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How to Pivot from Humans to Animals | STMPatch CEO Jasdeep Singh
29 Plays5 months ago
In this episode of The Healthcare Theory, we’re joined by Jasdeep Singh, CEO of STMP Patch, to explore their innovative approach to vaccine delivery through microneedle technology.
STMP Patch is addressing critical challenges in healthcare, such as reducing reliance on cold chain logistics and improving accessibility in human and now animal health markets. Jasdeep shares the journey of pivoting from human-focused healthcare to animal health, the lessons learned from earlier ventures, and how STMP Patch is revolutionizing vaccine delivery for underserved populations and livestock. Don’t miss this insightful discussion on adapting innovation to meet market demands and drive impact in healthcare.
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Transcript
Introduction to Healthcare Theory Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Healthcare Theory podcast. I'm your host, Nikhil Reddy, and every week we interview the entrepreneurs and thought leaders behind the future of healthcare care to see what's gone wrong with our system and how we can fix it. On today's
Innovations in Vaccine Delivery: From Syringes to Patches
00:00:15
Speaker
episode, we're speaking with Jazdeep Singh from SDMP, also known as Single Time Michael Needle Patch. And these are transdemo patch to administer vaccines rather than using traditional syringes. And thank you so much for coming on today and welcome to the Healthcare care Theory.
00:00:30
Speaker
Thank you for having me, Nikhil.
Career Transition: From Education to Healthcare
00:00:32
Speaker
Of course. And I'm super excited to get into what SDMP is all about and what you guys are doing just right now. But I mean, I saw that you have a background in education and now that you're working in healthcare, it's a bit of an untraditional story there. I mean, can you give a bit more um while your background is and what brought by you to the space?
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah. So I, um, I think that, um, working in kind of any fee, any field can lend itself to entrepreneurship, especially fields where you've had to work with multiple diverse groups, building organizations and getting people to work together. And honestly, that's pretty much education or any kind of field like that. And so I got my MBA, uh, at the university of Connecticut and my mentor in my, uh, so I did my summer internship with the small business development center in Connecticut.
Entrepreneurial Lessons from 3BC
00:01:18
Speaker
which you know does consulting services for you know just tens and tens of small companies. And it was probably the best internship you could do because you see entrepreneurship just at the base level from restaurants to vet centers, to cat cafes, to really high-tech businesses. So I ended up going into one of the companies that I consulted with, which is 3BC. It was a hemp cannabis company. um Learned a lot.
00:01:46
Speaker
made some very traditional first time entrepreneur errors. yeah I say I lost my shirt, but I didn't lose my wardrobe, you know protected my investors to the best of my abilities. um And as I was kind of going through the this the work of 3BC, it was sewing so showing signs that it may not pan out. And so I was continuing to kind of grow my network And my mentor introduced me to Tanh Nguyen, who is the a associate professor at the University of Connecticut who developed this technology. He pitched me his, one of his other companies, Paizo Biomembrane.
00:02:27
Speaker
It does like cartilage regrowth and it can also be used in PPE equipment. It just didn't have the heart and soul I was looking for. So I joined 3BC as a hemp cannabis company because my parents had a lifelong illnesses. And
Leadership and Transition to STMP
00:02:42
Speaker
I believe that before they passed, if they had had access to some of the higher grade cannabis you hemp components that we give, their last years might have been a little bit better without all the opioids and pain meds and sleep meds. So PBM didn't have what I was looking for.
00:02:59
Speaker
A year later, I just happened to reach out to him again. He talked to me about the time microneedles and the conversation went from there. It started in 2022. He opened the company in March. I took over as CEO later that month. So it was a little bit of a kismet, you know, two people kind of coming together at the right time, but we knew each other over that period. So we had been in touch. So I think we had a really good relationship starting.
00:03:23
Speaker
It's awesome meeting a co-founder and finding a co-founder is always like a difficult step. and Before we kind of talk about like what went right, what's going wrong well with STMP, can you speak on what went wrong with your first startup and and of provide that background there? I think it's definitely an interesting story and people i learn a lot from their mistakes. Yeah, I think it was less about what didn't go It was less about what went wrong and what and more about what didn't go right. you know There's a lot of companies where you have these particular moments where things break your way. The law, the the landscape changes to your advantage. And for 3BC, we just didn't have those breaks. um you know The market got very competitive.
00:04:07
Speaker
And as a sort of in-between supplier, you get crushed.
STMP's Strategic Pivot to Animal Health
00:04:12
Speaker
So if you can't expand, so in that market, if you're not expanding down and touching the plant or expanding upward and and touching the customer, you're not expanding your vertical, you're going to get squeezed. That was one piece. The second was um around the testing. Our product just didn't test. So we got great market feedback.
00:04:32
Speaker
But the market testing from the science companies just didn't match our internal testing. And we spent too much time, I think, fighting the science rather than listening to the market. So I mean, it's it's probably one of the most basic things. We missed the product market fit. Yeah. And I think about a lot of scenes and tragic comedies where you have the main character just yelling at the ocean, yelling at the at at everybody.
00:05:03
Speaker
I think we were yelling at the wrong people. And so we missed that we miss that boat, but the technology has been acquired and to live on. So I think ultimately we did accomplish some really good things, but we missed some very fundamental business strategy points of growth.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. That makes sense. I think it's something hard, especially as like a first time founder too. And I mean, now you you guys have like STMP. I mean, can you can speak on like, what is the problem you're trying to solve here and how are you're approaching that now?
00:05:35
Speaker
So Tan and I came at this from the same sort of element of, um we're both Southeast Asian and seeing kind of, um we knew exactly what happened in COVID, especially in India. Whatever is reported, you can always say that it it was definitely worse. and And it had to do with access to these vaccines. it's The pharmaceutical industry is a really tough, it's a very tough industry where the patient isn't always necessarily the customer.
00:06:04
Speaker
right Because you've got a lot of layers between the pharmaceutical company and the patient. So we saw this as a product to really help people to really change the way we do things and really start to treat our patients more as customers.
Challenges and Innovations in Animal Vaccination
00:06:18
Speaker
um As far as co-founders, I think the reason we work well is that we had a very honest conversation. right off the bat. And I said, I'm going to tell you three things. And if you would say no to any of these three things, I can't work on this project with you. And I wish you luck, but it's just not going to work. And ever since then, we've just had brutally honest relationship. And the brutal honesty was as we wanted to go into humans, the market within eight months was telling us this is too hard of a ride. There's bigger players,
00:06:50
Speaker
And so we had a very hard conversation about what are we going to do? Do we dismantle? Do we wait? Do we go to grants? Do we continue? And then we started listening more to the animal health side. So we I learned from 3BC, the market's telling you something, stop fighting it and listen. And we started the shift to animals. And what we realized was as our product advantage and our moral mission of making changes really makes sense in the animal industry because
00:07:17
Speaker
people People in the US s may not always think about it, especially in the coasts. But when you start start thinking about the Midwest, or you start thinking about any ah many countries that are developing or low income, they require animals to survive. That's their protein source. That's their money source. That's their entire business. And if their animals aren't healthy, whole communities can go down. And frankly, crossover illnesses, right? Our pandemics don't come from birds. They come from pigs.
00:07:45
Speaker
Right. that We know these crossovers happen. And so being able to ah to attack animal illness is a really strong foundation for human health. So that was really where our our our honesty and listening to the market has really influenced our decision making.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And it's also interesting because animals are just a billion dollar industry. You have not only small farmers, but you have the giant conglomerates, these giant kind of almost like factories in a way. 41 million. It's insane. And so a lot of investors miss that. They really focus on the human market. They know there's money in the human market. And yes, the entire animal market might be smaller than the human vaccine market, but that doesn't mean there's not A, money to be made, but also real change and innovation that can happen. Yeah. No, I think it's, yeah, I think there's just less like focus and innovation there because there's less eyes on it in the first place. Yeah. And one thing I know, I mean, of course, you guys, like you have traditional vaccines and like different, like, I guess almost like ways to ways to deliver care in the animal space. I mean, how do you guys differentiate yourselves and what's the kind of the whole mission of s STMP in the first place?
00:09:01
Speaker
That's a really good question, Michaela. And I think it gets to what the problem we're trying to solve. So what we're trying to solve is obviously the cold. We're trying to reduce the access the the increase access by reducing the reliance on cold chain. So that that cold chain, if we think back to COVID,
00:09:17
Speaker
The cold chain meant that rural areas of the United States were as disparate in access to New York City as six months later, rural America was to even urban Africa or Southeast Asia, right? So the ability to keep these vaccines cold. The second is access to trained people. To put this into a human and to put an injection into a human, you need to clean the site. You need to have a trained person. You need to, you know, it's really difficult. It's expensive.
00:09:45
Speaker
And then the third is compliance. um People miss doses. So our patch solves all three. We require no cold chain at any point. I mean, this has to be stable up to about 42, 43 degrees Celsius for a year, meaning in your body, safe. So we take m mRNA and we have to stabilize it for a year. That's that's pretty groundbreaking in and of itself. The second is is it's a single patch for multiple doses. So you apply the patch,
00:10:14
Speaker
you then remove the backing. So you're not wearing anything, but these what we call our delivery, the delivery pods or the delivery needles are embedded in the skin like an invisible tattoo. You can't see them, can't feel them, but when they degrade, they deliver a payload of vaccine or medicine. So you can get three doses over 12 months, but you only applied the patch months. So if you think about the product advantages, no cold chain,
00:10:43
Speaker
You don't need a trained person to do it, and you don't have to go back for boosters. That's pretty it's pretty groundbreaking for first world nations, but that is earth shattering when it comes to animals. yeah Because doing 10,000 cattle is not easy. 1,200 pound cows don't like to be injected. They don't really matter, but it'ss they're dangerous animals. I mean, they they move their heads, they can kick. it's You don't really get trained people doing it. The needle can break ah inside the animal. The needle can hit the human. So what we've done is no cold chains. So these things can be stored for long periods of time, saving farmers money. It's a single dose that covers an animal for up to four years. I
Microneedle Technology: Pricing and Delivery Models
00:11:28
Speaker
mean, if they only need three doses for their lifetime, then they're done. One patch, they're done. So you're reducing application costs.
00:11:36
Speaker
increased safety, no one's getting stuck with a needle. There's no biohazard waste to burn. There's just less last climate issues and healthier animals, meaning you make more money on fewer animals. Again, a climate issue and a monetary issue. So our product advantage really actually made more sense in animals. No, that makes a lot of sense. And it's good to kind of, you listen to the market and adjusted because even then, like even if you come to like the market with a good idea, the market's always changing and it's good to hear that you guys have adapted.
00:12:05
Speaker
none of us are pharma people. So I think we have really strong pharma people advising us. But to be completely honest, I think coming in as outsiders and sort of um big eyed, doe eyed, you know, innocent but um outsiders, we didn't know what the challenges were. And actually, that allows us to think creatively, you know, creatively, and we weren't blinded. So animal people sometimes are blinded by only the animal viewpoint. And human pharmaceuticals are really focused on human, but What we forget is it's the same product, whether it goes into a six six year old child or a 300 pound pig, it's the same patch. It's just the amount of testing and paperwork and regulation that we have to go through to prove efficacy and safety. That really is the difference.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's so much more stringent for humans. And I mean, I'd hope so. But um one thing one thing I was curious about is, like of course, it's still the same product, but there is some adjustments that needed to be made. So because, of course, like a 600-pound pig probably needs a bit more of a dosage or thicker skin, like hard to harder to deliver. I mean, were there adjustments you guys had to make once you pivoted towards animals, or could the same patch work for almost anyone without any adjustments there?
00:13:19
Speaker
For the most part, the patch doesn't change much. Um, we may have to change the length of the needle or something like that, but it's not really radical changes because ultimately the skin is super reactive, right? I mean, if you've ever gotten a a cat's ever scratched you, you can see if you've, some people, you know, some people really have really reactive skin, they can scratch it and their initials and it like rises up and you can see super super reactive. Um, the dosing is not a problem. You actually need such a small dose.
00:13:49
Speaker
in order to get an immune response that a one centimeter patch is the same patch that we would use for a child as it it is for a 1200 pound cow um with vaccines. Obviously, when we get into drugs, dosing is much more weight contingent than vaccines. So that's not so much the change. I think the biggest change is the pricing model and the delivery model. So if the patch costs $25 and we're doing human vaccines, that's a That's a potential problem, but it's not an automatic halt. However, if the patch costs $25 and you're going to do 10,000 cows, yeah it's it's dead on delivery. yeah It's not going anywhere. If the patch is in blister packages like contact lenses, and you have to open each and every one for every human, that's fine. That's actually less waste than we do now.
00:14:41
Speaker
But if you have to do that on a farm with 10,000 patients, and you're opening each and every single one and of loading the applicator, you can't do it. So we have to have like a manual semi-automatic kind of mechanism. So I think it's more operationally focused and financially focused on the animal side. With the human side, it's really about the details. Every minute detail has to be perfect. On the animal side, it's more about making it making it accessible for the humans that are going to be putting it into the animals at the large scale.
00:15:17
Speaker
Funny enough, cats and dogs, we treat very similar to the human, right? They're they're one-on-one. they yeah know You can actually press it onto the end. Well, I've done it onto my dog. I've done it onto my cat. They didn't care. They were totally fine with it. But I can sit with my cat. I can't sit with a cow and feed them treats while they sit down there for a minute, while I wait to take the pads off. It's a different paradigm.
00:15:40
Speaker
And you also don't have to get 1,000 cats, you have to like vaccinate the house, right? Right. Yeah. Right. You don't have to get through 5,000 cats in a day. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That's pretty fair. And I know that you guys i kind of talked about on your website, you guys are like 42% cheaper than normal. And I mean, how do you guys get that affordability? Because you guys, I mean, I know a lot probably lack the pricing power this larger like conglomerates probably have. How'd you get to that point? So that's based on um That's based on peer reviewed research as well as interviews with two very large interdermal patch manufacturers. So they actually get their patch down to the same cost as an injection. So um the the savings really comes from the lack of cold chain, inventory storage, um the ability the the the fact that you're working with polymers and not liquids. um There's a lot of savings to be had in those elements. And so that's kind of where that number comes from.
00:16:38
Speaker
But that manufacturing number is also spread across the entire scope of manufacturing, meaning you go from the point of getting your API active a pharmaceutical ingredient to storing this on site to shipping. Obviously, shipping patches in blister containers is going to be a lot cheaper than shipping liquid filled vials at negative 30.
00:17:03
Speaker
i mean and how do
Comparative Advantages of STMP's Multi-Dose Patch
00:17:04
Speaker
you kind of I mean, the cult is a huge thing, right? Because yeah i mean it's expensive to store. It's kind of in the name. But like how how do you guys mitigate that with your patches? Is that just like in the modal delivery of care or what's the science behind that?
00:17:18
Speaker
So we utilize um one of our a couple of our formulations of proprietary, some are more well known in the industry. So ultimately, um there's multiple ways to reduce cold chain ne needs. One is a sort of drying process, lyophilizing or spray drying, which is where you're basically removing the liquid by you add some sort of carbohydrate or other um material salts and carbohydrates, and then you dehydrate the water.
00:17:47
Speaker
And those carbohydrates allow for some of the stability in the temperature. that's one and Those are main name mainly used to reconstitute. So on site, they're reconstituted into a liquid and then done to an injection. They haven't caught on as much as yet because if you think about it, right, it's an added layer of of potential infection. It's an added layer of of labor. It's an added layer of a lot of things because you have to reconstitute on site.
00:18:15
Speaker
The other method, and that's the one we're using, is to do the same drying process, but then mix with a polymer. So now we have a polymer core that has this stabilized vaccine or drug agent. that's kind of That's how we create the thermal stabilization. But with us, you don't need a reconstitution. You're just applying it right to the skin. And the big difference between us and our competitors is the multi-dose. Our competitors are single-dose.
00:18:42
Speaker
So they are, I think they are improving the supply chain, but what I don't think they're doing is changing the entire game. If a child only has to go and get their vaccine one time from a patch and they get all three pneumococcal bacterial ah vaccine doses, that's a very big difference. My son, if you say the word doctor, he starts crying because he knows he's getting a flu shot. He has a horrible relationship with healthcare care and it's because of needles. And I know it sounds so simple, but it is.
00:19:12
Speaker
But then I think about, you know, and I can afford the healthcare. I think about parents who can't, who struggle to get their children to the clinic, who struggle to get their their children to doctors. If they can cut down the number of visits, maintain proactive health through vaccinations, that's a game changer as well. So that's where we're really trying to change, but that's why thermal stability for us is so important. This is in the body for 12 months. We can't be stable at 20 degrees C room temperature. We have to be stable all the way up through skin temperature.
00:19:42
Speaker
That makes
Regulatory Pathways and Pharma Partnerships
00:19:43
Speaker
a lot of sense and I like the example you brought up about like how people can't really afford this because mean on this on the demand side, right yeah it's expensive to go to the office and even to get insurance in the first place and on the provider side, it's such a big supply and demand problem where it's hard to see every patient and you don't want to go wasting time on the appointments that can be done by a nurse or don't really need to be done in the first place with something like a product like yours.
00:20:06
Speaker
And on that shift from like working with people to animals, i mean how did your actual like commercialization time change? I know you guys are probably trying are our revenue generating or ah obtaining customers now, but what does that process look like in terms of sales? like How are you guys like thinking about that right now?
00:20:23
Speaker
So we signed a couple of development deals that allow us to earn revenue. So we basically take a startup fee, and then we get paid for each of the research steps to develop products for these pharmaceutical companies. So those have been the the early pharmaceutical contracts that we've done. And I think we're close to closing a third um before the end of the year.
00:20:46
Speaker
What's interesting is over the last two months now, we're going to be entering into the human market first. So those are all those farmer ones. the two of the The two of the three are animal based. One is m mRNA based, which animal are human really doesn't matter. It's more human focused, but obviously it could be used in both. But our entry is actually going to be in the human market. So the US has a very, um when we think about non-regulated FDA items, things that are less regulated, things like nutraceuticals, supplements. That's an entry to the market that would allow us to be selling a little bit more directly to consumers, um gathering data, improving manufacturing, and driving product development through revenues rather than constant um investment. And that's actually be happening next year.
00:21:35
Speaker
So what we're really doing is is we never ever want to have only one or two products going through a sales channel or a regulatory pathway at any time. We want four or five multiple shots on goal because we know half are going to fail, right? I mean, drugs, just drugs and vaccines, especially if we're using novel therapies,
00:21:59
Speaker
more than half are going to fail through clinical trials. So you can't have just one. You see it all the time with these companies that try to push one through, they fail, and then the whole company goes under. Yeah. Yeah. So we're we're thinking about really diverse sales. So we're starting, if we think sale wise, we've started in the animal market through development, contract research, contract manufacturing. On the human side, that's contract manufacturing and sales.
00:22:23
Speaker
But all the data, and is in this is really important, the data is additive, meaning the data we get from the manufacturing for human products is data we would use for our FDA master file for regulatory. yeah The data we get from the animal studies that we do with the animal pharma companies is stuff that's preclinical for humans. So as we enter the market, we gather more and more data to show that we're safe, effective, reliable, consistent, all of those things that we can utilize to then go into more regulated products.
00:22:53
Speaker
that would potentially have larger scale change for our patients. Yeah. That makes sense. It's it's kind of all the FDA and like insurance wise, like data to prove that it actually works. And there's not kind of your strategy. So you get like work with these pharma companies and then get that data and then get for go for approval. And then from there go with B2B or do you think this is a better area to be in right now?
00:23:15
Speaker
In the pharma space, we're not focused on being the drug developer. So what we're focused on is working with pharma to develop their products. And then they own the regulatory pathway, but they also own the IP to the end product. And they utilize us as sort of a contract research manufacturing organization because regulatory is very complicated and it's very expensive. And, yeah you know, even to go through a very well-known pathway in humans is about eight to 12 million in three years. um To bring a brand new drug through is tens and tens of millions. We just don't have the network for that. So ultimately, I think for regulatory, we're mainly staying on the partnership side for pharma, utilizing the strength of pharma. So we have the strength of innovation, yeah and pharma has the strength of the organization. So we want to build those services.
00:24:08
Speaker
When it comes to less regulated items, when we think about nutraceuticals, um we're thinking about going into partnering with B2C firms. So we manufacture for the B2C windows, and they then operate sort of that element for us because we don't have the B2C experience. yeah And then we have the potential to take generic drugs, create products, and then go to pharma companies and say, hey, we have this product. We've done the safety efficacy testing. Do you want to commercialize it?
00:24:37
Speaker
So that, again, we're we're we're taking multiple strategies and trying not to be like children in a candy store and just grabbing every opportunity. We want to really stay focused on what are the high yield, high effective and most likely candidates. Okay. Well, that makes sense because I think like, I mean, they have, they've been through the regulatory processes before. They have the tools to scale and sell something. So why like put that risk on you guys when you guys can focus on the science and kind of make everything work?
Navigating Investment and Market Adaptability
00:25:05
Speaker
Right. Cause if we focus on the regulatory, we could probably only take one, maybe two products to regulatory at any given moment. Whereas if we work with pharma, we may be able to take five or six. Yeah. And who knows? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That makes a lot of sense. And I mean, I know you guys have worked with like accelerators and pitch competitions before kind of getting the name out there and getting that funding. I mean, what role has that played within like scaling your organization so far?
00:25:31
Speaker
huge. Um, we, yeah, we were four for four on pitch competitions at the beginning of the year. We were kind of on a roll and then, yeah um, we got kind of bruised up a little bit and then yeah the summer hits. And, you know, I think, you know, when I raised for three BC, five, six years ago, um, a soft commitment was as good as a hard commitment rounds were closing in weeks. No, pharma biotech has been rough. Um,
00:25:59
Speaker
And it's taken us months and months to raise. But I think we get we you know as we win these competitions and we get the name out there, we sign a contract here. But really the big thing for us is having a clearer pathway to market for next year so that they can really see us generating revenues has really changed the story. So instead of really hitting huge revenues in years three and five where we hit regulatory approval,
00:26:24
Speaker
moving directly into the market, even at a smaller level, is much more um reassuring to investors because they know that an actual thing is going out. it's not when they When I think investors here are regulatory, of course, their concern goes up. My concern goes up because you have less control. So being able to shift over the last two months to, hey, we actually have two ways of going to market,
00:26:48
Speaker
in the next 12 to 18 months, these are the revenues we're generating. Here's our partner that you can meet. That has that's been game-changing. But we wouldn't have met that partner had we not spent seven, eight months on our, what I call, my ah my my road show. Yeah. That makes sense. I think the model is kind of changing for investors because like rates are high, the economy is pretty is tied in.
00:27:11
Speaker
um from the federal round Today are more like Series A five, six, seven years ago. Yeah. And you know, it's just, it's just different. And if the competition is way harder, founders are even, even inexperienced founders are coming with more knowledge where you can go on Reddit and you can get, you know, so much information. about this yeah So even founders are coming to the table with more investors are coming to the table with more. So it's just, it's a more maturing field.
00:27:36
Speaker
Yeah, but I think i think hopefully, I guess markets, investing markets will kind of open back up. It seems like right now, investors would rather get like kind of, I guess 50% chance of like 2x growth and a 10% chance of like 10x growth. I think they're just more risk a risk. If you've got millions in the bank and you can put it at a high yield savings account and in a high yield savings account, you're guarantee sort of guaranteed a rate of income above inflation. And you you think about going into a startup with a convertible note whose interest is only maybe 50% higher and you know it's got a... The risk is, yeah. Yeah. 65, 30% chance of of of going down on you. I mean, it's just in and kind of not getting any return or just a two X return, I can understand where they're coming from. um But
00:28:25
Speaker
We're also in a tougher industry. you know wherere we Pharma is, ah you know because we're not a device. I think you know that's ah that's a kind of a misnomer. We're not a device. We're a reformulation. So we're really into pharma. Pharma's tough. It's a really big area to make huge returns, but the timelines and the money is high. So that's that's ah that's a risky area. And We're not AI. I mean, we were at South by Southwest. There were over 800 something companies that entered. We were one of eight winners and of the eight companies that were there, only two. Austin, one other made a thing you could hold in your hand. I go to all these pitch competitions and areas um and we're just different. You know, we're not a device that you can hold in your hand. You have a single customer. It's a true acquisition model. Very clean story, right?
00:29:18
Speaker
We're not that. We're not AI. We're not a single acquisition model. we're We're different. And I think getting that story right has taken me a very long time. Yeah. You know, it's definitely interesting. And because it goes are almost like, I mean, I think five years ago, the market was so different. now Everything's kind of AI related. I think almost all of our guests have had some AI integration, even if their product would not even need it five or six years ago. But it's kind of a word that's been really important lately. And I mean, for SDMP, things are changing. And you guys have also been able to pivot so far. I mean, what do you think the future is going to be like for you guys as the market changes? Maybe opens back up opens back up or
00:29:57
Speaker
that kind of regulatory pathways may be changed? I think for us, what the danger for us is that we become big enough or too big that we can't be flexible and meet an opportunity when it comes. So we become so large that every project costs $500,000 just to even get moving and then a million to kind of do this. And we don't want to constantly pivot. it that That's not a business model for any sort of long-term success.
00:30:26
Speaker
But we don't want to see an opportunity and kind of be so big and bureaucratic that we lose it it just because we're sore we're so slow-footed. So I think for us, what we're really going to see is as we enter into the human um nutraceutical supplement market and the animal sort of more FDA market and continue these developments, we're going to be more and more entrenched in the in the space and start to see areas for innovation. And that's key for us is staying on top of the market, really listening to what's the next drug? what's What are the biggest problems people are having? For instance, um it's ah it's a weird one, but cats. um Cats over the age of 14, the vast majority will have renal failure or especially osteoarthritis or diabetes. It causes pain.
00:31:17
Speaker
But the average cat lives past age of 18, 19, 20, 21. I mean, they're they're living very long. So you have a patient that could potentially need some sort of pain med for four, six years. How do you deliver that? Giving ah giving me a cat a pill is not easy. it's obvious Fixing a cat weekly is not easy. And so we have a way of meeting that need. And so we want to bring a product to market, but that means we have to stay focused.
00:31:46
Speaker
That's two years to really make sure that we take that product. And in that two years, we don't want to lose that product, but we also want to be listening for potential other candidates and always judging how do we, you know, do we run an NPV? Do we run an IRR? Do we run all the financial models or do we really do a market study to say, where should we be spending our resources? But you can't do that if you're not at the trade shows, you're not talking to vets, you're not talking to doctors, you're not talking to patient, you know, human patients, obviously not animal patients. You're not, you're not embedded in the industry constantly. And that's where I spend most of my time. No, that makes sense. Is listening to the market and seeing what they want. Because I guess like, I mean, running like an I like assessing IRR, like MOIC, whatever your your financial metrics, like, it really based on like what your assumptions are, but your assumptions need to come from the market, they really believe in.
00:32:39
Speaker
There's a fine line between listening to the market and leading the market, right? You can lead the market if you lead the market in a way that you're not solving the problems they had. So there's that example of, you know, like the idea of Steve Jobs, like he always tried to lead the market. But what what I think people forget is that he was also very aware of what the problems in the market were, right? So he wasn't leading people completely into a place that they didn't want. He was also giving them things that that were issues.
00:33:06
Speaker
And, you know, that we're solving issues that we're solving issues that they may not recognize, but they did have an oh, yeah, that's I see that. And so, you know, I think in in in pharma, we don't want to be so far ahead of the market that they're like, what are you talking about? like That's that's yeah. Health care is not the place where people go to experiment. Let me just put it that way. That is not the place to go experiment. However, in the nutraceutical supplement market, yes, there's a little bit more
Building Sustainable and Innovative Businesses
00:33:32
Speaker
room. People are a little bit more willing. People are a little bit, you know,
00:33:35
Speaker
theyre willing to do their own research rather than just, you know, wait 10 years for the thing to come through. So you have to pick your opportunities and where do you lead and where do you and where do you follow? That makes a lot of sense. And as you guys kind of, I know things have changed for you quite a bit. I mean, with the original startup and then even starting as an educator and not moving to this space, I mean,
00:33:56
Speaker
If we could go back in time before you had this like entrepreneurial journey and you're continuing that now, I mean, do you have any advice because for people kind of listeners, like a lot of entrepreneurs or students trying to enter the space team, any advice for them and how to put the best foot forward?
00:34:13
Speaker
You've got to be a learner. You absolutely, and and so one of the books that I always think about is Carol Dweck's mindset. I mean, if you don't go in with a growth mindset, you're dead. For instance, you're coming out of a good university, Northeastern University, you're coming out of a good university and you you really want to take on a mid-level position in ah in a startup. No, just take on anything. um Take on anything and learn. Don't worry about as much about the industry as about the company you're starting, you're going to do work for. What is the culture? What can you learn? What can you grow from? what What lessons can you take away from that? Because chances are that company's not going to survive. yeah
00:34:53
Speaker
And I think the second thing is know what you're getting into, you know, you're going to go. I mean, I, with, with single-time marketers, I went 18 months without a paycheck. When you have a family and you're not, you and you know, when you're over 40 years old and you have a family, that is a big risk. It's a big risk. You know, American Express and Visa are, we're very happy with me and they're still pretty happy with me because I'm still paying off those balances now. Yeah.
00:35:19
Speaker
but You got to figure out out, you got to know what you're getting into. This isn't like, you know, I know entrepreneurs talk about starting in a garage and eating bologna sandwiches. That's great. You're hearing from that person that succeeded. What about the 30 that did that? Yeah. So have, you know, go in, but have a backup plan. You know, so if you're picking an industry, know that if you leave that startup, you can get a job in that industry and then try entrepreneurship later again, you know, once you're a little more stable.
00:35:50
Speaker
or you're picking high growth companies that you know there's so many high growth companies in that area that you can jump from one to the other and continue your journey so that you're not spending five years making no money and then struggling in your 30s and 40s. So I think those are the two. You have to have a growth mindset. Know it's going to be tough. Know that you're going to learn. Know that you're going to get bruised along the way. And know what you're getting into so that you're not surprised.
00:36:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. I think it's just like ah it's a long journey. You need to come ah come in it with the eyes open. But, and for you, I'm just a little curious. I think it's very different for me, starting business as opposed to you, because of course, if you're younger, you have a high risk appetite. If things go wrong, it's always the next thing and I don't have any obligations really. But I mean, for someone with a family and other things going on, how'd you stay motivated and what was that journey like for you when you're still developing the product while some of those obligations on the side you had to make to your family?
00:36:48
Speaker
I think with a little bit of age, I was able to understand that there is a need for this product. And what I was running into was my ability to sell that need, sell a discovery of that, you know, ah um um sell a solution to that need or a position in the wrong market. So I was never questioning whether the technology had a space. You know, I had spoken to the right people. I had done my market research before joining.
00:37:13
Speaker
um I think that for me, what kept me motivated was really simple. yeah I had a timeline. I knew there was only so much risk I could swallow before it was going to cause problems you know in my personal life. And I don't want problems in my personal life. That's never healthy. And so I knew there was an element. And I think that that's sometimes a little bit easier for people on the on that have a little bit more experience or have more what you can call obligations.
00:37:41
Speaker
They may know when to take it out behind the barn and shoot it. Okay. When you're younger, you may not. And, but those are the lessons you have to go through. How many people survived? How many people do the first time they do anything and they succeed? If it were easy, I don't think if it were easy, everyone would be doing. And it's not. So I think that starting young is important to get those lessons under your belt, but don't think you're going to be riding, you know, on a Gulf stream by the time you're 30.
00:38:10
Speaker
That shouldn't actually be your goal. Your goal should be to build a sustainable business. How you define that is important, but if it can sustain you and you can get a little bit of money and continue to build, that should be your goal. Because then everything else figures itself out. Acquisition will figure itself out. um Your trajectory will figure itself out. You'll meet new people. Opportunities come. But if you don't have a sustainable business, you're in panic mode.
00:38:41
Speaker
And you do not make good decisions in panic mode. You don't. You make short-term decisions that'll have long-term consequences.
Reflecting on STMP's Journey and Future Outlook
00:38:49
Speaker
Like, yeah oh yeah, I'll give you 50% of the company because I need the money. Or I'll give you, I'll sign a contract that I didn't really read and now you own it after two years and you just do horrible things because you just, you're struggling to survive.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's just, go yeah, I really got to build the product and then as things go, like the good things will follow as opposed to like seeking out the good things before you get like, I don't think you build a good product. You have to build a good company. Yeah. Yes. They are tied, but they're not, there are really good products that have failed because the companies around them were terrible. And there's been really at mediocre products that have done amazing jobs because they're companies that you have to know that you're building a company. And that's where,
00:39:30
Speaker
I think Tom and I come in as a really important team because he's highly technical and I'm more on the business side. Either of us alone, this company would have failed. But together we were sort of that yin and yang where he's constantly focused on the tech and I'm constantly focused on the business and we we we that conflict in between is where the business really succeeded. Yeah, having the synergy between like a non-technical and technical co-founder Yeah. I think that's great. And it's I'm super excited to see where things go with s and um s STMP. I think the market's really there. And of course, technology is there too. So it'll be super exciting. And
Podcast Conclusion and Contact Information
00:40:09
Speaker
I just want to say thanks so much for coming on today. It was great hearing about your story and the transition from different companies. And I appreciate that. and Thank you for giving me that time to reflect on it. Sometimes I just kind of run from one thing to the next. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Good luck to you.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Thanks again. If your listeners want to get in touch with me, I'm on LinkedIn. they're happy I'm happy to connect and continue the conversation however they see fit. Of course, yeah. and And for the audience, thanks so much for listening today for you guys too. You guys can check us out every week. We'll have episodes just like this on the streaming service of your choice.
00:40:43
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Healthcare Theory. Every Tuesday, expect a new episode on the platform of your choice. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, any streaming platform you can imagine. We'll also be posting more short-form educational content on Instagram and TikTok. And if you really want to learn more about what's gone wrong with healthcare care and how you can help, check out our blog at thehealthcaretheory.org. Repeat thehealthcaretheory.org.
00:41:10
Speaker
Again, I appreciate you tuning in and I hope to see you again soon.