Kelvin Crosby: 0:06

Welcome to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast. We're not waiting for change, we're investing in it. Join us as we speak with entrepreneurs and thought leaders that are focused on creating a more accessible world.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:30

Hey, so good to see you, even though I can't see you. It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood and I'm so excited that you're here at Investing in Accessibility, and I'm your host, Calvin Crosby, and my co-host, Chris Maher. How you doing, man?

Chris Maher: 0:45

Good buddy, good to see you and be with you today.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:47

Yeah, I mean, have you ever thought about losing your finger and then thinking about you could replace it with a 3D printer?

Chris Maher: 0:56

No, I haven't until until I met our guest.

Kelvin Crosby: 0:59

I mean that to me seems fascinating, like okay, you lose your finger, and then you could get a new one and it could be 3D printed for you.

Chris Maher: 1:11

Yeah, or you could be born with a limb difference.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:14

Yep, and that is truly a fascinating concept.

Kelvin Crosby: 1:21

So let's figure out who our guest is.

Chris Maher: 1:23

You got it, well, we have the great pleasure today of welcoming someone who I had the good fortune of meeting through a mutual friend, which we'll get into in a second, but let's welcome our guest. And our guest today is Levin Sliker, who is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Point Designs. Welcome Levin.

Levin Sliker: 1:40

Thank you, Chris, thank you, Kelvin. It's great to be here. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Chris Maher: 1:47

Well, it's our pleasure to have you, and the way that Levin and I met several months ago was actually through a mutual contact who is a dear, dear friend of mine, who lives in the Boulder area where Levin is, but a gentleman named Brendan McGuire.

Chris Maher: 2:00

A little shout out to Brendan McGuire, who I actually spoke to earlier this week, but Brendan and I worked together gosh, 20 years ago, and have continued to stay great friends to this day, and he and I were catching up a few months ago. He's like hey, chris, I got to introduce you to this entrepreneur that I know here in Boulder and he's got this amazing company. And so it's amazing how the universe conspires to bring folks together. So good to have you here, Levin. I think where we should start, because you have a unique background and the growth and trajectory of your company, I think, is a little bit different than the normal path of a startup, and so I think let's maybe start with just your personal background, because you came from the world of academia, not really from the world of business initially, and so let's just let you kind of take us from the beginning and the arc of your career and how you came to Point Designs.

Levin Sliker: 2:50

Yeah, I'm going to. Actually I'm going to start even before that because I think it's relevant to the story. I grew up in Colorado Springs, excuse me, and I watched my parents run and operate and own a veterinary hospital and that I think that's relevant later because people always ask me like did you go to business school? Like how'd you learn how to run a business and lead a team and and and do this? And I think my answer has always been I think I just learned it through osmosis as a kid because my parents kind of lived, breathed, worked and I just kind of learned by observing.

Levin Sliker: 3:30

So, bounce forward, you know, 10 or 15 years, I went to University of Colorado, Boulder, for college mechanical engineering. I ended up in school for almost 10 years. I got three degrees from the mechanical engineering department and during grad school I was pulled into a project, or very interested in a project, completely unrelated to prosthetics. I was doing research on the biomechanics of gastrointestinal tissue for surgical robotics in the GI space, And, I've always been drawn to helping people and so the medical device field is a natural way for me to leverage my engineering skills and background and also help people skills and background and also help people. So after graduating from University of Colorado, I then took a faculty position in the bioengineering department on the Anschutz Medical Campus. So same university, different campus and it was there that I started getting involved in assistive technology projects. So I actually worked on a variety of different things from wheelchair systems and seating, fall detection, social assistive robotics and then got involved in this project to develop prosthetic finger technology. So I got pulled in. It was actually a graduate school friend named Jacob Siegel. I went through graduate school with him and his advisor, his PhD advisor, Richard Weir, and then a colleague of ours Richard Stevens. So the four of us co-founded Point Designs in 2016. And kind of leading up to that, we did a lot of the development work in the university, in the university setting, so it kind of enabled us to, you know, we did leverage some university resources to do that work, which kind of helped us kickstart the technology.

Levin Sliker: 5:37

And the need for the technology was born directly from industry. Richard Weir had some longstanding relationships with prosthetists and they started coming to him, knowing the capabilities of his lab at CU and they said we don't have prosthetic fingers that don't break. We need something that doesn't break. And so we set out to do that. And Richard, he had acquired a 3D printer that printed metal and we started designing these finger mechanisms out of 3D printed metal. We worked on that for a couple of years and at one point, the guy who kind of came to him with the idea in the first place said I think it's ready, when can I buy it? And it was at that point where we're like, okay, well, what are the next steps? So that was 2016. And we created a company, we did a few things to get ourselves ready and we sold our first system in January of 2017.

Chris Maher: 6:50

Wow, wow. So thank you for taking us through the the the arc of that journey, and thank you for sharing the story about observing and watching your parents run their business as a child, and so we talk a lot about lived experience on this podcast, and a lot of times it's in relation to disability, but it also can be in relation to entrepreneurship. And so I have no doubt that you watching your parents run their business for those years, because the entrepreneurial journey is not for everyone, and to experience that, I'm sure that you are using lessons and observations from watching them run their business every day, as you're now the CEO of this business. So thank you for sharing that. My first question is, so you incorporated the business in what late 16, 2017, and had a market-ready product that you were selling at that point. How many years was it in development up until that time?

Levin Sliker: 7:54

Yeah, I think we probably started development and I'll be fully transparent here I was not involved in the very first stages of development. I got pulled in probably around 2014. But development started probably 2013, 2012, 2013. So about three years of development, kind of back and forth. I don't know how many prototypes, but about three years of development.

Chris Maher: 8:21

And that was all within Professor Weir, right Within his lab, within the university, kind of being funded through the university during that time, and he's using PhD students to help him develop things,

Kelvin Crosby: 8:36

Well, I mean, what's fascinating is one of my first projects. I did a very similar, not same project, but used the same model. And as this kind of started developing, I'm curious did you guys ever see this becoming a business when you guys were developing this, or was it always like this is just a university project?

Levin Sliker: 8:58

Yeah, I mean. So, honestly, the answer is no. We did not see this as being as successful of a business as as it has become. We were honestly just. You know we're technologists at heart. You know, all four founders are engineers. We like to build cool stuff that makes an impact, and that's really what we set out to do is just like solve a need that we had identified and then, it become aparent

Levin Sliker: 9:31

Well, it became apparent. We always, we always did know the market size, right. There there is a, we knew that the partial hand space, like so people with partial hand amputations, historically have been underserved. They have not had nearly as many options as other levels of amputation or lower limb amputation and the incidence rate is much higher. So there's just a bigger patient population.

Chris Maher: 10:04

Can you give us a sense of the size of that population?

Levin Sliker: 10:07

Yeah, so total number in the US is a little hard to nail down, but annually in the US about 50,000 individuals undergo a partial and amputation traumatically.

Chris Maher: 10:23

And that number is larger than lower limb amputations.

Levin Sliker: 10:29

It's about the same as so in the number of fingers. So you can count it a couple of ways. Number of fingers and number of individuals. And if you look at the number of fingers amputated annually, it's about equivalent to the number of upper leg amputations that happen annually, which is about 120,000 per year.

Kelvin Crosby: 10:53

Wow, Wow. I mean, do you find, as you were doing this research, like was it mind-blowing to you realizing like this is a lot bigger deal? Like my mechanic that works on my wife's car, he's missing half of his finger. I'm like this would be a good product for him, but he just he doesn't want to get anything at the moment. Honestly, now that I think about it, I know firsthand, as I start thinking through this, about 20 people that are missing a finger or part of the hand or something like that. And I mean I wanted to make a joke. As you were saying this, I was like I mean, the amputee hands lifestyle has always been the, the pirate. You know, you got your hook, that's it. You don't got anything else fancy. And I thought this is this, is this is mind blowing to me, Like, like how underserved as you were talking about it. Like this seems like common sense. I think I've heard that before. This seems like common sense, but why hasn't it been done before?

Chris Maher: 12:09

Well, and also the market came to you, came to Professor Weir. So it was obviously a gap in the market, right, it was a problem worth solving.

Levin Sliker: 12:22

Yeah, I mean just in response to what Kelvin was saying. I mean I think you know one of the things that we, the technology is actually relatively simple, right? So you know. You ask the question well, you know, why aren't there more options? The technology is relatively simple, but you know there are a lot of, I guess, there are some barriers to entry, one of them being funding, not on getting the company funded, but on actually getting the devices paid for. Maybe we can get into that more, maybe not, but that is a challenge, it's a barrier. If you don't know that your product is going to get paid for, then why? You know why? Why develop it and put in the resources to develop it.

Levin Sliker: 13:24

And up until recently, actually, I think there's been a misconception out there, even among medical professionals, including surgeons and hand therapists, that a finger amputation is like no big deal.

Levin Sliker: 13:28

In fact, it used to be termed a minor amputation.

Levin Sliker: 13:29

And what we've learned?

Levin Sliker: 13:30

There's been several studies over the past decade or so where it's, just from a physical impairment, It can be quite extreme, but then there's also a large psychosocial component to the impairment as well. And even more so there was a study I think came out of, I think, Hungary, where they looked at, I actually I can't remember exactly where the study came out of, but they looked at a group of people with partial hand amputation and then higher levels of amputation, so transradial or transhumeral, and the group with partial hand amputation self-reported a higher level of disability than those with higher levels of amputation. So that to me tells me that there's a really large psychological component to a partial, any amputation, but really specifically a partial hand amputation. So a lot of what we do is we try to build awareness around just that, that these are not minor amputations. These do have a large impact on someone's ability to do the things they want to do or take care of their family or go back to work, and so that used to be a barrier and I think that barrier is decreasing.

Chris Maher: 14:54

Yeah, yeah, that giving back some more autonomy and independence, which is so important. So Levin, a big decision you had to make in this process, as you folks in 2000, late 16, early 17,. It's like, hey, we're, we're going to commercialize this thing, we're going to turn this into a business. Can you talk about the decision that you made to to jump out of being a professor and be coming

Levin Sliker: 15:18

Yeah, you know, I, I would say I wasn't thriving in the academic environment. It was something that I, you know, I came away with a PhD in mechanical engineering and it was something I kind of felt obligated to try. You know, what do you do with a PhD? A lot of people go into academia and so I felt, you know, I should give it a shot. And I didn't really thrive in that environment. So I was,

Levin Sliker: 15:47

I was already looking for, you know, something else and when this opportunity came up, Jacob, you know, he knew, knew my background, he knew me very well and he was like, hey, do you want to, you know, you want to take this on? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. I'm just kind of I'm, I'm, it's kind of in my, you know, it's who I am. I tend to just go for things like if I, if I'm passionate about it, and I and I want to accomplish something, I you know I get after it and I go for it.

Levin Sliker: 16:24

So, you know, this in my mind was no different and I was like, let's do it, we'll figure it out. So It was actually kind of an easy decision and you know, at the time I was I'm still young, but I was younger and it was a fairly low risk for me, you know personally, and I didn't have a family at that point. So you know, taking a, taking that risk was something that was, that was kind of an easy decision for me.

Chris Maher: 16:54

Yeah, and I think probably that that experience of growing up with your mom and dad and having that, having that entrepreneurial DNA, was probably a part of making that decision easier. So a couple other things that I'd love to dig into with you is talk a little bit about how you actually make the prosthetics and this technology around 3D printing with metal I think most people only think of 3D printing with, like plastic and then how you funded that. Right, because I think what you folks have done is very unique versus many startups, especially in the assistive tech and disability startup space. And so if you could talk a little bit about how you actually make the product and I'm assuming that first product in 2017, you're several generations past that, and so there's been a lot of development and iterations on that and you had to fund that, and so if you could speak to those two things.

Levin Sliker: 17:52

Yeah, definitely. So I'll start with how we did things early on, because it's important.

Levin Sliker: 18:01

It plays into why we were able to do what we did. So I mentioned before Dr. Weir had a, he had a 3D printer in his lab. So we actually set up a, you know, a relationship. We have always have had a good relationship with the university, but we basically treated them as a vendor. So the way that we build these fingers is we we 3D print most of the most of the components out of metal.. You know these, these machines are expensive, million plus dollars and of course you know he had one that, I think, was that the actual purchase of that machine was funded by some VA money. So he had that, you know, in his lab.

Levin Sliker: 18:48

And the way this technology works is that the machine's pretty big. It takes up a, you know, it takes up a room and it's got quite a bit of ancillary equipment required. There's a chamber and inside that chamber is a metal build plate and the machine takes all the oxygen out of that chamber and fills it with an inert gas and then the machine lays down a layer of powdered metal and then there's a laser that comes and centers that layer of metal to the base plate and then another layer of powder gets placed and then more centering, more layer centering, layer centering, and then you eventually have a 3D printed part. That has to be cut off the build plate. So everything's metal. There's no, you know there's, there's not multi-material. You don don't have different support material. The support material is metal. So there's actually a lot of nuance to how you design parts to optimize them for, how they're oriented, how much support material they require in order to get printed, because all that plays into how much post-processing is required after the print is done. There's quite a bit. You've got to cut it off the plate, you've got to remove support material, then you've got to usually grind, and then you know, make it look pretty, and so that's kind of in general how the the parts are made.

Levin Sliker: 20:14

Then there's an assembly process. So in the beginning, you know we had to make a decision like how do we do this, how do we fund this? And we kind of, we never even really considered going after VC money. We just sort of were like, let's try to figure, let's just try to figure it out. We're going to try to make one and then we're going to try to make another. And we were lucky. I guess what What helped enable that is just the relationships that we had. So we used, the , as a vendor and at first we did everything to order. So we'd receive an order from a customer, we'd go print the parts, then we'd have them post-processed, then we'd assemble them, then we'd ship , to the customer, then we'd invoice them. They'd pay us, then we'd pay all our vendors. So we just we set up, you know, really we had generous vendors that had generous payment terms and we just worked really closely with them.

Levin Sliker: 21:16

then we just did that over and over and each time we did that we retained some earnings. We ran really lean. at the beginning . I didn't take a a, nobody took a salary for for, I don't know know, at least a year . we We operated out of Steven's garage and my basement . and And then we just set up these vendor. You know, we just built relationships with vendors and you know we were cash flow positive from pretty much the very beginning and then kind of built on top of that. Now that only gets you so far, because it's really hard. That's a really hard way to do things, as you guys know. When you need, you know eventually we needed more space.

Chris Maher: 22:01

Hard to scale, making one unit at a time.

Levin Sliker: 22:04

Exactly.

Chris Maher: 22:04

But really creative way to start.

Levin Sliker: 22:08

Thanks, exactly, it's hard to scale. It's hard to scale and it's also hard to retain enough to feed back into the business to make improvements and develop more products. So at that point, you know, we because...

Chris Maher: 22:26

So you guys got to remember like, okay, we need a chunk of cash for investing in the production so we can scale, but also you need some, you need some working capital. As a manufacturing company, essentially, you need some working capital too. So like, so, where where'd you go?

Levin Sliker: 22:42

Yeah. So you know, at that point that was when we started kind of considering other options and you know investment versus, you know, other ways that we we knew how to get money and one of those was through grants. Right, we're all academics, we've all survived on grants at one point or another. So there there are a number of different small business innovative research programs through the government. NSF has one, NIH has one, I think the DOD even has one. So we're in the right industry and we have the right background to start applying for some grant funding. And we were successful. So over the last nine years we've raised about 15 million in grant funding and that has also in the last nine years we've developed, we've put six more products on the market. So all that grant funding has resulted in products that have been commercialized, that people are using and wearing and are having an impact. So that's how we leverage, that's how we raised money and for us it's worked really well.

Chris Maher: 23:58

Levin, that's awesome. A couple of questions on that. I know sometimes grant money comes in that is essentially earmarked for just product development, where you can't really pay salaries. I'm assuming some of those grants you could kind of use any way you want so you guys could pay yourself salary, or you had to wait until you were generating some revenue and paid yourself salaries out of revenue.

Levin Sliker: 24:23

Yeah, so it's a little bit of both. You are correct, there are rules about how you can use grant funding and it is earmarked for R&D. Most of the grants we've received have been earmarked for R&D. But you can cover salaries as long as it's R&D salaries. So we did a little bit of both.

Levin Sliker: 24:45

We, you know, we our first hires were engineers. We did not, we did not go out and hire a sales team because we couldn't. We hired engineers to develop more products because that's the type of money that we had coming in. So, yeah, it was a mostly you know grant funding and then and then revenue, right. I mean, as revenue grew, then we were able to, you know, we were able to reinvest the retained earnings from revenue back into, you know, sales and marketing and the things that you can't spend the grant funding on. There's very few options grant funding, although the state of Colorado actually has some nice programs where you can get some limited funding to do some sales and marketing efforts and expansion efforts, import-export stuff.

Kelvin Crosby: 25:38

I mean, as you explain it. I mean I've been doing 3D printing for a while myself and I'm just like, wow, what if I could have had that machine to make my See Me Cane? You know, that would have changed a lot of things for me. But what was interesting, as you talked about your journey on this, is the relationships. And I think this is something that is extremely important for entrepreneurs to fully understand.

Kelvin Crosby: 26:14

Your relationships are the key and that's what's going to be your keys of your success. And I mean that's the same thing with my company, See Me C ane, and really building that out. I mean I'm in a potential opportunity that could be really good for me and as I hear you talk about, all right, this relationship with university and just working that system and it just blows my mind away. Like I didn't realize that this was possible. I mean I think I've heard it in the past just in passing, but the way you described it and the way you scaled, I'm like, wow, this is a whole other way to look at running your business

Levin Sliker: 27:02

Yeah, and you're exactly right, but I will say I think the stars aligned for us. Because it's a whole other way, but it's actually quite difficult to kind of put all these pieces in place. And for us it's just kind of I think it just kind of all lined up kind of perfectly for us and it was like the right, you know, the right application, the right market, the right application, the right time, all those things kind of kind of aligned. And then to build on your comment about relationships. I think most entrepreneurs and founders will echo the importance. But for us it was, it was really forced, right, we did this because we had to. I mean, we ran so lean in the beginning and and I wore, you know, most of the hats, if not all the hats.

Levin Sliker: 28:00

And you know one thing, I think it's so important for founders to get out there and be selling the product and talking to the customers for as long and as much as you can, especially in the early days, because you're building those relationships that will hopefully be longstanding relationships and may generate real opportunity in the future. And then you're also getting feedback. You know quick feedback on your product and one of the really big benefits of additive manufacturing is you can make design changes quickly without a huge amount of cost. You don't have to do any retooling or invest in new molds. You can make changes on the fly. So we did a lot of that in the early days as we realized what was working, what wasn't working, what was failing, the feedback we got and we made really quick iterations and we adapted to the customer's needs very quickly and I think that also contributed to our success and the reputation that we built for ourselves.

Chris Maher: 29:06

Yeah, I think you raised a couple of really good points there, Levin. The founder sales is essential. I think those founders that don't want to be out there in the market selling in the beginning and, as you say, one, let's assume, the founder is the most knowledgeable person about the product likely, but to be out there not only doing the selling, but it's that feedback you're hearing from the market that is so essential and then incorporating that, bringing that back to your product team. And your business, because it is the 3d printing, it just sounds like you were incredibly agile and flexible and that is a that is super unique to a hardware business. I mean a lot of people. It's like, oh, we've got to get tooling and molds and we're having it made in China or Vietnam or some manufacturing partner that's in another country and you're doing everything here, initially at university. Now, I think, do you have a factory in? Is it Utah?

Levin Sliker: 30:01

Yeah, we have a location in Colorado and Utah and we actually do different things there. But, yeah, we're now manufacturing. So we moved from the university, we outgrew that one machine and we had to find new partners. So we found a few vendors that we've worked with very well over the years and, most recently, our big effort the last year is actually bringing a lot of that manufacturing in-house. So now we have our own machines, we're printing parts in-house and finishing them in-house, so everything happens, it comes in. We start with raw titanium powder and we finish all in the same building with built titanium fingers.

Chris Maher: 30:44

That's amazing. That's amazing. So let's, let's shift gears a little bit to go to market, right? So you mentioned before like we raised money but like it really had to be earmarked for, like our engineering and product teams and we really couldn't hire salespeople. So, can you talk a little bit about how you went to market? I'm assuming maybe through partners. You know channels, but also you're considered a medical device and so can you talk about navigating that? Is it class one, is it class two? Kind of that whole process, as well as finding partners to bring it to market so you could scale your revenue.

Levin Sliker: 31:18

Yeah, all good question. So I'll start with the regulatory side. We are fortunate that we're basically the lowest class, lowest risk, class one device you can get. So what that means is we, you know, we do have to have a quality system established, but we are GMP, so just good manufacturing practices exempt, 510k exempt. So you know, really, from a regulatory standpoint it doesn't get much easier. You have to register and pay your dues and then maintain a quality system that's in compliance with regulations. So that is definitely a hurdle that that, you know, could regulatory. The regulatory pathway can stop companies in their tracks and so if that pathway had been different or more complex, we probably wouldn't have been able to do what we did.

Levin Sliker: 32:21

So and then to answer your second question about you know how did we go to market? We had relationships with the largest prosthetic clinical care provider in the US, a company called Hanger Clinic. They've got about now probably 950 clinics across the United States. Back then I think it was maybe 700. So that was kind of low hanging fruit, right. We had relationships with them. So that was our first customer and they've, you know, they've continued to be a great partner ever since.

Levin Sliker: 33:01

So that was a really, you know, through a basically single partnership, we were able to really kind of ramp up sales fairly quickly. And then, of course, we established relationships with other clinical care providers that we knew to be, you know, early adopters of technology like this, and so that's kind of how we started. In the U S we've always done direct sales. It's a relatively complicated product. And so it's difficult to go through, you know, distribution partners who just, you know, they've got a lot of different products that they're trying to rep and there's a lot of education that has, you know, comes along with selling and providing this kind of product. So, we've always done direct sales in the U S and we've just kind of built up our customer base organically throughout the years.

Chris Maher: 33:56

And Levin quickly, is that direct sales to consumers or to like rehabilitation centers?

Levin Sliker: 34:05

Good question. Direct sales to prosthetic clinics very specifically. So sometimes those clinics are within a hospital system, sometimes they're at a rehab center. But yeah, it's a prosthetic clinic. They're staffed by certified prosthetists. So you know, to get a certified, to get a certification in prosthetics and orthotics, you go through a master's program and pass, you know it's a board certification process, residency, and so that's who we sell to, that's our customer. We don't sell directly to consumers. It's actually quite a, it requires a lot of clinical expertise to fit these devices well and get good outcomes. So we've actually only talked about the finger so far. But what is equally, if not more important, is how that device interfaces with the patient's residual hand, and that happens through what we call a socket. So a prosthetic socket is usually made up of a soft inner liner that interfaces with the skin. We build that out of silicone and then a frame of some kind. Traditionally it's been like a carbon fiber laminated frame, but more recently we've started to leverage additive manufacturing. So we print them out of nylon, so like multi-jet fusion technology, and then the fingers bolt onto that. So that whole process of creating a socket interface that fits well, it's comfortable, it suspends adequately.

Levin Sliker: 35:49

When we say suspension, that means how well does it stay on. If you go to put your prosthesis on and then go pick up a bucket, you don't want the prosthesis to just slip off your hand. So there's a lot of clinical techniques. Prosthetists have to have a very good understanding of anatomy and the techniques necessary to make a well-fitting prosthesis and also align the fingers, right. So each finger has to be aligned on the socket so that patient can do what they want to do. So yeah, that's why we you know we will never sell directly to consumers because we can't. You know that there has to be that layer of clinical expertise to deliver these devices and get good outcome

Kelvin Crosby: 36:37

Yeah, I mean here's the other question I have is how are you using AI to help you with this workflow? I mean, this sounds very complicated.

Levin Sliker: 36:48

It's a really good question. It's one that's kind of in flux, right. You know, AI is such a fast paced. It's just so fast paced right now. You know we're constantly trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. But yeah, we do incorporate it as much as we can and we're trying to incorporate it more and more. You know it's interesting. Every single prosthesis we make is unique, right? No amputation is exactly like another. So there's a lot of manual steps involved and there's a lot of customization involved in making a prosthesis. But it is ripe for, I think, disruption by AI and we've got some ideas that we're working on to implement it.

Chris Maher: 37:47

Yeah, that's super exciting. So, Levin, everything you just shared. First of all, it's fascinating. I could talk to you for hours about hearing about how you make these prosthetics. It's just amazing, but it sounds like It's not cheap, and so how does the end user pay for this? I mean, you're giving people a prosthetic that can be transformative for their lives, but how are they paying for it?

Levin Sliker: 38:13

It's a really good question. We have kind of three pillars in how we conduct business right. So we have a mission and then we have these three kind of pillars of activities that we do to accomplish that mission. And the first is innovation. I think we've kind of talked somewhat about that. The second is education, which we've talked a little bit about building awareness and just educating people.

Levin Sliker: 38:40

And the third is advocacy. And so we have taken it upon ourselves to advocate for this patient population because historically it's been underserved, and part of the reason for that is there have not been clear ways for these devices to get paid for. The majority of cases that we get involved with are work injuries where there's a workers compensation company or insurance that kicks in. They've actually been incredibly supportive of what we're doing. They understand the value and so they are willing to pay for devices like these because they see that these devices enable people to get back to work, which is what everybody wants in that kind of situation. So that's really kind of the majority of cases that we deal with, but that leaves a big group of people that still don't have access to these devices.

Levin Sliker: 39:44

So one of the things we've been working on very hard over the last two years is to establish some new billing codes. So to do this, you have to work with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. You have to apply for new codes, show up to public hearings. It's a lot of work and there's two applications per year, so you get two chances per year to submit for new codes. So over the last two years we've worked very hard and we've started to make some progress.

Levin Sliker: 40:16

So this early 2025, we did get some new codes established for the socket level, so the socket that I was just describing. We got some new codes established for that component or part of the prosthesis and then we're working on getting some codes established for the terminal devices or the actual fingers themselves. So we're really excited about it. That means you know, once that happens, it means access is is opened for a bigger part of the patient population. So right now you know insurance, insurance. Our goal is to have insurance cover all of these devices. So currently mostly workers' compensation, but some private insurance will also fund these devices. But ultimately we hope to have billing codes established with CMS.

Chris Maher: 41:14

Yeah Well, your mission is fantastic and kudos to you guys, and it sounds like you've done a really good job of balancing the entrepreneurship, the commercialization and the advocacy. Kelvin and I we're going to do an episode about advocacy and entrepreneurship because I think all of the, especially with the work I'm doing right now with the Samaritan Fund, all the entrepreneurs that I talk to are trying to balance that entrepreneurship versus the advocacy. But it sounds like you guys have done a really good job, so congratulations and just fantastic. I've got a couple quick questions before we wrap things up here. On the funding side of things, the route you took, and I'm making an assumption here, but tell me if I'm wrong, probably a little bit slower of a process in terms of your growth and your journey. In hindsight, would you do it differently and take, say, venture money or other private capital to accelerate things, or would you do it the way you did again?

Levin Sliker: 42:18

I think I'd do it the same way. And a couple of reasons for that. I mean, the slow growth is, you know, it's okay if you're okay with it. And as founders we were okay with it. It enabled us to kind of focus on, you know, like we sort of had a little bit more time to make some of these decisions. Our team grew a little bit slower, so we were able to establish the culture that we wanted within our organization. You know, all those things become harder when you scale quickly. Right. It's really hard to scale and maintain the culture that you want. So, yeah, I think I'd do things the same.

Chris Maher: 43:08

Very thoughtful process you went through and and I admire that greatly. The the next question is I guess, maybe advice or tips for entrepreneurs that maybe aren't, as I mean, you folks now have scaled and you're in the millions of dollars of revenue and I've been at this for coming up on the better part of a decade. Any words of wisdom for the entrepreneurs out there and maybe specifically in kind of that medical device space that are embarking on that journey and that are at an earlier stage, any advice or words of wisdom for them?

Levin Sliker: 43:39

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think one of the things that helped me is just surrounding myself with good people that shared the mission or shared the passion for the mission and also had complementary skill sets to my own. That really set us up for success. And you know, having kind of carefully picking who you, who you work with. So the first thing you have to do is decide, you know, are you going to have co-founders and who are those co-founders going to be? That can have a huge impact on on how successful you are.

Levin Sliker: 44:22

The co-founder dynamics, I think, are sort of under, you know, I think things can go really badly. I think it's sort of underplayed sometimes how important it is to have, you know, good people by your side, and I was very fortunate to have amazing co-founders. We all have really great relationships today. We all still work together. You know we're all still involved. And then and then you know, to that point it's like who do you hire, right? And the next step is like who do you hire and who do you work and who do you choose to work with?

Levin Sliker: 45:10

So I think I've always felt that what we have done and accomplished wouldn't be possible without the people. Like I didn't do this by myself, like it was me and, you know, three other co-founders and then a great team of people that we assembled. So it's it's really for me, it's like it's all about the people that you put together, and so I think that's been the most helpful for me.

Chris Maher: 45:30

Gotcha. Kelvin, any final questions before I ask Levin...

Kelvin Crosby: 45:34

I am just fascinated.

Chris Maher: 45:37

it really is.

Kelvin Crosby: 45:38

I'm just like this is awesome.

Chris Maher: 45:41

We're going to put in the show notes where people can go see these products. These prosthetics are incredible. But, Kelvin, do you have any final questions for Levin before we let him go and we ask him how people can connect with them?

Kelvin Crosby: 45:55

No, how can people connect with you?

Chris Maher: 45:59

Levin, how can people connect with you?

Levin Sliker: 46:02

I mean, I'm not super active on social media, but I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit, so find me on LinkedIn, connect with me, shoot me a message, tell me you heard the podcast and that's probably the best way to connect with me. And come check out our website, wwwpointdesignscom, check out what we're doing and, yeah, I would be happy to connect and talk. Prosthetics.

Chris Maher: 46:29

Awesome. Well, Levin has been an absolute pleasure, my friend, Thank you so much and and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon.

Levin Sliker: 46:36

Yeah, thanks, Chris and Kelvin, it's been great.

Kelvin Crosby: 46:39

That wraps up Investing in Accessibility and go live beyond your challenges and we'll see you in two weeks.

Kelvin Crosby: 46:50

Thank you for listening to Investing in Accessibility, a Samaritan Partners podcast where we invest in change for accessibility, not wait for change. If you want to follow us, you can find us on youtube or LinkedIn at @Samaritan Partners. If you would like to invest in Samaritan Partners, email Chris at chris@samaritanpartners. com. If you'd like to learn more about us, go to www. samaritanpartners. com. You can take the first step in investing in change by giving us five stars and sharing this podcast with everybody that you know, so we can spread the word, so that we can give access to all, by Investing in Accessibility.