plus. You know, we started with Vesius. Now we launched Vesius Plus. And Vesius Plus is really a super stable, performing, reliable system. On that note, let's talk a little bit about capabilities, right? Because I think on, I believe it's VERSC plus, you have limelight, the ultrasonic deceptor, there were a couple things that seemed to stand out from my perspective, kind of do some background

research leading up to this conversation. But maybe answer this question within the context of how you decide to deploy capital. Because you mentioned this earlier when you took on the CEO role. Yes, it focuses on a U.S. commercial launch, but you're also thinking about what's next from an R&D perspective. And so how do you, like what are some key things that you've picked up on over the years, maybe, you know, go even circling back around your time at J&J and Smith and Nephew? in terms of making those decisions on where you're going to deploy capital next from a R&D and product perspective. I would like to be very specific on CMR. I'm not referring to past experience, although, as I said, I had some robotic experience in one of my previous companies.

But here specifically, the way I look at deploying capital is keeping in mind my big aspiration. So I always joke and say that I should put a trademark on what I'm saying before everyone will use it. But I keep telling everyone that I would like CMR to become the first tech company instead of met tech company. Which means I want to deploy capital behind huge development in R&D and really working on the digital side, extract whatever possible from this AI revolution that we have been living in. And therefore, for me, R&D inevitably is and will remain one of the key areas of development. And I go back with, I go back to what I said. First of all, I want to be sure that I attract, hire and retain the best talent in R&D.

I need very innovative, smart guys who help me. bringing this company from the METTEC to the TechMet world. And then, you know, as you can imagine, you know, this is the way you work and keep your differentiated approach to the market by offering more and more support and tools to the surgeons through digital. This is where we are focusing now. As I said, we started with Versus. We just launched versus Plus.

As you can imagine, we are already working big time on Versus II. And we have clear how versus three will look like. But in the main time, there is a lot that we can do on a digital front and side in order to make versus two versus three even more better and more performing than what we had in mind when we agreed on what versus two or versus three should be. So R&D and driving the digital evolution of robotics is for sure one of the main objective of this. of our company. And of course, of course, we are small. And when you're small, part of your capital is inevitably needed to scale up and to continue to invest in the countries where you can win.

So we became quite selective. We know where we want to go and win, and we will keep investing in those counties. Are not few, but we have cleared the list and we have clear plans on how to invest in commercial execution. You mentioned the word tech med. For those that have never heard that phrase, right, because it's kind of, it's one that, I don't know, was introduced maybe, I think in our ecosystem, maybe one to two years ago.

I first started hearing about this word, but how do you explain kind of the concept of tech med versus med tech? Well, as I said, is where all the digital solutions will probably enable more the existing product, rather than just inventing new products. I always use the example of, you know, it's a classic example. Everyone uses the self-driving automobile industry

where, you know, you want to be sure that you give every time new tools to the drivers in order to stay safer and to drive safe and to have better outcome at the end of the trip. So it's exactly what we would like to replicate here, knowing that somewhat this is part of what people say is a democratization of surgery, because if we can really develop the kind of robots that give almost zero chances to make mistake, then you end up in giving an opportunity to all patients to be operated with, I would say, 100% sure, but 100% clear expectations in terms of outcomes.

Let's transition to capital, right? We talk about your thoughts and how you frame up deploying capital and a company the size of CMR. You just came off a pretty big fundraise, right? So let's touch on raising capital. And most of the founders and CEOs that I have on the program, I would say the majority kind of fall more in the series A, series B, sometimes series C, maybe every now and then a series D kind of CEO,

CEO will join the program. But, you know, this is this is high stakes, right, raising a $200 million round. That is a, that is no easy feat. So for those maybe CEOs that are listening now, right, that have had successful kind of, you know, series B, series C's under the belt, but they're more like in the neighborhood of 30, 50, 60, 70 million dollar range, 200. What, what changes at that at that level? What do you think are some keys to closing around of that size? I hear something I think a few years ago I heard something that I like

always to keep in mind and it was like if I remember what was like early investors bet on the product and late investors bet on exit so I'm very lucky and fortunate because our investors although they have been around for long

some of our BC funds have been around for than five, six years. They are not focused on exits. They are focused on giving a CMR the opportunity to create value. They are really supporting all of us with new funds because, you know, the 200 million came mainly from existing investors and partially with that. But the existing investors were very clear. We really want you to continue to focus on creating value and making this company every every day better. They are not, they are not really pushing me in any direction on taking decisions in short term in order to monetize, not at all, very lucky, very grateful of having this kind of

investors. So therefore, you know, what I could say to my fellow, you know, colleagues and CEOs is just be sure that you are surrounded by the right investors and at the same time have a transparent conversation and expectations because that is the only way of, you know, keeping the collaboration at the right level with the board. On that note, I want to get your thoughts on team building, right, and hiring, because it is one of the things that you mentioned very early on in the conversation, right, the importance of people. But let's touch on board, right?

Because you've got obviously a pretty sophisticated board now at CMR stage. What do you think are like the one or two things that are especially important to maintain a functional board, a board that actually is helpful to the company versus a distraction. Well, I'm very patient about this because at the time I was working with TPG, I went through, I went to Ains AED and I got a diploma on international directorship. I'm very passionate about boards and how the boards run business, influence the business. They are involved with. So I think that the point number one for me is, first of all, personal trust. You know, you have to spend time in building the mutual trust between board and CEO, board

and management, single board members and CEO, single board members, and key manager, key leader of the company. Second of all, I would say clear governance with very distinct roles and no great areas between board and management. Because, you know, it's inevitable. Sometimes you have gray areas, but you have to minimize the possible conflict when people don't really follow the script

and they don't apply clear governance on how to distinguish the role between board and management. I think that basically these are the truth. If you build the right trust, if you basically create sort of common vision and way forward between the management and the board. And at the same time, you have a clear governance. And as a CEO, every time you see the tendency of going beyond the governance or taking over a little bit of the management's role, you have to have the courage to say, what, stop here.

We need to keep these two things fully differentiated if we want the company to succeed. This is what I think, personally. I'm glad you mentioned governance because it's, I think, to most people, kind of a bland topic, right? But it's really, really critical, especially at certain stages. Well, really at any stage, for that matter, but especially at a stage like yours where there's difficult conversations that are undoubtedly going to come up, right? And, you know, sometimes those devolve into emotional conversations. And if everyone's sort of aligned on, you know, from a governance perspective, it's really, really important, right? Well, I mean, I can, I don't know if it's a little bit too much.

I was in conversation with a friend of mine and CEO of another mid-sized company, a private company, was telling me about the fact that after two, three years, he has realized that now the board is entering in his decision, taking decision and so on. And I asked him, are you trying to push back? He said, I'm trying, but I'm not able. So they are just asking you to go. If the governance was there, there are boards that are not structured. But if the border is a structured board, there is a governance. And after a few years, you see this falling apart, you know, something went wrong. I mean, and therefore you have to jump to some conclusion and understand that there is a message behind the B.

No doubt, no doubt. And sometimes, you know, especially if maybe you're coming into a company for the first time, everything feels good, bored seems otherwise pretty, pretty normal, pretty healthy, you're undoubtedly going to run into challenges and difficult conversations, right? And that's why I think it's like especially important that you brought up governance, right? Because if you can establish that up front and sort of always point back to that as a North Star in those difficult conversations, it just becomes, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's one of those things that you don't maybe think as is as important until you're in the throes of some of those challenging, challenging times and, and it does, it does become very, very important.

So maybe the, maybe the takeaway is establish that up front or make it a priority, you know, to get alignment around governance, you know, from the, from the get go if you're, if you're joining a new, a new company, large or small. So agree. I agree. Yeah, I want to leave a little, a little bit of time for the rapid fire portion in this interview, but let's touch on hiring, right, and kind of circling back around to kind of one of those key things that you mentioned, that you're bringing,

not necessarily bringing to CMR, but it's a focal point, right, of like, you know, the people concept. And so when you think about either working with a group of people that's been at CMR, right, or recruiting and finding new talent to build up maybe a certain function, maybe it's commercial execution in the U.S. as an example, what are a couple tips, right, that you give to other CEOs that are, maybe don't have quite the team building experience that you have? Well, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to say the obvious, but for me, the way I look at hiring new people is mindset more than skills. I mean, skills is something that you know, you can get in a fairly amount of time, but mindset rarely you have a quick change of mindsets from people. And considering the world we live in, I think resilience is another thing. and another characteristic I look at when I hire people at all level. As I said, if they have a strong background and they know what we are talking out is good,

but if the mindset doesn't fit into the culture and the needs, yeah, better you go over and try to find the right people with the right mindset and the right approach to business. Mindset and resilience. Those are two really, really great ones. I don't know if they're overly obvious too. Maybe mindset a little bit, maybe resilience, I guess, to a certain extent. But so, so important, right?

Especially, I mean, most of the folks that listen to MedSider are kind of more startup oriented, right? And maybe CMR's still kind of consider CMR a startup, maybe later stage startup, right? But hiring is like so crucial. And if you don't, if you're not careful, right, about bringing on folks that do have similar, kind of similar thinking, right, a similar frame that they're working from, or maybe haven't had some of those experiences prior, right, that have really pushed them to the edge and they've shown a sense of resiliency.

If they're learning that for the first time at your startup, I don't know. Sometimes it can be a little bit rough, right? So if they've had to work through some of those things in previous roles, it's super, super crucial. Yeah. So with that said, Max, let's jump to the rapid fire portion of this interview. But again, for everyone listening,

CMR surgical.com, CMR Surgical.com, just as it sounds. We'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider. If you're new to these Medsider interviews, those longer form write-ups, try to highlight some of the key insights that I guess share on these podcast discussions. So I encourage you to check those out if you haven't before. And we'll link to CMR's website there as well as Max's LinkedIn profile. You can check them out there too.

So with that said, Max, first question on the docket. Feel free to expand on your answers if you want to, but it's meant to be more rapid fire in nature. Since joining CMR a couple years ago, what's the most surprising or unexpected thing that you've learned? Well, let me think. I learned a lot. As I said, the business per se gives me an opportunity to challenge my intellectual curiosity every day. But I would say, look, I would say that the thing that surprised me the most is how quick can be a turnaround if you surround yourself with the right people. I just want to be honest, the results that we had last year are well above my expectations, although I'm very positive normally. When I said, you know, when I share plans and business

plans and goals and objectives, I'm very positive. I push the organization. But we ended up in fantastic results. And I believe that. I was surprised by that. I was surprised. And the reason is that we had great people already on board, but we had also another three or four, and that made a huge difference. That's good.

Kind of touching on the people concept, right? Once again, so definitely a theme of this conversation. Let's say we just finished up dinner. Maybe it's a summer evening in Cambridge there in your neck of the woods. And we're sitting around a group of med tech, other med tech entrepreneurs, right? kind of some earlier than earlier stage in CMR, maybe somewhere on the same stage. What's like the one lesson that you would want to leave them with, right?

That if they're going to find any sort of success in their adventure, they really need to really need to hone or really need to focus on. Well, this is, you know, I would love to be original, but I'm not sure that I can get there. But I would say that the only advice for me is just being yourself, regardless your job title, regardless, you know, your pay grade, whatever it is, just be yourself and apply your values, principles. And I'm sure that that is the only good way to succeed in life and in business. Yeah. Interesting that you brought that up because that's one of the, you know,

when I think about, I don't have, you know, 30 plus years quite yet, although I'm getting starting to get gray. My cybers are starting to get, you know, show a little gray. I'm more like kind of, you know, closer to, closer to 25, 20 to 20 to 20. five years in MedSec anyway. But that's one of the things I look back on in my earlier, kind of earlier stage in my career is like sometimes you, you know, you're just trying to maybe get that next promotion or just trying to fit in and you tend to kind of like bend or not, you know, kind of morph into someone you're not in essence, right? You don't maybe necessarily lean into your strengths. And so I think that's just, I'm glad you, I'm glad you mentioned that,

right? Because it's really important, especially for those that are kind of earlier, earlier in their career. So with that said, talking about kind of earlier in your career, let's go back in time. and maybe whisper something in the ears of the younger max. You know, call it, you know, put yourself like maybe late 20s, early 30s. You know, your professional career at that point in time is probably, you know, really starting to take off. Anything you tell the younger version of yourself? I'm happy to say that I have no big regrets, so I'm not going back and talk about big things.

But maybe an advice that I would give to myself at that age is to celebrate more successes, the successes of your life. And as you correctly said before, I mean, we are in this business or whatever business and we just look at what's the next, what's the next promotion, what's the next big job I can get. I think that I've been always like this,

always focusing on what's next. And the advice would be enjoy more successes because, of course, you have also to spend a lot of time in learning when you fail, but when you succeed, enjoy the time. of, you know, and reward yourself. Yeah, get ready to wrap the conversation.

I love the answers to the last two questions specifically. So with that said, Max, I can't think enough for coming on the program. This has been a fun conversation. CMRsurgical.com is the website. CMRsurgical.com. Again, we'll link to it in the full write-up. Definitely encourage you to check out the site. And obviously, CMR is going to be doing some big things in 26, right, with the Versus

robot. And I'm kind of excited to kind of watch, you mentioned it a couple times earlier, but like Versius, you know, two, and then, you know, you know, versus three. I'm not sure how far those are out, but it'll be fun to watch CMR take on a giant here in the U.S. So I can't thank you enough for carving out some time to do this, Max. Really appreciate it. Thank you. It was fun. Thanks a lot. I'll have you hold on the line here. But for everyone listening, you made it this far,

appreciate your attention as always until the next episode of MedSider goes live. Everyone, take care. Hey, it's Scott again. One quick thing before you go. You see, I love bringing you insightful conversations with the best founders and CEOs 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. So if you found value in this podcast, if you found yourself nodding your head while listening, or if you simply enjoy what we're doing with Medsider, please take a moment to leave us a review. It's super easy. Just open your Apple

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