Find Backers Who are Willing to Invest Emotionally as well as Financially

The science behind medtech is often fascinating, and there are some lucrative investment opportunities. But when you’re dealing with devices that could potentially catch, prevent, treat and cure deadly diseases, you’re likely going to find people who have an emotional connection to your mission. Knowing that your investors share your passion is an advantage.

Novel medtech is a risk. Bringing in investors who have personal reasons for wanting the product to succeed, beyond the potential financial upside, can help you maintain support and secure funding during the rockier parts of the journey.

For example, Jared says that several of IONIQ’s investors have had cancer, which is why they’re determined to help bring a nonintrusive early detection device to the public.

“I'm not sure that makes the work any easier, by any means. But it does make it so you have an investor who is in this for more than just the payday, and becomes much more of a partner than just an investor,” Jared says.

He believes so strongly in the value of alignment between investors and businesses that he thinks it’s worth using as a filter when you’re looking for funding.

He’s not just talking from a place of success. Jared recently ignored his own wisdom while trying to raise money for a certain venture. He tried to talk to every possible interested party (regardless of whether there was an emotional tie to the issue) and came up empty-handed.

“We're doing it very differently [now], very strategically finding those investors who are aligned with us, filtering them as best we can before we meet. I'm confident the outcome is going to be substantially better for us,” he says.

Direct-to-Consumer is the Future of Medicine

If you measure your glucose levels today, know exactly how many steps you’ve taken, or how fast your pulse is racing from reading this exciting content, you already know that consumers love having direct access to medical devices.

This has become even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic when once-neglected telemedicine took over as the primary form of interaction between many patients and their doctors.

Being a forward-thinking leader of several forward-thinking companies, Jared is hopeful that one day, IONIQ will be able to sell its cancer-detecting technology directly to consumers, or at least to pharmacies.

It won’t be quite as prevalent as something like a FitBit or Apple Watch — not a device you use every day. An equivalent might be a blood pressure machine: “Something that someone uses at home every three to six months: They're running a test and keeping tabs of that in an app,” Jared says.

Another possibility is that it ends up in a pharmacy, at least initially. “You go in and buy your eggs at a Rite Aid or Walgreens, and at the same time, you sit in this machine and run a scan for 20 minutes. Maybe you get a massage at the same time,” he says.

Jared is also very clear that the plan is not to cut out doctors. Far from it, he says that many physicians are strong advocates for technology that helps them remotely monitor their patients. For example, his mom’s cardiologist has asked her to use an Apple Watch that sends the office alerts via an app.

“This isn't about removing the physician: It's about empowering the consumer, and giving the physician additional information that gives them the opportunity to be more precise and more effective — something they all want,” Jared says.