Building Resilience Through Rejection

Key Learnings From Eric’s Experience

• A technical background is great for a CEO, but sales experience adds unique value. It sharpens the skills needed for initiatives like creating clear, stage-specific execution plans, staying focused on measurable progress, and handling setbacks with persistence. Ultimately, a CEO’s job is to sell an idea—both to investors and the team.

• Fundraising is seldom a straight line. You'll get money from different places like family offices, high-net-worth individuals, and angel investors. Don't worry about sticking to traditional labels related to raising capital. Get the right amount of money for where you are. One thing that’s immensely helpful is having a lead investor who can back you across multiple rounds. This entity or firm can guide other investors and support you through each stage of growth. Ultimately, remember that fundraising is a cycle. Start each stage with the next in mind.

• Don’t get stuck aiming for perfection. Get into the market faster with a “good enough” device for early traction and investment. For that, move to clinical trials as soon as possible to learn and iterate based on real data. If you can, start with a simpler version to meet regulatory requirements, then refine and expand in phases to build momentum and attract support. 

Medtech has been a family affair for the co-founder and CEO of Transverse Medical, Eric Goslau. His father entered the field back in the '60s with American Pharmacy and later joined Valley Lab in Colorado—now part of Medtronic. 

Being around the medical device scene throughout his childhood, Eric followed the path through college at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he interned with medtech companies around the city. These internships gave him a feel for the different facets of a medtech company—development, packaging, customer service, and beyond. He even got to attend some industry conferences, including ARN, where he made important connections.

One of those connections led to his first job at J&J through their RCG (Recent College Grad) program, which placed him in Fargo, North Dakota. While Fargo wasn’t the most exciting place for a 22-year-old, it was a good start. Over the years, Eric moved through companies like Everest Medical and Guidant. His path eventually crossed with Brad Lees at Cordis and later in Seattle at Spectranetics, a cardiovascular device company. This crossing is where the idea for Point Guard sparked. Brad Lees is the conceptual inventor of Point Guard—after his father-in-law suffered a stroke following a coronary intervention, he started looking for ways to improve in this area.

Structural heart procedures, like TAVR, carry a significant risk of stroke, specifically due to "debris shower"—tiny particles dislodged during the process that enter the bloodstream and may reach the brain. The debris can cause major strokes, cognitive decline, and even death. For TAVR patients, the stroke risk can be as high as 9%—that’s if the brain isn't protected. This is where Point Guard comes into play: comprehensive cerebral embolic protection.

While other options cover only part of the brain’s blood vessels, The Point Guard Cerebral Embolic Protection device’s filter system is designed to shield all major vessels supplying blood to the brain. It fits within the aortic arch and filters out debris while avoiding interference with other surgical tools.

In August 2023, the Transverse team raised $3 million in Series B1 funding to start manufacturing and prepare for a feasibility study. Currently, they’re close to wrapping up a Series B2, which will fund their feasibility study and position Point Guard 2.0 for an FDA pivotal trial.

Apply a Sales Mindset to Your Startup

Beginning with his first job at J&J after college and continuing through various roles in the medical device industry, Eric carried the bag in sales for most of his career. “Sales people make the best early-stage CEOs,” he says. This is primarily because it takes perseverance to follow through a sales cycle and see a project through to success. 

Eric’s sales experience helped him understand the full process of taking something from concept to acceptance, and he applies this same mindset to fundraising, product development, team leadership, and managing investor relationships. He shares, “Those of us who sold understand that there's a cycle that you have to go through,” pointing to the practical benefits of sales knowledge in managing a company’s growth and strategy—where it’s paramount to build a step-by-step process.

In sales, “99% of the time, you hear ‘no’,” he shares. However, constant rejection builds your ability to persevere. He says, “As an early-stage CEO, there are many types of CEOs, and one of them is going out and raising funds. But a lot of times, as an early-stage CEO, you're put in a position where not only are you fundraising, but you're also running a process to develop a product. You're leading the team and helping that aspect of it. Maybe you have early shareholders or investors. Now you have to manage them. So now you have public relations in there. All of those tie back to the sales cycle experience: running that process at different stages, being able to address people's concerns and gripes.”

Running a company is no different. Most aspects of a sales cycle is transferable to fundraising. Working with investors, especially non-VC investors, requires patience and the ability to explain things simply, a skill honed by years of managing varied client perspectives. At the end of the day, what you’re selling is an idea.

Your Fundraising Rounds Aren’t Always Clear-Cut

Although having a step-by-step approach is useful, it’s important that you remember early-stage fundraising doesn’t always follow a neat, structured path like “seed,” “Series A,” and so on. It's often a combination of funds from different sources, like friends, family, high-net-worth individuals, and family offices. Each of these comes with its own challenges and timeline.

“When you get a lot of investors at different levels, small checks versus medium checks to big checks, it's hard to get shareholders to a point where they understand where you're going and where you need to be,” says Eric. That’s why his advice is to focus on securing the right type and amount of funding for each stage rather than getting tied to traditional round labels.

Eric chooses between VCs versus other options based on the amount of capital he needs. For larger raises in the range of $50 to $150 million, especially for multibillion-dollar markets, venture capital is often the best route. However, for smaller raises, you’ll need to get creative. “The sources are out there, but you have to dig deep to find them.”

For example, if you only need $500,000 for early animal testing, don’t go collecting 50 small checks. Eric suggests, “Try to find that one angel investor who can fully fund it or combine it with non-dilutive funding. It’s going to be a lot easier to manage.”

He also notes that for smaller-scale projects with a more limited pathway—say, raising around $10 million for a specific technology—you're likely better off targeting angel groups or family offices instead of VCs.

For non-VC investors like angels or family offices, Eric suggests keeping explanations simple, as these investors may not have medtech backgrounds. Patience is key with non-VCs, as they often require more hand-holding to understand the tech. Also, securing a lead investor early on—someone who can provide continuous support through multiple rounds—is always beneficial.

To survive the fundraising cycle, Eric’s strategy is to plan each funding round with the next one in mind—raising capital is an ongoing cycle—guide investors through this process, and secure their commitment in a methodical fashion.

Know When a Device Is Good Enough

Transverse was founded in 2012, with seed round funding to kick off the development of Point Guard. After testing about 50-60 prototypes, they built the first-generation device and conducted a first-in-human clinical trial in Germany. However, adjustments were needed. By 2019, the team began redesigning the device, but the pandemic in 2020 slowed things down. Thankfully, a non-dilutive grant from Colorado and inside investor support helped keep them afloat while they finalized the Point Guard 2.0 design. 

The team is now refining the device. Their goal is to learn from past challenges and ensure Point Guard meets clinical and FDA standards, especially given that the only approved device in this space, Sentinal, was approved despite failing its primary clinical trial endpoint. This caused skepticism among some physicians about the feasibility of the idea. Appointing Dr. Ian Meredith, a former Boston Scientific Chief Medical Officer who played a key role in the acquisition of Claret Medical’s Sentinel device, as a board director has been a big win in boosting Tranverse’s credibility and sharpening their insight as they approach their pivotal trial.

During this phase, it’s crucial that the team focuses on a streamlined, achievable goal. As a co-inventor, Eric has seen the risks of aiming for perfection in device development, which he believes can slow down progress. “The evil of good is great,” he says.

It's essential to quickly introduce a device into clinical testing. Simulations can’t fully replicate human use, a lesson Tranverse learned from its first-generation Point Guard device. So it's crucial to see how the device performs in real-life conditions.

Eric recently helped found and joined the board of Secure Closure, a medtech startup developing a device for large-bore vascular closures. With high failure rates in existing products like Abbott's Perclose and Teleflex's MANTA, the need for this type of device was clear, but reaching the ambitious goals they set was going to be challenging. Eric advised a step-by-step approach: secure a 510(k) or PMA clearance on a simpler version first. He believed this would expedite market entry, build momentum, and attract early investors. And it proved true: by phasing development, the team could gain traction while preparing for a more advanced version down the line.

Now, the team is applying the same strategy to Point Guard 2.0. Eric insists, “Get it in, test it as fast as you can in all the different types of models, but you just won't know what you have until you put it into a human. If you can get there quick and fast, then you can start that process again.” He also adds, “At the end of the day, time is money. If you don't have any money, you're going to run out of time real quick.”