Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Testing Demand Before Perfecting Technology: Interview with Eyebot CEO Matthias Hofmann

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Matthias Hofmann, CEO of Eyebot.Eyebot is commercializing retail kiosks that deliver quick, efficient vision testing.Before Eyebot, Matthias led product development at Formlabs and served as an R&D lead at EyeNetra, where he helped bring the first smartphone-based vision test to market. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with graduate work in vision science and optics. In this interview, Matthias discusses how early missteps informed Eyebot's strategy, how he proved demand before raising capital, and how iterative clinical studies established commercial credibility — along with his unconventional advice on fundraising.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 Matthias Hofmann.KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(02:53) - Overview of Matthias’s background and the journey that led him into vision care startups (05:58) - Lessons from solving the right problem the wrong way at EyeNetra (08:44) - Why Eyebot chose a kiosk interface instead of smartphone vision testing (11:08) - How Eyebot designed its system to deliver accurate prescriptions in about 90 seconds (18:17) - How Eyebot proved demand with a rough prototype and a “Free Vision Test” sign in a Boston mall (29:01) - How clinical studies and iteration built the evidence retailers needed to trust the technology (33:17) - What commercialization revealed about consumer behavior in eyewear retail (37:07) - Matthias’s fundraising advice: run your raise over Zoom and don’t lead with your pitch deck

We just coupled together some money and had no external investment, just our own money and our parents' money. And we just hacked some stuff together and built the thing and we actually got permission to put it into a shopping center in a mall in Boston. Very gracious that, you know, that they actually allowed us to do that. And we put in there, we put a big sign up. It's a free vision test. And sure enough, get lines of people check their eyes. And that to us was the big proof that like this is a thing. Like people care.

Welcome to Medsider, where you can learn from the brightest founders and CEOs in medical devices and health technology. Join tens of thousands of ambitious doers as we unpack the insights, tactics, and secrets behind the most successful life science startups in the world. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. Hey, everyone, in this episode of Medsider, I sat down with Matthias Hoffman, co-founder and CEO of Ibot, a company automating vision testing through kiosks that deliver doctor-reviewed eyeglass prescriptions. Before IBot, Matthias led product development at Form Labs and served as an R&D lead at Inetra, where he helped bring the first smartphone-based vision test to market. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering with graduate work in vision science and optics. Here are a few topics we explored in this conversation. First, when

commercial adoption isn't meeting expectations, how do you determine what's really holding it back? Second, can you validate demand before clinical credibility or do they need to move in parallel? And last, what makes a fundraising pitch truly memorable to investors. Before we dive into the full episode, if you're a MedTech founder or CEO preparing to raise capital, you should check out the MedSiter fundraising cohort. This four-week live workshop combines small group sessions with real-time feedback to help you sharpen your investor story, build a targeted investor pipeline, and run a focused fundraising sprint instead of a never-ending slog. Over the month, you'll walk away with an investor-ready narrative in deck, outreach scripts that actually get responses, a refreshed LinkedIn profile, a simple content plan that keeps you on investors radar,

and a repeatable system for running your raise. You can join the waitlist at medsider.com forward slash fundraising cohort. Again, that's medsider.com forward slash fundraising cohort. All right, let's get to the interview. All right, Matthias, welcome to Medsider Radio. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having. I know things are hopping at IBOT.

So I especially appreciate your time and really looking forward to this conversation. I think it would be some interesting, interesting things. that you share for our audience that I think for the most part are going to be going to be quite helpful. So first one on the docket, though, is really just your background, right? I recorded a very abbreviated kind of intro at the beginning of this episode, you know, that touched on your background. But let's start there. Give us like a one minute kind of elevator style pitch of your history before co-founding and running Ibot as CEO. Yeah. Hi, Scott. Thanks for having me. So my backgrounds, I'll just give you the abbreviated version because I throughout my childhood and also,

an adult. I traveled around and moved around a lot. But the short version is that I'm born in Switzerland, born and raised. I did have a stint living in California and then back to Switzerland, but mostly raised in Switzerland. And then around 19 years old, I moved to United States for college. At college and engineering, then ended up in graduate school in vision science, optics, physics, that kind of thing. And then ended up as a postdoc in Boston working on mammography. So I'm very mission-driven. So my mom at the time had breast cancer. She's fine now. But I felt that was a calling for me to work in a field that I felt like can contribute to, you know, loved ones.

And yeah, so I worked in mammography for almost, well, well, over a year until I, that was at Harvard Medical School. And so I walked into somebody at the school at a function who just started his new startup called I Netra. And it was an MIT spin out. And it was the first startup or first company to use smartphones to do a vision test. And I thought that was amazing because I had bad vision. I need glasses. I've needed glasses my whole life. I've always wondered why it's so damn difficult to get new glasses.

Enthralled by this idea and, of course, startup culture and life. That was back in 2013. So I hung up my academic coat immediately. And two weeks later, I was like, hey, I'm joining this startup. And so that's how I really started in the industry. And there's a lot more after that. But that's kind of the transition into how I joined the vision care industry. Okay.

Got it. Have you always been, even growing up, have you always been a little bit more, your appetite for risk is like higher than or greater than most, right? Because it sounds like you made the jump, you know, with relative ease into the world of startups. I think so. Yeah. Maybe I'm more of a person that once I see something very clear in my head, I go for it. Just go.

Yeah. I think that also helps a lot with decision-making in startups because you have to make decisions with incomplete information a lot. You try to gather up as much information about and facts and even anecdotal things before you make a decision. But at some point, you just have to make a gut call and then stick with it, which is the hard thing. Yeah, no doubt. We'll get into that in a little bit more detail here. But we're reporting this in early 26. It looks like, I mean, based on your LinkedIn profile, you started.

started ibot back in the spring of 21 so we're like you know call it almost almost five years right on five years kind of in the in the making touch on maybe the a little bit of the origin story around why you decided to give this to go and then obviously tell us more about the technology because the website which will link to in the full write up ibot dot co a super cool website like the technology looks very cool so yeah take us back in time to why you started the company and the touch on the technology as well yeah really the origin actually of ibot goes back all the way to 2013 when I joined that vision care startup we were the first ones to use smartphones to do a vision test to get to a prescription first ones to bring that to market we tried everything from you know

2013 was a time when smartphones were in everybody's pocket and everybody's wondering well what can this supercomputer do in my pocket besides being like a Facebook and Instagram machine and of course the excitement was around and health and well can it do? do blood pressure, can it do a vision test to get to a prescription? And so, uh, the answer is yes, but that's essentially the, the thing is the theme is it's yes, but. And we brought it to market. We got the, we did all the necessary work for clearance, did all the clinical studies necessary. We did that all the work and we came up with all these different solutions that on paper worked. But the big thing that we could not get passed was that,

People don't want to feel responsible doing their own health care. That is not so obvious when you start a company like that is that Barbara and Bob don't want to fidget on this hacky thing. And, you know, at the end of the day, you get maybe 5 to 10% of the population to do something like this and the rest taps out. That was a realization we made around 2014, 2015. And of course, there's a bitter pill to swallow, but we learned a lot. And especially actually what I took away from that time was that, yes, back then, even 10 years ago or so, the doctor shortage was already a problem. We knew we were building the right, like we were solving an important problem. We were solving an important problem the wrong way.

That was a big lesson for me. Nobody doubts or like I think you can ask anyone, do you enjoy. joy buying eyeglasses and the answer is typically no it sucks getting to a prescription is cumbersome and complicated and requires scheduling and planning and all this stuff and money and it's been that way for a long time it's pretty antiquated and we knew that the problem was the same back then it's an even bigger problem today less doctors the population has grown the more people are myopic more kids are myopic that we're going to be adults soon and we're actually having less doctors.

We have less eye doctors today than we had 10 years ago. And actually in 10 years, there will be 30%, even 30% less doctors than we have today. And so back then we knew it was a problem. We just solved it the wrong way. Yeah. And then I left that company and it's been marinating my head for years of like, gosh, like, what do we do wrong? And it was very clear at some point it became clear to me. It's an interface problem.

It's not a technology problem. It's the interface that needs to be solved. And that's actually, once you eliminate all the things that you know are true and you know about the industry, you end up essentially with a kiosk. Did I ever imagine that I would ever build a kiosk company? Of course not. But what ended up happening is that through a process of elimination, we realized that that is the user journey and interface that people, that the majority of Americans can understand.

and interact with. Yeah. And that was a really more important insight. And so that's actually how, while, yes, we started the company in 2021, the making of this is far longer, actually. Yeah, like a decade, almost a decade in the making, right? Yeah, yeah. I want you to touch, like, just briefly on the technology, because we'll get into it

in a little bit more detail. But just to real quick on timing, I couldn't agree with you more, right? That's so crucial to any startup. But it sounds like you didn't maybe necessarily have the right solution back at ITRA, but also maybe the timing was a bit early. I mean, that's still, we're seeing like the burgeoning of kind of consumer-driven health at a whole nother level now versus 10 years ago. And I think with the proliferation of LLMs, like, it's probably just going to like accelerate things, right? I mean, people who are going to go to chat GPT, perplexity, you know,

Claude to at least to get a baseline, right, of where they, where they see, where they, you know, what's wrong with them or what they possibly could do before consulting, you know, a clinician. But But anyway, I just wanted to mention that because it, you know, timing is so, so important. If you're building a startup, don't be surprised if that's the frustrating aspect, right? It's like you maybe have really cool technology. It's just market's not ready for it. But yeah, touch on your technology. Right?

That we're just too early. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, we could probably spend the next 45 minutes, you know, go through example after example. But touch on the kiosk, right? Because like, again, iBot.com's a website. I highly encouraged everyone to check it out.

Well, again, we'll link to it in the full write up. But it's iBot, like E-Y-E, like your I-bought. Co. Website's super cool. Technology, I would say, is even cooler, right? So give us a sense. Like, what, what is this? If I'm going to, if I see this kiosk in, in a Walmart, like, what is it and what's it doing? Take us, you know, touch on that briefly. The way we thought about it is actually that, well, kind of finishing my point on smartphones, the problem with a smartphone is it's not actually measuring anything. It's really just like a glorified survey that you're doing. And that's not going to get you to a prescription very accurately or efficiently. And, and

that's really the problem. So the learning from that was, well, actually, how do you create, what are the requirements and the minimum amount of tests and measurements you need to do for an efficient but also accurate and well-tolerated prescription that when you put on the glasses, you're just like, oh, this is amazing. And you look at the entire examling and you realize, okay, this instrument, you don't need that for a prescription. You don't need this, you don't need And when you chop things away, you realize that for the prescription, there's four things that are what we consider essential in getting to a very accurate and well-tolerated prescription. That is a refraction technology, meaning that we can measure your settings of your eyes or the

correction needed for your eyes, but also a tool that measures your current glasses. So we have a lensometry technology that you put the glasses, your current glasses into a tray it measures their current glasses what their settings are. Because it is actually very important to know what you currently like or don't like. And the third thing is we do a visual acuity test. It's a letter-based test that also helps our doctors dial in the prescription. And finally, and as important as all the three that I just mentioned, is actually very good intake information about your history and your preferences, your hobbies.

like what do you want to use your glasses for? What did you use them in the past for? That is actually usually handled in a micro-conversation of the doctor in a clinic. When the patient sits across the doctor in the clinic, they had this micro-conversation about this and that, and the doctor immediately knows, ah, this is what you need. Like, you need computer readers. You didn't know those existed, but I can make that for you.

And so it's really those nuances that are really important. So we do all of those really core things. things. And then we collect all that information very quickly in about 90 seconds, actually. And you don't have to stuff you're heading to a machine or anything like that. You just stand there. It does all the work for you. And that was, you know, that from the smartphone days, that realized it had to be something that just works without people understanding how it works. It just happens. And so I collect all that information, goes to the cloud. And then every session is reviewed by a doctor who then crafts a prescription if the person is eligible. And, uh,

it crafts a prescription with a clinical training of over 10 years in the clinic typically, the same way they would if the patient was across from them in their own clinic. Got it. So that you get really high accuracy and really high tolerance. So after that kind of telehealth review, if you will, I'm going to call it that, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe that. Then I'm assuming as the patient, the prescription, right, if I need glasses or if I need a different, you know, you know, sort of a change, I guess, in my, in my prescription,

that's just delivered to me like via email or via text or something like that. Exactly. So once the doctor writes, effectively crafts the prescription the same way they would in their own clinic, that prescription then is sent to you via a signed PDF into your inbox, email inbox. We always deliver a minimum of one copy into one of your locations that you can receive. Okay. And also if you opt in, if you're in a store, for example, Walmart, you then can

also opt in for getting a fax sent directly to the store. I see. And I know if fax sounds so antiquated, but actually it's working really beautifully because that means the optician in the store immediately also gets a copy. And then they can take the conversation, you know, that handoff with that conversation to the patient who is in the store because they also need to learn what's available in terms of what kind of lenses you can get and what kind of settings you can get, what kind of configurations you can get with glasses.

Got it, got it. So just to review, I see this, like, beautiful looking kiosk in Walmart. I go to it. I don't have to, like, peek in the hood, right? Like, I'm at the DMV. I think we're all familiar with, like, doing the vision test. Like, the DMV, which, like, you've got to put your head in, like, the tunnel. So I just basically stand in front of this kiosk.

Nine is, like, quick, minute and a half. And then it collects a bunch of data. I get the telehealth. Is that a tele-consult with me then as the patient then? Or the data is just reviewed kind of, like, asynchronously? Exactly. The data is reviewed asynchronous. Okay.

So you walk in, you do a test, 90 seconds. It goes into, you know, you get a text message essentially that says, yeah, in review, you even see, like, where it's going. And once it's done, almost like a Domino's Pizza tracker. Okay. The doctor reviews it. And then in the case when you qualify, you get your prescription. And if something of interest is found in the images, the doctor may,

actually refer you to you. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So because I think the natural inclination is for someone to kind of look at your technology at a, from a 30,000 foot perspective and say, oh, the consumer does all of this, but no, the data is still reviewed by a, you know, by a clinician. So it's like they don't have to sort of take that burden on themselves and sort of trust this kiosk that, yeah, that it's delivering the right information, right? You still solve for that. So that's super helpful. So where's the, like, we're, again, we're recording this in early 26. So where's the company at in terms of like it's life cycle, about are you, I, you're actively commercializing this, this technology. Okay, got it.

So it's in, uh, different retailers. The one that we're public about is Walmart and Sam's Club. I can't speak to the numbers, but we're very excited about where we are today. Yeah. Very cool. Definitely exciting, exciting stage. I think most stages in a startup are very exciting, but especially when you're kind of, you know, early into commercialization, right? You're actually, you know, diagnosing or treating, you know, real, real patients or real consumers. So with that said, let's spend maybe the next 20, 30 minutes kind of going through some functional areas that every startup, right, has to kind of navigate through its journey if it's going to see, you know, some semblance of success. And I want to touch on the first one, right, which is largely

around product development. I think some of the more intense challenges are, are in those early years, right, where you're trying to get your product, your device, your technology, you know, trying to get to the next sort of, you know, milestone in terms of development, but oftentimes with very little, very little capital, very little dollars to be had at that stage. So take us back to kind of maybe those early years that I bought, you know, are there a few things that stand out in terms of, you know, things that you either did right or you did wrong that might be helpful for other founders and CEOs to learn from? Well, that's a two-partners. So the first question is, you know, the early days and I give you some tips on what to do, what not to do, and like mistakes

made and learnings made. It was like 2020. It was like peak COVID. And I started tinkering with this idea of like, what if it's like, you know, this new kind of interface, like a kiosk type interface. And the very first thing that I cared about was what is actually the user journey, not with technology. I've built all sorts of stuff. We'll figure out that later. Like, what is actually the thing that people are comfortable with using and can use? And so that was the first thing we, and so I called up Jack, my old co-founder co-worker from Formalibus. It's a three-year-pertern company. And I told him, like, hey, come to this maker space. I have, I built a thing. and I want you to look at.

And I need actually a mechanical engineer that's good at like actually, you know, turning this into it's more than just a thing. And he shows up and he's like, yeah, I've never had an eye exam in my life. What is this all about? I was like, Jack, you're, you know, like how, how, you're almost 30? Like, how did you end up with no exam, eye exam in your life ever? And he's like, well, welcome to American, you know, health care. And then we test his eyes.

And sure enough, he has like a stigmatism, negative one cylinder on, both eyes, which basically means that, you know, at night, like, you actually see a lot of star shapes when you're looking at, when you're looking at lights and things. So those can, that can be very easily corrected. I happen to have the right lenses with me. I pop some stuff together, and I put on a frame on his eyes to just prove to him that like he has astigmatism. And he puts those glasses on. He's like, whoa. And it looks around like this maker space. He looks outside and he sees like, you know, a tree with leaves. And he's like, I didn't know I could see all those leaves. Exactly. And you've been living like this forever.

It's not just you, Jack. It's like there's one in 10 Americans is not wearing glasses even though they should. You know, something like 8 million Americans are not buying glasses because they can't afford them. And it's ridiculous. How does that even in a first world country, how is that even a thing? And so Jack and I looked at each other at this point. We were like, well, even though we had this rickety prototype on a bench top, we're like, you know, this is a massive problem. And there may be a handful of people on this planet that know how to solve this problem.

And we looked at each other and we're like, well, let's be the ones. Let's solve it. I don't care how long it takes. But like we know it's a massive problem and let's just do it. And so cans and we started the company. And then the very first thing after that, it was we started building a prototype in his apartment. You know, we used friends and family money. Honestly, we just coupled together some money and had no external investment, just our own money and our parents' money.

And we just hacked some stuff together and build the thing. And we actually got permission to put it into a shopping center in a mall in Boston. Very gracious that, you know, that they actually allowed us to do that. And we put it in there. We put a big sign up that's a free vision test. And sure enough, get like lines of people checking their eyes. And that to us was the big proof that like this is a thing. Like this is people care.

And what's, and I have this on my desktop, this picture that I will never get rid of. is who like not just how many per day like we're talking like 60 to 100 people checking their eyes a day on on this box then but who like within a two hour period we're talking like black white Latino Asian rich poor educated not educated everybody like big beards and little old ladies and everything and and I still get goosebumps moments. I have goosebumps from thinking about this moment of realizing that we've created something that actually applies to such a broad spectrum of the population because we all have eyes. We all need to check them. And it's unbelievably hard to go check your eyes.

And that was to us like the big proof. And then of course, we immediately ran around the venture capital. Like, hey, we got a thing. And so we raised the first two million dollars as a pre-seed. Okay. We also at the time actually got National Science Foundation funding, so SBAR grants. That was the first money in, oh, that's not true. Actually, it was VC money, the first money.

Okay. Before the 90s. Yeah, at the same time, also got, it all happened sort of at the same time, also grants from the government. And with that, we were able to start really building the technology that made this interface work. Okay. The very first thing was not even worry about the technology, just prove that. people cared. That's awesome.

This was like early 21, but how quickly were you able to get that first prototype in that? I think it was, you said a ball, right, I believe, where you actually have like real people using it and kind of lining up to use it.

How, like, give us a sense for kind of how quickly that was. I mean, Jack and I, we read that a Wii work, uh, at some point we couldn't do it from his apartment anymore.

So we got a rework and then we were clearly the only hardware startup in a we work. Yeah. Because everybody else was just having computer like clicking and clacking. And we're just like all this like parts like rolling around. We work screws and. That's awesome. And so yeah, a lot of, we were definitely the most interesting company there

because we had a lot of people like watch almost like, almost like in a zoo. Yeah. Like watching us like these two weirdos. Yeah. The kiosk inside of We work. Yeah, it was such good favorites. I'm glad you. one of the things I always share with like, like newer founders, right,

that haven't been around startups. Like, make sure you document that journey because it's like so, it's so easy to kind of blaze through and look to the next thing that you need to get, you need to get to the next mile to, et cetera. And you kind of forget about like all those moments that are, that are really fun and should be, should be kind of, you know, capture. Yeah.

Even with software startups, but especially with hardware startups, it takes a long time to really get things rolling. Yeah. And you just have to, that actually is the second part of your question, is, you know, the learnings. It takes just longer than you think. But what we learned is to just, you know, like the North Star of where this is going. To us, it's very clear what that North Star is.

We want to make Vision Care accessible to all equally. You shouldn't have more or less access to getting a prescription and getting glasses depending on your geographic luck. That makes no sense. Or even your income or anything like that. but it just takes a lot longer. And so we focus on just what is the really next big milestone? We just get there and then we just set the next milestone.

And you just keep doing that. And then because it always feels like then you accomplish your main goals, they don't have to be massive. But then you get there, you look back. And at some point, you look back, you're like, oh, this is actually pretty turning into something. Yeah. But it just takes patience.

Yeah. Takes time. Yeah. Oftentimes two times longer and two times the cost. Or what is it? Two and four, two times longer, four times the cost or something like that. But it's almost like if you knew how much time and effort goes into it, you just wouldn't do it. Yeah.

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. dollars. 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 invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Now, let's get back to the conversation. I had this conversation a lot with, even with my group of kind of co-founders at FastWave is like, even knowing that that that's true in almost every startup, right, especially in the kind of life sciences or like med tech, health tech space, is that it does, everything takes longer and is more expensive. As a CEO, you still kind of, you do need to set like definitive, you know,

at least at least goals, right? Like we want to accomplish the, this particular milestone or this particular development effort in six months, nine months a year or whatever, and it's going to cost X amount. I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can use that as an excuse. She's really to set these goals, but, you know, no, be planning the fact that it does, it almost always takes longer. I think one of the best analogies I've heard recently from someone was that it feels like pushing this bowler up a hill.

And then on a sudden, like the boulder's rolling, you feel like, oh, my gosh, it's moving, it's over the hill and it goes over the hill but then you realize that was just like a local maxima the bowler stops again you're like okay here we go and then it's like you keep pushing the next over the next big hill that's after that yeah it is it is it's a good yeah that's a good that's a good analogy yeah and then sometimes that boulder's a little bit too heavy and it pushes back on you you know the funny thing is the problems that i have today if i go back two years i'd be like oh my god that's amazing we made it yeah yeah i'm dealing with today are have to do with scaling and have to do with producing fast enough which all sounds like wow it's like a champagne problem but it is

actually more stressful than when you're in the days when like nothing really mattered and you know the stakes weren't as high yeah so it just it's all relative yeah like probably in two years we'll look back and be like, oh, the problem I'm having today is like a joke. So true. Yeah, so true. Like the problems, the near-term problems in front of you always feel so huge. And then, you know, you run into even more challenges and bigger hurdles, you know, a year or two from now.

I'm looking at our set of questions. I want to be mindful of the times. I'm going to combine kind of the next two into one because I think it's, we covered some of this already. But I want to touch on it from a slightly different angle is, is kind of this notion of as a patient, you saw this, you know, whatever, 10 years ago at, at I tear where like patients largely, they didn't want to like, they didn't want to make a decision about their health care, like, and it had it fall solely on them, right? They didn't want

that burden. They wanted still like an optometrist or ophthalmologist to be, to be involved. Is that something that you were, like you were, you were mindful of right out of the gate at I bought it and maybe, maybe kind of overlay how you're thinking about clinical data, right? Because you've got clinical data that probably you need to use to convince clinical partners, retail partners, et cetera, but also you've got the patient element too that probably wants to know, hey, this is actually legit, you know, and it's, it actually is accurate. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, maybe, maybe touch on that topic. So on the clinical data side, yeah, of course, one of the first things we did, Jack and I was to partner with optometry and clinics to very quickly

iterate and test using IRB approved clinical studies. And because we, the technology that we built had to be built around the user experience. And so we had to very quickly try this, make changes, bring it back to the clinic, try that until we had the configuration, right? And also the technology, right, to do accurate measurement. And so we've done over, I think, close to 3,000 or more patients in the clinic, but all three iteration, right, over the last four years. We do 50 at a time, and then we do 100 at a time, and then we backtest and check again and so on. And then we will track essentially how close we are to the standard of care. And we get closer and closer and closer to a point where we feel that actually we're beating the accuracy and

tolerance that you would typically get from the traditional path of getting an IGOS setting. And so once we had that data to prove it and show those charts and show those data points, retailers started signing up. They're like, okay, this is the real deal. Because they've heard a lot. There have been a lot of other ideas throwing around. It was never really the real thing. It was too hacky. We made sure that by the time that we really go engage with, you know, B2B contracts and retailers that we're ready, and this is the real deal. We don't want to present them something that's not ready yet. And so we made sure of that. And then once they agree that it's right, the consumer, we also learned that takes a lot of their trust from the brand.

So the context here is really important. A lot of the trust that people have in using the technology like this actually is rooted in a brand or a company or a store that they already trust. And that kind of came with that. So really our focus was on making sure that retailers understand and believe in our mission and believe in our technology. Okay. Got it. Yeah, it's interesting because I think someone could make the argument that, look, if you present to a Walmart or name another, you know, some of the retailer, a business case,

like this is what we're doing. This is what we're solving. This is like how it benefits Walmart, etc. Maybe that could sort of seal the deal, right, or at least open up some sort of like, you know, sort of beta partnership. But they're still looking for a clinical data, right? I mean, they need to make sure that like the technology is legit and that, you know, their customers, right, are being served well as well. So at the end of the day, clinical data is so crucial to kind of. Yeah. You got to have an overwhelming amount of evidence. to show that this is the thing. Yeah.

I want to touch on fundraising because it sounds like you've got some interesting things to share on fundraising. But just maybe let's talk real quickly on your commercial model, right? Did you know out of the gate that this was like where you were going to start? You were going to go to Walmart or other retail partners and establishes this chaos? Or did you kind of work through some other ideas or other, you know, go to market, you know, plans before landing on this one? We always knew that the model was going to be,

that we work with Enterprise. Okay. That enterprise essentially is our customer, not the consumer. Because what we really, our vision is that ultimately we want vision care to be open, accessible, and effectively free. And I know that sounds almost too ambitious or not possible, but actually if you, through automation, a really automated data collection or testing, you can provide so much efficiency that actually,

the patients or consumers can get their eyes checked for effectively free, which obviously is a win-win solution. There's so many folks out there that I've never had an exam or had large gaps in their vision care. And we capture them all the time. Every day we see people that I've had an exam in 20 years or I've never had an exam, 55 years old, never had an exam. And so, yeah, we realize that essentially that automation allows us.

us to create this kind of model. From the very beginning, we encourage the partner that we work with to not even charge people money for this because it is a bit. And it is also potentially a very good driver into their business. And that seems to be showing quite well. And so then of course, they can be able to sell their goods more efficiently. So that was always the business model. Okay.

Where we did pivot more recently was that we started at the most extreme end of, of what's potentially possible is that you can essentially do a kiosk that is unstaffed. It's just a kiosk that somebody can use, get their vision tested, get a prescription if they qualify, and then also buy glasses with an online retailer. That's where we started. And we realized that was potentially two steps too far. Society is not ready for that pure hybrid digital interaction. one day will I think it'll be ready but I learned from maybe I didn't learn because that's where we started but when I was up forum labs Max was the founder of one of the founders of forum labs he's like

when you introduce new things you only have one token two or three so you got to be careful about not going too far and I think with with the very first tests we did we stepped a little bit too far but we wanted to see how far we can go to understand if society is ready for something like this. Yeah. Now, well, it became very clear, very fast, is that as soon as you put a person there to explain to people and, and, and understand, let them understand how it works, conversion just like went up double digits immediately to buying glasses. And then the next step is, well, what if you also put product there for people to try on, like glasses to try on, frames to try on? Conversion goes up more. And it's kind of obvious, but we didn't, like,

expect like how big of a jump. If you look at the data, 85% of the eyewear market is in brick and mortar stores. And that is just an unchanged number. Even during COVID, it only like changed by like a percent or two. And that's where the glasses are sold. This is in stores.

And to us, I became very clear that really where our early bread and butter businesses is actually in eyeglass stores. Okay. Because over something like over 50% of eyeglass stores are struggling to find a doctor. not only is it not that lucrative of the job anymore but also the doctors just don't exist they're not around they they're not the schools are not creating enough young trained optometrists and ophthalmologists than are retiring today so more are retiring today than coming out of school

wow and a lot of the stores just struggling to even find a doctor once a week yeah yeah super helpful i'm glad you touched on kind of the slight commercial pivot too right um and And lessons learned only gleaned when you're actually in market, right? And beginning to like a slow roll launch. That's good stuff. I would say that the business model actually is the same, but the context is different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I hesitate calling it a pivot.

I mean, maybe pivot. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is normal. And you have to just be open to truthfully looking at the facts and then make good decisions based off of that. Yeah. With that said, let's let's jump to fundraising because you closed a, I think it was a 20 is there's $20 million series A last year kind of mid kind of what Q3 of last year.

It looks like based on our nodes. You mentioned before we hit the record button, you've got some some interesting takes on fundraising. So let's hear them. Like what do you what do you think is most valuable for other other founder CEOs that are raising, you know, either a series A kind of earlier on in their fundraising journey. What are some of the key tips that you've got for them based on your experiences?

Along your journey, you get tons of advice, right? From this and that, you should this, you do that. Okay, but there is one piece of advice that I have maybe three in my register of like the most amazing advice I've ever heard and one of them is this one. And shout out to Andrew who may not listen to this. You can do almost your entire raise or your whole raise over Zoom. And there's an amazing advantage of doing fundraising over Zoom because it is your rectangle. It is your real estate.

and you get to craft your persona and your real estate the way you want it to be matter what shoes you wear doesn't matter how tall you are doesn't matter what pants you have it doesn't matter you can craft the persona narrative around your company in a very particular and very strategic way and so the background matters lighting matters everything matters and so that's number one because you have to understand like you they see you know 10 pitches a day and you want to stand down. And so you have that opportunity and it's your rectangle. And what's also really good is that you can have conversations with folks rather than being

in a boardroom where everybody's sort of like staring at you and looking for every like little micro movements that you're doing. You can actually just have a conversation with people face to face over Zoom and get them excited about something and show your enthusiasm over Zoom. Now, I never pitch with an open pitch deck. That is, I think, this is just my opinion, take it or leave it. But I do best when you don't even open a presentation. You just talk about the problem, talk about how big of a problem it is.

And once people are like, understand that the size of the market and the size of the problem, and then almost like, well, here's a solution. It's pretty obvious at this point, right? Did you get some weird looks, though, from investors that are almost looking? They're like, Matthias, when am I going to see slides? When I'm going to see the data? Well, that's why they're paying attention. Okay.

If you put up a slide deck, they're going to be in Gmail and LinkedIn. I see. Look around, right? But, and this is, again, Andrew, shout out, is that once in a while, like, things may slow down. The energy slows down in a pitch. And that's when you open the presentation. I see. That's when you show.

That's when you open it up. And you're like, hey, look at this and this. Here are the figures, here the stats. Here's the picture on this technology. 30 seconds, though. And you take it away. Okay. Okay, got it.

Back to me. Back to me. Look at me. I love this. This is good stuff. What else do you have for us? Yeah, because these are counterintuitive. But I would say the second one especially, right?

I don't think I've ever pulled that off or it's like, because it's so easy to rely on slides. You know what I mean? It's kind of like a security blanket for you. But like, this is good. Okay. Because especially early stage, what are they investing in? They're investing in you.

That's the thing is they're betting. It's maybe a little disingenuous, but, you know, especially early stage, like pre-seed and seed. It's like they're gamblers in pedigonia vests, right? Yeah. Of course, they have a process. They do obviously a lot of homework and math and check the facts on the industry and size, et cetera. But at the end of the day, they have to roll the dice. him like, is this the guy or the gal that's going to be on Forbes?

And we would love to find that person. And ultimately they're investing in the person who will do whatever it takes to just crash this car through all the obstacles to get to the destination. And that's ultimately what pulls the trigger. Yeah, that's the best. Yeah, that's good. Was there a third thing that you're going to call out? Was I? I'm not sure.

Those are good. Those are really good tips. I think maybe I think the first time I've heard someone say, effectively don't lean on a pitch. In fact, try not to use, or I should say slides. Try not to use them. Yeah. Everybody goes like, oh, what is the best pitch set up?

What is the order of slides and not more than 10 slides? And I said like, it's got to be 20 slides and whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Because they've seen so many. It doesn't matter anymore. So true. So true.

You need to sell is, I would say the three most important things to sell is how big is that this is a massive problem. And everybody without really any doubt can shake their head like that is a massive problem. Two, how big is the opportunity? Because like, yeah, maybe you can get to 50 million error at some point even quickly. But maybe you're tapped out on the market. That's it. Not interesting. They can't bet on it because you have to show them that given all the things,

that are true, you can expand into making a billion dollars in revenue. And you can claim that statement without people, you can pass the red face test on that. Yeah. Yeah. That's how big this market has to be. Otherwise, they just can't, the venture math doesn't work out. They can't invest in it. Yeah, no doubt. You may have a fantastic small business, right? That makes you very rich. But if it's not venture scale, they can't invest. Yeah. I'd say the third one. And then again, that already pointed out to it is, The third one is, okay, cool. So you got this massive problem.

You got a solution itself, this problem. You got a massive market opportunity. The third thing is, is, why you, why this guy? Or why this guy? Yeah. Why not go to like Cambridge and pick up some folks at MIT and Harvard to do it? Like, well, what's special about you? And if you convince people that, well, there's only about 10 people on this planet,

they can do this. Like, wow, we found the unicorn. Yeah. Got it. I'm nodding my head, right? Obviously, we're referring this on Zoom, but people are listening to this audio, but I'm nodding my head because back to your point earlier about being remembered, like so, so important.

I mean, these VCs like literally are getting pitched constantly. And yes, it's not all about, you know, like, you know, creating differentiation or like, you know, being different per se. But that is an important aspect to all of this is, right? You've got to be of the 10 pitches they saw today. Who do they effectively remember at all, right? If anyone. And so I think that's so, that's so important, especially in the earliest stages, right,

where you've got a lot more to get sort of, you've got a lot more to prove and they're taking maybe a larger, a larger bets in terms of risk anyway. Be memorable. Well, actually, one of my favorite pitches was a general catalyst pitch where the first five minutes, all we talked about was seltzer water. Because it's like, yeah, I mean, we already know about what this is about. So, yeah, what am I drinking, cool? Yeah, yeah, that's such good advice.

I know we're running a little bit. You still have a few minutes. Are you still good on time? Yeah. This is great. I'm glad we left a little bit of time for the fundraising topic. Good stuff.

With that said, let's jump to the rapid fire portion of interview. But again, for everyone listening, ibot.co. So I like your eye, like your physical eye, i bought.co. I highly encourage you to check the website out. We'll also link to it in the full write-up on Medsider.

So with that said, let's breeze through. I might cut these rapid fire questions a little bit short here. But just just real quick on hiring building a startup team, What if he had a single like, you know, kind of narrowly in on one, one particular thing that that's like really crucial to kind of, you know, either either recruiting or building out a team at a startup, what would that be? Well, every startup is different. I can't provide a formula. But for us, what it's true is we don't care about your degree. We don't care about what school you came from or what company you came from. Like, yeah, sure, if you came from Facebook or whatever. Okay, great. That usually like raises some attention. but ultimately we only care about what you've done and how you've done it and is that going to carry forward and also if you have just a bit of an ego you're not going to make it at our company because you're ego at home we are open honest transparent and that's i think the way to go and

every culture is different but we have a culture where people can make mistakes and even suggest changes even significant changes without like feeling blowback and In fact, it's encouraged. And, you know, we also, we have a couple rules. Like, one is like, you can ask anyone as many questions as you want. You can ask the same question in time and times in a row. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

Because it's usually, that's the kind of stuff that makes stupid decisions or boneheaded decisions is by just covering things up because you don't want to be, like, be put on the spot, right? Yeah. We want to avoid those situations. Yeah. Going back to ego. Yeah.

Typically, someone's a big ego is not going to survive. in that sort of environment. I'm going to jump to this. We're going to do three rapid fire questions this time. But the second one here is let's say we've got a small group of med tech, health tech entrepreneurs in Boston. We're doing dinner, towards the end of the dinner, maybe finishing up the glass of wine, and you want to leave them with one thing. Like the single most important thing, they need to get right if they're going to have success with their startup. But what do you think that would be? What's the billboard message for other med tech founders? Cios. Yeah, it's really good consultants.

to make sure that you are doing everything right on the regulatory side, to have really good strategy in place many years ahead that you think you need. But also use common sense and don't let the consultants just make everything complicated. So take everything with a grain of salt, question it, and then use common sense to move forward. You're going to get so many different opinions and advice. And it's almost going to be the most conservative possible thing because they also don't want to put their neck on the line. So you have to be able to balance the input and understand actually what this is about and what is important. And then only do the things that matter and then don't do things that just have absolutely no impact on stuff.

Yeah, the common sense part is so good, right? Because like inputs really matter. and if you're getting inputs and not understanding kind of like how those inputs are being derived or where they're coming from, it's like, you know, it's probably a component of that that you're missing out on. So, all right, last question, Matthias. Let's go back to maybe whether you want to take us back to like your postdoc in, you know, in Boston or maybe your early startup days at ITERA. Anything you'd whisper in the ears of kind of the younger version of yourself and call it your mid to late 20s? Mid to late 20s. Yeah, just make, it's fine to make mistakes. You've got to make a lot of

mistakes. Just do it. People think that like the career is over when they're like 28. It just goes. Just go. Just do a lot of stuff and take risks. You can take risks. The most successful startups are actually by founders in their 40s. Let's look at the facts. A lot of people have to get experience first before they actually build something good and strong and reliable. Got to get those swings in those reps. Yeah, this has been fun. I can't think enough. I know we're a little bit over time. I don't want to be sensitive to your schedule and the throes of a very busy startup. But again, for everyone listening, iBot.com is the website.

We'll link to it in the full write-up on MedSighter. We'll also link to Matthias' LinkedIn profile as well. You can check out his background for a little bit more detail, maybe even reach out to him and say, hey, that fundraising tip was good. No slides. No slides. This is my, this is my, this is my key slides, just like it's three of them actually that really mattered. You should have a full pitch, by the way. But it doesn't have to be in the pitch. just like that's for afterwards, for them the review and for the diligence team to get into. I don't let slides become your security. Maybe that's the message. Yeah, that's good. That's good stuff. Yeah. But again, thanks. Thanks everyone for your listening attention with us all hot viewhole

on the line here. But again, Ibot.com. Check it out. And again, for everyone listening, you got this far. Appreciate your attention as always until the next episode of Ben Sider 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.

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