Ken Nelson - Entrepreneur, Investor and Board Member

Ken Nelson: 0:05
I fundamentally believe this, the big core device companies that haven't made that shift and aren't investing in Transitioning to not only just being a medical device company, but also being a digital health diagnostic services player. If they don't quickly shift, and this is any company, big, major core device company, they really risk becoming Kodak and becoming irrelevant.

Giovanni Lauricella: 0:30
A dinosaur,

Ken Nelson: 0:32
It's true. The world is shifting quickly. You look at the digital health revolution, you look at. What's happening with LLMs and OpenAI and if people don't make quick shifts and pivot quickly right now, they really risk becoming irrelevant.

Giovanni Lauricella: 0:51
This is the MedTech Startup Podcast. We're about to get inside the head, the heart, and the gut of this crazy MedTech entrepreneur, serial board member, and venture capitalist. Ken. I would say most of the medtech world knows you already. But if anyone who doesn't know who you are, let's talk about who you are, where are you from? How did you build your life? How did you get into medtech through your professional career thus far? And then right now, where you are not only a serial board member, but also a partner in the Medtech Advantage Fund. Tell that story leading up to that point and then we'll hone in on what you're doing now, but who the hell are you?

Ken Nelson: 1:33
Yeah, I grew up in a little beach town in New Jersey called, Manasquan, New Jersey and I used to Carry my surfboard on a bike, ride my bike to the beach about two miles every day and surf every day growing up. Four brothers, so you can imagine with five boys in a house. Testosterone house. It was pretty rambunctious. We were, we would send each other to the ER, break each other's limbs, that brotherly love. But you can imagine the competitive nature of five boys in a house. I was one of those kids who played a different sport every season, so I was a pretty competitive kid. My mom was a public school teacher 8th grade English teacher. And so I was a public school kid up until my last two years of high school. And then I went to a boarding school up in New Hampshire called Phillips Exeter Academy. Which was really competitive in terms of academics and sports. And so that was, a whole other level of education. I thought I was a pretty smart kid in public school, top of my class, and then went to boarding school where I was nowhere near the top. I was somewhere in the bottom third, I would say. New Jersey is not what everybody sees on the Sopranos. It's definitely different, and so growing up in a nice beach town was fun. After boarding school, went to Vanderbilt. So I was in Nashville, Tennessee. Loved Nashville, still love Nashville. I have a brother who lives in Nashville. In terms of where we're spread out another brother in Boston, one in Atlanta, one in Tampa. And I think I got all of them.

Giovanni Lauricella: 3:12
You got all five of them, including yourself.

Ken Nelson: 3:13
And then I'm in Dallas, Texas. So yeah, it was it was fun growing up. My dad was a, business owner. He started a couple different. small businesses. Grandfather was the same way. So I got that like entrepreneurial spirit from them. My grandparents, especially on my dad's side, my mother or my grandmother she went to Wellesley when she was like 15 or 16. So really intelligent artists and model. And she met my grandfather up in Boston. He was at MIT. She was at Wellesley. but no, I get a lot of my love of travel and, using experiences to shape you as a person from my grandparents, from my dad's parents my grandparents traveled all over the world. They took my brothers and I on some of those trips. We didn't do a ton of trips on airplanes and stuff as a, with a public school teacher as a mom, as a parent and four brothers, we were our family vacations were typically in a station wagon somewhere, but my grandparents would take us. On trips and, fast forward. My grandmother was an artist. She took us to art museums all over the country or wherever we would be going. If we were out of the country, we'd go see an art museum. She was a sculptor. And she she really was big on experiences and that shaping you as a person. And and so they used to take us up into the Twin Towers. What were the Twin Towers? And so we would go up to the top. I think there was a restaurant called Windows on the World that I remember going to as a little kid. And then even standing outside on the top of the Trade Center. It was really windy. I just remember that distinctly as a kid. And it was really cool. She was, as a grandparent to be doing that with your grandparents and your brothers. You really remember that. And so the reason I'm telling the story is, you ask, how did I get into med tech? I was a finance guy at a college, but when 9 11 happened, I was working for a startup software company in Atlanta. And I remember sitting in a cubicle, like watching live stream the first tower had been hit and then watching it collapse and watching the plane literally live streaming on a laptop in a cubicle in Atlanta at the startup. What the? Tech bubble was bursting. thE second plane fly in and I remember trying to call friends that I had and family like in New York. I couldn't get through to anybody. And I just thought what am I doing with my life? What, I'm sitting in a cubicle doing like finance stuff. And I just didn't feel like I was making an impact. And so I decided I wanted to get into medical devices. My older brother was in... medical device sales. He had always talked about cardiac sales being really interesting. And I'd heard you could get into the procedure for pacemaker and defibrillator implants. And when I learned what a pacemaker did and what a defibrillator did, I just got obsessed with wanting to go work for one of those companies, get into those procedures, be a part of those procedures with the physicians putting them in, knowing that a pacemaker in its basic form could tell if your heart was beating too slow and speed it up like pace the heart and a defibrillator if it was beating too fast or radically could shock it back into a normal rhythm and be a part of saving and improving lives and that was 2001 and I've been in cardiac devices ever since so started with Guidant which then got acquired by Boston Scientific. This was in Atlanta, Georgia. And then had unbelievable mentors at Guidant people like like Doug Nock and Roger Owens, who gave me my first shot in sales, even though everybody told me nobody ever transitions from finance to sales. I had this five year plan in my head that I was going to build relationships and just do really well and work really hard in whatever role that I was in hoping that someone would give me a shot in sales and that's what happened. They moved me from Atlanta, Georgia to Dallas, Texas, and that was my first pacemaker sales job, worked my way up to sales leadership. I had a five year plan like personally and professionally to get into cardiac device sales and become a sales manager. Took me five and a half. So I was pretty close. And I think at the time I was the youngest regional sales manager and cardiac rhythm management for Guidant Boston scientific. So for me, that was a big accomplishment. I'm really proud of that happening, but it would have never happened without some of the great mentors that I mentioned. And Guidant just in general, I feel like I've based the people and culture theme and my focus on people and culture around what I learned at Guidant. And that there's tremendous mentors, a tremendous leadership development program that they had and just people loved working there. And I just decided any company that I'm part of, hiring the team, building the team, building the culture, I wanted to model it around that. And having grown up with four brothers, you have that family like approach to building a work culture. And that seemed to have worked out pretty well. It's a long winded way of telling you how I got into MedTech.

Giovanni Lauricella: 8:47
That's what I wanted to hear. You're known for having been at companies who have successfully exited several times. Finish that journey. What happened after Guidant?

Ken Nelson: 8:54
Yeah my boss and boss's boss at Guidant Boston went to a competitor called St. Jude Medical, which is now Abbott, in the cardiac rhythm management side, the pacemaker side. And St. Jude is about to invest in a small startup called iRhythm, which is based here in San Francisco. And they needed somebody to come in and build out the sales and marketing team, launch the product, build a partnership with St. Jude and see if they could turn it into a company. And and I remember distinctly many people saying, I can't believe you're giving up your medical device career to go work for some monitoring company. Like, why would you do that? You're in pacemaker sales. Like, why would you go give that up to go work for a monitoring company? But for me one of the challenges in our pacemaker world is that there were so many patients who were indicated for a device, for a pacemaker, for a defibrillator, plantable, defibrillator for inflation, but never ever got one. And part of the reason is that they just were never. diagnosed with the arrhythmia and I remember a statistic really just never forgot it. They just ingrained it in your head that 75 percent of patients indicated for an implantable defibrillator never got one. And I thought this product, when I saw the Zio patch for the first time, I said people are going to wear this and they're going to wear it longer. And so that's, they're going to capture more arrhythmias with it and it's going to lead to more ablations, pacemakers, defibrillators. So I just got really passionate that we could bring it to market and build a team. And did I know it was going to transform into a multi billion dollar industry? And yeah, I'd spend time building what had become three of the teams and the cultures that had become three of the four biggest players in that space. I had no idea at that time, obviously. But it was a lot of fun to, to get into the startup world, to do that. And then to go from iRhythm to what was known at the time as CardioNet, which became BioTelemetry and run A and business development there first for the first like nine months or so, find the products in Europe that would become their core products today, the MCOT patch and ePatch do this partnership with IMEC and Delta, take over sales and rebuild the sales team, rebuild the culture, take that company from a hundred million to 300 million a year and in revenue over a couple of year period help them get to profitability for the first time ever with the team we put in place and bring a real time patch to market. I mean there was one other one kind of on the market and we became the better number one player in real time cardiac patch monitoring. iRhythm was a non real time product, but they also at Biotel we came out with the ePatch to compete head to head with that product. But I was primarily focused on bringing a real time, device to market, meaning one that talked to a smartphone. So we did that. And now they're, I think Biotelemetry monitors over a million patients a year, just that company. I was there for five years. We acquired a bunch of companies. They were acquiring the second biggest player in the space, a company called LifeWatch. And then just got, just smacked in the face with a family member dying. My father in law, gotta get choked up even thinking about it. Died of sudden cardiac death, just out of nowhere. And I just thought, spending 10 years in, in pacemakers, defibrillators, and then the next 10 years building the, what had become the two biggest players in cardiac monitoring, yet, my own father in law just dies out of nowhere of sudden cardiac death and thought we still have so much work to do in terms of finding technologies which find these, or diagnose these patients to get them the procedures and technology they need. There's no reason he should be dead today. We should have been able to capture it. My wife and I knew something was up. But he, like my dad, refused to go see a doctor. So we couldn't get him to go see a doctor. It was Thanksgiving 2016. And I remember showing him the AliveCore technology. It was on the back of my smartphone. I said, if you won't go see a doctor, I can't get you a patch. Cause they're a prescription only product. But I'll buy you one of these AliveCore products. This is how it works. I showed him how it works. It was November. 2016. I remember buying it for my parents, my wife's parents. I forgot to bring it on Christmas and he died man, 10 days later. It was tough.

Giovanni Lauricella: 13:38
Holy shit. Oh my God. I'm starting to hear that. And obviously you've now been super, super responsible for bringing multiple technologies like this. And you've gone through multiple companies turning around these commercial teams to get it out there. And you've gone through three exits at this point.

Ken Nelson: 13:57
It's like right after that happened or shortly after I got approached by Paul LaViolette, who's the old COO of Boston Scientific and now runs one of the partners at SV Health, the venture capital group. And they had led series a of Barty Diagnostics, which was Gust's parties latest company. He had bought Gust's prior company, Cameron Health for Boston Scientific. It was the subcutaneous implantable defibrillator. And he said one, I'd love for you to come just hear Gust story, hear it from him. And and Gust's wife had worn 10 different external monitors, had a couple implanted and none of them could really see her P wave really detect what kind of atrial arrhythmia that she was having. And she ended up dying of, some type of sudden cardiac arrest in her 52, 53. And so he started Barty Diagnostics a year to the day after her death, with the premise that he was going to bring a more accurate P wave centric and higher fidelity rhythm strip monitor to market. And so Like the other two companies, when people are like, why would you go do this? You just built the teams that built the two biggest players in the space. Why would you go compete against that? And for me, it was about, my father in law had just died. And I just said, if we can bring a more innovative, accurate technology to market, that's going to diagnose more people and lead to more procedures and prevent what... So I decided to be chief commercial officer of that company and kind of go in and rebuild their sales organization, rebuild the culture. And we went from something like, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred patients a month when I had started there, did a million a year in revenue. And three years later, after building this team and culture and infrastructure, that company, Bardy Diagnostics, we were doing something like 20, 000 patients a month. We'd become the second biggest player after iRhythm in non real time cardiac monitoring, patch monitoring, and and doing about$30 million in revenue. And the company got acquired by Hilrom, and then Baxter bought the combined company a couple weeks later. So it's, been a rollercoaster of a ride, I can tell you. I think I was telling you this the other day. prIor to being a part of those three successful companies in a row that, all eventually had pretty significant exits. I worked At Turner Broadcasting, which is Time Warner, AOL Time Warner, during that merger, and it was at, obviously, at Guidant during the Boston Guidant acquisition. And I remember reading a, an article in Fortune magazine talking about the two worst acquisitions ever, and you can look this up, it was in Fortune, ever, were, the worst acquisition ever, they said was Boston's acquisition of Guidant, because they were in a bidding war with J& J. Only to have been eclipsed by the, previously by the the AOL Time Warner acquisition. I'd worked at both of the two worst acquisitions ever according to Fortune. So I had that article on my refrigerator at one point and I had it in a drawer for a while as motivation. Hey, I don't want to be part of the third and fourth worst acquisitions ever if I'm ever in that position of being able to lead a team and build an organization that... I kind of use that as as motivation, although Guidant, like I said, I don't think that was a bad acquisition by Boston, but that's what Fortune magazine said.

Giovanni Lauricella: 17:40
So by the way, for those listening in what we didn't preface this yet is that we're currently in San Francisco at the medtech strategist innovation summit. And we have the medtech innovator alumni, as well as 2023 cohort. That is here right now. We're going to jump into Ken Nelson's affiliation with that. But before we do that, yeah. We have honestly had a blast together coast to coast in the United States, over in Europe at MedTech Strategist Dublin Conference. You name it, we've had a blast. And most recently, you were super influential at MedTech Malta with us only a month ago in Malta, which was a phenomenal blast, which we know you're coming back next year. So thank you so much for what you did for us last month. And you brought up this word about awareness. And obviously, you brought up awareness in terms of making awareness for detection of cardiac failure based on family stories. But awareness in general, what I want to know is I know that you consume podcasts, you read books you push out a lot of content. If anyone follows you on LinkedIn, you know what we're doing even right now yeah, what is the beneficial aspects of the resources that we're creating like this right now, you're Yeah. What we do in building community, whether it's Paul Grand in MedTech Innovator, whether it's MedTech Malta and the people and the investors and entrepreneurs that we brought there, the podcast that we're learning these stories of real life medical device and MedTech entrepreneurial, not entrepreneurship, as well as what it means to be an investor. Why is this so important?

Ken Nelson: 19:19
Yeah. If you've, if you look hard enough, you can find like minded people who are really, passionate about Innovation and especially in healthcare and MedTech and so you find different resources like all these healthcare startup accelerators. I was fortunate enough to have found MedTech Innovator by the third one and have gone, had gone through MedTech Innovator as well as Healthtech Arkansas, which became HeartX and I just, I got so much out of going through those and networking through the ecosystem. And it was so beneficial in finding strategics to talk to finding venture capital groups to talk to figuring out, what recruiters can help me find the right people. I think that's how we first met over the phone was, we're talking about recruiting people and and when you find like minded people who are as equally as passionate as you is with their part of that ecosystem, you want to help other people out. And when you've. built teams and worked with teams that have done some of these things. You want to help other people try to do the same thing and try to impact as many lives in a positive way as you can. And I think people know if you're like that and people see what you're doing with with your podcasts and going around and doing some of these these events and and helping these early stage startups out, whether it's with people or connections to investors. And I think that matters. And so when I see other people doing that, I want to help those people out just like I wanted, would have, would have appreciated to help when I was. building these companies and didn't know any better. It's sometimes you just don't know about those resources and MedTech Innovator. It's the biggest MedTech digital health startup accelerator in the world, but still many people don't know about it. I try to raise awareness about these resources and other people who are passionate about innovation and driving innovation and raising awareness about those technologies and then driving adoption of them. And yeah, I, I just, to be honest, I never was a social media person until until COVID happened. And I, sometimes you have to pivot and to save a company. And I became, I was not a social media person. I tried to become one and and tried to post stuff that I thought other people could be interested in. And if I'd read something or see a resource that I would want to share it with other people and they just gain momentum from there, but it all started with COVID.

Giovanni Lauricella: 21:57
You're a commercial story. So you're a commercial executive. You've done turnarounds before. You've built teams before. You've taken user bases from very small user bases to very large user bases. You've crossed the chasm, like you've talked about before. So I want to let you run on this story, but with you being involved in MedTech Innovator, for example, where there's a bunch of companies that are not only far away, but they're either... A few years away or many years away from commercialization, right? So you've seen product development companies. You've worked with product development entrepreneurs. But your professional career has been turning around and building commercial stage companies. I want to get really tactical and leverage your experience and knowledge. What are these nuances between product development stages and commercial stages? And let me refine that meaning. What don't product development stage companies get about how hard commercialization is for medical device companies?

Ken Nelson: 23:01
Yeah. So I'll touch on that, but before I jump in, I just wanted to mention some of these things you just learn over time and what I've tried to ingrain in the people I work with and I live this, I breathe it. So I don't say it. To other people to do it, but I do it myself too is just to never stop learning. I listened to, I read a ton. I've read a ton of books. I read books. I like to listen to podcasts. Most of the stuff I listened to is either leadership or business or biography type of things. And for you specifically, I think I've told you this before, to learn about a person or a venture group. I'll listen to your interviews with those people. And it's not like I listen to it once. I'll listen to it like four or five times as I'm running or walking in the morning or whatever, exercising, and just to get a better feel for that person and their philosophy on investing. And just another way to do it versus just going on their website and reading about it, is hearing you talk to them and hearing it directly from those people. I feel like it's a, you get a better understanding of that individual and their personality. And I feel like you if you really want to get good at some of this stuff, you've got to read the books, you've got to listen to the podcast, you've got to talk to other people, and you can't ever stop doing that. I still do that stuff all the time, every day. And then going back to what you're saying about, what are the product development people not get about commercialization is you can have the best product in the world. If you can't build a commercial team and sell it, the company will go nowhere. And so sometimes that's a fundamental flaw. As you see some founders that build this great product, it's a great innovation. They figure out reimbursement, they figure out all these other things. But they're not commercial people. They don't know how to get it in the hands of the customer and get people to actually use it. And one of the things, one of the big learning points for me is at iRhythm, I remember going down to Moore Davidow. We'd go down Sand Hill Road for board meetings. And, it's a first time MedTech Startup person going there. It's, first it's intimidating, but also really cool. And then a couple of board meetings in, I met Jeffrey Moore, who was part of Moore David, who wrote the book"Crossing the Chasm". And I remember reading the book and then reading second and third time thinking, man, this is like a Bible of how to segment out customers, how to drive adoption and how to take a product from a couple customers to a lot of customers, then a lot of customers consistently and really what he referred to is crossing that chasm. And I remember coming back to him more recently saying, Hey, I just wanted to thank you. And I got a phone call with him. I said, what I learned from you and your book and meeting with you at through iRhythm and through Moore David and through the board. I said I use that to, to commercialize two other companies and what have become the teams, the cultures, the infrastructures of three of the four biggest players. And now what is a multi billion dollar market, but it's you look back on those things and the people that helped you do it. And I think it was fun for him to see somebody who he had taught and I'd learned from him, but to go back to him years later and say, this is what we were able to accomplish. But I owe some of that to you and what I learned from what you taught us in that, from that book.

Giovanni Lauricella: 26:37
You mentioned an interesting story, but, and also I know a lot of part of the challenge and what we talked about, there was even a panel yesterday here at MedTech Strategist about. Reimbursement being the number one challenge, right? They used to talk about regulatory being the number one challenge, but now reimbursements the number one challenge, and obviously you've had to take that into consideration because If you can't figure out how to get it paid, it doesn't mean anything. But you have this awesome story about Medicare getting reimbursed.

Ken Nelson: 27:04
I don't know if it's called awesome, but But in the cardiac monitoring world, we had to get a new brand new code established with iRhythm for the extended cardiac monitoring. They had 24 hour Holter monitoring codes, they had 30 day event monitoring codes, and I'm getting in the weeds a little bit, but then they had 30 day mobile cardiac telemetry real time monitoring codes, but they didn't have anything for 14 days of continuous non real time monitoring. So we had to work with Medicare and commercial payers to get them to believe in that and all the hard work that goes into getting Category 3 code and then trying to get it to be a Category 1 code and get not only national coverage but national pay schedule. And so after many years of that all happening, continuing to be in that space, when the acquisition was announced of Hillrom buying, this isn't, this is a cool story. So after 10 years of trying to sell these, build these companies and try to get the big device players to acquire one of them end of 20. 20, beginning of 2021, very end of 2020, beginning of 2021. There's a 45 day period where three of the four biggest players, acquisitions got announced. I think the first one was Phillips was buying Biotelemetry and then Boston Scientific announced they're buying Preventice. I can't remember the exact order, but I think this may, maybe the order. And then Hillrom announced that they were going to buy Bardy. So the first two got announced, they eventually went through. Before the Barty acquisition finalized, Medicare came out and instead of doing what the RUC committee had said, and increasing the reimbursement 30%, they cut it by mistake 85%. So think about that. Instead of a 30 percent increase, it was an 85 percent decrease. Hillrom tried to back out of the acquisition. And so it became a huge lawsuit. Medicare eventually changed the reimbursement over, it wasn't fast, it was like over almost 8 or 9 months where they finally adjusted it back. But but we won the lawsuit acquisition went through, thankfully.

Giovanni Lauricella: 29:24
Not easily.

Ken Nelson: 29:25
No, not easily. But there's weird hiccups that happen, there's weird ups and downs, obviously, of any startup. But it's one of those things where the acquisition was happening, the other two had gone through. So it was, we just assumed it was a done deal. And you just never know until the money... Somebody told me this, that I just didn't register until it actually happened. Until that money hits your account, you don't have the money. And so you just never know it's going to happen. Thankfully it all worked out.

Giovanni Lauricella: 29:54
You've mentioned before people in culture, I know you're really big on people in culture, but imagine you're speaking to a room of non commercial CEOs. They haven't been there yet. So educating them on what that means to get there when it comes, what are the challenges of building a commercial? And then how do you incorporate your people and culture into that? What don't Commercial CEOs know about what it takes to actually build a right commercial team.

Ken Nelson: 30:19
Yeah. So I think you really have to spend time trying to figure out what's the ideal profile, like what's the ideal person's background experience that you want to build that sales force. So you figure out the ideal profile and then as you're recruiting a team, it's how close can you get? to that ideal profile, but you've got to spend the time on what you're looking for, what aspects of the people that you want. Fortunately, some of the companies I've worked for in the past, they were big on personality profiling. So Myers Briggs, DISC, Enneagram. So I went through all three of those programs, and you learn a ton every time you go through it about how people are wired. And so part of it is coming up with this profile of what you're looking for, The other part is assessing that person as you're interviewing that person. And so for me, I was always a part of the process when people were hiring. And this is how my process worked is I'd say you, you recruit for that role. Once you have your top two or three candidates, I want to talk to them and meet with your top two or three. I'll never pick the person, but I'll just give you my feedback on those. And then it's you as the hiring manager you pick who you want. And and I I've always lived by that. If somebody made two or three mistakes in a row, I obviously got way more involved in that process. But I always let them pick and I wanted, I didn't want people to make mistakes, but I wanted them to own who they were hiring. And some of the times, man, it's, You try to lead them in the right way, and you know that person's not going to be a fit, but it's almost like you have to let them make that mistake, as painful as it is sometimes. And then it but they own the person, and it all works out in the end, and you build that family like culture and people will go the extra mile, they'll work the extra time, they'll do the extra things that are needed to weather the storm and the ups and downs of a startup. And if you don't do it that way and you don't have fun ingrained into a work hard, play hard type of of attitude, then you're in for a world of hurt. And I tell you, making the wrong hires is just really painful in terms of time. And money and resources because you don't want to have to continuously be recruiting for the same roles. So spending that time on the front end to hire the right people and really think about what you really want in that specific role and bring people into the right people into the right roles. It just, it matters so much. It's so important. And I feel like the most important thing you can do is hiring and developing your people more than almost anything else and building that culture that's on top of that.

Giovanni Lauricella: 33:15
You're also huge on mindset and I want to prompt you with this story that you had mentioned to me about how you were with a medical device company. And you had to change mindset. Because they actually really were a diagnostic services company. What does that mean?

Ken Nelson: 33:28
Yeah, so when I came into Bardy I remember sitting in all these executive meetings, sitting in the board meeting and they're like, Yeah, we need, we're a medical device company. We need to do this. We need to do that. And he kept saying that and the way that they were operating as a business, they were missing out on 80 percent of the dollars in that industry. I said 80 percent of the market, it's diagnostic services. You're not selling the device. This is a, it's a cool device, but it's being used for diagnostic service. We've got a really cool device, we've built a really cool device, but we're not a medical device company. We're a diagnostic services company. And we need to buy or build an IDTF, an independent diagnostic testing facility. And until we changed that mindset, made that decision, they would have just been spinning their wheels and not growing at the pace that we ended up growing. It would have never grown to the size that we were. They're grown into if they had kept that mindset. And then you fast forward to more recently I'm trying to, I was trying to get a medical device company to shift their mindset to become more of a digital health remote patient monitoring, diagnostic services company. And I fundamentally believe this, the big core device companies that haven't made that shift and aren't investing in Transitioning to not only just being a medical device company, but also being a digital health diagnostic services player. If they don't quickly shift, and this is any company, big, major core device company, they really risk becoming Kodak and becoming irrelevant.

Giovanni Lauricella: 35:10
A dinosaur,

Ken Nelson: 35:12
It's true. The world is shifting quickly. You look at the digital health revolution, you look at. What's happening with LLMs and OpenAI and if people don't make quick shifts and pivot quickly right now, they really risk becoming irrelevant.

Giovanni Lauricella: 35:30
I want to touch base on you becoming a serial board member, right? So an operator, a strong commercial operator has gone through and been responsible for helping out a few acquisitions in the space that obviously you're incredibly passionate about. Yeah. But now you're a serial board member. Speak to that. What can you speak to? You're chairman, you're board member. What does it mean to be a great board member for all those people out there who want to be a board member? How do they go about being a board member? The companies that you can share that you're a part of being a board member, all that stuff. What does it really mean about you becoming a serial board member?

Ken Nelson: 36:04
Yeah I think, so what, let me back up for a second. One of the things that I do every year between Christmas and New Year's is I look at my... personal, professional goals. I think about it and then I actually write it down. What I want to accomplish over the next five to ten years. I'm a big believer in that. I've done it every year, going back to 2001, when I had that kind of fundamental mindset shift of what I want to do with my career. I've been doing that every year, usually in that time period. And and more recently, I said I wanted to start joining boards and I wanted to try to get on a handful of company boards to try to help these companies with things that I wish I had learned from somebody or somebody had been there for me to help me along. I wanted to be that person who could help some of these other earlier stage companies. And I wanted to try to start joining boards. I put that kind of in my plan of things I wanted to get accomplished. Unfortunately, not all companies are okay with you joining boards. And so in January, I decided to leave the company that I was with and start a venture with Paul Grand and two other guys, Patrick O'Neill and Chris Neal to invest only in the alumni companies of MedTech Innovator, which is the biggest MedTech digital health startup accelerator globally. And having gone through it, I was a big advocate of someone who'd gone through the program, really loved it and now wanted to help other companies as a investor. And and so I did that and then joined, started to join boards. And so over the last year, I've joined a half dozen boards. HeartX, which is a cardiac startup accelerator formerly known as Health Tech Arkansas. Which is tied into MedAxiom which is an ACC company, American College of Cardiology. I've gotten more heavily involved with Heart Rhythm Society and HRX, which is the Digital Health Summit of Heart Rhythm Society a lot more involved with American Heart Association and their Center for Digital Health Innovation Chairman of the Board of Cardiac Care out of Israel, out of Tel Aviv area. On the board of Heart Beam, which is a public company outta San Jose on the board of Happy Tech out of Amsterdam on the board or about to be heavily involved and likely on the board of a company called Smartcard out of Switzerland. That one's not public yet. I guess now it's public but

Giovanni Lauricella: 38:31
only here at The MedTech Startup Podcast.

Ken Nelson: 38:34
And it, it's just been fun and there's a couple other ones that. I'll likely potentially join. And then I've been doing a bunch of angel investing and in some of these companies that I'm on the board of and then just in general health Wildcatters in Dallas, which is a local healthcare startup accelerator. I've invested in a handful of their funds, a mentor for them. Blackstone Launchpad, which is UT Southwestern. Starting to get a little bit more involved and probably get more involved with Capital Factory. I think we talked about them the other day but I'm probably least involved with them today, but I'll, trying to get more time in Texas and in Dallas and in that local ecosystem. So I'll probably get more involved there.

Giovanni Lauricella: 39:17
Shout out to Bryan Chambers. Listen in. We're coming for you Capital Factory.

Ken Nelson: 39:22
But no, I, and I know you're coming, you're going to be moving to Texas yourself. And so it's, how do we, having built the, these companies that are on the coast and raised money from venture groups on the coasts, how do we, I know we didn't even talk about this, but how do we continue to build out the local ecosystem in the middle of the country in Texas, Texas has what it has the bones of something that could be a really amazing healthcare, MedTech innovation ecosystem. And you're starting to see that happen in Austin and Dallas and Houston. And it's people like you who are really passionate about making that happen and your team. And then, myself and some of the groups that I'm involved with, who are committed to making that happen.

Giovanni Lauricella: 40:11
We're going to make the third coast a reality. There's a shit ton of money in Texas as we all know, and how we convert that, how we educate the ecosystem, how we make them realize that it's not only just gas and oil and energy as a whole, but, or even cattle or real estate, but there's, there's health at play. And, Houston, for example, you guys have Pegasus park up in Dallas. Now Houston has the largest medical ecos or hospital ecosystem and hospital center in the world with the four major hospitals there. I fully believe in Texas,

Ken Nelson: 40:39
I've even asked you this question before, but I'll ask you on the podcast, why did you start doing these podcasts? And I'll tell you I love it because I've learned so much from these podcasts about investing in general, about being a venture capitalist, but it's specifically about certain VC funds or corporate venture or individuals that are part of those. I'm guessing you did that in part. To learn as much as you could, but what, what was the motivator for you? Did you want to have this resource? So people like myself could learn from what you're doing or was it more for yourself or was it a combination of those things?

Giovanni Lauricella: 41:16
Great question. Didn't ask questions on my own podcast, which I love, but interesting twist. No it's true. So it's a two part now. I think in the very beginning, it was an opportunity to pull on my network. And then spend quality time asking questions that I selfishly wanted to learn from. And, it's one thing when you're at a conference and it's somewhat transactional or you're quickly buzzing by and you're talking about a topic before you're speed dating to the next one. But to have an hour with somebody and you get to ask them all the questions that you wish you could have, like who you are, what company are you really building? How did you actually do that? How many times do you get quality time where you can ask someone how or why? So in the very beginning it was quite selfish and I was asking investors how they invest and how they build funds. I was asking companies how they go about raising capital, the nuances of those raises for the various cells of technology. So super selfishly in terms of how I was learning through asking my own questions out of pure curiosity. I think what was the encouragement and I've heard it on other people who have shared it with like, why do you keep on going? Is you need that positive reinforcement because then you hit that wall of saturation and It was fairly quick that when we started disseminating the information out there, I was getting hit up on LinkedIn. I was getting calls and text messages. I was getting emails. I was hearing, Hey, I listened to your podcast and I was really interested in that investor. Can you introduce me? Or by the way, I reached out to that investor and they actually invested in me. I really resonated with that CEO. Can you share their email address so that I could reach out to them? And then i'd get me emails back a few months later saying they got on my board or they're now my advisor Or they connected me where so it just became this massive networking effect that created this community And you've been very verbose of telling me if you listen to the podcast you've learned from them You've been able to reach out and make a network of it as well or at least add on to your network So that certainly keeps me going and now it's at a point where Every story is so unique and you learn something from each. And so to be able to take all of these playbooks and these blueprints and at a high volume, disperse them to a community and keep on sharing it with the early stage entrepreneurs, the investors that are listening in, the LPs that are listening to the potential investors or the investors themselves, the late stage entrepreneurs. So that's definitely why I do it. And and we're gonna keep on continuing this because, it's coming on and sharing your stories right now that are gonna help out. And once again, you have a huge network. People know who you are. Now more people are gonna know who you are. Yeah. And I think even more powerful on this particular episode is, we've known each other for a while. We've done some crazy stuff together. I knew that you were passionate about heart diagnostics and cardiovascular heart failure and making sure that. You're able to push that mission forward, but today, like learning about why, like your actual, why that's a huge driver and you don't learn that stuff unless you get time with somebody, you can ask why and how. So that's definitely why I do it.

Ken Nelson: 44:17
Yeah. And I think once you see, it's probably similar for all of us who are doing this, once you see that you're making an impact, helping other people doing what you're doing. You probably feed off that a bit and you want to keep doing this. And, I'll tell you and you see me, I was almost in tears telling that story, but that's the type of stuff that drives you to bring these disruptive technologies that you really believe in. And I would only join the board of a company if I felt that passionately about, Hey, I love the technology. I love the founder. And I really want to bring that to market, raise awareness about it, drive adoption of it, because there's so many other things that we could be doing with our time and other companies we could be involved with. But unless you really love the technology, love those founders it's just not worth putting your time and energy into it. At this point, it's not about money. It's about making an impact and and doing stuff with people you really like. And people and getting involved with technologies that you think can make the biggest impact in advanced patient care the most.

Giovanni Lauricella: 45:25
Last question and we'll wrap up. Super thank you for this bar style conversation. No pun intended. I'll give you another ching real quick. Thanks for drinking a beer with me. Bud Heavies by the way, if you can't see this. Hey Bud. These are not Bud Lights. There's nothing light about this conversation. My last question is, we've talked about MTI. MedTech Innovator, the MedTech Advantage Fund, whatever you can share, and let's talk about it as much as you can. The MedTech Advantage Fund was designed to invest in alumni of the MedTech Innovator. It's 2023. It's been a challenging year. You're going from being a commercial expert in actual execution. on the operation side into being an angel investor, into being a community builder, into being a serial board member. And that's been a journey. Yeah. What can you talk about it. The good, the bad, the ugly.

Ken Nelson: 46:16
Yeah. So being involved with some of these startups, I'll tell you most recently, I tried to learn as much as I can from the board members that we had. I was lucky to work with legendary people like Paul Violette, who I consider a mentor and someone I've learned a ton from, not only in terms of how to operate a business, but as a board member. He's someone you emulate as you see them as an investor and board member. And we had, other people like Matt Herman from Ascension Ventures and Dave Tamburi from HEP and just really great people. And Rick Vandiven from River Cities and Ned Sheets from Aphelia. And people who are really great venture capitalists and board members and helpful. And you just try to learn as much as you can from them and emulate some of the stuff they're doing. I'm new to this in terms of being a board member, but I just try to bring my knowledge and be honest about what I know, what I don't know, and how I can help and where I may not be able to help. And then as an investor, and I'm not, I don't have a venture capital background. I have a finance background, which I think helps prior to getting into sales. But I try to learn from the people who I raised money from or who were on our boards who were also venture capitalists. And then, Paul Grand is a former RCT Ventures guy. Chris Neal came from Maxim Ventures. Patrick came from Connecticut Innovations or Connecticut Ventures. And so I think we kind of balance each other out in different skill sets. And it's been fun. the idea is try to build that network even stronger. Get even stronger sponsors in there. We just announced a partnership sponsorship or strategic collaboration this past weekend with the American Heart Association. What's really excited about and being a cardiac person that, that really gets me excited. And so you never know. I think some cool things will come from that. And like I said, I keep listening to your podcasts with VC guys and other people's I'm big Tim Ferris podcast listener and he likes to listen to people who have done great things and he wants to know what are their daily routines, what are their habits? I'm a big believer in reading things like Charles Duhigg's power of habit and what are impactful daily routines and what habits can you do that, over time will help you master something or be successful in something. And yeah, it's just doing that every day and continuing to do that as best you can. And you'll fall off sometimes. And then you try to get back on track to those positive behaviors. And and surrounding yourself with not only people you can learn from, but as you develop these people into leaders, I like to be able to, to now putting them into the companies I'm on boards of to lead their commercial efforts. How can I help them be what I was and what I tell people all the time is my goal is for them to be way better than I ever was and just whatever guidance I can teach them. That's the fun thing now is having some of those people I've built companies with in the past. And having them as part of some of these companies I've either invested in or on the boards up. This is the medtech startup podcast where we just got inside the head. The heart and the guts of this crazy, awesome medtech entrepreneur, board member and investor. Thank Grab your beer. Twist offs. All right. Hey, Bud. Bud Heavy. Bud Heavy. Cheers. All American. Good to be here, Geo tronic, Geovanni. I want everyone to know that you guys just experienced the f******** Ken Nelson experience on the MedTech startup podcast. This has been a lot of fun going around the world and babysitting Cristiano, our mutual friend, 100%, just can't handle a lot of different countries. No, he can't. One day he'll learn. Alright. Medtech money. Medtech money, baby. Cheers me real quick.

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