How to Raise Money for Your Medtech Startup | Christina Goudy

If you think raising money for a medical device startup is mostly about having strong science and a slick deck, you are going to have a rough time. Talk to Bill.

Bill Schick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/founderandcdo/

In this episode of LifeSci Continuum, I sit down with Christina Goudy, MBA, CEO and co-founder of Reach Orthopaedics, to talk about what medtech fundraising actually looks like when you are in the middle of it.

Christina is building a company in a tough category, solving a real orthopedic problem, raising capital in a brutal market, and doing it all from Canada while navigating the U.S. medtech investment landscape. We get into medical device startup fundraising, pitch storytelling, investor expectations, startup marketing, cross-border investment, and why founders need to act like real companies earlier.

Connect with Christina Goudy to continue the conversation:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-goudy/
https://www.reachortho.ca/

00:00 Why raising money in medtech is harder than most founders expect
00:22 Christina Goudy’s background and path to Reach Orthopaedics
02:33 The orthopedic problem Reach Orthopaedics is solving
04:03 What early-stage medtech fundraising looked like during COVID
06:39 Why founders need to adapt when the market changes
09:03 Changing the structure of a seed round without changing the goal
10:11 The reality of raising medtech capital from Canada into the U.S.
13:15 What due diligence and investor momentum look like in real life
14:17 Explaining an unmet clinical need to investors outside your specialty
15:41 Why storytelling matters in a medical device pitch
17:24 The mistake technical founders make when they pitch features first
20:03 Matching the right story to the right audience
22:09 What accelerator programs can and cannot really do
23:07 Three lessons Christina would tell herself earlier
25:51 Why marketing matters even before you feel ready for it
30:04 Why startup employees need to advocate for themselves

A lot of medtech founders still assume that if the science is strong enough, the market, investors, and momentum will eventually line up.

Nice fantasy. Not how this works.

In this conversation, Christina breaks down what it looks like to raise money for an early-stage medical device company when the funding market changes, investor expectations shift, and the original plan no longer fits. We discussed how Reach Orthopaedics moved from a priced round to a SAFE, why adapting the structure of the raise matters, and how founders need to think about dilution, milestones, and what investors need to believe before they move.

One of the most useful parts of this episode is investor pitch storytelling. Christina explains how her team reworked the story to make the problem resonate clearly, especially with investors who do not live in orthopedic surgery every day. A lot of founders are still pitching like technical insiders to audiences who are not. They lead with jargon, features, and science details when what they really need to do first is create relevance, context, and urgency. 

We also get into something founders do not talk about enough: marketing in early-stage medtech startups. Christina makes the point that marketing is not a luxury you get around to after the “real work” is done. Fundraising is marketing. Investor confidence is shaped by how credible, clear, and coherent your company looks. Your website, story, identity, positioning, and ability to explain the problem and your value are all doing work long before revenue shows up. If you still think branding and messaging are optional because you are “science first,” this episode may irritate you a little. Good.

Another useful angle is the Canadian medtech startup perspective. Christina shares the real friction of trying to raise from U.S. investors when some funds want a company incorporated in the U.S. before they will even engage. That is one of those practical, expensive startup realities that can eat time and money fast. It is also a good reminder that raising capital is not just about the pitch. It is about structure, geography, timing, investor fit, and knowing which constraints matter.

We also touch on accelerator programs, startup cash flow, team leverage, and why employees inside early-stage startups often have to build the roadmap while walking it. Christina has a refreshingly honest take on why founders need to listen when team members advocate for themselves. In startups, replacing someone is not just replacing a headcount. It is replacing hard-earned navigation through a messy system without a template.

If you are building a medical device company, trying to improve your medtech fundraising strategy, reworking your startup pitch deck, or figuring out how to communicate real value to investors without burying them in technical detail, this episode is worth your time.

#MedTech #MedicalDevices #StartupFunding #Fundraising #MedicalDeviceStartup #Orthopedics #PitchDeck #LifeSciences

Transcript

0:00

Today we're going to talk about raising money. How have you been able to accomplish that? That has come down to reworking our storytelling in the pitch. Drew Brees, former NFL quarterback. He had a partial cuff repair. A couple years later, he won the Super Bowl. 20 years on, he's now 47 and he can't throw with his right arm. That storytelling aspect is really important. Hi and welcome to LifeSci Continuum. My guest today is Christina Goudy, CEO and co-founder of Reach Orthopaedics. Christina is in the thick of building a med tech company right now. Firms that would potentially be interested at this early stage aren't necessarily orthopedic specialists. They also like to use their medical jargon. Early on, you want to keep it as high level. It shows that you're a real company and you're not just a science project. In this episode, we get into what fundraising looks like when you're navigating capital, storytelling, investor expectations, physician-led innovation, and the realities of doing it all from outside of the US in the US market. They're okay with you being incorporated anywhere, but those smaller ones, they require the company to be US based. That's actually very difficult for us. You should be allowed to negotiate. If you're an early stage founder trying to raise money without losing the plot, this is a good one. All right, let's go. Christina, thanks for joining me today. For the audience, people listening and watching, tell us a little bit about you, your background, how you got here today. Yeah, absolutely. I think my background is a little bit more eclectic, if you will, than a lot of people in med tech. My undergrad is actually in geology, which no one really expects. I worked in Northern Ontario for a mining company for a short period of time, but then I got my MBA afterwards. I was interested in doing investor relations for some personal reasons. I didn't move to Toronto. I'm based in Canada. So I did not move to Toronto to do finance or investor relations, but I was working at a boutique marketing firm. was for a couple of years was looking to get out of that and really grow my business acumen more. I had a friend who was aware of these two surgeons who needed someone with a business background that was able to write a business plan and That's how I met my co-founders at Reach Orthopaedics. an unusual journey. I'm interested about the marketing background but maybe we'll get to that later. Tell us about Reach. Give us a kind of an overview of the company. Reach Orthopaedics was originally founded by two orthopedic surgeons. They're upper extremity specialists, and they were consistently met with this problem in their practice. How do we treat that active middle-aged uh patient who has a massive irreparable rotator cuff tear? And there wasn't a really great solution. So I'm not just talking about a partial cuff tear. or even a massive tear that is still, you know, it's still good margins so you can still get the supraspinatus back onto the humeral head. I'm talking about those ones that are really degenerative in nature, fatty tissue in growth, and some muscle atrophy. What do we do for those? Well, they're not doing a whole lot of them. People might try soft tissue treatment options or they'll move to a reverse shoulder, which isn't great for someone who's still 50 and in the working population. So they came up with our titanium implant is what we have and it's minimally invasive. It doesn't require a lot of soft tissue healing and it doesn't require bone loss. What it does is it reestablishes the position of the humeral head within the joint itself. So it no longer continues that superior migration. They needed someone to do the business and that's where I came involved and shortly thereafter. came on as a co-founder as well. Today we're going to talk about something that is top of mind for a lot of people who are trying to bring a new product to market in this space. And that is raising money, getting investment. For some people it's possible to go it alone, but for a lot of companies, a lot of founders, they need capital. You know, it's a, it's a little bit of a, a little bit of a long road to get there. Talk a little bit about when you first started thinking about fundraising, what did that look like? Our first raise we did during COVID. So that was a pre-seed round. And if anyone's familiar with the funding landscape during that time, there was money kind of just being thrown around and it was much easier for about 18 to 24 months for startups to raise capital. And we, our initial raise really fell in that space. uh The markets were doing well because of all of these stimulation checks that people were getting. And as a result, we had a number of orthopedic surgeons, not necessarily upper extremity specialists, but orthopedic surgeons who had a relationship to Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia health system. And they wanted to invest in what we were developing. So that raise was actually somewhat easy for us. I call it a pre-seed, it was a little bit more of a family and friends angel sort of round, but then the landscape really changed. And I believe it was around 2024 when the stock market took a little bit of a dive, interest rates started to go up. And I don't think it was just startups. think VC funds had difficulty raising money as well. And that's been going on for a while and it's, you know, Early last year, they were saying that, I think it was at JP Morgan where they suggested that the market was really opening up and things were looking good. But then four months after that, it was no longer opening up and looking good. So it's been a difficult couple of years for raising money and it's really across the board. Unless you're doing something that's AI, you're going to have difficulty raising money. And even with AI, means to me, you need to know that there's a user need for what you're doing. I mean, there have been a lot of market surprises for all of us in the last couple of years. It's been very much a seesaw. So for you, is there something that surprised you or you learned along the way? What you learned along the way is that you really need to be adaptable. So when we first started our raise, we thought we would have a priced round. So it would be equity based and we had based what our pre money valuation was based on some comparables that were at that point, they would have been seven years old. So they would have been pre COVID numbers that no longer translated. into a post-COVID world. And so that was one of those things where, you know, we didn't know any better and we just had to take those investors at their word that, no, you're not going to get a raise with that valuation. So, you know, we had to reassess where we were at. Okay, how much do we need in capital? What makes sense so that the founding team still has enough equity in the company that will allow us to continue to grow with the company as well. I think in any good VC firm or investor in general wants to know that the founding team still has substantial equity up to a certain point. You don't want to be too diluted early on. And so, yeah, we had to reassess what that looked like. And then beyond all of that, it's really a lot of firms that would potentially be interested in us at this early stage. aren't necessarily orthopedic specialists. And so they're not going to be able to give us a great valuation themselves either, just because they don't know how to evaluate a startup that doesn't have first-in-human yet. So that's when we switch to, oh we're actually going to do a SAFE. That's probably the best for everyone all around. And that's where we're at now. So you need to be willing to adapt with sort of the feedback that you're getting, either from those who are interested in investing or those who just know that you're going to struggle sort of on the path that you're already on. Right. Even though you've laid out a plan and you've spent your time and probably significant resources in putting that plan and that roadmap together, anything can happen. Um, and you need to be flexible. Did you have to adjust your expectations on what you would raise or did that change maybe the trajectory of the company at all? Yeah, so we actually had to change not how much we're raising, but how we're raising it. So we're still raising $3 million, but rather than do all 3 million upfront, we've tranched that seed round. So we have a seed A and a seed B. Seed A allows us to get to one set of milestones and seed B gets that second set of milestones. But I still wouldn't call it a seed or a series A, they're still very much so seed round milestones that we're looking for. And one set of milestones leads very clearly into the other as well. So we're hoping that it allows that those seed A milestones provide enough assurance and de-risk the investment enough for investors who we already have on board to invest further and also encourage those who have just been watching us and seeing how first in human go to then actually put in that investment. One element of note is you are in Canada. So your your experience as a Canadian company is I think pretty interesting compared to maybe a US company and I guess my question is are you focused primarily in you know the Canadian market with Canadian investors. Are you coming across the border to the US? What does that dynamic look like? We're not saying no to investment in Canada, of course, but there's only maybe a dozen of VC firms or investors that really focus on healthcare. And so obviously we do need to go to the US. That is where the money is at. With that said, a lot of the smaller funds that are typically more willing to put in even half a million into a startup, they require you to be incorporated in the US. So that's what kind of makes it difficult. um Those larger VC firms that focus on Series B and beyond, they're okay with you really being incorporated anywhere, but those smaller ones, because their limited partners require the money to be coming back into the US, they require the company to be US based. So that is That's actually very difficult for us because there's some smaller funds in the US that we know we would absolutely, if we were based in the US, would be great. Those funds want us to already be incorporated in the US before they'll even consider us for due diligence. Well, it's difficult for a small startup to justify incorporating the US just to potentially go through due diligence and potentially get that investment without that already in place. We have no problem with you know, obviously incorporating in the US but having that confirmation that we will absolutely have investment once it's completed is one of those things that would prompt us to do it. So that that does make it a little bit more difficult for us because we have to then, you know, it can't just be, oh, you know, spend $15,000 on incorporating the US for a small startup. That's a lot of money. That should be a lot of money for even larger companies, to be honest. It's kind of networking between the Canadian and the US investors to find the ones that are going to be best for us. Luckily in Canada, there is a significant amount of investment that the federal government has recently put into expanding healthcare and the traction of healthcare startups in Canada. Our business development bank of Canada, they recently started a new fund that's specific for life sciences in that pre-C to series A sector. So that's really exciting to hear about. What successes or what stage are you at in raising now? So we are at a due diligence stage with one fund. We're still discussing potentially going into due diligence with another couple. just kind of hoping it all comes together because it is a little bit, you need to speak to one or two funds to convince the other funds to also invest at the same time. um So it's just managing those relationships and keeping them all aware and up to date with how things are going. So you've spoken with investors that understand your space, they get what you're doing, but also others who maybe not so much. What are their kind of different needs? What do they need to see from you and how maybe, how are those different between those two groups? Because I imagine that a company or an investor that really understands your space, they probably have more pointed and different questions than maybe a more general investor. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so I think the answer to that is both yes and no, because end of day, they are investors, so they want to know what their potential return is going to be. That is what's important. With those investors that are familiar with the space, I don't need to convince them that this is an unmet need that we're solving. They get that. With those investors that aren't in the space, that can be much more difficult to do, because they just don't realize what a large problem massive rotator cuff tears are. And if they're only in their 30s or 40s, they don't really think about it a whole lot either. But I can guarantee that their colleagues who might be older than them or their parents have certainly woken up in the middle of the night with shoulder pain because, you know, they have a shoulder that's not doing so great. So it's just convincing them of the actual prevalence is one of the most difficult things to do. How have you been able to accomplish that with these investors? Because I think that's a big question. think when we're in it and we live this, we sort of forget what other people don't know about it. We forget what we even know about it. What are some ways that you can recommend somebody in a similar situation? They kind of get that data and that point across. That has come down to us reworking our pitch, reworking our storytelling in the pitch. And I think we've gotten it to a place now where it's really resonating with people, where even a year ago, we were still just missing the mark, but now we've got it locked in. So what I did about a year ago, actually, is I started to include a slide early on em that I'll call a case study, but it's actually a slide about Drew Brees. So obviously former NFL quarterback. He had a partial cuff repair, I should say in 2006, I believe. And then it was a couple of years later, he won the Super Bowl. Great. Fantastic. 20 years on, he's now 47 and he can't throw with his right arm. And this is a man who made his career on throwing with his right arm. So I think that storytelling aspect and getting it in early on is really important. And even for myself, that's a story that I initially had a little bit, a couple slides in to our deck when providing our pitch. And I've slowly moved it more and more forward. So it's right there at the beginning. And that's really what hooks people in because it's a name that they know. And it's a story that resonates with them. And I think I've been to a lot of different conferences and have seen a lot of pitches over the years. And that is one thing that I recognize that some of the best pitches that I've ever seen do very well. They give you a story upfront and then they go into the actual science that goes into what they're developing and then into the market. I think that's a great example because what I see and what I do on a daily basis is, you know, we have an entrepreneur who is extremely proud of what they've created and they just want to tell the world about their technology, what it can do, the features that it has, all the little details that make it amazing. And they, I think, can forget that the person on the other side of the table, whether they're you know, a customer or an investor or a patient. For them, it's less about that. They have their own needs. They have their own perspective and lens that they look at this through and they have information that they want. And it's not always the specific features of the product. It's how, know, how does this relate to me? What's in it for me? What connects and resonates for me? What I think as a follow up, he is not a patient of yours. Oh, not at He is not a recipient. So he's kind of stuck, right? with that shoulder. I mean, until we're able to get on market and convince him that this is, or his surgeon, that this is a great option for him, of course. But it's an example of someone everyone knows or knows of that this is absolutely a quality of life issue for them. When he throws with his son in his backyard, he uses his left arm, which I'm sure is still way better than everyone else's right arm. But it's still not his right arm, right? But it's not just former professional athletes that have this problem. And then I can get into how big of a problem it is. I think what you were saying there is a bit interesting. I was speaking with my co-founders just the other day. And when I speak with them, because they are surgeons, they get into very like minute details about the problem or how our implant can help solve this problem. And. That's important to know, but they also like to use their medical jargon a lot. And that's not important at this stage. I want people to be interested in the story and the company, and then we can get into those details later on. That's a due diligence. Let's get further in. Let's not just have a 30 minute pitch. Let's, you know, be on a call together for an hour, have some meetings together and get into the details. That's when that's important. Early on, you want to keep it as high level, but also provide the science that you do have at that high level so it's more attainable to a greater audience. Yeah. And I think that's something that's really hard to do if you are the subject matter expert. I think there's definitely people who do a great job with it, but I think more often than not, it's hard to gauge the level that you need to communicate to buyers that aren't you. Um, and the con, you know, the, different types of buyers and the context with which you're communicating, we often see putting together kind of like a a talking point matrix, depending on kind of what category somebody falls in and what stage you're at in the conversation to add the most value to the conversation. Because often with some of these things, the person on the other end, they're very busy. They're doing a lot of things and we're, this is everything to us, but this is just one of many things to them. And so we need to maximize what we're getting out of that conversation. So having exactly the right message for that audience in that moment is really important. That's why you often hear that you should have multiple pitch decks and multiple stories. And I agreed to that to some extent. And once you're far enough long, absolutely you should. But when you only have a limited amount of, you know, we don't have inhuman data. We have our cadaver studies and we have data from that. And that's in our deck as an appendix. I do think that it's beneficial to just know who you're talking to. So what parts within your deck when presenting it should you spend more time on? So when I'm talking to surgeons, I go past my first few slides that are about the problem. They know what the problem is. I do not need to explain this to them whatsoever. But going into how we're solving the problem and giving them more detail on that, that's important for them. Is this something that you feel that you knew fully going into this situation? Or do you feel like it was more of a learn it as you go or something in between there? Yeah. This was a learn as I go. This was absolutely, I was kind of thrown into the fire and then had to learn to walk on coals. Yeah, it was definitely a learn as you go. And this goes a little bit into accelerator programs. They can help you with it to a certain extent, but there becomes a point where they are all giving you the same feedback and the same lessons. But they certainly have supported and helped me even more specifically in that growth, in how I can best tell our story and be a good CEO in terms of achieving company growth. Let's time travel for a moment. Where you're at today, what are three things that you would tell yourself if you could time travel to the beginning of this and give as far as advice or recommendations to free all of this you? Spending money on marketing is important. And a lot of especially scientific founders would argue, oh, no, that's not important. We need to focus on the science. But even when you're fundraising, fundraising is basically a lesson in marketing from my point of view anyway. So I do think that's one of the most important things. Even if it's having a logo and making sure you have business cards. That's how people connect with you. That's people how people are going to recognize you out at conferences and in the world. So I do think that's very important. Another sort of initial thing would be basically knowing what your cash flow is. That's really important too. Very, very important. It can be difficult sometimes, especially if your funding is coming from founders and they're just kind of putting in money. and putting in money to know exactly what that cash flow is. So, you know, it's something that at certain points we've struggled with a little bit as well. But I think what's most important is being able to advocate for yourself. Even I was recently at Plug and Play and there was someone who was working with a startup who came up to me and she was asking about how to best advocate for herself. And especially in startups. If you've already been with a startup for a year or two, it's going to be difficult for them to replace you. And so I think you need to advocate for what you deserve and you won't always get exactly what you think you deserve, but it helps to give you a bit of leverage and for the founder to know where you're coming from as well. So I mean, you don't just go in and say, hey, I want to raise and I want it to be this much, or I want more time off and it needs to be this much. You do need to go in with some metrics, but those metrics are often a bit of an eye opener for especially those scientific founders that don't concern themselves with sort of what the wages in the startup life sciences market actually do look like. Why do you think marketing is important? Because you said it was important and you gave an example of a logo and a business card. But why should I care about that? Because I hear every day, I mean, I work with clients all the time that didn't invest in things that they really, really needed to have seven years ago and they're stuck in the same place. They haven't moved at all. And they've had this epiphany, I need marketing. For you, why is it important, especially at the stage that you're in today? because it shows that you're a real company and you're not just a science project. For investors, they want to know that there is a company behind this. And I do think it's the way that people are going to recognize you moving forward, whether it be your website, business cards, logo, all of those things. I mean, they do follow you. I made our logo ourself because we didn't invest in that marketing early on, even though I would have liked us to. You know, our logo is one of those things where it's now being shown at conferences that we're going to, but it's not the logo that I, it's not a logo that I want us to have as our logo forever, but we're already getting recognition through it. So at what point is going to be the right point for us to then make that sort of marketing switch? Or at what point are we just too far gone? And it's like, this is what people know. I can easily make the case all day long that if your logo isn't right for the application, you know, it's not right for the business, it's not right for the audience, there are million reasons why it might not be right. I'm sure it's great, but if it's not right for what you're doing, you should change it because it is often the very first thing. It's the introduction that people have to the company. And when do you do it? As soon as you can afford it. You know, and of course you have financial priorities, but when there's money in the bank and the things look clear, that's one of those things that the sooner you can tackle it, the better off you are. I could not agree more, absolutely. With that said, there are, because of the rise of AI, there are a lot of tools that can help you develop your logo as well. And you can do that relatively inexpensively. It's going to be somewhat generic looking, but I recommend that if the money is tight and you are able to put even$20 into it, which hopefully you can, then you at least look at what some of those suggestions are and then you can maybe take it from there yourself. If I can stack on top of that, I had a client do exactly that. And because I look at these things all day long, every day, as soon as they showed it to me, thought, oh, that's either clip art that I've seen in my travels or that's a, that's something from somewhere else. And Google has a tool. It's a reverse image lookup. So if you generate something, whether it's through a designer brand company or AI, you can take. what you're considering for your logo and put it into Google's reverse image lookup, it's found that actual company had that logo. And AI just went out and found what it thought was the right thing and then kind of repurposed it. And I can't tell you the legal trouble you will run into. So that's why I suggest you look at what the suggestions are and then make it yourself so that it is different. Yes, absolutely. I think scientists are often in a tough space because I think you have a visual background. So typically for in marketing, we have at least some amount of, you know, visual capability. Scientists I find often don't. They don't know what looks good. Their expertise lies in elsewhere and they just, they're in over their head. So they don't have that to draw on. And so they look to somebody, you know, like you to advise them and say, I don't know what it is. Can you just help me do the right thing? So that's, that's important to know. One last thing, because we're just about at time here. Tell me briefly, if you can, advocating for yourself, because you touched on that a bit in a minute, if you can dig into that, why is that so important? Maybe explain it a little bit for our audience who are often, you know, business leaders, entrepreneurs. Maybe we could give them some context why maybe they should listen to when employees are advocating for themselves. I think a lot of founders that I know and have spoken to, we all kind of wish that there was a template for startups specifically in the med tech life sciences space. That would be great, but there isn't. And whoever you hire to come on to your team, they're going to basically have to learn how to navigate that specific space that they're in on your team themselves. Yes, there might be support through accelerators or some other advisors here and there, but they're going at it day by day, making their own sort of roadmap. And I don't think everyone recognizes how much that is actually taking on. It's a huge lift. And I know that startups are typically very cash strapped, but unless those founders are willing to lose those employees who have already like, they're learning these things as they're going within your company. You know, it really, they're invaluable at that point to your company, the amount of time and money that would have to go on to retraining someone else to pick up where that person left off. Well, they're going to have to reteach themselves how to get up to that point as well. So I think it's important for founders to listen to those who advocate for themselves. But I also think it's important to advocate for yourself because you shouldn't just agree to the number that's put out to you. You should be allowed to negotiate and you should negotiate. I think that's absolutely important and make it clear. You know, there are a lot of other options out there for you. There are always other companies that you can go to, but you are with this company because you see it going somewhere. And you want to continue that, but you're not going to do it at a detriment to yourself or to your own personal work-life balance. So I do think that that's very important. You need to listen to your employees. I think if you don't have happy employees, well, then you're not going to be a successful company. Agreed. And a recommendation to people who are staffing up these businesses and investing their lives in it, the shortcut, if there is one, is to tie the work you're doing to the money. Options are always great. Yes. So understanding that when we get into this entrepreneur headspace, yes, we want to get our product out there. We want to provide therapy or a cure, or we want to address an issue, but we're also looking at the money. And if you can tell the story, if you can provide, you know, connect the dots between your work and the money, it makes a more compelling story for the audience. Who's the the business leader to listen. You would hope that it would be another way. It really is an effective way to getting what it is that you believe you should be getting. I agree. Christina, it was so great to speak with you today. I appreciate you hopping on. Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having me, Bill. If you made it here, thank you. If you haven't already, like, share, and subscribe to the channel. If you want to learn more about this topic, I expand on it below, as well as in my LinkedIn newsletter. That's all for now. More soon.