This week on the podcast, Matt sits down with Jared Greer and Spencer Jones to discuss their entrepreneurial ventures in the medical space at Lapovations, Jared is the Co-Founder and CEO and Spencer is the Chief Technology Officer and VP of Sales at Lapovations. They begin with the story of how Lapovations came to be with a problem that needed to be solved for surgeons who perform laparoscopic procedures. Spencer also touches on his solution that he created at his previous company for IVs that led him into the healthcare entrepreneur space after working as a nurse. They then discuss how the Walton College, University of Arkansas and local entrepreneurial support organizations has impacted their company with a focus on customer discovery, validation of your product and pivoting to meet what your customer needs. Learn more about Lapovations: https://lapovations.com/

If you're trying to be better at sales in general

but also medical sales, really investing in being a people

person and you know building relationships because your

relationship capital in most businesses, but especially sales

is paramount.

Excellence, professionalism, innovation and

collegiality. These are the values the Sam M. Walton College

of Business explores in education, business and the

lives of people we meet every day, I'm Matt Waller, Dean of

the Walton College and welcome to the be epic podcast. I have

with me today, Jared Greer and Spencer Jones. Jared is a

successful entrepreneur with over 20 years of medical sales

experience. He's the co-founder and CEO of Lapovations, which

we're going to be talking about today, which is really

interesting. He has studied engineering. He also has a MBA

from from the Walton College. He's been very engaged in

entrepreneurship with the Walton College for many years. Spencer

Jones is a clinical innovator with broad medical devices

experience. And I actually did a recording a video interview with

him about five years ago, about his business. Lineus medical,

which was really interesting. It was particularly interesting for

me at the time, because I had spent quite a bit of time in the

hospital with IVs hooked up to me, and he told me about this

invention he had that allowed for easier access to IV lines

and IV line management. So, but, but now he is the chief

technology or technology officer and VP of sales at Lapovations

and you've been there for a couple years now. Is that right?

That's right. And I was part time consultant for

about two years and then have come come on board full time

just this month.

Okay, that's great. Jared, I want to start with you.

And of course, as I mentioned in the introduction, you have lots

of experience. You worked for Pfizer for almost nine years, as

a help in sales, I believe. You were owner of Northwest Arkansas

TCBY, why for several years, makes me hungry, just thinking

about that. I'm ready for some ice cream. And you were in sales

for Medtronics for about 10 years. And you started

Lapovations back over six years ago. Would you tell us and of

course, I've followed both of your companies carefully for

many years, and it's so fun to see these kinds of successes.

It's really amazing. But I know it's been very difficult and

challenging. So first of all, you know, Jared, how did you

come up with the idea for Lapovations?

Well Matt, to start with, I would just like to say

thank you for taking time to speak with Spencer and I today

about Lapovations and what we've done. You know, I listened to

your, your podcast frequently. And it's a real honor to be

here. So thank you very much for that. You know, as far as

Lapovations goes, our story really starts. Back in early

2016. There was a surgeon who I worked with very closely over

the past two companies that I was with in medical sales. And

he came to me with a problem that was driving him crazy in

surgery in his laparoscopic surgeries. And just to take a

step back, you know, laparoscopic surgery is

minimally invasive surgery of the abdomen, you know, whereas

25 or 30 years ago, they'd have to make a large incision, cut,

you open completely visualize everything they were doing in

the abdominal cavity. If you had a procedure, you know, now they

go in through tiny incisions that are small enough to cover

with a band aid and they can visualize what they're doing

through small cameras called lapper scopes that are showing

what's going on inside the abdominal cavity. And so this

doctor is Dr. Chris Taylor. In Harrison, Arkansas. He's a

gynecologist. Um, one of the things that was driving him nuts

in the laparoscopic surgeries was at the very start of the

procedure, before the doctor inserts their first instrument,

they don't have visualization into that abdominal cavity. And

so when they inserted the first instrument, it's, it's typically

through the belly button, or umbilicus is the technical term

for it. And the biggest risk with the procedure is that they

will pierce the bowel or a vascular structure, you know,

some sort of important structure that they can't see yet because

they don't have a camera inside the abdominal wall. And so

that's the biggest risk of the surgery is this initial

insertion. And what surgeons typically do to minimize that

risk is they will lift the abdominal wall either by hand to

get away from those vital organs, or they will insert what

are called perforating towel clips. And the best way I know

to describe perforating towel clips is they look like a pair

of scissors with really sharp points on the end that come

together. And their intended use is to clip towels together, you

know, in the surgical field there. But surgeons will

actually insert those into the skin into the abdominal cavity,

you know, into the abdominal wall on either side of the belly

button to provide a handle by which to lift. And so, you know,

the problem for Dr. Taylor was after you know, 20 to 25 years

of practice and tissue manipulation, you know, he had

some issues with his hands that made it where he could not lift

the abdominal wall reliably by hand. And if you think about it

with the obesity, you know, epi- epidemic that we're facing here

in the United States, patients are larger, right, and so

there's a lot more tissue to manipulate. But he didn't like

the idea of using the towel clips, because the towel clips

are invasive. And laparoscopy is intended to be a minimally

invasive surgery. So, you know, he was left to choose between

two options that were not great to lift the abdominal wall. And

so what we've done at lapovations is we've developed

AB grab, AB grab is a suction based device that lifts the

abdominal wall more reliably than manual grasp, but less

invasively than the towel clips. And so in 2016, he brought me

the idea for that product. And we incorporated the business.

And we made what many would probably view as a unique

choice, in that I re enrolled at the University of Arkansas, to

partner with, you know, the the, the researchers here, and

specifically with the Walton College of Business, to help

bring this company, you know, into existence. And we can

discuss that a little bit more, as much in depth as you would

like. But the Walton College has certainly played a major role in

the success we've had at Lapovations.

How did you come up with the idea for a company, a

medical device company focused on IV access line management?

Yeah, so I was a nurse by training, went to

Eleanor Mann School of Nursing. And it didn't take long for me

being at the bedside to realize some or have some frustrations

and realize that the devices and supplies that we were using,

that nurses were using at the bedside, were, you know, really

commoditized, you know, poorly built, it seemed and I was

having, you know, similar to Dr. Taylor's experience and his

frustrations, I experienced the problem firsthand as a

clinician, and thought, you know, there's got to be a better

way to do this, you know, and chiefly, it was, you know, with

safe break, which is Lineus Medical's lead product, it was

patients losing their IV lines, you know, their IV catheters

would get pulled out, or there would be tension on the line,

and it would cause the IV to fail for a number of reasons.

But it seems like all of those failures were kind of mechanical

force derived, right? It was it was some tension on the IV line.

So that was kind of the you know, the idea came out of that

initial experience with the problem. And I thought, you

know, well, what if the line just intentionally separated?

And from there, kind of through a series of accelerator programs

and, you know, putting a lot of smart people around the we were

able to, you know, start and launch to kind of build that

company and ultimately get FDA clearance last year.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you.

In both cases, you all have been solving problems

that existed. That's one commonality between your two

companies. And, and again, I know Spencer that you're part of

Lapovations now. But but and they're both in medical. In your

case, Spencer, you saw the problem and became aware of it

because of because you were a nurse. And I told you this, when

I interviewed you for the video that time, I mean, I, I

experienced the problems that you were solving. And I thought,

wow, I wish they would have had that when I was in the hospital.

I mean, and I also, you know, even even Jared the first time,

he told me about what he was doing, I thought you can see,

you know, after you have laparoscopic surgery on your

abdomen, which I've had multiple times, you can see the results

of the trauma that it looks like, the first time I had it

happen, I thought, did they beat me in the stomach with a

baseball bat? You know, it's what it looks like, because of

all the bruising. And so I didn't know why it was so

bruised until I heard your story Jared and Lapovation, I thought,

well of course, if that's how they're pulling the skin up,

yeah, it's gonna bruise it pretty bad. And it stays bruised

for a long time it seems like and it looks funny. But so I

would imagine, not only do surgeons benefit from from AB

grab, but so do patients. And I'm wondering, have you all

looked into that very much in terms of like the the effects on

the patient?

Yeah, we sure have. So you know, there is a

physician benefit, as well as a patient benefit with our

product. And you know, the physician benefits pretty easy

to see in that, you know, if you have a more reliable way to lift

the abdominal wall, it's going to make you feel better about

the safety of the procedure that you're performing, it's actually

going to be better ergonomically for the surgeon as well, which

could, you know, lead to a longer and happier and healthier

career. But from the patient point of view, there are clear

benefits, you know, if that surgeon is able to have a more

reliable lift, that reduces your risk of having one of those

serious complications, right. And that's the that's the

absolute last thing you want as a patient because those serious

complications, they have high mortality rates, you know, a, a

piercing of the bowel or the vascular structure, the

mortality rates can be anywhere between five and 15%. Right? And

so-

They can go septic, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And it's not uncommon for the surgeon to not recognize that

there was one of those complications during the

surgery, right? It's not, it's not uncommon for it, not to be

recognized. And so until several days later-

But the patient knows, because when they go

home. And this actually happened to me. You know, I thought, as

soon as I came out of surgery, they said, the more you walk,

the faster you'll recover and the less narcotics use, the

faster you'll recover. So I went on this ibuprofen and

acetaminophen, alternating them like this. They said, so as soon

as I woke up, I started walking, I had my IV thing I was walking

on the floor, I was at Baylor Medical Center and I literally

walked for six hours. Because they said you'll recover more

quickly. I think it worked, you know. And so I went home, not

home actually went to a relative's house in Plano. And

again, I was walking every day. And a couple days later. I feel

like I'm about to die. I was sweating profusely. I took- I

couldn't walk. My wife had to drive me to the hospital. And

they had to bring up a wheelchair. This is after having

walked for miles and miles. And thinking I called my admin

because I I said oh, I'm gonna be gone for at least a week. I

called her the next day said I'll probably be home a couple

days and back at work. Little did I know I had a month ahead

of me and it was because of this problem.

Yep.

Once you once that stuff starts leaking in you,

it's bad. It was worse than the original problem I had in the

first place. So what a great solution.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, that's the serious

side of things, you know, and and Spencer can maybe validate

this, this number here, but it's around 50% of the serious

complications associated with laparoscopic surgery are around

this initial entry into the little cavity. And, and so

obviously, it can be very serious, you know, we're, we're

both very grateful, Matt, that you were able to overcome that

and get past it. However, you know, if you could have a two or

three day recovery versus that one month recovery that you

ended up having, of course, there's a huge benefit there.

And, you know, you mentioned something earlier about coming

out of that surgery and having all the bruises on the abdominal

area and thinking you'd you've maybe been beat up with a

baseball bat, while you're under. You know, a lot of that

comes from the use of invasive towel clips. And so you know,

it's it's not uncommon, the invasive towel clips, when

they're, they're inserting those into the abdominal wall to lift.

And so it's not uncommon for us to hear from surgeons that they

get more complaints from patients regarding the towel

clip, puncture wounds than they do regarding the surgical

incisions themselves.

I believe it.

Yeah, so having having a, a non invasive suction

based device, like AB grab is a is a real benefit to those

Yeah, and I'll just add on real, real quickly,

you know, we talked about the benefits benefits to the patient

and the benefits to the surgeon. But there's also a real benefit

to the hospital kind of as a whole or even the Ambulatory

Surgical Center, you know, if one of these vascular injuries

or bowel perforations occur, and it requires an additional

surgery, right, or an additional days of lengths of stay, you

know, that is a hospital acquired, you know, condition,

right. And so the patient's not on the hook for that, the

patients.

hospitals on the hook for that. So, you know, when that occurs,

there's a real financial impact to the hospital as well. So

avoiding that obviously has a huge benefit.

You know, and Spencer, your experience as a

nurse, and anyone who's been in a hospital for a serious length

of time, knows the value of good nurses and nurses see the really

nitty gritty issues associated with different kinds of

procedures, failures to do certain things, et cetera, et

cetera. What a great training ground for entrepreneurs that

want to go into medicine. Because you see so many

problems. Is that right?

It's absolutely right. I mean, nurses are, you

know, really astute problem solvers. You know, when you're

given your patient load, you're kind of out there on an island

caring for them, you know, obviously, you've got some care-

care staff and the physicians around but, you know, nurses are

problem solvers. They're hard workers, you have to adapt,

adapt quickly, you know, assess and adapt very quickly, which is

a really great skill to have as an entrepreneur. You know,

there's actually it's funny, you say that there's actually I

think it's the University of- UPenn there's a nursing

instructor who teaches a design, it's a design thinking in

healthcare type class, because she recognized how valuable of a

kind of a training ground like you said, nursing is for

entrepreneurs and innovation. And, and you're absolutely

right, you know, it's it's tough because there's, there's so much

to do as nurses, we're constantly getting put, you

know, more and more patient loads. And, you know, think

about all these awesome innovations and devices and

medicines that are coming out, the nurses have to keep up and

you know, how to use all of them, right and know what the

drug to drug interactions are, and the dosing and all that

stuff. So, it's hard for nurses a lot of the times to kind of

get themselves out of that, you know, I call it, you know, not

meeting this disparagingly, acting like ants, right? They've

got a mission, they're working their heads down, everyone's

working together, it's hard for them to kind of get out of that

and almost work like a hive mind, right, like, you know, a

hive mind and see the big picture and think about

impacting those problems. And, you know, frankly, too nursing

is a very straight line track in terms of formal education,

right? It's very difficult to take business classes to take a

finance or econ or engineering classes when you're on that

nursing track, so you don't get exposure to it. But you know,

look, I was lucky enough to when I was down in Little Rock, have

some great mentorship and kind of business mentors through the

accelerator programs I did that, you know, allowed me to kind of

say, you know what, the here's a problem. We can create a

solution and then here's the path forward to commercialize

it.

So Spencer, you may not know this, but what do you

part of this you know, and I'm sure Jared knows this. We, the

Walton College a couple of years ago started a new academic

department, something that doesn't happen very much. And we

started, it's our eighth academic department. And it's

called the Department of strategy, entrepreneurship and

venture innovation. I, we just felt like, hey, entrepreneurship

is in our mission statement. We need to put more focus on it. So

we created a whole new department. But one of the

people we hired to teach in it is Cara Osborne. Do either of

you know, Cara?

So so for those of you don't know, Cara, was a

Yes.

professor in nursing here at the U of A, so I hired a nursing

professor to come to the business school. And now, she

has created two and exited a couple of businesses that were

successful, right. So she knew the business well, she, she, she

started businesses, and sold them she she know, she knew the

business side, she actually started a whiskey business, a

bourbon busin- business in Kentucky too, she's still here,

but she did that just recently. And but I thought, what a great

her I think her Ph, she's a nurse, but she also has a PhD.

And I believe it's in epidemiology, I can't remember

something like that. And but I thought, what a great way,

right, in a entrepreneurship department, to bring in someone

with some sort of, because a domain expertise, like medicine,

because, as you know, Northwest Arkansas is developing a

competency around Whole Health. And, I mean, it's just

incredible, because we have the Whole Health Institute, the

Alice Walton Whole Health School of Medicine. Cleveland Clinic is

coming here in a big way. And other things are happening as

well. UAMS is increasing involvement here. There's a lot

of things going on in healthcare. And there's more

startups here early or not just startups, but early stage

companies here. Hopefully, we're creating a cluster of expertise

here and you two, I think are key to that. But, Jared, one

thing I wanted to ask you about you, you came up with this idea.

But it took a while to really get something that had product

market fit. Would you mind talking a little bit about that?

Absolutely. And that's a probably a crucial part

of any startup, right? You come up with an initial idea, you

think you're solving the problem. And then it's

incredibly important to get out and speak to customers or users

and confirm that, hey, number one, I'm solving the right

problem, right? The problem there to solve. And then number

two, what I've come up with, actually solves that problem.

And so our initial thoughts for AB grab, was that we wanted to

create a device that a hand suction device, and what I mean

by that is, you know, it's got a little hand pump to where the

the user, the surgeon or the scrub tech and create their own

vacuum, if you will, to be able to make this device work. And

what we found is as as we went down that path, we found that

number one, it was pretty complex and expensive to develop

a product that could create suction by hand. And one of the

reasons we originally thought that was the way to go is you

know, because there is suction available in all operating

rooms, wall suction or portable suction. But we didn't think the

surgeons and the scrub techs would want any additional

suction tubing, you know, coming through the medical field or the

sterile field and, you know, cluttering up the mayo Stan and

cluttering up their work area. But as we got into the process

of developing that first generation AB grad, and

prototyping it, we found that when we went back to our users,

our surgeons and our scrub techs with that product, that some of

our assumptions, some of our original assumptions were not

correct. And the number one user need was reliability. And the

most reliable section was was not going to be created by a

hand suction device, but it would be created by a wall or

portable suction device. And a benefit on the back end of that

is that we were able to create a much simpler design, less

expensive to manufacture, easier for the surgeons to use. And we

made a pretty major pivot, you know, several years into the

company and moving from that hand suction device to the wall

suction device. And the that's the version of AB grab that we

are actually launching nationally this month. So it's a

you know, and we wouldn't have had the, you know, the

opportunity to do that if we hadn't been doing that customer

validation work. And, you know, just to kind of bring the bring

the story back around to the Walton College of Business and

the role that the Walton College has played. You know, during

those initial few years, I was re enrolled at the University of

Arkansas, I was actually a master's in biomedical

engineering student over at the the engineering college. But I

was in Dr. Carol Reeves' New Venture Development class,

right, because I knew that we wanted to leverage the business

plan competitions and the learnings that we could, we

could gather in Dr. Reeves' as class as we built the business.

And so a big focus at that time, as I'm sure it still is, is

customer validation. And so we did a lot of customer val-

validation work in her class, in partnership with some of the,

you know, entrepreneurial support organizations here in

Northwest Arkansas. The Delta I fund was well, at that time, one

of the organizations that we were working with startup

junkie, innovate Arkansas, you know, we've got such wonderful

support organizations to help young companies like that, but

they really focused us on that customer validation side of

things. And that allowed us to pivot into what we think is

going to become the gold standard for abdominal wall

lifting at the start of laparoscopic surgery.

Well, you know, your point about importance of

customer discovery can't be under emphasized. It's it really

makes all the difference in the world. I think that's one of the

reasons why there were so many failures from the .com, boom,

companies were getting funding too early. They were scaling

before they had product market fit and a good business model.

Spencer, you had the same thing. You you had to do a lot of

pivoting early. Is that right?

Yeah, we, you know, gosh we went through, I

don't know how many designs for safe break and kind of had to,

you know, it took a long time to get to the eventual design that

we got FDA clearance with. But I remember at first there was a

stem in it, and then next there was, you know, some frangible

stem and different things like that. But I think part part of

the iteration and the pivot, you know, I'll call it more of an

iteration than a pivot that we did was was, you know, I think

there was normal iterations and kind of product development

stuff that we had to do. But then the problem that we were

solving ended up evolving based on the customer discovery that

we were doing, you know, and because we originally thought,

oh, this product is going to be for dislodgement, right? We're

going to prevent people from pulling out their IVs. But then

the more and more, we got into it, and did research, and then,

you know, spoke with customers and things like that we

realized, you know, infiltration and phlebitis, those are larger

problems, and also problems that are derived from, you know,

mechanical force on the line. And so we kind of shifted our

focus and obviously, when you can expand the problem that

you're solving with the same product, that's a win win for

everybody. Right. So and sure enough, when we did our, you

know, pivotal study, it was a 300 patient randomized

controlled trial. The we had huge reductions in both

phlebitis and infiltration as well as dislodgement. Right. So

it was just really crucial that we identified, you know, kind of

and expanded on that problem through customer discovery and

through research. But that was huge for us. Yeah.

Well, one of the things I wanted to pick up on

what you said, Jared, about the entrepreneurial support

organizations, and you mentioned a couple I think you mentioned I

can't remember startup junkie was one of them. But there are a

lot here, you know, we've got endeavor. We've got plug and

play. We've got startup junkie, innovate Arkansas. Of course

here on campus, we have the office of entrepreneurship and

innovation, technology ventures, Arkansas, Small Business and

Technology Development Center. And then we have a bunch of

events, you know, case competition, startup

competitions, like Heartland challenge, which is really good.

The Northwest Arkansas Tech Summit, the Arkansas startup

crawl, which is fun. NWA tech fest, TechStars, Startup

Weekend, the blockchain hackathon and many, many, many

others. It's kind of remarkable how much there is right now. And

I in fact, I just earlier today I had in my office, Katherine

Andrews, I don't know if you know, her, Katherine, she

graduated here in 2013. And she's done a number of things.

But right now she is the director of outdoor the office

of outdoor recreation for the Arkansas Department of Parks and

Tourism. But prior to that, for five years, she worked with the

Arkansas economic Economic Development Commission, and she

set up the small business and entrepreneurship development

program. So she's been an entrepreneur within the state.

But, but there are so many things going on right now. And I

know Jared and Spencer, you both stay, I see you all at a lot of

different events. So you're not just building your own business,

I see you giving back and contributing to fuel I missed

fuel fuel was an important one, too. I see you all giving back

and helping other early stage companies succeed.

So it's, it's so we're so blessed, Matt, I think

to have all of these support organizations here in Northwest

Arkansas. And I cannot underestimate the importance

that these organizations have played in the development of our

company. You know, and I even go back to the very, very

beginning, because a lot of these programs that are here

today started from work that was being done in the Walton College

of Business by Dr. Carol Reeves, right. You know, for a long

time, she was kind of holding, you know, the torch for

entrepreneurship high all by herself.

She was a voice crying out in the wilderness

She was light in the darkness. That's exactly

what she was. And, you know, my first interaction with her and

her program actually came back in 2008, 2009, when I was

getting my MBA at the Walton College of Business. And that

was the first time I went through the New Venture

Development Program. It was with a company that I co-founded

called tears for life. And, you know, we were developing a way

to test for breast cancer using women's tears. You know, we had

some success in business plan competitions, ended up not

moving forward with that company for a variety of reasons, that

technology was picked up though, and, and is still being

researched and commercialized today with a another Northwest

Arkansas medical device company. So I had you know, I've had a

long relationship with with with Carol and and kind of seen that

but when I came back after after we founded lapovations and I

came back to school a big part of that a big part of the reason

was to participate in that new development program again. And

at that time, you know, there this ecosystem was starting to

develop. Right. And, you know, startup junkie was was there,

innovate Arkansas was there. It was the first year for the Delta

I Fund, which I believe at that time was an Innovate Arkansas

program and they were affiliated, you know, somehow

maybe funded by the Winrock Foundation. You know, ASB TDC

right, they they have been phenomenal and helping to

provide us mark reports and strategy sessions. And, you

know, what, what Marybeth Brooks has done over there has just

been phenomenally helpful. You know, grant writing assistance.

And so, you know, that was that was our, I guess, initial

relationships with those organizations, but that has

expanded, you know, Health Tech Arkansas and what Jeff Stinson

is doing over there, you know, we were part of their first

cohort in 2018. And, you know, that provided some much needed

capital to continue that customer validation that we

discussed earlier. You know, some of the some of the

resources they provided to us, directly led to some of the

grant funding that we were able to receive from the National

Science Foundation. And so, you know, I, we would not be here

lapovations would not be here as a company today, we would not

have AB grab being launched nationally to surgeons around

the country, without each of those support organizations

helping us along the way. And, and being able to provide both

financial support, as well as guidance, you know, when we were

encountering whatever problem or whatever challenge it happened

to be at that time to get us to the next step. So we're, we're

we're just very grateful. And I think that having that ecosystem

and that structure in place, is going to lead to that startup

community that community, that entrepreneurial community that

we are we are trying to build here in Northwest Arkansas.

Wel, and you're absolutely right. There's a lot

Sure. So we actually have two focuses right now with our

of companies that wouldn't have started without all these

organizations. And actually, Mary Beth Brooks's organization,

played a key part in keeping companies alive. During the

early stages of the pandemic, she was really engaged and made

a big difference. But we can't forget, a lot of this wouldn't

have been possible without the Walton Family Foundation. The

Walton Family Foundation has a division called the home region.

And, you know, the home region is run by a guy named Robert

Burns. And one part of the home region is focused on the

entrepreneurial ecosystem and here, and it's run by a person

named Yee Lin Lai. And she, I met her quite a few years ago,

but she did something similar in Singapore. I don't know if you

know that a long time ago. And but we are fortunate to have

that I mean, really the Walton Family Foundation. So many of

the organizations you mentioned, got their start through the

Walton Family Foundation. In our case we haven't mentioned, I

mean, you know, there are so many things, we have this new

master's program called the Masters of Science in product

innovation, that we couldn't have got off the ground if it

weren't for the Walton Family Foundation. And then we have the

green door, outdoor recreation program, we call it GORP that

helps, it's an incubator accelerator for early stage

startup outdoor products, services and technology

companies. And I think we're in our second cohort now, and it's

pretty successful, it's very encouraging to see. But now all

this is proliferating because of these organizations that are

helping, and it's also drawing people here from other regions,

because of, you know, all the resources that are here. Jared,

how are you planning to scale this from a sales perspective

right now?

company, two big, big focuses. The first is investment. We are

about three quarters of the way through a Series A fundraising.

And the goal of those funds or the usage of those funds is

going to be the national launch of our first product, AB Grab.

The second focus that we have is is that national launch, right?

We have 22 sales reps around the country who have the product,

and they're getting in front of surgeons right now getting in

front of hospitals. They're getting tremendously positive

feedback. Surgeons are loving this device we've heard several

times across the country. Why didn't I think of this? Right?

And so it's we're very excited about that, but we're in the

process of scaling up over the next 12 months, we want to have

100 sales reps across the country with this product. We

hope that those 100 sales reps can, you know, cover roughly 200

million of the population of the United States here. And so, you

know, we're we're in the process of raising the funds to do that

and putting the processes and protocols in place and probably

most importantly, getting the right people on the bus.

On behalf of the Sam M. Walton College of Business. I want to

thank everyone for spending time with us for another engaging

conversation. You can subscribe by going to your favorite

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