BoneChat call #13 - Steven Flutie - a new orthopedic marketplace for innovators and experts

All right, Bone Chatters, we are live with Stephen Flutie Davis. He is going to present, uh, a brand new concept that he's building a marketplace for orthopedics, and it's— nobody's ever done this before. It's gonna be really interesting, and you guys get to be the Guinea pigs and ask questions. He has a few short slides, so I'm handing the mic over to Steven.

Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for having me, and I'll try to do my best filling in here last minute. My name's Steven Flute. I'm the founder and CEO— I'm gonna put my screens up— founder and CEO of PitchSync. And PitchSync is a two-sided talent marketplace. It's meant to try to connect anyone who wants to develop a product, needs any type of resources in the med device innovative space, to a resource they may need. Quick background on myself. There we go. Quick background on myself. I've been in med sales for med tech sales for 13 years. Started distributor model in Florida, sold everything from trauma, foot and ankle, sports medicine, joint recon, pediatric limb discrepancy, everything, and then moved into a product development role with Stryker Sports Medicine. Did a lot of, a lot of medical education around the knee, a lot of development around ACL reconstruction and meniscal repair. During my time there, I got just a couple years, you got pitched over 100 times of surgeons coming to us with great products that they really wanted to develop. But a lot of these were smaller, like Class II products, and we just didn't really have the resources. Is kind of, we're hearing from a lot of the other companies as well that they, there was no, no resources and we just kind of would slow, no, the, the surgeon to death where we drag 'em on and either say we can't do it and we have nowhere to send you, or we we finally would say, yes, we're gonna do the project. But by the time the surgeon pitched us the idea or pitched anyone really the idea and the product was finished, it wasn't what the surgeon wanted. And I feel like, Tiger, you can come talk to this. There's a lot of surgeons that feel like they've been burned by industry because they come with something that they truly think will be game-changing. And by the time it's back, it's nothing like they wanted and they don't want to use it anymore. So that's kind of where the idea of PitchSync came. And the name PitchShank is fun because we developed it when, when you're going through sales training on day one, you're taught your very first thing is develop a scrub sink pitch. And so that's kind of how we came up with our name is PitchShank. Most of these conversations are happening right around the scrub sink. So something that we wanted to resonate because we, we don't want to just be for surgeons that want to develop products, but reps, engineers, whomever it may be. So again, so we're two-sided town marketplace and please interrupt me at any times if you guys have questions on that. Made for connecting, you know, innovators with, with the resources. We really want to make sure that we are enabling surgeons to develop what they want. So the problem that we really realized is that the way the marketplace or the way the market is set up right now, there's 3 different options. You can either go to a large company and they're going to slow-mo you like we said. You could find a developmental agency and hope that they'll take your product on. And during our concept phase, we went and pitched fake ideas to a bunch of different agencies trying to figure out what the process is like, how easy it is to do. And it would take weeks sometimes to hear back from them, if not ever. And that was really frustrating. So we wanted to try to figure out how to fix one of those problems. Or the other way is you could try to find an incubator or an accelerator. And all of these are really based around more of like larger Class 3 products. And what we realized is there's a larger market for Class 2 and Class 1 products. So we really decided, let's focus our attention on that. And that's where PitchSync came from. And so we interviewed a number of surgeons, a number of engineers. We went to my old team, my old team at Stryker, and then we went to some incubators and tried to figure out what are the biggest pain points for independent innovators. And what we came up with was streamlined IP, escrow payment systems, making sure there was vetted, highly qualified talent. And then the other thing is timing. We need to figure out how to make this all work. So we came up with a platform that has a one-click NDA. Payments again are safe and secure through escrow system. So once the product is, once the price is agreed upon, our client would click and say, yes, let's go. That money is transferred in escrow. No one can touch it once everything, once the product, until the product's done, the project's done. And then the other concept that was really frustrating for people was funding options. A lot of surgeons just didn't have the money to be able to go and say, hey, I've got $50,000, $150,000 to develop a product. So what we're doing now is also partnering with a few different banks, investment banks to give funding options to, to the surgeons. Now our use cases are we've got 15 different categories, but you could see some of these right now: regulatory, legal, engineering, creative design, funding, research, writing, and the list goes on and on. We just continue to add on as we get more people to sign up. And then we recognized that not everything could be captured through a platform. And what the hard part was, was trying to figure out what can go through the platform and what couldn't, and also what stages to offer more products. And that's where we came with the PS Agency. So for our PS Agency, that offers our innovators to come and get surgeon KOL feedback when they're getting ready to develop a product. It allows us to find manufacturing partners. Or if you just don't have the time to really do this yourself, we can become that white glove product or program manager for you. And then also offer— we offer access to different health systems, people to do research opportunities. And it's pretty easy to do, and we're gonna walk through a demo at the end of this, but it takes all of just a few minutes realistically to post a job, find a connection right here, and then within a couple minutes you are connected with whoever you need to. To be able to develop a product. So that's as our, our quick little pitch here. And, walk you through this demo here in a second. So any questions, please feel free to reach out.

Has, has anybody ever used Upwork to find a quick expert? Nope. Oh, there you go, Mark, Kyle.

Yeah.

So Upwork. It's probably the closest concept I think is Upwork.

Yeah. Imagine Upwork just dedicated strictly for medical device innovation.

Yeah, I, I joined Upwork as a, you know, on the consultant side when I first started my, my firm. It wasn't a great experience. But I think, I think, I mean, it was basically race to the bottom for cost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you're competing with people from India and Pakistan.

Yeah, that's right. And it's also interesting, there's no real vetting that's done on Upwork, and we really wanted to make sure that we had a vetted group of clients. So it's not open to the masses. We don't want it to be open to the masses, and that's why we want to be able to get referrals from, you know, larger companies that have nowhere to send their doctors now. And we'll have a, you know, a highly vetted group of individuals to be able to make sure that they're getting quality work.

And so we're not— How do you vet?

As of now, so we're still in a beta phase. We're getting ready to launch in a few months, but anybody that comes and signs up to our platform now does short, short questionnaire, and then I have a call with them one-on-one. And so we kind of see what their background is, what they've worked on, how many years in the, in the industry, and then we'll research them on our own. So it's a couple different factors at this point.

So Alessa's got her hand up.

Apologies. I thought I put it down. I was just saying that I worked with— I've used Upwork before. And like Andrea said, it was more cumbersome than it was worth. It was easier to make a phone call. But I actually, I've mentioned this idea, something like this to Tiger, because as I went through this process over the last over a decade, 15 years, I never knew what quality I was going to get out of people. And even when I was consulting with other companies, when I would bring on somebody, it was basically through word of mouth. And sometimes you get really lucky and you get somebody that understands it, and then sometimes they might have done really well on one project but not on another, but they had no fluency in, in the other project. So I, I don't know if you have a ranking system or a rating system to where former clients can go on and vouch for the projects that they've done. But as you know, in orthopedics, there's a big difference in spine versus trauma, uh, implants, or, or total joints versus, uh, foot and ankle. Um, how do you anticipate, uh, determining that for the, for the person that's going on and looking for help?

Yeah, there is— so in order to move up our, essentially our algorithm, you need better, you need better referrals, better ranking system. You need to be able to push that on your own as a consultant on our platform to get the good feedback to move up. So transparency is really big on this as well as vetting. It's a hard thing to figure out exactly how to properly rate somebody if we've never worked with them, but that's why we go through that, that initial vetting call. I'm sorry, one second. I think it's a problem that all platforms are still trying to work through as well. But the biggest thing is that we can do is say you need to, you need to get a proper rating system. Well, you need to be properly rated and you need to have referrals from each job as well as you have to invite a client, which we'll show you. You have to invite a consultant on to be able to get a, a job. So not anyone could just randomly apply for a job. So I hope that kind of answers that one. It's, it's a tricky topic.

You know, Angie's List has done it really well because there was, thousands and thousands of contractors on there, really defining what people are good at. I mean, even with regulatory consultants or some defining what their projects that they've worked on and what they're fluent with is a— there's—

they're—

I've found that regulatory consultants will take on any— them will take on a lot of projects just because they're fluent with the FDA. However, it doesn't always translate.

Yeah, I think, you know, so it's interesting, we've kind of gone through Upwork, we've gone through Collabtree and any of these other platforms that we could try to find as well as a lot of LinkedIn groups and diving in the background of who, who's done what, how many jobs they've done and really getting the rating systems off there before inviting somebody on. Would you think, so not just from an FDA standpoint, but having references like what, someone has, what research they've done or products they've helped create. Would something like that help get a little bit better transparency for you going to hire somebody?

100%, because that's where the failure lies, lies even in word of mouth, is people know that they've worked with somebody on one project and just, but they don't know the full extent of what they worked on. So if I'm looking for an additive manufacturing engineer, for example, just because they've done design work in the past or they have 3D printers in their house doesn't mean that they're fluent in, in additive manufacturing practices. And in fact, we had a catastrophic failure at one point because an engineer who is a veteran, wonderful, excellent engineer in subtractive, was just not as well-versed in additive. Procedures, manufacturing standards. And so they just don't translate.

Yeah. When you hired, I mean, how easy was it to be able to see their profile, their background? And we want to make sure we have a robust profile for everybody signing up, including LinkedIn, that you can— we want to make it sure it's a little anonymous, but we also want to make sure there's enough information for if you're trying to find someone that's additive, that's, that's good in additive work, that that's on there. So yeah, it's, it's a work in progress on that, making sure that we're getting as much information to you to make sure they're qualified and vetted in everything that they're putting down.

Patrick, Patrick, go ahead.

I, I just want to vouch for or second what Alyssa said. There's definitely a need out there for some better way to qualify external consultants. The regulatory thing sort of cause me to raise my hand because that's a, that's a definite issue that, you know, they all have FDA experience, they all sort of had, you know, previously did work at FDA. That should, that's a, that's an ante in the poker game. That should not be sort of the qualifying, you know, step. And there's, there's definitely a need for some way to, to better source other than just sort of calling around to your friends and asking who they've worked with before and what they liked and didn't like about them.

Yeah. What would be a minimal year that you would, so 5 years of experience at the FDA, then moved on to independent consulting, kind of what would be the ideal candidate you'd be looking for from an experience standpoint?

There's probably some sort of floor, but I would myself be very hesitant to set like some sort of— there is a point where like it just sort of like more doesn't, more doesn't matter. You know, 25 does not, it's, it's not better than 20 or something. You know, 10 is better than, you know, 5 is definitely better than 0. And then, you know, diminishing returns after a handful of years. I mean, any company, I know my own and plenty of other companies, they're always interested in sort of like Who got the stuff that was hard to get through the FDA? Not sort of like I did some, you know, not I got hired by some company and they had 6 of one of a product, 6 sizes of a product, and you know, we've got through the 7th size, you know, not that kind of stuff, but who got through stuff where they found an interesting predicate or woven narrative through to FDA that made them understand something that to the sort of casual observer or at first glance you think like, how in the world did that get through? Or how did they get that done? There's a definite need for those people. They, I think those people don't even realize the premium that they have on the marketplace.

Yeah. So if there was essentially like an internal library where we can have our consultants almost have like what they post, what they've worked on, or have some newsletter, something they're continuously publishing of the things that they worked on, their achievements, and you could see that before hiring someone, do you think that would help?

I think that'd be helpful.

Yeah.

We really want to make this as a platform that our consultants are helping build and we want to empower everybody part of it as well as, you know, say a surgeon comes to us and doesn't know what's actually needed behind an FDA or this, they can see what this, you know, what that independent consultant's worked on and the publications that they provided to us. So do you think that would help with a clarification?

And an internal— I'm sorry.

Go ahead, Alyssa.

No, go ahead. And an internal ranking. So for example, I worked with Andrea. She did our IP search a few times. And so I can candidly say, This is the product. This is the IP search that she did and rate her at a 5.0. And yes, I would use her again.

I mean, that's incredibly kind. Thank you, first of all. But also, you're one of the few people who would do that. And that's— I think there's differences in the various aspects of the consultants that you would have there, because I know in the IP, on the IP side, I'm not allowed to talk about the projects that I worked on. Yeah. And my clients are likely not going to want to divulge that. I mean, some, some would, like Alyssa said, but it's very rare. So I think where some domains people are happy referring and sharing and saying, oh yeah, they worked on my, my device. Others are, other areas are not as open.

Yeah.

So Steve, is this— are you intending for this to be orthopedic? Are you intending for this to be orthopedic only?

My efforts are going to be behind orthopedic for our first year. That's where my background is. And then just go from there and then scale out to other industries. But yeah, orthopedics is really where my bread and butter for the past 13 years has been. You know, each— after each job, there's going to be internal marketing that push for those rating systems, and it helps that independent consultant move up the list of being able to be identified. This would be a good consultant for your job for reasons XYZ, pricing, ratings. Look at the referrals from there. The question becomes to what Andrea said is some, some consultants, some clients don't want to say what she's worked on or not. So that's gonna be an option that you'll be able to do as well. Yes, I was able to work on XYZ or more of a vague statement. So it's that fine line we have to flirt with. Who will allow what?

Or even anonymous. Yeah. Allowing for anonymous. But so I guess the question is, it would only be like in-network referral, right? So whoever is doing the review or the ranking would have to be part of the system.

Exactly.

Yes.

Platform.

Yeah. Yeah.

You could probably, without knowing some of the tech requirements, you could probably give a few descriptive definitions that would still stay compliant with someone's existing NDA of, you know, instead of like, I worked with company XYZ on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I worked with a mid-market foot and ankle company or, you know, whatever that, you know, if you design the categories, they can drop their own, you know, you know, their own information into there.

Yeah.

And you'll see as we go through the kind of the creative job, less for you to do is more. We want it to be click-through. We want you, we don't want you to have to sit there and write out an entire story. We want it to be as easy to use as possible. So, it's, it's again flirting with that anonymous versus not. So, and how much information can be added in there.

So, Stephen, I would, I would, I think you should offer video introductions and maybe audio introductions because it's, it's way easier to kind of assess somebody when you're looking at them than, you know, you're reading a paragraph. Yeah, I'm doing that with recruiting. I'm, I'm doing, um, video introductions to clients and they really like that.

Yeah, that'd be an interesting concept to do. It's, yeah, we'll look into that one for sure. What platform are you using for that?

Myself? I, I, I just posted, uh, you can post things on YouTube in an unlisted format, so, uh, nobody in the world can see it unless they have a, a a secure link.

Yeah, that's okay. Interesting. I'll show you guys a really quick walkthrough of that and then we'll try to figure out how that could incorporate in there because this would be interesting. Disclaimer: we're still in beta. There's still features that are being added through this. We're a few months from being able to launch here, so bear with us. All right, as easy as posting a job. Let's say consultant needed, FDA filing, and this would be a quick dropdown of the different Categories that we could do, we'll do regulatory. Andrea, we'll do it for you. And then description, just test 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then you could add files that you would have. Really, really simple to do. Look in the details aspect, it could be a one-time project, ongoing, or complex project. And then you could have screening questions. Do you have suggestions to make this run successful? Which of these required skills do you feel you're strongest at? You can continuously add through here. Press next. Expertise, regulatory, strategy. Andrea, what else would you be looking at?

I only do patent research, so I'm in IP.

All right, we'll do, we'll do something there as well.

It's great for an example.

Yeah, perfect. So you can continuously add in here, and then if there's not one, you could write one in there. Then like we said, we wanted this to be quick. I didn't want anybody to have to sit there and write as much information in there. So it could be a fixed price, there'd be an expert, How long do you want this to last? We want this job done in less than 1 month. I need someone for more than 30 hours a week. Specific budget, $3,500. And then there'd be a quick review of what everything looks like. Once we're okay with that, we would publish it. And then on the backend, we immediately connect you with somebody. So here's the next thing. Sounds great. This is still work in progress. There's still gonna be more information added, like ratings and, and different jobs, and you'll be able to look into it. But you can save this, you can have a conversation with them, and then once you're ready, you can invite them from your job. And then, you know, 510k, Sutra Passer, and then boom, invited from there. So it is easy as that. Questions, concerns? I know a lot of it's coming around the rankings and making sure these are vetted qualified candidates, which we will do. So there's still more being built in the back end here. It's gonna be interesting to figure out how you can— I hope this, this one works. Oh, one second.

Yeah.

On how to go through education, there'll be research, there'll be more that's on there, but have essentially like a little button over here, Tiger, where you could say, watch my intro video. And that would be really interesting. Hmm. As well as I feel like if someone's willing to do an intro video versus not, if they're willing to do so, that means they're more serious about being able to utilize the platform. So definitely something we're gonna take into consideration. That's a great, great concept.

Stephen, forgive me if you already said this, but who pays you?

So the way marketplaces work, there's anywhere between a 15% to 25% to 30% transaction fee sometimes. Like, if you look at Uber, all those service fees that are being done through there, that's how it's done. So from a consultant side, it would be paying, you'd be, we'd be taking 7.5% of the transaction from the client side to post the job. It's free to post, but you have to, would have to pay 7.5% as well to be able to hire somebody. So there's an additional fee to hire it.

So I, so I go looking for a regulatory consultant and I hire Ted Anderson.

Yeah.

The, the, the price is $150 an hour plus 7.5% or that's baked into the $150?

Plus, plus 7.5% on your side. And then we take it out of his side as well. And so two-sided talent marketplaces are taking from both sides. Some of them out there are taking 15% from each side. So it's, it's pretty high. We feel like we're on the lower end because we want to make sure that we are giving consultants coming to our platform the best opportunity to grow their, their business.

And is it a deliberate choice to not mention that 7.5%?

Up front? Um, when, like, when you're—

I mean, my thought process is that some people might be irritated, be like, actually, it's not $150 an hour.

It's— you'll see that. You'll see when you post the job what the, what the fees would be at that point. Okay. Okay. You're not gonna get hit with it at the very end.

Uh-huh.

Yeah. So when you're going through and you're discussing it, it's gonna say, okay, there'll be a popup, which we haven't done here because we haven't had any negotiation with prices. Pop-up would be, here's what your fees would be, like an Uber would be. So at the end of, you know, once you say I've got to go from point A to point B, this is what the estimated cost would be. Now here's the total cost. Do you want to go or not? Yep. Any questions? Andre, do you think this is something— are you, quick background, independent? Are you working with the firm?

I'm independent now. I've been independent for almost 7 years now, uh, but I, I worked in-house at a at Nuvasive for 9 years, and before that at search patent search firms for 9 years.

I sold the lips lengthening, limb lengthening nail for a while, though.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So I worked on that acquisition, on the due diligence of it.

Yeah, I love that. I worked with Dr. Paley for a long time.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's great. Do you think, do you think this is something that you could utilize if there was specific parameters put in place, or kind of how do you grow your business? At this point?

It's word of mouth at this point, um, which kind of helps of staying within that ortho space as well. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's, it looks interesting.

Um, okay, good to know.

You're always— and part of my challenge is to differentiate myself and to— because it— I'm a niche within a niche within a niche, kind of, you know, IP and then patent research, but then also within ortho. So, yeah, it, I think it's a great way of, of sort of providing more visibility for, for that demographic.

We want people to look at, you know, the 7.5 is essentially business development and marketing expense. You know, we want to go find more business for you. We want to handle all the non-fun parts of going out there and trying to figure out who to work with and provide as much to you as possible.

So Great.

Anyone else?

Mark, I think you have it. I think there's an additional opportunity here for extension once you get this developed. Um, I know, for example, when we're doing upfront due diligence, mergers and acquisitions, valuations, and all that good stuff, I mean, we were asked our valuation the first month we were out. And, uh, you know, to do a valuation on a company that has no revenue and isn't going to have revenue for a few years is very challenging to do. So valuations, and then also from a rep standpoint, I know a lot of companies are looking for, uh, sales reps to go in and fill in occasionally here and there throughout the country, and they literally just pay a salary and they deploy the person out into the field that they're having an issue with. And I think that this is a really good matching system capability for, um, for particularly small companies that are going to market that have cases that they need covered by a professional, but they don't have the turnaround time.

Have you ever heard of MedTech Intel?

I've heard of it, yes. Yes. But I don't know much.

It's a platform that would allow you to find either independent or direct reps around the country, give surgeon profiles. It's a really interesting concept. I've used it for some consulting I've done in the past. So we partner with them. For the same reason of once someone's created a product, what do you do next? Now you need to find a way to help build your sales force. So what we wanted to do is be able to give our consultants discounted rates to go to their platform. It's not a very expensive platform, but it's an easy way for you to go around the country and say, I need an independent consultant that does spine implants. And then you can see all the different companies that they work with. So it's a very, very easy-to-use product as well. So instead of rebuilding the wheel on our side, we wanted to partner with those companies that can help, you know, push out whatever may be needed in that aspect. Martin?

Yeah. So Stephen, nice, nice pitch.

Thank you.

I kind of come from a world of it's not necessarily what you know, but it's who you know. And everything is relationship driven. And so plat— what other platforms like this are trying to reduce that very subjective edge to a more objective analytic, analytical edge? And hey, how do you know it works? Because in my, my experience with consultants, with everything from, you know, going through ISO, other types of things that are maybe more technical, You know, all I do is ask the consultant who they used to work for.

Yeah.

And I know that's who he's gonna recommend.

Yeah.

So, but I think, I think there, there's definitely, definitely a need, especially those that may not be super connected.

Yeah.

Don't really know who they know.

Yeah.

And do you have— when everybody—

have any, have any competitors now? Besides people like Tiger?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Upwork is doing this at scale. But like people have said on the call, it's kind of a race to the bottom of the pricing and they don't vet anyone. There's another company called Collabtree that also does this, but they don't have as many medical device consultants as people that are just kind of spread amongst industries as well as you're seeing like The Mullins Group has a whole contract group, but it's all a manual process. So you have to wait for them to respond to you. Now, which nice thing about that is it's all vetted through their system. Now we're vetting through our system, but we're making this on demand for you. So there's a few companies doing it. There's companies, you know, larger developmental companies are doing it manually. We're the only one that's really pushing it on demand for people that want answers now rather than waiting 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks to be able to get an email back.

So the idea, do you have a kind of feel in advance where you're, the tip of the spear is gonna be as far as the, positions that, or the consulting expertise that you will be more effective with?

We're getting a lot of interest around medical writing research, a lot around regulatory right now. A few engineers. We haven't put any marketing dollars behind this right now. It is me going in LinkedIn groups and posting questions and polls and then vetting people from there. Had a decent result doing so, but that's been where most of our, our interest has been at this point. Okay, thanks.

Yep. Yeah, that's the theme there is introverts. So people, medical writers, engineers, research people are not good at networking, and that's probably a great place to start.

Yeah. As well as smaller products, you know, class, class 1, class 2, anything very more complex becomes a little bit more of a difficult payment concept. So definitely focus on the smaller innovative stuff at this point. Any other questions?

Mark, think about— Mark, think about dating, the dating apps. So more than half the marriages now are online. Connections. I mean, who would've guessed that 20 years ago? That's crazy. But they solved the problem. There was a, you know, dating is uncomfortable and sloppy and not very efficient. And some of the apps do a good job with it.

Yeah.

No, I think it's great. I've been, I've been in digital medicine since the late '90s. So I'm, you don't, you don't have to sell me. I'm an evangelist. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, where to put it. 'Cause what the funny thing about, big moves is that you just don't see them coming.

Yeah.

You know, that's true. Yeah. There's a, there's a saying that it's slow, it's slow, it's slow, and then all of a sudden it's sudden, sudden, all the overnight, you know, things change and, and you get to that tipping point and it takes off. And this, it's gonna take a while to build this because we talk, Steve and I were talking, it's the network effect. Just like BoneChat, it— the more people in the network, the more valuable it is to every single person in the network. And, and I don't— Stephen, do you have an idea on how many, you know, experts are needed for this to become really valuable?

Yeah, so that's a question that we keep going back and forth. Our CTO was, uh, employee number 2 at A-Team, and A-Team is a high-end talent marketplace for web development out of San Francisco, and they launched with 10 consultants per category. So it wasn't a lot, but it was a very vetted group of individuals. So we go back and forth whether it's at 10, 15, 20, and how many that needs. And then what— that's our supply side. And then on the demand side, how much is needed? So that's a topic we talk about every single day. I wanted more and he said less, but more, more vetting. So I think we're kind of landed between 15, which is the sweet spot right now just to start. Be able to give some variety of different people to help.

Interesting. Well, you know, LinkedIn started in San Francisco with just guys in inviting their friends. They started with about 15.

It wasn't much. Yeah.

Yeah.

So there's a great book, the Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen. Definitely read it if you haven't. And it's how all these companies started and how Uber grew their growth, how PayPal, Venmo, all these companies, Dropbox, and how they continue to grow organically and pull those levers and building out the network effects. It's a phenomenal read. I definitely recommend it. It goes exactly into what we talked about on the network effect. Yeah. That's not the name of it. Bold Star Problem. Yep. Andrew Chen. Andrew Chen was involved with helping grow the North American Uber launch demand.

That's a home run for sure. Yeah. One idea is to, to make this more viral, you give people an incentive to, uh, bring in more people somehow.

Yeah.

I don't know what that would look like.

What we're doing at this point is when you sign up, there's an automatic email that goes out with a referral code. Um, the referral code, if you refer 2 people that sign up, your 7.5% goes down to 5. 5%, and that stays that way for a quarter. If you continuously add more and more people, then it stays down. You know, right now, again, we haven't put any marketing dollars behind it, but that's, that's the big one is trying to figure out the organic growth levers to continuously pull as well as I think empowering people that are signing up to give them opportunities to say, this is what I've worked on. You know, here's the roadmap that we got to X product, keeping it as anonymous as possible. We want to make sure that we're giving a voice to our consultants. Yes, Kyle.

Where do you expect to be your shortfall first, in consultants to go to or in clients seeking help?

From a number standpoint of how many?

Yeah, I mean, obviously you want to have a growth trajectory and it'd be nice if those things balanced out all the way, but you're, you're probably going to have one outpace the other. Which do you think will be your shortfall?

I think we'll have more demand than supply. And the reason being is like, you know, go around to a Salesforce and ask anybody who's got a doc that's had an idea that doesn't know where to go. And so if you can get the word out to lower level team, you know, the sales reps and then go from there, the demand should build pretty quickly. And a lot of it is against smaller products, smaller innovation. We're not gonna launch without having the appropriate amount of supply. And that's why we think the demand will outgrow the supply side.

So follow-up question then. Do you think— what do you think will be like your bare minimum or most common package to offer in the first place? 3 months at a certain rate with a certain number of reads?

Like, what, what do you—

what, what's going to be your Big Mac?

I think it's going to be more in the beginning, more fixed rate projects rather than an hourly rate. I think people are going to be kind of wanting to do more IP searches, going to be wanting to do more FDA searches and smaller research rather than developmental projects in the very beginning. Now what we want to do is when someone does post a job, take whatever they posted, start the internal campaigns of you've posted this, want to make sure you're also hitting the different, you know, other areas that you may need through the process. So capitalize on anybody coming through the process. Patrick?

I'm going to guess that the answer is you sort of put some sort of clause in the contracts that people sign before they ever end up on the platform. My question is though, is how do you keep people— if there's a common connection, you know, a someone looking for work and, and, you know, someone who has a project and, and someone looking for work. How do you, how do you keep them on the platform and, and prevent them from sort of like booking 1 hour and then essentially moving off the platform and saving 15%, um, like over, over time? Is it in the contract?

I have to assume it's in the contract when you terms of service sign up. It's also going to be on every single job when you post. When you post a job and you hire someone, there's going to be one-click NDA, you can add your own NDA needed. And then there's a terms of service per job. Every platform right now that's doing marketplaces, talent marketplaces is trying to figure that out. And what most of them have done, put in the agreement, if the job is being found, found that you're doing the job outside, you are then liable for that money as well as legal fees on top of it. And so then there's parameters that we put in place to essentially track the progress of the jobs, conversations, and then see why it didn't fall, you know, why it fell off or not. So something that everybody's trying to figure out, it's really hard problem, but pretty much what everyone's essentially done is we will go after you legally if they do that or not. Most haven't.

Yeah.

It's a con. I mean, like my daughter's former daycare had that baked into the contract there. Like you can't hire them for like, you know, to babysit down the road. The cleaning company has it baked into there. Like you can't.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a problem every, every marketplace is trying to figure out and everyone's kind of gone a similar concept of putting in the terms, you know, terms of service. As well as we can track pretty easily how the conversations are going, see it all on the backend of, of did they go off platform or not? Upwork will ban you as well.

Yeah.

I figured, I figured that would be kind of one of the first steps.

Yeah.

Yeah. Got a couple more people than we do, so it's easier for them just to put the automation in place.

So, yeah.

Right. But yeah, that's how they, they've kind of done it. So, Alyssa?

So I'm kind of on that note, um, what I foresee happening as a comp, uh, as a, as a problem here is they use— even if you do get the business, um, just being devil's advocate, they use— let's say I use Andrea one time and then I just call her again later the next time I need to use her. I'm not going to go through the app because now I've established the business relationship. How are you going to, to, to stop that attrition?

That's a great question. That's one we're all still trying to figure out how to, how to fix. You know, if the concept was started with our platform, the job was done on our platform. However, more business has happened off our platform. It's hard for us to actually say what was done and what wasn't done because of our relationship. So we don't really have much parameters behind that right now just because it's really, it's a tricky topic to go down as well as from a legality standpoint. It's, yeah, it's hard for us to really do. It's a great question.

Well, this is why I would think that not charging the, only charging the the specialist for the business that they get. I would— I honestly would not recommend charging the, the companies because if you limit the company's access, they're just gonna find a— may have a one-and-done situation, whereas you want to continue that relationship because the more opportunities you bring in for the consultant, the, the more— the better it is for the business in general.

Yeah. Yeah. It almost everyone that we've gone against, fought against so far, or not fighting against, or that we're competing against, are charging both sides and at a higher rate as well. Almost all of them, not all of them.

So it's, well, that's how you can separate yourself then.

Yeah.

But then, and that's how you can keep business and steal business.

Yep. We would also have to then probably charge our consultants a higher rate to kind of counter what everybody else is charging on the marketplace.

But advertising fee monthly.

There's another thing we were trying to figure out is, so A-Team did this, is that they started out initially it was just contract work and then they would allow, allow for essentially to develop a team on their, their, their platform. So say you needed an engineer and you needed some FDA help, you can then come and hire both on our platform for a different pay structure. And so that's something we're looking in Phase 2. But for Phase 1, we've kind of almost fully locked in on exactly how the $7.5 would be broken up or the $15 would be broken up.

Yeah, this is going to cost so much money in legal fees to try to figure out and investigation fees. I mean, if you just did a flat subscription fee for whoever wants to be on the platform and you didn't charge the opportunistic or the opportunities on the opportunity side, you will capture the market in a second. And then you won't have to go chasing after contracts. You'll know exactly how much money you're bringing in every month as well.

So charging the companies a platform fee, essentially X amount per year, per month, whatever that would be. Yep. Okay.

Interesting.

Just your legal fees alone are going to be massive. To try to, and to try to figure out what's going on behind the scenes is not worth it. To me, you're going to be spending $1 million a year just on legal fees. Whereas if you provide like an opportunity where you're just basically a dating site between the consultants and the, and a verified dating site, it's win-win.

Yeah, definitely will take that into consideration. I think I think there needs to be parameters where if there is a bad actor that comes on there, I mean, would we sue them? We'll see. But immediately they're just cut off and kind of like an Upwork. So it's definitely one we'll have to continue to figure out and evolve the pricing strategies if, if we did go that way. So appreciate that. Patrick.

Yeah. One category of specialists that I don't remember seeing on the left-hand column there, but definitely could be sort of maybe baked in as a subcategory. My sense, and maybe others have the same experience, my sense is there's a bit of a growing number of what I'll call like sort of contract, like hospital contracts consultants, people that will help you get your product into a specific like IDN or GPO or those types of things. That's very transactional. Like I need help with one healthcare system or something and it's highly, highly fluctuant in terms of like one person could be an expert with a handful of health systems or, you know, regionally. And, you know, it's very like variable. That's just one like category of external consultants that came to mind though, that my sense at least is that maybe they're just reaching out to me, but there's a growing number of people with that type of expertise that are starting their own sort of shop as the demand for, or, you know, the ability for companies to sort of do that kind of work or smaller companies to do that kind of work themselves gets more and more complicated.

Yes, I'm going to go help you get through the SCA, surgery system. Yeah, we've got that on there just in big consultant and then there's a subcategory underneath that. Okay. Yeah, that was like the third person I talked to was someone that did exactly that because I saw that rising significantly. So yeah, that's, that's in there as well. Yeah. Do you think so if you're searching just for consultant and then all of a sudden just IPO, you know, IDN GPO consultant comes up, do you think that'd be okay on a Or should it be their own individual category rather than a subcategory off of consultants?

I think, well, I don't know. I mean, if you have 10 of them up there, I don't know that it's a big deal to add the 11th sort of like primary category. It's a section though where like referrals would matter. At least I think referrals would matter a lot or word of mouth or the starring system or, you know, some sort of like a, you know, something like that would matter a lot because like there's a lot of variability in expertise and contacts specifically from, you know, even, even some, you know, someone who's from, you know, GPO to GPO and all those types of things.

Yeah, no, definitely. We've definitely got a few of those people already signed up. So that takes all 3 seconds to add that as a new category. Easy to do. Appreciate it.

Is there, is there a location attribute so you know what city somebody's in?

You know what country and what state they're in. We also keep it as anonymous as possible for some people because we do have some that are working for larger firms that want to stay a little bit anonymous and make a couple extra dollars on the side.

Yeah. Well, that's, that brings up another question. Can you be anonymous? Can you be Spider-Man in Phoenix?

Yep. You can put as much or as little information as you want. It's just gonna really depend on how much information you want to put in there to actually get hired. And try to make yourself look as attractive as possible with as putting least identifiers as possible. Got it. Well, thank you for your feedback. I know it's a new concept, definitely to orthopedics. It's not new in general, but new to orthopedics and it's growing pains. And I thank you all for your feedback as we're definitely gonna look into a lot of it. Alyssa, thank you for a lot that you put in there as well. You know, trying to figure out how to capture working with, as, you know, a smaller company rather than just an independent developer. That's, that's what we really wanted to try to capture today. And thank you for that.

Yeah, well, you've got a bunch of startup founders here, so they are always seeking out experts in certain areas.

Well, I invite you guys to sign up to the waitlist and we'll keep you up to date with everything going on. You can see our newsletters and, you know, again, everything helps with us, so we really appreciate it. Have you talked to MedTech Innovator at all?

In that group?

Amy Siegel, do you know her? No, she, I don't know her. Yeah, she advises them in the early founding days. We did, we just don't fit in there because we're a service and not a product. And so to build the beta going into there, not, however, we want to be able to capture what's coming out of their system. Right. Yeah. It's not about you being in the program. It's about being, you like offer to, I mean, they get 1,000 companies a year, all startups coming through there. So yeah, well, we haven't— we've kind of started with Stanford Biodesign. They're— yeah, so we've got a couple referrals from them. Stryker, a lot— a big part of our growth strategy is organic growth from companies that don't have anywhere to send anybody, you know, there's their innovators to send to. So MedTech Innovator is definitely on my target list. I just haven't gone there yet. Yeah, and they partner with Stanford Biodesign and then they'll have a kickoff for like the Next year's cohort, 100 companies every June. And like, that might be worth going to that meeting because you could meet quite a few people. Yeah. You know, definitely. Thank you. That's definitely one on the target list there. Organic growth is huge here. Better, you know, better job that we do for someone, then more people are going to hear about it. So word of mouth is everything, you know. Exactly. Exactly.

Yep. I would, I'm thinking about the business model that Alyssa brought up. I, I think you've gotta take the friction out of the system for the first 100 or 200 people. I think you've somehow, maybe by charging only the expert or by subscription fees only, and then just let everybody know when you hit the 200th member, then the fees kick in. But that would juice the system early and it wouldn't cost you anything much.

Yeah. Lisa, what is a price for a small company that they would be comfortable paying? Couple hundred dollars, $1,000 a year? Anyone's feedback would be great on that.

Well, that's the, that's the thing that you guys have to decide. Do you guys— is this a market share play to where you want to be like LinkedIn, uh, the— that massive? Or is this a concierge play? If it's a market share play, then your pricing is going to go down and the flat rate flat fee and the subscription model makes sense. And if it's a concierge, that's when you can charge more because you'll have less clients. But this is really— you have the option of doing both. Yeah, we thought strategically I would want everybody, I would want the whole world to utilize my platform, and I would make it as streamlined and as cost-effective as possible. And if you're a startup, I mean, there are big companies that are searching for, um, consultants. When they can't solve a problem. So big companies can use this. If you're a startup and you have your pre-revenue, I wouldn't charge them because that's the people that— that's your target market, that's who you're trying to capture, and they don't have a lot of money. And especially with surgeons, the second you— if they want to make a product, the second that you sue a surgeon because they went outside of the contract, all the surgeons know about it. You know just as much as I do. They're going to be talking, oh yeah, don't use them because they sued me. Because I did a contract with somebody and there's always an excuse.

Yeah, 100%. Definitely want to take into consideration. Stage 2.5 is essentially going, building the team aspect that you were talking about for trying to get larger companies and building out a— it's going to Smith and Nephew and saying, hey, here's your 10 consultants that are on your, you know, your, your little area. So that's kind of Stage 2.5 that we're looking at. So Definitely, definitely interesting. I appreciate it. And Kyle, thanks.

How are you gonna, how are you gonna attract surgeons with ideas? Because we, you know, Stephen and I have talked, there's a common epidemic of surgeons that have great ideas and they go to the big companies and their idea gets locked up at Zimmer or Stryker and nothing happens for a year or two. And they can't even get their idea back. I mean, it is, And they are so frustrated that surgeons don't know how to take an idea and turn it into a product, and they don't even know how to, who to go talk to about that.

Yeah.

So I think that's a big opportunity. How are you gonna reach surgeons with ideas?

I think it's gonna be from a, from a company standpoint, a bottom-up approach. Find how to get to the, the reps, the lower marketing professionals. So all of a sudden they start talking about it. You see some, some buzz going around the company, then move our way up into more the business development managers and companies.

Okay, that's— and this is a good way to track, to protect their invention ideas too, because how many times have you talked to a surgeon where they say, oh, I told X company about this idea and they stole it and they went ahead with it anyways and they kept me out? I've heard that. I mean, if I had a dollar for how many times I've heard that, even though it may not be true, it may be true, I don't know, but It gives protection to say this is when the idea concept came to life, so on and so forth. And so if it does get stolen down the line, somebody can prove it.

Yeah, it's, it's in it. That's exactly what we're— we've, we've talked to a couple different surgeons just this past week. You're right. If I had a dollar every time I heard that on a call right now, we could all retire. It's absolutely wild how many times that's happened., and or by the end of it, this is not even the product they'd wanted to develop. So, yeah, that's great.

But you definitely, I would advise for you to have a checklist because most people when they're starting this journey, they don't even know where to start. So if you have a checklist of where it goes down the line and says, okay, first things first, you're going to do a patent search, make sure, or you're going to get an engineer, you know, here are the top things you need to do at the very beginning stage. And here's what to look for. I think if you make it a valuable resource, a learning opportunity for the pathway to bring a product to market, I think that could be very valuable just in and of itself for somebody that is not used to the business side of things.

100%. And that's kind of what we're empowering some of our consultants that have signed up already, that have X amount of years experience, help us build those roadmaps, and we can also help that utilize essentially how to rate somebody on our platform. Are they engaged with us? Are they helping educate innovators as they're coming on board? 100%. That's, that's needed.

Kyle, uh, two quick things. First is, if you meet a surgeon who's been spurned by a big company and he feels like their IP, his IP is in their hands, tell them to take it somewhere else because they'll— the big orthos will screw it up and they won't come after him if he goes and does it with somebody else. We've seen that so many times. Um, So no surgeon should feel like he's locked into something just because he shared an idea with big ortho. Yeah. Second thing is there's a, and I'm sure this is one of many examples, but, um, I had some friends of mine who recently took an idea with a surgeon to a company called Envision. Envision basically invested all the money behind, it's just the letter N Vision. They put the money into building prototypes, cadaver labs, um, They were basically required no investment dollars from the doc and from the rep, and they brought the product to market, but now they took 50% ownership in the design. Yeah. So if, if you have anybody, like, that's just an anecdote for you to include in the, you know, doctor doesn't want to throw $15,000 at an initial investment to get some proof of concept work done. Like, well, do that or give up half of your idea or have it take 10 years and go nowhere. Just a worthwhile metric for comparison.

It's, it's scary what some of these agencies will do. I mean, it's, no one's looking out for the doctor on that, that part. And that's, it's sad, sad to hear that. I'll definitely look them up. Appreciate it. Anyone else?

I really like the roadmap idea and sort of having almost like a visual with, you know, like a little, and then having, you know, you click on, on the different things and then you connect it the consultants that are in that.

Yeah, I think, you know what it gives, like we're talking about having a good rating system where you can have our consultant, Andrea, made this. You have an idea. When do you need an IP search? When do you need protection? Then when's the next step? And to have your picture linked to your profile through our platform on there, that's, again, that's how we can kind of weed out who wants to be on the platform and who doesn't, as well as like the video ideas Tiger came up with. Education is huge. You don't know what you don't know. And a lot of these surgeons don't know what's needed to actually develop a product. So we love—

Yeah, that's a lot of time. My challenge is, is that, you know, we are a big part as a profession. We're a big part of the process, but people don't know about us. They go to patent attorneys. Patent attorneys don't talk about us, but we're a valuable part of the development. So it would be nice to, to have sort of the buckets, right? And, and people see it and people get educated about it.

Yeah.

Yeah. We would love your help on that. That'd be great. Well, thank you. Kyle, saw your hand go up and down.

There you go.

Yeah. So that roadmap sounds like a powerful option that you're recognizing as well. And one of the things that came to mind when Andrea was just mentioning it again is you, you'd have to be careful with, but you could potentially throw some cost and some timing estimates into that roadmap. And you could even try and use that as a tool to incentivize people to bundle the entire package. Like, do you want to spend $5,000 on an IP search and $10,000 on a proof of concept and $40,000 on Phase 1 development? Or do you want to commit to 12 months and X, right? So you, you maybe build a more, a higher commitment with some cost savings associated with it. As an alternative.

Yeah, I think, you know, something that we talked about, like an educational page that also has a cost calculation in there, estimated cost calculation in there, is interesting. And then all of a sudden the problem would be someone's like, well, you said $5,000, it's $50,000. What's going on here? So it's something we've pushed away from, from stage one. Now we want to come out with the Kia version right now that is efficient, that works really well, looks pretty good. And then we'll get Ferrari down the road and Ferrari will have a lot of, a lot of like that, that information in there. But education is one of the biggest parts of this for us as well. It's empowerment. We want to make sure we're empowering any innovator to do the right thing by professionals like, like Andrea and everyone here that are going to help out. So awesome. Cool. I appreciate everybody. Thank you so much. This has been very helpful.

Yeah, it's a good lot of smart people that are entrepreneurs. So They can vet, they can vet a new marketplace very quickly.

Yeah.

Well, thanks, Stephen.

This is great.

Thanks for stepping up.

Good luck with that. It sounds, yeah, it's, it's exciting to, to see something like this in, in, in our niche.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, any support helps. So we appreciate the feedback.

I, yeah. So I put the, uh, website in the notes. It's, but it's PitchSync. It's the easiest thing in the world. So, all right. Thanks guys. That's a wrap. We'll see, see you next week and, uh, have, have a great week. Academy week will be kind of crazy, maybe a little light, but, uh, we'll have a meeting anyway.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Bye-bye, Tiger. Thank you so much.