Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - Who You Raise From Matters Most: Interview with Firefly Neuroscience CEO Greg Lipschitz

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Greg Lipschitz, CEO of Firefly Neuroscience. Firefly’s FDA-510(k) cleared Brain Network Analytics (BNA™) technology objectively measures brain function through EEG analysis. With a proprietary database spanning twelve cognitive disorders, the company serves both clinical practitioners and pharmaceutical partners.Greg brings extensive experience in private equity, investment banking, capital markets, and finance to his leadership role. As Managing Director of Old Stone Advisors and former Vice President of Lazer Capital, Greg has advised on over $1 billion in transactions. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst.In this interview, Greg shares insights on strategic fundraising approaches, platform prioritization decisions, and building commercial momentum in healthcare through direct sales and customer feedback loops.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device and health technology founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.Second, if you want to peek behind the curtain of the world's most successful startups, you should consider a Medsider premium membership. You’ll learn the strategies and tactics that founders and CEOs use to build and grow companies like Silk Road Medical, AliveCor, Shockwave Medical, and hundreds more!We recently introduced some fantastic additions exclusively for Medsider premium members, including playbooks, which are curated collections of our top Medsider interviews on key topics like capital fundraising and risk mitigation, and 3 packages that will help you make use of our database of 750+ life science investors more efficiently for your fundraise and help you discover your next medical device or health technology investor!In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members also get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost, including the latest Medsider Mentors Volume VII. If you’re interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, if you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Greg Lipschitz.

For us, it's not just the amount of capital that you raise, but it's also who your investors are and the terms that you raise them on. I see a lot of companies struggle in this aspect where they might not have the right investors long term that as the company keeps growing and maturing, they may not be there to support that next level of growth. And then the founders constantly out there spending all their time raising capital. capital and not actually on the underlying business. 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, it's Scott. In this episode of MedSider, I sat down with Greg Lipschitz, who has served as Firefly neuroscience as CEO since March. of this year, having previously been a board director for the company since December of 2022. He brings extensive experience in private equity, investment banking, capital markets, and finance to his leadership role.

As managing director of Oldstone advisors and former VP of Laser Capital, Greg, has advised on over $1 billion in transactions throughout his career. He is a chartered financial analyst by training. Here for the key things that we discussed in this conversation. First, prioritize investor quality over funding speed even when capital is desperately needed. The wrong investors can create long-term problems that outweigh short-term cash flow relief forcing founders into the undesirable position of constantly fundraising instead of building their businesses. And if traditional funding routes don't fit, explore alternatives like strategic M&As or public markets that align with your business model and timeline. Second, for platform companies with broad potential, let market signals guide expansion decisions instead of trying to capture every possible use case immediately.

Firefly chose dementia care as their beachhead despite having data across 12 different cognitive disorders, focusing on the aging baby boomer demographic rather than spreading itself too thin across all potential applications at once. Third, once early adopters are in place, leverage direct sales and customer feedback to drive sustainable growth. Direct sales teams enable closer partnerships with existing users whose insights drive product improvements that accelerate future adoption. Firefly's approach of working intensively with 60 clinics to refine their offering creates a snowball effect where clinical success published evidence and customer testimonials combined to reduce sales cycles for new prospects all right before we dive into this episode I'm pumped to share that volume 7 of medsider mentors is now

live this latest edition highlights key takeaways from recent medsider interviews with incredible entrepreneurs like Bill Hunter CEO of Canary Medical Brian Lorde CEO of pristine surgical Don Crawford co-founder of Safion and current CEO of Corvista Health and other proven Mettech founders and CEOs look we get it keeping up with every meds Sider interview isn't easy. That's why we created Medsider Mentors. These ebook volumes distill the best practices and insider secrets from top founders and CEOs, all in a downloadable, easy-to-digest format. To check the latest volume out, head over to MedsiderRadio.com forward slash mentors. Premium members get free

access to all past and future volumes, plus a treasure trove of other resources. If you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. We recently revamped Medsider with swanky new features, especially for our premium members. In addition to every volume of Medsider, MEDsider mentors, you'll get full access to our entire interview library dating back to 2010. You'll also get MedSider Playbooks, curated guides packed with actionable insights and topics like fundraising, regulatory challenges, reimbursement strategies, and more. And if you're fundraising, don't miss our exclusive investor database featuring over 750 life science VCs, family offices, and angels.

We've even created three custom packages to help you with your next fundraise. Learn more about Medsider mentors and our premium memberships by visiting medsiderradio.com forward slash mentors. All right, without further ado, let's dive in in the interview. All right, Greg, welcome to Med Sider Radio. Appreciate coming on. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Really excited for this. Yeah, no, looking forward to the discussion. You know, for those listening, you can't see Greg's background. He's on brand with the Firefly neuroscience background here on Zoom, but that's great. Jokey to side, though, with that said, I recorded a super short bio of your background at the outset of this episode. But let's start there. If you can give us like a two-minute

kind of elevator style pitch of your journey leading up to taking on this year role at Firefly. That'd be great. Yeah, sure. Happy to talk about that. So my background is about 15 years in capital markets and also advising high growth companies. And so it was about four years ago when I met Arun, who's got an incredible background, by the way. And he basically showed me Firefly as an investment opportunity.

And so I came in the company and I did some. due diligence, and I was really blown away for a number of reasons. So one was the people involved, so Arun's had three MedTech exits, one IBM and one a striker. The second was the incredible technology and the database that the company had. They've spent over 10 years and $60 million building the database and then getting that through the FDA. And then when I looked around, I saw a whole bunch of really exciting companies in the space backed by some of the smartest investors, kind of household names, but none of them seemed to have the database and the FDA clearances that Byerfly did. And so I invested in the company about four years ago. I took on a role as a board

member, and I was pretty critical in terms of helping the company raise the capital and meet investors. And through those four years, I really understood the business and got to know the team a bit better and decided in January to step in as CEO. I just thought the opportunity was so big and exciting. And I was really looking forward to it. Yeah. So about about six months into this role, but but almost more, it sounds like more like five years kind of with pretty pretty intimate knowledge of kind of the company. So with that said, I'm looking at the website right now, which is firefly neuro. So we'll link to it in the full write up on MedSider, but it's firefly fly, just like it sounds and the neuro, any uro, firefly neuro.com. Give us a sense for kind of like,

At least at a high level, I mean, if you want to drill into the, into the weeds a little bit, but at least at a high level, if I'm a freshman or sophomore in high school, I have no idea what you're doing. Like, help me explain kind of what the technology does and the major problem that you're trying to solve. Yeah, happy to. So there's two pillars to our business. So one is clinics and the second is pharma. So on the clinic side, what we do is we do objective measurements of the brain.

for cognitive disorders. So right now, why that's important is currently mental health is treated. It's very subjective. It's how are you feeling today? And what happens is someone comes up to the doctor, says this is how I'm feeling. And the doctor will say, hey, try this medication, come back and let us know how you're feeling. And if it wasn't, look at you, we'll stay on path. And if it doesn't, we'll try something else. It's trial and error. Now with our technology, you can scan the brain. You can objectively measure and see if it's, you know, if the treatment path is working or not. And people can come back for subsequent visits and track that. And so the business model there is a subscription model with a per use fee.

But why we like that model is because each incremental scan that we do, we get more data. And as that database grows and grows, it gets richer and we get more insights, which we can then mine for biomarkers, but then we can also feed it into the other pillar, which is pharma. And so we view ourselves as a platform company in pharma, the picks and shovels, so to speak. And so we're agnostic to the type of company or the drug that they're developing. What we really do is we help them get that data and that insights to help them get through that clinical study. That's super helpful. Yeah. And I could see where you're going with kind of that flywheel effect, right? The more scans you do, the database gets more richer. It gets more deeper. It gets more

broader, right? And it turns into a kind of a seemingly like a, you know, a flywheel that doesn't stop spinning or a snowball, right? They kind of gets bigger as it rolls downhill. So, but on the, on the pharmacist, just to be clear, pharma companies are then coming to firefly and saying we need, we'd like to access the database or access kind of biomarker information, what have you, right? And you're kind of like assisting them in their clinical efforts, their R&D efforts, etc. Is that kind of like a Yeah, what's exciting is we actually haven't had any business development in pharma. They've actually all come knocking on our door. And so we've worked with Data, Navaritas, Bright Minds, biosciences, and so we can help them with their clinical trials. And in many different ways,

a key piece is patient stratification. And so the example there at a high level is say you have 100 people go through a clinical study and they all, you know, the response rate is 30%. Well, that might not be strong enough to move to the next phase. But what we can do is say, hey, we've noticed that a third of the population has mild depression, a third of it has moderate and a third has severe based on the signals in their brain. And then we say, hey, we've noticed, you know, those with mild depression actually respond to 90%. And so now they can be much more focused and understand that patient population better to move on to the next phase in the clinical study. Got it. That makes sense. And I like these plays because I think most

generally speaking, most MedTech founders, they're like, I'm working on this technology, and this is the ClinRag pathway, and it's going to be five, seven, ten years before I ever earn revenue for the company. And not that that's not typical or that's a pretty normal path, right? But in some cases, there's, there's like alternative ways to drive revenue, right? I've had a few, a few CEOs on the program that have kind of done maybe somewhat similar things, right? Where they have, there's an easier path to get to, you know, 5-2K clearance as an example, right? And maybe that's not their end goal, but it's an easier. your path that, like, effectively have a device that you can make claims around. But they find a way

to drive revenue by partnering with, you know, CROs or other types of companies that want access to the data that that device is collecting. So it's a, I don't know, I guess it's a cool point to emphasize because oftentimes there's like, there's, there's unique ways to like, you know, keep a company sort of, you know, capitalize driving revenue, right, even though maybe these interim steps aren't your ultimate ultimate goal. So it's kind of, it's kind of cool to see. So from a, From a lifestyle perspective, I know, I know Firefly is kind of unique in the fact that you're publicly traded, right, under the ticker AIAFF, which is pretty cool. But when did you go public and kind of are you just focused on the U.S. right now or do you have a kind of a global commercial kind of play as it relates to the brain scan aspect of the technology? Yeah. So we went public through a reverse merger in August of last year. So we haven't even been publicly traded for a year yet.

but that was really to go public and get more visibility into investors and enhance our profile. And for now, we're really focused on executing in the clinics in the U.S. We do have a number of pharma partnerships globally. But from a commercial perspective, we're trying to stay incredibly focused and try to just win in core markets. And so for now, it's just kind of heads down focusing in the U.S. Cool. Awesome. And again, firefly neuro.com is the website.

I definitely encourage you to check out the technology more details. It's pretty cool. But we'll link to it in the full write-up, but it's firefly neuro.com, just as it sounds. So with that said, Greg, I'd love to kind of dive into a few different kind of topical or kind of functional areas, right? And get kind of your key lessons learned, things that you think would be valuable for other med tech CEOs to kind of really, really lessons that you think would be valuable for them to take home. And the first one is really around capital markets, right? I mean, you just mentioned you spent the previous, what, like 15 years in the capital markets, and that ultimately led to you wanting to kind of get more operationally involved and take on

the CEO role at Firefly. But when you think about your experience is either raising money for Firefly or just other friends, right, that you know in the space that that have struggled kind of keeping their companies capitalized, this is just might be one of the hardest things to do, right, as an early stage MedTech company. So what, how do you typically advise them? What do you see, whether you want to kind of approach that from mistakes that you typically see or just kind of these are the one or two things that, you know, CEOs need to really, you know, get, get right when it comes to this, this area. Yeah, it's, it's a great question. And so, you know, the number one reason that companies fail or startups fail, I think is

they just run out of capital and a runway to actually go and execute to get cash flow positive. And so, you know, it's a critical piece to any of these businesses, these pre-revenue companies. And so for us, it's not even, it's not just the amount of capital that you raise, but it's also who your investors are and the terms that you raise them on. And so I see a lot of companies struggle in this aspect where they might not have the right investors long term that as the company keeps growing and maturing, they may not be there to support that next level of growth and then the founders constantly out there spending all their time raising capital and not actually on the underlying business. And so, you know, I think it's who you raise that money from as

well. And that also dictates, you know, the terms that you raise them. So, you know, my advice is really trying to find the right long-term partners that can help you strategically and build your business and not get too stuck on valuation and the amount of capital. It's really who you're working with long term. I think is important. This is an area that, you know, someone listening that's like, I'm desperate for capital, right? They've been banging on doors for, you know, six months, nine months a year. They, you know, they're trying to make sense of lack of traction. You know, they may say, they may counter that and say, well, that's easy for you to say, gray, you've got all this, you know, these connections and you've got all this experience in

capital raising. But I think, I think from my perspective, it's such a crucial point because if you end up, let's say you end up saying yes to a certain investor, right? You got, you're able to find, you know, some people that are inject capital to the company and maybe that buys you a year or 18 months, whatever. But if they're the wrong investors, right, that year or that 18 months, not only could it be brutal, right, but you could often times be in a much worse scenario, you know, when you fast forward a year or two down the road. So that seemingly like quick yes could end up being, you know, causing a lot of turmoil. So I think it's a really, really great point around like who you're, who you're raising from is

quite crucial. Well, I want to make a point because you mentioned some of these companies you may be not in a position of strength and you really just have to go on whatever, you'll take whatever capital you can get. You know, for us, it wasn't always an easy. It was a long, bumpy journey to get to where we are. and one of the biggest things that I learned through this whole process in health care is you need a strong team that is multidisciplinary. So you need a strong medical officer. You need a strong

technology person. You need a strong regulatory person. So you can't do everything yourself. And so if capital raising is your weakness because you know, you're a founder led and you're a physician and you really understand the science, then I would say, go partner with someone who has that strength because they can help speed that along and it can be very complimentary. I think if you try to do everything,

I think there's just, healthcare is just way too complicated. That's really challenging. So I think it's have the right team and find those people that can help you at the capital side. Yeah, so so crucial. Because there's a lot of,

I've had a lot of like physicians per se on the program, but I interact with a lot of physicians that have an idea, maybe or they're already like actually, they've made good progress on their concept. Maybe they're into preclinical as an example. But they've got a full-time gig, right? Like they're still like practicing medicine. And sometimes it's just hard to let go.

It's hard to let go of their baby to hand it off to someone that can, you know, step in and operationally run the company. But I totally agree. Like if you, you've got to be thinking about this as like, you know, from a sustainable perspective, you're going to have to have like these key spokes, right? These key cogs, you know, whether it's R&D, whether it's, you know, Reg Klen, whether it's, you know, kind of capital raising or finance, if you will. So, so yeah, I think that's a ultimately going to have to make that call, right? You can't, you know, sort of have two

two full time, two full time, to, to do well. And capital raising is a full time job. So I've encouraged people to make sure you have a great team and find those people that can help you. That's good stuff. Let's, let's move on to kind of this platform kind of technology. You mentioned it earlier. And I know, based on kind of our notes, that you recently identified a new, a new cognitive brain age biomarker, which I think you announced in a press release. And you've got, you know, other, you know, dementia clinical trials, I think that are either ongoing or maybe that you've completed. And so anyway, I guess where I'm going with this, this question is you've got probably a lot of different areas, right, that you could go and look at.

When you're dealing with sort of this underlying kind of platform technology, how do you prioritize? How are you kind of thinking about, like, where to focus? It's a great question. And I think the exciting part about Firefly and maybe the weakness as well is that we have such a big opportunity. We know so little about the brain and mental disorders and our database covers, I think over a dozen different cognitive disorders. So concussions, depression, dementia, ADHD, Alzheimer's. So there's so many paths that we can take this from a disease state, from a clinician state, and then from a pharma. And so for us, we're hyper-focused on this year, just executing in neurology, and our focus, for the most part, is dementia. You know, we have this big baby boomer generation that's aging and an aging population. You know, I think one of the key things that they care about is, is their brain. So for us, you know, we want to focus there.

But as we keep, you know, building out our network of clinicians and, keep getting more data. We want the market to kind of pull us and tell us, hey, by the way, you know, here's here's all these exciting ways to grow and we can evaluate them to say, okay, look, there's 20 different directions we could take it, but which one's going to get us the best return on investment or ROI in the short term and the long term? Because we can't stretch ourselves too thin. We have to focus.

And so if we execute and do really well on our first initiative, then the market will enable us to keep growing, giving us a privilege to then work on the second, the third, and the fourth. And so for us, I think that's, that's, you know, there's so many exciting opportunities, but it's trying to, it's just trying to make sure we just do one at a time. I mean, it's a good challenge to have, right, to have like so many opportunities that you could potentially pursue. But that, that framework of like nailing one and then letting the market, like signal, like looking for those signals and letting the market kind of pull you maybe in the, in the next direction, once you've been able to showcase that you can execute in, in, in,

one area. It's like such a healthy, I think, framework is, again, I think there's a lot of people that are, that are, that'll listen to this and be like, I'm stuck in this scenario where it's like, it's hard to choose, right? Like, it feels like we're doing pretty well in one area, but like, you know, there's, there's, there's opportunities and there may be opportunity costs. We don't pursue them now, but it's like, you know, I think that that idea of let's nail one and then, and then let the market pull us into other areas if the opportunity is there. Hey there, it's Scott. And thanks for listening in so far. The rest of this conversation is only available via our private podcast for Medsider Premium Members.

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