Shlomo Assa Podcast Transcript
Shlomo Assa 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 Shlomo Assa. Shlomo Assa is one of the leading and most experienced laser experts in the world with more than 30 years of business development and entrepreneurial expertise in both healthcare and industrial sectors.
He served as the chief technology officer in Cineron Candela and helped triple the company’s revenue in four years by driving innovations and developing effective clinical marketing. Shlomo is very experienced at aligning the latest technologies with market demand to transform companies. By successfully launching innovative products across culturally diverse environments in the U.S., Europe, and APAC. Prior to joining Candela, Shlomo founded and successfully sold four companies with game changing inventions in the laser industry, including Laser Inc., which was sold to Dover, a NASDAQ listed company. He has invented a number of leading aesthetic platforms, including Rotary and Pico Way to the bestselling facial rejuvenation platforms in the global market and the current gold standards in the industry.
Well, good afternoon, Shlomo. Welcome to the show!
Shlomo Assa: Thank you, Brian. And thank you for inviting me. And I really appreciate and looking forward for our conversation.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely again, appreciate you making the time. I know you’ve traversed the globe and in your career you’ve done quite a lot of great things. So, we’re just going to jump right into your questions here.
Let’s talk about your impressive educational background with degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering from Technion. And a master’s in lasers and optics from Tel Aviv University. Could you share what initially inspired you to pursue a CRE career in laser technology and how your education shaped your career path?
Shlomo Assa: Yeah, so, my, the road to UltraClear starts maybe 40 years ago when I joined a startup in Israel called Laser Industries. And what fascinated me, like a lot of other young engineers at the time, is just a revelation of laser lights. Laser was in an infant stage, it was revealed and invented in the late sixties but talking less than 15 years after I joined into a, a startup that targeted medical application of lasers.
And you know, I had an engineering degree, so I was very curious. As to the potential of light and intense light and collimated light and conditioned light. What can light do to life science? This was kind of like a, the young of me. Fast forward 40 years after, you know, still my fundamental training of engineering that keeps my curiosity and keeps me digging for what else can we do and where can we find the next the next idea and where’s the next benefit coming in?
So, you know, education is important. Gives you the foundation. Gives you the, the, the method and the means to explore and, and satisfy your curiosity and your curiosity. Has been triggered by the school. That’s the other thing that they develop in the shaping. So. You know, education is important.
Opportunities and curiosity together. I’m getting you into where 40 years after. I think I culminate a lot of the experience into what ultra clear became as a product.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I love the story. You know, we talk about everybody’s story here initially when we jump on a podcast, but at the end of the day curiosity is definitely something that is really a thread that resonates through throughout each podcast. Curiosity is what drives people to do what they do. So, I appreciate the story and Shlomo, you founded and successfully sold four companies with groundbreaking inventions in the laser industry, including laser ink to Dover. Can you walk us through your entrepreneur journey, highlighting the challenges and maybe some milestone or two bringing innovative laser technologies to the market?
Shlomo Assa: Yeah. So, you know, the curiosity is it as you said, Brian, driving a lot of people into innovation and into entrepreneurship my curiosity was shaped a little bit different in a sense that i was trying to create my curiosity but more focus on what is people are looking to solve what is the problem to solve.
And I think I’ve been very blessed to be able to always have a clear idea what, what is, what is exactly the problem and what kind of solution will satisfy the problem. I remember back in 1996, and that leads me to how I started lasering, I had a small little medical startup that I just sold, and I was in the tail end of it.
And I took some of the technology to meet a fellow in Los Angeles, his name is Boris Reznik, a good old Jewish Russian Jewish, but senior manager in Safeway. He was responsible for the ice cream production in Safeway in Los Angeles. And I came to him with the idea that, hey, I have this technology, I can actually do some marking on ice cream packages.
Are you even interested in being my partner? And, and I thought that This could be a very interesting opportunity, because now ice cream, you get them out of, out of fridge, they, they sweat, they, they create condensation and ink and condensation don’t go together, but you got to put a mark on them. He looks at me and he says, well, you’re dumb like everybody, all the engineers, you’re coming with something that, that everybody is asking me the same question, but you don’t understand.
I don’t have engineers working in packing ice cream. I got people who barely know how to read. I need a printer. That is so simple that people who don’t know how to read know how to do it. And that actually triggered me to think about can we build a very simple laser printer? I mean, we’re talking about mid-90s.
The technology was not there. So, I think my curiosity always revolved around. So, what is the unmet need? Where is the problem that people are willing to pay for not just. Hey, I have the technology. Here’s my solution. Let’s go to find the problem. I was driven by let me look at the problem and what people are looking for and see if I can find a solution in a lot of aspects.
I couldn’t have a solution you know, and in some areas that I could find a solution. That’s where I broke into basically investing my money and later investing with other investors. Into a bigger and bigger venture. Lasering was one of them that created SmartLase. SmartLase is a world known brand, probably one of the biggest laser marking brands right now.
And then later on became I started, you know, UltraClear with, which is a very fundamentally similar technology, but different way of achieving completely different, different, different unmet need. But as I said, my, my, my entire career is all focused around. Can I understand the problem? And can I fit the solution to the problem and not the opposite?
Brian Thomas: Love that story. Definitely going to resonate. We talked about that today as well as a lot of entrepreneurs find that problem and they bring a solution to it. And it takes a lot of hard work and ingenuity as, as you mentioned. So, I appreciate that and slomo holding over 20 published patents and medical and industrial laser technologies.
Showcases your profile contributions to the field. Can you share your process for identifying and developing patentable innovations and how do you see the role of intellectual property in the laser industry evolving?
Shlomo Assa: Yeah. So, I mean, that’s a fantastic, great question, Brian. And again, it, it brings me to, to how I, UltraClear from the very beginning, because, you know, from the very beginning, I thought I sat on something very substantial.
But again, it started with an idea that the university had, they published a lot of papers, and they were looking for the solution to the problem. They had a solution. I spotted that technology in a regular, what we call a dog and pony tour in the University of Quebec, right? And I’m telling you this because this will connect ultra clear and connect many entrepreneurs who are asking the question, how, how much do I need to invest in I.P. on how important is I.P. So, university created a lot of, a lot of papers, a lot of intriguing papers, but they had the solution. They did not understand where the problem is. And so, when I spotted the technology, I remembered I turned to Helen Fung, who was my co-founder, and I said, I just think we have the solution.
But the darker skin she looks at me said what do you mean i said you know you’re an Asian right Asian is darker skin they got PH i have a solution that particular product that. Paper that day when university develop could be what we need but we need to license the technology how the hell we going to do that how do we going to convince the university so we embarked on a process that took us.
Longer than a year to convince the university to license the IP. We finally ended up licensing the IP before we put a dime into ultra clear. We wanted to secure the access to the technology. Why is that important? Because without this. You spend all your energy to create a solution to a problem, but if you don’t own the ingredients for the solution, you’re basically developing to somebody else.
Somebody else with more money and more capabilities is going to come and take it away from you. So, to me, IP always has been part of how you build a building. You know, you build a structure, a wooden structure, which is a house. You start with a foundation. The foundation has to be solid. To me, IP is the foundation.
It’s where you build your intellectual property. It’s not just patent. Patent is one important ingredient in all this, but it’s trade secrets. It’s the way you do things, the way you document and the way you protect your information from leaking to other people. So, UltraClear started with probably a year plus of idle legal negotiation with the University of Quebec around, I want to license this technology.
Why? Does it matter why? We talk about why after you give me a confirmation that you’re willing to license technology because they want to understand why maybe they want to do it themselves, right? I mean, that’s always the question in you and your mind is an entrepreneur. So I think the most important portion off structure off a business, especially if you have a valuable solution, is to protect your intellectual property, which is creating patents, right?
Your trade secrets, your working instructions, your assembly procedures, your, everything you do that is uniquely create the solution needs to be protected and defended because that’s, that’s your foundation. That’s what makes your company great. And that’s what separates you from other people. I hope this gives you a good perspective of how I treat IP and why I spend so much energy on creating IP.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate that. And you really shared an important message, especially for those entrepreneurs out there that are trying to protect their I.P.
Shlomo Assa: I want to add one more thing, Brian, which is important. I know there’s a lot of theories. Running out in the market and some of them are coming from very distinguished people.
I’m not matched to guys like Bill Gates or any of those mega entrepreneurs that created the life changing events. But, you know, there’s a lot of theories that saying that the best success is shouting forward, developing the market and worry less about IP. And I mean, you got to find the balance, right? I agree with that.
That the best defense is offense. So, when you have a good solution, don’t let, don’t waste time on waiting for things to happen. Just go forward with a, with a marketing to find the balance between going forward and telling the world what you’re doing and protecting your secrets. Protecting the secrets. Very important.
Brian Thomas: Thank you again. I appreciate you highlighting that. And Shlomo last question of the day here, if you could briefly just tell us based on your extensive experience, how do you envision the future of laser technologies in both health care and industrial sectors? And are there any emerging trends or technologies that you believe will significantly impact the industry in the coming years?
Shlomo Assa: Well, Brian, this is a fantastic question with a lot of insight, which I don’t believe I have enough of it. I mean, I am mean, I’m looking at 40 years and I’m trying to, to ti stipulate from my last 40 years what we’re next 40 years be. I think the laser technology is at the infant stage. I’m saying that because just in the past 15 years, the laser technology transverse itself from being a solid state, what we call free space.
where alignment and stability and environmental is very critical to the quality of the product you’re producing. And it’s expensive because you have got to maintain a lot of parameters that controls the performance of the product. And we transition into fiber lasers that are a combination of a fiber optics and a gain material that creates a flexible, very stable, very easy to scale up, which gave birth to the IPG technology which is Revolutionized the way we do cutting and welding metals for automotive and heavy industry.
So, I think that laser technology is at the infant stage. I think we have a lot of opportunities to expand, especially in health care. And I’m going to specifically talk about health care and specifically tie that to UltraClear because our vision and our direction is, is linked into where we believe the future in healthcare is.
You know, people live longer, and they expect a higher quality of life. I mean, there’s eight and a half billion people in the world, only 350 million of them live in the United States. All of them live longer and all of them expect a better quality of life. So, they look at the health care system to provide them with and support a better quality of life.
But they do tend to develop all kinds of sicknesses that need, some of them need intervention and some of them need intervention inside the body. What laser technology offers is a minimally invasive approach, difficult to, difficult to reach areas where you can actually do a quick surgery. And the recovery is going to be quicker, and the cost of the treatment will be cheaper, so more people can enjoy that treatment in the process of getting a better quality of life.
Why is that important? Because if you look at emerging countries like China and India, right, they’re dealing with a massive population growth where the population growth and quality of life expectation is out beats the amount of money and the growth of the health care. So there’s a trajectory that doesn’t converge, so the solution for those countries is you’ve got to find a way to create more surgeries, faster recovery, less hospitalization and less cost to produce better results for the patient.
In other words, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a kind of like the problem is, how do I create an operation that takes short amount of time, recovery is faster, the patient spends less time in the hospital, and it costs less. Well, that’s an unmet need. This is a serious dilemma that every health care provider has.
And I believe laser technology, and I believe ultra clear and particularly has an enormous opportunity to make that improvement. We have a series of fiber optics that actually can bring technology inside the body and two distances up to one meter from endoscopically with robotic assistant We can improve the quality of surgery by bringing them to a minimally invasive where the trauma to the patient is minimum, you deal with the issue you need to deal with only, and then the patient recovers faster.
I hope I gave you my vision and my perspective as, as I said at the beginning, Brian, and again, thank you for having me here as, as your guest, you always know in a journey where you start. You don’t know where you end. So, I know where we start. And I don’t know when the laser technology journey will end with.
Impacting health care health care system. I hope this answers your question.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And I love that. And it resonates with me because I’ve been in health care quite a number of years and it, it really. Piques my interest when I hear solutions that we can improve health care and lower that cost because that is certainly one of the bigger challenges that we’re going to be facing in the coming years.
Shlomo Assa: So, I want to give you another example, simple example, and then and I have a personal connection to that. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a procedure called endometriosis. It’s, it’s actually treating some small molds or growth on women. Embryo women ovaries and they, they typically affect young women who are fertile, and they would like to be, to continue to be fertile.
They will have babies. And my daughter had this procedure. What I didn’t know at the time, and I know today because I looked into this and, and try to unfold, the unmet need, is that the success ratio of end is, is, is 10%, 90% of the women. We’ll go to the procedure; we’ll lose the ovaries. And, and they’re going to be dependent on IVF to, to get, to get pregnant and get babies, right?
Which is what my daughter had, and, and I know a lot of other women that went through this. 90% The over GYN leadership, global leadership told me in many conversations I had, get it to 90 percent to 50 percent you made an unimaginable improvement in the quality of life of young women from 90 percent to 50 percent they’re not talking about getting it from 90 percent failure to 90 percent success.
So, these are the type of things I’m talking about. I mean, you’re going through the procedure, you know, you’re 90 percent doomed to fail, but you take into 10 percent chance. If we can move the 10 percent to 50%, this is revolution.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you. And I appreciate the second example there. Again, you, it’s a story that we all can relate to, and it’s something that obviously you’ve had to experience in your life, and it brought that to light today.
So, thank you. And Shlomo, it was such a pleasure having you today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Shlomo Assa: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me. Thank you for your team and good luck with your amazing, amazing podcast and amazing journey.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Shlomo Assa Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
