Articles

Why Warm Introductions Create Cold Performance The studio executive leaned back in his leather chair, tapping a script against the mahogany desk. “I know the writer personally,” he said. “We went to film school together. He’s brilliant.” I’d heard this before. Too many times. Three months and $2 million later, that “brilliant” writer delivered a screenplay that couldn’t get past page 30 without losing the audience. The project died in development. The executive’s relationship

I thought we had a successful launch. We had regulatory clearance, product was shipping, and revenue had started to come in. On the surface, everything looked like it was working exactly as planned. Six months later, we had inventory sitting in distributor warehouses and no real adoption. Clinicians weren’t using the product, and the early momentum we thought we had built wasn’t translating into anything that would last. We had confused shipment with launch. That mistake cost

Last year, I watched a competitor burn through $4.7 million entering a market that looked perfect on paper. No reimbursement barriers. Minimal regulatory friction. A clear clinical need. Their device worked beautifully in trials. They exited eighteen months later with nothing to show for it. The market wasn't wrong. Their strategy was. This plays out constantly in MedTech. We chase markets where regulatory timelines are short, barriers feel manageable, and revenue comes