How The Pandemic Has Impacted BioScience Innovation & Companies
Matt McBride
VP of Strategic Partnerships at BioEnterprise
Changes In The Bioscience Industry
The global pandemic has changed marketing and sales as we know it. In this episode, Matt McBride will share how physical distancing and shelter-in-place orders have impacted strategic partnership and innovation management in bioscience.
About Our Guest Speaker
As the VP of Strategic Partnerships at BioEnterprise, Matt oversees the continued development, promotion and execution of the Global Center for Health Innovation and its mission of promoting healthcare innovation and growing the biomedical sector in Northeast Ohio.
Prior to joining BioEnterprise, Matt spent seven years with Cleveland Clinic Innovations (CCI), translating medical breakthroughs into patient-benefiting products for the commercial market. As the Director of Inventor Services, Matt established and implemented a process that was used to evaluate early-stage technologies and usher them toward a commercial outcome.
Matt received a B.S. in political science with a focus in engineering, math and science from the United States Naval Academy and an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University.
Full Episode Transcripts
Paul Roberts: Hey, welcome back everybody. It’s time for another episode of RapidTesting.ai, a show where we help B2B and CPG marketers generate data that turns into money. And the woman who seems to know how to make this magic work, Tessa Burg. Hey Tessa.
Tessa Burg: Hello.
Paul Roberts: How are you?
Tessa Burg: How are you?
Paul Roberts: Where are you holed up? Where are you bunkered down? Or are you out in the world again here?
Tessa Burg: Nope. We are at home in Cleveland, Ohio, and it’s a beautiful sunny day in tropical Cleveland.
Paul Roberts: This must be Cleveland day on the Funnel Radio Network, because earlier today we had a guest who puts the publisher of Cleveland Edible, a magazine about the restaurant scene in Cleveland there. I don’t know why Cleveland’s the focus here today, but happy to make it so here. It has been many years since I’ve been back to Cleveland.
Tessa Burg: Oh, it’s a wonderful place. And today our guest is also from Cleveland. When we were coming into the show, there was some grim news. I was like, geez. But today will be a really great conversation about bright spots. The one thing that we’ve seen is companies, especially in medical and bioscience, have not just pivoted, but they have had to change what it is that they’re selling or making or bringing to market. And as marketers, it is a challenge for us to kind of keep up. So we wanted to talk to someone who was more at the source of those changes and what’s going on in bioscience. And our guest today is Matt McBride from BioEnterprise, and I’ll let him say hello.
Matt McBride: All right, hello, everyone. Happy to be here. When Tessa and I originally started talking through this, I had to think about the audience and ultimately think that in bioscience and especially commercialization, we’re always marketing, we’re always selling. And I think that if you’re not, you’re probably not long for a job in tech transfer commercialization. But it’s always trying to find the niche markets that might be a good fit for your technologies and how to sell them correctly. Because if you don’t fit into the right sales cycles with large companies, even a great idea can fall flat. So I think that’s something that I’ve learned over the last 10 years. But I guess with that, do you want me to go through my intro?
Tessa Burg: Yeah. I think that what I’ve found really interesting in those early conversations is how well your journey has prepared you for the role you have in BioEnterprise. So do you tell us a little bit about how you got started and those experiences that shaped where you are.
Matt McBride: For sure. Thanks. So for the group that most likely probably doesn’t know, Tessa and I kind of grew up together. So we’ve known each other for 20 plus years, both from Mentor, Ohio. I went on to go to the Naval Academy, focused on engineering and international relations while I was at the Naval Academy. And I think during that time in probably an odd way, learned a little bit about innovation. Innovation there was finding out ways to get around some of the rules. And you figured out interesting ways to make your life a little easier. From the Naval Academy, went on to Athens, Georgia, went to supply school there. Then spent about 18 months in Far East Asia. So part of the time in Diego Garcia, a small island, and then Singapore. Again, in those situations, kind of being put in odd places, odd tight, cramped places, you learn how to make the best of it. And a lot of that, it’s necessity breeds innovation.
Matt McBride: So beyond there, I felt like all that training got me ready to go to Afghanistan for about eight months and then served as the program integrator for the V-22 Osprey and Chinook helicopter at Boeing. All of which necessitated some sort of sales and innovation, especially in Afghanistan where being at Camp Leatherneck where you’re in the middle of nowhere and you’re just trying to figure things out. And I think that from a military perspective, what I would always say is, I mean, you don’t think of it as innovation during the time when you’re actually there, as much as you do survival. And so I think one thing that I always try to tell my team and people that we chat with is you are innovating in some way, and it’s just really getting down to kind of the brass tacks of look at your life and what do you do to make it easier. So I urge people, as I’m mining for innovations, to really think about everything that they do and the processes that they follow and what they do to make that easier for themselves.
Matt McBride: Anyways, so this kind of leads right into, got out of the military, joined Cleveland Clinic Innovations, where I was really initially dealing with internal, almost continuous improvement projects, and then moved on to manage in inventor services, which essentially meant I ran our version of a shark tank.
Matt McBride: So weekly we’d get in about, not weekly, but we’d get in 300 invention disclosures per year. And each one of those would be reviewed with my team and we would decide. We would look at market. We would look at competitive analysis. We would at clinical feasibility, technical feasibility, and then intellectual property. And so that was a weekly thing that we did every Thursday, just to make sure that things we were moving forward with were feasible. Because when I originally came in, I think a lot of what was happening is projects would be worked kind of in a silo and it would move forward, but probably shouldn’t have, which ended up resulting in people trying to market these things and saying, well, there is no market or people aren’t necessarily hungry for this product at this time. So I felt like that was a good vessel and filter to make sure that we took that 300 and funneled it down to the amount that we really should be working.
Tessa Burg: You’ve said so much there. And I have a few-
Matt McBride: Sorry.
Tessa Burg: I feel like your life journey has sort of prepared you to lead innovation in this type of situation, both from that global perspective and from the perspective that all of us are now having the shared experience where we need to pivot and try and prioritize, what are the best ideas? What is the best way to innovate? So what were some of those criteria that you used to say, yes, these are the ideas that should move forward versus these are the ones that might need more definition.
Matt McBride: So I would say right off the bat, we battled a lot with, is this an idea or an innovation? So are we getting a cocktail napkin sketch given to us? Or are we getting something that’s had some studies and has some legs behind it as far as potential funding? So what we would do is during those meetings and continue to do it by looking at that addressable market. And I don’t want to give a finite answer around what those markets, what the dollar amount is, because I don’t think anyone has that perfectly kind of sketched out and it kind of depends. Is it healthcare IT? Is it therapeutics and diagnostics? Or is it medical devices? All different because it’s going to be a much longer time span to get things to market. And it might be… I mean the one term that constantly would flow through my head was just straight return on investment. So how much time and money are we going to spend on this to get it to market? And does it make sense or the obstacle’s to great?
Matt McBride: I mean, I can speak from the clinic’s perspective. Well, maybe I won’t, but I’ll speak from a past life and say that there’s not as many therapeutics out there from the clinic because the risk and reward, it’s vast. And so being healthcare systems, but I think what we see is healthcare systems that have a lower margin return are less willing to invest in some of those more risky technologies. As clear as mud as that might be, I think you really have to take it case by case, but I mean, in general, the criteria that I mentioned earlier, being IP, market assessment, competitive analysis, technical feasibility, you kind of lump that and say, all right, let’s talk about this as a group and figure out if this return would be worth putting more resources into.
Tessa Burg: That’s awesome. So tell us a little bit about how you apply that process and your experiences to what you’re doing now at BioEnterprise.
Matt McBride: So left the clinic almost a little over a year ago to go over to BioEnterprise where I’ve looked at it. I mean, originally the founders of BioEnterprise are Case Western, University Hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, and now Metro’s joined the board as well. So a nice representation of our ecosystem here in Cleveland. And I looked at leaving the clinic to go with BioEnterprise to be more of that regional hub, and because that’s what bioscience is meant to do. So being able to take over, I mean to be honest, if we go back to the process that we instilled at the clinic, I would say that upon initial, and this is still goes for what we’re doing at BioEnterprise. But I would say once an idea comes in, doing that quick triage of the idea within, at the clinic, it was three to four weeks doing that triage and deciding if it met the criteria to put more resources onto it.
Matt McBride: And I think what you would find in most organizations that have been doing this sort of work is things just tend to stay. Projects that probably shouldn’t, need to be shelved. And other ones need more resources applied to them. So under me sits an analyst team that does a lot of that initial research. And what I would say is just even the last three months, going through a new portfolio review that we sit down every Monday, we go through every company we have, any updates and then kind of just have that come-to-Jesus moment where it’s do we work on this or do we not? And if we don’t, how do we… A word I like to use is raising the entrepreneurial IQ. So if we’re saying no, how are we teaching our inventors at the same time to not say this isn’t a fit. But also we want you to come back to us and work with us potentially on other projects or figure out ways to enhance what you already have.
Matt McBride: I would say we’ve completely adopted what I was doing at the clinic. Now we’re doing it at BioEnterprise. And the only, I’d say the big difference would be that a lot of the things you could get at the clinic could be those cocktail napkin ideas I was talking about. We tend to get things that are further along the road at BioEnterprise because for the most part it is formed companies. But there’s also the institutions that we work with where we try to move forward individual ideas.
Tessa Burg: That’s great. So I know at BioEnterprise and really with all innovation and tech, there’s a lot of physical collaboration and sort of being there is really important to pushing some of these ideas and medical device and bioscience products forward. How have you guys had to adjust your process since the start of the pandemic?
Matt McBride: It’s been, I think like all of us, even the beginning of this call, you have a handful of people at work who know how to use every system that you put in front of them from a digital standpoint, and you have those that don’t. And so our Monday meetings are probably 25, 30 people. I’m trying to run it through Zoom and to be very honest, it’s been awesome. I think we’ve acclimated. Really it has. I mean, not so much working from home, but I mean, I’ve dealt with in the past having to do a lot of virtual meetings that were just a mess. And I think our team has adapted really well. And we’re, as far as clients go, it’s a lot of cold calls, cold but warm calls, because they are our clients. And it’s just, it’s kind of catching people at the right time when they’re not feeding a baby or dealing with a kid out in the front lawn.
Matt McBride: But we still do that. And so I think the one part of the physical limitations that I think will hurt is a lot of the incoming inquiries that we get come from networking events and random networking events. So it’s showing up to a Plug and Play meeting and showing up to a HiNZ event, Cleveland Clinic. And without that, some of the serendipitous sort of interactions that would happen aren’t happening. But I think it can be made up for another in areas.
Tessa Burg: Well, that’s good. So Paul was waving around again. Do we need to cut for a commercial, Paul?
Paul Roberts: We do. Let’s take a quick break and let everybody digest this.
Tessa Burg: Okay.
Paul Roberts: All right. So hang on. We’ll be right back.
Paul Roberts: And we just want to tell everybody in this quick break that during this global pandemic a lot’s changed. Marketing has probably changed and sales as we know it. To plan and prepare for what’s next, sign up for a one-hour remote Digital Readiness session with Tenlo. We’ll talk about opportunities to align your digital marketing tactics to your business’s goals today. Plus you’ll receive a Digital Readiness Playbook with immediate next steps to execute measurable digital marketing tactics to take you through today and tomorrow. For more info and to sign up pretty simple, go to tenlo.com. That’s T-E-N-L-O, tenlo.com.
Paul Roberts: All right. We want to make sure everybody doesn’t miss that, because we’re all trying to figure out what’s the new normal here. In the world, are your guesses in? Do you think things have changed or is it too early to tell? The way you do business, what you sell, how you sell, all that?
Matt McBride: Yeah, no, for sure. I don’t necessarily think it’s changed in an unprecedented way. And when I say that, I’m want to be careful. What I mean is innovation is always trying to cater to what’s new and what’s needed. So I’ve just seen a lot of pivoting of ideas to address what this current need is. So from an innovation standpoint, I think it’s par for the course because you’re always trying to address needs. But I mean, from a work standpoint yeah, of course. I mean it’s, when there’s not really clarity, especially around funding and where that’s coming from or an excess of funding from the state or government, how do you dial into that and how does that change how you do business? And that’s kind of something that we’re changing every day and we’re trying to figure out how to best deal with that and help our client companies deal with that as well.
Tessa Burg: So I think from our perspective, it’s almost like we’ve had to put on innovator and inventor hats. Where before we were pretty comfortable in our own routines and in the way that we sold and the way that we provided services to clients. So what are some of the things that your portfolio companies do to bring people along, and very quickly? Because I think a challenge that we’ve seen both in our own company with our client companies is we know we want to pivot. We know we want to do something new, different, and make sure it solves the problems and help. But we got to stay aligned and stay together. So how are they doing that?
Matt McBride: So I’ll give you an example of… I mean, there’s several examples, but one that I find kind of just striking is we do have a company called [inaudible 00:17:19] and they had essentially dealt with wound healing and I think different patches with hydrogels. So once this happened and once the need for PPE sort of came out, they completely pivoted and started making these face shields that were antibacterial and that became their sole business. And that was kind of an overnight decision. Prior to, I don’t think they’d produced… I won’t say they ever produced a face shield, but now in mass quantities. And to the point where they now have a large contract that’s about to be signed in probably the next 24 hours. So you have people like that. But what I would say is they read the tea leaves quickly and decided to go that direction.
Matt McBride: And then you have others that are… I was speaking with the CEO earlier today, Jacob Sheridan from TPA Stream, theirs is a fit. Their job is to make operations easier within a hospital so they can bring down costs in any way. It just tends to be a natural fit. And people like that are succeeding in a big way because they’re not necessarily rowing in an opposite direction.
Matt McBride: I had a great conversation… I know we’re going to talk about partnerships, but I think this might be a good way to segue into that a little bit. We have a relationship with UCSF Health Hub out in San Francisco, and I had a conversation with their executive director today. We’ve been meaning to catch up. And his thought is there’s kind of two categories and it’s either you’re able to adapt to COVID just because you can. And then there’s people that can’t. And there’s business models that don’t fit into this model. So I think what he’s seen is actually a huge spike in a positive way in mental health. And he’s more in the IT side of mental health apps. He said they’ve never been so successful in getting funding than they have over the last two months. So I think that there’s a paradigm of which companies are willing and able to fit the COVID model and others who just aren’t able just based on the market right now.
Tessa Burg: That is really interesting. So speaking of the partnerships, tell us how that has evolved and has it opened up any new opportunities as a result of the pandemic?
Matt McBride: Yeah. So a part of my role while I was at the clinic was business development, which was essentially building an aligned system, which would bring in sort of, if you look at what the clinic’s really good at, or you look at what most healthcare systems are good at, it normally doesn’t include manufacturing, app development, any activities that would go around therapeutics and CROs. So it was kind of looking at filling those gaps. What do our companies need that we can’t currently provide?
Matt McBride: So a partnership that’s actually been really positive over the last just week or two is a company out of Japan called Marotta Manufacturing. And I think this is an interesting one because it shows that companies whose focus wasn’t initially healthcare are to help and partner healthcare companies. So Marotta focuses on manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, but they’re really good at making small sensors. And so I have a need internally for small sensors. So we’ve been able to put those two together and have those partners come in, partner with our companies. And they both provide critical pieces to each other’s business, but wouldn’t be typical partnerships if you were to go back a year ago.
Matt McBride: So I think just getting those companies that want to get more into healthcare, and in all honesty, I mean, these companies like a Marotta who are revenues dropping from a consumer standpoint, they’re trying to find ways to make that up. And I think we’re on the receiving end of that, say all right, well, we can figure out partnerships that could potentially do that for you and in healthcare because it’s obviously a hot button right now.
Matt McBride: Otherwise, I would say some of this or most of this group is in Cleveland. The way that I try to sell partnerships, CSF Health Hub would be a good example. In San Francisco, they don’t have a ton of issues with funding. They don’t have a ton of issues with ideas. They sometimes have issues with plugging in that clinical validation piece. So when I’m selling, I’m going out to those types of individuals, not to say that there isn’t great institutions out there, but I think it’s just a saturation of ideas that are out there. So I try to bring them in to plug them into our local institutions and create those sorts of partnerships as well. Because we’ve seen a lot of success in doing clinical validation locally with external companies.
Tessa Burg: That’s really interesting. So let’s say I am a company, I have found a pivot, I want to get into the medical space. How did you find Marotta? Or how would I as Marotta let someone know, like a BioEnterprise, that I have an innovation that can help solve a problem now.
Matt McBride: Right. And I think that goes back to the physical distancing that we were talking about earlier is this relationship started when I was at the clinic probably eight years ago when one of my main physicians was speaking at a conference in Los Angeles. And they just said, well, we want to talk to him. They followed up with me and it became eight years of us kind of having meetings and talking through. So I don’t know if these are the sorts of innovations that I think are going to be new to our spaces. How do we, from the sales and marketing perspective, get those inquiries? Because if people don’t know what we’re doing, then in their mind, we’re not doing it. I think we’re trying, and this is a little more passive, but from a website perspective, just from a how do we properly blast media out to get responses? It’s one that I struggle with, but a lot of it is going to be because of people on this phone call and sharing our networks and just knowing what we all do.
Tessa Burg: So it’s almost like when you have that need, it’s a different type of communication and virtual networking to be able to get in front of the right people to say, hey, who is available to help solve this problem, provide a piece of the puzzle?
Matt McBride: Right.
Tessa Burg: Do you guys have any events coming up or are you thinking about virtual events that might help with making those connections?
Matt McBride: Yes. So we have an… I’m going to send this over after, but so we have a… We’re calling it a Bio EDU, bio education web series. So the business of bioscience, mitigating new market risks, emerging from the crisis, forecasting bioscience investment trends in the wake of COVID, and then raising non-dilutive capital in a stressed economy. So those are just events that we’re doing. But Case Western School of Medicine is doing a ton. Jumpstart is doing a number. And so we’re partnering with Case Western on a few of these, and we’re, looking for panelists from the entire ecosystem. So I have noticed a lot of collaboration here from at least the event standpoint right now, and how do we deal with this collectively?
Matt McBride: Speaking of Jumpstart, we have monthly meetings, but we had a COVID-related meeting recently, which has Jumpstart ourselves and about, let’s say 14, 15 other partners. And we spend about two hours going through 100 plus… It was probably approximately 100 different COVID-related technologies. And I think the most important part there is we sat there and said, not just here’s our report out. But here’s where we need help and here’s how you can help. And so I thought that that was a extremely positive sign that the ecosystem is moving in the right direction.
Tessa Burg: So I imagine in Cleveland, it’s awesome they have such a great strong collaborative community. Are there other cities around the country that you guys are modeling after, or that you’ve seen this type of collaboration also be very successful?
Matt McBride: Yeah. So I had spent, during my time at the Global Center, trying to create that ecosystem. I was doing a lot of primary research into different groups around the country. And I’d say the obvious ones are going to be San Francisco. Well, let me even start this off by saying something my CEO always says that I think it’s a great statement, but we’re not going to be Boston, but we’re going to be a great Cleveland. I like that because if we’re trying, we have to understand what our constraints might be. And I think that as we look through the different… So we spent about a week out in Cambridge earlier this fall touring all their innovation groups. I’ve had many conversations, there’s a group called HGI out in Denver and essentially it’s similar to what we were trying to do at the Global Center. And then San Francisco and Austin, where they have the… I’m forgetting the incubator right now. But I spent some time out there when I was still at the clinic. But it’s just trying to understand how all these groups can work together.
Matt McBride: And that’s the theme though, is it’s not all these disparate things going on. It may be disparate, but somehow they funnel into one end game. And that’s where I think maybe historically we’ve struggled a bit. And I think that’s essentially why I went to BioEnterprise to figure out how we can pull all these pieces together to work towards an end. So that’s why I love what we’re doing with the COVID technologies, and hopefully this brings us together and keeps us together.
Tessa Burg: I feel that way about a lot of things, that this is definitely been dire and extremely stressful, but there are these bright spots that are making us strong and becoming a stronger community. I love that phrase, the best Cleveland we can be.
Matt McBride: It is. Because we can’t pretend to do things that just aren’t us. So let’s just-
Tessa Burg: Right.
Matt McBride: And I’ll say we had a call… The chairman of our board is the Chief Operating Officer of University Hospitals. And we had a call last… And he was the head of their Ventures Group. But what I would say coming… And his entire background is around pandemic crisis-related issues. So it’s perfect that he has taken on that role. So Dr. Eric Beck. But I would say we spent about an hour on a call and I came out of it feeling really positive, which we’re talking about a pandemic, so there’s not much that you can come out of that with a smile on your face. But I mean, in doing this, just the response that he’s already seen has just been amazing. And not just from his own team, but nationally, in how the landscape is changing and how… I mean, think about telemedicine. Think about that. I mean, just starting there.
Matt McBride: Telemedicine has been something that’s been, I wouldn’t say up and coming, but a growing field. But there’s been a lot of problems around reimbursement around it. So now you’re getting these telemedicine companies who are now getting reimbursed because they have to. There’s kind of no option. I mean, we reached a point where a lot of these potential groundbreaking things are going to come through because we need them. And the same goes with the FDA and they’re fast tracking a ton of things that otherwise might not be fast tracked.
Matt McBride: So from my standpoint where I sit, in an innovation standpoint, I have not seen a downtick in that at all. I’ve probably seen more and I think that’s awesome. Because just to know that there’s all these ideas out there and people just ready and needing help. From a marketing sales standpoint, that’s where we kind of step in as well to say, we know you’re at home right now with your kids and you may have some downtime. You may be down some resources, but we will step in and be that marketing and business development force for you. And so I think, I feel like there’s a lot of reception to that.
Tessa Burg: That’s awesome. Paul, before we go, do you have any questions? Usually a lot more talkative in these interviews.
Paul Roberts: Well, you guys, you’re old friends here. I don’t want to interject in this conversation here. I just wonder if this is going to set back biomedical development because investors have lost money or they’re going to be hesitant to invest in new technologies? Or does it accelerate it because it shows the need? We got to come up with all sorts of new techniques and technologies. We rested on our laurels too long. Even just testing the physical, look at the difficulty we’re having just rolling out tests. The most technical logical advanced nation in American and we can’t test millions of people all at once for some reason.
Matt McBride: Yeah.
Paul Roberts: So is it going to be… I know it’s hard to look into the crystal ball, but is this going to slow things down for a while, you would think? Or is it going to accelerate it and you could make that too? I don’t know.
Matt McBride: Yeah, no. I mean, it’s a great question and an answer that is probably many, many pay grades above me. But no, but what I would say is, not to complicate this, but bull. I mean, I think you’re going to see your companies that aren’t able to adapt. You’re probably going to see them go away. But I think on the other side, you’re going to see some new innovative companies that are going to step in not necessarily their place, but they will step in. Now from a funding perspective, that’s tricky. I mean, like when I was talking to the guy from UCSF earlier, Mark Goldstein, he seemed to say funding is going on… Not to say that this is true for everywhere, but funding from a COVID perspective was looking awesome, looking great, no issues. But then he also said the same thing I just said is where the companies that aren’t able to adapt probably won’t get funded right now. I mean, that’s-
Paul Roberts: We had a show this morning where the guy said… He’s a big sales trainer. And he says, the problem is all these problems do is expose the weaknesses in our system or the weaknesses in our company.
Matt McBride: Right.
Paul Roberts: So it’s a natural, the weak will not survive and the strong will thrive. And that’s always true in everyone. It’s harsh to put it that way, but that’s really what seems to happen.
Matt McBride: Well, it does. And what I would say too, though, is I think in the longterm, moving out a few years, I feel like the weaknesses, as you just said, that we’re seeing might be in the FDA, might be in… I mean, not to say that they don’t do their job correctly, but just to say, do we need to fast track more things? Do we need to get things out quicker? And how does that affect funding?
Paul Roberts: Right. Well, the way we dealt with the crisis [crosstalk 00:33:44] 20 years ago, may not be the way we have to deal with them coming forward here.
Matt McBride: Right.
Tessa Burg: Yeah.
Paul Roberts: Okay. That’s my only thought. And you’re talking about biomed here and on the one hand you think biomed, boy, if anybody was going to put any money into it, I’m putting it into biomed these days here in any way, shape or form. But maybe it’s too early to tell. I don’t know.
Matt McBride: Well, and valuations are different right now just based on where we’re at and investors want to make sure that they’re getting their return on investments. So I think as things settle a little bit and valuations even out, we’ll start seeing a lot more investment. And what I would say is we have a group called a G2G that we work with and they’re government consulting essentially. We have probably 40 plus federal or state opportunities to get funding for these startups. I mean, so I’d say the government has stepped in a good amount to help a lot of these startups and keep them afloat at least for the time being.
Paul Roberts: Okay. Well, it sounds like we’ve morphed into a whole other show. We went way over here, but that’s good stuff.
Tessa Burg: Well, and I was just going to say as a closing thought that I think is really important for anyone in product or business development or marketing, is if you work at a bigger company and you need to pivot and you need to pivot now, start looking at that startup community. As Matt shared, they’re much more agile, they can move faster and they can make those changes much faster in a larger company. The only concern I have is with the larger midsize enterprise businesses, they can’t do that. But they might be producing a small piece of the puzzle. So keep networking, even if we’re not altogether and see where you can be a part of that bigger picture.
Paul Roberts: And get a cool background like I’ve got here on your [inaudible 00:35:33].
Tessa Burg: Yes. I know, not just my office.
Matt McBride: I have an American flag back here.
Paul Roberts: There you go. All right. Take us out, Tessa.
Tessa Burg: Well, thank you, Matt so much for being our guest today. This was extremely interesting and a lot of information to process. And if people want to hear what’s next week, maybe we’ll have someone from the FDA. Actually another good friend of mine works for the FDA.
Paul Roberts: There you go. That’d be fascinating actually.
Tessa Burg: Get another lens on the situation. But if you want to follow RapidTesting.ai, you can we go to Podbean. This will also be turned into a podcast that you can download later and visit tenlo.com to grab that recording. This will also be our last episode is RapidTesting.ai, since the pandemic has changed… Or really rapid testing was already sort of a medical term, but now more so than ever. So we’ll be changing the name to be revealed next month.
Paul Roberts: Stay tuned.
Tessa Burg: Yeah, stay tuned. But it will be the same type of subjects. How do we use data insights in our relationships with partners and customers to accelerate marketing? So still that test and learn data-driven approach will be the subject. And that’s all we got for this week.
Paul Roberts: Test and learn. Those are the new topics of today. No matter what it applies to, test and learn. Everybody wants to test more than ever on everything here suddenly. All right, thanks for joining us here today.
Matt McBride: Thanks.
Paul Roberts: You’ve been listening to another episode here on the Funnel Radio Network, for at-work listeners like you.