Tiger BufordYour Orthopedic Industry Expert (free today)

How to increase the speed of Product Development in the highly regulated Orthopedics world today

7 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this conversation, Tiger Buford and two other speakers compare the rapid iteration cycles typical of software (weekly SaaS updates) with the much slower timelines of orthopedic product development, which must navigate extensive regulatory hurdles. They note that even a pace considered slow in tech can be fast in orthopedics. Buford advises startups to seek real‑world feedback early, even during FDA review, by performing surgeries in foreign countries to gather data and iterate. The discussion highlights the UK as a favorable environment for orthopedic innovation, noting that their company is registered there and benefits from its supportive market for new medical technologies.

The other thing is that moving fast in our industry is very different from moving fast in tech. So, you can be slow by tech standards and still very fast by ortho standards.
Yeah, you can. That is really— in the software world especially, you can iterate the product every week, you know. And it's—
my other business, Tiger, is a software business that I'm invested in and that I work in. So, it's fascinating on one side having a SaaS business and on the other side And yeah, the pace of the two businesses is just— it couldn't be different.
And that's one of the reasons I always coach startups to don't, you know, even when you're going through the FDA, go do a surgery in a foreign country somewhere, get some, get, get a, get some feedback on your product.
We're actually doing that in the UK. So we, we're registered in the UK. The UK is a great market for innovation.