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Medtech Innovation Podcast: Spencer Jones dives deep into winning medtech startup strategies. Each episode unpacks hot takes and insider tactics from the trenches of medtech innovation. Join physician inventors, founders, engineers, and healthcare market makers as they share actionable insights to navigate the FDA, secure medtech funding, and drive medtech breakthroughs. No-nonsense advice to be a change maker in medtech.
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fundraising barely ever goes faster than you think it will do you have budget constraints do you have Milestones that
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you need to hit you know do you have an animal study scheduled for next month that you need prototypes for some
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Founders especially if they're the ones that are in charge of fundraising like they don't want to tell people that they're struggling fundraising buying
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components and subassemblies from champer or other off-the-shelf components and retrofitting them to make
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it work for what you're trying to do you really don't want the cheapest price usually they're cutting Corners
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somewhere sure that you ask questions and B deep around their experience and their capabilities and their expertise
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oh I figured out I need to change this thing I have one more Hot Topic actually let's go let's
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go hey everyone thanks for joining us on today's episode of the exom Medtech
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Innovation podcast I'm Spencer founder at exom Medtech today we have with us Sam Wagner she's a business development
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manager at Medical Murray prior to becoming that business development manager she was an R&D engineer you know
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before transitioning into that strategic Business Development role so she really knows the ins and outs of complex
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medical device development and how to get these devices to Market so with that Sam welcome to the Pod thanks yeah I'm
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happy to be here I'm excited yeah so one reason I'm really excited to have you on
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the Pod today is you know with the work that you've done you know throughout your career but also at Medical Murray
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uh working with new clients kind of going through that RFQ process you really live on a side of the curtain
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that a lot of Founders it's like a black box right they like they really just don't get to peek behind you know the
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curtain there and one thing that I think is super important but it's hard for new Founders to get right is kind of making
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sure that they're prepared for that RFQ process so maybe we'll just start there you know for the first question you know
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kind of what are some key steps or Readiness Essentials right for Founders to have when they're initiating that
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request for quote RFQ process with contract uh development and and device manufacturing organizations yeah for
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sure I think it kind of depends on the stage you're in right if you're coming more on the design side of things the manufacturing side of things there's
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going to be different requirements but regardless I think there's some Readiness Essentials to both the
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development or technology side and the business side of things um I think a lot of times Founders Overlook the business
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side of things communicating that with their SE Mo but that's super important for us to know too and and really kind
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of sets up that partnership for Success when you communicate both the technology side and the business side you know like
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communicating your your state of technology is the first step I think a lot of times Founders may not really
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understand exactly where their state of technology is they know they need prototypes but they're not necessarily sure how to communicate the level of
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prototypes they need you know whether it's just a a prototype that they're going to use for fundraising efforts or
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prototype that they're going to use in an acute animal study or maybe you know they've done that and the next step is
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their first in man study so I think you know really communicating and understanding what level of prototypes
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you're looking for your state of technology I think that's a a really important factor kind of going into the
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RFQ process no I think that's a great point I mean you know one thing people forget it's like you guys are running a
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business and you really care about what this product is going to do so having forecasted volumes and like when you're going to go to market and kind of even
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like are you do you have funding right like do you can you afford to pay for someone to do all of this work you know
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I've seen people like get like flumix when they get asked that question like hey do you have like annual forecasts and volumes that we can expect yeah you
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you hit on another thing that I think a lot of Founders they'll think like okay I'm just going to go get this made and
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the Prototype we make is going to work and then we're going to go straight into
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you know they're basically immediately reaching design freeze and then kind of going through there I'm curious when you
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guys are quoting projects especially when they're coming in a little bit earlier and there's a fair amount of development work that you're assessing
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will to be done for the project do you try to bake in or maybe talk to them and and kind of work into the quote like hey
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like the chances of you getting it right on the first prototype with us is very slim and it has nothing to do with us
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that's just how the process works do you kind of think about that do you work that in yeah we do absolutely and sometimes that is hard to communicate
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because first-time Founders definitely don't know how that works and how many iterations you'll have to go through
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before you truly reach that design freeze and after you reach design freeze you may still get some more clinical
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evidence that you want to change the design for some reason or another so we do try to build that in it's super hard to predict obviously you don't know how
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many iterations it's going to take or what the changes are going to be it could be significant changes or it could be minor modifications so sometimes
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we'll we'll give a broad range of you know this TBD phase of iterations or design iterations sometimes there's a
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broad estimate to it and sometimes it's just a giant TVD yeah no it it's it's those things too and that's I I mean I
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think every single podcast I've been harping on customer Discovery but like it's so funny they'll get deeper into it and they'll meet potential customers
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maybe they go to a conference and then they'll come back and like oh I figured out I need to change this thing I need to do this thing I need a surface
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treatment I need to be this different material and it's always funny how you know they think they can skip out on that work but it always comes back to
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get them right um yeah yeah one thing you also mentioned was kind of that relationship between development and
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then you know contract manufacturing and I'd even throw there's kind of a prototyping step right viously in there
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in between those things so lots of different groups lots of different flavors that are doing this type of work
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you'll see some that only do development you'll see some that only do prototypes some that only do contract manufacturing
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and then some that do all three I know medical Murray does pretty full service you know Cradle to grave you know I
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personally think certain projects that is perfect for right having one partner
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doing Cradle to grave kind of everything for other projects right it can be more difficult to do that and specifically
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kind of the development versus you know kind of doing both development and contract manufacturing with one group
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open-ended question kind of what are your thoughts on that how do you parse the development versus contract manufacturing yeah for sure I think we
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are a bit unique because our businesses really split 5050 between development and Manufacturing and I think that's
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becoming less common and groups are focusing more on one or the other um you
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know I I think it depends on your technology we are really focused and specialized in catheters and implants
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and that's a huge variety of market right all over the body all different
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price ranges and we have worked on pretty much every catheter you can probably think of but we're not always
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the best manufacturing partner for those so where we tend to specialize in
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manufacturing is the lower volume High complexity devices you know think of
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complex cardiovascular implants or um complex GI implants we've been doing a
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lot of you know those types of devices are good fit for manufacturing but the devices that are super high volume very
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cost sensitive those products are not a good fit for us in manufacturing but we're we're good at the development
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we're good at the testing and helping get customers through regulatory approval and maybe even through pilot
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manufacturing where we're supporting early stage low volume manufacturing and
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putting together a good package for you to take to another contract manufacturing group that can produce it
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at higher volumes and a lower price you know that's better for that markets those would be Urology type of devices
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for example yeah yeah for sure for sure so before we hop off the RFQ section
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talking about you know Readiness and all that stuff I'm just curious if you have any horror stories or really head
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scratcher instances where a client brings you a product or some you know
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sketches on a napkin and you're like whoa this is wild I don't know where they dreamt of this concept but there's
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no way we could make this like anything that's just kind of been you know that you can remark on is either funny or
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mindblowing yeah we get some pretty crazy stuff from customers like you said napkin drawings or you know 70 page
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patents we've got to scroll through and and them wanting to us to figure out a design out of their patent so we get
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some pretty crazy stuff but you know it's all fun it's all R&D I think that's we truly enjoy working on the R&D stuff
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so it's always entertaining to see what we get from different customers yeah no it's it's so true I mean and uh you know
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quick plug the Playbook the Playbook one of the lessons in there we have a RFQ kind of Readiness checklist but some of
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the core components of that like just have a nice clean simple deck you know prints CAD drawings that deck should
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have a forecast in it you should think about packaging material bill of materials all that stuff like it's really not rocket science but it's such
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a foreign you know it's an art and a science and it's just not something that's like really taught that many places you just have to kind of go
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through it but yeah it is super important because like I feel like maybe I'm wrong here but I feel like when you
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are really prepared and you are kind of personable and seem like you'd be a fun
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person to work with like you are going to get a lot more flexibility out of you know potential Partners I don't know if
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you know I don't want anyone listening to hold you to that but um what what are your thoughts on that would you agree disagree yeah 100% no I I love the RFQ
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resource you guys have when I joined the Playbook I looked through that and I was like oh my gosh if every customer gave me this slide deck that would be amazing
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and it really does show that your prepared you're organized you know what you need and that does communicate a
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better story and you're more likely to get attention and be taken seriously because I think a lot of times as startups you're kind of fighting for
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attention with contract design and Manufacturing groups and if you can clearly communicate what you're doing
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what your needs are that's going to go so far and one thing in that RFQ deck that you guys have I love that you
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highlight that customers should share their challenges and their pain points I
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think that's something that is we don't always think of sharing and it's something that's really easy to shy away
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from you want to paint a a pretty picture like Hey we're ready to go and we have this beautiful device and it
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works perfectly but in reality that's going to hurt you in the long run it's super important to communicate specifics
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and specifics of what your pain points are what your biggest challenges are you know we're we're struggling with this
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aspect design of the device or we have this very small complex intricate part that has to be machined that's you know
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very difficult and it's important that you guys know know about this part going into things I think that's one part of
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the RFQ slide deck that you guys have that I think hardly any customers share with us that I wish pretty much every
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customer did yeah I no I appreciate that I mean it's you know if you've got like hey this tolerance is the tightest thing
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we have or this component is the hardest to machine and it's going to take you know five AIS you know 3D Machining like
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knowing that on the front end you can kind of attack that first and so that you don't waste a ton of time putting this quote together and then like oh I
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wish they would have called this out before because we either do or don't do that right or um this is going to be
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something right so it it's just super helpful information to have on the front end and I kind of think that leads into
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expectation setting where being clear about what your expectations are whether it's timelines or hey we need you to do
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these things we need you to support these things and we need you to be able to hand off to XYZ other partner you
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know I I don't know if you have any thoughts on kind of that expectation setting but like I feel like some people probably come to you guys and are like
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expecting you guys to do everything and that's just not how it goes yeah real quick on the you know on the the
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challenges too that helps kind of set those expectations and understand if the
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contract design manufacturing group really does understand what you're working on and you know cuz if that's
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your most complex part they start spitballing some ideas then you know you're in good hands you know they know what they're doing and then they're
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going to be able to handle those challenges and that you know I think that's really important too is kind of V
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those contract groups to make sure that they have the right experience and they're you know they're not fluffing things up and just over promising and
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telling you they can do everything but yeah so I think setting expectations is huge I feel like that's probably the
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main theme of working with contract manufacturing groups is setting expectations together and understanding
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you know what what really your needs are and communicating that clearly setting
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the expectations of again like we talked about your budget and your business requirements do you budget constraints
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do you have Milestones that you need to hit you know do you have an animal study scheduled for next month that you need
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prototypes for communicating openly honestly transparently and really setting all those expectations is huge
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and I think that's the number one thing that sets you up for success in those Partnerships yeah no doubt no doubt one
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thing you know after you've gone through your quote process and maybe you've talked to a good number of vendors you find who you like capability match
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culture match price match right one thing I always recommend doing is getting kind of like your point of contact list from them and then making
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sure that you understand like hey if I've got a question about Machining I go to this person if I have a question about packaging validation I need to
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talk to this person but I have a question about you know how we're going to handle this you know quality dhf related thing who am I talking to
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because a lot of the times you'll you'll kind of interface initially and build a relationship with kind of the business
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development person or the salesperson and then you're kind of very quickly jettisoned into this different kind of
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project management and team structure some of my favorite groups I've ever had to work with like as soon as you made that transition like emailed you the
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contact list and kind of what they were in charge of specific to your project like you know there's some packaging
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groups that are like yep so this is your project manager here's your process engineer here's your labeling engineer
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here's your sterilization scientist like you know exactly if you have a question like which one you need to go to that
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way you're not ping ponging around people I how does medical Murray you know how do you guys approach kind of
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putting a team around things I know it's probably a little bit different for every project but kind of what's y's philosophy on kind of putting a team
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around a project yeah we do the same thing we start off a project with a team member list so you know exactly who to
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go for for each item each resource um typically you're right it does vary
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depending on the project the you know whether it's a small prototyping effort or a large multi-year development
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program it's always going to have a project manager and a lead engineer and then from there kind of depends on on
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the project needs there'll be more Engineers supporting there'll be engineers and technicians supporting as well for builds and testing but that
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project man manager and lead engineer is always going to be the core structure of our projects yeah yeah that's awesome
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that's awesome and just having worked with I think medical Murray before like I have gone through the quote process with you guys and the clarity with which
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you guys lay things out is just like admirable and you feel like you know exactly what you're signing up for and
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you know I I just I think yall do a great job at it so I'll I'll get off I'll quit beating that drum on medical mer I you guys do awesome work yeah I I
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think that's important like we we try to be really transparent probably maybe too transparent and too honest um so you
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know we're not going to promise the cheapest project or the fastest delivery time but we're going to be honest about it I think our customers find Value in
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that so it's good to hear reassurance no and to that point you know I don't know if if we've talked about this before but
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if it's a critical supplier like you should at least have three if not six quotes I feel like there's this bell
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curve of you know you've got most expensive least expensive and like there's kind of like a correlative other
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bell curve of like level of service and quality and you really don't want the cheapest price usually because you're
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going to get like they're cutting Corners somewhere right so I've always found like if you can kind of find that
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you know Middle Ground maybe it's kind of that you know left half right of the
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uh between that midpoint and a bell curve where it's like hey I feel like I'm getting good pricing this supports our business case on the margins that we
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need but I'm also not scraping the bottom of the barrel I like the team they're well equipped so I I really
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think it's a fine line and and you know I've seen projects blow up because they tried to go with this group that you
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know promised the moon and gave them really good pricing and then it's a 26 week lead time for the first set of prototypes or something and it's you
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know there's an excuse here and an excuse there like how much did that cost you right like how much time you know
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maybe the cash or maybe the quality of these prototypes was so bad you can't even use them for testing so yeah it's a
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big watch out when you're getting engage with a critical supplier it is like a marriage right so you want to build a
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high quality you know long lasting relationship when you need to tweak payment terms or maybe to amortize
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something or whatever it is right you need to be able to rely on them so what are some tips and tricks for cultivating
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you know really high quality long- lasting relationships with suppliers so you're right it is a marriage um you're
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you're going to go through challenges together you're going to go through highs and lows together um and it's it's important that you're in it together and
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I think that idea of mutual partnership is really important you know because you
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both need to feel like you're helping each other succeed and you want to see each other succeed right because you
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know the startup success is the contract manufacturer success and vice versa so I think you know as much as you can try to
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really build that Mutual partnership and and try to feel out that Mutual partnership during the RFQ process it's
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a little challenging but you know visit ask for references you know try to talk to as many people as you can don't just
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talk to Business Development ask to talk to the engineers ask to talk to the Quality Group you know ask to talk to the different teams so that you can kind
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of try to get a feel for the company as a whole and see if you you see yourself building that Mutual partnership
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together and yeah like I said just honesty and transparency I think is huge being able to set expectations together
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discuss timelines and budgets together openly you know those kinds of things are what I think shows you have an
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honest and transparent group you know if during the quoting process they're willing to break down the budget with
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you and go through it with you and and discuss ways that you know maybe we could adjust the budget to help you out
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out or you know adjust your budget because of your cash flow restraints or whatever it may be or your funding
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Cycles groups that are going to are willing to work with you on those types of things and be honest and transparent
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with you through the quoting process I find that that is going to be maintained throughout the lifetime of of your
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relationship as well yeah amen you took the words out of my mouth when you were talk or like out of my head when you
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were talking about go visit like I think on-site visits are huge huge for relationship building you get to see you
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know oh okay here's where the operators you're going to sit here's the clean room like Okay and like you can really start you know to understand the process
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a little bit better I think it helps quality a ton when you're really kind of laying eyes on it you're trying to think
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about processes and workflows and and different things like that but I totally agree on that I also you know the
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funding Cycles thing and that was such a great comment I feel like some Founders especially if they're the ones that are in charge of fundraising like they don't
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want to tell people that they're struggling fundraising but like it happens like it it you know fundraising barely ever goes faster than you think
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will so like I totally agree just be like hey like we would love to take the next step in this project or even start
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this project but like we got this funding cycle we're waiting on this investor we're negotiating a term sheet whatever we can't do it right now like
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that goes a long way it goes so far it's so huge because also weed out contract manufacturing groups that don't truly
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want to work with startups yeah because if if they're not willing to hear that and have that discussion with you then they're they're really not going to give
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you the time of day if they're willing to hear it and go yeah no worries you know what do you need I'm happy to you know provide a draft budget or a draft
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proposal or whatever you need to help support your fundraising efforts you know those types of groups will
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understand it and be willing to work with you through it and I think that's a good way to to make sure the groups want to work with startups also totally I
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mean I asked that question and I recommend people ask that question like do you work with other startups can you
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support some packaging validation adoption if you ask that question and you're getting some like head scratching
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and they're you know and then you ask them about startups and they're like yeah we're we're looking we're trying to lean more into that they haven't done it
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before like it can be rough yeah yeah and I've actually like I've gotten better about this but I I still
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sometimes feel a little weird about it you're going through a quote process you've got a project you're reaching out to a lot of different people and you're
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like hey like you're trying to you know win them over you know whatever and you get a bunch of quotes and then they're
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doing their job they're following up and like hey where do we stand on this project right do you still need these things it's like H I don't want to tell
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them that I'm not right yeah personally I've just taken the approach just being like hey this
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group they had a better price or they had a better lead time we really enjoyed it and appreciate all the energy and effort what would your words of wisdom
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be to Founders kind of what does it mean to you when you get specific types of responses in those situations yeah first
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off we know you're searching right that's part of the process and you should be you should be reaching out to three plus groups and making sure you
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find the right partner and if we're not the right partner I won't take any offense to that you know it's we've got
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a small world in especially in the cardiovascular space so chances are will run into each other there may be a
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project we can work on again in the future together uh you know maintain the relationship and the best way to do that is just exactly what you said send a
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quick email that says thanks so much for your time we went with this other group for XYZ reasons you know please stay in
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touch we'll reach out because a lot of times too you may get a month into your relationship with that group and it doesn't work out and then you've got to
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start your search over again or reach back out to the groups um and if you've been ghosting them for a month or two or
21:24
six you know it may not be as easy to open that conversation back up yeah just be honest be open again the transparency
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and communicate it I think it goes a long way and honestly that's how we get better too if we're consistently hearing
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hey your lead times are way too long then that's a good way for us to take a look and say okay what do we you know
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clearly we we're having this consistent feedback from our customers how do we improve on that so yeah I think the the
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transparency is always great yeah no totally totally I mean if I was in you know your position like I would
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absolutely want to know like hey like we didn't win the business that's great like can you tell me why cuz like you are trying to improve too and I think
22:00
just to call back to an earlier point about the expectations too you know there's many ways to do a project to
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quot a project to execute it right like do you care more about lead times do you care more about Price Right do you care
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more about you know speed to Market overall and you know how are you balancing those things because I know
22:20
how it is right when you're Staffing folks and putting hours on projects and things like you've got to kind of pick and choose it's like am I going to dump
22:26
all this effort and energy and then like you know stick with them with a big Bill or they really worried about cost of goods more than lead times and speed to
22:33
Market and we got to really focus on that any thoughts on that piece yeah we have customers that do have focus on one
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or the other and communicating that is so essential because you're right it's easy to focus on the timeline and you
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know we have to hit this deadline we have an animal study coming up next week we have to have these prototypes ready
22:53
for the animal study do anything you can to make it happen and does that truly mean do anything we can are we paying
23:00
expedites are we you know are we sending these to the sterilization facility and paying double expedite for it and
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expedite shipping both ways you know is it truly the schedule is most important or are there budget constraints within
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that and then vice versa you know maybe we're working within a very constricted budget and we need to know hey we have X
23:19
amount of funding it's grant funding so we don't have a penny more to spend and
23:24
you know we got to see what we can do within that funding and a lot of times there's a SCH involved with the grant funding as well but you know that is
23:31
more of a constraint than the timeline often times so yeah communicating your most important needs your most important
23:39
Milestones your most important constraints is a huge way to set those expectations and set the project up for
23:45
Success mhm yeah that's awesome that's awesome um so one of the kind of one of the last topics you I want to get to is
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just like common mistakes right common missteps that you see that Founders are going through the RFQ process and and
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they just get wrong or it causes them some heartburn you know kind of take it anywhere you want any missteps or or
24:04
watch outs for Founders out there engaging in the RFQ process yeah I think we've touched on a few I think the most
24:11
common I probably see is not aligning on expectations so you know we build prototypes and they're proof of concept
24:19
prototypes and you know they were expecting to be able to use them in a cadaver lab and that wasn't the intended
24:26
function of the prototypes you know and that's it seem so simple but it's very easy if you're not aligned on those
24:31
expectations to to go down that path so I think that's a huge one there's a lot
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of missteps I think around the vendor selection process I think we've touched on a lot of that too you know visit the
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facilities make sure that you ask questions and dig deep around their experience and their capabilities and
24:48
their expertise you know when you visit facility make sure you're looking in the clean rooms for all of the equipment
24:53
that is needed to build your device and build your product and you know just kind of really dig deep on the
24:59
technology and the experience as well as you know the relationship we talked about communicating kind of your
25:05
challenges or your pitfalls or your pain points I think that is huge and and that can lead to a lot of issues if those
25:11
things aren't openly communicated and then it leads to bigger problems down the road when you run into these issues
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that weren't communicated and then you've got you know your over budget over schedule cuz you spend 2 months
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dealing with whatever issue that wasn't openly communicated I mean in general I think that's a huge one is R&D is
25:29
challenging and there will be issues there's going to be unforeseen challenges that come up and you're going
25:34
to have to be prepared to overcome those right so you need the budget Runway and the schedule Runway and and a buffer to
25:41
be able to overcome those challenges and we always build in a little bit because we know it's coming but there can always
25:47
be more there can always be more challenges and I think the founders have to be prepared with bandwidth funds
25:54
schedule you know all the above to survive and to survive those challenges and know that that's just part of R&D
26:01
pretty you know it's a lot of times unavoidable yeah no for sure for sure one big kind of mistake and I guess this
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would be a little bit RFQ but more just kind of getting into the execution but you see a lot of people try to make a
26:13
fully functional device right out of the gate or they'll try to use kind of High
26:19
Fidelity like production level materials or processes to do that and I am just
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very much in the camp of isolate what is the hardest to make highest risk element
26:30
of your device and see if you can make that kind of in a chamber right like isolate it and maybe it's even larger
26:37
than scale right or maybe you kind of hack and harvest taking some off-the-shelf components from like
26:42
getting some stuff from chamfer literally sawing through devices I'm just curious how do you approach kind of
26:48
that initial really jumping from concept to prototype you know phase and what strategies you guys take yeah I mean I
26:54
think it does depend on if you're proof of concept versus first prototypes vers trying to get into that you know first
27:00
real prototypes and so I mean we're constantly hacking up devices and buying
27:07
used product or expired product and trying to apply it to to new devices or new technologies that's one of the most
27:13
cost-effective ways I think to prototype or yeah buying components and subassemblies from chamfer or other
27:18
off-the-shelf components and retrofitting them to make it work for what you're trying to do uh that's a
27:24
huge thing and a great resource um I I think the some s where we run into challenges with that is um if we have a
27:32
a clinician inventor that's expecting that prototypes to look really pretty and look like a you know a commercial
27:37
device but they're really just proof of concept prototypes that's again with the aligning on expectations and and what
27:43
the prototypes are going to look like act like feel like how they how they're going to perform and what the focus is
27:49
of the the prototyping efforts yeah like two really quick Stories the I was going through an accelerator and spent a bunch
27:55
of money trying to get you know 3D printed Proto types and these other kind of High Fidelity and it was like yeah this is exactly what it's going to look
28:01
like and and everything and we we were just not not getting it done and like especially when you have Parts where
28:07
there's kind of you know your modulus of elasticity or there's a living hinge or things like that like you know it really
28:12
is important the material can make a big difference in sometimes 3D printing can't do it but what we ended up doing as we were approaching demo day we like
28:18
literally got some parts from Cina and went and got a small PVC pipe from Like Home Depot and basically hack this
28:26
device together but it was like 95% fully functional even though it looked a little Frankenstein and took that to
28:33
demo day and within like five or six months I think within five months we had raised like almost a million bucks for
28:40
around that company so like that's just a testament to like if you can sell them on the functionality like I think people
28:45
understand like the Aesthetics is easier to figure out right than the functionality yeah anything that you
28:51
want to share kind of with the audience out there you know it could be a saying it could be a movie quote anything
28:58
um I have one more Hot Topic actually let's go a little bit hard to discuss but I think part of the like sharing
29:06
business strategy not strategy but Business Essentials I guess at during the RFP process is sharing your cogs
29:12
Target and I know startups and Founders don't want to do that they don't want to
29:18
maybe pigeon hole themselves into pricing and which I totally understand you know I understand the first person to speak in negotiations loses and
29:25
whatever it may be but the startup should have a deep understanding of the
29:30
market and a viable price and the contract manufacturing group is probably not going to have that level of deep
29:36
understanding they'll have some understanding and and some range but the startup will know best what their true
29:43
cogs targets are and I think that needs to be shared with us from the beginning and and you'll see the experienced
29:49
groups share this immediately yeah um they share their cogs targets because it it needs to guide development we need to
29:55
come out of development with a product that's sellable and profitable and viable for both groups right so it has
30:01
to be market price viable for the startup and it has to be a cogs price for the contract manufacturing group
30:07
that allows them to make some money too you know we're a business also so we we also got to survive but you know sharing
30:13
upfront those cogs targets I think is huge to guide development and make sure you come out of development with a
30:19
product that's viable for your business but I know that's a Hot Topic and it's hard to share and it's something that
30:26
people really shy away from yeah no it really really is I mean I can't I've not done it much you know but if I get ask
30:33
it's like yeah like and I think you know there's ways to do it right like you could say hey this industry is like they
30:39
expect a 60% or an 80% margin so we're planning on pricing it at this and you
30:45
know so we need it to be here um I think some Founders like think that they're kind of pulling the wool over people's
30:52
eyes and it's like oh like we can't tell them we're going to sell this for 2 Grand and then ask them to make it for like 500 it's like yeah you can yeah
30:59
because like we all understand that's what's happening yeah exactly yeah we we understand you know what percent we need
31:06
to make and what percent you guys need to make for everyone to have a a healthy successful business and you know you're not going to surprise us with your
31:12
target cogs most likely because again we probably know the range we know the range of what's acceptable and and your
31:19
price is probably going to be on somewhere on the lower end of that range most likely a lot of the time you're trying to create a product that you know
31:24
on the lower end of the price range to get a little bit bit more you know to make it more sales effective or you know
31:31
sales attractive yeah um so yeah we get it yeah you're probably not going to surprise us and and I think it's huge to
31:38
share so that you know our engineering teams deeply understand it too because we may come up with a super cool design
31:44
that's got a laser cut night and all frame and it's you know super flexible and kink resistant but it's a laser cut
31:50
night and all frame and your target cogs is $20 a device and it's just not viable in any world so you know sharing those
31:57
things is so critical to guiding the design process laser cut night now that's pretty cheap isn't it I would
32:03
imagine yeah I'm just kid no but um and I think too like you talk you talked about transparency and you know I feel
32:10
like a lot of contract manufacturers they would love to be able to say Hey you gave us this cogs Target we actually
32:16
came in like 5 cents cheaper you know I think a lot of people especially if you've been operating in good faith and they're committed to you you're
32:22
committed to them like they would love to be able to do that because like you're still going to work in and have a
32:27
margin for your business right and and everybody likes kind of you know being the hero and being able to say hey we
32:33
beat our goal right we beat our Target I think a lot of Founders think that like whatever they tell the contract
32:39
manufacturing group for their cogs Target like it's never going to be lower than that right and I really don't think that's the case of course there's
32:45
probably shops that like may take that approach but I think as you get more into this you know kind of from the
32:51
founder side and like you understand like hey like this is what you know these things just cost right and then
32:56
there's parts of a cogs breakdown when you ask for it where you'll be able to say like yeah I understand where kind of
33:02
everything's coming from and just again that transparency is really really key um yeah yeah for sure so wrapping it up
33:08
here Sam what do you want to plug where can we find you uh we can put your socials down in the show notes below but
33:15
um yeah uh where can we find you what do you want to plug cool yeah LinkedIn will be I guess posted in the comments um
33:22
check out medical Murray's website just medical murray.com medical M Ur r a y uh
33:27
we are contract design manufacturing group and we focus on cardiovascular
33:33
devices or more catheters and implants I guess but we love working with startups and we'd love to help you guys out so
33:39
check us out and to be honest I'm I'm always transparent if we're not a good fit but I usually have a good resource
33:45
to point you towards a good direction to point you so you can always reach out to me and I can point you in the right
33:50
direction if uh we're not the right fit yeah did not to that the folks at Medical Murray they do great work and they're also very helpful and well
33:57
connected so like you know absolutely plus one to that they can put you in the right direction even if they're not the right group but I bet they would be so
34:03
with that we'll wrap it up Sam um this was so fun I think there was a ton of nuggets in here that are going to help
34:10
Founders be better at going through the RFQ process and building better highquality relationships with their
34:16
suppliers so really really appreciate you taking out the time today to hop on the Pod and uh until next time yeah
34:21
thanks Spencer happy to be here and appreciate your time yep all right see you everybody
34:28