Breakthrough MedTech Strategy
I work with the investors and boards who put the money in, and the founders who have to spend it. I find the problem, define the fix, and stay for the part that needs an operator.
Most medtech and digital health companies don’t stall on the science. They stall in the gap between “this works” and “someone pays for this, repeatedly.” Investors and boards usually see it a quarter late. Founders often can’t see it at all. I’ve worked that gap from the payer’s side, the vendor’s side, the acquirer’s side and the CEO’s chair. Below are the six ways I work, each with a defined output.
$0 → $7.5M
NightWare revenue. The first $5M with no sales staff, $7.5M after a small sales force.
10 + 1
Premarket products advised through my firm, including one exit to Integra LifeSciences.
$172K → $1M
Highmark Health’s VITAL program, which validates medtech for a payer, in one year.
$275M
Acquisition whose commercial integration I ran at Baxter.
Who I work with
The engagement starts from where you sit and what you can see from there.
You took the seat on a round priced on commercial milestones. Nobody at the table has built the sales engine, and the founder may not have either. I tell you early, and specifically, whether the plan will hit what the round was priced on.
What keeps you upThe first hire is a VP Sales who’s supposed to arrive with the plan, and nine months and $3M later the milestones slip.
Your reputation rides on whom you put in front of a founder. I’m an operator who has sat in the founder’s chair, not an adviser who studied it, available as a bench across the companies that need one.
What keeps you upSending someone who talks strategy, leaves a deck and disappears.
Your companies were backed partly because the parent might deploy them. Most have no idea how to get through procurement and medical policy. I’ve been the gatekeeper and the applicant.
What keeps you upA pilot that stalls at the parent, when the fund’s thesis was strategic fit.
You have a thesis, a 100-day plan and a founder-led asset. I pressure-test the commercial plan in the memo, before the close or in the first 100 days, and give you an honest read on whether the team can run it.
What keeps you upActing on the founder six months too late, after the numbers in the memo have slipped.
Six ways to work together
Counsel, coaching, strategy, diagnosis and, where it’s the right answer, operating leadership. Project-based or retained.
Two weeks inside the business, working with the founder, measuring where it stands against what the round was priced on. Commercial plan first, because that’s the milestone that moves the next raise. You see the size of the gap before you decide anything else.
What you get
Coaching and counsel for the CEO, strategy for the board. I identify the problem, define the fix and work through it with the team, either on a defined question or retained for a founder who needs someone in their corner who has run a company at that stage.
What you get
The data room shows you the first layer. The capital gap, the product debt, the channel that can’t pay and whether the team can run the fixes usually sit one or two layers down, and they surface when someone has to run the company. I inherited one, so I know where to look. The point isn’t only to avoid companies with hidden problems. It’s to give the ones with a real shot a map through them.
What you get in three weeks
A platform team is judged by whom it puts in front of a founder. I serve as an operator-CEO on your bench: one relationship, applied across the portfolio companies that need it, without a new search or a new vendor each time. I’ve run the function at a company of that size, and more than once.
What you get
For strategic, payer and provider-backed funds. A pilot that stalls at the parent is a portfolio problem and a career problem. In my experience it’s usually stuck in procurement or medical policy, not in the product. I treat every pilot as a procurement case from day one, not a clinical demonstration.
What you get
Sometimes the read says the business doesn’t need better advice. It needs a different operator for the next leg. Where there’s capital to scale and the founder isn’t the operator for what comes next, I can step in as interim or long-term CEO. I’ve done it: I stepped in as CEO at NightWare when the board needed an operator, after taking the company from $0 to $7.5M as chief commercial officer.
What you get
Commercialization planning, fractional commercial leadership and positioning for acquisition. The work I’ve done for founders directly, before launch, in market and ahead of an exit: customer and market insight, evidence planning, launch strategy, sales build-out, payer access and a commercial story that survives diligence. I’ve advised ten premarket products, including a client exit to Integra LifeSciences, and integrated acquisitions from the buy side.
How an engagement runs
You see what I find before you commit to anything larger.
01
No pitch. We compare notes on the business, where it’s stuck and whether what worked for me applies to it.
02
Fixed fee, two to three weeks, scoped before kickoff. Inside the business, with the founder.
03
One page, in your terms: where it is, where it needs to go, what it takes and who can run it.
04
A follow-on project or retainer, a different next step, or nothing at all. The diagnostic fee is credited in full against a follow-on signed within 30 days.
Fit
I’d rather tell you in the first conversation than in the third.
Start here
Tell me the company, the round and the question you most want answered. If what worked for me applies, we’ll scope the first step. If it doesn’t, I’ll say so and point you to who might help.