Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Translating Academic IP into a Medtech Startup: Interview with Echopoint Medical CEO Antony Odell

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Antony Odell, co-founder and CEO of Echopoint Medical.Echopoint is a London-based UCL spinout developing iKOr, an optical microcatheter for coronary diagnostics.Antony brings over 30 years of medtech experience across Johnson & Johnson, Fresenius, and Stryker, before transitioning into startups as CEO of Tayside Flow Technologies and Tissue Regenix. He holds a BSc in Physiology and Biochemistry.In this interview, Antony discusses translating academic IP into a commercial device, choosing early clinical sites to balance speed and learning, managing non-dilutive funding as a long-term discipline, and outlines the most important responsibilities of an early-stage medtech CEO.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 Antony Odell, which includes a link to ScottBot — an AI version of host Scott Nelson trained on every Medsider interview and playbook. Feel free to ask ScottBot any questions you'd like!KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(03:06) - How Antony’s career centered on translating clinical insights into commercial reality (05:54) - What Echopoint's iKOr does, and why 40% of cath lab patients leave without a diagnosis (12:13) - How Echopoint landed its first U.S. clinical site, and what that means for the company (13:48) - What to assess before spinning out an academic idea, and why clinician input is the first real test (20:14) - Why Echopoint chose Barts over typical sites for its first-in-human study (22:58) - How getting too close to one clinical site can lead to dangerous groupthink (30:54) - Why non-dilutive funding belongs on the board agenda permanently (39:54) - How CEOs should manage boards, control information flow, and avoid becoming a “glorified note-taker”

We had a wonderful box of wires coming out of it, which was our first console in UCL, which looked like something from the Frankenstein lab. When you move that into an environment where you're testing it rigorously, you're providing with, you're looking for ground truth, things change. You know, you find things out that weren't important to the academic. And you know, the IP that we got from the university was good basic ground IP and we've got got brands in that space, but we've had to really translate that into something that is reproducible and you can make it a reasonable price and produces clinically meaningful data.

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, we sat down with Anthony O'Dell, co-founder and CEO of Echo Point Medical. Echo Point is a London-based UCL spinout developing the iCore and optical microcatheter for coronary diagnostics. Antony brings over 30 years of Medtech experience across Johnson and Johnson for Sinius and Stryker before transitioning into startups as CEO of Tayside Flow Technologies and tissue regenerics.

He holds a BSC in physiology and biochemistry. chemistry. Here are a few topics we explored in this conversation. First, what does it take to translate academic IP into a fundable company? Second, how should you choose clinical sites when speed comes with the tradeoff of learning? Third, when does a grant become a liability instead of an asset? And last, what are the CEO's responsibilities that determine early stage outcomes? Before we dive into the full episode, if you're a MedTech founder or CEO preparing to raise capital, you should check out the MedSight or 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 and 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, Anthony, welcome to Metzada Radio. Appreciate it coming on. Thanks very much for the invitation, Scott.

It's been, it's going to be fun, I hope. I think it's going to be fun. Hopefully, hopefully mostly fun, right? But also we'll mix in some, hopefully some educational stuff for the folks listening that they can take away to their own startups. Or maybe if they're at a strategic, maybe their own business inside the multinational. But with that said, I recorded a very short bio at the outset of this interview. But I always like to kind of start here. Give us a like a one-minute overview of your career leading up to taking on

the CEO role at Echo Point. Yeah, I mean, without giving you the CV, I think I've always been interested in clinical insight and how that translates into commercial reality. And I had what you might call a fairly standard career out of corporates. So usual suspects, J&J, Frizzanious, striker, blah, blah, blah, but I've always been in that kind of space where I'm looking at, you know, how do you take a really compelling clinical story and translate it into something that makes a business, but also ultimately helps patients.

And without sounding like Mother Teresa, that's always been an important factor to me. And it kind of is a natural transition when that is the things that are important in your career that you move into. Startups and startups give you that unique self-expression piece that allow you to really shape your own business story and your own business models

and really learn from your mistakes because there ain't anyone in the office next to you to blame them on. Isn't that the truth? We're recording this in Q2 of 26, but it looks like, based on your LinkedIn profile, which I'm looking at right here, you took on the CEO role at Echo Point back in 2018. Yeah, absolutely. So you've been at it for, you know, for gosh, almost coming up on eight years here, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I mean, the company didn't get funded until 19. So it was, I was brought in by the university to pull the business plan together. But, you know, like I said earlier, the thing that really always, when you're looking at a new venture or something new, it's the clinical behind it. And what really impressed me about the group at University College London was you had Professor Malcolm Finley and Professor Adrian Desjardin, very different backgrounds, biomedical engineer, cardiologists, but they'd come together and form this idea and this set of concepts and worked bloody hard about showing what they could do within the constraints

of the academic system. And that really intrigued me. And I also like them as individuals. That's very important as well. I've said no to some very compelling technologies on the basis that I couldn't spend five minutes in the room with the people concerned. So I think there's an important thing when you're looking at these as a whatever role you're coming in for. You know, it's going to be tough. It's always hard. We always need money. There's always deadlines. But you've got to be able to interact and work well with the people you're going to be doing that with.

Let's talk a little bit about Echo Point before we kind of go back in time and learn a little bit more about your journey, right, leading up to today. but also, you know, kind of your background and some key lessons that you've picked up on throughout your career. But I'm looking at the website right now, which is echo pointmedical.com, just as it sounds, if you're listening to this, echo, ECHO, and then pointmedical.com. We'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider. Let's pretend that I know nothing about the technology. I haven't researched it at all. Give me a sense for kind of what this is and how an interventional cardiologist would use this in the Cath Lab. The core technology is based around sensor platform, which is which is much broader.

but essentially we address something called complete physiology. There's a huge issue with people who go into cath labs, have the standard angiogram, and then basically they can't find any blockages of the apocardial or major vessels. That affects around 40% of patients. And there's a huge issue around undiagnosed coronary microvascular disease. It's encapsulated as a syndrome called Anoka, which is just a way of encapsulation.

all the potential issues here. But women typically are five times more likely also to have an ok. So there's a vast number of women who just cycle through the cath lab and get told, okay, we can't find anything wrong with you. They'll give you some medication and send that lady home. So Echo Point is based around the sensor platform that is a very, very simple way to use that sensor to detect coronary macovascular metrics, which are very well established, been very well researched, but in a very simple, intuitive way that fits into CathLab

workflow and is very easy to use. Where I came in the story, if you like, in 2018, 2019, is this had been done on the bench and been shown to work in a number of pre-clinical models, but they needed that translation to the, you know, make it into a business proposition. So we set about, we built a plan, we were really lucky with our investors, part walk advisors, and UCLTF managed by Albuan Capital. And we actually got the funding to basically work towards our first in human in the UK. It's a class three device here. It's a class two device in the US.

So we had to deal with the regulatory issues in the UK. But essentially we got a good chunk of non-dilutive funding, which again, very important subject when you're looking at money, whatever stage of development you're at. But that enabled us to basically do this 10 patient first in human. at Barts, which is a major centre in London, which has got the kind of gravitas you need at this stage. And that was a pivotal moment for us as a company. You know, there was a one thing that really stands out for me there.

There was a woman who wrote to us and we'd had some publicity in the Financial Times. And she wrote and she's convinced she's got an ochre. And she said, can I be in the trial? Because she'd been through this whole roundabout through the hospitals thing, being told there's nothing wrong with her. You know, that really brought home to me that there are a lot of human beings. who aren't getting the best deal out of this process right now. And that really made it real for me.

Yeah, no doubt. It's those types of stories that, like, are the kind of the push that you often need, right, when things get hard and to start up, right, hearing from real patients that are suffering from the disease or the issue that you're trying to solve for. So a real quick follow-up question before we get kind of some more immediateer questions. So this microvascular disease,

it sounds like it's much more frequent or prevalent than maybe most people would expect. And if I'm a patient and I'm kind of being sort of filtered around or bounced around maybe from, you know, from certain, I guess, department to department inside a hospital, right? No one can really figure out what I have. And the angiogram actually doesn't look, it doesn't look like there's any issues, right? Maybe the echo doesn't look like, you know, there's any issues. But there is some, this underlying kind of microvascular problem, right? And this is, your, your catheter is, that's what it's meant to do, is like diagnosis.

So it's looking at flow. Flow. Flow is the important thing here. So basically, if you've got a, if you've got a microvascular issue, your flow is compromised. And it's those tiny vessels that feed the heart. When you have heart pain angina, a large chunk of patients who are, you know, don't have major vostis, will have this coronary anoka angina with non-obstructed coronary arteries type syndrome. And it could be many subsets of disease. And I think the, you know, the other important part is, when I've started this, this with the company, this whole area of coronary microvasities felt what I call it as a Sunday afternoon project. It was a lot like something that was of academic interest and maybe, you know, to a few key clinical academic centres. But it's really gone mainstream in the last

two years. And that's changed the way people perceive us from a funding perspective. It's changed the way strategics look at us. It's changed the way, you know, just your ordinary conversations with people in the street. People are much more aware of this now. So I think, you know, I think the, the, the, the, the, my kind of light, bold moment in terms of that, that whole piece. But really the interest and focus on this space, you know, when I first went to TCT, which is our big US conference, Hans Castro Therapeutics, it was getting like sort of, you know, sessions, but now it gets whole afternoons on it. It's a very important subject. So that to me just underpins how key this area is. And what we're doing as a company is basically easy access

to the information for people to make the right decisions. You know, our therapy were a diagnostic. You know, I remember when I first started out trying to raise money for this company, And I said, oh, well, you're a diagnostic. You know, you diagnose it. What's the big deal? What do you do next? And I didn't always have a good answer to that. It was, you know, okay, well, you know, you might change your medication or something.

But now you've got things like sinus reduces that are going working through FDA approval in the US and approved in Europe. You've got different medications. You've got different subsets of patients. But I think the key thing is, you know, you now have a greater awareness. You have people who understand this. is an important issue to be solved. And I always come back to, you know, people who are dismissive of diagnostics. Cancer is a, you know, until cancer had better diagnostics, you didn't get better therapies.

It's just a very simple equation. You've got to understand the problem before you solve it. No doubt. It's always a good sign, right, when a certain area of med tech, right, starts out at, you know, with, you know, small little abstracts in the back corner at TCT, right? And then two, three, four years later, maybe five years later, maybe six a little bit more time than that than, you know, whole afternoons, you know, are dedicated to, you know, this certain area that's usually, usually means you're on to something. So with that said, you touched on on this just a little bit,

but just to level set, make sure people kind of understand where, where the company's at. Recording this in early Q2, 26, for someone that's listening to this three, six months down the road, sounds like you completed your 10 patient first inhuman and you're gearing up for some studies here in the U.S., correct? Well, yeah, we're intending to make our FDA submission this year in 26, approval, probably 27 and we are also we're fortunate enough to win a place on the heartex accelerator again not diluted funding very important and for that we actually get to work with a center we're working with the baptist hospital in little rock arkansas and they will be our u.s first in human site for

our first hundred patients in the state so two very exciting strands in in this point in 26 where you know i'm off to arkansas next week to you know to meet them in person but you know it's all is really exciting talk to clinicians, and these are the first U.S. clinicians who are actually going to use it, which is huge. Yeah, pretty fun time after spending, you know, five, six years and kind of develop, you know, early stage development just to kind of finally get to this point. Definitely some exciting kind of inflection point. So with that said, let's spend maybe the next 20, 30 minutes kind of, you know, covering some, some key functional areas that most startups have to navigate at some point in their trajectory. And maybe, maybe start out kind of taking us back to that

kind of 2018-19 timeframe when you're spinning it out of UCL. What do you think, there's a lot of, a lot of a lot of, I would say, academics, if you will, right, that are, you know, maybe working on idea and they think it should become a company. What do you think are some of the key things that they should understand about, you know, what that looks like taking a, you know, a concept inside an academic institution and actually turning that into a, you know, a real thing that clinicians can actually use in a, you know, in a first and human study? Well, I mean, I think one thing I always like to see, and I've done this four or five times now, is academics who actually talk to clinicians.

So they've had some kind of conversation with a clinician about, well, I've got this idea, do you think it has some kind of merit and how would you use it? You know, that to me says the academics kind of thought, well, okay, I may have a great idea, but it's got to have some kind of utility. The challenge is always with academia is their priorities are different. You know, they're under pressure to write papers, you know, produce results. Some of them are still teaching, da-la-la-la, and all the rest of it. So, you know, I have huge sympathy for them in the sense that their agenda is different.

But if they're serious about something they think is going to be clinically game-changing, you need to talk to a clinician. And that's what attracted me to Echo Point. The other challenge when you're translating something scientific into a clinical device, and I've seen this happen to me several times is, you know, you can take, you know, we had a wonderful box of wires coming out of it, which was our first console in UCL, which looked like something from the Frankenstein's lab, you know, when you move that into an environment where you're, you know, testing it rigorously, you're providing, you know, with, you're looking for

ground truth, things change, you know, you find things out that weren't important to the academic. And, you know, the IP that we got from the university was good basic ground IP and we've got patterns in that space. But, you know, we've had to really translate that into something that is reproducible and you can make it a reasonable price and produces clinically meaningful data. So that's always the challenge is just that academics priorities aren't the same. You sometimes come, you know, I was very lucky. I had a top class academic in Adrian and I had a and a clinician in Malcolm. They're both very clever guys,

but they thought about this beforehand. But I've been in lots of conversations where you realize this guy is very passionate about what he does, the academic, but he's not really thought through the practicalities of either making it or how it might be used in clinical practice. So, you know, I think that translation piece is not about technology.

It's about that understanding of the hospital environment and how it works. and, you know, all the usual things, you know, I used to work with Imperial and do a guest lecture spot there for entrepreneurs or other than air units. You know, they would say, well, what's the biggest unknown? It's always regulatory. Regulatory is just the biggest unknown. So all those things are things academics have to realize. And it's just a, you know, there's no single answer. And the other point about academics is, you know, they have to be able to admit their babies ugly sometimes, you know.

It's not going to be perfect. easier said than done, right? Because a lot of these academics have been thinking about this idea for a long time. And it's not to underappreciate kind of the work there. But it's, you know, they think maybe it doesn't have a lot of flaws. And in reality, it has some flaws. You know, there's some gaps to so forth. But you, you round it off like several things that I just want to emphasize. Like if you're, if you're coming into a project and it's largely still stuck, I don't want to say stuck, it's probably a poor way to describe it. But it's largely still kind of in the hands of an academic. and there's been no clinician involvement, like that's, you know, that's probably something that should be addressed, like, sooner rather than later because there's going to be a lot of things that probably surface as, you know, this idea, even if it's a great idea, like, you know, after getting it in the hands of someone who sees patients on a regular basis, right? That, you know, that idea might evolve a bit, right? So, like, I think that's, that's something, you know, really important that you, that you mentioned. For those that have never taken an idea out of an

academic center, what's a good timeline, you know, in terms of actually, spinning, like taking that IP, getting the licensing deal done and whatever kind of like structure that looks like. What do you typically kind of bake into that process? I got involved in the echo points. I'll just take that as my nearest example. So I got involved in sort of back end of 18 and, you know, it took us about at that point nine months, really. It wasn't like I was approaching it totally cold. There had been some discussions before. So you've had another three months on for that. It's probably a year. You know, it'll really depend on your, the tech transfer people you're dealing with and things that are kind and how, you know, nifty and professional they are as

well. And I think they, you know, if you really want to get it done, you'll get it done. And it's, I think when everyone's pointed in the right direction and you can kind of tick off all the, all the things you know, the license and the diligence and all the rest of it, you should be able to do that in less than a year, I would thought. Yeah. It just depends. If there are complications about the IP, that can lengthen things hugely.

So, but generally at that stage, you've got one very discreet block of IP, you hope, and there's nothing weird about it. Yeah. So nine to 12 months, maybe a little bit faster, depending on the center, but maybe a little bit longer, right,

depending on kind of, yeah, if you're dealing with a tech transfer office that maybe doesn't do this a lot or doesn't have a refined process. The other thing that I think is worth, worth kind of emphasizing again that you mentioned is, like those early alpha prototypes, types, right? They're often like really ugly.

You know, and kind of like, you know, again, kind of going back to this idea of this concept that's been sort of like iterated upon in someone's head in an academic center and then actually building it are two vastly different things. And it reminds me, I posted this on LinkedIn just, it was last week, I think. It was a quote from Dr. Steve, Michael said with, you know, is the founder of Farapulse. Now he's working on field medical. And he mentioned, like, the very first, like, console that he built for that device. Like, I mean, he almost thought he was going to electrocute himself, right? When he first turned it on, I mean, that's how early it was.

And most people think of like Fairpools is this, you know, phenomenal success story, which it is. And don't get me wrong. But like in the very early days, it is like wires coming out of everything. It's like, I mean, it's like these are like the bare bones, bear bones, you know, sort of, I call it a device, but, you know, prototype just to just to answer a few basic questions, right? In those, those earliest versions. Yeah, we've preserved us for the Echo Point Museum. if that ever gets. We laugh.

Those are actually, those are, I always encourage other entrepreneurs to like, you know, make sure you take lots of pictures of that stuff because it's always kind of

point back to, especially if you run into like some challenging times to think about like what you already overcame, you know, along the journey. So with that said,

let's talk a little bit about Clint Rang. And you mentioned the first in human study at Barts, which is obviously a very highly respected, you know, academic center. That's interesting because I think most people,

especially with a novel technology like this, would maybe go to some other, whether it's Eastern Europe, right, or maybe somewhere in Central or South America or kind of name your kind of classic first in human geography, but you chose you chose Barts. Like what was the kind of the rationale and for that? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think, you know, I've done that route. You know, I've taken a sort of, you know, less rigorous, maybe initial route for those types of things.

I think, you know, we had an end to Bart's because Bartz was being very supportive. that's where Malcolm worked. He's a cardiologist there. I've met with Professor Anthony Maythe several times as part of the process of spinning out the company and post spin-out. And he's always been very supportive. And I think they were very helpful in connecting us with the, you know, the major issue with any clinical trial is the administration. And the NHS is absolutely no exception to that. But, you know, I think they gave us the support we needed and the help we needed. And it always takes longer than you'd like. I don't think I've ever met a CEO in my life who said, oh yeah, that went perfectly and on schedule. And so that piece worked. We also had a really good

regs team in place who was working with us at Echo Point and from the MHRA point of view. So that piece was kind of covered off. So it made sense from a logistical point of view as much as any, you know, it's great going to these far-flung places and there are a lot of great clinicians there but just setting up a trial in a foreign country is no small thing you know you lose a lot you know so we could get on the tube and go to see parts you know and we could we could work out you know and we could go and talk to clinicians and we could understand you know and we were there at every procedure so you know i think that that closeness to that first human experience in the clinic is really important you find out so much and i'm very precious with clinical feedback to me

all the things you learn, even when you're not doing a trial from clinicians are really, really important. And we store those things at Echo Point and we bank them up and we try and remember them at the right times by bringing them into our conversations with, you know, what we're going to do design wise, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I think that first in human is so important, you know, seeing it in clinical hands being used in an actual patient is so important, you know, I wouldn't want to be having, you know, have a three-hour flight to get to where that was done. You know, to me, we wanted, you know, to be close to it and understand it. Now, the other side of that coin is, and I've also done this, I made this mistake in my life,

I've got too close to a clinical centre. You end up with group think with your clinicians, and that is also dangerous. So you have to maintain the appropriate distance because they've got a job to do, you've got a job to do. But, you know, if you're still, you know, if you're start believing in each other's propaganda, then that doesn't work either because you're there to learn, you know, and that's also an important point is that distance has to be there as well. So, you know, Barts was a great choice. You know, we'd love to do it quicker. It didn't happen that way.

But, you know, we got it done. We got the result we wanted. We got the information we wanted. And I think that, to me, justified picking a heavier weight center. And it also helped with fundraising post-up. Yeah, especially to have such a premier institution kind of be involved in that first human study. Like your point about not believing, you know, sort of your own propaganda, right? Like that's such a crucial.

I don't talk about it enough on this program. But like, it's so crucial in those early days. Obviously, you want physicians that are supportive of what you're doing. But if you get, like, if there's no disagreement, right? If there's no pushback, that's usually not a good sign. I mean, you want some, I don't want to say haters, but you want, you know, some a little bit of some cynics, right? That are going to challenge some assumptions, challenge the way you're thinking about that. I think that's just very, very healthy, especially in those early phases.

I worked in marketing in my early career, and I was a product manager at J&J. And the first thing they do when there was a product complaint is drop the product manager in there. So you're like, you're being in front of a son clinician who's saying your product is the worst thing I ever used in my life. So you get, you begin to understand that the world isn't full of people who love your company and what you do. And it's the same in a startup is, you know, you've got a lot.

listen, as you say, to the other side of the story. And, and, you know, be aware that's something, you know, whoever you're going to end up working with is going to have to deal with as well. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in those early days, when you're, when you're just looking for any sort of momentum, right, sometimes it could be challenging because if you do have those physicians that are, you're pressing into some certain things, it can kind of feel like, yeah, they're not on your side, but it's usually, it's a good, it's a good thing, especially if you're working with physicians that have been around startups and they know, you know, they know not to push too hard, but they know, know, to challenge certain things, you know. And so I think that's such a, such a crucial point.

The other thing that you just mentioned about balancing, you know, going to a site in Eastern Europe as an example, right, versus, you know, a site like Barts or maybe it's a, you know, a larger institution in the U.S. as an example, there's always tradeoffs. And your point about, like, the lift required to just get any study up and running, it's never easy. You know what I mean? It sounds easy to say, oh, ethics review is 30 days or 60 days and it'll fly through. But it's like, well, there's a lot of work to build out that investigational brochure, et cetera. So like don't underappreciate just the sheer amount of work regardless of where you go. And it sounds like you had a, you had sort of some inroads into Barts already.

And you sort of leaned into that. And it was worth kind of like some of the, maybe some of the downsides in terms of maybe lengthy, lengthier time or cost or et cetera with doing a study there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Really good points. One other quick question before we get to fundraising and really just kind of like capital allocation in general, that topic. You're now transitioning to the U.S., right? You've got this

FDA submission that you're planning on, and you're going to, it sounds like you're here to do this study, you know, starting out with your foresight in, in Arkansas. What were maybe some of the meaningful things that you felt like needed to be nailed down before you sort of made that, made that transition to the U.S.? Hey, everyone. Let's take a quick break to talk about Fastwave Medical, the company I co-founded and lead as CEO. We're developing next generation intravascular lithotripsy or IVL systems to tackle complex calcific disease. Over the last few years, we've closed a series of oversubscribed funding rounds bringing the total investment into FastWave to over $50 million. Corporate interest in the IVL space is growing to, the $900 million

acquisition of Bolt Medical by Boston Scientific in 2025, and Johnson & 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 Pat we've successfully completed peripheral and coronary feasibility studies and are gearing up for pivotal trials. If you're interested in investing in the fast-growing IVL market, head over to fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Again, that's fastwavemedical.com forward slash invest. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Oh, I mean, I think was the Q subs of the FDA were critical. And I think, you know, one of the, you know, my last company, I was, we were, that company spanned the change over to MDR in Europe. So we've all, you know, CEMARP being the first choice of both U.S. and European companies are being the last choice of EAS and European companies, particularly startups. So, you know, I think the FDA, for me, it's kind of a no-brainer because it's a class two device in the United States. It's a class three device here in Europe. And I think the other thing that the FDA, you know, for all the fact, it's a big organization and it can be kind of scary, particularly for a small company, you know, you do have this ability to interact with.

there. And I think that's so critical. You learn so much by interacting early with the FDA. And, you know, generally they'll give you pretty straight answers to the questions you want. So, you know, I think everyone kind of, you know, sees, you know, particularly when you're sitting this side of the Atlanta, it's a kind of a big step and a big leap to do that. But actually, you don't have that capacity really with notified bodies or any of the, you know, the MHRA has a scientific advisory group and, you know, I've not used it personally, but it exists. But it isn't as a, you know, clear and ambiguous as the FDA is. And I think, you know, for all its ups and downs and political pressures and all the rest of it, the FDA is a great institution that's really kind of, you know, it thinks

about small companies as well as big companies. And I think that that's really critical. You know, sometimes when you're dealing with monolithic organizations, the NHS is a good example. They don't have, They have a one size fits all and it's great if you're AbV or Gilead, but you know, if you're, you know, then you've got a gap to bridge there. But no system's perfect. But I think our regulatory pathway, a 510K, we did a Q sub, we confirmed what they wanted to see. We've done subsequent Q sub to actually refine that. And it's about just reducing risk.

And that's what investors want to see as well. So that's, it's about managing the risk in your organisation and understanding, you going to the U.S., you know, it's a big market, but there's also many more competitors over there. And it's more challenging. You've got reimbursement, da, la, la, la. But at the end of the day, it's still a huge market, a huge opportunity. And the FDA is the gate to that. Yeah.

You mentioned de-risking. And I think that's such a crucial point because if you're, let's say you're pitching an investor, right, and you get questions around sort of the regulatory process or how a certain regulatory body, FDA as an example, is thinking about your technology, especially if it's novel, It's a pretty new category. And you've not done a Q sub. That's usually, I don't want to say it's always a red flag, but it can be a red flag, right? Because it represents a little bit of risk, right?

You may be even working with great, you know, regulatory advisors or consultants. But if there's been no interactive, if there's been no engagement or interaction with FDA, it can be, you know, it can signal a little bit of, a little bit of, you know, risk, you know, to a particular investor. So I think even if, I guess my point in kind of rambling here is that even if you feel like a Q sub, is overkill. It may be worth just doing because, one, it could de-risk the technology and kind of the potential risk associated with the regulatory pathway. But also, there still may be some things that you learn, right? Some unexpected things you learn through that, through that Q-SEB

kind of process. So really good points. Let's jump to fundraising. I want to ask you two questions. One, one about non-diluted funding and then the other one about diluted funding, right, on the opposite side of the coin here. But let's talk about non-dilative funding because you've had some success here, not just with Echo Point, but in previous, previous companies that you've been involved with. What's your general take on the use of non-debted funding? I mean, obviously, it really important in the early days, but is your, like, is it your goal to kind of continue to try to raise non-dilita funding throughout sort of the, you know, the journey of your startups? Absolutely. I absolutely think it's critical wherever you are, you know,

I think, you know, it's been a board agenda item. It's a permanent item on our board agenda, because we have a grant tracker, we track grants, and as you evolve as a company, so we've moved out of, you know, pre-clinical to, you know, we've got clinical data. You know, the grant environment changes, but it doesn't go away. It just, the requirements to do it and it may be a bit more work to get, you know, larger sums of money to do bigger things in the latest stages of your company, but it never goes away. The grant agenda, the grant thing is really important. The other important thing about non-diluted funding is there are lots of consultants who will come to you, like, we've got a million things you can apply for and all the rest of it.

But, you know, the most important thing is just just look at the grant requirements compared to what you want to do. You know, so I was involved in a previous existence in one of the old framework things which is the EU funds. And the reporting was just mind-boggling, you know, and we spent more time talking about reporting than we did about the results of the project. So, you know, to me, you know, I love it when people get great big grants and you know, it's great news and everything. But, you know, if you're small and you don't have a lot of

people, you really got to look at the effect of the reporting burden, but just also, you know, if that grant is skewing in a way that moves you away from your commercial objectives, that's a red flag to me. Because then then you're going to spend time and effort and focus on something that isn't going to get you that extra couple of million dollars or whatever it is to do whatever you need to do. So I think the grants are great and I'm a huge believer in them, but I think there's a, you know, you really, really have to look carefully that you do this. And consultants are really good as well. You know, I've had, I've worked with some great people in the UK, but a lot of people I've spent a lot of time talking to are just clearly they're trying to get you to sign some kind of

retainer and boom, they're off. And it's never, you know, and the other red flag for me is if it's never, if it's always never success-based, you know, if whoever you're working with, should have the skin in the game in terms of whether this is going to work or not. Yeah. So I, you know, I think, you know, we were very lucky. We raised 1.7 in £1 million in equity, and we raised approximately similar amount in non-dilutive funding at the beginning.

And that got us to a lot of goals, you know, including the first in human. So, you know, it was great. And, you know, as we've gone on, you know, we've kept. We've kept applying and we've made some small scores with that one. But, you know, it's just one of those things that I think it should be there all the time. Don't ever underestimate how much, you know, if it's going to divert you from what your investors want you to do, that that's, you've got to think carefully about that one. Yeah, so critical because if you ever make a significant pivot and you're left with, you know, going down

this, the old legacy path, right, because of this grant funding that you took, you know, years ago, that could be, you know, a pretty detrimental company. But your point about just the requirements, I think, is so critical, right? Because you could end up getting a million-dollar grant, right? But now you're stuck reporting almost if you're publicly listed company. You know, and it's like you got these ankle weights just tied to you now moving forward. So, like, those are just like really, really good points to kind of be aware of. Let's talk a little bit about diluted funding, right?

Like traditional kind of, you know, fundraising from, you know, whether it's from a family office or angels or venture funding. you've done a lot of this throughout your career. How you go about fundraising now, like what do you, I guess, what are, what are some of the key things that you kind of fully understand that you maybe didn't appreciate, you know, 10 years ago when you were first maybe, you know, trying to pitch investors? You know, I think one of the things is can you work with that investor? I think is a really important thing.

And that's not, you know, that's not in some utopian world where there are people thrusting checks on you and you've got to say, I like you, but I don't like you. I think, you know, you pretty much find out. when you're in that first pitch, whether they're asking questions, they're intelligent, you know, and they can be challenging and difficult and you may not be able to answer more, but you get a pretty feel that that's just somebody I feel I can work with. So that, that I think, is an important piece I've learned over the years. I think also, if you're in an early stage med tech, a lot of the time you're pitching in, you know, maybe in smaller funds, they may,

they may not have specialists in your space. And this, this, I've seen it because I've been on the receiving end of it, you know, been on panels and stuff where, you know, people have great ideas, they're a great CEO, they're clearly, you have a good team, but they make assumptions about what you know and about the space that are totally inappropriate. And just remember, you may be pitching to generalists, you may be pitching people who don't understand the MedTech space. And that doesn't mean, say you have to get all silly about it and take them back to the ABCs, but just maintain it at a pace that's appropriate. So what I've really learned is the other point about rejection, and I've plenty of those,

is try and learn something from it. Also, don't beat your head against the wall saying, what did I do wrong and keep going back and saying, if I change that, would that make a difference? Because generally once they've said, no, that's the end of the conversation. But it's also true, you know, never close a door. You know, never, you know, somebody said no at one point. Funds change. People change in charge of funds and funds priorities change.

you know, I won't go through the obvious stuff that you see on every panel on fundraising, which is check they've got cash and all the rest of it. I'll take us a given. But, you know, I think the key thing is really don't be in a position where, you know, you storm out of the room and slam the door behind you. That, you know, if somebody says, no, that's, that's, it's not a good way to end it. I think it's, in my younger days, I got very angry when I said, they, they seem to say, yeah, we love this, we love this, we love this.

And you get this two-line email. I'll say, sorry, we decided not to pursue this any further. And that's all the feedback you get. And that's, you know, that's never going to change. You get some funds which are great at feedback. But, you know, when somebody won't give you a real reason, that's annoying. But hey-ho, you know, take it on the chin, live with it, learn from it, if you can, if they've given you any feedback to learn from.

But, you know, I think the one piece of advice I give is just, it is a tough environment. It's toughest I've ever known it right now. but I think if you've got a good idea and you keep knocking on the doors, it's just keeping it up. And it is wearing, you know, I've gone from CEO jobs where you raise some money and you get some chance to put your effort into the program. But, you know, I feel like I'm on a permanent fundraising treadmill now. And that's just the nature of the job. The job's changed. Yeah, there's no doubt the concept of like always be capitalizing or always be raising.

It's very true. And, you know, and sometimes those stretches are, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, actively, like, closing around. But others, you're just, you're simply like, you know, meeting new investors, right? And kind of trying to, trying to grease the skids for maybe a future, a future round. But your point around, like, investor feedback, that can be, I mean, it's, it's easy to say, a lot harder to take when you're in the throes of facing all of those rejections, you know, all of those nose over and over and over again. And I think it's such a, it's such a, I just want to, like, really, really emphasize that point. And I'm nodding in agreement of, like,

it can feel really challenging to hear no after no. But, you know, It's usually a no now, right? It could be a maybe or a yes down the road. And so I think that's just healthy to keep in mind. If you get a no and maybe the no doesn't even come with any helpful feedback, just consider that a potential prospect down the road, right? Put them into some sort of like, you know, potential investor update, right, that you check in with on a quarterly basis, something like that. I mean, there's always something that you can kind of glean from it.

At least it's a conversation. They at least know you. They know kind of what you're building. And maybe it's just consistent follow-up over the course. of, you know, three, six, nine, 12 months where, boom, things changes that fund, whatever, and the door, the door's back open again, right? So I think that's, that's a lot of times the only thing that you can got to take with you after getting a, getting a no and not really getting a lot of helpful feedback along the way. But yeah, that's, yeah, really good advice.

But if you're, if you're listening to this or reading this interview, you know, and you're raising capital, just know, it's never, it's never easy. Like, it's, even if you've done it a lot before, it is challenging to see the least. So with that said, let's maybe in the discussion talking about kind of just CEO perspectives and learnings. And I want to start maybe at the board level, right? Because you've been around, you've been on boards, you've been around a lot of startups, you know, especially over the past, you know, 10 to 15 years. What do you think are things that any CEO needs to really get right to try to establish some sort of like healthy function at the board level? Well, I think, you know, when you really start out, you know, from the get-go, you're going to have a

heavy proponents of investors on your board. There's no way you're going to escape that because they want to see how their money is being deployed. So you just have to accept that as a given. Now, investors are investors. They're generally finance people. They won't understand your space in any technical depth. So from a CEO point of view, it's making sure that you're reporting in a way that they understand. But also, you know, I think one of the other things is, you know, just understand that they're looking at it is my money being deployed in the way I originally intended to it. And if they're getting uncomfortable with something that's happening, you deal with it. You know, you deal with it. I remember, you know, one of the piece of advice I was given very early on is

if there's something, you know, horrible happened. Don't bury it at the back of the award agenda. Deal with it. It's run. And if I could give one piece of advice to CEOs in the position, there's you know if you've got some bad news don't try and hide it because they'll find it you know they've got this lots of times and it'll just come back and bite you in the leg at some point so I think the point is you know just be up front with them and they'll be up front with you and be clear with them about what you're doing I think the other thing about you know information flow is you control that as CEO so like I say it's a power and responsibility you've got to make sure it's worked member board members are there about strategy yeah that's the other thing that's the other thing

I've seen too many times is, you know, you're the executive, you're executing what strategy is and their role is to work with that. Anything that, where they start trying to run the company with you, that is a huge red flag for me. You know, it's when I see, I remember seeing a startup once in the university in the UK and the board meetings ran for two days. I thought, what on earth have they got to talk about for two days? You know, I mean, they run major corporates or less time.

It was because they were going through the operational plan in line by line. And you're not CEO at that point. You become a kind of glorified, you know, takeer. So, you know, I think understanding your roles in the board is important. And also, you know, very early on who your chair is. And any time who your chair is is very important. But very early on, it's very important. You know, my last couple of roles, I've been an exec chair very early on,

whereas I've done both roles, you know, because they didn't have a separate person to be. do it. One of the things I do insist on is those roles are split as soon as it's practical to do so because that that gives you somebody in the board who you can sound off and you can you can kind of learn from hopefully if they're the right type of individual and I've been very lucky with my current board because we've got Nancy briefs who's a US based person but as CEO they when we said we've been a recruiter chair I had a huge amount to say about what kind of individual I wanted and we ran a process and everybody interviewed them so it wasn't like i pick them but you know i think that kind of

awareness from your board as to how important that relationship is is is is key yeah and how someone parachuted on you is sometimes very challenging i've had that happen before and it's it's never touchwood gone wrong but that's more challenging when the investors say we want x yeah yeah and you get no saying the matter yeah you're because i think a lot a lot of folks maybe look at when they look at a board, they see that executive, that executive chairman or the chairman role that, you know, the natural question is like, is that really needed, right? What is that person really doing? But, but to your point, especially if you walk into a scenario where maybe there's an existing board or there's already some red flags, that could maybe be the best move, is to really, like,

propose, let's get a, let's get a chairman, right, that can kind of serve as that, that ringleader of source, right? And that, that may be worth the cost, right? Whether it's the form of equity or, you know, whatever compensation, that executive or that chairman role person they can, they can play. That could be like, that might be the smartest move if you're dealing with some interesting board dynamics, right? It serves as a bit of a third party, right? Experience third party that other folks can vent to, you know, to try to help solve some difficult, difficult challenges. Yeah, that's really, really good stuff. One other quick follow-up question, just thinking about your experiences and what you're bringing

into Echo Point, right? Like maybe, maybe come back to like 2018, 19 timeframe. You've been around a lot of startups, led startups before. Is there like one or two things that like, you know, you realize now like, oh, like, I'm glad I doubled down on those one or two things that really like, that really mattered, right, that I learned from other experiences at other startups. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, particularly that early stage where you're setting the company up is getting your relationship with the academic institution right.

Essentially, you're in the position when you're spinning a company out of a university where they have all the knowledge, they have all the knowledge, they have all. the expertise, everything is sitting inside their building. And, you know, one of the pieces of advice, again, is one of your roles as of CEO is to make sure you can work with that academic institution, because not everyone's going to work for you. You can be dealing with departments or people who, who are, you know, have no interest in you succeeding whatsoever. But what your role of CEO is to take all the bits of knowledge you need out of that institution and put it in your company for series A round. And, you know, God bless it, COVID happened immediately after we

formed the company. And we had to learn to, we literally just moved out of the building, the university building nearby. And we had to learn to stand on our own two feet very, very rapidly by fault, by default. So, you know, I think that early stage, that relationship with that academic institution, because it's so critical as to whether you're going to lose. Now, as time evolves, you're independent, you make your own, you know, blah, blah and all the rest of it. But I think from that early stage, the other is the investors understanding about, you know, your recruitment strategy and who you're going to bring into your team. You know, the team you build in that early stage is not going to be the same team you're going to have three years later. They'll change.

All those people who've got that kind of, I can do five different jobs and, you know, I'm good at loads of different things, you're going to get to much people who are much more people who are kind of focused on specific areas of the operation. So, you know, as an early stage CEO, you've got to be aware that everyone in that in your team, the star, has a kind of shelf life. You have a shelf life as a CEO. And you've just got to, when you've just got to, it's hard, but sometimes you've got to say, that person doesn't fit with what I need to do now. So those early decisions you make based on the information you have at the time, but just be aware that changes over time. And trying to keep things in stasis with exactly the same team you spun out with generally

doesn't work. Yeah, such a great point, right? Like there's always phases of startups and typically those phases may a lot of times come with different folks, different people, right? So, which is, I think, I think, healthy. So with that said, Ansi, let's shift to the rapid fire portion of this interview. But again, for everyone listening, echo point medical.com is the website. I highly encourage you to check out the company, the technology, really, really new,

kind of new, newer or new-ish field in the world of interventional cardiology. We'll link to it in the full write-up on MedSider, and we'll also include Anthony's LinkedIn profile as well. So with that said, first question, first rapid fire question is, what's the most exciting milestone over the next 12 months for EpoPoint? So I think FDA submission is critical and obviously clearance. But that first U.S. clinical data is going to be so great. that ICOR data holds up in the US system is the moment we change gear as a company.

Yeah, it's a big, big year, yeah, 2026 for Echo Point and ICOR. So, all right, next question. Let's say, let's maybe say we're, you know, we're sitting down for a drink in your neck of the woods over in the UK with a group of, you know, 10, 15 other MetTech entrepreneurs. What's the one thing that you would like really drive home with that, with that group, right? That they would, they really need to get right in order to see, you know, any sort of semblance of success at their adventure. I think, you know, you've got to appreciate it.

So we've managed to go and a whole interview up saying AI. It's a major milestone in history, really. But I think over the period of this company's been in existence, we've seen AI grow to be a massive importance in this space. And it's actually affected the way the clinical space works as well because we've seen non-invasive approaches to do what we've done invasively, what we do invasively. And I think better AI is really about understanding where, you know,

correctly identified who need treatment. And I think see AI as an opportunity. Don't see it as a threat if you're a device company. Don't tack AI into everything. You know, I am detecting AI fatigue in investment community because it's mentioned all the time. But I think, you know, there's a clear opportunity there for people, both, you know, beyond sorting out data sets

and AI making better treatment decisions. It's going to help anyone who's involved involved in the sort of the physical end because the last mile of this is always physical, you have to do something to a patient. You know, that's where devices live. We're in the, we're in the physical end of things. And AI is a, is an asset to us in different ways, depending on where we are in that continuum. All right. Last question I've got for you. If we could rewind the clock, maybe 20 years ago, maybe earlier in your career, it's starting to take off. But, you know, you don't, you still don't maybe know enough, right? Or you know enough to be dangerous,

maybe at that point. Anything you'd whisper in the, in the, the younger, in the, the years of the younger version of yourself? Yeah, I'd say trust, trust clinician signal earlier. Trust the clinical signals earlier. You know, when clinicians get really excited and make polite noises at you, that's really important. Everything, you know, that, that should be what you use is your guide, you know, that everything else, you know, will calm always just noise. Yeah, good feedback. Anthony O'Dell, thanks for, thanks for carving out some time and really fun to learn about not only your journey, right, but also more about the technology you're building at Echo Point. This has been fun. Great. Thanks very much for doing, Scott. I'll have you hold on the line here,

Anthony. But for everyone listening, you made it this far. Appreciate your listening attention. As always, again, check out EchoPointmedical.com. We'll link to it in the full write-up on Medsider. Those full write-ups, if you knew of this program, include a lot of the key takeaways and kind of action items, if you will, right? Lessons learned that you can take away from our guests. Anthony shared a lot of those this time around for sure. So I highly encourage you to check out those writeups. But thanks again for your listening attention as always until the next episode of MedSedder Goes Live. Everyone, take care. Hey, it's Scott again. One quick thing before you go. You see, I love bringing you insightful conversations with the best founders and CEOs of medical

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