Bill Colone Podcast Transcript
Bill Colone joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Bill Colone. Bill Colone is the CEO of SinglePass. He is an experienced medical executive with experience in investor presentations, fundraising, building teams, product development, Operations Management, Class 2 and Class 3 Medical Device Clinical Trials, and Startup Organizations.
With over 30 years of experience with medical device development, Bill has a long history of listening to what physicians and surgeons say is needed to help them and their patients. He was the CEO of EndoMed and Spinal Singularity, the Director of R& D for Endologix, and the V.P. of R& D for DirectFlow Medical. He holds 13 U. S. patents.
Well, good afternoon, bill. Welcome to the show!
Bill Colone: Thanks, Brian.
Brian Thomas: You bet. Appreciate you making the time hailing out of the beautiful sunny Southern California. I spent some time. There’s we chatted about before, but bill, we’re going to just jump right into the questions here. Could you begin by telling us about single pass and the unique electrocautery device that you’re developing for deep tissue biopsy procedures, and what sets this device apart in the medical field?
Bill Colone: Sure. Thanks, Brian. Well, the unique thing about the single pass device is it truly is the only one of its kind. Currently, there are no procedure methods or other devices that can successfully close biopsy tissue channels that are damaged by the tools that you use when you perform a biopsy procedure.
So, we have the first and only device. That can highly ensure that you do not have any bleeding, which causes adverse events after biopsy procedures.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. I know that sometimes it’s competitive field out there in the medical device. But also, you know, trying to create and be innovative to take on some of the health care challenges that we have today.
Not only from a, you know, how do we improve things, but also how to reduce the cost. So again, appreciate the share and all the work you’ve done on that. And switching gears, Bill, having led Spinal Singularity through significant funding rounds and product development milestones, what inspired your transition to founding SinglePass and how have your experiences shaped the company’s direction?
Bill Colone: I think what I learned at Spinal Singularity, I, I developed a much larger investor outreach. So, the investor network grew. And also, just every time you do one of these startups, you learn a little bit more and really the goal for me every time I do these things is basically cut my mistakes in half. So, everything I learned at spinal singularity, as far as raising significant funding between equity funding and grant funding.
That was over 11Million dollars. A lot of that led to steer me how to open up the funding rounds and fill them for single pass. So both. Unique technologies that were unmatched before and the experiences were directly relatable. And what I learned is final singularity really helped us be successful at single pass.
Brian Thomas: Thank you and I appreciate you sharing your experiences that led up to single pass and what you’re doing today, but. Obviously getting in the trenches starting with your 1st company and, and raising funding and that sort of thing has certainly led to some efficiencies, right? Cutting down that time so you can move quicker, be more agile in raising capital for your current product. So, I appreciate the share. And Bill, the third question I have today, with over four decades of experience in medical device development, what are some of the biggest challenges you face in bringing new technologies from concept to commercialization and how have you navigated these challenges?
Bill Colone: I think the biggest thing that we are concerned about, we get a lot of ideas put in front of us, a lot of deal flow. And number 1, you’ve got to pick the correct deals and a very thorough evaluation is required as far as searching for market information, searching for the value of the unmet need, trying to evaluate whether the technology that’s in front of you can meet that unmet need.
And then, of course, navigating the patent landscape. Can you get it. Intellectual property approved for your device. And can you make sure that you don’t infringe anyone else’s intellectual property? So that’s kind of hurdle. Number 1, once you overcome that, and you do decide to move forward 2nd, biggest thing, which may be the biggest thing overall is fundraising.
So, these very new early companies that don’t have any traction literally, then maybe it’s a prototype or very sometimes even earlier than that is simply an idea on paper. That’s the biggest challenge to convince people to risk their hard-earned money to invest in something that’s so early and doesn’t have traction yet. So that’s almost always the biggest challenge.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And you’ve basically broke those out into two. Obviously, that IP or intellectual property is certainly the first obstacle. You want to make sure your ducks are in a row and who actually owns that IP is so important, obviously, for taking this to market.
And then, of course, the fundraising is can always be a challenge. But again, with your vast background and knowledge of going through many startups over your career has certainly led to some efficiencies like we talked about. And I appreciate you unpacking those two items right there for our audience.
And Bill, last question of the day, based on your vast experience and current trends, what do you see as the next big breakthroughs in medical devices and healthcare technology, and how is Single Pass positioned to contribute to these future advancements?
Bill Colone: From what I’ve seen lately, it seems like almost everything is moving towards utilizing artificial intelligence as much as possible.
Now, right now, we don’t make any devices that utilize software, so they don’t have any decision making, but it’s, it seems the trend towards companies that are getting funded usually have some sort of artificial intelligence offering. And even with single pass, even though our device does not include software, so we don’t, we can’t utilize artificial intelligence directly.
Inside the device, a lot of our marketing includes artificial intelligence. We have a QR code on all our labeling that if you point any kind of camera at a cell phone camera, or an iPad camera at it, a 3D image pops on the screen of our device. But then there’s a chat box that allows anyone who’s opened up the QR code.
Any question either typed into their machine or just on their microphone and artificial intelligence will search, we’ll search our thousands of documents and produce the actually correct answer to any type of question that a user has. So, although we’re not using it for the device. It is helping us with our marketing purposes to make sure when anyone has a question, we’ve loaded, I think, over 400 questions into our artificial intelligence on that QR code.
And that’s been very helpful. Instead of people needing to email the company or call up and ask a rep, they simply can click on our QR code and ask the question and they’ll get the correct answer due to artificial intelligence.
Brian Thomas: I love that. And, you know, sometimes people think, well, gosh, that’s a baby step, but actually it’s, it’s really not.
It’s, it may be taken that way, but honestly, now AI has the capability of doing a real time analytics, real time feedback, real time questions and answers based on. The large language models that we have access to now in just about every environment, every industry. So, I appreciate you sharing that. That’s awesome that you’ve taken advantage of that.
And the next step will obviously be to enhance that and take it to the next level. So, you can use it with your device. So, Bill, it was so awesome having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Bill Colone: Thank you, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Bill Colone Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
