Securing capital and forming strategic partnerships are crucial at multiple stages of a MedTech company’s growth. This panel will bring together strategic leaders and investors as they share how companies can effectively attract and secure funding from inception through to market entry and beyond. They'll also highlight the importance of early planning for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and partnerships, providing a roadmap for companies to align with larger organizations and better position themselves for successful exits or accelerated growth.
Greg Banker is a Partner at Vensana Capital. Greg brings over a decade of investing, operating, and consulting experience to Vensana. Prior to joining Vensana, Greg served as Director of Strategic Market Development at Vertiflex, an interventional spine medical device company that was acquired by Boston Scientific in 2019. Greg's prior experience includes his work as an Associate Director at Navigant Consulting, where he advised medtech CEOs and boards of directors on over two dozen strategic market assessments across a range of sectors including cardiology, interventional pain, orthopedics, neurology, and robotic surgery. Greg currently serves on the board of directors of Artelon and Elucent Medical. He graduated with a BS in Biology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Aftab serves as Chief Medical Officer and Managing Director of Ajax Health. He also serves on the board of current Ajax companies Cortica, Endovascular Engineering, Puzzle Medical, and XII Medical. He additionally serves as Chairman of Summus Global and on the Board of Visitors of Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to Ajax, Aftab was a Partner at Aisling Capital, a life science-dedicated investment fund in New York, where he continues to serve as an Operating Partner. While at Aisling, Aftab was actively involved with all aspects of sourcing, diligence, and managing investments in several private and public medtech, biopharma, and diagnostic companies. His historic board involvement includes companies such as Arcus Biosciences (NYSE:RCUS), Loxo Oncology (acquired by Eli Lilly), Spirox (acquired by Entellus), Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:SYRS), and TransEnterix (NYSE:TRXC). Prior to Aisling, Aftab was an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, where he was a member of the Pharmaceutical, Medical Product, and Private Equity practices. Before that, Aftab was a Chief Resident in Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, where he completed his residency in general surgery. He also completed a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship investigating treatments for heart failure, valve disease, and arrhythmia at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons. While at Columbia, he served as an organ procurement fellow as part of the cardiothoracic transplantation team of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Aftab received his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine, where he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship recipient, and his B.S. in Biology and A.B. in Economics from Duke University, awarded magna cum laude and graduating Phi Beta Kappa.
Erik Anderson was promoted to President, Breast & Skeletal Health Solutions in September 2022. He joined Hologic’s Breast & Skeletal Health Division in 2014 as Regional Sales Manager for the Upper Midwest, then was promoted to Area Business Director. In 2017, Mr. Anderson took over as Vice President of Sales for Hologic’s Medical Aesthetics business amid turbulent times, stabilizing and rebuilding the team while also impacting the broader business, leading to his promotion to President of Medical Aesthetics in 2019. He led the business while also leading Hologic’s divestiture of Cynosure and its transition to new ownership. Erik rejoined Hologic as Vice President, Global Service Initiative and Breast & Skeletal Health Field Service/Technical Support in early 2020, and was promoted to President, Global Services in August 2021. Prior to joining Hologic, Mr. Anderson worked at ImpediMed and Stryker Instruments. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Iowa State University, where he was a 4-year letter winner and captain of the football team.
Merit Medical’s endoscopy team suddenly found themselves responsible for selling a product outside of their current call points. Hear Niki Kennedy, VP of Sales at Merit Medical Endoscopy, share how they used AcuityMD to get a more accurate picture of surgical procedure volumes and identify opportunities for expansion within their accounts. Learn how, armed with this new information, the team was able to optimize territories and recapture business from competitors.
MedTech sales operations teams often work on time-consuming tasks such as CRM management and data requests, but that’s essentially just “the basics.” In this session, Ralph Beentjes, Vice President Sales Operations & Customer Relations at Intrinsic Therapeutics, shares how, with the right mix of technology and high-quality data, sales ops teams can play a more strategic role in their company’s growth, elevate their partnership with sales, and have the bandwidth to lead more innovative, forward-thinking projects.
Intellijoint, a high-growth orthopedics company, needed a better way to manage their contracts and share information with their field teams. They decided to implement AcuityMD Contracts as an early adopter to streamline this process. Alex McLachlan, VP of Sales at Intellijoint, will walk through how deploying Contracts to their sales teams has improved both targeting and opportunity management, leading to faster sales cycles and better opportunity management.
Many companies struggle with CRM implementation and adoption. Hear how this top 10 MedTech company moved off of Salesforce and onto AcuityMD Pipeline to track opportunities and get an end-to-end view of their sales cycle. They’ll also walk through how they got their sales team to adopt and consistently use this new module, expanding their opportunities and landing more revenue.
LivsMed provides wristed articulating robotic instruments that offer tremendous value for complicated surgeries in laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgery. However, finding the right surgeons and procedures was difficult for their lean sales team. Learn how they went live with AcuityMD Targeting, then quickly expanded their investment to encompass the entire AcuityMD platform, including managing their pipeline and operationalizing their contracts so they can scale effectively.
For a medtech company to be successful, sales needs to be one step ahead of their customer needs. That can be challenging with so many moving pieces, disparate data, and competing priorities. Hear how one Fortune 500 medical device company aligned their focus by using AcuityMD to prioritize targets, guide territory planning, set and manage quotas, and more. Hear how Sales Manager Danielle D'Amico arms her team with better insights to ensure cross-team alignment and hit company goals.
Niki Kennedy is the Vice President of Sales for the Endoscopy division at Merit Medical, a leading manufacturer of proprietary disposable medical devices. Since joining Merit’s Endoscopy division—which integrates non-vascular stent technology with tools like inflation devices, dilation balloons, and guide wires—Niki has driven significant sales growth and built top-performing teams, playing a central role in advancing the division's success in the medical device industry.
Alex McLachlan is the Director of Sales - US at Intellijoint Surgical Inc., which advances orthopedic surgery by developing solutions for total joint replacements. At Intellijoint, Alex leads initiatives to grow revenue and market presence by promoting groundbreaking medical technologies. With over 18 years in medical device sales and marketing at top MedTech companies like Stryker and Olympus, Alex has expertise in launching innovative products such as MAKO & ROSA robotic systems and AI-enhanced diagnostic tools.
Stephen Jarrells is the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at LivsMed, a global medical device company that creates innovative laparoscopic instruments to treat diseases. With 25 years of experience across various medical device specialties spanning companies like Covidien and Boston Scientific, Stephen has held leadership roles from VP of Sales to overseeing GPO/IDN National Account teams. He has successfully launched numerous surgical devices globally, spearheading strategic go-to-market plans that generated millions in new revenue.
Ralph Beentjes is the Vice President of Sales Operations and Customer Relations at Intrinsic Therapeutics, Inc., a medical device company focused on preventing reherniation and reoperation following lumbar discectomy. With a robust track record that includes pivotal roles at MicroPort Orthopedics and Wright Medical Technology, Ralph has overseen strategic sales operations initiatives across global teams.
Danielle D'Amico is a Sales Manager for a Fortune 500 Medical Device Company
Vince Fath is the VP Americas, Advanced Surgery at Baxter
Michael Monovoukas is the co-founder and CEO of AcuityMD. Prior to launching AcuityMD, he was a medtech entrepreneur. He also held a leadership role at PatientPing, a leading provider of Care Coordination software. Michael started his career as a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he advised leading life sciences companies on growth and commercial strategy. Michael was recently named one of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. He received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and his B.A. in Public Policy and Finance from Princeton University.
Join us as we close out Flywheel 2024 with poker games, blackjack, and a world-class magician. Robb Weinstock has been performing corporate close-up magic for over 20 years. In addition to winning five state championships for his comedic patter and highly technical sleight-of-hand magic, Robb performed for 8 years with the Spike & Hammer comedy magic team which he co-created with Las Vegas headliner Mike Hammer.
He is a performing member at Hollywood’s World Famous Magic Castle in which he won an unprecedented two back-to-back close-up strolling magic competitions against the best in the industry in 2016.
