How to Build a Community of Investors

Key Learnings From Conor’s Experience

• Be selective with where you innovate. Disrupt where it matters most, but don't reinvent the wheel unnecessarily. By aligning with established practices, you can streamline your development processes, reduce costs, and ultimately leave room for creative freedom where it counts.

• Although less common in medtech, community fundraising rounds may offer benefits like brand awareness and direct engagement with potential end users. View all investors as valued partners to foster a strong community around your product and make sure to maintain open and consistent communication with all of your financial supporters. 

• Everyone in the healthcare supply chain, from payers to providers, needs a reason to choose your product. To successfully launch a medical device, it's crucial to understand the needs of all stakeholders involved and not assume anything. Talk to your potential audience directly, regardless of their role or level of expertise.

Conor Cullinane might be the Iron Man of medical devices. Driven by the simple question, ''Is this going to be awesome?", he’s walked an extraordinary path.

Conor grew up in Southern New Hampshire, about a mile from a grass strip airfield, and spent his summers watching airplanes fly by his window. Intrigued, he started tinkering with RC airplanes and eventually moved on to flying real ones.

Although he pursued an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering, Conor also harbored a deep interest in human health. This prompted him to minor in biomedical engineering and later obtain a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics, specializing in healthcare innovation. 

Although designing spacesuits at NASA sounds like the dream job for a kid who grew up with a passion for flying, Conor was bitten by the startup bug and eventually co-founded Pirouette Medical. As the CEO, Conor and his team are developing Quicpush, a discrete, disc-shaped injector designed to deliver medicines more easily and effectively through the simple press of a button. The initial focus is on administering epinephrine and naloxone to treat severe allergic reactions and drug overdoses.

The idea for Quicpush arose from a news story about a child's allergic reaction, reminding Conor of his brother's struggles with severe allergies that required him to carry an EpiPen all the time. Realizing the technology hadn't evolved significantly since his brother's diagnosis, Conor sought to create a safer, more user-friendly solution.

Pirouette Medical has successfully demonstrated Quicpush's feasibility and is nearing the completion of design verification, a crucial step towards regulatory approval. The company's next milestone is preparing registration batches for final design validation testing, paving the way for market clearance.

Balancing Creativity with Industry Standards

When developing medical products, it's important to balance innovation with practicality. For Conor, the ‘fail fast’ mentality served him well during the initial phases of iteration. The team focused on rapid prototyping, using tools like 3D printers and benchtop injection molding to quickly test and refine the design.

“Sometimes it's great to think outside the box, and certain aspects of your technology obviously have to be outside the box to have your competitive advantage and to bring your specific value proposition,” says Conor.

However, it’s important to find a balance between innovation and conformity in the medtech industry. In other words, Conor suggests that it’s equally important to understand and align with industry standards where possible.

“If I were to start it all again today, I would spend a bit of time thinking about the existing infrastructure in whatever industry I’m in,” he advises. This is a prudent course of action, especially if you’re in a highly-regulated and standards-driven industry like medtech where you must follow specific guidelines and industry best practices from design and development to the final fill and finish stages. It’s important to understand these from the outset of your design process to prevent costly delays and revisions later. 

Once you understand the infrastructure and limitations certain guidelines impose on your design process, you can get creative in other areas. For example, in addition to developing their flagship technology, Pirouette has invested considerable effort in building the infrastructure necessary to produce, test, and release Quicpush. For Conor, having control over these areas allows you to focus your resources and expertise on your core competencies that give your device its competitive edge. 

Conor believes that while contract manufacturers might be beneficial at larger scales, owning certain functions, especially with a new product, is crucial. In Conor’s case, to successfully transfer the knowledge to potential contract manufacturing partners later on, their team needs to master certain key steps. Conor emphasizes, “It really short-cycled the period between producing a device, testing that device, updating the design, and producing another device. Having those capabilities all in the same building really allowed us to move quickly and achieve the milestones that investors want to see and gets us to the finish line sooner so that we can get this product to patients as soon as we can.”

Building a Community Through Fundraising

Transparent communication has been a cornerstone of Pirouette's success in fundraising. The company is backed by a variety of different investors including VCs, angels, and accredited investors.

Conor and his team have always prioritized keeping their investors informed. Whether it was good news or setbacks, they kept their investors in the loop. “That is one of the main reasons that led us to having extreme success with existing investors who ended up reinvesting,” shares Conor.

Pirouette also recently raised a community round. To make it clear, this wasn’t the only way Pirouette raised money. In fact, they didn’t really need it, as the company was already funded by traditional investors. In Conor’s words, it was a bolt-on addition. But he also acknowledges that it doesn’t hurt. He shares, “When you're putting together how much capital you think you need, you need more.”

There are a few advantages that a community round can provide a startup, such as building brand awareness, marketing, and direct engagement with potential users. The last one is what drove Conor to eventually pursue this approach. As Conor says, “I really love the advocacy piece of Pirouette Medical and helping to develop something that can help individuals in need.” With crowdfunding, creating such a common ground between investors/potential users and the brand was a huge bonus that not only came with additional capital, but also feedback that Pirouette could take back to the drawing board. 

Conor shares, “Every time somebody invests, there's a little box where they put in information about why they're investing. It's been rewarding for me to read through those comments and just hear the stories about family members and loved ones who see how they could use our technology to make improvements in their lives and the lives of those around them.” 

For startups that are considering a community round, Conor’s advice is to maintain a personal connection with your investors. Be approachable and keep them regularly updated. Whether they're investing a hundred dollars or millions, each one of them is valuable, and treating them as such is the first step to building a strong community.

Importance of Broad Stakeholder Engagement

Each stakeholder needs a reason to adopt your product, and understanding their needs early can make a big difference later on. Sometimes the same value proposition works for both physicians and patients, but often it's different, and it's crucial to understand those nuances.

To fully comprehend their target market, Conor and his team consulted stakeholders in different geographies with various levels of expertise. This was crucial in identifying what was important early on and integrating those insights into Quicpush’s development. 

Quicpush, for example, has a consumer aspect, but it also involves traditional clinicians. While patients care more about out-of-pocket expenses, physicians are usually more concerned about the time it takes to train patients on using the device. This means Quicpush needs to find that sweet spot between affordability and ease of use. 

When conducting this kind of market research, it’s important to not underestimate the scope of your audience. Talk to a wide range of people, from doctors to nurses to techs to understand the full picture. It's also crucial to understand every part of the supply chain, including payers, distributors, and regulatory bodies. 

In Conor’s words, “There's the entire chain between when the product leaves your facility and ends up in the patient's hands or that end user's hands. Every single one of those stakeholders needs to have a reason why they should be adopting your product versus another. Those channels in the healthcare industry are not simple and straightforward. It takes a lot of time to understand the nuanced specifics of how your product is going to travel and how the finances are going to work to accommodate that.”