Duane Mancini | CEO of Project Medtech | From Podcast to Consultancy to Hosting Events, Science, & Family

The Leading Difference

Duane Mancini is the CEO managing partner and founder of Project Medtech. In this episode, he shares how Project Medtech quickly evolved from one industry podcast to two, then to consulting for medtech startups, and now to hosting events. He also discusses his passion for the industry, his background as a scientist, and how his family, friends, and the startups he helps motivate him and always prompt him to smile.

Guest links: https://www.projectmedtech.com/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanemancini/

Charity supported: Save the Children

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at [e-mail].

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Host: Lindsey Dinneen
Editor: Tim Oliphant
Producer: Velentium

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Episode 005 - Duane Mancini

Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello and welcome to the Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host Lindsey, and I am very excited to introduce you to my guest today, Duane Mancini. Duane is the CEO managing partner and founder of Project Medtech. He has extensive experience in go-to market strategy, including regulatory and reimbursement, biocompatibility, preclinical efficacy testing, and clinical trial design and execution. As a result of his unique background, he has developed a comprehensive understanding of what early stage startups need to do in order to be successful. And I am just so thrilled that you are here today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Duane Mancini: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me, Lindsey. This is super exciting. Congratulations on launching the podcast as well. I know the work that is required to do that.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. And in fact, that is where I would love to just dive in because you have such a cool story about the way that Project Medtech has come about and I would just love to hear it, if you don't mind sharing it.

Duane Mancini: Yeah, for sure. So you know, my background as a chemist, I got my start at a company called NAMSA, and NAMSA is just a CRO in the medical device space, but phenomenal company when I was there that invested in their employees and so they allowed me to learn a lot of different aspects what a medtech company needs to do to bring a product to market, which was super nice. I had left there, though, in April of 2020 and went to a company called Covance, which was then acquired by LabCorp, and I think now just recently spun off again. But in between me leaving there, I wanted to continue to give back to startups and learn the way I learned, which was talking to people, experiences, that sort of thing. And I had found podcasts really interesting and there was no one really out there doing a podcast on what it took to run a medtech company. So I said, "well, I'm gonna do this." It'll keep me close to the startup scene where all the innovation is happening. I'm gonna do this podcast. So I worked with one of my buddies from high school to do the design of the Project Medtech logo. And I worked with another friend who was up in Chicago to do the jingle. And that's where I started, April 2020 right in the middle of everything shutting down cuz of the Covid pandemic. Yeah. So, launched the podcast and there was always this greater idea of what I really wanted to do, which was launch a organization around really specific vertical of medtech startups. And the podcast was just the first idea of it. And so yeah that's really where it started.

Lindsey Dinneen: That's a fantastic start. And I do want to hear the details too, because, relatively speaking-- although I'm sure there were times that did not feel like this to you-- but from an outsider's perspective, I look and go, wow, a lot has happened really quickly for your organization. So I would just love to hear more about how it's evolved.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. And I'm happy to share and I'm an oversharer, so I'm gonna share some of the personal details as well and hoping that it inspires other entrepreneurs and people with ideas and whatnot, cuz that's really important as well. So I start the podcast and like I said the pandemic kind of shuts everything down so people stop going to events. And so I stay really consistent on it. That was the whole idea. It was weekly podcast, no matter what, get it out. And so I started doing that. And about six months in, I had some people reach out and say, "Hey, how do I sponsor the podcast?" And I said, "interesting idea. I don't know."

So I took that back, reflected on it and said, "well, it makes sense, right?" We're getting way more listens than a webinar would get, and it's weekly, so it's amplified even more than that. And so I gave it some thought. I worked out an agreement with the first person to come in and sponsor. And then that's when I said, "Hey, you know what? I maybe need to think about the other ideas I had for the rest of the company." And so that's when I approached a co-founder named Aaron TenHuisen, who was a guy I knew from a doubles volleyball league I played in and just someone I had conversations with. So I approached him, told him the ideas, and he joined in November of 2020 to help with some of these ideas and I guess the concepts of what I wanted Project Medtech to be.

So I worked with him to work out some of those kinks, sell him on the idea, and really kinda what we settled on was, "Hey, let's keep going after this media piece of this podcast and continuing to grow this brand." And so in the same year my wife gave birth to our first daughter in December of 2020. And so, it was just crazy with personal life, working a full-time job and then trying to get this podcast that was gonna be the launching pad for our larger company off the ground.

Lindsey Dinneen: So then you're a new dad?

Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Lindsey Dinneen: And you've partnered up with Aaron and then and then what?

Duane Mancini: Yeah. So, so that continues to go really well. The podcast continues to expand. That is when I had reached out to another person in my network, Rich Mazzola. I knew his sister back in college. She was friends with my wife, and we had just been in the same area. He was doing fractional CFO support for medtech companies, oddly enough. And so I reached out to him and said, "Hey, this is our idea, we have our media company that we're gonna do this podcast and do some events within, then I have this idea for this consulting advisory group." But I have my background from NAMSA and LabCorp, but I'd love to get how CPA firms run their practices and law firms, right? Maybe there's some mix of how we need to be doing this. And so I of talked to him and sold him on the idea of, "Hey, why don't you come in and just be a co-founder here with us and help us conceptualize the idea?"

And so, he was the next co-founder to, to really come in and be a part of helping me conceptualize how we would eventually launch this consulting advisory service. So, I'll leave that one there, but he comes on in May of 2021. I gotta back up real quick, and this is part of that personal journey. So, in March of 2021, my wife comes off of maternity leave. She's a physical therapist and gets laid off. And so, besides what everyone's probably thinking of, "there's a lot that's probably illegal," was.

So all of 2021, I'm reaching out to Rich, and when I reach out to Rich, I'm having these personal discussions with my wife of, "okay, well, she just got laid off. Does she go back to work full-time? What does that look like?" And oh, by the way, Project Medtech going towards this path of I'm gonna have to make a decision to either step back from my LabCorp position and do this full-time, or Project Medtech stays at just a podcast. And so we're having those personal discussions as well of, "okay, we have the comfort of a nice job at LabCorp, but this is what I really want to do." So all of this is of going on for me personally as well, beyond just the Project Medtech evolution, which is super exciting, but also super scary. So there's this.

Lindsey Dinneen: Oh my gosh, yes.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. So, we progress further in that year, and by June, it's almost apparent that starting in 2022, I'm going to have to quit my job at LabCorp and go in to Project Medtech full-time if we really want to make a go at this, based on the positive momentum we're having. But also within June, I reach out to Giovanni Lauricella, who's part of Lifeblood Capital now, and approach him and say, "look, I'm getting a ton of people reaching out about raising and investing capital in medtech. You have this a presence on LinkedIn, as well, about raising and investing capital. Why don't you come do the podcast called Medtech Money for us at Project Medtech and host it. I don't have time to host another episode or another podcast series, but I do have time to produce it. So, would you be interested in that?"

And he's, "oh my gosh, a hundred percent, let's do it." And so, Giovanni comes on board and hosts the Medtech Money podcast series powered by Project Medtech and centers it around investing and raising capital specific to medtech. And so, it's been an absolutely wonderful partnership. He has Lifeblood Capital now, which is a recruiting firm and does this for us, and we both share in the benefit of putting out this podcast and giving back to the community. So that's where Giovanni comes in and is really an awesome partner.

Flash forward to the end of 2021, and in October we do this soft launch of, "Hey, I'm gonna go full-time. Can I fill out some consulting hours?" And it happens like within that month, and so, I put in my six week notice in the middle of November. And then from all of November and December, it was just like this scary moment of having a one-year-old and quitting my full-time, stable position at LabCorp to go full-time into Project Medtech. So yeah, that takes us to Project Medtech and then I can tell you about where we're at today and that kind of thing.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. I was going to ask you a little bit more about the consulting side of the business. I would love to hear your take on that.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yep. So 2022, I go full-time in January. Aaron comes full-time in September. Rich comes full-time in August. We flash forward to where we're at today in 2023. We have 14 consultants on our team, a handful of which are full-time. The rest do part-time work with us. So what we did for our consulting group we had this theory that what startups really needed were fractional resources across finance, commercial, operations. And that's an overall business strategy and that's the areas we had originally thought in 2022. So we used 2022 to work with clients, continue to bring people in that were willing to give this three month old consulting firm a chance based on what we were telling them and the people we had on our team.

And from there we spent all of 2022 really looking at trends of how we supported companies, were there are different things we were doing, were there similar things we were doing that we can be more efficient on? And so, what we came out of that year with was, there is a huge need for this. And what's appealing about the group is it's all under one roof, right? So if you go to a CPA firm and say, "I need fractional CFO support," they're gonna tell you they should be their next hire, right? And you're gonna go on retainer with them, and you're gonna pay for that person when you don't need them. Same with a commercial person, same with an operations person.

And what our value is, is that it's a peel on, peel off service. If you don't need us, then you don't need us. If you don't need a person, then you sub another person in. And so our idea was we ride with that. We've built a consulting firm for medtech startup companies rather than a consulting firm that's built around generating as much profit as possible and tries to slam startups into how that consulting firm is run. And so we've done the opposite, which has been frustrating at times to try to scale. But in the long run it'll be super valuable and we think we'll have a unique value proposition for these medtech companies.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Okay. So what I love about what y'all do, and to what you're saying is, it's so highly focused on coming alongside these companies who, they're probably founded by people who are brilliant at what they do, but they might not have the experience of a business background just to supplement that, or, we can't all be all the things as much as we'd like to be. So it sounds to me like the way that you all are able to come alongside and partner with these companies to provide them the support they need at the time they need it, is a brilliant offering to the community.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. That's a big piece of it, right? Startups don't need more advisors. Like they don't need more people to be coaches or tell 'em where to go dig the trench or how to climb the mountain. They need that, but they also need people who are gonna get in there and execute the game plan with them, or go dig the trench, or go help them climb up Mount Everest. Right? Like they need those individuals too. And to our knowledge, there was no organization that did both of that. And so that's what we set out to be for these early stage startup companies.

And I think at first we thought we'd be a great fit for first time entrepreneurs and then we started to look back and go, well, we have a lot of first time entrepreneurs, but we also have a lot of entrepreneurs who are on their second, third, fourth company who are like, "Yes, I need you" because they know the power of the team. And so, what we end up becoming for these people is filling in the gaps. We become their extended team members. And, to take that one step further, what we've eventually found is that our core areas were finance, where we're supporting budgets, proformas, cap table dilution scenarios, but that was spilling into operations where we're doing supply chain logistics and bill of material support and helping to be that internal owner for the startup company as they talk to groups that are contract manufacturers or the suppliers or your quality systems management.

The CEOs of these companies don't have time to be managing that. So we were fractionalizing that role and that spilled over into product fit, product messaging, and go to market strategy, and commercialization, and how to sell to a hospital system, and actually where we can put a fractional sales leader in place for you until you can go out and hire that first time salesperson. And that's spilled into investment strategy where we've built a great investment network, but we understand how to build pitch decks, executive summaries, how to target what investors you wanna raise from and why you wanna raise from those individuals. How do you do that?

We help with warm introductions and then that kind of just spills over an overall business strategy because we have this end-to-end service where we can help you think about, okay, your regulatory consultant's telling you this but that's gonna affect reimbursement, which is going to affect your clinical strategy, which is gonna affect your commercial strategy. And so we are those early consultants who understand all those things, but then we'll go help you execute those things that you can't execute on your own. And our model is incredibly flexible, right? We meet the startup where they're at. And again, that makes it harder to scale, but that's okay because we're laying the groundwork for a company that just will know how to work with startups over time. It'll just take a little more time.

Lindsey Dinneen: Right, exactly. That's awesome.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. And then beyond that, we do events. And so our whole thing with our events group was, we don't want to go be another conference that's already out there. So how can we differ ourselves? So last year we did our Startup Symposium. We're going back to Houston in October of this year, October 25th and 26th, 2023. The whole idea from the Startup Symposium is we want to take companies from back of the napkin through exit with panel discussions on all the major topics that need to happen from ideating the idea all the way through exiting the company. And so that's exactly what we set out to do.

And then we sprinkle in pitches from startup companies all within that timeframe, plenty of networking sessions. And really the whole goal was, okay, let's connect this ecosystem. A lot of times startups get hung up on "well, I need to be in front of 10 investors." No, you don't. You need to be in front of 160 medtech nerds who are going to take what you need and connect you to the rest of the ecosystem. And that's true value.

And so that's what we set out to do and that's what we did last year with our first Startup Symposium in Houston where we had 160 people from Singapore to Australia to all over Europe, to coast America, all in Houston, Texas for a couple of days. And so, that's our one event. And then our second event we're gonna do this year, which is actually before that one is in August. That's a little more of a passion project for me. I'm an Ohio guy. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, on the east side of the state, went to school on the west side of the state in Toledo for my bachelor's and masters, and then now live in Cleveland, and so love the Midwest.

And so we're going to do a Midwest showcase where the idea is to show off the innovation, connect the different startups, innovators, service providers, companies in the healthtech, medtech ecosystem from western PA, all the way to Iowa, up to Wisconsin and Minnesota, even South and North Dakota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio. And just connect those regions where there's some really cool innovation going on. They don't happen to be in Boston or San Francisco where most people think of Medtech hubs. Yeah. That's more of a passion and just wanting to do our part in connecting the regions.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Well, as a Kansas City gal for 10 and a half years, I fully support this endeavor.

Duane Mancini: Yeah, exactly, right. Yeah. So you get it .

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah, I do. And it's exciting to see because there are really great companies and there is an ecosystem in the Midwest, but it doesn't have the same visibility always or maybe the same options, cuz trade shows tend to be on the coasts. Yeah. So this is exciting. Very cool. So if we were to rewind and let's say the start, either the end of 2019 or the start of 2020, could you have possibly imagined what this would have become by today?

Duane Mancini: Oh, no, not a chance. I tell all the co-founders and the advisors, that I couldn't imagine being here right now, where we have an office space in downtown Cleveland that we work out of. And it's pretty surreal just because it started as a podcast and I, I think I originally said it was like, "Hey, five year plan, I'm gonna go full-time into this." And then it was, "well, maybe it's three years." And then it was, "well, we'll launch a consulting practice and I'll go full-time, but you guys come full-time in a couple years. Let me build this more." And then nine months later, they're both full-time. And so it's, yeah every step of the way we've far outpaced where we thought we'd be. And every time there's another milestone, I always think it's further off than it is.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I love to hear that kind of success story. It's nice to hear that, because everyone's story is so unique, but it doesn't always have to be the slow burn. Sometimes it can just be a rocket ship, I guess?

Duane Mancini: Yeah. And well, and like to your point too, like, the slow burn, we always looked at as, we were as risk adverse as possible, right? Like no risks, or at least not as big of risks, each step of the way, right? And we've bootstrapped this, so we're different. We didn't raise any money. And so that's made it a little more challenging as well. But we've also felt like each step of the way, it was as de-risked as it could possibly get before it's " okay, well you either gotta do it or don't do it." And so it's been a wild ride.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes. I can only imagine. Yes. Well, so I am curious, is there a moment or maybe a series of moments that stands out to you? It could be with what you're doing now, but it could be in the past. I'm just curious, is there anything that particularly stands out to you as confirming that yes, this is the right industry for me?

Duane Mancini: That's a good question. Yeah, I would say back to the early NAMSA days. My background is theoretically set up for more of a pharmaceutical background, but when I got into NAMSA and then worked with with so many different companies, so you got to see so many cool products. There was one that stood out in 2015, and we had done the biocompatibility for a company that was working on a disease where kids are born and their esophagus doesn't connect to their stomach. And so there was a lot of surgical procedures done, but this company had developed magnets that you essentially do one procedure where you inserted in the stomach, inserted in the throat, and then eventually the esophagus and stomach would fuse together. And we did the biocompatibility for that, which is like a small piece of medtech innovation.

But I remember getting that story where they did it at their first clinical trial and the baby had two procedures and went home in seven weeks, which was like unheard of for this type of condition. And some of those details could be butchered a little bit. So no one hold me to it, but that was the general concept of it. And I just remember feeling like a sense of, "that's pretty cool how that paid off and I had a part to play in that." And from there on out, it was just like an absolute addiction to the industry of, "wow, we can make a lot of big differences in people's lives here."

And, part of it was like, saying it tongue in cheek, but I used to be like, "what better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives, affect people's lives in a positive way." And, it's part tongue in cheek, but it's also serious. Like we all play a really big role in affecting people's lives in a really positive way that we don't get to see all that often cuz most of us aren't on the frontline of treating patients like the clinicians are, but we're giving them the tools to do that. And so, that was the earliest time I can remember where I said, "oh I'm gonna be in this for the long haul."

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh my gosh. What a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that. I can see how that would easily cause a healthy addiction to the industry.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. I should say healthy addiction. Right? And cuz there's other things that are probably not so healthy, but that's one of them.

Lindsey Dinneen: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, throughout your career and of course now being the primary founder or the first founder of your company, you've had opportunities to demonstrate leadership and be a leader within the industry. How would you define leadership? Or what does it mean to you?

Duane Mancini: Yeah. This is something too that I spent a lot of time, especially like stepping into the role of, I founded the company, but then it was discussed that I was gonna be the CEO and take this primary leadership role. And I think that it was something that I took really serious about, okay, well how do I want to be a leader and part of it was, okay, I want to be hands off-ish. I want people to feel like they have their creative freedom to, to take an idea and run with it. And I've tried to instill that from the very beginning of, "Hey, here's my ideas. What are your thoughts on this? Take it back. Take your time. Add to it."

It's a free space to put your idea out there and let people do what they're good at. I think sometimes people fall victim to, "well, I'm the leader, I have all the answers." And you don't. You have to know where you're weak and put stronger people around you to fill those types of gaps you have. So I've made a pretty big effort to try to do that. And I think if you met Aaron and Rich you'd totally understand. We all excel at different things and Project Medtech doesn't happen without all of us. And so, I think, being humble in that sense is pretty important, which I see a lot of people struggle with, where they think they have to have all the answers, they want to do it by themselves, and that's not fun. Doing it as a team, that's fun!

Yeah, so that was the early thoughts around leadership and then, a lot of it was, just little things here and there that you pick up on, you read about. I, I did a lot of reading around psychology and how people make decision and what motivates humans. And I did a lot of reading from folks who did a lot around decision making and thinking and they did a lot around behavioral economics. And so, I spent a lot of time reading those books and thinking about those. And, it's funny how little things stick, but there's a video that floats around one of the social media platforms, one of the short videos that talks about how the Navy Seals make decisions on who they want on their team.

So this guy draws a graph on the whiteboard and says, on one of the lines, it's "performance." On the other lines, it's "trust." And it says, obviously you want high performance, high trust. Right? That's an ideal person for your team. But then he says, "you would think that performance would be more important." But one of the most organized organizations in the world, the Navy Seals, actually would rather take high trust, medium performance, and even potentially high trust, low performance over a high performer with low trust.

And that was something that, I watched and like anything, I'm a scientist. Every time I see something like that, I question it. And then I thought about it more and I'm like, "wow, that's actually makes a ton of sense." And so that was something that we talked about from the very early days of even adding 1099's of, they could be a high performer, low trust. We just have to identify that really quickly. But we'd rather take those high trust, medium performers cuz they're gonna make great consultants as well because the clients are gonna like them. And so we thought about those types of things really early on too. And that was a video that I just always go back to.

The only difficulty with that is there's metrics out there to measure performance. There is not a ton of metrics out there to measure trust. And so that's been the issue of like right now, trust measurements is kind of on gut, and that's not the best formula. But anyways, that I wanted to share that because we have a whiteboard here I'm looking at in our office and we draw that graph on that whiteboard more than anything else to talk about people we're thinking about adding to the team and whatnot.

Lindsey Dinneen: Amazing. Yeah. And so, if somebody were to be interested in obtaining a leadership role within the industry, potentially even follow a path somewhat similar to yours in terms of founding a company or something like that, what would be your advice for that person?

Duane Mancini: Yeah, so I, I'll give you the advice that-- so Tim Blair is one of our advisors here. He's a consultant for us, but he is also someone that is an advisor for me as well and the company at Project Medtech. His dad, Jeff Blair, was the CEO of NAMSA at one point in time. And Jeff was a guy I talked to while I was at NAMSA and I talked to him a little bit and I got sit down with him for just a 30 minute discussion and I said, "Hey," I said "this is what I wanna do with my career." And he said, "you better go learn how to sell." Cuz I was a technical person who was stepping into technical sales and he said, you have to go learn how to do true sales and business development if you want to be a leader at a company," which is what I really wanted to do.

And so that is my piece of advice for folks who are in the space, that are maybe in a technical role who want to get into leadership. They may have a low opinion of sales because I know I did before I was in it, right? I was that scientist who was like, "what do we need salespeople for?" And then, I get into sales, marketing, business development, and I was like, "oh my gosh, I was such an idiot. I was so wrong." That was advice that I look back and go, "yep, a hundred percent, totally get it." You have to go do that. Because if you don't have those skills or haven't done that, running a company is gonna be really hard because when you're running a company, you're selling internally and externally all the time, and so you better learn how to do that.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. I can definitely understand, and it is funny, I have talked to people who are quite skeptical of sales and marketing sometimes, and coming from a different background and I try to gently remind them, "well, the thing is if people don't know your product exists, they can't buy it."

Duane Mancini: Yeah, right. A hundred percent. I mean, like even take an example, not related to medtech, but if you look at the Apple iPhone versus like an Android, right? I think most people who are really tech savvy or are engineers who really understand it will be like, "oh gosh, the Android is so much better than the iPhone from a performance standpoint." But the iPhone owns the majority of the market. And it wasn't because someone built a better product. It's because their sales and marketing and their brand development was that much better. And they own the market for that. I brought this up one time and someone brought up the example of, I think it was like an 8 track or cassette or something like this, from like in the past with music. And it was another example of like someone had a superior product, but the branding and marketing of another product that maybe wasn't superior, crushed them. They eliminated them out of the market. And so, that is always the truth is that you have to have those sales and marketing people and you have to be good at what you do there.

Lindsey Dinneen: Right. Yep. Unrelated a little bit, taking a turn, imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach a masterclass on anything you want, doesn't have to be in your industry, but it could be. What would you choose to teach and why?

Duane Mancini: Good question. I think I'd probably honestly stay in medtech, stay in the masterclass of everything you need to do to make this medtech company successful. I think I have to stay there. I don't think I know enough about anything else to teach. I think that's my issue there. I'd love to say what worked for me for staying motivated or a lot of the mental things I've read about or like having a really, worry free kind of mindset. But that's just what's worked for me, and there's other experts and it's just been like I've pulled that from so many other people. I'd probably have to stay in Medtech, I think that's where I have to sit.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Well, hey, and you live it, so that's a great one to do a masterclass on.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Dinneen: What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world?

Duane Mancini: Well, one, I hope that my daughters remember me as a great father, first and foremost. So, we have our second daughter on the way. I will tell you that being a father and even maybe more specifically, like to my two daughters, has just absolutely changed me as an individual: way more sensitive, closer to my emotions being just a dad in general. So hopefully, that's first and foremost, is that they look back and go, "yeah, boy, dad was awesome." That'd be my first thing.

And then after that, Project Medtech has consultants. We're not gonna be remembered for bringing a specific product to market, right? That's gonna be that founder. But just the fact that they made a difference in, in helping innovators bring really good ideas to market. And that's what I want to be remembered for personally is that I helped play a role in allowing people that have really good ideas to see their idea through to as far as they want.

What kills me sometimes is when an innovator has a really good idea and they don't get to see it as far as they wanna see it, right? When they're forcefully said, "Hey, some other CEO needs to take this role, or someone else needs to take the leadership reins" and they wanna do that. I don't want that ever to be the case. I want it to be that they've made that decision cuz they had the resources to do what they wanted to do. And so I just wanna play my role in, in bringing innovative products to market to improve patients' lives. That's the mission of Project Medtech. So, I guess in a way, if you're gonna be the founder and CEO of a company, that mission better be something you personally live by. And that's a hundred percent what I wanna be remembered for.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's really cool that you get to live that out now, you get to see impact that you're making in various peoples' and various companies' lives because of the role that you do get to play. So that's pretty cool.

Duane Mancini: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsey Dinneen: Well, this will be the final question, but I am curious to know how it's gonna tie in. So, what is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

Duane Mancini: I'll stay on the same track. It's family for me. Family and friends, which I bucket together because anybody who knows me will tell you that like my group of people that maybe aren't blood related, are still family for me. And so that goes all the way down from my wife, to my kids, to my parents, to my in-laws, to all of my friends. That is the one thing that just consistently brings joy to me.

And then in the most cheesy entrepreneur way, it's Project Medtech and the development of Project Medtech, and more so the companies we are supporting and when they have success. I'd love to see the success of Project Medtech, but even more so when a company hits a milestone or raises funding, gets to market, sells into a hospital, benefits a patient-- that's honestly for me, even a bigger moment to smile than the success of just Project Medtech because that's why we're here is to support those companies. And so, that's more than one, but those are those three things that consistently bring me happiness and make me smile.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love it. Great answer. Thank you so much again, so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your stories, your insight, your advice. It's really cool to see Project Medtech's story, and I just thank you again for sharing it with all of us because it's very inspiring and it's so cool what y'all are doing, so I really appreciate it.

Duane Mancini: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for starting your podcast series as well. It's funny, one last comment is, I talk to so many people who think starting another podcast would be competitive. And it's not, right? There's how many billion people in this world? There's a lot of ears for us to reach out to. And so, I always think it's so cool when people are starting podcasts in the industry and especially on more of the human side of things like this, Lindsey. I thought you did a fantastic job on the interview and just making me feel comfortable, which I know is not easy to do as the sitting on the other side of the table. And I think the more of these things that exist where people can actually get to know folks in the medtech space like this is really exciting. It makes the industry a little bit closer. So kudos to you for taking the plunge and starting this podcast. It's a heavy lift.

Lindsey Dinneen: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that and I value that feedback too. Well, we are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Save the Children, which works to end the cycle of poverty by ensuring communities have the resources to provide children with a healthy, educational, and safe environment. So thank you very much for choosing that organization to support. And of course, I just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world.

Duane Mancini: Thank you.

Lindsey Dinneen: Absolutely. Thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you'd share this episode with a colleague or two and we will catch you next time.

The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.

Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.

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Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.

Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.