New England Venture Funded Medical Device Startup List 2013 Q3

According to PWC’s recent quarterly MoneyTree report, no new medical device companies achieved Series A fundings in New England in either Q2 or Q3 2013. Zilch, zip, zero, nothin’, no, nada.

I’ve been tracking first-time venture financing of medical device companies in Nw England since 2005. You’ll find the link to my latest list of these companies at the bottom of this post. I wish I had a better update to offer.

What’s causing this New England drought?

Continue reading “New England Venture Funded Medical Device Startup List 2013 Q3” →

Engineering Is Not Product Development

Every once in a great while I read something so well stated that I put down my book/ipad/kindle and just reflect.

So when I recently read a post from Mike Sellers on Quora, I had to share it with you. Mike was responding to the question “As first time entrepreneurs, what part of the process are people often completely blind to?”

Mike wrote beautifully about software companies (read his original post here).

I’d tweak his words slightly for medical devices. Here’s my modified version of Mike’s post: Continue reading “Engineering Is Not Product Development” →

Medical Device Startups: Extraordinary Outcomes, Extraordinary Effort

My blog has gone pretty quiet for the last couple of months – an effect of the pace of a high-performance startup. After all, extraordinary achievement requires extraordinary effort.

We start new medical device companies to achieve extraordinary outcomes:

For patients, dramatic improvements in mortality, morbidity and quality-of-life.

For physicians, new and better options for patient care.

For providers and payers, meaningful reductions in the cost of care.

For our investors, healthy returns on investment.

For our families, providing for our future.

For ourselves, the exhilarating experience of extraordinary achievement.

And it truly is exhilarating. Continue reading “Medical Device Startups: Extraordinary Outcomes, Extraordinary Effort” →

Startup Medical Devices Change the World

In case you aren’t paying attention, novel medical devices are changing the world. Some recent clinical trial headlines:

Ardian’s Renal Denervation System Demonstrates Sustained Blood Pressure Reduction at 30 Month Follow Up

Asthmatx Bronchial Thermoplasty Provides Long Term Asthma Control Out to 5 Year Follow Up

Percutaneous Valve Technologies’ and CoreValve’s Real World Registry Data Show That Transcatheter Valves Dramatically Improve New York Heart Association class III/IV symptoms and Angina

Barrx’s Endoscopic Ablation Therapy Eliminates Precancerous Esophageal Tissue and Significantly Reduces Disease Progression In Patients with Low Grade Dysplasia

EndoGastric Solutions’ Incisionless Endoscopic Procedure Significantly More Effective at Eliminating Chronic GERD Symptoms than Maximum PPI Dose, New Data Show

CV Ingenuity’s drug-eluting balloon demonstrates good 12 month efficacy in peripheral arterial disease.

Making a real and lasting impact – that’s what medical device startups are all about.

That’s why I do what I do.

Physician entrepreneurs are key contributors to new medical devices (eurekalert.org)

Medical Device Venture Funding Trends – Q1 2013

The latest quarterly MoneyTree Report was just released, providing some insight into the state of medical device venture funding in the US. I downloaded and plotted the historical trend data for medical device VC investments in the U.S. from Q1 1995 to Q1 2013. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

What do the trends tell us?

Continue reading “Medical Device Venture Funding Trends – Q1 2013” →

Uncle Bob Describes The Start-Up Trap

My colleague Jeff shared a great blog post recently, “The Start-Up Trap” by Uncle Bob. While the post is ostensibly about coding, the philosophy applies broadly.

Definitely worth checking out.

Medical Device Startups – Northern California Over New England Again

In the eight years of data I’ve collected on New England medical device company venture funding, I’ve never seen it this tough. Only four new companies were funded in 2012 (see my complete list below).

You might be tempted to blame VC belt-tightening or the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” You’d be wrong. While the macro environment has its challenges, four new NorCal medical device startups were funded in Q4 alone.

What gives?

Continue reading “Medical Device Startups – Northern California Over New England Again” →

Medical Device Marketing – Segmentation With Procedure Data

Ask most medical device marketers about market segmentation, and you’ll get an earful about physician specialty (and subspecialty), hospital/facility size or type (academic, ASC, for profit, large system, etc), or adopter type (early adopters, followers, and skeptics). Unfortunately, these approaches rarely help companies identify customer groups that are differentially addressable – i.e. best served by different products or services, different price points, and/or different marketing channels and sales techniques.

Contrast the typical medical device approach to the sophisticated techniques of consumer product firms. Are you a Barry, Jill, Buzz, Ray, or Mr. Storefront? Best Buy’s in-store staff segments you with a few questions before steering you to the products you’re most likely to want. Amazon suggests possible purchases for you, based on your clicks plus the buying history of other customers who bought the same products you did. Target buys your demographic data to combine with your Target purchase history to create custom coupons for you.

Medical device firms can do much, much more to understand and better serve their markets. Even back in the 1980’s much more could be done. Let me explain how I approached market segmentation twenty-something years ago.

Continue reading “Medical Device Marketing – Segmentation With Procedure Data” →

Healthcare Venture Capital Fundraising List 2012 Q4

The glass is half full. I’ve been tracking the fundraising activity of healthcare venture firms for the last few years, and I estimate that there are about 250 VC firms actively investing in healthcare innovation worldwide. In contrast, a list I created ten years ago, at InfraReDx, included about 500 healthcare VC firms. Times are tight in 2013.

Why the drop?

Continue reading “Healthcare Venture Capital Fundraising List 2012 Q4” →

Star Medical Device Engineer – Attitude

Engineering Department employees, 1962 (Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives)

One of the best parts of starting a medical device company is the opportunity to build a great team. At Fractyl, I’m happy and proud to say that our team is truly awesome – talented, hardworking, committed, and fun. Putting together a great team is not easy – for every position, we’re always looking for a superstar. Somehow we’ve found them.

One of my best friends runs an engineering group at a major contract research lab, and we occasionally commiserate about the difficulty of hiring great engineers. Of course, number one on our list is technical expertise. Don’t knock on my door if you don’t have the technical chops. While technical competence is hard enough to find, my friend and I are both looking for more than mere technical brilliance. The number two attribute on my list of star medical device engineers is attitude.

In an effort to improve performance, my friend gives each of his engineering hires an article from 1999’s IEEE Spectrum: “How to be a Star Engineer” (or here). It’s a great article that would benefit almost every engineer. The author, Robert Kelley, presents nine strategies that lead to better engineering performance. Attitude is critical.

Here’s the attitude I’m looking for:

Continue reading “Star Medical Device Engineer – Attitude” →

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