Compassion, Courage, and Creativity: Meet Raydiant Oximetry's Founder & CEO, Dr. Neil Ray, and President & COO, Russ DeLonzor

Co-hosts Yolanda Fintschenko (Startup Tri-Valley) and Lynn Naylor (Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group) continue the Startup Tri-Valley #GameChangers podcast series with a conversation with two leaders from Raydiant Oximetry , a #GameChangers 2022 award-winning company,  Neil Ray, MD, Founder and CEO  and Russ DeLonzor, President and COO. 

The Raydiant Oximetry team is dedicated to improving women's and fetal health by preventing unnecessary Caesarian sections with a more accurate measurement of fetal distress during delivery using Raydiant's novel, non-invasive fetal pulse oximetry technology. 

Dr. Neil Ray is a pediatric anesthesiologist who observed the number of unneeded C-sections he was performing due to the lack of quality fetal pulse oximetry data during delivery.  Inspired by the ability to make non-invasive oxygen measurements in the brain, he decided to leave his medical practice and form a company devoted to taking a more reliable fetal pulse oximeter to the market. He has lead Raydiant Oximetry since 2016 as founder and CEO. 

Russ DeLonzor has had the good fortune of spending his entire career in the Bay Area developing and commercializing products that improve lives. He is experienced in leading teams in a broad range of organizational settings - from early start-up to Fortune 100, from pre-clinical through multi-million dollar commercial success. He currently serves as President and COO of Raydiant Oximetry, a recent graduate of the Fogarty Institute for Innovation, focused on developing a breakthrough technology for keeping mothers and babies safe during childbirth through transabdominal fetal pulse oximetry. 

Transcript

Yolanda Fintschenko
This is the Startup Tri-Valley podcast, featuring in-depth conversations with the leaders who are making the Tri-Valley, the go-to ecosystem for science-based startups. I'm Yolanda Fintschenko from Startup Tri-Valley.

Lynn Naylor
And I'm Lynn Naylor, CEO of the Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group.

Yolanda Fintschenko
We're excited to cohost the special series highlighting winners of the Innovation Tri-Valley's #GameChangers Award. These startup founders were recognized in 2022 for their local leadership with a global impact.

Yolanda/Lynn together
Welcome to the Startup Tri-Valley podcast #GameChangers edition.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Welcome to the Startup Tri-Valley podcast. I'm here today with my co-host Lynn Naylor from Innovation Tri-Valley Leadership Group.

Lynn Naylor
Good morning, Yolanda.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Good morning, Lynn. And we are just so excited and thrilled to be welcoming two guests today, both from Raydiant Oximetry. Dr. Neil Ray, founder and CEO of Raydiant Oximetry and Russ DeLonzor, president and COO of Raydiant Oximetry. Neil and Russ, welcome.

Lynn Naylor
Thanks.

Neil Ray
Thanks for having us.

Yolanda Fintschenko
So we were just talking before the pod started, how excited we are about what Raydiant Oximetry is doing. So I think as a very first step, it would be incredibly helpful if you could tell the audience about the problem Raydiant technology is solving and the progress that you've made.

Neil Ray
Sure I can start. So my name is Neil Ray. I'm a pediatric anesthesiologist by training. Practiced for about 20 years before I came up with the idea to develop Raydiant Oximetry. And the problem that we're addressing is, the monitors that are used during childbirth to make sure the baby is doing okay during labor contractions, that monitor has an accuracy of a coin toss in predicting fetal distress.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Wow.

Neil Ray
It's been around for over 50 years. There's been no innovation in the space and it literally has an accuracy of a coin toss, telling you if your baby's okay or not. And what happens as a result of that is we do a lot of C-sections because we think the baby's in trouble when they're not. And the analogy I use is kind of like if your smoke detector in your house went off because it thought there was a fire, but there actually wasn't a fire, imagine what that would be like.

So that happens a lot. C-section rates have gone up over 400% in the last 40 years and a big reason for that is the monitors that are used and they're not benign procedures. Not only do they drive up cost, but they have risks to both mom and baby. And so we at Raydiant Oximetry, we're developing a new type of fetal monitor to help reduce unnecessary C-sections, but also more accurately identify the distressed baby. So when the baby is in trouble, we can make that diagnosis definitively and rescue them before bad things happen to them.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Wow. That's so needed. Thank you for that explanation. So this is clearly a problem of global impact, and I'm curious now, what have you been able to do uniquely? Why do we have Raydiant technology here in Pleasanton that is transforming this global problem locally?

Neil Ray
Yeah. So getting back to that monitor, the fetal heart rate monitor, it's been around for 50 years and there's been no innovation in the space. And the way that technology works, it looks at the baby's heart rate to figure out if the baby's in trouble or not. We're doing something different at Raydiant. We're not looking at the heart rate of the baby, but rather the oxygen saturation, because we all know in healthcare that oxygen saturation is a better detector of distress than changes in the heart rate. And it just so happened that a company called Nellcor Corporation was born in the Tri-Valley 30, 40 years ago, and a lot of the brains behind this technology just happened to be in this area and I'll let Russ...

Russ DeLonzor
Sure.

Lynn Naylor
Yeah, yeah.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. And I'll just mention that... So my job, I've just had the fortune of working in medical devices here in the Tri-Valley for the last 30 years. And pretty much the last half of my career, I've spent partnering with really smart, motivated clinicians like Dr. Ray and helping them bring their concepts to life, and commercialize these things that might have a big impact like this. So when I heard about the opportunity, I just had to help out with this. We worked in fetal pulse oximetry quite a while ago, but the project... We were acquired by a large company that really just wanted to harvest that business, so we stopped the project. And it requires people like Neil to come along and challenge that status quo and say, we've got to have something better. And you know, that's really what it takes here is just that spark of innovation.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's amazing. And I know that's exactly why Lynn and her group nominated you guys for #GameChangers. Right, Lynn?

Lynn Naylor
Yeah. We are so thrilled to have the chance to talk to you about the rest of the paragraph. We met you at #GameChangers and got to learn about this incredible organization and startup that you're driving to change so many important things for families all around the world. And really honored to meet you at that event that calls out people who are making life changing advances right here from our region. So really excited for ITV and Startup Tri-Valley to shine a light on you today and hear more about what drove the journey. How did this begin? How did your journey begin? What inspired you and what keeps you going every day?

Neil Ray
So I can remember the moment I thought of this idea. So imagine, I'm an anesthesiologist and I'm on call, and I'm on call from home. And you get that phone call in the middle of the night, you need to rush in to do a emergency C-section. And literally you're half awake, you're trying to get your clothes on, get your shoes on, get in your car. You drive like a maniac, literally putting your life at risk getting to the hospital. Then when you get there, you've got to give anesthesia and get this baby out as quickly as possible. So there's no room for error, seconds count because the baby's suspected to not be getting enough oxygen to the brain. You go through that whole ordeal and you realize it was a false alarm. The monitor was wrong, the baby was okay, but you just went through this.

Not only did you put your life at risk, you put that mom's life at risk going through that exercise. So I remember thinking there's got to be a better way to assess the baby. And one of the technologies we use in anesthesia is to monitor brain oxygen. When you do heart surgery, you stop the heart and lungs and you put the patient on a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, and then you need to assess whether you're giving the brain enough blood flow. And one of the ways you can do that is with a brain oxygen monitor. And I thought to myself, if we can monitor brain oxygen through a skull, why can't we monitor baby's oxygen through the maternal abdomen? So that was that idea that made me think there's got to be a better way.

But I didn't have a network. I'm not an engineer by training and I didn't know how to start taking this idea from concept to reality. And so I started pounding the pavement, building out my network, talking to people. And we, at the time, this was 2017, had gotten into a medical device accelerator called the Fogarty Institute for Innovation. And it was through the Fogarty Institute that I was able to start building my network. And that's how I got connected to Russ and Russ can elaborate on that a little bit more.

Russ DeLonzor
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It seems like everything goes back to Nellcor. That was such a big part of my life and career and actually med tech here in the Tri-Valley. But way before that, my interest in biomedical engineering really started out of necessity. When really early on my brother and I were teenagers growing up in the Napa Valley and he had a spinal cord injury diving into a swimming hole up there on one of these drought years. Just like now, the water was a little low and he hit his head and was a quadriplegic. And we spent a lot of time tinkering in the garage, just working on things that would help him with the daily living and doing things he enjoys. And he's just always been an inspiration in how positive attitude and good humor can get through anything and just inspired us. His daughter, my sons, myself, our families, he's just always been there for us.

And when he went off to Sac State, I went up there for biomedical engineering, graduated and came down to work for Nellcor, a little kind of a startup doing pulse oximetry, which pretty much everybody's used to now, right? It's the sensor that goes on your finger and shines light and determines your oxygen saturation. So it just grew like wild fire and the company grew and grew and grew and I just had so much fun growing with that. Eventually we were acquired by Tyco International and we had a project that Neil was talking about that we were moving over towards fetal pulse oximetry, but it was a little too long range so Tyco shut the project down and kind of clipped the wings of R&D in general. And I said, "All right, that I'm done with that." And really went back to my passion of working early stage with founders like Neil.

And when I heard Neil was taking this on again, "Oh my God, we've got to do this." Because this is the opportunity to do, just like pulse oximetry did for everyone else in the hospital, we can do the same thing for the fetus. So just thrilled to get involved in that. We have the benefit that because Nellcor was here in the Tri-Valley and it was pretty big when they finally moved it out to Boulder, everybody has really stayed out here; it's such a great place to live. So it's been really easy to collect up the team of engineers and other specialists that it's going to take to get this done. And we're working with biophotonics researchers from all around the planet, and it's still a tough challenge. It's much more challenging to deal with all the different maternal characteristics as opposed to just working on a finger, so that's really where the magic is in this being able to tease out that fetal signal regardless of the maternal layers. So that's kind of where we're at now.

Lynn Naylor
So I've got to just jump on that. So people want to live here, Yolanda.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Right, they do want to live here.

Lynn Naylor
So that's, why do want to have some of the most effective entrepreneurs and startups coming out of this region, because as you just said, people stayed and they want to live here...

Russ DeLonzor
They do.

Lynn Naylor
And they want to engage in important work. That's a great story.

Neil Ray
They want to live here and they want to work here. They don't want to have to cross the bridge and be in the car an hour and a half each way.

Russ DeLonzor
Which is kind of funny, because I didn't want to live here back then. My wife and I, we were going to Sac State and we came down to work for Nellcor, which was in Hayward. So we moved to Union City and we were bursting at the seams so looked around for where to put their headquarters and arrived at Hacienda because at the time it was really inexpensive and plenty of room and a lot of engineers were commuting over the Altamont and it seemed good. But yeah, I'm a young engineer and I think 99% of the jobs are out on the peninsula and South Bay. If we move out here and something happens to the company, I'm going to be driving down there and that's going to be horrible.

And my wife was a nurse at San Ramon Regional and once she saw how great this area is in every respect, and especially it's schools. We had young kids about ready to go to school so she said, "We're moving." And I fought and fought and fought, finally I gave in and best decision we ever made. You know, our sons grew up in the Dougherty Valley and through all those changes. And my oldest is the first graduating class at Dougherty Valley.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Oh wow.

Russ DeLonzor
And it's just been such a incredible place to raise a family.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's great. So we won you over.

Russ DeLonzor
Oh my gosh yes. And then the ecosystem has developed so much too. Back then, it really was kind of on the edge of the tech universe and a lot of pieces were missing, especially investors. There were no venture capitalists, you still had to go to Santa Road, Palo Alto to raise money. And finally that's starting to change, but really it's just completely filled out here as far as having everything you need to have a startup here.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's great to hear and coming out of the pandemic where you did have a lot of remote work, I'm assuming for something like Raydiant Oximetry's product, you have to have a lot of in person work. How are you seeing the impact of the pandemic playing out in terms of that value proposition in living here, working here, changing? Or is it not changing at all?

Russ DeLonzor
No, I think it has, we were very virtual. We had a small office at Bishop Ranch and we made it work, but part of it was because, a good thing technology had come along, you've got Zoom and Teams and all that so you can collaborate much more effectively. But the other part was, at that stage in the company, we were really only bringing together folks that have worked on this project before. People we know and have worked well together in the past. So much easier, you don't go through that whole norming, storming of that aspect of the project. So I don't know if we would've been as successful had it not been, we were only looking for people with a lot of experience that we all had worked with before. Now with coming out of the pandemic, we expanded quite a bit over in Bishop Ranch and it's great. We're getting back together, having those in person meetings, and it's just so much more effective and having a lab you can work in instead of my garage and...

Yolanda Fintschenko
Right.

Russ DeLonzor
It's just so much better. But it is something about this area I think is going to be one of their strengths, is that, where a lot of folks did maybe move off to Tahoe, thinking remote is going to be around forever. That's a little too far away, where right here in the Tri-Valley, we can still pop down to the Fogarty Institute for meetings. You know, it's great, no commute, everyone lives here, but it's still accessible to the rest of The Bay area when you need to. So I think that's going to be really a strength here.

Neil Ray
I think we've been able to build a neat culture too at our company because it's an East Bay company in the Tri-Valley with folks that live in the Tri-Valley. So they're local, they're really local. They get it and you build a different kind of culture when it's so local and invested in this area.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's such a good point. Yeah. And it leaves, I'm sure, you and your employees a lot more bandwidth to participate in the community. And I'm curious if you've seen that shape your business? Maybe it's just your culture or does it shape your business? Does it shape your culture? Does it shape you personally having that feeling of, not only am I living local, but if one of my employees wants to have Raydiant support their local team or...? Is there some element of that community interaction that you find valuable, either personally or for your business?

Neil Ray
I think it makes us competitive. You know, we're a small startup and you've got these very well-to-do tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and we're competing for resources with these big companies that can offer much bigger salary than we can. But we've got something to offer that they can't, which is a culture. We're based in the Tri-Valley, people who work with us are all local and maybe we can't offer the same salary, but we can offer a tremendous amount of job satisfaction. So we're able to hire some key resources, really incredible people, hire them away from these big tech companies because they value what we offer, which is different than just a financial package.

Russ DeLonzor
For sure. Yeah. And the whole live where you work kind of a thing is just been such an important part of my life and a lot of the folks that I work with, where I can go work a hard day and zip home for... Coach a little league game, then get back to work if I need to and that kind of thing. And all the dads that are driving down to San Jose, it's like, lucky if you're home by the last inning, so that's just been such a part of my life and others here. And yeah, even still now, one of our most recent hires, Eric Johansson, our VP of R&D we just hired, and he doesn't have to drive to the South Bay anymore or Fremont. And it's life-changing when you don't have to do that, there's just so much more life balance that way.

Neil Ray
And then Martin rides his bike.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. I think Martin rides his bike. Yeah. Yeah. And just getting back into the swing where... Nellcor was just really a special culture too, and partly because we were here and grew up in the Tri-Valley and everyone was part of the community, where 30 years later, we're still having quarterly get togethers. Had to kind of put that on pause, but now we're starting to do that again and just same thing with Raydiant. We can start having backyard barbecues and just socializing a lot more. So it's just all our part of that community.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's great. I know we're going to come back to this, but I did want to get, while we're talking about the Tri-Valley, just curious if there are a lot of new companies starting right now, if you could... And say they were living in the Tri-Valley casting around, where should I locate? What would your pitch for the Tri-Valley be?

Russ DeLonzor
Well, certainly for our board, the price is still really competitive. So we've got class A office space in Bishop Ranch that just shines, and if you look at what we'd be getting down in San Carlos and down in that area, it's still a really competitive cost wise. But then there's other things too. And just the Hacienda area, the Bishop Ranch area, these business parks are really top notch as far as... You've got restaurants, you've got outdoor facilities, places you can just go on walks, things like that. It's a lot harder to do when you're down in the middle of San Jose. So I think that's that whole package that I would really be pitching is that, gosh, just take a look at what you got right here. And again, the pandemic kind of threw everything into a bit of a shuffle, but I think once people start coming back into the office, they're going to really appreciate this kind of a work life balance out here.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Anything to add Neil?

Neil Ray
I think Russ said it very well.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Great.

Lynn Naylor
Yeah, you're just getting great feedback from so many directions. We know you just had an oversubscribed series A funding round. So tell us... Our startup community really likes to hear, how does this work? How has it gone for you? Can you help us know a little bit what you've learned about funding and how that's gone for you?

Neil Ray
Yeah, so we've been tremendously fortunate. So we're a medical device company and it's a regulated medical device company. So the average journey from concept to commercialization is about 10 years. So it's a long road of R&D before you can even start selling the product. So you really have to be working on something that's super impactful, game-changing, can impact a lot of people to get investors to participate in that long journey that has essentially a high chance of failing. We're in women's health as well, which has historically been underfunded. You look at all EC dollars, less than 1% of EC dollars go to women's healthcare. You look at NIH research, less than 5% of research dollars go to women's healthcare.

So here we are, we are a women's healthcare medical device company and, and we're literally in a space that, chances are we're not going to get funded. But we've been able to persist and persevere and overcome because I think people realize that what we're working on can be so impactful. And we were doing a series A2 bridge run last year of $2 million, and we oversubscribed and were able to raise $5 million. And I think part of it is one of our investors is a women's healthcare fund called Avestria Ventures. They're based out of Lafayette, so out here in East Bay, and they've been huge supporters of what we're doing and champions, and they're been able to get other funds to take a look at us and almost do my job for me, where I don't have to pitch they're pitching for us.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Nice.

Neil Ray
It's a shared effort and yeah, we're tremendously fortunate that we were able to oversubscribe that round.

Russ DeLonzor
That's great. And I think Neil's a huge part of this too, where I think a mistake some MedTech startups make is maybe too early... You know, the investors are comfortable working with finance people. So they bring in the Harvard MBAs or whatever. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with Harvard MBAs, but there's a real value in its Neil. It's Neil's passion, his clinical experience that he brings to these discussions with investors and it just resonates so well. So I think that's a big part of our success too, is having Neil here, not the kind of stand... He's still the active CEO running the show, a lot of times the MD kind of moves aside and lets the finance people take over. So I think that's where we're at. We need that passion and that's what's really resonating with investors.

Neil Ray
Yeah. Sometimes there's this perception that the CEO has slick hair and shiny teeth and polished and I'm definitely not like that. I'm just...

Lynn Naylor
You're very polished. Let me just say.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Yeah.

Lynn Naylor
You're fantastic in representing this cause.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. And I think that's also having, working with the Fogarty and Neil recognizing his strengths and where he needs help and the Fogarty was really instrumental in bringing together or helping you build a board, a board of directors that is supportive and they fill in a lot of those gaps where a first time med tech CEO might run into pitfalls. We've got such a strong board with experience in developing products themselves, that I think that's been another big part of our success.

Neil Ray
Yeah. For a long time I didn't think I could be CEO. I didn't want to, I didn't think I could. They call it imposter syndrome, but I was able to surround myself with people who believed in me and said, "No, you're the right CEO for this company and you need to be in that position." And it took a while for me to believe in myself, but they helped enable me to believe in myself and...

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's great.

Lynn Naylor
Wow, fantastic.

Yolanda Fintschenko
What do you think was the biggest fallacy that team of supporters helped you address that was keeping you from feeling like you could be the CEO that clearly you can be?

Neil Ray
Well, part of it's a job description. I didn't realize what a CEO does. And so if I had to boil down what a CEO does, you sell, you make decisions with incomplete information, and then you have to be able to articulate a vision. And being in medicine, I never thought of myself as someone who sells, but the reality is I'm always selling. We're always selling ourselves. We have a brand we're always selling. So I just had to get comfortable with the idea that I'm always selling and it's not anything different than what I have done for my whole life. And then making decisions with incomplete information. Well, physicians do that all the time, and so that, wasn't something I... You know, you never comfortable with it, but you're used to it, and I was definitely used to having to be in that situation of making decisions.

And then articulating the vision. And for me, the vision is so crisp because I've lived the pain point that we're trying to address. So I think once I understood the job description of being a CEO, then I realized I could do it, and then you bring on great people like Russ who, operationally they can do anything, literally move mountains during pandemics.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. I guess that's what I bring to the table is again, a really strong network of people that have learned through all of the hard knocks, every aspect of going from research to commercial success. And again, bring it back to Tri-Valley, that's what you get here. It's not just that we have a lot of engineers out here now and researchers, but it's that whole village that it takes to make this work. Professionals that do everything. I'll think of Pat Yazolino is just a great example for us. She was the first employee hired by the founders of Nellcor, way, way back when, and she just kind of dives in and keeps things coordinated and works with engineers. She's kind of the glue that gets people moving. And I've invited Pat to join me on every startup I've done and she was one of our first employees.

But it's that kind of experience that is again, kind of unique right here. It's people that have been there, done it a bunch of times, grown with this industry. So I think it's really just having access to all of that talent that is what makes this area so unique.

Neil Ray
And we've had zero turnover, knock on wood.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Okay. We're knocking, we're knocking. So the microphones can hear it.

Neil Ray
I mean, I think we've had great culture. People are mission driven. They believe in the product, the mission and there's been no turnover.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. And we're just starting to transition from that team of really senior experts in everything to now we're saying, "Okay, we've got a lot of other work to do." And we just hired our first... From an intern, biomedical engineering student at UC Davis, her name's Christina Davis, interned for a couple years with us and we just hired her. She's full-time and she's helping run this clinical study out in Texas for us.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Nice. That is amazing. That's great to hear your pipeline is... You kept your intern in house.

Russ DeLonzor
Absolutely. Yeah. She really shined.

Yolanda Fintschenko
I think that gives hope to all the interns out there. Right. Because so often, people wonder what's this going to lead to, and it sounds like you can become part of a very impactful team.

Russ DeLonzor
Absolutely.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Both of you have had some incredible journeys and background. I'm really curious, thinking about it from two different ways. If you could talk about the most important yess's and the most important no's. So the most important yes and no that you've given, and the most important yes or no that you've gotten, that you think has really shaped your ability to lead in the way that you've been able to.

Russ DeLonzor
First decide who goes first.

Neil Ray
I can tell you what a no. So back when I was developing the idea of Raydiant, I didn't want to be CEO. I thought I'd just stay as a full-time physician and be an advisor of the company and kind of dip my toe and be involved peripherally, but not core. And what I realized was I can't be good at both. I can't be a good doctor and a good entrepreneur. I don't have the bandwidth or the capability of doing both well, so I had to pick one or the other. And you can imagine as a middle career professional, you've got so many obligations, your family, kids in private school, mortgage, car payments, right? It's not easy to give up comfortable physician's salary and go live off of quote unquote, ramen noodles, as a startup entrepreneur. And it took some people on the outside telling me, "No, you can't have your one foot in each door," that kind of got me out of my comfort zone and focused on Raydiant.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That's great.

Neil Ray
And it was uncomfortable. It was hard, but it was the right thing, which at the time I didn't necessarily realize because it was scary too.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Absolutely. So those no's really catalyzed some yess's and no's for you that allowed you to be decisive and take on... Yep.

Neil Ray
One door closing opens another door.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Yeah. And you had to really commit.

Neil Ray
Right.

Russ DeLonzor
Yeah. That's true. One of mine was when Tyco bought Nellcor and it was clear that... All right, they're not a research development company. They consolidate, they acquire and they consolidate. But they paid really well to get you to do that. And so that's what I did for two whole years, partly because they're paying well and you've got college funds to think about and all that. And I hung in there when I really knew I wasn't happy. I wasn't really enjoying it, but how do you pass up the money, and my wife gave me the yes there. "You know what, you're not happy. You've got to move on."

Yolanda Fintschenko
Oh That's great.

Russ DeLonzor
And you know, there was a startup just right down the street, still in Hacienda. And I was really worried that by that time I had a big organization and I didn't really do anything anymore and in a startup, you're doing everything again. It's like, "Wow. I don't know if I know how to do it." So we've just jumped in and figured it out and never looked back and it's just been just a blast. So I think that's it too, if you just kind of check in with yourself, why are you doing something that you don't like? And yeah, especially out here, there's no reason for it, right? You don't like it, you feel yourself getting complacent, just start looking around. There's going to be something a lot better to do and you'll be happy you did it.

Yolanda Fintschenko
That sounds like great advice.

Lynn Naylor
Absolutely. We could talk for hours. There's so much to say about what you're doing and what you're adding to our innovation community with such incredible empathy. It's really inspirational to speak with you. But if I can, Yolanda, I'd like to ask them one thing they want to say that we haven't asked you yet.

Neil Ray
Yeah. You know, I think about the women's healthcare ecosystem. If I said I've come up with a cure for cancer, I need a $100 million, in 10 years I'll develop it. BCs would come back to me and say, "I'll give you $200 million, can you do it in five years?" Because that's just how we think about cancer or... It's one of the more pressing healthcare issues, but there are all these women's healthcare issues that are equally as pressing that just aren't getting the bandwidth. And what can we do, all of us collectively as a society, to get these issues on the forefront and have a situation where, if you come with a solution, everyone will get on board and say, "Hey, we'll give you double the money you need. We'll see if we can accelerate it and make it happen in half the time."

Yolanda Fintschenko
That would be transformative.

Russ DeLonzor
That's for sure. I think I'd just add that, keep doing what you guys are doing. And one thing that is still kind of in its infancy here, in my opinion, is the same sort of infrastructure or incubator structure that we had down at the Fogarty Institute and other places like that, where it's pretty well evolved. They screen and bring in companies and they foster them. They have labs and they have experts they can bring in. I think we're just kind of starting some of this. I wasn't even aware of some of the things I've heard here at your events. So I just encourage. We need more of that, we need more people that are involved in those incubators to help people feel supported as they're ready to make that jump head first into the next adventure, and not feel like they're all out there on their own.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Absolutely. Well, I think I'm just going to speak for Startup Tri-Valley and say challenge accepted.

Neil Ray
Yeah, and a big shout out to Tri-Valley Ventures, John Murphy. He sits on our board and he's an incredible resource and a great guy. So they've been very, very instrumental in our development.

Lynn Naylor
That's great. And this is really dynamic ecosystem has a little bit of everything and we're thrilled to have Tri-Valley Ventures here working with us in the community.

Yolanda Fintschenko
Absolutely. Okay, anything else?

Lynn Naylor
No, that's it. Great closing thoughts, wonderful inspiration for all of us. We're pleased to have you here.

Yolanda Fintschenko
I cannot thank you guys enough, and it's such a pleasure to... I've seen you both, I think at different times, on the stage and it is such a pleasure to meet you in person and get to know you here on this episode. Thanks so much.

Lynn Naylor
I'm inspired. Have a great day.