I recently had coffee with the CEO of a small spine orthopedic device company. In the course of our conversation, we talked about his challenges in selling his unique product into the US healthcare market. Like many startups, his company was a “one trick pony”- they had one product. This device, while innovative and potentially money saving for providers, was not what strategic Ortho companies would consider a “big ticket” item, in fact it was so much less costly than what currently was being used that it could be considered “disruptive”.
There are hundreds of small orthopedic companies in the US healthcare market, all of whom face the same challenge as this CEO’s company: they possess innovative products that would improve patient care, but struggle with getting the products to market. The problem is their particular product or limited product range doesn’t have the revenue (yet) to attract the attention of the Big Fish, and distributors have so many small products in their bag its very hard to get any attention, especially if it is a “money saving” technology that may cannibalize a currently sold product that yields higher revenue. Money ...
