Episode #101|Therapeutic Hardware: Can Implants Also Heal? With Alyssa Huffman Allumin8

In this episode, Alyssa Huffman, CEO and co-founder of Allumin8, shares the six-year journey behind a first-of-its-kind 5.5 mm porous, 3D-printed pedicle screw. We discussed how Allumin8 earned FDA clearance and why design details matter for fatigue, fixation, and fewer revisions. We also map a path toward therapeutic hardware that integrates orthobiologics without slowing surgeons down.

Critical questions addressed:

Why does 5.5 mm matter so much?

How does Gaussian topography support bone ingrowth?
What are some of the lessons from fatigue testing and post-processing?
What are the additive vs milled manufacturing trade-offs?
What was Allumin8's FDA journey and strategy?
When and how do orthobiologics add value?
How did Alyssa build a purpose-aligned team and investor base?
What are some practical founder advice on equity and boards?
What is on Alyssa's wishlist for the future of orthopedic implants? 

Please listen to the disclaimer at the end of this podcast.

Stay tuned for our show notes for relevant links, video highlights, glossary of terms, and more resources to enjoy this episode. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Why 5.5 Millimeters Matters
• 1:01 Guest Intro And Milestone
• 2:23 Mission To Reduce Spine Reoperations
• 7:56 From Rep Idea To Inventor
• 9:50 Additive Vs. Milled Screws
• 16:55 Gaussian Topography And Bone Ingrowth
• 20:49 FDA Strategy, Predicates, And Data
• 25:15 Patient Guidance And Surgeon Choice
• 28:28 Cannulation, Fenestration, And MIS (minimally invasive surgery)Plans
• 31:20 Winning Believers: Surgeons And Investors
• 35:54 Personal Adversity And Founder Grit
• 44:16 Roadmap: Biologics And Protocols
• 52:04 Data Collection And Animal Models
• 55:34 Founder Advice: Intuition And Equity
• 1:00:20 Curiosity, Research Habits, Community
• 1:07:12 Closing Notes And Disclaimer

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Um 5.5 millimeters is a really, really important milestone. So many companies have been trying to achieve this for decades, literal decades. And had I known going into it, I probably would have chosen something else in the body, some other area that had a high revision rate in the body to work from so we could gain the knowledge. However, I think there was a little bit of divine intervention that my family members had such catastrophic failures. And that's the point here is these people are severely affected.

unknown: 0:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 0:35

And the caregivers are severely affected. And so, yes, we're looking at optimizing, making things better with biologics and better bone mineral density and better implants, but nobody's working together. And that's what I would like to create in the industry: an opportunity to develop a protocol that we as an industry work together.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Hi there. Welcome to the Lattice Podcast, episode number 101. Today I had the opportunity to talk to Elisa Hoffman, CEO and co-founder of Illuminate, who recently had FVA clearance for its 88 Integral 8 porous pedicle screw system, which offers the first 5.5mm diameter pedicle screw produced using 3D printing. Enjoy. Please listen to the disclaimer at the end of this podcast. Hello. Welcome to the pot, Elisa. Today we have the honor and pleasure to have the CEO and co-founder of Illuminate, Elisa Hoffman, join us for this interview. I have admired Elisa's work for years. I think we've met maybe during the pandemic or before the pandemic. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:54

Yeah. Yeah. It was right at the end. Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 1:58

Yeah. So I kind of saw your journey of struggling through. So it is very accurate to say that six years of work culminated in your recent success of getting the first 5.5 millimeter particular screw FDA clearance. I I want to say it more accurately, but I think you will say it better. So why don't you tell us what is Illuminate and what is your recent news?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23

So Illuminate was built off of the deep desire to reduce reoperation rates in spinal fusions. I was a distributor, I was a sales rep, I worked in the clinic, I've been in orthopedics and spine literally my entire life. And I saw catastrophic failures occur in the OR, but then I saw the ripple effects of what those catastrophic failures meant for patients. When my cousin, who was an incomplete quadriplegic, had screws loosening on a couple of occasions. And then my uncle was on his seventh spine surgery prior to his death. And so I specifically saw implants that worked really well in other parts of the body that I thought we might be able to pull the design concepts from and apply them to pedicle screws because one out of every four pedicle screws loosen. Loosening propagates infection. And so those are the two biggest proponent uh components of failure in spine fusion surgery. However, as we went along this journey, I came to the awareness that there are a lot more diseases that we aren't even looking at as an industry. And patients don't have those met, those needs being met. And that's there's up to 300 different disease states that occur in Bone. And so if we're only looking at infection and loosening, then we're missing a myriad of problems that actually create a ripple effect, a long-term ripple effect that lead to adjacent level disease. Yes. And other issues that that that we're not even anywhere near looking at. So we developed the concept of therapeutic hardware. What can we do to optimize the hardware itself, meet the demand? 5.5 millimeter screws are used between 25 to 30% of the market. So 5.5 was really an important milestone that we needed to meet for millimeter diameter or pedicle screws, but it was exceptionally challenging. And so we were not willing to compromise on design whatsoever. We would have actually rather have pivoted instead of creating something that could fail in patients.

SPEAKER_00: 4:33

So this 5.5 millimeter, I would imagine, is that talking about the tip of the screw? Or what is this measuring? Because it's rather small.

SPEAKER_01: 4:42

Yes, it's the diameter of the screw.

SPEAKER_00: 4:44

Okay. So it's actually the diameter of the screw. Yeah. It's very small. Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 4:49

Yeah. So um 5.5 millimeters is a really, really important milestone. So many companies have been trying to achieve this for decades, literal decades. And had I known going into it, I probably would have chosen something else in the body, some other area that had a higher revision rate in the body to work from so we could gain the knowledge. However, I think there was a little bit of divine intervention that my family members had such catastrophic failures. And that's the point here is these people are severely affected. And the caregivers are severely affected. And so, yes, we're looking at optimizing, making things better with biologics and better bone mineral density and better implants, but nobody's working together. And that's what I would like to create in the industry, an opportunity to develop a protocol that we as an industry work together.

SPEAKER_00: 5:53

Yeah, I also want to mention that you're the inventor of this screw, right? Yes. Yep. That's that's amazing. I mean, you're not an engineer, uh, and you're just basically in and out. Like I said, there's uh there's a theory that I'm forming that you have to be in the orthopedic industry for 20 years before you you can uh really successfully fund the company. Maybe, maybe not true, but you're definitely in there for a long, long time. So, how did you even conceive this idea of this little screw that can be better performing than whatever your uncle received?

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

You know, in 2009, I thought about doing like a wall anchor, right? Um, the wall anchor that you put in into the wall and it helps stabilize. And then I thought about porosity at the time and sketched out an idea. I pitched the idea to a few companies and nobody wanted to even look at it. Nobody really thought that reps had any, because I was a distributor and a sales rep at the time. Nobody really gave much credence to reps. However, some of the most profoundly impactful inventions in orthopedics and spine have been developed by reps.

SPEAKER_02: 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:03

And so because we work with a variety of different philosophies, we understand where the failure mechanisms lie about getting them sold. We understand different hands, different mentalities, different thought processes. And we understand that there is a, there needs to be a common denominator. You can't change preoperative, postoperative care. You can't change surgical technique. If you do, there's a massive snowball effect that prevents adoption. And so commercialization, and I always talk about this, is really important to design from the beginning. Because if you design for commercialization from the beginning, then you reduce the dependence and the reliance on cost prohibitive measures down the line.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

Yeah, um, to be honest, I'm not really surprised that the uh the whoever that you pitched to while you were a rep were not considered seriously because in medicine there is this weird hierarchy, it's almost like military. You know, you always like listen to the general and nobody gives the foot soldier any thoughts because obviously they don't know more. And so that's I think that's a built-in system, and hence why sometimes I feel that's the reason innovation cycle is so long in medicine sometime. So, well, still let's go back to the screw itself because there are so many interesting features with it, and you guys actually patented quite a few interesting points from manufacturing to design of the screws. And also, I'm just curious, the 5.5 millimeter, usually people wanted to do in the past, they were trying to do traditional manufacturing process, right? Like milling or something, but you guys are 3D printing this screw, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01: 8:41

Yeah, they've they were milling, that's cost prohibitive, that's really cost prohibitive and time prohibitive. Um the um since the bringing in additive manufacturing to orthopedics and spine, they've been trying to do this for 15, 20 years. They've been trying to, whether it be coatings on a milled on a subtractively manufactured screw, putting like 3D printing, those things coatings very rarely ever work. Um whether they they may function well, but then they don't work well in the patient, or vice versa. Yeah, we've been we've been trying for a very, very long time to to meet that. And the design features, we've tested a majority of different, a ton of different designs over the course of four and a half years and prior to submission. We almost pivoted because we had failed so many times. And it's funny.

SPEAKER_00: 9:38

How many times? Just give us a concept. And how long does it take for each psycho to, you know, how do you try and error? What is this painful process? It sounds enormous.

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

Well, you have to step one is FEA analysis, right? So there's probably been over 30 different designs that have failed. Yeah. And in cumulation. At the very end, stay at one point we had a design that our engineer thought that he was 95% confident that it would pass testing. And he was a 30-year veteran in engineering for spine specific. And so we had a lot of confidence there. We passed about 5% of the way through testing and for the 5 million cycles. I mean, if that doesn't tell you how little we actually knew about additive manufacturing and how very little engineers know about additive manufacturing, you really have to find not only a design engineer that can that understands how to push things to the limit, but also understands how the material functions post-manufacturing, but you also need to find a manufacturer who knows how to push the machines to the limit. We actually modified, they modified the machines, the laser printers, in order to meet the fatigue limits that we needed because you speed is a big part of this. Speed, the particulate size, how much heat the machine can handle, post-processing. There are hundreds of different factors that fall into play. And if you don't have each one optimized, then you're not going to get through. So I give such deep, deep credence to Matthew Schomper coming in, saving the day. Yeah. At the very end, we had six different designs that we tested. At uh I had a Hail Mary idea just to throw some topography on threads, which is one of our broad patents. And that was the only one that passed. But what's interesting is the topography didn't work on the other designs. So it's specific to this Gaussian topography that's mimics bone in the spine that was based off of Dr. Zadpoor's work over in Amsterdam.

SPEAKER_00: 11:53

Phenomenal paper that occurred in the we should definitely find that paper and put a link in the show notes. And also I think we need to, okay, we can try to explain what this topography Gaussian bone structure is, but I think I probably would need to put a link somewhere to show because it's really hard to verbalize what this geometry is like. But that is basically how the bone lattice is constructed naturally. Do you want to just explain a little bit what this Gaussian bone pattern is that we talked about a lot?

SPEAKER_01: 12:23

Yeah. So what Dr. Zadpoor said was he took samples from different areas of the bone and in a multitude, a plethora. They they have a library. This is all they do is study bone, right? And and additive, and um, and so he he took, he realized this was profound, and a majority of surgeons don't don't even know this. Bone is different in the spine, in in the vertebrae, specifically in the vertebrae. It's significantly different. It's thinner lattices, it's different shapes. You'll have the curvature has more squareness, rounded square and trapezoidal, and it's all it's rounded and then elongated, and then they have like little nanotubes in there as well. And so another study that's been recently identified was that stem cells like little narrow, tiny little caverns and corners to work through. And so that's why this entire design philosophy using the Gaussian curvature to optimize bone ingrowths, like stronger, better, harder, faster bone. That was another independent study that was done that shows that Gaussian topology actually. I think I saw that one. Yeah. It's fascinating how like hundreds of different little parameters, they just work together in unison and create a long-term ripple effect. And then it's from different papers all over. I'm a dot connector. That's all I do. I don't have an MD, I don't have a PhD, but I read a lot and I'm deeply, deeply interested in solving this problem to reduce revision rates.

SPEAKER_00: 14:00

Well, my answer to that is Edison also did not have MD nor a PhD. And he invented many, many things and he tested millions, probably millions of materials before he figured out light bulb. Yeah. So yeah, you don't need a degree to uh discover new things. Yeah, awesome. Well, definitely should put a picture of the Gaussian pattern. I believe it's like two horse saddles kind of stack perpendicular to each other. So it's like really hard to describe verbally, but if you see it, you know what it is. Yeah. So okay, so the one big major announcement. Well, I wanted to interview you for the longest time, but I think one major announcement recently, the trigger does actually happen, is the FDA clearance of the screw itself. You want to just tell us, like, well, first of all, for some of our audience, this is still pretty much a black box. It's really hard to s to figure out, okay, one, you invented something and you finally got a prototype, and now you are ready to get, want to go to the market, you need FDA clearance or approval. How do we even get started with that process?

SPEAKER_01: 15:09

You find somebody that believes in you that has the no overlap, right? I went to an engineer and showed him an idea, um, and they thought it could be profound. And then I went to Koi Than, asked for 15 minutes of his time on a LinkedIn message. He he obliged, and then in 15 minutes he said, I'm in. This is great. And what do you need me to do? And so between having somebody that believed from a clinical standpoint, and also somebody that believed from a highly tenured engineering standpoint, uh, from a CTO level, having those two parameters, people that believed in the purpose. And also, I took 10 years before I was sat on this idea for 10 years and just making it better and better and better.

SPEAKER_00: 15:58

And also funny, 10 years nobody else even figured out this idea independently either. So how unique this is.

SPEAKER_01: 16:05

Well, they did, but we just did it differently. Like, um, we just did it differently because we had to. I think that's the beauty of being a small company and also me being a wild card, right? Just wrong. Like a little, I'm I'm like the little kid of the bunch, you know. I'm like, let's just try this. Just from gut intuition and seeing things from a different lens that typically would never work in subtractive, but somehow it's it works in additive. I think having those those three key components facilitated this.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

So now after you found your believers, do you have to have an external consultant to get the paper submitted? You know, tips on or warnings to entrepreneurs who are listening about getting similar devices cleared?

SPEAKER_01: 16:57

Yes. So we did our pre-sub with the FDA uh two years prior, a little over two years prior. What we were concerned about about the FDA wasn't concerned about really. And so we pivoted during the pre-sub and focused, because we thought that they would be more concerned with the bone marrow draw portion. And the that the screw would be a straight K pathway. Um, the FDA was more concerned about other parameters. I think really refining, trying to understand what they are looking at, we had to change at the very last minute the device to test against. Um, and that was really challenging uh to source. Trying to find predicates, we searched for a predicate to test against for over two years, and trying to change the predicate at the very last minute um really put a kink in in things. And so it pushed us back about six months just because we couldn't source a predicate. Nobody wants to give us their cannulated fenestrated uh 5.560 millimeter length screw to test against, right?

SPEAKER_00: 18:00

So this is the big because that will be you're you will be the direct competitor.

SPEAKER_01: 18:05

Yeah. So how do you source it, right? And and so we had to scale it. That's really that's all you can do. And so we had to have a a pretty robust conversation. And it this was they have uh a variety of thousands of data points to connect with through the pec paper. The pec paper provides the standards of where you measure where you need to be at within the industry, and it compares it as data points with solid screws, cannulated screws, fenestrated screws. And so we performed extraordinarily well against those data points in the in the pec paper that the FDA uses to guide them on clearance.

SPEAKER_00: 18:50

Okay. We need a copy of that too, because this is the first time I heard about this.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

Oh, yeah. The I would love to. In fact, I really want to educate the general public. This is not, this should not be done by just anybody. I know of a company that put out a pedicle screw over in Europe and they had four failures out of the first 10 cases. Oh no. Because that solid to porous transition is very ch very prone to fatigue. So if you have pores in the distal half of the screw, that's where it's going to break off.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:25

And if you don't have certain particulate size, if you don't have the certain heat process, if you don't have a certain post-processing, and a majority of companies don't even do post-processing on additively manufactured screws, even in the SI, I highly recommend looking at their data. This does not correlate to mass production unless you have all of these parameters refined. And I want to make sure that that their technology doesn't kill our device because we've done gone to extraordinary measures to make sure that we are fatigue resistant. And we break, as all pedicle screws are designed to break, they're break, uh, they're designed to break at the head-neck juncture so you can get it out. If you have the distal tip that fatigues in the vertebrae, to get that out is extraordinarily challenging, if not near impossible sometimes. Right. What do you do for that patient? You do a corpectomy, an A-LIF, like it makes it very complex for the surgeon and not beneficial for the patient in any sense of the word.

SPEAKER_00: 20:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, you know, before knowing you, I know, I mean, I'm a radiologist, I see failed back surgery all the time. I mean, 50% of the back surgery, about approximately, depending on what paper you read, fails. And that is crazy. So that's why we typically, I mean, even our neurosurgeons we work with try not to do surgery on people. That's our first line of defense, is because even with the best surgeon, you're still gonna have failure, either devised or just interoperatively. Plus, a lot of these patients are older and they have all kinds of comorbidities, which your screw actually intends to address that issue too. So, yeah, there's there are definitely a lot of unmet means. And the other thing that you mentioned that's interesting is you don't want the bad, not bad, you know, we don't want to put people in bad or good categories, just I would say suboptimal design and device. And you can really create a bad street rep for this whole general categories collectively, because I remember 10 years ago, and I'm not gonna name names, that there was a company for a lower extremity 3D printed implants or procedure, and they had a couple cases with a lot of infection, like increased. I don't know if it's an anecdotal or documented among the orthopedic surgeons that I knew, and that put I think it pushed the industry back for like a decade or so until now is more widely accepted. And I know people in my immediate vicinity who had implants, knee implants. Okay, sorry, I just said that. Um uh successfully, she had a really good recovery, very good experience. Um, so that that is that is pretty important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 22:18

And we saw this with hip resurfacing. The BHR, Birmingham hip resurfacing with Smith and Nephew was a great product, very viable in the market. And then we saw metal ions from softer metals that were being produced with other manufacturers' products, and it killed hip resurfacing. Hip resurfacing can buy a patient 10 years if it's done well. But if it creates osteolysis around the implant, then it actually puts you into a revision pathway much sooner. And as you know, uh for hip surgery, you have a much higher likelihood of not being able to walk again after a big revision case.

unknown: 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:00

Same with the knees. So it's very important to me to educate, look at the company's data. And I'm so proud of our data because again, it was compared against solid screws. Solid screws, like a myriad of screws, um, different designs throughout the entire industry for decades, literal decades of collection.

SPEAKER_00: 23:19

Right. So I don't know if you can answer this question, but if I'm a patient and I don't read typical papers, what are some of the bullet points that I need to watch out for when I'm looking for a surgeon or devise for myself?

SPEAKER_01: 23:35

Yeah. So I and I tell people this. Again, we are a manufacturer, but if it were me, I wouldn't have spine surgery unless a fusion, unless absolutely 100% I act uh had to have it. Um I I look for surgeons that go in and say, let's try XYZ, let's try rehab, let's try uh, and this happened. My sister, she really thought she had a a lot of pain uh radiating down her arm. And she's an emergency room uh assistant director. And I told her, I said, most of the time your pain will subside within six months. And and uh she didn't want to go get help, but then she finally did, and rehab was very effective for her. Yes. So rehab can be very effective. It's it's what you put into it preoperatively or along the way. I'm a firm believer, I've I know several people that have had bone marrow aspirate injections. I'm a firm believer that that regenerative therapies do work, and I've seen it all over the globe for decades. This is not voodoo science anymore. This is actual legitimate science.

SPEAKER_00: 24:42

I think it's called the uh orthobiologics, right? Is that the collectively called orthobiologics that includes stem cells, maybe bone marrow injection, that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01: 24:52

Yeah, it just depends who you ask. Like the surgeons that are like, oh, regenerative doesn't work. Well, those are also the surgeons that go in the most complex procedures and they take bone from the iliac crest and bone marrow and they mix it together. It is a gold standard. It is. Now, how we modify and manipulate the bone marrow, that's what's in and which patients to choose and how much bone marrow to draw and how much PRP to draw. That is that's the science, that's the artistry. And this is we need to recognize that this is true artistry in surgery. And we're coming back to those surgeons that really take time to build knowledge in the regenerative, those are the ones that are going to thrive. Those are the these are the things that patients are looking for. And the FDA acknowledges it now. They actually have opened up regenerative for and yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:48

I mean, I have friends who are going through clinical trials right now as we're speaking. Uh yeah. So, okay, so I'm a I'm a patient. Okay, I got a good surgeon, but you know, I'm just like too much pain. And now I'm looking, do I have an option to even choose what screw I have? Or how do I know that your product is being used? Okay, let's just say any products. I don't even know if patients have access to that kind of information. But if they do, what should I look for? Like when you say data, do I need to look at their failure rate or outcome clinical studies or what?

SPEAKER_01: 26:22

Honestly, you're I don't think you're gonna be able to find that information.

SPEAKER_00: 26:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 26:26

I think if you're going and just like I had brain surgery, right? Yeah. When I was looking for that, I was looking for the people that are lecturing and who are writing papers within the industry, right? Yeah. And there are a few things you don't mess with in the body, we really don't mess with. It's the the heart, the brain, yeah, and the spine.

SPEAKER_02: 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:48

Those you go to the best of the best, and particularly if you want newer advanced technologies. Now, 5% of the market are going to adopt this product right out the gate. And those are the quote unquote cowboys of the industry. However, what you'll find is those people really invest in education as well. So if your surgeon even knows about this product, most likely you're highly educated. And again, I I live in Missouri. Very rarely would I take any kind of credence from somebody coming from a uh from Missouri, you know. But there are true Well yeah, Washiu.

SPEAKER_00: 27:29

I mean, that's one of the biggest hospitals.

SPEAKER_01: 27:32

Yeah, yes, yes. But I didn't go to I went to Wash U specifically to give myself credibility as a as a GEO. Nobody would have believed in me without the Wash U. Like I was just a distributor rep, you know. And so I did that for my own personal benefit and also to take my blinders off and to give me credibility. And I knew because I knew that the likelihood that they would believe in me is very small. So people that know about this product, they're the 5% of the industry that actually is working towards artisan artistry artisanry. Is that the right word? Yeah. Artisan. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:14

They they're I am making words up, but I'm pretty sure my audience get it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:18

Yeah, they're true artisans at the time.

SPEAKER_00: 28:21

This does touch upon uh interesting feature of your screw, is that you you you mentioned other cannulated screws exist, and yours also is cannulated. You can aspirate or inject. How do you differentiate from the other ones?

SPEAKER_01: 28:37

So it's the it's Gaussian topography, right? That's that's the biggest thing. To mass produce that is very challenging. It's cannulated and fenestrated. The first one is not, right? Yes. The first one is not, this one is not fully cannulated because we wanted to uh have an open system. A majority of the patients that are going to be receiving this are going to be revision surgeries, most likely, because there's exclusivity agreements with large manufacturers in place. So to get us into the hospital right out of the gate, we knew revision surgery was where we would go. Because there's no any other options but then but putting in another screw, like taking up the screws and then putting in another screw. And so why not put something that allows on growth, ingrowth, um, and then future down the line, the ability to inject through the device to treat the disease states that are causing the failures.

SPEAKER_00: 29:38

Is that already kind of prototyped and manufactured, the one that was the cannula?

SPEAKER_01: 29:44

Yes. That is our MIS. The this is cannulated, but it's just not cannulated at the distal tip. The MIS system we're planning on submitting next year, and that will be fully cannulated.

SPEAKER_00: 29:55

Cool. I look forward to that. Now, we have talked about an invention that Journey so far? And I think the one thing that you every time we talk about, we talk, and you always said, you know, it's really hard to convince people, but you did. Okay. And so how did you do that? And what are your journey of, you know, convincing not just the investors, but also the surgeons more importantly? How do you find your advocates in in these areas?

SPEAKER_01: 30:22

The surgeons got it right away. Okay. Here's the thing. I wouldn't let surgeons invest if they were affiliated with the hospital with a GPO. Because if they're uh the GPOs do a filtration process to where you cannot have a surgeon investor that will use your product and get into a hospital contract.

SPEAKER_00: 30:43

Right. There's a conflict of interest, probably. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

But it's interesting. They can they can invest in Medtronic and Johnson ⁇ Johnson and still use their product, but they can't use a startup's product.

SPEAKER_00: 30:54

That that is very interesting, actually, to think about. Yeah. Because yeah. And then what about um, I mean, do you have any stories? What about okay, we haven't talked about the investor side of things. Like how do you how do you convince? You actually convinced one investor I know closely. Um, I'm not gonna mention, but we can talk about it later. And he's definitely convinced. Um, but I know it took like six years to get here because initially you started with mainly your mentors and your immediate vicinity of investors, right? Which is not a very good vicinity, I would say.

SPEAKER_01: 31:30

Well, yeah, and I wouldn't let friends and family invest for the longest time because I I looked for so I had my professors, they invested in me. Um, Washu was$147,000 for me. I had one professor that invested$200,000.

SPEAKER_00: 31:46

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01: 31:46

Yeah, like they just, I don't know what they believed in me, but they just saw something.

SPEAKER_00: 31:51

And I think here's the data professors don't have a lot of money. I hate to say that, but they don't.

SPEAKER_01: 31:56

And they uh he and they had uh invested in quite a few companies that failed too, right? So I think that there's a variety of parameters that need to occur. Has this person been in the industry a long time? Do I know them? Um do I know them personally, but not also from do they know where they excel? Do they know their limitations? And I I am a firm believer of the Steve Jobs philosophy of I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to surround myself with the number one experts in the world around me to keep me out of trouble. And so when we make a team decision, I lean on the expert of that decision. And I think that's one thing that they saw within me was I wasn't trying to be a know-it-all. I knew what I knew and I knew how to commercialize and I knew what surgeons were looking for, and I knew how to optimize it, but I didn't know how to get there. And just finding the people that could help me get there, I think that's where they believed in me. And now that we've actually met a milestone that nobody's ever been able to meet in history globally, that gives more faith and validity that they could trust in me. And so as we were meeting milestones, the valuation of the company increased and the the convertible note valuation cap increased as well. And so those people that believe in me right from the beginning, and you were one of those, like you I can't write a$200,000 check.

SPEAKER_00: 33:27

But you know what? Believe it or not, my money is actually in your um convertible note uh in some way or another, um, because I belong to an angel group. So actually, you know, I just realized this is like a uh Eureka moment uh as you were speaking, is I I actually read a book recently, it's called A Founder's Effect. It's a it's a it's a random book I picked up, okay? And I think you fit the three main categories that this book was talking about. One is being able to make bold and correct decisions, okay. Number two is alignment. So you have both internal and external alignment. You are extremely motivated from personal reasons, and also your entrepreneur aspiration. So that is there. And number three, and I do want to give you huge credit about it, is your influence. You are able to build influence from zero. Think about that, right? Because I remember the first time I got to know you is because you sent me a rendo LinkedIn message. I was like, who's this girl? Should I even respond? But my typical operative motto, or yeah, I think that's how you say it, is I will give everybody one chance, no matter who you are. And I actually require myself to take one risk every day, either losing time, money, or whatever. So I'm so glad I did. You know, I took that chance. And but your influence on social media and your ability to grow from zero to one is quite evident for the six years that I've observed. So yeah. So and and I'm continuing to observe you.

SPEAKER_01: 35:12

Oh, thank you. So I mean that was really kind of you. I had chills as you were saying it. And that's where intuition meets grit, resilience, and and influence and all of that is trusting your gut. And one thing that I did in trusting my gut to create that influence was I just if I ever found information that was extraordinarily valuable to me, I just shared it. And so people could see that they can learn with me. And it wasn't about me, it's not about my ego. It's about what we can do as a collective to make things better for people. And that feeds the soul, it feeds the psyche, it pushes the industry to do more with less, especially in this environment, right? We can achieve extraordinarily thing, extraordinary things, and I think we will over the next 10 years as we collaborate together.

unknown: 36:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:08

No, I would say you are you are pretty crazy, but not that crazy. And uh and I have seen you consistently deliver very accurate information, even though at the beginning I was kind of skeptical about these ortho biologics and what you were saying about the stem cells and biologics. And now I I think actually this is actually kind of possible horizon that you can actually get that kind of screw through regulatory and maybe into the patient soon.

SPEAKER_01: 36:35

Yeah, to do anything extraordinary, you have to have a dream and a vision. You know, like if you were watching Back to the Future in the 80s, you know, with hoverboards and flying cars and robots and stuff like that, it literally, some of that technology exists today. Yeah. You just have to have the vision and have the right people that can help execute on that vision. And building a protocol that reduces revision rates in spine is not tough. It's done all of the time in other areas of the hospital. I've been on the targeted temperature management protocol developments for big teaching institutions. But with Keith Polderman and various neurointensive Tariq Janjuwa, like thought leaders in the space, that have such deep, deep knowledge that it's it's just second nature for them to go, this needs to be in there. As long as you find those people, it can be done. And it can be done very relatively quickly to track the data is the long time to that. That's what takes time is to track the data. But just finding those people that have no ego in it, they just have that deep, deep knowledge, partnering with them uh and and collaborating, I think is going to make all the difference. And it doesn't have to be an Illuminate product. I'm talking about a variety of products um pulling together to create that. One product is only going to do so much. And these companies that try to capitalize upon our therapeutic hardware trademark, they are not. If you if you are just a metal piece of metal, there is only so much you can do with just a piece of metal. Right. And I find it interesting that these larger companies are trying to pull in our concept. Unless you're we invented the concept. We know what it is. Unless biologics or injecting biologics, it's not therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00: 38:28

I think speaking of larger companies, you've heard the news that JJ and Stryker both are spinning out their spine divisions or ortho divisions because they realize too big can fail and they need to bet more competitive, shorter innovation cycles. And I think this is where your advantage is, is you can't innovate tomorrow or maybe next hour, and they have to go through various layers of bureaucracy to get there. Even if they spend off, I mean they're still much, much larger than you.

unknown: 38:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:57

So, you know, I had another interview with another founder recently, and the secret is that these larger companies really cannot innovate as fast. And they have to rely on you. So you're definitely the perfect acquisition target because you're able to get to the market faster. They will make money by able to distribute your product more efficiently and wider. So that that could be a potential win-win situation. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I didn't want to start the interview with your personal journey more, but you do have a quite extraordinary journey. I mean, just the six let's not talk about, you know, since you were one, but just six years. The six years, you have personally had went through a lot. Yeah. So, I mean, if you want to just kind of tell us like what some of the major things, events happened that kind of also influenced the way that you're building Illuminate.

SPEAKER_01: 39:55

So I think this is a really important story to share. And most people get uncomfortable going personal, right? But personal things happen at the most inconvenient and inopportune times. And I want to use this story because it's almost unbelievable for somebody to go through something so much in such a short amount of time. But most people have these moments in time, I've found, and they're just not willing to share it. And so when in 2018, I was in the middle of a divorce. I got hit by a drunk driver going 77 miles an hour. I'm sorry, 2016. And then 2018, my dad had multiple types of cancer that we were trying to navigate. After the car wreck, I told my employer that I needed brain surgery. My employer let me go two weeks later as part of a RIF, even though I was number one, number two in the world. I had produced such a large order that they couldn't even fulfill it over the course of three years, if that tells you anything. They were not prepared for that order. And so I thought I was a sure thing, like going to keep my job. I didn't, it was not prepared. Um, but all of a sudden I found myself needing brain surgery in the middle of COVID, no child support, in the middle of a divorce as a single mom, and no money, no income coming in. And so what do you do? I recognized that I was not going to get hired by a billion-dollar company because I was suing a billion-dollar company. I was in six lawsuits, divorced, three from the car wreck, and two from the crazy. And I just decided I was gonna bet on myself. And this is why I truly believe this was my purpose. This is my divine intervention, um, that I had to have everything stripped away from me, uh, or or a lot of huge things stripped away from me to recognize what my intention was. And I invested in myself. I took five different consulting jobs that would allow me to be a better leader. I invested in myself psychologically. I recognized what the common denominators that I were that I allowed in my life, and I learned how to eliminate chaos from them. I do not surround myself with people that I can't trust that have demonstrated X when I cannot do chaos anymore. Being a startup role is already chaotic enough, right? Oh yeah. I don't I do not admire your life at all, just so you know. Yeah. I can't do people, I can't add on stressful people in a stressful environment. I need people that can that are there, ride or die. Like I am. I show up for people. I'm a good friend, I'm a good idea.

SPEAKER_02: 42:39

Yes, you do.

SPEAKER_00: 42:40

You show up for this pot. You show up with every email I have sent you. You know, I understand people don't understand my emails, but you always do. Well, they're boneheads if they don't, FYI. Well, they're busy sometimes, and you know, I give them some slack, but but yeah, you consistently always respond. You always show up, and I really can have a lot of uh admiration about that.

SPEAKER_01: 43:03

Well, and I'd like it. So you're doing this out of the kindness and the joy of your heart, you know, and your mind. You're putting, you're doing this for curiosity, deep curiosity, and this is part of that community, right? You're a building block that the whole industry can advance just by listening to your podcast. People can hear what is in the pipeline, what 20 years, 40 years from now is going to look like. And if you reduce that opportunity, you don't really know what the industry is. You could be in the industry for a long time, but if you don't know what the future looks like, you're not in the industry.

SPEAKER_00: 43:43

Yeah, having having the initial curiosity is extremely important. And any conversation that can inspire the curiosity, just say, hey, let me go Google that paper or let me Google that geometry that they're talking about. And let's take a look at the FDA process. Like if this podcast can inspire people to just do something that they usually won't, I think we have served the purpose.

SPEAKER_01: 44:05

100%. Because what happens is the ripple effects, they may not have to listen. Uh not everybody has to listen to it, but if one person gets one piece of information from your from your podcast, it shares. People share that information and then they get curious and then they'll go, oh, look up at that paper. Is that legit? Um, oh, I might listen to this one podcast that Jenny had. Education, people love to be educated. They don't like to be sold to. So if you create a curiosity that gives somebody enough to go, okay, is this legitimate? Now you've educated that curiosity. And that's how the entire community evolves together.

SPEAKER_00: 44:48

It's so important. Absolutely. I learned a lot more about orthobiologics or whatever you call it after our conversation, because I thought it was voodoo as well. Yeah. And I was advising people against it, but then all my friends are like, no, I'm gonna go get it. I'm like, okay, well, you can waste your money, but but now I'm thinking twice about it because I am seeing real clinical trials going through. So people are really serious, they are, you know, managing it as a serious, you know, that's not just marketing anymore. So, but let's go back just a little bit about building the team, because I know Matt Schumer, when he was in is he still in Ohio? Yes or is he? Okay, yeah. Uh was tangible. I think that's a tangible.

SPEAKER_01: 45:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 45:31

It's uh is a metal 3D printing manufacturer at the time for Spine, actually. So he really was deep, has been deep in the industry. So how did you meet him and then grow your team? All this chaos that was happening, and thanks for sharing, by the way. That was not I agree, not many people want to share that. And I appreciate that you shared it.

SPEAKER_01: 45:52

Well, it's important to share your why. That's what because it connects with people. You know, without the thing.

SPEAKER_00: 45:58

Also, people, you know, you could choose to look at things of miss in in a in a very pessimistic lens, but you chose not to. You you're the way that you you know uh made yourself to think the other way, you know, it's it's what allow you to be here today.

SPEAKER_01: 46:15

Yeah. We're not put on the earth to be happy. We're put on the earth to to to to grow through strife. Um and you know, we were created perfectly. This is a little theological, but we were created perfectly. There's no baby that's ever been created that's not perfect, no matter what the deformity or anything like that. Just perfect soul, right? And it's the world that screws us up. And as we get closer to our deathbed, I want to go beyond my deathbed. And I had this opportunity because after that car wreck, you know, and after a surgery, I had a couple of opportunities to think about what I would have done differently if I was going to be stuck in bedridden, what would I have done differently? And that's the moment in time where I said, I'm gonna bet on myself because I don't want to be on my deathbed going, I wish I would have. And so I think align and and part of that alignment with the team is finding people with similar mindsets. Similar, and we have stuck together through really, really tough moments in time. And I think it's because we all have curiosity and are just deeply ingrained in our personalities. We have grit, we believe, we definitively believe that this could be valuable, not from a monetary standpoint, but from a clinical standpoint. We definitively believe that this is better for patients. And we believe that we're doing something that's meaningful. And so when you have a collective like that, uh and I saw Matt Schomper, Matt Schomper is an information sharer. He doesn't do it for personal ego, you know, or gain. He does it to push the industry forward. And he's I'm very transparent and he is the same. So when I saw him on LinkedIn producing these really cool designs, just going, hey, I wonder what we could do with this, it was like, that's the guy. I don't know. I just knew it deep in my the pit of my gut. I was like, that's the guy. And so I tried to pull him in on a hip project that I was working on that I wanted to work on just to maintain like the backup plan if the design failed, which the the original design failed, one of the original designs failed. And so um it was the best thing ever. You know, like he's just he's a genuinely good person. He's a genuinely good person. He's also a thought leader, but he wants to do something meaningful.

SPEAKER_00: 48:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:51

And I think that's why we could get it achieved because our team has that mindset. And anytime we have somebody that comes in that's more about what are the shares look like, or they'll ask questions. They won't get the work done. They're too focused on where's the money coming from. They don't align well with the team and they're usually out within a couple of months.

SPEAKER_00: 49:12

Yeah, well, we're glad that we're gonna have Matt on for our virtual event focusing on the design. I'm sure he'll share more and teach us what the Gaussian part pattern is and 3D printing. So we're approaching the end of this interview. I know you have a lot of visions for the future, but let's start with what is your immediate future for Illuminate?

SPEAKER_01: 49:33

So Illuminate is focused, right, on optimizing the hardware. Well, actually, let's let's narrow go back finding areas of the bone with high revision rates. Okay. Making the high hardware, optimizing it for with RIP through to create porous implants for that area. We've done that. We've tackled that for spine, right? We have thoracolumbar indications for pediatric as well as revision. The indications are fantastic. Now we translate that into the biologic segment. So the next portion is drawing the bone marrow, getting that clearance with circulate and the circulate bone marrow delivery system, drawing the bone marrow, getting that clearance for reinjection. And now you have an implant that harvests bone, but it also, because that bone marrow coagulates a little bit, you can inject it and it in the area acts as a strainer to hold the stem cells in place around the screw, in and around the screw. So the design philosophy is to create an implant that creates signaling and recruits cells to the site. And so now you have an implant that functions biomechanically in the highest optimization, but also therapeutically by creating the signaling and recruiting the cells to the site. That is one. So our key focus next year will be getting clearance for the bone marrow delivery system as well as the minimally invasive system. So as we gain adoption in the revision surgeries, now we'll start gaining adoption in the minimally invasive surgeries as well. And then we will create uh, I want to do a lot of research on how much we are reducing the revision rate with the bone marrow delivery versus just the screw versus maybe even just a standard screw through retrospective data. And proving that this algorithm works and creating that protocol development with other companies, I think that's very important. I think it's the one thing that the industry is lacking right now.

SPEAKER_00: 51:41

Okay, so I need a little bit of education on this is the bone marrow aspiration and injection. Like, is this something that people are already doing? And if so, what what is the uh how are they doing it and what's the reason?

SPEAKER_01: 51:54

So, and this this that's the perfect question. So a lot of surgeons use porous titanium cages, inner body cages, right? Yes. And I ask them, I say, what do you do for um if you need the highest, like if you if you're in a revision case and you need to throw the kitchen sink at it. And so what they'll do is they'll take ilia iliac crest bone, they'll crunch it up, and they'll draw the bone marrow from the iliac crest and they'll mix it, and then they'll pack it into that porous titanium cage, right? I see. That's literally what we're doing through the screw. And so if they say that they don't believe in the philosophy of the screw, but yet they do that procedure, then they're they're lying to them.

SPEAKER_00: 52:32

But it's very invasive. I mean, you have to cut off a piece of iliac bone. That's yeah. And it's painful, right? Oh yeah. I mean, that means two part two part. I don't know how I mean I guess you can get to iliac if you're doing lumbar procedure, lumbar sacral procedure, but elsewhere I'm not sure how you can get that. You I mean a second surgery.

SPEAKER_01: 52:54

Yeah, they'll take uh bone marrow from the pro like other orthopedics will take, you can take it from the proximal humerus, the proximal tibia, you can take it from the distal tibia, the iliac crest. There's all sorts of areas where you can get bone marrow. However, new data is showing that the best, the highest quantity of cells, of stem cells, is actually in the cranium and the vertebrae.

SPEAKER_00: 53:14

See, it's in the vertebrae. I know about that one.

SPEAKER_01: 53:17

Yeah. Yeah. So you're getting the highest quantity number of stem cells actually in the vertebrae. And these are the education things, these are little pearls that I've learned throughout the years that I want to help educate that have no things, certain things have no benefit for us other than the fact that we're focused on that revision rate, reducing the revision rate. As long as we have that goal, I would love to work with anybody that can help us get there.

SPEAKER_00: 53:45

Now, in addition to revision, do you see the screw can be just a standard screw for all procedure in the future? I mean, which is amazing if it is.

SPEAKER_01: 53:52

Yes, that's that's the overarching goal in reducing the revision rates, right? Um, you don't have to inject through it. The hardware itself speaks for itself. Um, the hardware is taking globally accepted data that porosity and ingrowth help act like Velcro for the bone. If one out of every four screws are loosening, then why not try something that helps reduce that loosening?

SPEAKER_00: 54:18

Just number one. Absolutely. Are you collecting data to see, you know, the uh clinical outcome of the screws are? Absolutely. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 54:28

We will our first case is probably going to be next month or maybe January, but we will be collecting data right out the gate. And we chose not to do this in animals. Um, we were going to do a$300,000 sheep study, but to induce osteoporosis was going to take nine months. By the time we got data, we'd already have data in human. And so, and the spine is very different in sheep.

SPEAKER_00: 54:51

Oh, yeah. It's horizontal. It's a four-legg animal. Yeah. The loading is just going to be different. The mechanism is going to be different. No. Yeah, that's why animal testing on a in a lot of cases, either from drug or device testing, it's not the perfect model.

SPEAKER_01: 55:05

It's not. And very rarely will you ever have a company that is curious enough to induce osteoporosis. Yeah. Every company that I've ever seen a study from has that has animal data, it doesn't correlate with humans because there's not uh poor bone mineral density patterns.

SPEAKER_00: 55:26

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so we have a couple minutes left with uh your precious morning or afternoon. For closing, what kind of advice do you have for new MedTech founders or any founders in in healthcare?

SPEAKER_01: 55:40

Number one, you're going to have a lot of information and a lot of opinions. Your gut, if you have good intuition, and you really need to know if you have good intuition or not, because a lot of people don't. Um but if you are a if you are born for entrepreneurialism, typically you do. And that's uh through traumas that you've developed over your lifetime, right? Uh, that's one of the common things um that like uh major founders, Oprah Winfrey, John, the founder of Google, really good entrepreneurs. They have deep intuition and they've had a very long history of trauma. So if you have those two things, okay, when you've developed yourself, you've invested in yourself mentally, physically, spiritually, you know, that's gonna be number one. You have to invest in yourself because you'll be a very poor leader if you haven't invested in the mind and your in um, but number two is find people that believe in it, but at our the top 1% of their field. Those are the people that stay curious throughout their lifetime. They don't need, they don't, they don't, a lot of them are like, uh, I'll work for shares, you know, whatever. Um, I just want to do something that's meaningful with purpose. And number three, get a professor Mike Moyer's book called Slicing the Pie. And I about this at NAS, the North American Spine Society's Innovation Network Summit. I asked the entire room, there were 150-ish people there, and there were surgeons and researchers and engineers that all were developing product. And I said, as a show of hands, who here has had issues with equity division? Every single one of them did. Oh, wow. And so I had my I asked M Professor Moyer from Northwestern to come up and talk about his book and his algorithm. And he has a site for$300 a year. You can, people can manage their time and you do it according to um what their average salary would be. You divide it by hours that they put in and their hourly range, and then you do a two times multiplier for their hourly. Now, if they have a capital investment, that's four times. And so what it does is it it compensates for the people that are actually delivering on metrics. Too much equity has been given away in companies to people that have big credentials that do nothing for companies. And so that will keep you, that has kept me out of trouble throughout this entire process because I would have somebody that say, I owe I was a former CTO, CEO of a couple companies. I deserve 10%. And they did nothing, very little. But they did like they did do things that helped us achieve funding or they introduced us to somebody. The work was being done elsewhere. And so connecting connecting people is one thing, but giving somebody 10% of equity for connecting me to do the work with somebody else, that is not worth 10% equity.

SPEAKER_00: 58:48

Yeah, I would be a very rich person if I can get that equity. Right? Yeah. But you know what? Having this kind of uh tool is absolutely valuable, especially, you know, you're early founder and you want to negotiate a good deal to have people on board. Um, this is not something that you can show you you can show people. This is, I'm not imagining this. This is actually a comparable out there as a standard a lot of companies use. So it make the conversation definitely a lot more smoother. I can definitely see that.

SPEAKER_01: 59:14

Yeah. And in the RD phase, another really key piece of advice was you do not have to have a board of directors. Have a bunch of advisors, a bunch of board of advice on the board of advisors. You're going to, you've never worked with these people before. And until you've worked with the people and they have sweat in the game, they've invested in your company, do not put them on the board because it's very challenging to get them off. And so when you get to your Series A, you're probably going to need a board of directors. But in the RD phase, you don't have to.

SPEAKER_00: 59:50

I have to say, I feel the board of director, this concept is BS. That's my internal voice. But uh, I'm gonna just whisper that. And uh if you disagree, Feel free to email me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:03

You know what's funny is Mark Buscogliosi said the same thing to me.

unknown: 1:00:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:08

He was like, it's MBA 101 and it is does not translate to real life because it slows down the company, because there's no way that a board of directors can receive the amount of information that the team does. There's no way to translate that. So they're using from their lens, they could be phenomenal people. And there are some great people on board of directors, but there's no way it just slows down the improcess. And RD, particularly, time value of money, it's speed and precision. You cannot, you need to be spending your time raising the money and creating the product at the same time, not translating information to a board of directors that can really do very little at that phase.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:54

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that's the many of this podcast, I would say. That's the return on investment for people who are listening. So thank you very much. I think you mentioned one book, which is slicing the pie, right? Is that the name? And do you have anything else that you want to share? How do you consume? I mean, you I know you read public publications all the time. Do you have some kind of media consumption habits you want to share so that people can aspire to that?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:18

Yeah, I love resharing papers that and you can look at my LinkedIn over the course of I don't know, 10, 15 years. I think I have about almost 10,000 followers. And I gained a majority of those followers just by reading a paper and then resharing it, taking a paragraph that's power that was powerful to me and resharing it. Because somebody out there is gonna have the same interest and curiosity that I do about that certain subject. And it doesn't have to, we we are a human body. Everything correlates together. Nothing is separate. So something that uh stimulates like temperature, how that affects the body, how that affects the spine, you know, cardiac um issues, amniotics used in other areas of the body, we can collectively gather data points from all over in cancer therapy, C cell activators, and somehow correlate it with certain areas uh with the spine. Um it doesn't just because two things can exist at the same time, and 10 things can exist at the same time. So just keep staying curious.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:25

I yeah, I think that habit is amazing. I need to get that. I'm I'm gonna follow this. I'm I'm gonna start reading more publications.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:31

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, Google Scholar is phenomenal for just and not many people, not many entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:39

I okay, I'm making a bold statement, but I don't think many entrepreneurs even have the time to read random publications, even in the relevant field. One is though the writing is very complex and a lot of lingos and abbreviations you have to like correlate back and forth. And two is just it just takes an enormous amount of time. But I do think this is really an amazing habit you have. I think this is your superpower.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:05

Well, research gate, LinkedIn, and uh Google Scholar, you can create keywords. So if there's something like Google Scholar is really good about this, if there's something of interest, like if I put Gaussian, you know, it will send new publications to me and it'll it'll say a synopsis of it. And if I find it interesting, I'll read it. If I don't, I won't. But you always have time. We all say that time is our biggest commodity. Yes, we don't have time, but you know, do I want to? And this is LinkedIn has gotten really bad about this. Like I can't, I get so many messages on LinkedIn from solicitations that it I actually had to hire somebody. I wish we can reduce the algorithm for people soliciting jobs. We're startups, we don't have a hundred jobs available, and we're not going to have a hundred jobs available. And we're not going to have be able to pay the industry standard. I'm very tight with the budget. So but LinkedIn is very powerful, just connecting with the top people in the world, commenting on letting them know that you appreciate their work and you you build a relationship with these people. And it's really, it's really beautiful that me here in, you know, Missouri is like commending, you know, the great work of Dr. Zadpour. You know, like some of the most brilliant minds in the world know that I exist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:31

Isn't that cool? Yeah, it is cool. I think I'm also connected to a lot of world-class scientists, but I never really talked to them much. Yeah, I should probably learn more and read their publications.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:43

Yeah, just commenting, like, this is really powerful. You know, just a little comment, just everybody needs a pat on the back, particularly the 1%, because they rarely get it. They rarely get it in the in the meaningful work that they do. They get it like in awards and stuff where everybody's congratulating, but in the meaningful little paper, uh the paper that they provide that only uh uh 1% of the world actually reads.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:07

Yeah, exactly. That you actually read it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:10

Yeah.

unknown: 1:05:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:11

It's so cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:12

I I suspect I suspect a lot of my posts people liked that they never really watched the video or even read the article, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:21

Well, but then you'll create one that actually provides a flicker of interest because and then all of a sudden you'll get them and then they'll want to read the transcript scripts or they'll want the bullets, you know, they'll want the notes and um it's yeah, that that flicker is what is driving me to do this today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:41

Yeah. And I I joked that we have seven listeners and we are basically creating this for our seven listeners.

unknown: 1:05:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:49

I mean, I had, you know, 10 years, 15 years ago when I started LinkedIn and I just started sharing things that I thought were interesting. I had like 50 people, you know, that I just knew that were friends or family. Um, and now that's 10,000. Yeah, amazing. It's meaningful to somebody. They just what you're doing is really powerful. And in the long run, 10 years from now, you're showing people that thought what 10 years could look like.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:18

You know, like well, less than 10 years, Alisa. So uh uh so you know, as we're wrapping up, I want to announce our JP Morgan event, which you will present as well. But the keynote, we found a keyno speaker um who is uh who just IPO'd his company this year and he uh started his company, Cosmet, uh in 2018, I believe, as just you know, ground zero. And so yeah, so less less than 10 years. I see, I see you can have a very interesting future. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:49

I don't know if we ever want to do IPO. Um, unless you need a lot of capital influx, you lose that ability to RD quickly. So there's a compromise there. But yeah, no, I think what they've done, Carlsmith is a great company. I'm excited to see what they what they do with it. I liked it. I'm a little bit more scrappy. So I want to produce things quickly, you know, and they've done so. I'm excited to see them present. I think you did a great job on picking up.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:18

I think it's gonna be a great room to be in because our aim is to bring entrepreneurs and investors that's it, in the room. And maybe a couple of my friends who are innovators. We have reached the end of this recording. Thank you so much, Elisa, for donating your precious time to be with us today. And I hope to see you soon in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:39

I'm very excited. Thank you, Jenny. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:43

It's my pleasure too. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed do not constitute medical or financial advice. The technologies and procedures discussed may not be commercially available or suitable for every case. Always consult with a licensed professional.