Torrey Smith and Chris Green - Endiatx

[00:00:00] Torrey Smith: I sketched in 2014. I really sketched it in 2015, 2016 and finally 2018 rolled around and. I finally stopped thinking that I had to do it all myself, because while I had been sketching logos, I had been trying to learn how to code. I'm no software engineer. And here I was surrounded with Arduino kits, trying to get my LEDs to blank to blink while trying to design tank treads to move the robot around. I was swamped. I, I felt like a fool. I felt like, like an imposter because I didn't possess the whole skillset and I was just languishing and I was descending into depression during that whole time.

[00:00:48] By 2018 though, with Burning Man, with our Tesla coil finally going off and people from all over the world, I finally realized the one thing I'd been missing all along was the team.

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[00:01:02] Giovanni Lauricella: Cheers, you guys. Cheers. Cheers.

[00:01:04] Torrey Smith: Thanks Giovanni.

[00:01:05] Giovanni Lauricella: We are in Santa Clara, California Post JPM, and we are with Torrey Smith, co-founder and CEO of Endiatx. And we are with Chris Green Angel Mind Freak turn Angel Chief Business Officer for Endiatx. And we are jumping on to the Med Tech Startup Podcast where we are getting inside the head the hearts and the guts, and actually truly the guts with this technology with Endiatx.

[00:01:38] And with that being said, we're gonna jump into not only how they fund the SCI-Fi technology, we're gonna talk to the spirit of this company. And then also keep your eyes open for all of the extra footage that you'll see in this manufacturing center in addition to some of the electrical en engineering that we'll talk about.

[00:01:57] And then how does Burning Man play into this? So anyway, um, I wanna start with our intimate relationship of you guys having to fly halfway around the world for us. Uh, not all that long ago, a few months ago, and we did MedTech Malta together. I wanna just throw in lob the question, why was MedTech Malta even important for you guys?

[00:02:20] Torrey Smith: All right. So you tell me that there's a beautiful island in the Mediterranean and that some of the smartest, most passionate people in health tech are going to be there, and that there's a stage where you could walk onto the stage and swallow a robot pill. We have to be there. We felt that Malta would make a lot of sense because as an island, it's kind of a good, uh, venue for a telemedicine offering, right?

[00:02:44] Because. PillBot is essentially a, a bridge between worlds. And so we, we saw a little bit of symbolism there and all I can say is that we hope that we can come back and participate, uh, in an even deeper capacity.

[00:02:59] Chris Green: Not to mention, to be perfectly frank, I had seen your show ahead of time and I had pictured this moment in the distant future.

[00:03:06] It's almost unsettling to me that it's come full circle now and you're proselytizing the case of our product. It's it, this is a dream for us to actually be on this show right here.

[00:03:15] Giovanni Lauricella: Awesome. Well, thank you guys for being on it and we're, we're gonna have a lot of fun here because you guys are characters.

[00:03:21] You're passionate. I mean, you literally live and breathe this technology and we've used the word sci-fi before, but at the end of the day, it is a medical device, but there's much bigger passion and, and picture here. So you guys came all the way around the world. Well, halfway around the world through this beautiful Mediterranean island, you, Chris swallowed the actual pill bot on stage.

[00:03:43] And before we get into your backgrounds, and we'll actually verbally touch base on what Endiatx is, besides all this awesome footage that we got today. Um, just wanna understand, when you take risks and chances on this sci-fi type technology and you actually do live demonstrations and it doesn't go the way that you hoped, what does that mean for you guys in terms of this Silicon Valley based spirit that you have for building this amazing technology?

[00:04:08] Torrey Smith: The Malta stage was a very interesting night for us. So, so the main, the main stage, the main night, the whole reason we were there, we had even had support from you guys to actually head out there. And so we felt a lot was riding on it. And a lot of the team had been telling me, you know, Torrey, there's a good chance we're gonna have a tech problem, right?

[00:04:29] And, and they said, you know what, if it's 50 50 or what if it's. 30% chance it doesn't work. You know, at what point do you, do you draw the line? And I said, look, I worked a few days ago. It might very well work on the stage. But let me ask you another question. If we say no to an opportunity like this, is that the kind of company that has any shot at succeeding when things get hard?

[00:04:53] Right? The only reason any company ever succeeded is because you swung at every ball that came your way. So interestingly enough, we're up on stage. We have delivered, I think what was a, a very heartfelt presentation. You know, we were walking through our slides, uh, really connecting with people, making eye contact, really feeling it.

[00:05:13] And it comes time for the demo. Uh, we actually have a good demo in the fish tank. Uh, you know, we're doing a little bit of a live motion, and I'm thinking, wow, you know, this is, this is it. We're finally pulling off that unicorn demo. Chris swallows the robot, and all of a sudden just signal goes dark. Right.

[00:05:32] And this is the peak moment. This is what everyone came there, you know, to that part of the event, uh, for, and I'm thinking to myself, is this, is this a horror story? You know, is this a nightmare for a founder? And, and the answer is no. You know, it's just another moment in your founding journey. And so what we did at that point was just started walking through with the audience, what we were seeing, what challenges we might be working on.

[00:05:58] We were able to draw a little bit of attention to our chief engineer, uh, to Cameron, uh, uh, to Kevin. All the guys that were on stage basically trying to get the best image we could. We got a little bit of a link towards the end, but it was clear at that moment we weren't giving the best demo in the world.

[00:06:15] But I hope the other thing that was clear is that we are a team on that stage. That's not going to give up, right? We're gonna get on the stage, we're gonna throw down the best pitch we can. We're gonna throw down the best demo that we can. And then in the morning we're gonna sit down and, and work that problem.

[00:06:32] We're gonna, we're gonna take whatever we learned into that device. And for the, for the parts that were on the drawing board today, you know, when we walked around, uh, I think you're gonna see that a lot of the, the DNA from the Malta experiences. Now in the modern bot,

[00:06:49] Chris Green: We've chosen to wear our hearts on our sleeves, and that prevents people from doubting the validity of the progression of the technology.

[00:06:56] We hope it also convinces them of our poise under fire as evidence of our passion. There will come a day when the technology works perfectly, and that may not matter, but if anyone cares to, they can look back and see the entire progression of us building this over the past few years. That makes us proud to have brought it this far.

[00:07:14] Giovanni Lauricella: Chris, what, what do you think? Have you ever been to Malta before?

[00:07:17] Chris Green: No, of course not. No.

[00:07:19] Giovanni Lauricella: What'd you think about MedTech Malta? Like what was your experience being there?

[00:07:22] Chris Green: Oh, I thought it was fabulous. Right? It was the opposite of the antiseptic amazing, uh, shows that we've been to in the United States. Right.

[00:07:28] To be said in that what's like a 17th, 16th century, um, Knights Templar castle, right? That was a, a wonderful antithesis of the sort of like flat trade shows that he and I have hustled at for a couple years now, right?

[00:07:43] Torrey Smith: Yeah. You know, and our intent isn't to necessarily take the industry standard and, and just purely knock it, but what we're trying to get at is that many of us get into med tech for emotional reasons, right?

[00:07:56] Each one of us is gonna have a family member or a friend that we're looking back through a time and saying, you know, I can't bring you back, but maybe I can bring some, maybe I can save someone else, you know, who's going through this kind of a health condition. And what I saw at Med Tech, Malta was the passion.

[00:08:13] And the drive and the commitment to pushing the status quo forward. And it felt good to be among like-minded people and on that stage and, and simply just walking around the conference.

[00:08:25] Giovanni Lauricella: Well, sixth through the 8th of November, 2024.

[00:08:30] Chris Green: Oh, we're sold. Yeah.

[00:08:30] Torrey Smith: Already spoken for. We're there.

[00:08:32] Giovanni Lauricella: It's happening all over again.

[00:08:33] So we, we've heard a lot about what you guys, well, what you guys have been building. Once again, we toured the shop. We're gonna see more of that in this video. But I think to set the stage moving forward and, and getting into some of the business objective stuff that we want to talk about, I think it's best for the audience to know who are you?

[00:08:51] So, you know, co-founder and CEO, Chris Angel, mind freak and Chief Business Officer. Torrey, where do you come from? How did you build your life? How did you personally, professionally get to the point where you actually founded Co-founded and the addicts? Sure. And then now Chris, I'm gonna toss it over to you, but Torrey, who are you?

[00:09:10] Torrey Smith: Honestly, I feel like I'm the embodiment of the American dream. And what I mean by that is that I think I am experiencing just about every bit of what it is to, uh, come up in this country. Initially, uh, you know, my dad built a dirt floor cabin in the mountains, delivered me there. And so I got to live the American experience as like almost on the frontier, you know, building campfires, reading by candlelight.

[00:09:38] Eventually my family made it down into the valleys, into the forest. I got to hang out in the forest for a while. My parents eventually, you know, managed to get us to the beautiful coastal town of Santa Cruz in California. And uh, that's where I learned my love of sandcastles. But literally just learning how to make a fire from scratch, um, teaches you the kind of resilience and self-reliance that is kind of necessary later when you launch a company.

[00:10:03] So I got exposed to a lot of science fiction, so I felt becoming an aerospace engineer was. The way that I could take what I read in books and saw in movies and sort of make it real. So I go to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, got my butt kicked, failed calculus three times. But while I was there, I, I started doing welding, casting machining, CNC, machining, um, just any, anything that would help me actually make something real.

[00:10:33] And then when I, when I went to work to actually go make some money, um, I had an opportunity to explore med device. And that was right around the time my Aunt Katie was unfortunately dying from a glioblastoma brain tumor. And the standard of care at the time, and which is still true today, is, is not quite what you would see in Star Trek, because in Star Trek, what you would see is, um, you know, Dr.

[00:11:01] Crusher would put a tricorder over someone's head and it would make some beeps and, you know, she'd wave it around and then. They'd say, okay, we removed the cancer. Right? But here and now if you have a glioblastoma, what we're gonna do is make a big incision. We're gonna peel your face over. We're gonna take a saw and cut a portion of your skull off.

[00:11:23] We're gonna put that in a stainless steel dish. Then we're gonna go in with hand tools, and we're gonna go cut away as much of the brain tumor as we can. Try not to cut away the brain. Uh, then we're gonna put you back together. Uh, you're gonna be fine because the, the, the best doctors in the worlds are, are, are doing this, right?

[00:11:40] Um, then we're gonna put you on drugs. We're gonna hit you with radiation, and you're gonna dry in about overall, if you make it to 18 months from your diagnosis, you, you're doing really well. And that's what glioblastoma means today. It's, it's no fun at all. Right? And that's how we address it today. 'cause those are the only tools we have.

[00:11:59] And so the question is, what about all that scifi, right? What could we do? What if there was a microscopic. Robot surgeon. What if it was the size of a red blood cell? What if you had a billion of 'em and you could swarm that tumor and just mine away at the edges of it, right? What if you could catch it years earlier because you had your, your robots going around finding stuff before it ever becomes symptomatic?

[00:12:26] Now that is truly sci-fi, and I hope to see it in my lifetime. But the crazy thing is you can accomplish just about anything. If you're willing to take the first step. What happens if you don't take the first step? So we started swallowing camera pills back in the 1990s, October, 1997. First pill can swallow.

[00:12:47] 2001. We get FDA clearance. It's been a quarter of a century. We feel at Endiatx that the time has come to take a new step forward. So I'm not here to give you a molecular army of nanobots, but we are definitely here to give you a robot that can swim inside the human stomach. A robot that can move in three dimensions freely, like the tip of an endocope, a robot that provides a bright live video to the doctor controlling it.

[00:13:20] And a robot that can be operated entirely through telemedicine so that any patient on the planet, regardless of where they live, regardless of what their income looks like, can have the very best cutting edge care in the playground of the human stomach. And my hope is that by doing it right there, well we can go and save millions of lives, but by doing it in the stomach, we firmly, we firmly put a flag in the ground saying that micro robotics in the human body has begun.

[00:13:52] And we wave our arms in an open invitation for people to come and join us and take the next steps right from fingertip size to rice, grain size and beyond. But we have to start somewhere. And I think. Let's do it now so we don't lose anyone else. Right? Let, let's simply start the adventure right now.

[00:14:11] Chris Green: It's a compelling vision, right?

[00:14:12] So how am I gonna follow up on this?

[00:14:14] Giovanni Lauricella: I grew up in Massachusetts. Uh, I succeeded at several things in my life on a whole host of fronts, and had done well enough that I had some money to invest by my mid thirties. And to be totally honest, I probably could have sort of faded into an easy life and not really achieved much beyond a certain level.

[00:14:31] But that wasn't enough for me. I didn't want to just check out at 37, 38, right? I came back to this and I pressed hard to remake myself in a whole new sphere. Right? So is it the American dream? Is it the dream of breaking through to the, the next layer? We are never quite satisfied with who you are and what you're, what you're capable of, right?

[00:14:54] You have regrets. The best anyone can do is. Stare in the mirror and clearly acknowledge them and say that you will soldier on despite, or perhaps specifically because of your own shortcomings and make the most of your potential. Right. In terms of my family, I had just assumed and accepted my whole life that I never got to meet three out of my four grandparents because they just died of cancer.

[00:15:18] Right. Both of my grandfathers died long before I was born of cancer. Both of colon cancer actually. And when you turn 40, you're supposed to have a colonoscopy, which I have not done yet. Right. So I built a special robot. Yeah. Earlier. I think

[00:15:33] Torrey Smith: we're, we're gonna help you out, Chris.

[00:15:35] Chris Green: I appreciate that, buddy. I appreciate that.

[00:15:37] But at the risk of sounding saccharin, it's bigger than just me now. Right. I've realized that I'm involved in something that far transcends my own fleshly existence. Right. So maybe there will, the day will come when someone judges you on. Some sort of a legacy, like what have you invested your spirit into?

[00:15:57] And if we can be at the forefront of a, a new realm of bringing the best of technology to the medical, the medical world, I'm really happy to be here with Tory and involved.

[00:16:08] Giovanni Lauricella: So we're in the Bay right now, Silicon Valley, and this is a medical device startup, but this is a big, big, big idea. This is a swallowable robotic pill.

[00:16:21] So you guys are creating something that is obviously game changing and I wanna talk about that bigger picture of what you see. But this is a, this is a platform to talk about entrepreneurship and really what it means to have that shower idea, or in your case, a burning man idea and actually taking these crazy ideas and, and turning them into technology companies.

[00:16:48] What does it mean to start a company of this magnitude and this complexity? And also. What have you given up personally to be able to do something like this?

[00:16:57] Torrey Smith: Well, you have to swing for the fences because if you're gonna do anything of substance, it's gonna take all your time, all your money, all your energy.

[00:17:05] It's gonna take your youth, it's gonna take your life. It is you, right? It's gonna take you. So once you've done all that, you might as well have something to show for it that really represents your, your true hopes and dreams. Now, with Burning Man, it was, it was basically saying, Hey, I'd like to, I'd like to show the community that has assembled from all over the world what science and engineering looks like when you just pull away the constraints.

[00:17:33] And so, my co-founder Dan Moyer, a brilliant roboticist, uh, he's currently at WPI, uh, working on his PhD, uh, for robotics. Dan came up to me one day and he said, Torrey, we built a giant tower at Burning Man. Thanks to your geodesic dome. 'cause I thought that was cool. We have a zip line, we have a crow's nest.

[00:17:55] It's this kinetic fun thing. But what we're lacking is lightning bolts. And he said, I wanna build a giant Tesla coil for our camp. Maybe we could put it on top of a dome or in front of the camp or something. Uh, is that cool? And I was like, of course. That's cool. Yeah, obviously that's cool. Um, and, and, and I said, how big, how big of a Tesla coil are we talking about?

[00:18:18] And he said, five feet tall. And I said, wow, okay. That's a pretty big Tesla coil. And so he said, can you make the aluminum donut the Toro from which the sparks emanate? And you know, 'cause I'm the mechanical guy and, and I say sure. So I go to the, I go to the makerspace and I, I go ahead and start trying to build donut shapes out of, out of aluminum.

[00:18:41] Very quickly realize that, well, it's possible, it's difficult and I realize there's a machine that makes, um spiral wound HVAC ducting. And I find one of these machines, they're I think less than 10 in the world at that time. One of 'em was actually in Santa San Jose. Right. San Jose, Santa Clara area. So I go in there, I make friends with the people that own the, the company, tell 'em about this giant Tesla coil.

[00:19:08] And they say, yeah, we'll, we'll help you make it. Um, you just have to buy a huge reel of aluminum. And, uh, of course, yeah, whatever the, whatever the cost, we'll find a way to do it. But they said the machine has adjustability, right? How big do you wanna make? Because Dan had said, make a two foot donut. Uh, but they said they could make an eight foot donut.

[00:19:30] And the key here is swing for the fences. And so I call up Dan and I say, if our toro were eight feet in diameter instead of two feet in diameter, what would that mean? And he does some calculations and he said, it means we're gonna order 380 pounds of copper wire from China right now, and the Tesla coil project went from what is a big Tesla coil we build, we could build to what is the physically largest Tesla coil we could possibly afford to build if everything went right with no idea where we would store it, no idea how we would transport it, and no idea how we would even erect it.

[00:20:13] But just what, what size of Tesla quill would that be? And well, it's three stories tall. So we start building this thing, and because of the audacity of the project, we started to attract very interesting people, people who ultimately became the chairman of Endiatx coming from the alphabet, Google X World, Dr. Alex Luebke, people, um, from Israel who were on the venture capital side, who ended up troubleshooting the electronics, but then wrote the first checks into Endiatx. A few years later, um, people like Chris who said he was interested in going on an adventure, opening his mind, he wanted to experience Burning Man, but he wanted to do so building something meaningful and this giant Tesla coil lightning machine in the desert, you know, was, was that for all of us?

[00:21:04] It culminated, uh, a few years into starting Endiatx with Elon's executive team calling us up and saying, Elon wants your big Tesla coil at the cyber rodeo. Can you go to Austin? And so in, I think it was like March of 2022, you know, we trucked this giant Tesla coil out to this, the, the Giga Texas, uh, building.

[00:21:24] And, and we put on a show at the Cyber Rodeo and they, they asked me, you know, what do you, what do you charge to put the Tesla quail up? And I said, guys, we make robot pills, right? Like. Our, our business is, you know, we're a deep tech company trying to totally change robotic, like micro robotic telemedicine and create that.

[00:21:44] We don't charge for the Tesla quail. The Tesla Quail's a gift. It's, it's fun. It's something we do to make friends, you know, maybe you'd cover our expenses, right? And so, uh, they said, heck yeah. So we were able to bring venture capitalists, a Wired magazine journalist and his daughter, right? Like we, we were being somewhat savvy, uh, if I may say so.

[00:22:06] But the Tesla coil ended up being the nexus that created the ground that we were able to plant Endiatx in. Because basically, once you've done something big at Burning Man, you might very well then ask yourself what's next? Right? And what's next for us is we need to go back to the real world and we need to do something that is 365 days a year.

[00:22:32] It's something that affects normal people. So that, you know, in the arc of our lives, we can say that we accomplish something real, you know? So Burning Man was sort of like a wake up call and an on ramp to where we are today.

[00:22:46] Giovanni Lauricella: Chris, I want to toss it over to you. When you think of the word entrepreneurship, and you've now been living it here, and it's in Silicon Valley, for all those listening in that, you know, it, I don't, it's almost cliche of entrepreneurship going hand in hand with Silicon Valley at this point, but what does it mean to you?

[00:23:04] You're not originally from here, you're from the East Coast or Midwest rather, or No, east Coast. East Coast, yeah. Yeah. And like, what does it mean to you now living this life of entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley area?

[00:23:15] Chris Green: It's, it's profound sacrifice, right? Like I literally had my RV parked in the shop right here, and I would just work until one in the morning sitting right here and then just walk into my truck and go to sleep.

[00:23:27] Right? And then I would wake up and maybe drive to the gym to shower so I could save 1500 bucks a month because we could put that toward the company, which at the time was a very meaningful amount of the capital that we had to spend every month. Right? So when we are looking for a new hire, we'd rather have somebody who is handpicked and referred to us and say, this kid's got a ton of hustle.

[00:23:48] Right? Then somebody who applies and says, by the way, is it okay if I don't get there until 10 30 on weekdays because I am commuting from 15 miles away? Or, you know, what's your policy on paid time off? If you lead with that, you're not the right person. It takes it extraordinary dedication, and it's, it's very clear to me, and I think about every day, even most people who commit to that still don't succeed, right?

[00:24:13] Torrey Smith: I mean, JFK put it really well when he said ask not what? Your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, I mean,

[00:24:20] Chris Green: it's broader than that now. It's like what can we do for the world?

[00:24:22] Torrey Smith: Imagine waking up one day knowing that every other human being on earth was waking up with the same energy and ambition and vigor and generosity and hopefulness.

[00:24:35] Saying, what can I do for my world today? What can I do for myself? But my entire world, if everyone got up one day with that attitude, we'd be in a completely different universe.

[00:24:47] Chris Green: Well, right. Well, Giovanti and I were joking right before we reeled on this, um, waking up before Dawn, doing pushups in the dark while listening to the ME meditations of Marcus Aurelius and thinking about stoicism and resolve.

[00:25:01] And he said, oh, I do that too, right, basically. And then you plugged. And then I said, well, you know, who always talks about that is Schwarzenegger, right? And then he said, oh, have you read his new book? Right. So yeah. Arnold, if you're listening, I'm gonna read your book tonight. Well

[00:25:14] Giovanni Lauricella: Be Useful The Seven Tools for Life is amazing.

[00:25:16] Torrey Smith: Yes. I love Arnold's rules. Right? Work your ass off, advertise, give back. Right? Like those are, those are incredible rules. And that generosity at the end means a lot. But Chris, I know you got your morning ritual. Mine I feel is equally important. Wake up, have a huge mug of coffee. Alright. Look at rock Rockets exploding.

[00:25:38] 'cause Elon does cool stuff out there, right? And then, um, you know, try to read an article that means something to me and then add the journalist who wrote the article because whoever that journalist is, if they're writing about something that's gripping me emotionally, why not go make friends with them?

[00:25:58] Yeah. You know, they might know the VC who funded that, that founder, right? Go make friends with that founder. But what I've found is. When I'm searching out in the world for cool stuff and neat stories and things that entertain me, I'm realizing there's no barrier stopping you from reaching out and finding those people and making friends with them and collaborating with them.

[00:26:21] Um, that, that's been the amazing, like entrepreneurial wake up for me is just realizing there are no strict boundaries. If you do cool stuff or if you're doing something that is gonna affect the world, then you have a license to go make some really interesting friends.

[00:26:37] Chris Green: We've done it just in the past few days, literally in real life at the JP Morgan Health Conference in San Francisco.

[00:26:42] In fact, we've walked up to people who you could never have guessed by looking at them and just started chatting with them, and they're the CEO of, of a company. I mean, it was hard to believe, just glancing at them from across the room.

[00:26:52] Torrey Smith: Well, six months ago, Chris said, you know, I feel that the JP Morgan conference could be a really valuable place for us.

[00:26:59] We could do a lot of networking there. We had closed our biggest check with, uh, the Verge Health Tech Fund outta Singapore. Based on a PillBot demo in a, a hotel lobby at JP Morgan last year. And so I was, I was telling Chris like, how do we get into this conference? How do we ingratiate ourselves, you know, in this community?

[00:27:17] Well Chris said, we'll just transfer all of our accounts to JP Morgan. And so Chris just started grinding out the effort and systematically, um, moving us into that ecosystem. And all of a sudden we have the arms wrapping around us of this incredibly powerful organization that says that they want to advance life science.

[00:27:39] Right? Yeah.

[00:27:39] Chris Green: We will burst through all the boundaries that we formerly imagined were, were pigeonholing us in life, if ever we imagine that, right? We're we're past that. The time is now to make something of ourselves and of the opportunity right in front of us.

[00:27:54] Giovanni Lauricella: So I wanna jump into a couple major topics 'cause you actually have brought them up already.

[00:27:58] Team building and fundraising. Let's start with team building. So. Both of you jump at this, how many people work at Endiatx? How have you found people to come and work for you guys? And then also what's the type of spiritual profile that actually it takes to work in this sci-fi environment?

[00:28:20] Torrey Smith: Yeah, so we are, we're 20 people total, 10 or full time.

[00:28:24] Uh, we were really proud to have a pretty good head count here today so that you guys could see the real deal. We do have some people that work remote, but honestly, I feel like your connection to a team is exponentially related to your ability to be bumping elbows, banging out some code, reaching into a fish tank, you know, getting your arm wet, pulling a robot out, peeling off the tape, finding the battery, drying off your fingers, writing more code, designing something, starting a 3D print, processing the parts, getting the goo off.

[00:28:57] Chris Green: And then chatting while you eat in the kitchen. Of course.

[00:28:59] Torrey Smith: Yeah. It's not all just digital and it doesn't all just fit nicely on Notion or Slack. Right? Yep. Agreed. The way that we recruited initially was let's fire giant lightning bolts in the desert and see who shows up. That was a great start. But the way that we recruit now is we basically say there's two ways you can do a startup.

[00:29:21] You can, you can go in stealth and stealth mode's good in the sense that, uh, it, you're less likely to get copied. Right. I think that's stealth mode. Also, I think some founders go stealth mode because if they fail, they can kind of quietly step away from it. But that's not our style. Uh, Chris and I are more like, there's an arena, let's step squarely into the middle of the arena and proceed to get our asses kicked together.

[00:29:45] Yeah. Publicly every day. Yeah. Right. So we, we go the public route, but the reason we're doing the public route is, as Chris said earlier. It helps to build a little bit of trust with the general public. If I say, I wanna put tiny robots in your body for a good reason, people might very reasonably ask, why is this safe?

[00:30:08] Are you in a inappropriate manner profiting off of my illness? I mean, there's so many difficult questions someone might have when you start with that premise, but if I say, I've swallowed 25 of my own robots so far, most of them in public, I share the video on my YouTube channel, which is not professionally produced.

[00:30:28] The reason for all that is just to share the process so that a curious person that wants to do a deep dive can go as deep as they want and find a very passionate founding team that's actually serious about what they do. The other reason though is you make amazing, um. Discoveries of other humans by doing this, right?

[00:30:51] There are amazing maker events. There are sort of subculture events like for the maker culture or people that are like hackers, people doing custom 3D printers. We go to all of those events, do demos, show up, listen to other people present, because we're finding that the craziest, weirdest person in a room is probably the person we're hoping would be willing to talk about joining our company.

[00:31:16] Giovanni Lauricella: What do you think about talent?

[00:31:20] Chris Green: I think, I think people need to show up, look me square in the eye, and describe their actual diligence and commitment to something, right? I'm not sold on resumes. I'm sold on actual interpersonal charisma and ability to articulate your passion for getting involved, right?

[00:31:39] Which is why we've sort of found people organically and they're already, they tend to be pre-vetted. And they don't really accelerate and achieve a lot until they prove themselves in the first couple of months of working here. And then we welcome them, we welcome them completely into the fold, including the very young people.

[00:31:57] Right? I mean, we have people who are 19, 20 years old who have equity in the company and have proven extraordinarily capable at technology and leadership, and we wholeheartedly support that.

[00:32:09] Torrey Smith: Yeah, we, we we're in the process of making a full-time offer to Evan. Yip. Evan just graduated high school and he's looking at college and we are saying, is there any way you can base your college experience at Endiatx?

[00:32:25] Like, we'll try to find a way to make sure you can go to class. We, we will try to see if maybe we can help pay. Right? But the bottom line is, please, Evan, don't leave because this is one of the most monstrously brilliant people I've ever met. And the reason he's here is that he finds the work compelling.

[00:32:43] And, and he says that this is a very interesting group of people and he just likes being here. And the, the kind of personality that we're really drawn to is one that sees a challenge, sees how hard it might be, sees how humbling that challenge is when you're staring it down in the face because, and that itself attracts them.

[00:33:04] The challenge stares back at you and says, you're not worthy. Right? But then you just say, I'm gonna try. Yeah. Right. I, I love the concept of intellectual ambition, that the desire and hope that you might be able to do a difficult thing. Because if you lean into really hard things where you get your butt kicked, you become more interesting over time, and you, you may very well get smarter, um, every day, just like, uh, our buddy Destin, right?

[00:33:33] Like the intent is that the challenge in work is gonna be something that you can rise to instead of be afraid of or try to shark.

[00:33:41] Giovanni Lauricella: So I want to take this ice cold beer that we're drinking and boil it a little bit and, and just throw a little flare question out there. Alright. Who's more passionate about Endiatx?

[00:33:56] Torrey Smith: Uh, honestly, I can't look at anyone on this team and tell them that they don't have fire. Like I have fire. Chris, I think has more bottled up just pure. Like, one, one weird philosophical question I've had for the last 10 years is I have a real problem distinguishing between joy and rage. I almost can't tell the two apart.

[00:34:24] Like for me, when I'm 18 hours into a SolidWorks bender and I'm finally doing some crazy surfacing thing and I'm finally seeing on the screen what I've been seeing in my mind, and I realize almost an entire day has gone by and I don't know what day it is. It's, it's like this intense, it's this intense high that just burns for itself.

[00:34:49] Like to me it's almost like, it's like white hot rage or joy. There's this creative fountain. You just have this intense desire to accomplish something major before you die, right?

[00:35:03] Chris Green: Yes, exactly. And it's so, it doesn't occur to you until a certain point in your life though, but it occurs to you all of a sudden.

[00:35:08] And I have leaned into that harder than ever in the past couple years.

[00:35:12] Torrey Smith: It's suffocating.

[00:35:13] Giovanni Lauricella: How much hours of sleep did you get last night?

[00:35:15] Chris Green: Like three or four. And you can tell by looking at my face too,

[00:35:18] Torrey Smith: but That's right. I know I

[00:35:21] Chris Green: You look great. Look, I look terrible, but I actually feel great. Right? I feel like I'm Great.

[00:35:25] Giovanni Lauricella: Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Exactly. Okay, so speaking of that. I want get into the next major topic, and I know that you both are passionate about it and you live it all day, every day. Almost.

[00:35:36] Chris Green: You're gonna say fundraising.

[00:35:37] Giovanni Lauricella: Fundraising. So we just got off of JP Morgan. Mm-Hmm. But talk about MedTech, Malta.

[00:35:42] Talk about your big crazy board with all these names on it that's in your office right now. I mean, I wanna talk about two things. First thing is, what is it like to raise capital early stage, mid stage, late stage for class three science fiction technology that you guys are building? And then what has, what has gone crazy in Silicon Valley with raising capital?

[00:36:05] Torrey Smith: We say class two and as of December, so did FDA Oh, good for you. That's that's a, that's a big one

[00:36:10] Giovanni Lauricella: for us, right? Okay, good. So class two, not class three. Sorry about that.

[00:36:13] Torrey Smith: Well, no, it's so salient, right? It's right to the point if we were class three, we would have to pump up the value proposition by a whole additional order of magnitude to be taken serious by any investor.

[00:36:25] And honestly, I think we could do it. But what does MedTech Malta mean to fundraising? MedTech Malta to fundraising means you walk onto a stage, you swallow a robot. That robot doesn't work as you were hoping to, but people see you throw down. Then we do some demos. The next day, people walk up to us out of the crowd and said, I'm in for 500,000.

[00:36:47] We had a German doctor walk up to us and say, I personally am in for 250,000. Right. MedTech Malta meant that we came back from the Mediterranean with the next few months, uh, of runway spoken for when we arrived at MedTech Malta. How many, what was our runway like? That was, that was a one way trip into oblivion for us.

[00:37:09] Yeah. We, we basically said, we're getting on this airplane and we're either gonna make the company or we're gonna come back to ashes.

[00:37:16] Chris Green: And I'm sure as Giovanni is about to ask, how does that match with the specifics of what played out on stage at MedTech model?

[00:37:23] Giovanni Lauricella: That's exactly what I'm about to ask.

[00:37:24] Chris Green: Of course. Right. We'll, go ahead. Why don't you describe from your point of view in stark terms, what happened?

[00:37:29] Giovanni Lauricella: Well, I was in the audience, so the, the whole story is we were super excited. I mean, we connected long before MedTech Malt actually took place. You guys wanted to jump on stage. We wanted a big showcase technology.

[00:37:42] To showcase, not only just have another panel about fundraising and what's it like to be the CEO, but actually have this break of showing the audience something live and real and very cool. So you guys came up on stage and threw a pill, meaning you, Chris swallowed a pill on stage and everyone's in this audience 'cause we beefed it up and all of a sudden you're taking this panel and you're trying to show it.

[00:38:01] And I'm sitting probably either first, second or third row. I can't forget it. I can't remember at this point, but, and you're praying it's gonna work. I'm praying it's gonna work because we have, we have like, we've hyped it up that this is our showcase. We got a technology that's swallowable robotics, the whole thing.

[00:38:15] Here's the big spectacle folks, right? Exactly. Yes. And I'm sitting there next to my team watching this thing. I'm like, okay. And, and and, and it wasn't working.

[00:38:26] Torrey Smith: Yeah.

[00:38:26] Chris Green: Now that was not the first time that I have swallowed it. And Torrey's been six inches from my face. And I've known that it went disastrously wrong and trusted him to carry it completely.

[00:38:37] Right. So that is the centerpiece of how we operate. We are hard on your sleeve out in the open if the tech goes wrong, you see us trying our best, and you see us standing our ground with the conviction that the technology will work and that all of the smart people around us are giving their energy to it.

[00:38:56] Torrey Smith: We, we are gonna ferociously pursue that, that unicorn moment. Uh, we're not gonna wait until we think we're ready. We, we, we have to be ready. We have to go for it now.

[00:39:05] Giovanni Lauricella: So then let's learn about the mechanics. How has Endiatx been financed to date? Like, where's the first check coming from? How much have you raised to date?

[00:39:13] Is it Angels Family Offices? Are VCs involved? Like, let's rip this open now. Yeah. How are you guys funding yourselves?

[00:39:20] Torrey Smith: Well, the first check was 15,000 and it came from, uh, Michael Earnest and, uh, his lovely, lovely partner, uh, Jocelyn. And that check came from Burning Man Artists, right? These are people who built a giant sailing vessel.

[00:39:37] That sails across the open playa, uh, under, under Sail. Um, it's a three mastered sailing ship called the Monaco. Um, and they were willing to entertain our concept of tiny robot pills because they had seen us, uh, just refuse to give up for three years in a row with a Tesla coil project that that really took years and, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to before it actually finally lit up.

[00:40:04] And so that first check of 15 K um, got committed in the, the parking lot at Perkins Coie. Right. Palo Alto a hundred feet away from Theranos headquarters. Right. Which is, which is somewhat ironic. Right. But I'm, I'm in the parking lot and, and I get this commitment and I walk into my car just like in a state of shock because I've been pitching for months.

[00:40:29] I've been at a, at an accelerator, the Founder Institute. I had been fired from my med device job halfway through that accelerator for good reason. I just, I, I got to a point where I just could not, I could not bring myself for the life of me to do a single click, a single mouse click more work on someone else's idea that's gonna be third to market with, with something slightly better than what came before, right?

[00:40:59] I just, and it was a good device. I mean, it's going to improve people's lives. It's wonderful medicine. But I just realized like, if I don't do something big now, then I need to permanently let go of that part of myself that has childlike wonder and dreams and, and optimism. I need to just accept my lot in life and not ever complain again.

[00:41:25] But I wasn't ready to do that. So that first check was huge. I was in my car, I was like driving home, I was screaming, I was crying. I was like pounding the steering wheel. Like there's no way to describe how good that felt. And the checks that have come since, like we raised about 6 million to date since then, the checks come in and they feel good.

[00:41:45] But nothing is ever gonna compare to that first fundraising check. That first time where someone says, yes, we choose, you do this thing. Right? That's a big deal. And there's a new kind of feeling, you know, when people start to make commitments and as the commitments get bigger and bigger, you start to realize how many people are on our cap table that we are gonna let down if we fail.

[00:42:10] Chris Green: Right? So it's the cumulative weight of all the people who've promised you something and you want, you want to get back to them and call them up and say, Hey, by the way, I made you a hundred x on your money. Right, right. Yeah.

[00:42:20] Torrey Smith: Every, if we fail. Everyone who has ever believed in us, the smartest people we've ever met is gonna sigh who believed in us instead of 10, 20, a hundred other people.

[00:42:32] Yeah. Right. And some of the people who have invested in us are artists from the Burning Man community where that was a good portion of their, their life savings. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That was their retirement, or is intended to become their retirement. This is one of the reasons why I do not quit ever, ever. I will never, ever quit on this.

[00:42:52] It is just not in the vocabulary. If

[00:42:54] Chris Green: I could jump right to a quick irony of fundraising is that now that we're on the verge of a working product, that actually doesn't matter anymore. Right? Like nobody wants to hear about the struggle from four years ago and how people were eating ramen noodles. That's and sleeping on this cot right here, because they were here 80 hours a week anyway, right Now there's like, what's the business proposition?

[00:43:15] Tell me how much the revenue is. Right. When you're talking about much larger pools of capital, finally, it's ironic that they basically dismiss the heroic energy put into it.

[00:43:24] Giovanni Lauricella: So are you talking about the nuances between angels and

[00:43:27] Chris Green: family offices? Yes. Between early fundraising and series A fundraising.

[00:43:30] Giovanni Lauricella: So when you, when you pitch VCs now, they don't give a shit that you ate round the noodles and up on there.

[00:43:34] Chris Green: No one cares. Right. Right.

[00:43:36] Torrey Smith: In fact, that's absolutely true. Yeah. It's, it's not relevant to the narrative. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and that's, that's why, you know, for founding teams, for, for passionate founders, if you're passionate about your, your idea, your invention, your team, your, your vision for the future, then you need to become like a cosmic chameleon.

[00:43:54] Right. You need to become, like modeling clay. You need to be shapeable, moldable. You need to flow like water. If you're serious, then you will probably need to be, to wake up and be a different person, a an evolved version of your previous self every single day, you're gonna have to change. Mm-Hmm. And so.

[00:44:15] When I am working with someone and they demonstrate an unwillingness to change and they say, I'm not gonna, don't ever change, you know, I'm me. It, it's becoming, I'm, I almost feel like exasperated dealing with someone who, who might not embrace change. Because for me, all I am is change at this point. That all I am is simply a desire to change into whatever I need to change into so that this dream can continue to march forward.

[00:44:45] Giovanni Lauricella: Chris, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Use your four hours of sleep, three and a half hours of sleep brain. Most memorable moment that you can share of fundraising for Endiatx to date. Oh.

[00:44:58] Chris Green: That one's obvious. When I got the guy who was the best man at my wedding, who actually gives me some credibility from back in the day for being a generally smart person.

[00:45:07] And I've impressed with my sticktuitiveness and profound ability to proselytize this cause I got him to give us a super angel investment of a million dollars, basically. Oh my God. That alone is like five months of runway for this company.

[00:45:21] Torrey Smith: You know where, you know where I was when that, when that came through?

[00:45:24] Right there. Right? No was, what'd you hear? I was at the circus. Oh, we were, we were staring death in the face because, you know, our runway was sort of non-existent. And uh, and basically I was like, what do you do? Let's go to the circus. Let's just literally watch. Clowns and performers, you know, let's watch people who are basically making poetry and art in the most absurd way.

[00:45:50] And basically if they can do it, if they can fly through the air and if they can turn, you know, you know, like a, an outfit and a cold night and some straw on the ground, if they can turn that into magic, then so can we. Right. But when my phone buzzed and, uh, and I realized I should probably run outta here and get on it, that's when our chairman said, so he's in and it was at twice the check size we've been talking about.

[00:46:13] Yeah.

[00:46:13] Giovanni Lauricella: So then let me throw the exact same question to you. What was your most memorable moment fundraising for Endiatx.

[00:46:20] Torrey Smith: Okay, so, you know, I described that first check and that, that's a big one. Um, but something that that happened, uh, this past year in 2023 that, that was very meaningful for, for me personally, was when the Verge Health Tech fund, uh, who we had received an introduction to them.

[00:46:41] Uh, through our original, uh, incubator through Founder Institute. And that was, uh, roughly like October of 2022, when we received the intro. Had the first video call, stuff like that. It was January of 23 at the JP Morgan conference when I was able to put PillBot, um, in the, in the hand of Scarlet Chen, managing partner, British Health Tech Month.

[00:47:06] Scarlet Chen is based in Hong Kong. Joseph McCue, uh, creator of this fund. Um, he's based in Singapore. And so I put, I put PillBot in Scarlet's hand and all of a sudden it was funny, she said, find me in the lobby. And she said, I'm an Asian lady. I'm in a, I'm in a red coat. There were 10 people who fit that description.

[00:47:30] It was, it was hilarious. Scarlet. Scarlet was a, she was like a class act. 'cause I was, I was nervous. I was, I was energetic and. We locked eyes and she's like, come here, I wanna see this thing. So I put, I put PillBot in her hand and she had a representative from Johnson and Johnson with her. And both, both people basically looked at the thing and I could tell they were impressed.

[00:47:57] Like I could tell that the physical object was, was actually helping to make this seem real. And it's like, once you hold this thing, you start to enter the world of PillBot. Now you see the world through PillBot size. You see the future through PillBot size. So Verge says that they're, that they're interested.

[00:48:17] Their check size at the time I think was like three quarters of a million, which at that time was a big number for us. And, and she said, you know, I think the next step is we're gonna do an in-person at your facility. So she goes back to Hong Kong and Joseph McCue flies from Singapore. And this was the first time a venture capitalist had flown.

[00:48:38] Literally across the world, right? To come see. And,

[00:48:41] Chris Green: and the only time to date that he's dived as deep and spent several days with the whole team, like the full nine yards up close and personal with every element of this.

[00:48:49] Torrey Smith: Joseph said, I just want the raw real deal. I suspected from the video call and from your behavior online that, that you want to show me the real deal, please just show me the real deal.

[00:48:59] Let's just talk straight. And so we spent the next three days working side by side building pill bots, couldn't get a single one of them to fly. Didn't matter. We were having lunch together, we were having dinner with the whole team. We walking through the problems. He's going through all of our spreadsheets or sort of lack thereof at the time.

[00:49:19] And, and Joseph at the end basically says, I've come to the conclusion that you guys are, you're serious. You're the right team to do this, and we're gonna have to double the check size 'cause you guys are out of money and you need money. We've always been in this pseudo cash emergency according to people who, who know what they're talking about.

[00:49:42] Well, we're doing better now, but yes. Recently because of your efforts, I would say we're in a, we're in a totally different, different scenario.

[00:49:49] Chris Green: Also, Verge's commitment by no mean ended by No means ended there. They've stewarded us through several additional steps and we're gonna be appearing at, uh, actually I myself am going to Dubai for Arab Health in just a couple of weeks.

[00:50:00] Nice. In the Verge portfolio.

[00:50:02] Torrey Smith: So here's what happens when Verge, uh, invests in your company, leads your seed and, and takes a seat on your board. The next thing is we get an invitation to go to Hong Kong, where Scarlet Chen personally walks us through skyscraper, after skyscraper after skyscraper. And it was funny, she began our tour there putting us at the Asian Summit on Global Health, right into the Shark Tank, and we managed to win the Shark Tank, which was convenient because then that served as the traction.

[00:50:34] For the 20 in-person VC meetings she had set up for us, like from boardroom to boardroom to boardroom skyscrapers where the, the name of the fund is on the skyscraper that you're pitching. Right. Which was a pretty big deal. And we started to realize what strategic support really looks like. Right? And we started, it was our first time interacting with venture capitalists who were just as relentless and passionate, just as relentless and passionate with their job as we are creating the technology in the first place.

[00:51:09] And so, Chris and I, uh, used this opportunity, we used this past year to, in every way possible, try to rise to that example, right? Because Verge basically said, okay, we do actually like you. Now imagine you 10 times more professional. Imagine your financial projections 10 times more. Well thought out.

[00:51:29] Imagine your team 10 times more serious. What do you think about that? Do you wanna become that? 'cause we want you to become that, but then they help you become that so that, that sort of brackets, you know, that first angel check to what a real venture capitalist can do for a team. Um, that's been quite the experience for me because, you know, the first time I got that check, I was wearing a a v-neck Glitter t-shirt I had made with my hot press machine.

[00:51:57] I thought it was the coolest thing ever said, Endiatx and glitter. But very, very much over time, that has evolved into a very different founder persona.

[00:52:05] Chris Green: Yeah. Now we're having like a charcuterie board at JP Morgan with like a champagne in your hand than a three piece suit. Right.

[00:52:11] Torrey Smith: And the interesting thing is it doesn't feel false or weird or alien.

[00:52:16] It just, no, we've evolved. Yeah. It feels like where we need to be and we're just kind of excited for what comes next. Yeah.

[00:52:23] Giovanni Lauricella: I haven't asked this yet. Probably should have done this a long time ago, but you've told me stories about how you've been edging out the logo for Endiatx for many years, all this other, what does Endiatx stand for?

[00:52:35] Torrey Smith: Ah, Endiatx. Well, first of all, you're one of few people that knows how to pronounce it the way we would intend you to Endiatx. It's three words crushed together. It is traditionally, essentially in a font inspired by NASA worm logo, uh, but in lowercase, I just love the flow of that font. And Endiatx is endoscopy or simply endo to go inside to go in and down through many orders of magnitude into the human body.

[00:53:05] You know, it's a journey towards the microcosmos. Diagnostics is obvious. Diagnostics is to understand what, what is going on, what is wrong, what is right, but really what is wrong. And the TX and Endiatx is shorthand for treatment. Endiatx is an adventure into the world of the small, into the world of the human body with tools, with intent, with a vendetta against disease, right?

[00:53:37] We intend to go find cancer where it lives and kick its ass. Thank you for that.

[00:53:43] Giovanni Lauricella: I want to ask the antithesis of my previous question to you. Once again, I've seen that board in your office with all those names of all the numbers and all the people that you're going after, gonna say, what's the worst thing I'm gonna say?

[00:53:54] What is the most bewildering moment of fundraising that you've experienced where you like, thought it was a for sure thing and someone went the other way or not? Or it could it be something different, but like, what's your crazy story for raising capital for ends?

[00:54:07] Chris Green: Honestly, this, well, this is not even gonna sound that, that exciting, but it's the first, the past 18 months or the first time in my life when I would put my best intellectual effort into crafting a a piece of communication, assuming there was a 98% chance that I would be.

[00:54:23] Literally not even rejected, just ignored, right? Just being ghosted as someone's way of saying, no, that takes thick skin to get inured to. And I wasn't used to it until now. Right? So that, that, that is the most typical experience in case anyone's wondering about trying to raise funds. We're having 49 times out of 50.

[00:54:41] They just don't respond. Even if you, yeah,

[00:54:44] Torrey Smith: we're having these bizarre situations in the last couple weeks where we send 30 emails and we get 20 responses and we're like, yeah, what the heck happened? Like people are actually willing to talk to us.

[00:54:54] Chris Green: Well now we've reached milestones, right? So once you have a great FDA meeting, and once you have clinical trials coming up, now all of the people who had been circling are pretty much trickling back in.

[00:55:03] But of course, the logical progression of capitalism is that by then the valuation of your company goes up. Right? Because it's been de-risked.

[00:55:10] Torrey Smith: The weirdest thing for me was back in 2020 in the fall when we had been swallowing the robot for a few months, but we weren't yet necessarily prime time. I mean.

[00:55:21] I felt that we were, but the entire world didn't know about us yet. And it, I'm sure it doesn't yet, but perhaps it will. The bewildering moment was I finally get myself on a video call 'cause it's tight of covid. So that's kind of how you're doing your initial fundraising calls with seasoned venture capitalist in, in like deep health tech.

[00:55:44] Theoretically a thesis fit. And it was essentially more or less the first time that we had, um, a real VC with a good thesis fit on the video call, ready to talk to you and hear your deck. And I brought a surprise with me. I brought a live PillBot demo and so I activated PillBot, put the live video feed up on the Zoom call.

[00:56:09] So there were three of us now, just the vc myself and what PillBot sees, I swallow it, start driving around in my stomach and they say to me, R right. Right there. I, I just don't really see the value proposition. And it was, it was heartbreaking to me because I had been telling my team for 18 months, maybe 20 months at that point, I'd been saying, if you can get me to the moment where we swallowed this robot and drive it around inside my stomach on Sandhill Road or in front of any proper venture capitalist, I promise you VC money is gonna rain down on us like manna from heaven because that is the universe that I feel that I live in, right?

[00:56:56] That is the world I choose to live in. So my commitment to the future founder that comes to me and Chris when we are venture capitalists in opinion yeah,

[00:57:06] Chris Green: is to turn, is to rise above what happened to us and treat people with more dignity and, and hear out their proposition, and at least tell them no instead of just nothing.

[00:57:16] Torrey Smith: If you show up on our doorstep with a demo. With a cool factor approaching swallowing a robot and driving you out in your body.

[00:57:24] Chris Green: Well it your heart, if nothing else,

[00:57:25] Torrey Smith: We will watch your demo and we will give you a chance to express yourself. And if we can't invest money in you, we will try to help you in some way.

[00:57:33] Maybe we'll make some calls, but if you're willing to travel from wherever it is your lab is, be like your living room or your shop or wherever your incubator, if you're willing to do something real, then you

[00:57:46] Chris Green: have chutzpah. And that itself has

[00:57:48] Torrey Smith: value. Yeah. Although, please, not an enterprise SaaS offering.

[00:57:52] Yes. Yes. Okay. So yes. Like, no. Okay. I do not wanna see that. There are other VCs that do wanna see that updating

[00:58:00] Chris Green: apps for dogs. Yes. I Dogs

[00:58:02] Torrey Smith: are. Yes. Dogster. Dogster. Well, so think about it like, you know, your pet loves you, you love your pet. What if you could tap into that kind of intense emotional rush? If you could find a pet app that would match owners?

[00:58:16] To pets compatible. Pets compatible owners. You go on a dog walking date, oh my God, it's love, love it per sight. What a good meet. Cute. Let's like make a little romcom movie out of it. You can make a ton of money of money doing this, but you're not gonna save lives. You're not gonna kill cancer. You're not gonna cure cancer, right?

[00:58:34] And while everyone's out chasing a quick buck with their app, people are dying. Alright? And while, while that's going on, we're missing out on this opportunity to explore this great cosmos that we live in. I mean, is no one else curious what's behind the great curtain. I'm terribly curious about that. I want deep tech founder friends so I can ask them interesting questions.

[00:58:56] Plus you get invited to more interesting parties.

[00:58:59] Giovanni Lauricella: Truth, very truth. Um, I wanted to ask a, a fun question. So you guys have closed your seed round, right? So tell me, right.

[00:59:08] Chris Green: Uh, we've closed seed. We're, we're wrapping up Seed Plus and we're gonna do a series A in the middle of this year, uh, corresponding with more progress in clinical trials.

[00:59:16] Giovanni Lauricella: That's what I wanted to hear. So series A and the confidence behind that. What's your philosophy on Series A? Who's allowed in, what do they need to bring to the table? What's going on with Series A?

[00:59:29] Torrey Smith: What I would say is Series A is where we bring the real deal to the table with Series A. Chris and I intend to put a pill bot into the transaction, uh, where Pill Bot simply works as advertised.

[00:59:46] Pill bot is the world's first virtual Endocope. We have clinical proof of this. We have dozens of physicians saying, holy cow, I will use this every single day in my practice. Those are the basic foundational items upon which we intend to raise Series A. And that means that Series A is probably the first time we're gonna have to turn some money away, because prior to those terms, people are going out on a little bit more of a leap of faith for you.

[01:00:17] They're saying, we trust that you're gonna nail the optics in the next three to six months, right? And for that, we can offer a very healthy discount against what's coming, right? Right now, Chris and I have to, you know, look under every stone, uh, you know, get on every jet, get into every room full of LPs, just let's do anything we can to make it happen,

[01:00:39] Chris Green: including demos that don't go perfectly right, but we decide we will leverage them.

[01:00:43] No matter, I mean, come what may.

[01:00:45] Torrey Smith: But with Series A, if you wanna lead that round or you want to participate in that round, get ready to open up your network. Get ready to put us wherever you need to put us to make this thing happen. Because with Series A, we're looking for serious people with serious money that actually want to go change the world.

[01:01:07] That's, that is the world that we are creating here. I mean, we are creating an ecosystem where you can operate tiny robots from anywhere in the world, in a person, anyone in a person, anywhere on or off the planet. This is an ecosystem that will be completely open for other founding teams to jump into and participate.

[01:01:28] You know, for the people that come up with a better PillBot or a different PillBot or some other kind of microsurgical device, we intend to have the, the, the regulatory ecosystem fully hashed out for them to plug into. I mean, this is gonna be the new paradigm, right? And we are desperately seeking the, the moment where we are surrounding a, a conference table with like-minded individuals, each of whom can actually make that happen.

[01:01:53] Yeah.

[01:01:54] Giovanni Lauricella: I got one final question for both of you. Okay. Well, one, each separately answered objectively speaking for medical device, Chris. Yep. What's broken about the investment world in for medical devices?

[01:02:11] Chris Green: Oh, it's, it's, it's, uh, pigeonholed into shortsightedness, right where people are looking as near as I can determine by, because of the bureaucracy involved and the length of time involved in making a profit, people are looking to make a three x or a five x on an incremental improvement.

[01:02:31] Just to be crystal clear, this is a categorical shift away from a now antiquated way of doing things, right? Like, let's have you unconscious in order to penetrate your body with a camera. This is a whole new realm where we're talking about making a hundred x or a thousand x and then. Using that capital itself as the battery to believe in future entrepreneurs like us who are doing even more amazing things in the future.

[01:02:58] Right.

[01:03:00] Giovanni Lauricella: Torrey, I wanna leave off with you. Thank you for that, Chris. This passion that just wakes you up every single day. I want you to speak to the whole world of potential entrepreneurs, people who are disturbed by how trapped they are in their job that probably chose the path that you may have if you would've chose your lot in life and just didn't complain anymore.

[01:03:24] Those people who work at the big companies who are engineers, who have ideas, who haven't pulled the trigger on leaving and going to pursue them yet, what would you say about if you have a great crazy big idea that may take psychedelics to unlock, may not, what would you speak to pursuing entrepreneurship to all those who haven't?

[01:03:45] Torrey Smith: You can't wait for even one more second if you really know in your heart. What the right thing to do is if you, if you know it, if you've been telling all your friends, just trying to get anyone to listen to you. For me, it was self-evident, tiny robots in the human body operating with some form of autonomy, not powered by capital equipment, but actual little robots doing things inside the body.

[01:04:08] To me, that just seemed like such an obvious explosive opportunity, right? So why did I sketch the logo in 2014 in my notebooks, you know, in the margins, in my notes when I was, you know, supposed to be working on, you know, some other med device at the time, you know, instead of doing the engineering test report, I'm, I'm sketching the Endiatx logo.

[01:04:29] I'm sketching some form of PillBot I sketched in 2014. I really sketched it in 2015, 2016. I sketched it in 2000, you know, 17 and finally 2018 rolled around and. I finally stopped thinking that I had to do it all myself, because while I had been sketching logos, I had been trying to learn how to code. I'm such a mechanical type.

[01:04:57] I'm a good mechanical designer, but I'm, I'm no software engineer. I'm not an electrical engineer. And here I was surrounded with Arduino kits, trying to get my LEDs to blank to blink while trying to design tank treads to move the robot around. I was swamped. I, I felt like a fool. I felt like, like an imposter because I didn't possess the whole skillset and I was just languishing and I was descending into depression during that whole time.

[01:05:26] By 2018 though, with Burning Man, just going ballistic and with our Tesla coil finally going off and with a theme camp of 75 people from all over the world representing technology and VC and entrepreneurship, I finally realized the one thing I'd been missing all along was the team. Because with, with Burning Man, I was a good maker.

[01:05:47] I could go into a maker space and make some awesome stuff. I could probably out build three people, five people off the street, seven volunteers off of Facebook, the great Tory Smith. I will beat you all. But the thing is, if you get 10 people or 11 people involved, at some point, the untrained mob is gonna be more efficient than the one expert.

[01:06:09] And I realized if I don't invest the time in training people accepting their initial work and calling it beautiful, knowing that something even more beautiful is coming. If I didn't take the plunge in building a team, then I would always be alone. And I would always be alone working on medium sized fizzling stuff.

[01:06:30] And I wanna swing for the fences. You know, I, my head is in the clouds, right? But what put my claws in the ground was realizing that we could build that team. So in 2018, I finally asked for help. I finally asked, uh, Dr. Alex Luebke from Google X, I said, Dr. Luebke, Alex Maverick is, what do we call him? Mav.

[01:06:52] Can you, how, how do I incorporate a company? How do I file patents? I asked Chris, how do you fund something? Who has an angel check? Right? How could you build a little cohort? I asked my friends, the electrical engineer. I asked Dan, who built that Tesla coil? Who designed it? You know, could you, could you work with me on the circuits?

[01:07:11] And finally we started to have real critical mass. And I realized I could have done this 10 years ago. I could have done this 10 years ago. All I would've had to do at that point would be start, go full time, make no apologies, and ask for help. All right? All you have to do is inspire people to join you.

[01:07:32] And that's the neat thing when you're thinking about what you want to build. Do you wanna build something small and maybe predictably successful, but limited in scope? Limited in outcome? Don't do that. Do the big thing. Because when you say you're gonna do something as audacious as build the world's biggest Tesla coil at Burning Man and perhaps zip line through the sparks, that gets people from all over the world involved.

[01:07:58] When we said we're gonna build tiny robot pills and pilot them inside the human body, people came out of the woodwork to get involved and join the project. And so the lesson here is that it's actually easier to do a giant thing. Torrey Alright, because you won't do it alone.

[01:08:17] Giovanni Lauricella: I couldn't imagine a better moment to end on right now after listening to Tory Smith and Chris Green from Endiatx.

[01:08:26] A swing for the fences sci-Fi medical device story. And you heard it right here, and I hope this video turns out even half as good as I expect it to be because we got B footage from everything. We've got swimming robots that you can actually see what they've been talking about. We got the actual emotional, passionate story from these two entrepreneurs who have slept on that cot that you probably can't see right over there.

[01:08:51] Chris Green: And we couldn't be more appreciative of Lifeblood for facilitating this and being ful matic in our explosiveness onto the world scene here. So it means a lot to us too. Yeah.

[01:09:00] Torrey Smith: Thank you. Thanks, Giovanni.

[01:09:02] Giovanni Lauricella: This is awesome. This has been the Med Tech startup podcast where we just got inside the heads the hearts, and no pun intended, the guts, guts of Endiatx.

[01:09:12] Thanks guys. Thank you. Cool man. Thank you

[01:09:14] Chris Green: very much.

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