From ER to CEO: How One Physician Built a Med Device Company by Solving What Others Ignored with Dr. Liz Clayborne

In this episode of Startup Physicians, Dr. Liz Clayborne shares her journey from being a medical resident to becoming the CEO and founder of Nasaclip, a medical device company focused on addressing the common issue of nosebleeds. She discusses the importance of identifying problems in clinical practice, the process of developing a medical device, and the significance of intellectual property. Dr. Clayborne emphasizes the need for market research, customer discovery, and the iterative process of product design. She also highlights the challenges of transitioning from a clinical role to full-time entrepreneurship and the skills necessary for effective pitching and fundraising. 

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] - Introduction to the Journey of a Physician Founder
[01:23] - Identifying a Problem in Emergency Medicine
[05:54] - The Importance of Intellectual Property
[10:38] - Leveraging Resources for Innovation
[11:52] - Understanding Market Fit and Customer Discovery
[15:47] - The Evolution of Nasaclip
[19:00] - From Idea to Prototype
[20:51] - Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
[23:02] - The Art of Pitching and Fundraising
[27:17] - Encouragement for Aspiring Physician Founders

Transcript

Alison Curfman (00:01.294)

Hi everyone, welcome back to Startup Physicians. This is your host, Dr. Alison Curfman, and I am here with my former med school classmate, Dr. Liz Clayborne. She is the CEO and founder of a company called Nasaclip. And I have been excited about this conversation because I've been following her journey over the past decade or so and...

I think that it's going to be really interesting for those of us who want to hear a little bit more about what it takes to start a device company. And then also just some things about the journey of being a physician founder. So Liz, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (00:41.717)

Absolutely, Alison. I'm so excited to be here. Like, who knew we'd be able to do this, like, back in our days at Case Western as medical students. We didn't know we were going to end up in, similar specialties on the kind of entrepreneurial track. And I'm just thrilled to be able to talk to you a little bit about my journey.

Alison Curfman (00:59.102)

Awesome. Well, I'd love to just go all the way back. I mean, we had, you know, anatomy lab together and everything. And then you went into emergency medicine residency and I went off to Peds. Now what happened along your journey from, you know, residency until now that got you into this role as a, as a founder and an entrepreneur.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (01:23.005)

Yeah, so it was definitely not according to plan. When I was at Case Western, I did a dual degree and had got a master's in bioethics, if you remember, while I was in med school. So I had a really heavy focus on health policy, ethics, and particularly end of life care. And so I went to George Washington for residency, primarily because I wanted to be in the DC area and have this heavy focus on

health policy and I wanted to be at our nation's capital. So that was my plan. I was going to do academic emergency medicine, know, like kind of go after the things that I was passionate about from training and having this background in ethics. And then in my fourth year of residency, I started noticing how many people came into the ER for nosebleeds. Like we actually see about 500,000 ER visits a year for nosebleeds. It's about 0.5 % of visits. So one in 200 people walking into an ER is for a nosebleed. And I just was like, why?

Why would you come to an ER for such a simple problem? And so for us as ER docs, maybe it seems simple, but we find that patients tend to really mismanage this. They almost do the opposite of what they're supposed to do. So they'll put their head backwards instead of forwards. They pinch up here in their nasal bridge, not over the flare of their nostrils, and they don't hold constant pressure. And then nosebleeds are really common in younger kids, two to 10, older adults, 55 to 80, who might be on blood thinners. So...

really it's like the least likely population to manage that problem well. So I think they panic because they're doing the wrong things. The bleeding doesn't stop and they show up to the ER and then they think they're going to be seen right away because they're bleeding. And then as you know, like just because you're bleeding does not mean you're going to be seen right away, right? Like this is still an ESI, you know, four or five, like it's a lower acuity problem, but it was very time consuming and frustrating for the entire team to deal with. so.

Alison Curfman (02:55.683)

Yeah.

Alison Curfman (02:59.906)

Yeah, yes.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (03:09.329)

in my head as a resident, was like, there has to be a better solution than taping together two tongue depressors, which is what I was taught to do in residency. So I started thinking about it.

Alison Curfman (03:18.094)

And you probably only knew about this being a big enough problem because of your day-to-day work as a clinician. Like if somebody was like, hmm, where should I start a company or where could I make a medical device? This would probably not be the first thing that comes up on their radar, but you're living that experience and your patients are living that experience. So just wanted to draw that corollary that like it's your clinical experience and the things you're noticing in your day-to-day that prompted your...

Dr. Liz Clayborne (03:26.515)

Absolutely.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (03:34.716)

No.

Alison Curfman (03:47.67)

Big innovation.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (03:49.18)

Absolutely. And a lot of times physicians don't understand things that they're seeing on a daily basis are not common knowledge or like people are always shocked when I say 500,000 ER visits a year, because it would not occur to anybody who's not in emergency medicine in particular that like it's that common. But if you talk to any ER doctor, like, yes, we deal with nosebleeds a lot. So yes, it is something that I had a unique lens for.

Alison Curfman (04:09.292)

Yeah, and it takes a bunch of space in the ER and yeah.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (04:13.223)

and understanding the scope of that problem and also why the problem existed, right? Like that patients were not handling it correctly and that's why they were ending up in the ER. And so I had an idea in my head about how we could better design a device that provided external nasal compression and then intranasal sponges that could be medicated. Because I knew the mainstay of treating a nosebleed was to apply pressure.

over your ala, your nasal flare, which puts internal pressure over castile vex plexus, and that you needed to get a vasoconstrictor like Afrin or oxymetazolene spray up there, but it would be better if it stayed on the area that is bleeding. So I started to just percolate with this idea, and honestly, in the very beginning, all I did was kind of sketch out a few ideas of what it looked like and file for some patents, which is one of the first steps I always tell anybody who's interested in like...

Creating innovation that's a physical device is you have to make sure you have a unique device. So you do need to do like a patent search, but then you also need to start protecting it really early on because as you start talking about it, you're opening up that idea to other folks. And in the very beginning of starting a company, it's a medical device, your intellectual property might be your most important asset. So.

I did that and I did a business plan competition as a resident, which was really foreign to me because I had no business background. I didn't even take business courses in undergrad. So this was all kind of something that I had to learn along the way. And fortunately I had a mentor at my residency program, Dr. Neil Sikka, who was like very helpful in directing me to the GW Innovation Center where they had the business plan competition, put me in touch with some resources and then encouraged me to go ahead and apply.

Alison Curfman (05:26.337)

Yeah.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (05:54.624)

to this competition, which we actually were finalists in. So I really kind of just jumped in in the beginning.

Alison Curfman (05:58.446)

So were they the ones that told you to get a patent or you did that before you did the comp? Okay, so actually I'm gonna like go back a minute, cause like you just said that like, and then you get a patent. Like that's probably a more involved process than just get, like how did you know what to do?

Dr. Liz Clayborne (06:03.325)

Yes. So, they were the ones. Yes.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (06:15.636)

Yes.

Yeah, so one of the things that you'll learn if you start kind of involving yourself in the ecosystem of whatever institution you're a part of, these exist on like local, state, and national levels, and then definitely if you're attached to an academic center, they're going to have something that is really focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and specifically life science type of technology. So when I first came with the idea of Nasaclip and I got introduced to this ecosystem,

they wanted me to apply to the business plan competition. went through the curriculum, but then we were going to pitch publicly and they were the ones who were like, if you publicly talk about this and show any images, you have to have something filed before you do that because then you're opening up the idea to the public. And so before you take that step, you need to file the patent. So that was the information that I gleaned from kind of making sure I started seeping myself in this ecosystem of entrepreneurship because

Alison Curfman (06:55.054)

Hmm

Dr. Liz Clayborne (07:15.303)

I did at least know what I didn't know, right? Which was a lot. Like I had the idea.

Alison Curfman (07:17.902)

Yep. And that's a very, I use that phrase all the time and that's a very emergency medicine thing to say is that like, well, I know what I don't know. And, and because we teach residents that we're like to be a safe ER doctor, you need to know what you know and what you don't know. And what we do really well is call the right people to get support when there's a problem that needs something specific outside of our, outside of our specialty. And I feel so much of that is translatable.

to entrepreneurship like, well, I don't know how to get a patent, but I know I need one. So I'm going to go like, do some research, find some people, hire a lawyer, whatever you need to do. And just keep going down that pathway until you get it done.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (08:01.109)

Right. And then there's a whole also an understanding of what happens with intellectual property when you're attached to an academic center that I didn't know either. So I was a resident at the time and because residents are paid through Medicare, they are not employees of the university. So the university did not have rights to my IP, which turned out to be a big advantage for me because then I was able to assign all of my IP to the company that we formed for the purpose really of getting the patents done.

And that was a really strategic step. If you are faculty, you should also understand what are the implications for your university having access and rights to your IP. It is not necessarily bad because sometimes then they will give you additional resources to develop that technology, which I didn't necessarily have access to. And so I had to definitely decide later on when I was going to start fundraising in order to take what was really just an idea in my head and bring it to fruition.

But that first step was definitely filing the patents.

Alison Curfman (08:59.416)

So yeah, and like you said, academic institutions, most academic institutions will have something for innovation or entrepreneurship or creating new things. If you're not at an academic institution, there's still a lot of resources. You just don't know about them. You've not ever looked for them. And so when I was getting started, my co-founder, when we were first figuring out our ideas, she was like, well, we should pitch to the local startup accelerator.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (09:15.539)

Yes.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (09:27.379)

Yeah.

Alison Curfman (09:27.394)

And I was like, what's a startup accelerator? Like, was like, I don't even know what that is, but they were just down the street, you know? And we met, we went on the website, we set up a meeting, we came and talked to them about our idea and we ended up getting enrolled in a coaching program with them. And when they like walked us through their facility or whatever, like they had people doing bench research, they had people doing, you know, all sorts of different things and they have different structures of how they, you know, support founders, but these exist.

like all over the place and a lot of them are nonprofits. But the two things you said that I think were really key are to find some of the resources in your area that you're already technically connected to and just learn more about them. And then two, check your contract because again, yes, if you are part of, if you're employed by an organization, there may be some implication if you're trying to develop a new

company that's got IP, I say the same thing for people who are looking to become consultants because sometimes people have things in their employment contracts that say that it has to like go through their organization. So good, good points. So then what happened?

Dr. Liz Clayborne (10:33.546)

Right.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (10:38.195)

Yeah, so the other early resource I topped into, and this is something that anyone can do because it's not necessarily always attached to an academic institution, is I was directed through the GW Innovation Center to look at the National Science Foundation, I-Corps. And the I-Corps, the Innovation Corps, has both local as well as national programs, and I did both. And the whole point of I-Corps really is to feed SBIR and STTR grant programs.

which are government grants for technology like what Nasaclip was going to be. And so what I really liked about participating in that early is they have a heavy focus on understanding product market fit through customer discovery. So they would have us go out and do a lot of interviews. I had a solution to nosebleeds, right? I knew what the ecosystem looked like in the ER and maybe the hospital system, but I wanted to know.

What does the lay person do for nosebleeds? Why do they do that? Who told them to do that? you know, where are they getting their information from? What is the current solution on the market? And then would they respond positively to this new technology and most importantly, pay for it? So it really kind of delved me into understanding that and then understanding my customer. And then they're also heavy on having a business model campus.

So this is where I really started learning about all the different things that would make a successful business because it's not just about having a good idea. You have to be able to put that good idea into motion and understand how to get it there. Where's your beachhead market? What's your most important consumer channel look like? Why, how are you gonna get there? And then you also really have to understand your regulatory path, particularly in medical device because that will set up how much money you have to raise. For us, I wanted the device to be medicated

and initially had decided like, I just wanted to come out pre-medicated. But then when I learned that would push it into a class two combination device, we actually decided to introduce it to the market unmedicated because now it's a class one 510k exempt device and it allowed me to get to market much faster. And then physicians and people can add medication after the fact. And now we're looking at other iterations. So.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (12:43.921)

I highly recommend looking for resources like the iCore. It also does come with some grant funding. And then more importantly, it will introduce you to this whole ecosystem of people who can make the connections, teach you, give you the resources so you can take the next steps in your journey.

Alison Curfman (12:59.15)

Because you need so much feedback at that stage. Yes, protect your IP. For my case, was like we had pre-NDA materials because we had to let people know, like, hey, this is sort of what we're planning on doing and they need to be interested or not. And then you get an NDA in place if you're going to really talk. For our IP, it was more of our model and our contracting model and our tech. But for you, was protecting your IP with a patent, so making sure you're set there.

And then going out and you said the word discovery, this is something I tell physician founders, like they absolutely have to do because we are sometimes colored by our own perspective that we're like, oh, that's definitely going to work because it can help all these patients. And I've talked to a lot of aspiring physician founders who have this like deep vision clinically, and they're so clinically motivated, which is great, but they can't tell me who would pay for it. They're like, well, it would solve all these problems. And it's like, but who's...

Dr. Liz Clayborne (13:52.274)

Exactly.

It still has to be a business.

Alison Curfman (13:56.91)

Whose pocket does that problem hit the most? Is it the patient? Is it the payer? Is it the employer? Those are all very different business cases. And if it's like the problem is kind of spread across multiple stakeholders, then how do you create a business case that'll actually sell something? Like, are you selling to consumers? Are you selling to hospitals? Or do you have two lines of distribution? So those are probably things you really had to think about.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (14:00.299)

Right.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (14:16.66)

Right.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (14:25.973)

Yeah.

Alison Curfman (14:26.862)

beyond just like, do I physically stop a nosebleed? It's like, who's gonna pay for this? How am I gonna get it to market? And I love the business model canvas for anyone who's thinking about an idea, go look it up, like just like Google that term. It's a really readily available PDF that gets your whole business idea on one piece of paper. And you probably went through 1000 iterations, right?

Dr. Liz Clayborne (14:32.063)

Right.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (14:48.981)

Right, right. But it was through that process where we had a better understanding because our device does serve both a B2B, so business to business, as well as B2C, like business to consumer, because we have a consumer product. But I knew from doing the customer discovery that consumers would be more likely to use Nasaclip if it was introduced to them by a physician or a coach or a trainer or a school nurse, and that that was going to be actually a more productive route to the consumer market, which

Alison Curfman (15:10.136)

Hmm.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (15:18.547)

We didn't have as good of an understanding how big that market was because there wasn't as great data on the true incidence of nosebleeds. We just had really good data on the subset of people having nosebleeds who actually show up in the ER. So for all of these reasons, it took a lot of, know, initial upfront work to understand like how are we going to make this good idea into something that could actually work as a business. So just to move us forward and I'll show you the advice now because I think sometimes it's helpful for you to see what it is now. And then I can tell you.

all the iterative steps that it took to get to where we are now. So this is our reusable kit that's available on Amazon and has been live on our website. We've been in market for about a year and a half, but just launched on Amazon about four months ago. And it comes in a reusable kit for a consumer, but it also comes in individual packs like this.

Alison Curfman (15:49.516)

Yeah.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (16:07.733)

for the hospital space. So these are blister packages. And we have both adult as well as pediatric sizes. So two to 13 for kids and then 14 plus for adults. People always ask me why and it's because once you're 14, you basically have an adult size nose, which comes out of the plastic surgery research. So they're all those things we had to do. So initially I had seen kayakers wear a clip called a kayak clip and they used it to prevent water from coming, going up their nose when they were flipping round and round. And so...

Alison Curfman (16:24.492)

That's interesting.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (16:34.933)

When I first had an idea, like, I kind of think it should look like that, but then it needs to have the sponges on it. And you need to be able to open and then adjust how tight it goes on the nose so that you can make it tight so it's not bleeding, but it's not so tight that it's uncomfortable. So I had ideas in the beginning, but we had to go through lots of iterations to get to where we are today. So this is what the device currently looks like. It has a medical grade open cell sponge, which is designed to carry a medication like Afrin spray or oxymetazoling. It's very helpful.

to use those in the setting of nosebleeds, but as you know, when the nose is bleeding, it's hard to get anything up the nose. So we typically are shoving it in gauze or on a tampon or a nasal tamponade device. So the whole idea is that this would be a more comfortable and effective way to deliver the medicine over a Kesselbach's plexus. The device also works without medication because the mainstay of treating nosebleeds is actually pressure. So for situations that might be like school nurses or coaches or places where people don't have meds,

it still works well. It's just that it's very helpful if you can have the medication. And you basically just simply clear your nose of clot. You insert the nasal sponges, rotate this into place, and then squeeze shut. And it just holds firm, constant, uninterrupted pressure at the correct anatomic location. But you can see now I can relax, right? I wanted it to be low to the profile of the face so that the mouth's clear, the eyes are clear, especially for kids. They panic when things are like in their face, even adults.

It was COVID times about the time we were developing this, so I needed it to be maskable. And then I wanted it to be something that felt comfortable so that they would tolerate it and keep it on and not like actually take it off so it would solve their problem. So you leave this in place for about 10 to 20 minutes and then you simply release and check for bleeding. It can be rinsed and reinserted if they're still oozing two to three times and then when you're done, it disassembles, the sponges come off and in our reusable kit, you can actually get sponge refills or buy the sponge refills on our own.

in the ER hospital space, actually send them home with a to-go device or the clip itself so that they don't bounce back, which is a big issue that we deal with in emergency medicine. And so I really consider this to be kind of like the bandaid of nosebleeds or an effective first line nosebleed rescue so you don't have to go to more painful and invasive interventions like coterie or packing or all the other bad things that we have to do to people when we don't have a successful first attempt with these.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (18:51.765)

less invasive interventions. So that is what currently exists.

Alison Curfman (18:57.602)

What year did you first make the first prototype?

Dr. Liz Clayborne (19:00.608)

Yes. So I mentioned that I thought about the device when I was in residency. So I was 2015 and then did the business plan competition, I-Corps, but it was on the back burner for about five years. So that's another thing I can talk about as far as like what it takes to actually make it happen. I got busy, I got married, I had two kids, I joined faculty at University of Maryland, life was life-ing. So I was doing that and I really didn't do much with the company between 2015 and 2020.

And then in 2020, which I talk about a lot because the other thing I'm very conscious of when you're talking about physician innovation and entrepreneurship is that it is always a busy time. But like in 2020, I was pregnant with my second kid right before the pandemic hit. I was at the start of a divorce. Yep. It was a very challenging time. And I for some reason decided, hey, this is when I'm going to start working on NASA clip again.

Alison Curfman (19:46.4)

Me too!

Alison Curfman (19:53.71)

This is the time! This is the time!

Dr. Liz Clayborne (19:55.606)

So I did an accelerator program in the summer of 2020, right after I delivered my daughter in May. like breastfed her through this program because it was virtual. And that was the first time I got a little bit of capital. And then in that next year from 2020, 2021, I really started fundraising. So we got our initial prototypes going around 2021 to 2022 when I was in the process of raising my first million in capital. And for a device company,

you are going to have to raise capital. So I definitely talk about fundraising a lot. is certainly helpful to bootstrap as much as you can. But for any kind of life science medical device company, ultimately you do need capital. So understanding when to start that, how much you need is really important because once you start getting in bed with investors, it does put you on a timeline and you're expected to kind of be moving forward at a certain pace. So that puts pressure on you to move at a certain pace as well. So this definitely transitioned for me.

in 2020 from being kind of a side hustle, a hobby to more of my primary focus. And then I went full time with the company in 2023 when we had raised enough capital to actually give me a little bit of a salary. And I significantly dropped my clinical hours down to PRN, which is what I am now. But I still practice two to four shifts a month, which I think is also really important and super helpful, especially in emergency medicine. It's nice that we have shift work so you can always work a little bit.

because I do think having a good understanding of how your technology works on the ground level is very helpful. It's helpful to me in sales and then it was also helpful in me thinking about the next iteration of our device as a drug delivery platform.

Alison Curfman (21:30.732)

That's so cool. I probably, I'm guessing that everyone who's listening to this is probably going, my God, she's so good at talking about her product. Like how, how many times do you think you have told someone your pitch or elevator speech about Navy Club? Do you think we're in the millions yet? Definitely thousands.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (21:40.981)

you

my god.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (21:49.238)

Mm-hmm. thousands of times. So, you know, so ironically in 2020 during the pandemic, I was doing a lot of live television interviews. I was on CNN, Yahoo Finance, MSNBC, and it was from this initial interview I did about being pregnant at the start of pandemic. And I found I had a knack for live television interviews. But what I didn't discover until later is that that really honed my speaking skills, which was so helpful.

when it came to pitching because a lot of times I think this is something that there is a little bit of a natural skill that people have. And I think I'm blessed with that to a certain degree. But then the other part of it is just repetition. How many times you're doing it. So because I had gotten very used to succinctly responding to questions and having poise and confidence and energetically kind of presenting myself in a way that I think is attractive to investors, I then had to get really clear on how do I present the story.

Alison Curfman (22:30.662)

Yep.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (22:46.143)

How do I introduce the problem in my solution? What's the audience I'm talking to and like how to talk to them effectively? And that is so important for you to be successful in fundraising. And I think that I've been really good at fundraising because I practice that skill so often.

Alison Curfman (23:02.075)

I'm going to tell you a funny story. So first off, think a lot of doctors actually have a lot of inherent communication skills because we have to simplify and present information to patients constantly and help them understand what it is that we've figured out or what we need them to do and like to inspire them to take action. Like, hey, take your blood pressure medicine. So, I mean, we do have

Dr. Liz Clayborne (23:23.551)

Yes.

Alison Curfman (23:29.27)

experience learning communication skills. And with pitching, like, I think back to some of our first, you know, pitches when we were sharing our, company for the first time, I'm like, I don't even know what we were talking about. Like, I, it was probably, I would love to see a video of that if it doesn't exist. But if it did, I would probably crack up. But I got so much feedback, both from the people we were pitching to about the business concept, but then also, I mean, I had a lot of support around me with a

business partner, I was obviously incubating within a private equity firm and our acting CEO at the time. He would come to the pitches with us. We were talking to a lot of big payers. And my funny story is that he and I had a thing where he would sit across the table from me because I would get really excited. And he was like, you got to stop talking at a certain point. And it was like, when it's clinical, we're going to turn on Alison. And when it's like,

Dr. Liz Clayborne (24:07.605)

Mm-hmm.

Alison Curfman (24:28.046)

something about the contracting, we're going to turn on this other person. And so he would literally give me like hand signals. It was like, it was like, and go. And then I'd be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here's this great clinical idea. And then he'd be like, And I would just stop. And so I, I had

Dr. Liz Clayborne (24:31.637)

Hmm.

Alison Curfman (24:46.754)

Like what a pitch should sound like, what components you should have, what don't go off track and all of that. And so like these things get better with experience and practice and repetition. And so I think what both of us had as we're describing this is support around us of people who had done this before or could give us coaching or guidance in this world that's totally foreign to us. Like, Hey, by the way, I get a patent or else you're screwed or

Dr. Liz Clayborne (24:49.715)

Right.

Alison Curfman (25:16.046)

Hey, if you want to be able to pitch. The concept of, you don't want to go invest a bunch of money into a company unless you've done the discovery process. You need to have a very good business model and a lot of feedback. Some people are like, well, I have my idea and it sounds really good in my head and then they get going forward with it. What I always want to encourage position founders is you need thousands of people's feedback.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (25:38.869)

Right.

Alison Curfman (25:45.378)

to take that and iterate on that and to really get to the core of what can make this a successful business.

Alison Curfman (25:57.378)

So anything else you wanna share about your journey or things you learned along the way?

Dr. Liz Clayborne (00:10.764)

Yeah, so I mentioned that I still work clinically and one of the reasons I do that is that I think all the innovation and ideas come from the clinical work. So I initially had designed nasocalyptic carry medications that were helpful in the setting of nosebleeds like chemostatic or vasoconstrictive agents. But I also, when I was working, thought this might just be a great way to better deploy any intranasal drug. The one that first came to mind was Naloxone or Narcan, the opioid reversal agent, because I knew from seeing all these overdose patients come in that police fire

EMS would be redosing Narcan a lot, both because the drugs were stronger on the streets, but also I kind of anticipated that they were spraying the Narcan up the nose and I don't know if they got the full dose or some of it went into the posterior pharynx or the lungs or it wasn't being greatly absorbed over the nasal mucosa, which is where it needed to be to be effective. So I thought like, if you put a medication like that on a sponge, put it in the nose, maintaining contact with the nasal mucosa and then put that system under pressure, probably more likely to be successful in one application.

So I thought that would be a great way to augment and potentially save lives with Naloxone, but then also opens up a $43 billion intranasal drug delivery market, because now we're talking about analgesics, benzodiazepines, migraine, allergy, even our vaccines. So we recently have engaged with a couple of pharmaceutical companies on ketamine-based drug. And what I'm excited about is this actually could facilitate a much larger exit, because I'm shooting for a billion dollar exit.

because of the state and I think it makes to be a black female founder, physician, innovator, mom doc. But also, when you modify how drugs are delivered, it can extend their patent life, it can help with efficacy and compliance, and these are all attractive features for pharmaceutical companies. So that is what we're looking at in the future, but I continue to work and who knows what will happen. mean, I think for me, I really am just trying to live by example.

be a model to my two girls and then also to all the residents and other physicians that I work with and letting them know that like you can do this. If you have an idea and you put some grit behind it, take initiative and follow the steps of other people you see in the space that are doing it, you can get there. And so I'm shooting for the stars, I'm going for the big exit. And then hopefully after that, I'll spend my time like you, Alison, which is talking more about it and spreading the word and just like, I think.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (02:32.46)

Definitely encouraging everyone in the space to understand how important innovation is in impacting the everyday lives of patients and also the physician innovators who are creating those solutions.

Dr. Liz Clayborne (02:53.784)

Thank you for having me.

Alison Curfman (29:12.076)

Liz, I just want to thank you so much for joining us today. I love your story. I love your energy. We are going to put her contact information on LinkedIn into the show notes and the website is nasaclip.com. N-A-S-A clip.com. And yeah, we just really want to thank you for being on the show today. Thanks.

Alison Curfman (26:51.618)

So for those of you who are out there listening to this and thinking, hey, like I actually have an idea. I have some thoughts of like how my patient care could be better or what my patients need to get better care.

your insight and inspiration is probably coming directly from your clinical experience, your time seeing patients. So if this is interesting to you, the theme that I want you to hear from me and Liz are that you have to have support around you and you have to have people that have done this before. She did an incubator program and she had the I-Core thing. I was part of a startup accelerator and then later incubated it at a firm.

And for those of you who are interested, wanted to share that we are starting our very first startup positions incubator this fall. We have only a couple of spots left and it's by invitation and application only. But if you are interested in learning how to build your business concept with a core framework of principles of how you can go from a concept to an actual business model design.

de-risking and getting the feedback you need from the right people, creating an entire financial model to ensure that this is going to be a business that can sustain itself and also really identifying how to create your pitch materials and identify your capital strategy. We are holding an exclusive program this fall. It's four months long and it's for founders or aspiring founders who have a business concept that they are

ready to invest this effort into. So if that interests you, go to our website at startupphysicians.com. I am really excited to hear from any of you who have ideas as physician founders. And I want to really just open the pathways for doctors who may not have identified what route they want to take to bring something to market. So if that interests you, please join us on our website.