Video Transcript
Grant Engine · Theranova · Ova Solutions
April 20, 2026
Participants
- Sam Tetlow – Founder & CEO, Grant Engine · Host
- Dr. Dan Burnett – Founder & CEO, Theranova
- Dr. Lisa Voronkova – Founder & CEO, Ova Solutions
Key Takeaways from this Executive Round Table
Nuggets of wisdom and experience distilled from the conversation:
- 1. Prioritize Payment & Reimbursement Over Regulatory —Early
Companies historically focus on 510(k) clearance and neglect reimbursement — now the biggest risk. Put early energy into payment to ensure the model makes sense. If it doesn’t, you’re pushing a sand dune. Regulatory is important, but payment is the most under-appreciated burden for early-stage med device companies. - 2. Three-Lens Stakeholder Analysis: Cycle of Care · Flow of Money · Journey of the Product
Don’t just survey obvious stakeholders. Map: (1) the Cycle of Care — everyone who touches the patient, including non-obvious actors like the Red Cross in blood supply; (2) the Flow of Money — whose revenue or reimbursement will you affect; (3) the Journey of the Product — who could block market entry. High-power, high-decision-making stakeholders are your biggest risks. - 3. The Red Cross Lesson: Understand Whose Bottom Line You Are Disrupting
A portfolio company developed auto-transfusion technology — clearly brilliant — but omitted the Red Cross from their stakeholder map. The Red Cross launched a ‘for-profit vampires’ PR campaign and undercut them on price. They could have made the Red Cross a shareholder. Always ask: whose revenue model does this threaten? - 4. DRG Deep-Dive: Hospital Economics Are More Complex Than They Appear
Diagnosis Related Groupings (DRGs) pay hospitals a fixed amount per condition — everything spent on treatment comes out of their bottom line. Even ‘breakthrough designation’ coverage has traps: one company’s device had to cost two-thirds of the entire DRG, and hospitals still had to absorb 20% of that. Dig into that level of detail or face rejection at scale. - 5. Engage the FDA Early — But With a Strategy, Not an Open Question
Never ask the FDA, ‘What do you want?’ — they will demand 1,000 patients, 10-year follow-up, and mortality data. Instead, ask specific, targeted questions that you control. Use the pre-submission (Q-Sub) process. If the existing guidance is strongly in your favor, consider whether engaging at all is necessary — one Theranova PMA was approved with zero prior FDA contact. Proof of FDA engagement is also gold for grant funding. - 6. Design for Manufacturing — or Plan to Reboot
Theranova has had to completely restart development on products that turned out not to be moldable. Design-for-manufacturing considerations must be baked in early, not retrofitted. The cost of a late-stage reboot — in time, money, and biocompatibility retesting — is far higher than getting it right the first time. - 7. Theranova’s Triple Aim: Reduce Costs · Improve Outcomes · Expand Access
If your innovation hits two of these three pillars, it’s strong. If it hits all three, that’s a slam dunk. But run the stakeholder analysis first — and if a Red Cross is in the mix, approach them early. The best outcome is making them a partner or shareholder, not an adversary. - 8. Grant Funding vs. VC — Night and Day
Theranova is ranked #1 among for-profit companies in SBIR funding in San Francisco — with facilitated through Grant Engine. Non-dilutive grant funding provides runway, de-risks the business, and signals credibility to equity investors. It should be a foundational pillar of any med device company’s early strategy.
Full Transcript
Sam Tetlow (00:00)
All right. Hey, good afternoon. Dan, it’s an honor and a pleasure to have you with us again. And Lisa, you’re a newer friend for us at Grant Engine, but you’ve been incredibly helpful with linking us to MedDevice teams in Minnesota. You recently wrote a book. So we’re excited to have this video cast with both of you as luminaries in your field. And we’re going to talk abouta lot of great topics.
In med device development and how each of you individually and your organizations drive improvement in that field. For everyone, I’m Sam Tetlow. I’m the founder and CEO of Grant Engine. We are a unique and differentiated firm that helps differentiated products and companies get funding, primarily non-dilutive through grants from a variety of sources and contracts.
But also support for active clients, equity fundraising. We’re really here to help build great companies and great products. And we do that through our workflow as well, which you can check out on our website at grantengine.com. So joining me today, Dr. Dan Burnett and Dr. Lisa Voronkova. Really excited to have you both. Dan, would you start us off with just a quick
background intro of you?
Dan Burnett (01:15)
Sure, great. Yeah, so I’m a biomedical engineer by training. I worked about a year at the FDA, and then I went on to medical and business schools. I did my internship at the Mayo Clinic and matched for a residency at Stanford, but never went. I ended up starting my first company.
And I joined the venture firm that funded that company. I was there for a couple of years before I realized I really liked building companies more than investing in them. And then I started Theranova and that was 20 years ago and we’ve had about one spin out a year from Theranova since then — about 20 or so. We have also recently signed a partnership with UCSF where we take in external projects.
Sam Tetlow (01:51)
Impressive. Yeah. So we’re having a mini reform venture capitalist meeting. That’s saying it’s like venture is a weird gig where it’s the only job I’ve had where you become the CEO of a company and some people perceive it as a demotion. But yeah, happiness reigns.
Dan Burnett (02:08)
And between VC and grant funding, it’s night and day, of course — that’s why it’s been great working with you. Someone sent me a link to the most prolific SBIR companies in San Francisco, and we are number one for a for-profit company. And part of that’s because of Grant Engine.
Sam Tetlow (02:29)
Wow. Well, I think Theranova did this — we counted maybe a few months ago but I think total grant submissions was clocked in at 144, which is incredible. You’ve been an amazing partner and inspiration for our team. We’re trying to figure out how to make the volume and quality go together. It’s been a great relationship and you have our best energy and focus. So yeah, it’s great. Lisa, you just wrote a book.
Lisa Voronvoka (03:06)
So I got my PhD in math. I’m not a biomedical engineer, but for the last 10 years I’ve been working in this space. I run an R&D shop for complex medical devices. Our R&D shop is located in Ukraine. I moved to New York recently — about three years ago — but the team is still located in Ukraine.
We have a team of 16 engineers, either with a master’s degree or PhD in engineering. We work with complex medical devices: orthopedic devices, everything from implants to bone drilling devices and at – home rehabilitation, wearable devices, and equipment that goes inside the operating room like medical ventilators or robotic surgeons. I wrote the book — it’s actually a fun story — because I wrote it after working as a mentor at Vanderbilt University.
Students were asking me the same questions over and over again, so I thought I should put all the answers in one book. But the book became fairly popular and I’m really proud to see it’s number 16 in biomedical engineering on Amazon now. I was trying to explain in really simple words what to expect from building a medical device from idea to market for the first time.
Sam Tetlow (04:36)
What’s the title of the book?
Lisa Voronkova (04:38)
We call it the Hardware Bible.
Sam Tetlow (04:40)
We’ll put the link in the comment section for the YouTube post. That’s great. So are there one or two secrets that would unlock dramatic progress for an early founder or physician that has an idea — things that if you did them would dramatically de-risk or move your process forward? Let’s say you’ve got a good idea, there’s clearly a problem that needs solving, maybe a prototype is in early stages. What are one or two big unlocks?
Dan Burnett (05:55)
Yeah, for me the biggest two are the things that are really an art in what we do: regulatory and reimbursement. I feel like people have historically focused on regulatory and said, ‘Once we get the 510(k) clearance, then we’ll raise our next round.’ They’ve largely neglected what is now considered to be the biggest risk: payment.
So I think put early energy into payment and make sure that that makes sense, because if it doesn’t, you’re going to be pushing a sand dune. Regulatory is still really important, but payment is the biggest burden for a lot of these companies that isn’t given appropriate attention early on.
Lisa Voronkova (06:45)
I can’t but agree more with that. We often see founders who see just the value for patients, but not the strategic value for a hospital, operational value, or economical value of what they’re building. It’s very important to figure that out early before you even start investing time and money into hardware development.
After all it’s about identifying the value and how big the problem is — and also how much this innovation would affect the care pathway in general. Sometimes we’ve seen innovations which are brilliant and extremely complex, but the cost of implementation would make it irrelevant for a hospital to adopt. These are business answers that have to be addressed before moving forward with a startup.
Sam Tetlow (07:43)
Getting down to the level of detail — is it around how money flows for that use case? Whether a hospital can charge by the procedure or if the surgeon charges for their time in a clinic setting? Do you have to get down to that level of detail? Is it a HCPCS code versus private pay? Can you unpack what level of detail you really have to interrogate on payment and reimbursement?
Dan Burnett (08:25)
Yeah, from my perspective it is that level of detail and beyond. Not just that — it’s also looking at whose bottom line you’re going to impact. I’d like to share a story of a company I invested in when I was at the venture firm. They had auto-transfusion technology— they were the first to come up with it. You go in for an elective procedure, give your own blood, and if you need blood you get your own blood. Brilliant. Obvious. A head-slapper. We funded them.
They did not include the Red Cross in their survey of potential stakeholders. The Red Cross went on a PR campaign calling them ‘for-profit vampires’ and offered the same service at a lower cost. It’s beyond just payment — it’s also seeing who else’s payments you’ll be impacting, whose bottom line will you be affecting. Not a lot of people would have thought you need to kiss the ring of the Red Cross on this one. But in terms of understanding the payment process, it’s super crucial.
I had another company I almost invested in where they had breakthrough designation, meaning CMS would cover their payments for a certain period. All you have to do is meet the cost criteria. But then I dug into it more: the cost criteria requires the device to cost literally two-thirds of the entire DRG. So 20% of 60% of the entire DRG is still unpalatable to the hospital. Digging into that level is crucial — somebody will dig in eventually and you’ll face massive resistance at the hospital level.
Sam Tetlow (10:38)
Yeah, just to define — DRG?
Dan Burnett (10:41)
Diagnosis Related Grouping. A lot of hospital-based conditions are now paid based on a DRG — it’s a single amount for that condition. If you go in with an uncomplicated heart attack, the hospital is paid a fixed amount, and anything they use to treat that heart attack comes out of their bottom line.
Sam Tetlow (10:51)
Right on. Amazing. Lisa, before I jump to the next question — anything else you’d add about what level of detail is needed on reimbursement?
Lisa Voronkova (11:17)
It’s really hard to predict everything, but you want to predict as much as you can. According to statistics on the FDA website, it takes seven years on average to bring a medical device to market. You have only one life — you don’t want to risk it building something that’s going to fail. Rather than doing what founders tend to like — talking to patients or designing the device itself — this prep work has to be done upfront.
Even though you can’t predict everything from the beginning — in Dan’s example, that founder could never have imagined what would happen with the Red Cross — there are two things we advise founders. First: go to a hospital and just observe all the processes. Even in in-depth interviews, doctors and nurses sometimes don’t mention processes that are so routine to them.
Second: find someone who tried to build a similar device or startup in your space and failed, and ask them to be your mentor. They would be fairly open to sharing their mistakes.
Sam Tetlow (13:11)
Yeah, you learn way more from failures, and it would be an opportunity lost if that knowledge of what didn’t work were just lost to time. Good. So how do you get to those answers — maybe embedding in a hospital or interviewing folks? For both of you, how do you do that landscape view of who’s going to pay, who’s going to win, who’s going to lose? Who do you talk to? Where do you go? How do you figure it out?
Lisa Voronkova (13:56)
I can give an example from a recent project. We have our own tool we call the Value Matrix — we created it a couple of years ago. The device I want to talk about was a fall prevention device in a hospital. It had different types of value: the hospital has to purchase the device, nurses have to use it, patients should benefit, insurance should save money, and you have to receive reimbursement from Medicare. You also have to consider workflow changes — not only from the immediate use of the device, but all the follow-up steps affected.
We give this matrix to founders — I also put it in the book — just to know what you don’t know about the process, what you haven’t considered.
Sam Tetlow (14:59)
Nice. Sorry Dan, you were on mute.
Dan Burnett (15:00)
I would say something similar. It’s important to do a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, and you can look at it three different ways. First, the cycle of care: the people that care for the patients. In the transfusion example, the Red Cross was a tangential member — they’re part of the cycle of care because they donate the blood patients need.
Second, the flow of money: again the Red Cross, because they’re paid for their blood so they can support their mission. Third, the journey of the product: is there any point in the product getting into the cycle of care that could be a resistance point? If you look from those three perspectives, you can usually identify all stakeholders involved.
Then figure out your impact on those stakeholders and whether they have power in the decision-making process. High-power, high-decision-making stakeholders are your biggest risks by far.
Sam Tetlow (16:07)
Incredible. The cycle of care, the flow of money — what was the third one?
Dan Burnett (16:30)
The journey of the product. Using a urine output monitoring device as an example: the cycle of care includes the nurse — if the nurse doesn’t like the device, you won’t get adoption. For the flow of money, you have to show the hospital it won’t cost money, especially under the constrained DRG. For the journey of the product, whoever does purchasing must not have a onflict of interest. This used to be a bigger thing — the Medtronic and Bard and Baxter salespeople were amazing at schmoozing. So even if you satisfy cycle of care and flow of money, that’s still a point of resistance.
Sam Tetlow (17:35)
That’s a big insight. Amazing. So I want to ask how Theranova and Ova Solutions work — Theranova, you mentioned you’re taking outside tech from UCSF. What’s the business model? Are you only working on companies you identify internally, or also with outside founders?
Dan Burnett (18:12)
Good question, because it’s actively morphing. We call ourselves an incubator, but that term has morphed. There are now accelerators, incubators, and venture studios. We’re somewhere in the middle of all three in different situations. Most of the 20 technologies we’ve spun out were hatched internally. Two of those 20 were brought in from UCSF, but increasingly we’re building a CDMO business that brings in external technologies.
One key criteria we look at is: is this fundable? And a key part of fundable is: is it grantable? We’re building that CDMO business more robustly because we have a limited number of internal ideas and see great ideas out there we’d like to be involved with — particularly from Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. They’re all very interested in entering the US market —the biggest medical devices market in the world. We’re working with many of those groups to help with stake holder analysis, FDA outreach, and payment pathways.
Sam Tetlow (19:49)
Incredible. Yeah, other countries like Saudi Arabia have stood up their own NIH-equivalent programs. Those global funding sources could serve them, or support cross-border immigration of tech and teams into the States. That’s really attractive. Twenty internally grown companies — that’s amazing. What does an ideal client look like on the CDMO side? What are the input requirements for you to start your work?
Dan Burnett (20:55)
We look for things where we can add value right away. If it has similar functionality to one of our existing devices, that’s very attractive because we can leverage a lot of what we’ve already built. We like problem-solving at the earlier stages. A prototype that has problems we can help fix is in our sweet spot.
A great example: Dr. Mitchell Berger, head of neurosurgery at UCSF, came to us with an idea I heard while judging the Shark Tank at UCSF — I’m on faculty in the bioengineering department there. He brought a napkin sketch for a brain mapping technology that stimulates the brain to identify which areas can be resected — called functional mapping. We’re going to submit a 510(k) in a couple of months, and first-in-man will also happen in a couple of months.
We were able to move fast because we already had two neuromodulation devices — the board, firmware, and software to deliver an electrical signal were already done. Natural synergy with what we’ve built is what attracts us most.
Sam Tetlow (22:17)
Very nice. Are those existing products linked on your website so people can identify synergies with what you’ve built historically?
Dan Burnett (22:43)
We’re not great at marketing. But that’s a great idea — we should at least put the list of everything we’ve done on the website. We’ve done catheters, neurostimulators, implants on occasion. We’re probably not interested in orthopedics, other than a device that vibrates to improve bone density by simulating weight-bearing exercise. So that’s a good follow-up action from this meeting.
Sam Tetlow (23:26)
We’ve got some marketing capability. If you want an assist, we’re happy to help. Our team is very nimble with website design — we could help you do that in a couple of hours. Yeah, for sure. Amazing trajectory that you and Theranova are on. So Lisa — building a product is hard, building a company is difficult, but doing it in a war zone seems impossible to me. How are you doing? How is the team doing? They’re not in Kyiv, are they? Where is the team?
Lisa Voronkova (24:19)
No, it’s in Dnipro.
Sam Tetlow (24:23)
Even tougher.
Lisa Voronkova (24:24)
It is. But I can say we’ve never stopped working even for a day since we started. And actually that’s something that made us focus more on MedTech space. We started as a more industry-agnostic R&D shop, then realized we didn’t want to live in vain — we started thinking about where we have the most expertise and could build incredible products.
I unfortunately still can’t disclose one device on the website, but I spent 20,000 hours on this project — and on average we spend 5,000–6,000 hours to bring something from idea to market. The client came to us with a vision after other R&D shops said it was physically impossible to build. Well, we’ve passed animal trials and are stepping into human trials. It’s a medical ventilator the size of a laptop.
The same way Dan approaches things, we try to find people on our team with similar experience. We’ve delivered over 200 different projects, so very likely we have expertise close to whatever comes to us. And because of the war, we rethought our business approach — we realized the biggest value we can deliver is saving time for clients. We can often guarantee delivery and accelerate time to market. If hardware components are clear to us, we can start design for manufacturing right away. It’s not a typical cooperation model, but we’ve already had a couple of clients that way. Of course we were affected by the war, mostly
mentally — but I think we started to value life more.
Sam Tetlow (27:40)
That speaks to the character and constitution of you and your team. You face that adversity and that harsh reality of being in a war zone, and you meet it with a rise to the challenge and a clarity of focus. The necessity of success is forged in that crucible of difficulty — that’s a very special thing.
Lisa Voronkova (28:20)
I should say it’s also hard to move a hardware lab. If we were a software company, we could relocate pretty fast. But we have our own mechanical lab, electrical lab, we own the building, we have a clean room. We’re in the process of renovation and in a couple of months we’re going to launch a testing room with a robotic arm. It’s just hard to relocate and we decided to stay and work from this environment.
Sam Tetlow (28:53)
Necessity is the mother of invention — you’ve got to be successful, so you are. I really can’t imagine how difficult that has been and is. It’s a testament to the team doing it and to your leadership. So tell us about Ova Solutions — what do you do for your partners specifically, and at what stage of a company would you want to see them to add your value?
Lisa Voronkova (29:33)
We have two different types of clients. The first is a startup or doctor who has an idea for a medical device — either a prototype or just a vision. They come to us and we handle everything related to hardware from idea to production setup. For example, we’re working on a project now — a tube that separates blood and air. It was just a founder’s vision. We created 10 different digital prototypes, ran simulations, selected the top three, built them as physical prototypes, and are now doing tests with pig’s blood to select the best one.
This type of client is where we handle everything from zero to setting up production. We don’t do manufacturing — we can produce 100 devices for clinical trials and do animal testing with partners in some cases — but we don’t do manufacturing at scale. We’re trying to make sure the device will see the market, so I now ask questions like: do you have connections to FDA experts or IP experts? Do you understand your reimbursement pathway? If not, I can recommend people.
The second type of client is someone already in the market who needs production optimization. A very common case from January this year is requests to relocate production from China to Europe or the US. That’s a challenge because we’re often forced to do reverse engineering of their own devices due to mismatches in documentation from the factory. We also help middle-sized companies organize their bill of materials, create a second version of the device, etc. When you don’t need to hire full-time engineers, you can give us a task and we’ll use our team to do it faster because we’ve likely had that experience already.
Sam Tetlow (32:32)
That’s quite impressive — to be able to play in both R&D and manufacturing transfer. Both are hard, but being able to do both speaks to the range and capability.
Lisa Voronkova (32:49)
To be very honest, we’re trying to keep our focus on engineering only. For manufacturing, we just talk to partners and try to understand the most efficient way to set it up. We’re not manufacturing experts — just wanted to clarify that.
Sam Tetlow (33:05)
Well, if you’re engineering a product for manufacturing, that’s still engineering. The best products have designers sitting next to the assembly line. So even post-facto, engineering for manufacturing is very difficult to do without awareness of how manufacturing happens. You probably know more about manufacturing than you let on.
Lisa Voronkova (33:42)
That’s correct. But I believe the best approach is to sit next to a doctor or the end user of the device first — then you can adjust the design for manufacturing.
Sam Tetlow (33:59)
Yeah, good point.
Dan Burnett (34:00)
I think it is important to design with manufacturing in mind. I’ve had a couple of instances where we essentially had to completely reboot and lost a lot of that work — the design we came up with was not moldable, so we had to do a substantial engineering reboot.
Sam Tetlow (34:19)
Right on. Crucial if you’re making anything at scale. And Lisa, the human factors — usability of the device in the healthcare professional’s hands, whether that’s a corpsman in a military heater or a nurse setting up a catheter — it’s got to work for that person. So we’re almost at time. I want to ask for the two or three pearls of wisdom on the regulatory side as well. We talked about payment and reimbursement. In this new world of Makary running the FDA, what would you say are things you wish you knew 10 or 20 years ago? What’s the regulatory unlock that makes big progress quickly?
Lisa Voronkova (35:43)
What I notice is that innovators now face a paradox: they have faster pathways but higher scrutiny on outcomes. It’s a shift from paperwork to real-world proof. Companies need to invest early in evidence generation and value delivery. On the other hand, there are alternative approaches emerging where you don’t even have to run a clinical trial — people are trying to simulate data to create more evidence.
I would say it’s obviously important to consider regulatory early in the product development lifecycle, but don’t focus on it too much. Engage early, but with a strategy. You don’t need a full regulatory pathway locked in day one, but you do need alignment on claims, endpoints, and value proposition. Same for payers — don’t assume reimbursement will fix a weak business model.
Sam Tetlow (37:01)
When you say engage early, you’re talking about picking up the phone or sending an email to the FDA — actually meet with them, tell them what you’re doing, ask what they think. Actually embed and engage.
Lisa Voronkova (37:09)
Yes. And also a lot of FDA experts offer free one-hour consultations. I would encourage founders to take that, at least to understand the device classification. We’ve seen examples where a product is about to start mass production and they realize they’re receiving a different classification — they have to change the plastic, but you can’t just change the plastic and pour it in the same mold. You have to redesign the mold. More redesign, more time, more money. It’s critical for a startup because every month counts — it’s a burn rate.
Dan Burnett (37:55)
And there’s biocompatibility testing for any new plastic too. I would say exactly the same thing: engage early, but engage with a strategy. You absolutely do not want to engage and ask, ‘What does the FDA want?’ because they’ll tell you they want a 1,000-patient study with 10 -year follow-up including mortality data. You want to engage and ask them specific, targeted questions in a way that doesn’t open the door to them designing the study for you.
And if there’s a strong existing guidance document that is favorable to you, there might actually be a disadvantage to engaging. One of my companies — the first time the FDA heard from us was when we submitted our PMA, and it was approved. But if you approach them with a good strategy and don’t leave it too open – ended, I think it’s a huge benefit. They’re very open to discussing through the pre-submission —it’s called the Q-sub. It also helps a lot with grants to say you’ve met with the FDA.
Sam Tetlow (39:07)
Yeah, that’s street cred — we like to mention the meeting minute reference number and direct quotes. That street cred is gold. I’ve seen later – stage commercial readiness pilots where they said, ‘It looks great — all you need is FDA sign-off.’ At NIH for a neurological fMRI diagnostic, that was tantamount to getting the grant. It definitely de-risks things and funding agencies need to see it, not unlike an investor. So amazing. Well, anything either of you would say or share — something you want Theranova and Ova Solutions to be known for? Open mic.
Dan Burnett (39:58)
At Theranova, what we like to be known for is the triple aim: reducing costs, improving outcomes, and expanding access to care. If you hit on two of those, it’s great. If you hit on all three, that’s a slam dunk — unless your stakeholder analysis reveals there’s a Red Cross in the mix. And if there is, approach them early. Kiss the ring, do what it takes. That company could have created a partnership with the Red Cross as a shareholder, even, if they had approached them in the right way.
Sam Tetlow (40:31)
The wisdom of experience. Thank you, Dan. That’s great.
Lisa Voronkova (40:36)
We recently went on a mission to share all our experience openly. Most members of my team are posting on LinkedIn about our case studies openly — with all the numbers, all the processes, all the mistakes we’ve made —just to help other founders avoid similar mistakes.
I believe we are the company that can build complex medical devices fast. We are not consultants or advisors. We are engineers who are ready to take full responsibility. We know that if you come to us, your device will work — period. But if you want to build it yourself, the information is very open. I recently posted an article about how to build a robotic surgeon, step by step, because I tried to Google it and couldn’t find it. We’re trying to be really open about the knowledge we’ve acquired over the last 10 years. That’s also another reason I wrote the book — it’s free in digital form, at least in the United States. Just look at the chapter names
and you’ll understand what a founder is missing.
Sam Tetlow (42:00)
Incredible. I studied aerospace engineering — we’ve got three engineers on our team —and that is one of the greater honors of working on this call with both of you as fellow engineers. Engineering capacity solves problems in every dimension — not just the technical, but reimbursement, regulatory, the people equation.
So last one — and thank you so much for joining this videocast. The name Theranova — therapeutic impact plus innovation? And OVA Solutions — how does the OVA name come about?
Dan Burnett (42:59)
Yeah, could be some trademark issues there — there’s an ‘ova’ in Theranova.
Sam Tetlow (43:04)
Yeah, that’s right. I started an IP battle.
Lisa Voronkova (43:06)
This is actually a profound story. We’re not great at marketing either— most of our clients came through word of mouth. We hired a new marketing expert a couple of years ago and they suggested a new brand. We were sitting together — me and my three co-founders —trying to decide on a name that would be easier to Google and easier to understand.
We agreed to name it after three of my kids. The first letter of each of my children’s names makes up OVA, and then Solutions. That was a mistake — because there are so many female health startups called OVA. But we decided: who cares what an R&D shop is called? Nobody cares. So let’s call it that.
Dan Burnett (44:04)
We had a very in-depth discussion about changing our name after Elizabeth Holmes’ debacle. I need to remind people: she’s all flash, no substance. We’re all substance, no flash.
Sam Tetlow (44:10)
Yeah, who’s thriving and who’s in jail, right? I’d much rather tie my connection to you than Elizabeth Holmes. So amazing. This has been outstanding. I come away from some discussions smarter, and sometimes I come away having learned from geniuses — and that just happened. Thank you both very much.
Incredibly valuable and we are grateful for your time. Please — for the audience — run, don’t walk to Theranova. And if you want something complicated that you think is impossible to do, call Lisa.
Dan Burnett (45:04)
Thanks.
Lisa Voronkova (45:12)
Thank you so much for having me.
Sam Tetlow (45:14)
Thank you. Yeah, amazing.
Dan Burnett (45:14)
Thanks so much.
End of Transcript.