Tiger BufordYour Orthopedic Industry Expert (free today)

Advice for early early stage ortho founders

15 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, Tiger Buford warns early-stage orthopedic entrepreneurs against jumping straight into heavy prototyping, FDA testing, and market launch with an unvalidated product. He emphasizes a low‑commitment, rapid validation loop: engage daily with potential surgeon users, ask when they would use the device, why they would use it, and how much they would pay. This continuous user feedback approach helps founders confirm demand and pricing before investing in costly regulatory and engineering work.

Chapters

If you had an idea that you thought was unique and potentially very valuable, but there was— you were not committed in any way to how you were going to do it, how might you start in today's environment?
I have strong feelings about this. So I— this is the mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make, is they, they, they design a baby and they think their baby's pretty, and they, they go straight into prototyping and FDA testing and FDA clearance and and they take version 1 into the market, and version 1 is not quite right. So I, I think you need to test the idea every day and every week and without any, without any major commitment. So I would talk to anybody and everybody. I don't know what kind of surgeons would use this, but I would talk to a new surgeon every day. When would you use this? Why would you use it? What would you pay for it?