Why Commercial Discipline Starts Long Before Launch
Interview with RenovoRx CEO Shaun Bagai
Guest
CEO of RenovoRx
Shaun is the CEO of RenovoRx, a company developing targeted oncology therapies and commercializing RenovoCath, a novel FDA-cleared local, drug-delivery device. Before joining RenovoRx in 2014, Shaun spent over a decade in the cardiovascular space, including leading global market development at HeartFlow and helping establish the European renal denervation market at Ardian (acquired by Medtronic for approximately $1B). He began his career in clinical research and medical device sales at TransVascular and Medtronic.
Interview Summary
Shaun Bagai is the CEO of RenovoRx, a life sciences company developing innovative targeted oncology therapies and commercializing RenovoCath, a novel, FDA-cleared local drug-delivery device, targeting high unmet medical needs.
RenovoRx’s patented Trans-Arterial Micro-Perfusion (TAMP) therapy platform, enabled by RenovoCath, is designed for targeted therapeutic delivery across the arterial wall near the tumor site to bathe the target tumor, while potentially minimizing the therapy’s toxicities versus systemic intravenous therapy.
Shaun brings over two decades of experience, including commercializing disruptive medical device technologies, with leadership roles at Ardian — later acquired by Medtronic for approximately $1 billion — and later at HeartFlow (IPO in 2025, valued at over $2.2 billion). His path to the CEO role was shaped early by a counterintuitive piece of advice: before medicine, learn sales.
RenovoRx emerged from a clinical problem observed by Dr. Ramtin Agah, a biomedical engineer by early education and a cardiologist at El Camino Hospital. While assisting with a pancreatic cancer case, Dr. Agah saw how difficult it was to isolate blood flow around the pancreas — one of the main reasons systemic chemotherapy rarely reaches tumors in effective concentrations. The challenge is especially acute in organs like the pancreas, which lack a dedicated blood supply. In response, Dr. Agah, RenovoRx founder and chief medical officer, invented an adjustable dual-balloon catheter drug-delivery device, RenovoCath, to isolate treatment zones and enable localized drug delivery.
That invention became the foundation for RenovoRx’s TAMP therapy platform. Using RenovoCath, chemotherapy can be infused near the tumor while minimizing systemic exposure. Over the past decade, many patients treated with TAMP have shown the ability to tolerate therapy without many of the debilitating side effects typically associated with conventional (systemic intravenous) chemotherapy drug-delivery.
RenovoRx went public in 2021. Today, the company is completing Phase III trial enrollment while beginning limited commercial use in selected geographies. While the initial clinical focus has been pancreatic cancer, physician interest has begun expanding toward additional tumor types, reflecting TAMP’s potential as a broader platform for localized drug delivery.
Key Questions
How can you figure out what your commercial model needs before building a sales team?
How should sales incentives be designed to drive real adoption — not just revenue?
What actually drives enrollment success in early clinical trials?
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Top Takeaways
Understand Why People Buy Before Building a Sales Team
In 2024, RenovoRx began limited commercial sales while working towards wrapping up Phase III trial enrollment. Rather than hire a sales team and raise capital to fund it, Shaun and members of the RenovoRx team spent a year in the field meeting directly with physicians, attending medical society meetings, and closing early commercial deals. In November 2025, RenovoRx reported approximately $900,000 in year-to-date revenue through September 2025, launching commercial sales organically and without a dedicated sales and marketing team.
The goal wasn't just revenue — it was learning. By selling firsthand, Shaun and the team gained clarity on sales timelines and cycles, the buying process inside hospitals, and the right profile for future reps. Did the team need clinically sophisticated reps or more technically oriented ones? Which physician specialties mattered most? Those insights shaped the commercial model and revealed that RenovoRx could achieve meaningful penetration in a well-defined market with fewer than five sales reps — a fraction of what most device companies would assume is necessary for a commercial launch.
Incentive design proved just as important. Simple commission structures tend to push sales reps to chase dollars — often leading to sales in the wrong accounts or products dropped into hospitals with no real adoption. Instead, RenovoRx designed incentives around behaviors that drive sustained use within each hospital rather than superficial revenue ramps.
With a clearer picture of the business, hiring became easier. He looked for people comfortable operating with ambiguity — those energized, not burdened, by wearing multiple hats. RenovoRx stayed lean by hiring cross-functional employees who were “willing to build the plane while flying it,” rather than waiting for fully formed processes to be handed to them.
➜ Don’t scale sales until you understand why people are buying.
By launching with minimal infrastructure, founders can learn the real sales motion — who buys, how long it takes, and what kind of rep actually works — before committing capital. Use those insights to shape both hiring and incentives: build a small, cross-functional team that’s comfortable operating without a playbook, and reward depth of adoption at each site rather than raw volume. In narrowly defined markets, a lean, well-incentivized team often outperforms a large one.
Commercialization Starts Earlier Than You Think
Earlier in his career at Ardian, Shaun saw the company take an unconventional approach to completing clinical trials. Instead of hiring traditional clinical researchers, Ardian brought in market development managers and treated enrollment like a commercial problem. Physicians were approached as customers, and progress was measured by one key outcome: enrolling patients. Shaun took this same strategy to Heartflow to accelerate their clinical trial enrollment, which ultimately led to successful commercialization.
The lesson stuck. "In a pre-commercial company, everyone is still an end user or a customer," Shaun says. Clinical sites require the same relationship-building, follow-through, and incentive alignment as commercial accounts. Enrollment isn't just a clinical milestone — it's a customer-driven process that benefits from sales thinking.
That same mindset later shaped how Shaun approached adoption barriers. At Ardian, cardiologists performed the procedure, but the technology disrupted long-standing referral patterns by pulling patients away from nephrologists and hypertension specialists. Instead of avoiding that, the team took clinical data directly to those groups. The result: former roadblocks became strong advocates.
Shaun applied the same thinking at RenovoRx. While interventional radiologists perform the procedure, medical oncologists ultimately guide treatment decisions. Involving oncologists in Phase III trial design helped align the study with what prescribers needed to recommend treatment with the therapy platform.
➜ Bring commercial discipline to clinical development.
Enrollment isn’t just a regulatory step — it requires the same relationship-building and follow-through as revenue generation. Use data to engage the physicians who influence decisions and treat them like customers. Turning early skeptics into advocates will help remove adoption long before launch.
When an IPO Is a Lifeline, Not an Exit
RenovoRx entered 2020 with a $20 million Series B term sheet. Then COVID hit, and capital markets froze. As cash burned and traditional investors pulled back, Shaun was forced to explore an option he hadn't considered: the public markets.
In August 2021, RenovoRx completed a traditional IPO — not as a liquidity event, but as a ticket to advance. The company chose not to "ring the bell" at Nasdaq. "It was a means of funding," Shaun explains, "and the valuation wasn't what I wanted it to be." He's saving that symbolic moment for a future date when he hopes shareholders will see meaningful returns.
Going public came with costs many founders underestimate. Robust D&O insurance, audit and legal fees, and an expanded finance department added significant overhead. "Being in the public market is very expensive," Shaun notes. "I'd stay private as long as you can."
The lesson isn't that IPOs are inherently good or bad — it's that capital comes in different structures and trade-offs. Shaun advises finding mentors who understand public markets, identifying trustworthy bankers early, and being selective about which investors participate. "Take the best capital you can," he says. Not all public market financing is created equal.
➜ Public markets can be a financing path, not a finish line.
When private capital dries up, an IPO can be a pragmatic way to keep a company alive. But public capital comes with real costs and long-term obligations. Stay private as long as possible — and if you go public, work with experienced advisors who know which investors and bankers bring true partnership, not just capital.
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