Why Your 'Kitty Hawk Moment' Matters

Building Toward Your Kitty Hawk Moment

“One of the concepts that has always been helpful for me with a company trying to do something for the first time, is the Kitty Hawk moment,” Kelly shares, referring to the Wright Brothers’ 12-second flight in their Wright Flyer, also known as the Kitty Hawk, which proved human flight was possible.

For a CEO bringing an innovation to market, the ‘Kitty Hawk’ moment translates to focusing all your resources on achieving a breakthrough or proving that the technology works for the first time. This is paramount, especially in early-stage development.

“You really have to figure out what are those two or three things you need to prove to show you could fly for 12 seconds,” Kelly explains. “Everything else after that is just optimization.” For the Wright brothers, it was proving lift, power, and control. For you, it’s the distilled-down version of your endpoints and claims.

In other words, you need to simplify, avoid distractions, and resist the temptation to over-engineer. This is how you set the context around the most important things. Focus all resources on proving your foundational capabilities. Expanding before that is out of the question. Kelly uses this as a reality check: “If you’re designing the beverage cart for the Wright Flyer when you haven’t proven you can fly yet, pause and focus—what do we need to prove to know we’re on the right path?”

Having experience in both R&D and commercialization, Kelly has learned that these two phases demand very different approaches. The former is where you explore and learn, and the latter requires an even tighter focus on execution.

When you’re in R&D mode, there could be, in Kelly’s words, “a swim lane” for each department with independent workstreams. As the company moves towards commercialization, workstreams should shift from independent efforts to interdependent, collaborating units. “Get the key decision makers in a room,” Kelly suggests, “talk about technical challenges with the business people and sales challenges with the technical people.” This kind of collaboration helps you see what you need to focus on next and better allows for the alignment of priorities.

In this phase, you also should be hiring for both technical skills and motivational fit. “Being purposeful about the culture is important as you add all these new people,” Kelly notes. “If motivations don’t align, you’ll spend a lot of emotional capital trying to make it work.” Adding 50% more people in six months is like adding appendages to a body. Without alignment, your system risks rejecting the new parts.

Finally, Kelly suggests viewing regulatory constraints creatively. If you can really understand the parameters for regulation guardrails, and develop innovation in a compliant manner within those guardrails, you can actually use these "constraints" to build a defensible market position.

Working Together to Push Reimbursement Forward

Even if you have a great product, you have to ensure someone will pay for it. To do that, you have to collaborate with others. Kelly emphasizes that, in medtech reimbursement, no one succeeds alone. Working alongside physician societies and industry organizations is incredibly valuable to be able to present a unified case to payers. 

Elucid works with physician societies and groups like the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) and the American College of Radiology to present clinical data, outcomes, and health economics that support reimbursement milestones. They also collaborate with industry groups like AdvaMed and MDMA for market access insights. Kelly stresses the importance of proof—not just that your technology works, but that it delivers clinical and economic value. “You need to justify and prove that this is a win, both clinically and economically,” he says. The proof in question is robust data that resonates with payers, clinicians, and policymakers. This is a reminder for entrepreneurs to think beyond the lab. Yes, technical breakthroughs matter, but payers want to know how your product will both reduce costs and improve outcomes. In short, always think about how you can align your data with the specific pain points of the healthcare system. 

Kelly also points out that timing can be everything in securing reimbursement. Elucid benefits from “tremendous Medicare and commercial payer tailwinds,” with CMS granting the category a Category I CPT code just a year after market entry. This level of support is rare in medtech, since collecting data for new technologies usually takes up to five years. Kelly points out there are tailwinds, especially in a space with growing momentum—be it payer interest, regulatory clarity, or public health focus. You can use this momentum to your advantage.

Lastly, Kelly’s take on competition is refreshing. For him, they can be collaborators, especially when building a new market. He says, “When you're going into a market where you're trying to develop a new technology, these competitors are really like great neighbors.” To this end, Elucid, along with companies HeartFlow and Cleerly, have joined together to positively affect these monumental changes in reimbursement. While this doesn’t mean ignoring competition entirely, as there’s still a race to stand out, when it comes to establishing reimbursement frameworks and advocating for new technologies, Kelly believes there’s strength in numbers: “Together, you’re keeping the parks clean and the streets safe.”