Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Lessons Learned Bootstrapping a Startup from $0 to $20 Million: Interview with Medsider Founder Scott Nelson

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

In this episode of Medsider Radio, I sat down with myself. Well, sort of. This unique episode of Medsider flips the script, putting myself in the interviewee seat alongside my good friend, and temporary host, Brett Johnston. We discussed where founders should focus early on, guidance for taking the leap from your corporate position, and how to know which opportunities to pursue.If you’re new to this show, here’s a little more about me: I spent the last two decades in the medtech space, starting in medical device sales roles that ultimately led to startup leadership positions. During that time, I followed my curiosity through several career transitions while engaging in side projects along the way. I'm the founder of Medsider, Joovv, Crossfire Medical, and FastWave Medical. The latter two are spinouts from Big Sky Biomedical, a medtech accelerator that I also started with several other serial entrepreneurs.Before we jump into the conversation, I wanted to mention a few things:If you’re into learning from proven medtech and healthtech leaders, and want to know when new content and interviews go live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter. You’ll get access to gated articles, and lots of other interesting healthcare content.Second, if you want even more inside info from proven experts, think about a Medsider premium membership. We talk to experienced life science leaders about the nuts and bolts of running a business and bringing products to market.This is your place for valuable knowledge on specific topics like seed funding, prototyping, insurance reimbursement, and positioning a medtech startup for an exit.In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost. If you’re interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, here's the link to the full interview with if you'd rather read it instead.

I think one of the key lessons there, and a lot of people that I've interviewed on this podcast have said the same thing, like, you've got to be willing to like take risks, right? So many times when I ask the question, you know, of other, you know, device founder, CEOs, etc. They're like, I just, I wish I would have done it sooner, right? In retrospect, it wasn't, you know, it felt risky at the time, but in retrospect, maybe it wasn't, you know, and I wish I would have just gotten involved sooner. Welcome to MedSider Radio, where you can learn from proven med tech and healthcare thought leaders through uncut and unedited interviews. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson.

Hey there, it's Scott. In this episode of Medsider Radio, I sat down with myself. Well, sort of. You see several weeks ago, one of my longtime friends, Brett Johnston, offered to turn the tables around and interview me. I thought it sounded like a pretty fun idea, so we decided to make it happen. If you're new to this show and not familiar with my background, here's a little bit more about me. I spent the last two decades in the MetTech space, starting out in medical device commercial roles that ultimately led to startup leadership positions. During that time, I often followed my curiosity through several career transitions while engaging in some side projects along the way. I founded MedSider about a decade ago, co-founded Juve, Crossfire Medical, as well as Fast Wave Medical.

The latter two are spinouts with my business partners at Big Sky Biomedical. Here are a few of the key learnings that Brett and I discussed in this conversation. First, when in a full-time role, dedicate about 10 to 20% of your time to explore opportunities outside your job description. the insights you gain will benefit you and your company. Second, acknowledge the risk inherent in any career change. Understanding the potential for reward and growth on the other side. Third, founders need to be willing to dabble and experiment in the early days of a project. Make space to pivot as the work evolves and ensure they're working with the right team as early as possible to optimize decision-making and results.

Last, never stop networking. Stay close to your connections and allow space for future projects you can't anticipate. Look for opportunities that align with your experiences and expertise. Okay, so before we jump into the discussion, I wanted to let you know that we just released the first volume of Medsider mentors, a print-based book that summarizes the key learnings from my favorite Medsider interviews over the past six months. Look, I fully realize it's tough to listen or read every Medsider interview that comes out, even the best ones. But there are so many valuable lessons you can glean from the founders and CEOs that join our program. So that's why we decided to create Medsider mentors.

It's a way for you to learn from the best thought leaders in our space in one central place. Here's a teaser of what you'll see in this first volume. Gar Hong Kong, founder of HealthQuest Capital, teaches you how to successfully pitch your startup. Patricia Ziliak, CEO of Ivansons, discusses what you really need to know about clinical trials. Jared Bauer, CEO of Ionic Sciences, shares best practices for avoiding obstacles in your startup journey.

That only scratches the surface, so if you're interested in learning more, head over to MedsiderRadio.com forward slash mentors. If you're a premium Medsider member, you'll get free digital access and a print version sent straight. to your door. If you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. In addition to every volume of Medsider Mentors, you'll get full access to the entire library of interviews

dating back to 2010. This includes conversations with experts like Erica Rogers, CEO of Silk Road Medical, Dr. David Albert, founder of LiveCore, and so many others. Learn more by visiting MedsiderRadio.com forward slash mentors. Again, that's Medsiderradio.com forward slash mentors. All right, without further ado, let's get to the interview. Okay, Scott, I appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to come in and flip the script on you. And I'll have to start with, I've been obviously been friends for a really long time. As I look back and think about it, one of the longest standing relationships that I have with anyone in the med device space is with you. And it started about 20 years ago.

and we can talk about how we met if we want to, but the fact of the matter is we, no matter how much time elapsed in between, we still pick up the phone and just catch up on a lot of things. And as I listened to more to your podcast, I became more fascinated really with what you've done. And I thought about all of the people that might be listening to you. And I think that there's a group of us, myself included,

that looks at somebody that started off in the pharma slash med device space and at some point pulled the rip cord and went over into this startup and not that you're just working as a sales rep for a startup, but that you're owning them and you're growing your network to a level that you can pull in and get to know VC people, how you get money, how you work through the FDA, all of those things are not easy skills to learn. And I just felt like, first off, I want to know how you did it.

And I think that there's a lot of people out there that have dabbled in. What do I do next? I don't like for whatever reason working for a big medical company. It's just not me. We can talk about, I know that you were frustrated. And that was part of the things that moved you all. because I know a little bit about you. But I wanted to go back and create really what I thought was a blueprint for somebody

that's listening to say, okay, here's the steps that it's going to take for me to go from Med Device. Here's the risks that I'm going to have to take. And here's where I want to end up. And I don't know anyone better to do this with than you. So thank you for letting me flip this on you today. No, this is going to be a lot of fun. I know when you first proposed the idea, I was like, this is a interesting concept,

but it probably makes a lot of sense, right? I've been recording these MedSenter interviews for over a decade now. And the people that have kind of listened along the way, you know, it's a decent podcast by now on a decent little website. And I'm sure a lot of people probably have the same questions as you. Like who is this guy that's behind the mic, right? Like, how did he get to be, you know, where he is right now, you know? So, yeah, it should be a fun conversation.

And I'm sure I'll be able to. kind of retell a lot of the big failures along the way, but also maybe provide a few insights into kind of what lessons I learned too. So it should be fun. Well, I'm looking forward to it. So let's start Scott back maybe at the beginning of your med device career. Maybe you graduate from college, you go in and maybe do some sort of sales role first and just maybe go through and give me the elevator pitch of what you did. Yeah, yeah, I'll cover some of the very early stuff, you know, pretty briefly, just so we can kind of get to the, probably the substance of what most people I think want to learn. But I'll cover like, I'll go back, I'll go way back in time,

I guess, right? So I was pre-med and undergrad, thought I wanted to go go down that path, did all the things, right? Kept my GPA super high. I did all the extracurricular stuff, et cetera. And then after taking the MCATs, the spring of my junior year, I interviewed I went out and sort of got my feet wet, right? Interviewed, you know, several different docs and various specialties and walked away from that thinking, this is, this is not me. I don't know if I'm not, I'm sure if I'm ready to commit, you know, the next 10 to 15 years of my life going down the med school residency and fellowship path.

And so I say all that because I sort of, at that point, I had a degree in biology, right, didn't really know what to, didn't really know what to do. And so my first gig coming out of undergrad was actually, with a small commercial finance company, something completely different than their life sciences, right? Because I was like studying biology, chemistry, the whole premed path. But it was interesting to me, right? And I think one of the things that's sort of a theme throughout my, you know, career in the device space, really just my professional career in general is just a natural curiosity. And I think that's key, right, for anyone's eventual success is to kind of keep your mind sharp, always be, you know,

always be selling, but maybe more importantly, always be learning. And so it was just, you know, that, that world, that finance world kind of caught my attention. It was something completely different. So I spent about three years doing that, something like that and came to the conclusion that it wasn't really what I wanted to do for the next, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. And my mom is always growing up, she was a nurse. And so she knew a bunch of farmer reps and device reps. And she was like, hey, Scott, have you, have you thought about this? Like, that could be, you know, that could be, you know, an interesting path to pursue. And so, she introduced me to a few people.

I had gotten to know a few device reps. And so I was like, yeah, this is really interesting. The appeal of being able to be in procedures to help train physicians, etc. That was all very interesting to me. And of course, is everyone listening to this interview that's been in the device game and knows that the jobs typically pay pretty well as well. So, yeah, landed with a small surgical company, not small, I guess, decent-sized surgical company called ConMed. That was my first device gig as a sales rep. And then it kind of

moved, used that as kind of a bit of a launching pad into the cardiovascular space. And then spent time with Boston Scientific, came into Cavidian through their acquisition of Bacus vascular, which was a thrombectomy device at Tom Thogry company, a thrombectady device before a thrombectomy was popular, I guess. And then stayed on with Cavendian and Medtronic through 2015. And then really since then. You know, we're recording this in late 2022, so really for the past seven plus years, I've been involved in various startups. Some, some as a very early employee and then others, other companies that have actually started. So that's sort of the, it's a high level kind of synopsis, right? But I'm sure we'll probably get into more details. Yeah. So I appreciate

you running through that with me. And, you know, thinking back on some of our conversations, one of them specifically, well, several are specific to my, to my memory, but one of them that that I wanted to touch on was your time in the marketing role, right? We met before you got into sales. And so we worked together for maybe it was a short period of time that we were actually on the same team, maybe a year or two. And then I had done a marketing role and then it really touted sort of the positives about it as far as a career choice.

And you ended up making the same choice. And you had, I think, a little bit different experience than I did. I just remember talking to you. And the word impatient and frustrated is coming to mind. And at least that was one of the conversations that we had. And I just maybe that was the genesis of you saying big companies aren't for me. So I wanted to maybe let you touch on that. And if that's correct or not, just kind of get your thoughts.

on it. Oh, 100%. Yeah, for sure. In fact, like, now that I've been outside of like a big corporate environment for, gosh, a long time now, you know, close to a decade, I don't think I could ever probably go back. You know what I mean? It's just the pace that you sort of get used to operating at, you know, with less bureaucracy, you know, faster decision making, et cetera. It's just a pace that definitely fits my mentality a lot, a lot better. And I think quite honestly is something that's missing in MedTech across the board is just the ability to move, move quickly and move fast. And so, so yeah, for sure, I think you nailed it. And patience is not necessarily my, my strong suit, although I think I've gotten a little bit

more patient, right, as I've made mistakes, a lot of mistakes along the road. But it's definitely something that I want to always be mindful of, right? I want to, I think there's a, there's a balance that you strike between, you know, being 80% confident in a decision and optimizing for speed, you know, versus being, you know, slow. and methodical and patient. I think it's it is it is a balance and I think only by probably trial and error, you know, and more experiences you learn to kind of, you know, you learn to balance those those two sides of the game appropriately. But yeah, like circling background of your question, I mean, I grew up in the sales game, right? And so the device sales

game and in the Midwest. And so you're not exposed to, you know, Silicon Valley, you know, startups or, you know, startups in Boston or whatever. And so like the one, like the obvious path if you want to stay in that geography is kind of you know continue down the sales path into sales management but i think i've always sort of been curious about other other things i wanted to know like how you know how devices came to be um you know how businesses you know work through different regular regulatory processes etc like all of those different functions in a in a life science business always kind of intriguing um and you're granted there's there's so many positives to spending time in sales but you're only exposed to to a certain

a certain aspect of a business, you know? And so there's other, these other things that were, you know, very sort of intellectually stimulating to me, I guess, for lack of a better description. And at the same time, I knew I didn't, I knew, I didn't always want to spend time in sales. I mean, I wanted to, I wanted to do something, you know, something different. But one of the things that we've always chatted about is this idea of this golden parachute, you know, if you're in device sales or sales management is that you tend to make a lot of money. And it's hard, the risk versus reward of like, you know, making a career pivot is, it's pretty difficult. You know what I mean? Because if you're making, you know, $200 plus $1,000 a year, there's just not a lot of other,

you know, gigs, especially gigs that are in-house, right, at a company that are going to pay that kind of money, you know, and I had a way, I always had to weigh that against, you know, a family. My wife and I got married pretty early. We started having kids right away. And so, you know, when you have, when you had kids of the equation and wanting to provide for them, it's just always a always a tough call. But I kind of got to that point in my career where I was at Cavendian at the time. And I got to know the leadership at Cavidian in the Perforvascular business unit, Brennan Marilla, who's a great guy. He's now a chief commercial officer at Osceo. And then Robert Rajallingham was the VP of Marketing at Cavendian at the time. And now

he's, I think he's president of some business unit Cardinal. But anyway, I got to know them fairly well. And they were starting this new program where I guess they were kind of restarting a program that had once been in place at committing where you bring salespeople in-house, right, into marketing roles and to hopefully stimulate more communication, right, between upstream and downstream marketing and sales and trying to foster, you know, more dialogue, more engagement between those two functions. And so I was in, I was in Des Moines, Iowa at the time. This was in Minneapolis. So it wasn't like a huge relocation. And it was just, it was like one of those opportunities where you get in your career where it's like, if I don't make the jump now,

I'm sure you could probably, you know, remember back when you did the same, made the same move. It's like, if I don't do this now, I don't know if I ever will, you know, I'll probably kind of continue down this path of, you know, sales management and then maybe, maybe eventually, maybe some other, you know, sales leadership position. But I'm never really probably going to have a legit opportunity to kind of be exposed, going house and be exposed to so many different aspects of a of a business. And so it was big risk, right? Like, definitely you take a pay cut, don't kind of know what to expect. And I'm sure we'll get into it. to end up being kind of dicey, right? Because about a year in, Medtronic acquired Covidian,

maybe a little bit more than a year, Metronic acquired Covidian. And the whole leadership, you know, was sort of shaken up. And, you know, as a sales guy coming in in house, so that program was like, you know, I was kind of left almost like feeling empty handed, right? Like, what do I do next, right? All these sales guys, or the, I'm sorry, the business leaders that brought me in are now gone. You know what I mean? So what do I do? So, but I think one of the key lessons there. And a lot of people that I've interviewed on this on this podcast have said the same thing. Like you've got to be willing to like take risks, right? So many times when I asked the question, you know, of other, you know, device founder,

CEOs, et cetera, they're like, I just, I wish I would have done it sooner, right? In retrospect, it wasn't, you know, it felt risky at the time, but in retrospect, maybe it wasn't, you know, and I wish I would have just gotten involved sooner. Someone that comes to mind is Mark Toland who was, you know, I think at one point he was chief commercial officer in Boston Scientific's cardiovascular business, which is like a, you know, multi-billion dollar business. And now he's, he's a EIR at Biostar and runs a few different portfolio companies. But that's something that he was like, you know, as a, as a commercial guy, he was like I always didn't, I kind of didn't feel like I could add value right to a startup,

you know, because most of the activity in a startup is always, it's very heavy on the R&D side. He's like, as a commercial guy, I was like, you know, what kind of value can I bring? And he's like, I wish I would have just engaged more in various startups because a lot of lot of those engineers, physicians, engineers, et cetera, that are, you know, heavily involved with some idea that they're trying to bring into life at a startup, they don't have the foresight to think about, like, what does commercialization of this thing look like? You know, they don't have, they don't have anyone around them to kind of help them think through that. He's like, I easily could have gotten involved, you know, with various projects and brought some commercial

expertise early on. So I think that that's one of the key lessons that I've learned personally, and I would probably echo to anyone listening to this, that, you know, is at that point in their career where they want to make a jump is like you're going to have to take a risk right. A move is never a move like that or a pivot, a pivot is never going to be easy. But I'm pretty convinced that you figure it out. You know what I mean? Make the jump.

It's something that, you know, going in house at Cavity and I don't look back on it all. It was a phenomenal as frustrating and impatient as, you know, certain things were, you know, going in house and kind of dealing with that. It was a phenomenal learning experience. I mean, you just can't. It's something that you can't replace, you know, without doing it. So, yeah, that's probably the moral of the story is like every career pivot's going to come with some risk. But, you know, you got to take some swings.

Right. And I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to come back to that. I think that just to summarize sort of this time of life for you and me both, right, was there comes a point in your sales career where you're either going to stay in that vertical forever, right? maybe move into a management role, maybe move yourself up. Once you get past that frontline manager role, manager roles above that, don't come open that often. So you could be sitting there for years as well.

But anyway, so I think that just to summarize again, you and I would both agree that the earlier in your career, that you can move in-house and do anything, whether it be sales training or marketing, whatever they'll let you go do, and then if you that you will learn more

than you possibly could have imagined because in my mind salespeople you want a good comp plan new products and don't go on back order ever that's the scope of what a salesperson thinks right and once you get in house you just learn things you never would have learned before otherwise and for someone that's listening

and that's thinking maybe this is what I should do if you don't like it in two years go back and be a salesperson person. You're way more valuable than you were to that organization and two years goes by to flash in house. Yeah. And I would add that if that were the case, right, let's say you spent you go in house for a couple years, two or three years, and things fall apart. It doesn't go as well as you planned. There's leadership, shake up, whatever, and you end up kind of going back in sales. And maybe that's kind of where you wanted to go anyway. The things that you'll learn along the way

will make you so much better, so much more effective. You know, whether you're at a large strategic, a mid-cap, a small-cap, a startup, whatever, those experiences are irreplaceable. I mean, you'll learn so much how things function internally across a wide variety of departments. It really, you'll become that much more valuable from a career perspective, but also you'll learn so much more and be that much more effective. Right. I guarantee you your job today is easier because of the two years that you spent in that corporate office.

Oh, 100%. You know, another thing, too, that comes to mind. as well, and you mentioned this, you touched on this briefly, is I think I've always been halfway decent at like when I, when I take a new gig or join a new company of getting to know people, right, people that like resonate with me, right? And getting to know them and kind of staying in touch and building relationships. And don't get me wrong. Like I wouldn't say burns and bridges along the way either, but kind of maybe push to, you know, push them lovers as well that I wish I hadn't. But for the most part, I think I've been halfway decent at that. And I remember even contemplating some of these moves,

being able to ping you and say, Brett, like, give me, like, you just did this. You know, you're like a couple years ahead of me, basically. Like, what was this like? You know, pros and cons, like, what's good, what's bad, et cetera. And that's probably another thing that I'd want to make sure people that are listening to this kind of understand is like there's so much value in being able to kind of curate this network of people and being, you know, even if you only talk once a year, being able to call them up and saying, hey, I've got this opportunity, you know, give me your honest take. What do you think? You know what I mean? There's so much value in that. So I mean, kudos to you, right, for being the wise, the wise older brother, right? Or slightly older brother, you know, that can lend some helpful

advice. Yeah. And, you know, it's the, the feeling is obviously mutual, right? And the more that you've moved off and done some other things, the more likely I am to have reversed those roles, right and really see what you're thinking what you're learning what you're doing and I would you know you can't say enough about having people in your life that you that you trust know care about you and will give you their honest feedback it's just it's it's it's worth more than you think but I wanted to pivot a little bit on you know there's there's a point that I think a lot of people have in their career in med device where they say okay I'm going to start doing a side hustle, right? And you may or may not have done that. So what I guess I want to ask you

is, did you do that? I just can't remember. Is that how it started in order to mitigate some risk? Or did you just say, okay, you know what? I've got 100 grand in the bank. I can live for six months. And I'm going to go, I've got this friend that I've met through Medsider, because you started a Medsider before this, right? You were always one that built your network, more than anyone probably that I know, that reached out and really met your dead on. You hit it. I try to meet a lot of people. That's an understatement, right? You know a lot of people. But anyway, I just kind of want to know how you mitigated that risk with a family because I think a lot of salespeople that might want to do what you do. That's what they're going through. That's the struggle. Right. And I'll say

one other thing real quick, that's probably pertinent here. I was up at Wharton a few years ago and interviewing one of their professors. And I was talking him a little bit about starting in Med Device when I was 22 years old, making decent money at J&J. And I told him, I felt like I should have gone and done some different things and taken more chances sooner. And he said, well, you know what your problem was, is you started off so young, making a lot of money, and you had a family, you became risk averse. And he was right. You spoke of it a minute ago.

So that's kind of where I wanted to go with this part, right? How did you balance? How much money you had in the bank? And I don't care. You know, we don't have to be specific. But maybe you don't care right now. You're like, you know what? This is what I did.

This is how much I was making. This is how much I was thinking I would go to. And we're talking, you know, seven or eight years ago. So to me, that's always been the biggest question. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great questions. And I think probably a lot of people that are listening, if they're in like

rules that we're talking about, right, whether you're a sales manager or sales rep, thinking about the same thing. Like, give me the details, right? Like, how did you actually cross that chasm or cross that hump? Yeah. So just to set the stage. So I was at when I, that story that I mentioned of, you know, the two leaders that come to my Brenna Marilla and Robert Rajaldingham, when they kind of restarted this program and it

caught my attention, I was like that this, this, This may be, you know, it's maybe the only opportunity I get to make this kind of, this kind of jump. I think my last full year in the device sales game, I, you know, I maybe made on a 250,000, you know, something like that's pretty good money. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, life changing money, but pretty pretty good money. And I think the guarantee that I had going in house was, I mean, it was tiered, right? So your first year, you made a little bit more money than your second year, because it was kind of set up as a two-year program. I think it was like maybe a buck 70, you know or something like that. I don't know. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less.

But hopefully that gives people an idea. I mean, it was a pretty significant pay cut. And my, you know, we, we had kids at the time, right? My wife stayed at home. We got five kids now. You know what I mean? So it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like, you know, that's still a lot of money, I think, you know, comparatively speaking. But it was a big pay cut, right? And so, you know, staring that down and kind of saying, you know, am I, is that something that I, that I can live with? You know, and so, you know, when we, when we move from, like, the Des Moines area to Minneapolis, we went from, like, owning a pretty big house, right? And then we leased for, you know, the initial, like, 18 months when we were in Minneapolis because we didn't know that area. And it was like a

felt like a significant kind of, you know, downsize, right, going from like owning a pretty spacious house where real estate's a little bit more affordable in central Iowa to, you know, Minneapolis. It was a much smaller house. We were kind of like tight and compact. But, you know, did that feel like comfortable? Not great. You know, it was a little bit of a lifestyle. change, but from my perspective, it was, it was worth it, right? You know, and I think that that's, those are the types of decisions that I think if you want to, if you really want to do something else in, in your, in your career, you got to be open to making some of those, some of those harder, harder decisions, you know, and so at some point, you just have to take the leap, right? You've got

to take a swing at the, at the plate. And so I kind of like, looking back, I think that's kind of, right, that's sort of what I did, right? Just take, take a swing. And like the analogy that I, I oftentimes use with people that are kind of weighing these, these sorts of decisions is like when you think about, and I hate always, you know, using sports analogies, right, because they sound cliche, but like the best basketball players in the world, right, they don't take 10 shots a game. There's a reason they go like 10 for 30, right, or, or, you know, 11 for 35 or whatever. They're taking a ton of shots per game. And that's sort of like what you have to do from my perspective in order to, you know,

in a career, if you kind of want to want to do some cool things, is you've got to take some swings. You know what I mean? And some of those swings you're going to miss or some of the swings are going to kind of be uncomfortable and you're kind of, you know, you're going to sort of strike out, right? Or leave people on base. But, you know, some of those swings you're going to hit. And so I think that's probably, you know, that's probably the how I, how I would sum up some of the,

some of that, those decisions. But, you know, coming back real quick on you on the side hustle concept. So I, so yeah. So to a certain extent, yes, I've always been like entertaining various side hustles, right? since very early on. But Medsider was kind of born out of that a little bit. You know, I was making decent, decent money. Thought it would kind of be, you know, interesting to, you know,

I've always kind of dabbled in various kind of side ideas, so to speak. And I was avid podcast listener at the time. This is back in like 2008, 2009. But I was always curious, right? I was always curious of like, I'm listening to these cool podcasts, but there's nothing around like life sciences, medical device, med tech, health tech, whatever. Like it was, you couldn't find anything.

How do these companies actually start? You know what I mean? Where did this cool device that's, you know, being used all the time? Like, how did it actually, where did it come from? You know what I mean? Who's the inventor behind it? How did it actually come to fruition? There's nothing available.

Like none of that content exists. And I was like, well, this one entrepreneurial podcast that I listened to at the time is called Mixer G and Andrew Warner's, he still does it to this day. I was like, well, why can't, I kind of want to do that, right? I mean, he gets to meet a lot of interesting people. And I had no idea what I was doing at the time or what it was. what, you know, the type of time commitment or whatever. And I was like, well, I don't know, no one else is doing this. It's kind of interesting to me. So like, I'll just do it. You know,

and that's kind of how MedSider was born. I thought, oh, maybe I can make a little money on this, you know, as I go along. And I've never really monetized it. But in retrospect, it's been phenomenal, it's been a phenomenal opportunity to build out a network, right, with people that I never otherwise would have been able to have conversations with and learn from. So, you know, I think that that story, that short story around Medsider specifically, it kind of speaks to, you know, tapping into that natural curiosity and not being afraid to just like do things right um not thinking about it too much not overthinking but just kind of doing you know uh and i'm i'm a pretty big leader in action trumps you know strategy all day so that's sort of a kind of a core core tenant of mine

so how how did you evaluate well first off how did you find opportunities right when you were busy doing what you let me say this first for anyone that might be listening that's working for a major medical device company, there are ways to let the company know, to disclose what you might be doing, and especially if you're not making any money. And I've been very open with my current employer about working for helping diverse candidates

get into the med space, right? I don't make money off of it. And I do it out of passion, I do it in my spare time, right? And when I have divulged that to them and they know that and they, proved it. So anyone that's out there, don't risk your job, right? Because I've seen that happen as well where someone thinks, oh, I'm just going to start distributing, you know, clips for somebody, right? And your company calls up and says, hey, who's my clip rep? And what Scott Nelson and you get like,

go the next day, right? So that's not a, that's not a good plan either. But how did you, how did you, so there's two elements to it. One, you got to find it, right, the opportunities. And then number two, you have to evaluate which ones of those things that you find to pursue. Right. And I think, like, I go back and forth between like the value of side hustles, right? Like, I firmly believe that even if you're at like a large, a large corporation, right, and have kind of more of your classic corporate job, like there's an immense amount of value to you individually as well as the company for you to be allocating, you know, 10, 20% of your time

towards sort of like discovery or exploration of different things. You know what I mean? Because there's there's so many insights that you can pull in, right, to your current, your current work. And so I'm a firm believer in that. But I think, if I kind of understand the question correctly, I don't know how many times you're going to be able to like, say you're in a, say your sales manager, right, making $250, $300,000 a year. I don't know how many. There's few and far opportunities where you're going to basically be able to turn a side hustle into something that completely displaces that gig. I mean, that's just, I would think, I don't know, I don't actually think that's the right approach.

In fact, I would say, like, if you're, if you're kind of into dabbling a little bit, don't, don't jump off a cliff, right? And don't, don't, don't dabble for a little bit in a side hustle and then think it's golden and then just jump off a cliff because all of a sudden your side hustle that you were interested in that's not got to pay the bills, it's not going to become an interesting side hustle. It's going to become like super painful, right? Because all of a sudden, that has to provide for you and your, you know, your family in a lot, in a lot of instances. And so I would just be very cognizant of that.

And like when I think about my career, yes, I've dabbled a lot for sure. There's no doubt about that. But like the swings that I've taken at the plate where I've hit, it hasn't been all of a sudden turning a side hustle into something, you know, into something that immediately works. You know what I mean? And even what I'm doing now with like, with the accelerator that I'm involved with at Big Sky and the portfolio companies

that were that were turning out. I've been able to work on this primarily because I had the freedom, right? I had the freedom to go and try to close an investment and milestone-based acquisition for Fast Wave because of what I had done previously, right? I could afford to spend, you know, six, nine months working for free on that to try to turn it into something. I had that sort of freedom. And so I think ultimately that's probably what you're looking for is like more flexibility

that you can then leverage into something that you maybe, maybe you want to do. Does that make sense? So let's get more. descriptive, right? So the sales trainer in me is coming off a little bit. So I apologize. But, but let's go back to when you made the jump. What was in front of you? What did you choose? What did that transition period look like? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, let's get a little bit more pragmatic. So, so I made that I went in-house, right? This was at this was COVIDian at the time for this kind of two-year in-house program, right? I was on a certain, I was on a guarantee for that two years. But

about halfway through Medtronic, you know, roughly about halfway three or so, Medtronic acquired Cavidian, there was an entire leadership shake up. And so that, that path that I thought I was on, right, of being able to leverage that two-year program into something bigger and better, that kind of went away overnight. You know what I mean? And so there was a, I mean, there was a period of like roughly three to six months where it was like, it felt pretty stressful. Like I didn't know, I didn't know what my next move was from a, from a career standpoint. And, you know, there was a few other positions internally. but they felt kind of more, very much more lateral, you know, and at that point, inside a big

company, you have to be kind of strategic about the moves you make, you know what I mean? Because if you make a lateral move, then everyone else inside the organization is going to question, like, why did you make that move? You know what I mean? So you've got to be somewhat thoughtful about it. But at the end of the day, like a lot of those other opportunities that I was exploring internally, there was a kind of a couple things that surfaced. One is that they did kind of felt lateral, right, and it wasn't overly compelling to me personally. And then secondarily, like, I just felt stifled inside a big corporation. You know what I mean? And don't get me wrong, like the learning experiences were phenomenal like we discussed. But, you know, I just felt stifled to a large extent. And so that's what

sort of led me to like, like, is this really what I want to do? Do I want to kind of like, you know, work up the corporate chain, you know, sort of use this, you know, program and kind of work up, work up the, not necessarily the ladder, but kind of move up the, move up the chain, so to speak. And, you know, I was like, ultimately, I was like, I don't, it's not really interesting to me. And that's where the opportunity with touch surgery came about. So I'd always kind of been interested in startups. And through, actually through the podcast, I'd had a couple, I'd got to know a couple people. And there was like an inbound interest in joining touch surgery, which was this digital health startup that was based in London, ultimately was acquired by Medtronic. And it was sounded

interesting to me. I have always been involved in, I have always been interested in digital health and kind of this, this convergence of, you know, offline and online and in MedTech. It seemed like a really interesting opportunity, but very early, right? I think at that point they had raised maybe a seed round of capital was based in London. The business model wasn't totally, you know, totally figured out. But it was the people that were there were interesting people, right? Tim Parkins, who's a guy still keep in touch with, Jean Nemey, Andre Chao, both founders of touch surgery, both like really interesting personalities, incredibly smart, very savvy from a business perspective.

It was just like, I felt like kind of a big leap, right, to do that. But it was like, there's a lot of positive signals at the same time, but not without its risk, right? I was, you know, going from kind of a very safe, comfortable, you know, position inside Medtronic, right, to this, you know, this small little, small little startup that was based in London. London and so, but anyway, the business model wasn't totally like, they didn't have the business model totally figured out. But at the time, I, what my role was VP of partnerships. So basically selling, they, they developed, um, uh, simulations at, at base simulations, right. So if a surgeon wanted to learn how to do a, um, a PCI, right, they would, uh, you know, and they're in fellowship or residency, they may, they would maybe go use a touch touch, they would start out maybe with a touch surgery simulation on their iPad. you know, to sort of, you know, get their feet wet, so to speak. And so the business model was like selling, like was largely centered around selling, selling the, the platform into device companies.

Hey there, it's Scott. And thanks for listening in so far. The rest of this conversation is only available via our private podcast for MedSider premium members. If you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. You'll get full access to the entire library of interviews dating back to 2010. This includes conversations with experts like Renee Ryan, CEO of Kala Health, Nadim Yared, CEO of CVRX, and so many others. As a premium member, you'll get to join live interviews with these incredible medical device and health technology entrepreneurs. In addition, you'll get a copy of every volume of MedSider mentors at no additional cost.

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