Brent Constantz: Tension Between Goals and ROI

Well, you know, there's the real world and then there's Silicon Valley, you know. And I think with my third company, I learned a lot about just building a business with your own money, you know, and not setting your goals too high. And if I, if I notice one common fault in everything I've done, it's that I've set my goals too high. Which is great if you want to go build that trillion dollar company, but it's a lot easier to fail. And I think choosing something that you know is doable, that you can go out and get accomplished without having to raise an enormous amount of capital and tell a fantastic story is a good way to go as well. I remember with Norion, the first company, they said, well, you know, it's going to take you $50 million and five years to go through prospective, randomized, multi center trials in orthopedic surgery. But you know what, there's more root canals than there are hip fractures. And we could make $15 off each root canal and we can get FDA approval for that in 90 days. So let's become a root canal company. And so we wasted about a year and a bunch of money to do periodontal defects. And it was a total waste of time. You know, dentists pay for things with their credit cards. You know, it wasn't what you wanted to do. So it's a constant tension. It's true. To really get these guys managing these big funds to invest in something, you better have just a big story with a fantastic return on investment. And that's really different than the way most people start businesses.