It’s not every day that a patient-doctor relationship turns into a Techstars-Funded medical innovation startup. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Onyinye Balogun and Eve McDavid, the co-founders of Mission-Driven Tech, a women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.
Onyi, as her friends call her, is the CMO of Mission Driven Tech and also an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies and does research into improving cancer care in low and middle income countries.
Eve, the CEO, is a former Google executive who is also a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor. Eve and Onyi met during the pandemic, when Eve was undergoing cancer treatment under Onyi’s care.
I heard Eve and Onyi’s presentation at the 2023 Techstars Demo day in New York and was stunned by the fundamental disparities in historical improvement in gynecological cancer outcomes - as they point out in this conversation, in recent years, Prostate cancer treatment has achieved a nearly 100% five year survival rate. In the same period, cervical and uterine cancer mortality has gotten worse, while cancer treatment for all other cancers has improved exponentially. Their company exists to change that story.
Co-Founder Communication Insights
This conversation is one of a series on co-founder communication. Check out my interviews with the co-founders of online gaming start-up Artie on Pivoting while staying sane (the secret - have a coach and a therapist!), a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, on navigating Paired Creativity, and this interview with the co-founders of collaboration tool Range, Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, on the keys to healthy conflict. One key that Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment, discussed was the importance of co-founders sharing how they are really doing so that they can be sure to not fall apart at the same time, a sentiment that Eve and Onyi echoed.
I also discussed the idea of “prototyping partnerships” with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist - and they helped me see that the healthiest companies have partners that have worked together in some capacity - and indeed, in this interview, Onyi and Eve called Eve’s cancer treatment their “first collaboration”.
Know yourself and each other
The start of a startup journey can be optimistic, so we explore what they have learned about each other that has helped them to better communicate and collaborate together since they started the project.
Accelerators can’t do it all for you
Eve and Onyi share how the accelerators can help with structure, mentorship, capital and community, but that ultimately you need to have something worth accelerating - a key customer insight or a core technology - both of which Mission-Driven Tech has!
Have multiple modes and frequencies of communication
Eve and Onyi have a weekly meeting just focused on their flagship product, the Blossom device, and another meeting weekly for other issues, and to simply connect. Meanwhile, they have a Whatsapp thread that enables them to constantly stay connected and in touch with each other. Balancing always-on connectivity and scheduled connectivity is key.
A partnership is a marriage and reflective listening is key!
Onyi shared their perspective that being in a co-founder relationship is like marriage, and that communication is key for any marriage to work. As she says, “The future of this company rests partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad and the ugly.” She shared their simple and effective approach to communication - making specific time for it, and using active listening intentionally:
“I hear what you're saying, I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me.”
Know who your real audience is
We discuss user-driven product development, which Eve and Onyi, as a former patient and doctor, are a unique example of…but we also discuss how in their current stage, investors are their actual “buyers”. Onyi discussed how she’s developed a keen sense of “push vs pull” when they are making their investment pitch - some investors just get the commitment required to make a startup like this successful, and those people are their real audience. It’s not about convincing the wrong people, it’s about finding the right people.
Balance Now and Next
Every startup needs to balance managing their current challenges and opportunities with putting energy into strategic vision and planning. Eve points out that this is a particular challenge for medical and device companies - the rate of change can be slow, due to fundamentals of the problem space. So, there needs to be more patience and intention put into planning and hypothesis testing. As Eve pointed out, There is immense pressure to achieve immediate results, but real impact takes time.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
https://missiondriventech.com/
LinkedIn:
Onyi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyinye-balogun-md-ms-22b57283/
Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemcdavid/
AI Summary
Eve and Onyi collaborated to improve medical devices for cervical and uterine cancer treatment, driven by a passion for improving women's health outcomes. Mission-Driven Tech aims to provide a less painful medical device and raise awareness to improve equity in outcomes for gynecologic cancers. Eve and Onyi emphasized the importance of finding aligned investors and noted the slow process of change in medicine.
Key Points
(3:02) - Onyi points out that The Techstars accelerator provided scaffolding, capital, mentorship, networking, and connections to investors. They learned that accelerators cannot do everything for you and it's important to have critical mass for acceleration. They also discussed how they met through Eve's cervical cancer diagnosis and treatment, where Onyi was her treating radiation oncologist, and this was their first collaboration.
(10:41) - Eve and Onyi discussed their collaboration to improve medical devices used in procedures for cervical and uterine cancer treatment
(12:57) - Eve's persistence and passion for improving the devices and their shared a belief in wanting things to be better in women's health led to them founding the company
(19:38) - Women's survival rates for cervical and uterine cancer have worsened since 1970, due to underfunding and lack of awareness
(22:45) - The startup aims to improve equity in outcomes for gynecologic cancers by providing a less painful medical device and raising awareness
(30:15) - Eve discusses the slow process of change in medicine and their goal to have their device approved for use in clinics globally
(41:22) - Eve discusses the importance of finding investors who understand the impact of their capital and are aligned with the mission, and shares their success in identifying those investors through conversations where they see people lean in and their eyes open
(45:47) -Onyi notes that when someone is for you, they get it, and even when they say no, it's better than a maybe
More About Eve McDavid and Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Eve McDavid is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mission-Driven Tech™, a new women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.
Eve is a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor and former long-time Google Executive who uses her expertise in tech, business & media to fight for change in women's health. She is a passionate advocate for women's healthcare access, literacy and equity and has been named an expert in survivorship and innovation by the World Health Organization. Her story has been featured in The Washington Post, Insider, Thrive Global and ABC-7.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies. She is also the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Mission-Driven Tech. Onyi is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Balogun initiated her residency training at the University of Chicago and completed her final year at New York University.
She has conducted and published breast cancer research in novel therapeutics for triple negative breast cancer and brain metastases. She is also engaged in gynecologic cancer research as well as global health activities with a focus on improving the delivery of radiation therapy in low and middle income countries.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman
So I will officially welcome you both to the Conversation Factory. Eve McDavid, Onyinye Balogun, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation…I really appreciate it!
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Thank you for having us.
Eve McDavid
Great to be here, Daniel. Thank you.
Daniel Stillman
Thank you. And by here, you're where you are, I'm where I am. We're here in a digital space, but you two are together, which I think is nice, actually, to have you not separated by the Brady Bunch window, which is great. How much time do you two spend together versus in your bubbles or in heads down work in your own just I'm kind of curious.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah. So it mean. I think we just were part of the techstars. New York City powered by Morgan Cohort So we were together for chunks of hours at a time, at least like twice a week or so. That was kind of more intensive time that we have spent together compared to a lot of remote work has happened since we've partnered. But yeah, so I think we found that we liked spending time together, which is always good.
Daniel Stillman
It's always nice when you like that.
Eve McDavid
Since that's one part of absolutely. We do really well when we get together and we sprint and then we're able to work remotely on asynchronous sort of items and projects and things like that. So we do a mix together.
Daniel Stillman
This is so interesting because I feel like the dynamic of the co founder and how work happens and how conversations happen is so individual and very nuanced. So now that you're not in Techstars, how do you feel like you're structuring your time together?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah, so, I mean, prior to Techstars, we know the importance of touching base regularly, so at least once or twice a week we have a meeting for the hardware tools that we're developing, or the engineering meeting, as we call it. And then we also would have a weekly sync where we just check in on various items. And of course, there's real time texting and talking. But prior to Techstars, we definitely knew that we needed a regular working times and meeting times. So that was already established. It just got amplified with the accelerator.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah. I'm curious and we're just going to meander, but what would you say were some of the biggest things you got out of being in that accelerator?
Eve McDavid
Yeah, one of the great opportunities of an accelerator is that it gives a startup scaffolding. So all the resources that a startup frankly needs, the oxygen it needs to grow, to build and to grow. So there's capital, there's mentorship, there's networking, and then there's connections to investors on the other side. We have been really fortunate to participate in two different versions of two very different types of accelerators. We were part of a program at Cornell Tech this past fall that is intended for typically academically driven founders who are now commercialize technology that they've created in their academic careers and bring it out into the wild. And what does that path look like going from academia into a commercial environment, then Spring, we had a very different experience in a commercial environment with Techstars that was very much akin to some of the environments I've worked in previously. In Tech, where there's a really singular focus, everyone is there building a software product, and all the companies are fairly similar in terms of either their staging or their needs or their resources or things like that. So the accelerator we have found is a great way just to put a little bit more structure around the startup as we're building it and figure out what is it that we're specifically looking for, how do we identify those needs within this program, whether those be actual people or specific resources, and then get what we need to keep going.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah, and I think one of the major takeaways one was it's good to have more face to face time in this era. We definitely work well remotely, but there was a flow, a synergy that happens when you come together. So I think that's one of the things we got from it. Two is, of course, the capital that was invested. Three were the other founders. Just seeing their drive, their brilliance, the success that they've had since. That has been inspiring. And then finally, I actually think one of the biggest lessons I got was they cannot do everything for you. And that's actually something I, someone else say on a recent podcast, love podcast, they said, do not expect the accelerator to do everything for you. They can take you a certain distance, maybe provide certain things, but they cannot do everything for you. So I think that's one of the takeaways from the experience.
Daniel Stillman
That's so interesting. I'm a former science nerd, so I'm just thinking of F equals Ma. And of course, acceleration is dependent on another variable. You got to have the mass.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
You got to have the mass, right. You got to have the critical mass. Which way is that acceleration going? Are you decelerating? Don't get me into no.
Daniel Stillman
As you know, I assume well, you may both know this, but the acceleration is the derivative of velocity. It's the rate of change of velocity is acceleration. But the rate of change of acceleration, there's a unit for that. It's called the jerk. The jerkiness of something is the acceleration is changing too much. It's one of my favorite physics fun facts. Completely.
Daniel Stillman
Well, thank you. Maybe not irrelEvent to our conversation because you want to be able to grow at a pace that you can sustain.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Stillman
I would say mildly obsessed with the question of how two people meet in this topsy turvy, mixed up world. And it's like hearing somebody's story of how they met in a romantic relationship. I find them fascinating. And this is like the co founder relationship, I think, is beyond a romantic relationship. It's much more complex and deeply entangled. And I'm wondering if you can take us back to the early parts of the conversation. Would you two today and the two of you at the beginning recognize each other?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
We've never been asked that question.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, that's a good one.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
That's a good one.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, I think from an ideological standpoint, yes, we would recognize each other. Yes, absolutely.
Eve McDavid
Yeah. Okay, you can tell them this story. This story.
Daniel Stillman
So for those of you listening, on Union did like very hard air quotes.
Eve McDavid
Okay, well, buckle up. It's really good.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah, it's an intense story.
Eve McDavid
It is. That's right. So we are here today because of the extraordinary care that I received when I had a cervical cancer diagnosis three years ago. Onyi was my treating radiation oncologist. And there was a combination of the best medical care that's available in the world that Onyi, as a physician, can administer in a really sort of just in time capacity because there was a lot of stuff going on. I was pregnant at the time of my diagnosis. I was being treated in New York City for both the delivery of my son and for cancer treatment. And then the sort of big sort of explosion within the explosion that happened at the time was that the pandemic started in the middle of treatment, and it was at the beginning of the end of treatment. But it's also the most intense time of this type of cervical cancer treatment called brachy therapy, where a patient has five internal radiation procedures administered over the course of a two week period. And the care windows are really tight, so the care has to be delivered at a very specific time so that the patient is able to receive a very specific dose of radiation so that she's able to effectively have her disease cured. And even in the throes of a global pandemic, where other providers had to make really difficult choices about care that they would continue or not, Onyi kept going and kept and I'm just good. She's stubborn and I'm really good at following the rules. I showed up and Onyi showed up, and we did it together.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah, that was our first collaboration.
Eve McDavid
That was our first collaboration, exactly. And what happened in terms of how we put our heads together around this. So these procedures are incredibly important. They cure cervical and uterine cancer, but they are also nearly possible to endure because they're so incredibly painful. And before my first procedure, Onyi let me know that this was going to feel like childbirth, that's how painful it was going to be. And I thought, well, one, that's really scary, but two, this is like a really strange thing that my doctor is letting me know. Something that's about to happen is about to be so excruciating. What is going to happen and why is it that way and how does this go? And so at a point during treatment, we started talking about the medical devices that are used to administer these procedures. The medical device brings the radiation source right to the tumor so that you can have a really hyper targeted, very focused radiation dose and spare the surrounding tissue and organs that are really important in the pelvis. And it turns out that the medical devices are from the early 1970s. They were designed 20 years before women were included in clinical trials. They were never properly designed to properly fit a woman's anatomy. And so you have physicians who are the best in the world at this practice, in the craft, who are using a tool from 50 years ago. And at the time I'd been in an executive function at Google and I'd seen great technology and some of the best technology in the world. And so I was like, I don't understand. What do you mean that in cancer, the tools are so dated, this doesn't seem right. And so we put our heads together on what a better design for that radiation device could look like. And by just beginning the process of what could this be and what could this look like, we really realized that this is a field within women's health that hadn't gotten much love in many, many years and was really due for an update. And from Onyi's incredible clinical expertise and my lived experience as a patient, we put our heads and our backgrounds together to start to make a change here.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
I think one of the key things know Eve is still being treated, right? It's a pandemic, right? She's still know a couple of treatments of this internal radiation procedure called Brachytherapy. And Eve is asking me all these questions. She's like Onyi, do you think this could be done better? Do you think these devices could be improved? And I was like, I'm trying to take care of your cervical cancer. You have all these questions. You're asking me to see the device. It's great, but I want to focus on preserving your life, getting you back home to your beautiful children, to your husband. We said, let's get you to remission first and then we'll talk about the devices. And sure enough, after her first, I think even at your first visit, after you finished treatment, you were still like, hey, can I see those devices? And it was her persistence, I think, when she first asked me, I said, I know this can be done better. You feel as a physician as though you're not 100% happy with how things are, with the status quo, and you know, in the back of your mind this can be better, but you have so many responsibilities, so many duties, how do you find the time to act on that knowledge that's back there? So it kind of like took Eve, who I think is the catalyst, as we thus to nerd out science a little bit. Eve was the catalyst that activated this because she was so persistent and passionate. And when she came and I said, sure, at a follow up visit, let's look at these devices. And it just went from there, the collaboration. So I think, as we were saying, ideologically, we are still similar. We're dreamers. We are aspirants for people who are not satisfied with, well, that's just how we've done things. So I think we've that core belief of we want things to be better, especially as it pertains to women's health. That's our passion. That's our calling. That's what brought us together.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah. This is so interesting to me because obviously you've been in this problem space for an exceedingly long time and have thought these aware of the limitations and the challenges. And you have to say, like when you said the you said 50 years, I was like, oh, God, that's true. It's a hard number anyway, just pausing over that. Yeah, I mean, hip hop just turned 50, 1973, which is just crazy. So it is really interesting that you'd thought these thoughts and were aware of the challenges. I presume had noodled on this, but you needed a little bit of a catalyst. If you're the active ingredient, you're the reagent. In this analogy, you had some pent up activation energy ready to release.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
But I think this is the case for a lot of physicians, right? You get caught up in the day to day. You know, I think this could be better. I know that could be better. But they're pressing things the immediate right. There are immediate things that have to get done. And I think a lot of our time goes to that and rightfully know, seeing people writing the notes, making sure orders are in, doing the procedures. But one of the things that really helped us was being part of Wild Cornell. In addition to having Eve as this catalyst and persistent and passionate. And we could see that we both wanted this to improve this device. While Cornell has an ecosystem, they nurture entrepreneurship. And I think that was one of the things that really helped us because it's kind of like, how do you yes, I know something needs to be done, but what are the next steps? And being at an institution that nurtures innovation, that says, okay, come and do this program together, that was key. So we were part of ICORE. We were part of this BioVenture e labs at Wild Cornell. And one of our proudest moments is we were just getting started in this and they had a competition. And so we looked at each other, we were like, we really can pep, like, talk each other like nobody's doing this at key events. And so we were like, we're going to win. Yeah, we're going to win. Yeah. So we go and we give what we hoped was a phenomenal pitch and then it's time for them to announce the winners. And so they called one group and we were like, oh, okay, fine. And then they called another person who won because they said there was a two way tie for second. And we were like, oh, that's interesting as well. And I think we both did not think we had won the competition. And so when they called the third group's name, we were just cheering. We were like, yeah, good for them. And then we realized it was our name, and we started we were jumping up and down.
Eve McDavid
I don't think anyone had ever said our company name other than us in public at that point.
Daniel Stillman
It's a thing.
Eve McDavid
Good for them.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
And it dawns on us that it's us. And I think that was a moment in which we were like, we can do this.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, we can do this. Absolutely.
Daniel Stillman
So can we talk about mission driven tech and around the challenge of eve, I remember your presentation, both of your presentation during the techstars pitch day, where you're talking about some of the major challenges in the numbers looking at a women's gynecological health. So for those people who are listening, who do not know this situation, could you paint why this company, why your mission is important and the challenge that you're facing here, that we're all facing here?
Eve McDavid
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start and then the clinical data, I think Onyi really your vantage point here is so important. The data that we see globally for two cancers that specifically impact women, cervical cancer and uterine cancer, women's survival rates today from those two cancers and cervical in particular, which is preventable, treatable, curable survival for those cancers today is worse in 2023 than it was in 1970. And when you look at all cancer survivorship since the 70s, that entire field has advanced exponentially. But these two cancers that specifically affect women that are gynecologic diseases are going in the opposite direction, and that is incredibly alarming. But when you start to double click into this field of women's health and then gynecologic health, and then you get into this field of an overlap of sexual health and public health and oncology, it all starts to make sense. These are fields of cancer research that have been underfunded, underinvested, in, and the layperson with a cervix. The lay woman on the street has very little general education and knowledge and awareness that she has a cervix. It's an organ that oftentimes and does get sick from a common sexually transmitted virus called the human papillomavirus, and that it is a normal part of her overall health to have preventative appointments and screenings to make sure that infection clears on its own versus turning into a cervical cancer diagnosis. So there's a really sort of big problem within a problem. And we started to look at the entire care continuum of cervical health, realizing that our innovation in treatment was just one part of the problem we're trying to solve for across this entire care continuum that includes prevention, intervention, treatment and survivorship and you can't solve everything at once. So as a startup, you have to pick one area of focus and do that really well, which is why we started with the medical device. And so once that work got underway and on a path and we can talk more about where we are in our development work now, we realized, okay, it's going to take time for that to get to market. So how do we also do work across this entire care continuum to draw attention and investment and awareness and research to this field so that we can advance the entire field forward?
Daniel Stillman
Anya, you want to put some more color on that?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that's really important to us.
Eve McDavid
Is just.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
The question of equity, right? We are a black woman and a Caucasian woman together working on this. And we know that Eve talks about it. She had incredible care, she had incredible outcomes, but that's not the case around the world. And we believe that one of the things that we can do to improve the equity in terms of outcomes for uterine cancer, for cervical cancer, one of the things we can do is provide this device so that women are not afraid to undergo the procedure. The procedure is very painful. And we have a patent right now, an international patent for a device that we believe will decrease the pain, improve the patient experience, improve the physician experience, because you feel awful when you're causing the individuals that have entrusted you with their care that you're causing them so much pain. So by doing that, we hope to also narrow the gaps in terms of racial disparities in these cancers. Also by just drawing attention to the issue itself. It's so taboo to talk about sexual health, to talk about women's health. They're all interlinked. And I think that and shouting it a mystery is part of why women don't come in early enough for treatment. And that's why part of our work is to amplify these issues to talk about. Look, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, they exist. Make sure you go for your screenings, make sure you present early if you have symptoms. So that's all part of what we're doing because right now we should not have 600,000 women a year being diagnosed with cervical cancer right now. We should not have mortality rates for cervical cancer and uterine cancer going backwards. Do you understand that in the same time span, prostate cancer has now moved to nearly 100% five year survival rate? In the same period of time that cervical cancer and uterine cancer mortality rates have gone backwards. Men diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States can basically expect to survive at least five years. And that inequity should not be it just shouldn't.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah. So what happens during Gynecological Awareness Month? What should be happening? What is the process of how do people get involved? What are you all doing for September that will move the needle from your perspective?
Eve McDavid
Yeah, that's a great question. So you can look at a starting point of awareness for Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month by looking at search trends on Google. So if you were to compare searches for Gynecologic Cancer Awareness Month relative to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it's not a leaderboard, right? Like it's a North Star, it's not a leaderboard. Right. There's no ranking of their winning. I think they've done a great job and they've created a great model. Yeah, the pink ribbon. I mean, everything pink, right? Like corporate sponsorships. And we're comfortable saying breast cancer, right? You couldn't say breast cancer before. Right. So you had leaders, men and women, you had people in positions of power who had capital to draw on the attention of policymakers of research institutions that, again, created a tremendous amount of awareness and research and funding that then helped drive these fields forward. Same thing happened in prostate cancer over the last 30 years. And so we look to those two different disease states as these are great models for what happens when people know about them and when people are comfortable talking about them, and then people have the ability to act and bring others into the mission with them. So for gynecologic cancers, of which cervical and uterine are a part, that awareness is very small. There are zero searches relative to, say, breast when you look at the data on Google. And so we want to make it easier for women to realize, okay, this is a time during the year where we want to make it more comfortable than maybe it was last year talking about this. Encourage women to make sure that they're up on their annual, well, women's visits if they are having concerning symptoms or anything that they want to discuss, that they're not nervous or anxious or uncomfortable having those conversations with their providers. It's just a great time to check in with yourself about are you up to date and when you get into those care appointments, are you getting the questions that you have answered and are you receiving the care that you need? So we're really excited about this time because it gives us all an opportunity to have a conversation about gynecologic health and staying up on care and handling any required interventions in a timely and safe manner as best as possible.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah, well, so I do want to shift gears because you talked earlier about strategy and your roadmap and what you built first versus what you want to build next. And I want to pull back to the next two or three years of your evolution as a company and how you think about the road ahead. I think one of the biggest challenges that every startup faces is managing the present right. What the opportunities that the world's throwing at you versus just being sort of like reactive and proactive with things that yesterday and has put on our calendars versus being really strategic and creating what we want to create and just moving through that energy field of what the world's throwing at us and all the things we could do versus the things that we really, really want to do. And I'm just curious how you manage reactivity versus proactivity versus strategy in your dialogue. Right? Because there's a lot of signals and a lot of noise you have to parse through on a day to day basis.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Stillman
We can't wait for it to be a double blind. You can't wait till the data is perfect for us for you to act on a sort of like weekly, quarterly basis.
Eve McDavid
No, I think what you're describing is every challenge of every company and especially every young company. How do you do the right now? Really well. So you're setting yourself up for a great future and in medicine and Onyi talks a lot about like change is slow and it's slow for good reason. We're talking about humans who are the recipients of advancements in technology. And so it's slow and it's deliberate for good reason in two to three years time, from a very tactical standpoint, we'd like to see our device, the blossom with regulatory approvals so that it's starting to be used in clinics here in the US and globally. And in order for that to happen, the seeds of change had to have been planted. So that's what we started doing. We knew it was going to be a long road to change medicine, but we also know that it's for that very reason that this type of change hadn't already existed. So fundamentally, we identified this is a very clear problem statement. There's a very clear, critical, unmet need. Physicians are frustrated and making unnecessary compromises. Patients are uncomfortable, in pain, in distress and having terrible outcomes. And it's like no one's fault. Everyone is there to do their best and this is the outcome of what today's care looks like. So that's where we got started. And then to your point around how do you stay focused and what do you do? The market pulls us to having a product now and having revenue now and having customers now and having all the milestones. Rack them, stack them, knock them down, right. Check those boxes. Right? And it's very difficult. And then you add on the layer that we are two women, we are a diverse founding team. The data in who gets capital and who doesn't couldn't be more clear. Right? So we are constantly balancing how do we tell a clear story to the market about what our company needs to be successful, how much time that will take and what's possible for us to produce with that. And the reality that not everything happens overnight. So it takes persistence, it takes tenacity. You got to be in it, you got to stay in it, you got to keep going. And when you have those really crappy days, you have to be real that those are part of it too. And they're going to be days that totally knock you sideways, and you got to recover from those and at some point get back up and then get back in it so that you have the next two to three years to keep looking forward.
Daniel Stillman
I think you bring up a really valid point Onyi I'm curious what your perspective is on processing. I feel like in any relationship, dealing with healthy conflict is important, but we're talking about something else here, which is just processing of events and continuing to plan and exist together. And I'm curious what your perspective is on your communication, your collaboration style, how you manage some of these, because you come from very different worlds. You're very different people. How are you similar? How are you different in your perspective with how you deal with some of these things?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yeah, so I think
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
we had a conversation. I think we were like, this is a marriage, and how does a healthy marriage work? Communication. So I think we had the conversations where you just need to be real with me, and I need to be real with you. If you're having doubts about something, don't let that simmer and fester. So I think we're very good about understanding that
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
the future of this company rests in partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I think that's key and to have the time right. If you don't have a time where you can both set aside to deal with, one, what's going on with the company, and also, two, what's going on with us. Eve does a really good job of how are you doing? Are you feeling okay? And I hope I reflect that back to ask you about how you're doing. It can't just be, oh, what are the numbers? Oh, what's the strategy? It has to be what else is happening? Because we call ourselves mompreneurs sometimes. We're mothers, we're partners, and we exist. This company, building this company is part of that ecosystem. Sometimes someone gets sick and we have to shift a meeting. So I think we try to have the space, the scheduled space. And also if you need to just touch base about something that's on your mind, we have that opportunity. And I think we're both good listeners. That's one of the things that's really helpful in that I hear what you're saying. I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me. So that's been, I think, really helpful. I think we're very similar.
Eve McDavid
I actually feel that too. Okay. When I first met you, I was like, this woman is incredible. She's incredible at her job. She's incredible.
Eve McDavid
I think we felt like we were working together from very early on, and. That we sort of knit together that way. There was so much trust involved.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
I'm trying to figure out how we are different.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Maybe we're different in that sometimes maybe I'm a little more like I want to just be efficient and be done and sometimes my thoughts are just but you do a really good job of mapping it out, so I'm finding it hard to verbalize. How are we different? What are the differences?
Eve McDavid
I think you made a really good point. You have a great ability of just cutting through crap and being like, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And I'll look at that same list and be like, well, what if and how about? That's really helpful to see the perspective and understand. Sometimes it just very much is a judgment call and you make that decision and you move on and you realize there are very few things that can't be unwound or addressed once you get to that decision point. So that has been, I think, really healthy in our ability to both be creative and dream of what a better world where better women's cancer care is experienced by the patients who receive it and delivered by the physicians who deploy it. And what does it take to actually get us there and how do we build that and execute against it?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
And I want to double back on what you said about Reactivity, because we're a medical device company, right. One part of what we're doing, we started out focused on medical devices, and
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
people would tell us multiple times, oh, wow, you chose a really challenging part of entrepreneurship to get involved in. And we like a good challenge. But especially in this economic downturn, it's particularly tempting to want to pivot and say, okay, let me give you what you want. Let me morph myself into something that's more appetizing to investors. And so I think what we've done a good job of, we've done a good job of being true to who we are. We're never going to drop the medical device aspect of who we are. Talking with mentors, talking with some other individuals, we found that there were some digital tools that can enhance what we are doing with the that can enhance the education about why do we need this device?
Eve McDavid
Right.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
That can enhance the education about cervical cancer in general. But at the heart of it all, we began with the medical device. And I'm really proud of us that we weren't just like, oh, well, people don't really like medical devices. So goodbye to the medical device. We forward with it. We now have the international patent. And I think that I think is key. I think we can't be reactive. You have to be true to who you are and follow that. The North Star.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah. It's a very different business model, a very different time frame. And I will reference I'll put a link for people who are listening and you may find it also interesting. I interviewed Avantika Dong from Plum Alley, which she and I talked on this podcast extensively about the gap in female and diverse founder funding, but also this idea of dressing your cap table and really being intentional about the kind of capital you're taking. People who really want to be part of the conversation, people who really get what you're trying to do, because somebody who thinks that you're a SaaS who's going to scale through enterprise sales, that's not your model, that's not the problem you're trying to solve. And it's a very different set of eyes that need to be looking at what you're doing to be able to get what it is that you're doing and to be part of the conversation. I'm curious, as you think about fundraising, which is obviously a huge part of the job, how do you engage investors in an intentional dialogue? Because I think it is clearly one of the most important conversations, and I think treating it like a conversation makes it much more productive, in my experience.
Eve McDavid
Absolutely. And we've had the success of finding folks who really understand what we're doing. They see the need. They are huge supporters of our work. And when you describe to them the state of care and what's possible, it's like an open and shut case, right? It's like, oh, this is so incredibly obvious. We see exactly what you're doing and we really love what you're doing. We want to be part of this. And there's a big conversation happening in medicine around patient centric innovations because so much of an outcome has to do with the trust and the partnership between the provider and the patient. And it isn't a one sided exchange. It's really symbiotic. And it's incredible that just the way that that partnership sort of is built and then grows can have an incredible impact on the patient's outcome. And it's incredible. And so when you're having conversations about outcomes in human lives and you have an investor who understands that that type of impact is where they want to be placing their capital, we do incredibly well in those rooms. And that, I think Onyi talked earlier about this win that we had last year. That was the first time that we did so much of this work over Zoom. It was the first time that we'd been in an open air environment where we're talking about the work, and as each of us are speaking, we're watching the room and we're seeing people lean in and then our eyes open. And when you see that, you know, you're like, okay, I'm in the right room with the right folks who are going to want to help us do something here. And we feel those environments, we know what those environments look like, and we win really well in those environments. In other areas where you'd love to be in a conversation with someone who has an enormous fund and they write enormous checks, and you want to be the recipient of one of those enormous checks. You also figure out, really quickly that no, this is not something that in a quarter's time you're going to have the type of metrics that their fund needs to show in order for their investors to be satisfied and fulfilled. And unfortunately, there's a lot more investors that fit into that latter camp than folks who are investing their capital to do great work in the world that also has a great return. And so part of our fundraising journey has been to identify those people and those rooms where there is that focus on the human impact of that capital. And so this fall, we'll be exploring a crowdfunding campaign to make our work more accessible from an investment standpoint so that we're able to get the message out to folks who are interested in supporting our work and interested in seeing this type of impact really be possible in the field that we're working in.
Daniel Stillman
That's really exciting. And I love this idea of knowing your room and being like, yeah, it's just not my room. Because we can be very hard on ourselves. Just speaking. I can be hard on myself. Use I statements we all can be and be like, but not everybody's for you. I'm not for everybody.
Eve McDavid
That's right.
Daniel Stillman
But it can be very hard to be like, oh, this guy doesn't get me. Right. And that's on me. But no, it is what it is. Sorry Eve, you're going to add some.
Eve McDavid
Flavor to no, that's exactly right. We would have meetings where we were just not clicking and we'd hang up on the close the laptop and then we'd call each other and be like, okay, I'm not discouraged. Are you discouraged?
Eve McDavid
That a lot. And we've had to find those rooms. Right. Like no one is laying out a roadmap to how to find those rooms and how to find those people. We've had to find them and we've had to do a lot of sifting some insufficiently to get there.
Daniel Stillman
Yeah.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
I think one of the good things is you can tell when the person is for you. We've been fortunate and when the person gets it, they get it. And frequently when they just are opposed and they're not in support, a lot of them have been just very loud and clear about not seeing why this needs to really happen or how it's going to happen. So I thank them for the no's.
Daniel Stillman
No is always better than a roll.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Yes.
Daniel Stillman
It's just being confident and clear that aware of the signal of push versus pull. I think of it, it's like am I pushing this or are they like pulling it out of me? They're excited. You can feel that energy. You're aware of that. We're sadly getting close to the end of our time. What haven't I asked you that? I should have asked you all what haven't we talked about that you feel like is important for us to touch on? We talked about the crowdfunding, we talked about Gynecological Awareness Month, your amazing story, the product. What haven't we touched on that's important to maybe touch on?
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Trying to think.
Eve McDavid
I can chime in. Yeah, okay. I got nothing.
Daniel Stillman
That's good. I call that a plus.
Eve McDavid
Yeah, that's good. We covered a lot of ground. I want to just do a super quick plug for what prevention looks like in cervical cancer, because that's a big.
Daniel Stillman
Question that plug away.
Eve McDavid
Talk to a room about what does it actually mean to prevent cervical cancer. So if you are a parent to a child, the most effective time, the most effective tool that we have today to prevent cervical and actually a number of other cancers that are also caused by the human papillomavirus that affect both men and women. The most effective time to have that vaccine that almost entirely prevents these cancers is between the ages of nine and twelve. So if there are parents in your audience listening and they're wondering whether they should have their child vaccinated, the most effective window is before any exposure to sexual activity. So between the ages of nine and twelve, if you are someone who is listening, who is outside of that window, or your children are outside of that window, that's okay, that's actually really common. The vaccination rates in this country are not nearly as high as where they could and should be for actual elimination of this disease. But if you're outside that window, you or your child, then what you need to be doing is having routine path and HPV tests with your gynecologist or your primary care provider. And those tests happen anywhere from every year to every five years, depending on your risk factors. And so having a conversation with your provider about when you need to be screened, what those results mean, and what any follow up care is required is the key to preventing this disease. If you are up to date on vaccination, if that's an option, and if you are up to date on screening, then you can almost entirely prevent this disease.
Dr. Onyinye Balogun
Absolutely. And I'll chime in that nine to twelve is ideal. But even if you're outside of that window, you should discuss with your medical provider because there may still be efficacy, it may still have value for you to the vaccine. And again, if you see anything concerning, go to your physician. Some of the key signs for cervical cancer are you may notice bleeding in between your periods. If you're still having periods, you may notice bleeding after intercourse or have pain with intercourse. Sometimes there's a strange discharge. It may not be bleeding, but sometimes people don't have symptoms and it's caught, like Eve said, when you go for screening. So I cannot overemphasize the importance of screening. So there you have it, prevention and screening hand in hand.
Daniel Stillman
Well, I think that's a good place for us to write on time, and I want to respect your time. I really appreciate you making the time for this conversation and sharing everything that you're working on. It's really important stuff. I wish you two the absolute best. And where should people go on the Internet to learn more about all things mission driven tech?
Eve McDavid
Yes. Perfect. So check out our website@missiondriventech.com, and then you can also find me and Onyi on LinkedIn, where we share live updates as we build in public.
Daniel Stillman
We'll put links to both of those in the show notes. Excellent. Well, we'll call thank you so much. Thank you. We'll call scene. And I really appreciate you being so generous and thoughtful with your responses. Thank you so much.
Eve McDavid
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you so much.