How the CEO of the largest medical device accelerator molds medtech startups

Nov. 21, 2023

Paul Grand is the CEO of MedTech Innovator. Eric Thayer for STAT

If Paul Grand weren’t the CEO of MedTech Innovator, the largest medical device accelerator in the world, he might have been a keychain salesman. Maybe a producer of the “X-Files.” Or even invented Quizlet.

The son of a teacher and a dentist, Grand graduated from selling neighbors keychains and washing cars as a little kid to programming software that made his parents’ lives easier. He created a test question generator, a digital flashcard software called Microflash, and a system to let his dad know which patients were due for teeth cleanings — all while in high school.

He didn’t create Quizlet, or a booming electronic health record business. It was the ’80s, before you could Google “entrepreneurship 101.” His parents weren’t really into the software thing; they saw their son in medicine. Looking back on his adolescence, Grand, now 55, wonders whether having inspiring mentors around him would have made a difference.

“I always used to say, if I grew up in Silicon Valley instead of North Miami Beach, Florida, I would have been a booming entrepreneur at age 16,” Grand told STAT.

Mentorship is the guiding principle of MedTech Innovator, a Los Angeles-based accelerator for early-stage medtech companies that Grand founded in 2013. He started it to empower entrepreneurs discouraged by a funding dry spell precipitated by the 2009 financial crisis, and to fill the void of a medical device-specific accelerator. But his primary motivation? As an investor, he kept meeting medtech founders who made silly mistakes.

“A lot of companies were making mistakes that were avoidable,” Grand said. “You chose the wrong CEO, you worked with the wrong vendor, you designed your clinical trials wrong, your device was too expensive. You name it.”

What started as a startup competition called MedTech Idol at an industry conference is, ten years later, practically an institution. Any new med device founder worth their salt knows to apply to MTI: for the mentorship, but also for exposure to the most powerful companies in the industry. Grand and his team comb through more than a thousand applications each year and narrow the group down to around 50 accelerator companies, culminating in $800,000 in funding, including $350,000 prize for a grand winner. Six hundred twelve companies have gone through MTI, earning $7 billion in follow-up investments.

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