12. From Innovation to Venture Capital for Nurses with Dr. Dan Weberg

Welcome to The Bossy Nurse Podcast, a show about nurse creators, innovators, risk-takers, and the ideas that shape their success.

Nurses are full of solutions, but too often, the missing piece is the business and funding roadmap to turn a clinical insight into something that can grow beyond one unit.

In this episode of The Bossy Nurse Podcast, Marsha speaks with Dr. Dan Weberg, PhD, MHI, RN, a healthcare innovation expert bringing nursing business ideas to life through venture capital. They talk about talk about what it takes to build nurse-led companies that can truly scale… and what founders need to understand before they ever take venture capital.

Find the all the resources mentioned in the show and full details at The Bossy Nurse website.

Transcript

Awards, Free Resources, Housekeeping

Marsha 0:02

Voting is officially open for nurse.org's 2026 Best of Nursing Awards, and the Bossy Nurse Podcast is included alongside some incredible nurse content creators. If this show has helped you or you simply love listening, we love your consideration. Visit nurse.org to cast your vote or you'll find the link waiting for you in the show notes. If you're a nurse ready to level up your career and boost your nursing income, I've got free resources ready to help from guides on landing the right remote nursing role to my top strategies on increasing your nursing income in the workplace and more. Head on over to thebossynurse.com forward slash free. That's thebossynurse.com forward slash free. To learn more about today's guest and get resources we shared in the episode, you can find all of that information in the show notes over at thebossy nurse.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Being a founder is really hard and uh things change very quickly. And you basically have to go in full time if you take vents or capital. Like they don't want this to be a side gig. They will not let you have a side gig if you're if they're giving you millions of dollars. And so you have to be ready to sort of make that life choice.

Marsha 1:24

Welcome to the Bossy Nurse Podcast, a show about nurse creators, innovators, risk takers, and the ideas that shape their success. I'm

Meet Dr. Dan Weberg And The Mission

Marsha 1:34

Marcia Batti, and on the show today, how Dr. Dan Weber is helping open doors for nurse founders to get real funding and real support by working in venture capital as a general partner and helping nurses turn their ideas into companies that can actually grow and last. Nurses are full of solutions, but too often the missing piece is the business and funding roadmap. Not because the ideas aren't strong, but because most of us were never taught how to turn a clinical insight into something that can grow beyond our own unit. For Dr. Weaver, that pattern started early. See what's not working, step in, and build what's missing. Over time, that instinct pulled him from innovation work into the investment world so he could help nurse founders get the support, strategy, and staying power to build companies that last. And here's

Early Spark: Simulation To Leadership

Marsha 2:38

the part that nurses don't always hear up front. Once you take outside funding, it's not a hobby, it's a commitment. And Dr. Weeberg understood that long before he ever stepped into a boardroom or a pitch meeting. He learned it in nursing school when he first spotted a gap and built what was missing.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

I actually started sort of my senior year in nursing school. So um that was like 2005. I graduated in 2005. So it was 2004, 2005. The nursing squad ASU had bought their first mannequin simulator and SimMan, and they had no idea how to use it. And so one of the faculty had the foresight to say, hey, we need two senior students to do their senior nursing project on simulation. I was like, that sounds awesome. I'll do that. And I locked myself in a closet with SimMan basically and taught myself how to program him. And then my thought of innovation was, well, you know, I know all the things that Simman could do if you, you know, I was thinking about how you can make him better and how you could write these scenarios and that kind of stuff. And so that was going to be my entree in innovation. And that's why I applied for the master's in innovation program at ASU, thinking I was gonna build a simulator. And I quickly kind of pivoted into, you know, healthcare is broken and it needs leaders to think differently. And I got really interested in like leadership science, the evidence around culture change and organizational structure and that kind of stuff, and sort of pivoted into innovation as leadership rather than building something new.

Marsha 3:59

Yeah, and what amazing body of work that you have, like coming out of that program, which we'll get into lots of that pretty shortly. But I did want to take a step back too. I just an interesting piece that you just shared that uh when you got to Arizona State University, it was the feeling that you had when you first got on the campus. And I think that's such an amazing thing to share because that's what happened to me when I went to college. It was the feeling I had gotten accepted into a couple of the schools, well, the schools that I applied to. And um, the one campus, I went there, got on campus, and I knew immediately. It was a small school, but it just knew immediately that was the school that I wanted to go to. So I really appreciate you sharing that. And I think that's a common, common feel because yeah, if you grew up in California, you're going to a UC school, most likely you're gonna do that. So with the program that you joined with your master's in healthcare innovation, um, was that the program that was the first program or was it your PhD where you were the first ever graduated?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I was in, well, both, both times.

First MHI Cohorts And PhD Path

Marsha 5:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

So the MHI program, uh master's in healthcare innovation program started, and I was in the first cohort to graduate. I wasn't in the very first cohort, but halfway through cohort one and co I was in cohort two, uh, we combined because there's only four students in cohort one. There were eight, I think, in cohort or six in cohort two. So we just combined into a big cohort and um and ended up all graduating together. And uh, so that was the first time that program had been done, which was awesome. It was a learning experience on the academic side. Um, I got exposed to some iconic nurse leaders like Dr. Bern Melnick and Dr. Tim Porter or Grady and Kathy Malik and just some of these people that like literally wrote the textbooks that we learned from and had them as mentors. And then uh the PhD, then you know, they they I graduated from that. And they're like, hey, we have this PhD program. We're starting in innovation. We need people to apply. And I was like, ah, whatever, sure, that sounds good. Like I had no clue what PhD was. I mean, you know, really in detail. And I I was the only one that got in to that contract. And so now I'm like, well, now what? Now I committed to this program, like I don't know what to do here. And I, you know, it was a humbling experience. I was in a cohort of other people who were focused on more clinical problems, and I was in the innovation science and leadership space, and there was a whole debate with our nursing faculty on that. Um, but again, it was like a life-changing decision. I got one-on-one mentorship from some of these people that like people pay thousands of dollars to get access to. And um, and it was just, it changed my whole, my whole experience and and was able to graduate in five years and uh be the first graduate with a healthcare innovation degree in the country.

Marsha 6:43

Yeah, so I wanted to talk about that as well. So, being the first to graduate with that type of degree, I imagine you had a lot of freedom in what you would study or in terms of your thesis. So, how did you go about selecting what was your area of study?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Oh man, that was a back and forth for like over two years, probably. Um, you know, I thought I was gonna come in again. My background at the time was really in simulation. I was, I was teaching simulation, I was teaching people how to program SimMan and lead simulation activities and debrief and all the things related to that, sort of the catalyst for all this. So I thought I was gonna do like a simulation-based study where I was gonna put people through a mannequin-based simulation on leadership, and you're gonna have to like do you get some curriculum, then you go apply it in simulation and have like a cohort, you know, uh pre and post-study. And that that really sort of lost its steam pretty quick. It just wasn't gonna be impactful. Um, so then I pivoted a little bit, kept simulation in the in the cards, but said, what if, you know, I knew I knew of a school in Arizona that was gonna be adopting uh a simulator for the first time. And so I said, well, what if I could study the leadership, the leadership behaviors of that school's um team and see how they led a successful uh implementation of an innovation with simulation being that innovation. And so that's what I ended up doing

Eight Behaviors For Innovation

SPEAKER_00 8:05

is is um I I did a case study where I interviewed all the stakeholders related to the implementation of simulation and sort of come up came up with eight behaviors that leaders need to have on their team or display or or practice in order to have successful innovation. That's sort of where we landed.

Marsha 8:22

Yeah. And so I I know that you had a some research around that about the eight qualities or yeah, you can read the 250-page dissertation if you want to, or just chat GPT a summary.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

It's probably better.

Marsha 8:36

So, can you give us some examples of what those qualities are in an effective leader?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, um, I don't remember all eight. That's the problem. Uh, but but it is in our book and it's in and it's in it's out there in the world. I mean, a lot of it is stuff we know, but it's like how do you apply it? And I think the big the big finding I also found was you know, you innovation doesn't occur with a single person, it requires a team. And so the whole point of these behaviors wasn't to have one person display all eight, it was for a uh a leader or a team to build their team to have most of these behaviors on the team. So I think that's important to say. It was things like, you know, um risk taking, you know, like which is a broad category, but you know, in order for innovation to have, you have to break the norm of what you're doing day to day. And so there's a specific behavior in which you have to sort of push against and challenge the routines you do every single day. So risk taking was a big one. Another one was leveraging opportunity. So, you know, at the time that school didn't have funding directly for simulation, they had to sort of like think about their budget in whole and figure out where they could sort of grab pockets of dollars to make this thing work. So really bootstrapping something that couldn't get formal funding. And so there's an aspect of like creativity and and finance kind of coming together. Um, there were things like um uh making connections and relationships. So, you know, most of the brokering of and getting people to uh adopt the change was built in the day-to-day interactions. It wasn't some big kickoff, like you know, off-site with a bunch of pizza and post-it notes. It was like the day-to-day connection and and conversations that happened in the hallways and the conflict resolution that happened. So that it was really sort of getting deeper than what we tend to do in innovation. And we have a whole story about this too. But it, you know, we we sort of want to kick off innovation by pulling a bunch of people in and off-site, giving them coffee and and and pizza and post-it notes, and then coming up with some random idea they thought of that day and vote with stickers. Like you forgot the whiteboards. Yeah, the whiteboards, yeah, and whiteboards and drawing, and like that that's not how innovation happens. Like, that is not that's a rapid cycle brainstorming, which is one tool, but that's not how like real innovation happens um over time. And so I I sort of got into what are those, what are those interactions that people have to have every day to sort of get innovation adopted, and and that's sort of where we landed.

Marsha 11:02

Yeah. So you touched on a lot of topics that were I'm gonna actually ask you a little bit later.

What Innovation Really Means

Marsha 11:09

But in terms of the innovation and the work that you do currently, how would you describe what is innovation? I think we all know, but when you get to the heart of it, what how do you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah, um, I mean, my my definitions evolved over time, but I would say it's something that adds social and economic value to the group that's experiencing the innovation. And I think it has to have both. And I think because the the debate that happens, and you know, I teach I teach this stuff at at um the Ohio State. I have to put that in there because they trademarked it, the Ohio State University. Um, you know, a lot of people confuse invention with innovation. And, you know, invention is creating the thing, innovation is having it adopted and adding value to some group of people. And so when when I when I talk about innovation, it's great that you invented something, but the hard part is like having people use it. So I think innovation is really um something new to the people experiencing it that adds social and economic value. And I think, you know, one of the sort of cliche examples is the iPhone. Like the iPhone itself is an invention, but it's an innovation because it changed the way we interacted in the world. It changed how we connected with people and all the things that we do in the world. And it also changed the way that we um manage our lives, like how we purchase things and how we interact with with uh vendors and and and companies. And like it changed the entire way we live our lives. Um, and so that's the innovation part of it. The the phone itself is is the invention. And so how people adopt it and incorporate it into their lives is sort of the innovation piece. And that's sort of how I explain it.

Marsha 12:46

So, in terms of nursing, I think that's a very interesting way of how you put this. It's not the invention, it's the actual adoption or the implementation of those things that impact us socially and economically. So, in terms of innovation and nursing, what are some of the inventions that you see or innovations that you see,

Nurse-Led Inventions Making Impact

Marsha 13:06

but inventions that you see that can lead to innovation that's going to help us long term in healthcare in terms of quality and outcomes with our patients? What are the things that you're seeing today?

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole, you know, there's a whole history of nursing innovation out there. I mean, everything from, you know, helping research uh tuberculosis, you know, treatments and and and that kind of stuff all the way through like the invention of some of the tools that we use today. But I think, you know, more contemporary answer in and full disclosure, you know, uh, we do invest in these companies too. And but they're also great examples. So um Roddy Medical was created by Lindsay Roddy. Um, it she invented a central line um stabilization device. So uh it goes on on the bed and secures all the central lines up to uh, I don't know, 50 or 150 pounds at some like crazy number, so that those lines can't get pulled out. Um, she's selling that into into organizations now as a patient safety um sort of uh thing, and and they have a lot of data around it it um stopping central line you know pullouts and and that kind of stuff. And so you know that was invented by a nurse. We have another group called Wave Therapeutics, uh, which was invented by a nurse named Jessica who um created a mattress pad and a wheelchair pad that takes pressure, um systematically takes pressure off um the skin. And and in some of the preliminary studies is showing blood flow is as good as standing up when sitting on this mattress um invented by a nurse. Uh there's, I mean, that we have with nurse capital, sorry, the the nurse venture capital fund I'm part of, we have over a hundred pitch decks from nurses um that have invented something that is ready to be out in the world in some way. And so it's amazing to see what's going on there. And I think the biggest thing, you know, for for nurses is to realize we are the center of healthcare. Like everything in healthcare touches a nurse at some point, whether that's health plan or direct care or some crisis or some issue, it always touches a nurse. And so we're the best positioned to solve the complex issues in healthcare. And not every innovation needs to be an invention. Some of it is process or product or software that helps with daily stuff, like all that is out there too. But nurses are positioned to solve the healthcare problems just because of the nature of their work.

Marsha 15:17

Right. I mean, we're we're the ones within the clinical workflows, we're the ones seeing the patients on the front lines and we're actually communicating with patients. So, who better to add voice to all

Venture Capital 101 For Nurses

Marsha 15:27

of the technology and the innovations that are coming forth right now? So you we're gonna talk about venture capital. So I actually want to get started on that right now because I have a lot of questions that I would love for the audience to hear. So likely a lot of the nurses listening don't know this world. Venture capital is something that we're not taught in nursing school. Um, innovation is barely even taught in nursing school at that. So venture capital is not a topic, a common topic at all, or any topic. So I want to touch on the opportunities that nurses are seeing right now within the work that they do and how they can move into a world of bringing those innovations to light. And venture capital is one of those opportunities to do so. And you've just made general partner with Nurse Capital. And if you could give us or give nurses a definition of what you would consider is venture capital, and then the role that you have as general partner. I know you were um well a limited partner before. Yeah, a limited partner before. So those are some terms that we don't, we just don't hear in this space.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah. So I mean, at its core, venture capital is a group of investors who rally behind who put their money into a pool um uh called a fund. And that fund usually has a certain thesis that they're trying to play out in investments. And so um the the nurse capital or nursecapital.net is our website. Uh, the thesis is that nurses are at the center of healthcare and their solutions are viable and um and underinvested in, undercapitalized, and um, and not really uh in the mainstream of of what we would see in the innovation sort of ecosystem in healthcare. And so our goal is to provide direct funding through our fund um and and and invest in uh companies in exchange for equity in that company, so shares of that company or a part ownership in that company. And and then what we do as a fund is um we have sort of two layers in the fund. One are called limited partners. Limited partners are investors, um, so they give us uh a certain amount of money and to put into the fund, and then they can help uh guide, advise, and vote on what our future investments are. The other piece are general partners, so they run the fund, they manage all of the due diligence and investments and um

Funding Stages, Valuation, Exits

SPEAKER_00 18:01

uh legal pieces and just the the management of the fund and then ultimately have the decision-making power to pull the trigger on an investment. And so that's that's sort of venture capital. So if you're raising, uh if you're starting a company in which you need a large amount of dollars in order to um, you know, build a product or get research for FDA clearance, or you want to sort of scale quickly, then venture capital can be an avenue to get large sources of money quickly in exchange for ownership. So also with that ownership, depending on how much we invest, sometimes we get board seats. So we we become part of the board formally for that company and can help drive the um the decision making in that company as well. Um and with nurse capital, you know, the value we bring, we're a small fund. So, you know, a lot of times venture capitals have hundreds of millions of dollars in their funds. You know, nurse capital is a very small fund, around $1.5 million. So we write checks to companies for about $150,000, $200,000, $300,000. Um, so not huge life-changing amounts of money, but the value that we bring with that check is a group of limited partners who are all nurses, and you most of them are nurse executives or past nurse executives. So we have this amazing uh network to take an idea and get it into the market very quickly through those introductions. And because our limited partners have a stake in the game, right? They're trying to look for a financial return on this, they're willing to make those introductions for our portfolio companies. So that's sort of the broad brush of what we're doing at Nurse Capital. And uh, we've made three investments, two are still viable, and then we're we're looking to make two to three investments every year moving forward.

Marsha 19:43

Awesome. Well, to make those investments, nurses have to know a lot of the terminology that you're using right now. Yeah, I'm gonna sort of do a rapid fire. So I hope you'll play along and I'm just gonna list some terms and sort of give us a little bit of the explanation, and they can be very, very short and brief. Most of the time when we hear venture capital, we think about Silicon Valley. That was the, I guess, the old school venture capital. Now you have Silicon Valley's popping up in a number of places. Texas is one, Austin, Texas, a lot of tech people are going there. But venture capital, we usually hear about it being tech based. And now there's health tech, biotech, things like that where nurses have other opportunities to either go into startups themselves and be a part of that first innovative culture, or actually be a startup themselves. So I'm gonna start with a couple of terms so we can put those out there so people, when they hear these terms, they'll have an idea. So um, let's start with one bootstrap.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yep. So bootstrap would be the opposite of venture capital. If you're gonna bootstrap, that means you're taking your own money and usually a friends and family uh, you know, big, bag, borrow, and steal sort of thing, uh, to get as far along in your company as possible. So you're trying to get the minimum viable product for as uh uh uh as cheap as you

Should You Raise VC Or Bootstrap

SPEAKER_00 21:05

can. You're not willing to give up much of your company or any of your company to investors. You want to keep it with yourself and you're funding it through your own means. Um, and you're not looking for big checks to sort of accelerate that. So that would be bootstrapping.

Marsha 21:19

You just brought up another term, minimum viable product, MVP.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Yep. So MVP would be the the um the cheapest, most uh rudimentary working uh prototype for whatever solution you're you're building, whether that's an actual device uh where you've kind of used cardboard and duct tape and chewing gum like MacGyver to sort of build something to show somebody uh and sort of get the idea rolling that then you refine over time, or if it's a software or or a service that it's sort of the minimum thing you can offer and get in a value exchange. So someone would pay for it or or think that it would be valuable. And it's it's sort of that first step in the innovation. Innovation process to formalize an idea from paper to something real. And that's where you can do a lot of testing and even sort of refine the product with an early customer in order to make it work.

Marsha 22:10

Yeah. And I just want to say on that point, just if a couple of years ago, in terms of like building software, because we have a lot of innovation with software. And as nurses, we can build a lot of software products as well. You would need someone who is an engineer or a software developer to do these things. Now I code websites on a daily using different tools out there like Claude, Lovable. You can just use any tools right now and just prompt these tools to create what you want as an MVP or a proto well, a prototype. Um well, prototype, what's that?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah. Prototype would be your first like working, like full-scale sort of uh sort of tool, right? It's not completely refined, but it's like ready to enter the market and and you can sell it in some way. Yeah.

Marsha 22:57

So yeah, so there are tools out there that allow you to do all of these types of things without knowing how to code or hiring engineers. You can actually use these tools to pitch them to venture capital to get the funding. So in that, so let's talk about decks. What is a deck?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah, a deck you want to, so we have criteria on our website for it because it's something that is a science um and and an art, just like nursing. So a deck would be what we usually call it your pitch deck, um, which is your basically five to 10 slide overview of your company, what your addressable um sort of population is, like who would buy this and and how how

Incubators, Accelerators, And Networks

SPEAKER_00 23:41

are they out there, how you differentiate from the competitors, why your idea is better, who your leadership team is, and then if you were to get funding, what you would use it on. That's sort of the basics of it. And that's what you would first send to someone looking to invest in your company to sort of pique their interest.

Marsha 23:58

Yeah. And sometimes these decks can lead to pre-seeds or seed rounds, which is yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

So pre-seed is like, I have an idea, I might have a minimum viable product or a prototype, and I'm looking for money to build that out. Um, and then you have uh, so that'd be pre pre seed seed, like you're funding, you're sort of funding the development. And then you would move into more formal funding rounds and they just follow the alphabet. They start with A and then go to, I mean, I've seen K rounds in some ways, but those are those are investments when you actually have usually paying customers or at least sign contracts with customers that you need um money to grow and your you your company's uh value has increased, um, but you're you you're sort of not gaining enough revenue to accelerate that growth either in manufacturing or in customer acquisition, that kind of stuff. So you so you'd get follow-on rounds, they call them follow-on rounds to get capital in order to grow faster.

Marsha 24:57

So it's good to have some type of work done, prototype done, um, customers first, customers, adopters first before you go to venture capital to actually get that funding. So, in terms of funding too, there's also things like valuations. So, how does valuations come into play? And then you talk about term sheets and things like that. How do how do those things come into play?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Yeah, I'm learning all this stuff too. So um it's it's a fascinating world, and there's so many nuances to it. Um, I would say, you know, when you're looking for raising money, it's venture capital is not the only answer. So that's the first thing I would say is you need to think about your business and what you want to do with it. Some people want to grow and have millions of customers and exit at some big multiple. There's a lot of risk to that. Um, also, those funding rounds we talk about, you know, there's there's different risk to the investor at each round, too. A seed round is really risky. And so there's certain funds won't invest at all in seed rounds because they're trying to protect their limited partner capital from the downside, from from losing money. And so they won't invest in seeds. Others like that high risk piece. They can vet companies really quickly, they have a sense for it or they've done it, and so they'll invest in seed rounds. Nurse Capital usually does late seed or series A, um, which means they have signed contracts or customers. Valuation comes in is based on you know a number of factors, these sort of your assets as well as your revenue, um, your potential revenue, your um how

Pipeline Highlights And Deal Flow

SPEAKER_00 26:18

much money people, what the hype in the market is, how much people are gonna be buying, you know, or investing in your company. Is there competition for that? That can all drive up a perceived sort of value for your company. And that number is basically what all these shares, these this equity, these the the ownership in your company is worth over time. So, for example, I when I worked at Trusted Health, um, I came in at a series A when I started working there and I was granted equity, and my equity is very low, like in the sense, right? But by the time I left Trusted two years later, our valuation went from 70 million, I think, to like 600 million. And so those shares are worth more. And investors coming in on a series C are now paying the um their investment is at the valuation of 600 million, not 70 million. So the earlier you get in on a company, the more opportunity you have to get a return on that investment. And that basically the cheaper it is to become an owner in that company, the more the valuation goes up, the more expensive it is to be an investor in that company.

Marsha 27:19

Yeah. And so later on, you're well, skipping through a lot of the steps. I I I know there's tons of things you could teach us on this, but then there's the exit part where you the dream. Yeah, the dream. And so what is the what is the exit? I we actually had a nurse, Sarah Bose, on our show first season who actually exited her company. Um, another test prep company purchased her company. Um, and so that was her exit. So, how would you describe an exit?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Yeah, so an exit, it really happened sort of well, three ways. One, your company could go under, and so you've exited the company completely and there is no return on investment. You sort of fire sale it and just, you know, you're done, you close it down. That's not an ideal exit, obviously. The other two would be either another company buys you, and so they they purchase the a value of your company that turns your equity, the investment dollars that you have, into real cash in it

Teaching Innovation In Nursing Education

SPEAKER_00 28:15

before you have an exit that is all paper, right? Um, so you have certain many shares at a certain valuation, but it's not worth anything until it's sold. And so a company can come by you and you've sold to them, or you can go public and have an um uh initial uh offering into the stock market, an IPO. And so that would also change your company from into an exit. And so those are the two main ones is either entering the stock market and offering shares to the public or um getting acquired by another organization.

Marsha 28:49

Wonderful. So now that we're educated on those terms, just curious how you would advise a nurse who had some type of innovative idea that you saw potential in. And if you maybe have a use case scenario that you could sort of walk us through what the process is, because a lot of us, we were talking just before we hit record about how our opportunities usually fall into, you know, going into nurse leadership with that healthcare organization or that type of opportunity where you are currently, or going back to school, becoming a nurse practitioner or CRNA, um, one of those routes. But we don't talk about the opportunities that we may have within healthcare innovative um opportunities or healthcare innovative ideas and how we can do those on our own without being underneath a certain structure of either healthcare plans or health organizations and also school. So, how would you walk a nurse who comes to you with an idea? Or does it happen that way? How does it happen?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah. Yeah. It happens all kinds of ways. Like some people have ideas that they haven't done any, you know, work on, but they have this idea and they want to know like what's step one. And others have come with like an idea or a prototype or a minimum viable product, and they're like, I I built a company, I created an LLC or an incorporation, and now I'm like, I need funding. I want to make this thing happen. And and so, you know, there's lots of pathways to start this. I think, you know, there's sort of a couple, a couple things to think about. If you have an idea, and again, it doesn't have to be a product, it can be a software, it can be a service, it can be a product if you want it to be. But the first thing you have to think about is um, what do I want to do with my life? Like, do I want to go and try and be like, you know, because if you get venture capital, they're expecting a 10x return on your investment. So are if are you willing to hustle and be have uh and lose some control of your business to the investors to make a massive return? And if you're willing to do that, then go for it. And if you want to watch the show Silicon Valley on HBO, it tells you all the in a funny way. It shows you this whole pathway. So I encourage people to watch it. It's hilarious. Um, but but so you that you have to decide. Venture capital takes control of your company and takes ownership

The Nurse’s Dose Side Project

SPEAKER_00 31:01

away from you in a good way. They're they're exchanging it for money. So that's the first. Do you want control where you keep it and you're getting um, you know, loans and uh grants to fund this, or do you want to actually sort of accelerate it and do you need the support of uh of a venture capital type uh um forum where that can make intros and help you scale your company quickly, knowing that you're gonna have to get a 10% you know return on your investment? The second one would be is it ready for investment at all? Right. So um, do you have, if it's a device, is it tangible? Are you able to sort of see it in the market? Have you started the diligence around FDA clearance if it's it requires that? Like that, you know, you need to be uh some way along with some research, at least some research on, you know, animals or or users or whatever to sort of make the case that this is gonna be a viable thing before people invest in it. If it's digital health or AI, you have to sort of prove that it's gonna, it's gonna change something in the market. So it depends on what your solution is, but you have are you ready and do you have evidence in some way, either research or user acquisition or or some initial sort of um buy-in to it that shows that this thing can take off and you're ready for uh a dollars to make that grow faster. Um, and then I think the last piece is um, you know, do you want to dedicate your life to this stuff? Because being a founder is really hard and uh things change very quickly. And you basically have to go in full time if you take ventured capital. Like they don't want this to be a side gig. They will not let you have a side gig if you're if they're giving you millions of dollars. And so you have to be ready to sort of make that life choice. Um, and if you if you're ready for all that, great. There's there's a lot of opportunity to get a lot of money very quickly, but you sort of have to, you know, it I tell nurses like, is this what you want? You know, and really think about and sit down with all your mentors and all your family and have the conversation of is this where I'm gonna put my energy for the next five to seven years? Basically, that's about how long it takes to get a good exit.

Path To LP And General Partner

Marsha 33:00

Yeah. What I've heard um or what I've seen in the innovation space in terms of other technology, not speaking specifically through healthcare, is that sometimes the new founders they'll go to an accelerator program or an incubator program so they can work through their ideas and innovation under some type of structured program where you have investors and advisors there to help support the work that they're doing to get their product or service off the ground. With Nurse Capital, do you participate in those type of programs as well? Or is Nurse Capital basically its own venture capital fund where people just come to you directly versus going through sort of a program like an incubator or an accelerator program? And then in an incubator and an accelerator program, if we get sort of a those are. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Yeah. Um, I I mean, we're not, you know, we're not exclusively partnered with any incubator or accelerator. We don't run one at the at this time. So, but we encourage our founders if they're ready for it, because you have to be at a certain, you have to have incorporated a company, you have to sort of have for an accelerator at least, you need to have a company ready. You need to have a product that's sort of there or nearly there to get that mentorship and and time. Accelerators also cost money uh or equity. So, you know, there's a there's an exchange of value that happens there. And if you're willing to do that, you know, you can you can do that too. There's some really big ones like Y Combinator, um, and we there's some nurses that have gone through that with their companies. There's um there's smaller ones, there's ones that like Cedar Sinai in California has one that's run by Techstars. There's one in um California or um LA Children's has one. So there's like unique ones that are sort of tied to a healthcare system sometimes too. So an accelerator basically is you have an idea, you've got some traction, and they accelerate that through network mentoring connections. They help you with your pitch deck, your business plan, your your engineering and your coding, all the things. An incubator is more I have an idea, it's sort of there, but I need a lot of help to really refine it and see if there's a market fit here. And so that's kind of earlier on. And you you would go into an incubator if you're sort of still pitching around the idea or you've gotten something,

How Diligence And Term Sheets Work

SPEAKER_00 35:17

but it's sort of really rough. That minimum viable product needs a lot of work. Um, so those would be those two. Nurse Capital doesn't do that. What we've set up is um not yet, at least, uh what we what we've set up is something called the Nurse Capital Founders, um, nurse capital network. And so it's an invitation group of nurse founders that come together quarterly and we connect them with industry experts and talk about growth of companies. And so we sort of bring them in and give them content. We've had um people on how do you sell into large health systems and what is like the value-based purchasing programs and all these things that they may not be exposed to. Um, we talk about investments and how to manage your capital table and all those types of things too. And so that's that's what we've created. That's free. Uh, it's a free service that we offer uh to to invited nurse founders, and and that's how we support them. Um, and then we have a large a large network of people too. So, you know, what we can do is connect people with uh accelerators or our limited partners who have run businesses or been in in decision-making capacity so they can mentor um the founders as well.

Marsha 36:22

Yeah, awesome. So you did mention that it is an invited network. The nurse, the nurse capital network is an invited network. So basically, does that mean you're sort of vetting these companies ahead of time or they're submitting decks themselves or have submitted decks that you've reviewed and you say, hey, this founder could potentially use some some some support? Is that how it happens?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yeah, that's sort of it. I mean, for our first thing is we do an intake call. So we take intakes from everybody. You can submit your deck through the website uh and uh and we'll we'll set up a chat with you and do an initial sort of intake and then we'll discuss on the back end like, is this something we want to follow up on? And is this within our thesis? Do we need to wait on it for a while until the founder sort of picks up and and you know shows us that this is they're they're they're building something more or whatever. So we'll we'll do that. And then um, yeah, once we sort of uh once we sort of see that you're you're all in on this stuff and and there's some there there, then we we can make that intro really easily um and and sort of go from there. Yeah. So we don't have like 75 people. I think right now we have like 15, uh, 10 or 15 founders in it. And um, and it's really, you know, they're in the middle of all the stuff we just talked about, the raising money, developing their stuff, going to accelerator, debating on how to get sales. You know, that's the sort of value that we add to that to that group.

Marsha 37:40

Yeah. And before that step, if you're not quite there yet to where you're probably going to apply or submit a deck to Nurse Capital for that kind of thing, probably an incubator, I would think, because a lot of incubators, there are a lot of incubators out there that actually provide funding that is free funding, not taking equity at all. I've seen a number of incubators on the market that actually provide, you know, startup funding where you don't have to sacrifice, you know, not to say sacrifice. It's not really a sacrifice as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Invest your capital.

Marsha 38:13

Yeah. So where you don't have to give part of your company to investors, but

Keynotes, What’s Next, And Identity

Marsha 38:20

sometimes it's an opportunity for you to get those ideas out and work on them and see if they can be something viable for Nurse Capital or any other venture capital firm that could work. So any projects that you're excited about, I know you said with Nurse Capital, you work on your the goal is to work on a few a year. Um, any projects that you're excited about that are moving through the pike? Oh, well, we probably can't talk about those, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah, we I mean, I can't disclose the company names. We have some really interesting ones. I mean, we have three that we're doing due diligence on now. Um, you know, ones around uh disinfecting central line hubs. That's pretty cool. Um, another one is like a triage wearable device for mass casualty events in which it it sort of takes vital signs and transmits it 10 miles and um can can help first responders sort of triage and and instead of putting you know tags on people for you know different levels of severity, it's an electronic version of that that can be sort of managed with a team. Um and uh and then we have a couple more in the pipeline that we're starting. So there's a lot of innovation out there. I was surprised that we even had 75 pitch decks in our in our inventory, you know. Like I didn't think there was that many out there. Um, but there they there's more every single day. And every time I go to you know a conference like Magnet or AONL or whatever, like there's more people that come up and say, I'm starting something, I'm doing this. And uh it's really fascinating. We become a great resource for them to at least start. And we're happy to chat with people too. I mean, I chat with people all the time, just starting their journey and and helping them point in the right direction, then watching them from afar until they're ready for you know something that we can offer.

Marsha 39:55

Yeah. And nurses are the innovators, right? Those decks that you're getting, they're all nurses. And any of the nurses out there who mulling over all of these ideas while you're on the unit and you're like, there's got to be a better way to do this. I would encourage someone to learn the basics of funding a business and how to get it started. Um, the very basics of that, and you know, maybe looking into venture capital and see what it's all about and incubators, accelerator programs, like you you mentioned, Y Combinator and Techstars, 500 startups, I guess that's still around. I'm assuming it's a bigger one. So I would encourage anybody to just look into that, look into that area because it's something that we're not taught in nursing school at all. So with you creating programs and innovation, do you see that we're moving towards putting these type of topics in nursing curriculum moving forward? No. Well, that's not that's disappointing.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

I mean, some schools are. I'll I'll tell you, some some programs are. I I find it's it's entering a lot more in the master's level. Um, and and you know, selfishly, we have two books out. One's for undergrad and one's for graduate master's and and DMP PhD. Um, our DMP book, uh PhD or a master's doctoral book is m it sells a lot more um into programs. So and that that whole book is on leading innovation. And so I I find a lot more in that master's when they because a lot of it's around leadership. So schools want to put it in their leadership curriculum for whatever program, whether it's clinical or non-clinical, they they sort of put it there. Undergrad is a lot to be desired. But we did we, you know, in our book, we also wrote chapters about non-traditional career paths, and it's written by two nurse entrepreneurs, Joey, um, Joey and Tofiki, who run a company called Frontier Medical. Safe Seizure, yeah, safe seizure, right? Yeah, yeah. So they're good buddies of mine. They live up the street. We go out for a beer every once in a while. And um, so they wrote a chapter uh or revised a chapter related to non-traditional roles. So we're trying to get it out there, and that book is like what you would use in your last year of nursing school, your senior sort of leadership project, or an R into BSN program. And so we're trying to get that out there. Now, we haven't gone into like innovation science that much. We haven't gone into like venture capital, that kind of stuff, but I at least it's starting to have the conversation that your life as a nurse is not necessarily only patient care, that there are other options. And it's something that's medicine has been doing for a really long time. Like if you go to Stanford, the chances of you practicing medicine is pretty low, in my opinion. Like you become an entrepreneur, right? You build the device or you run a company or whatever it is. And nursing, it's like you go to nursing school to be a nurse. And I think there's an opportunity for us to have tracks in business and in other things that can really um accelerate nurses out into the world as solution, um, as solutions and and business owners instead of just uh not just, but instead of patient care is only option.

Marsha 42:48

So if a nurse were starting, if a nursing student were starting or uh just you know in nursing school right now, how would they learn about these opportunities? What's the best way to learn about the opportunities? I would imagine first starting with LinkedIn and following people on LinkedIn who talk about this.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yeah, I would say LinkedIn's a great one, right? So that's that's I I find so much value in LinkedIn. I hate it and I love it at the same time. Um, it's like a necessary evil, but I've had so many connections and business opportunities come through it, it's just ridiculous. So I would say LinkedIn is important. Even even if you're a new grad clinical nurse, you know, just coming off of nursing school and past your Anclex, just create a LinkedIn profile. Not if if only for your applying to you know residency programs, people look at your LinkedIn first now. That's like the new resume. So um just build, have a have an online presence that that is professional. Um, I think the second piece is you know, if you're applying to schools, uh look for schools that have innovation in their work, like Arizona State. Their curriculum is based around innovation and evidence based practice. Drexel, um uh Texas, uh Texas Tech has it. Like there's some schools, uh University of Minnesota nursing, like they they have people in Ohio State. Have programs and content in undergrad as well as all the other programs, teaching business and innovation and leadership and not just building a business, because that's entrepreneurship. And some people want to be entrepreneurs. But also, if you choose to work for a health system or a clinic or wherever your career takes you, there's intrapreneurship. So building solutions for the organizations that you work for and leading change within established organizations. And so, you know, really look for programs that have that content. And um, and that's where I would start. And then there's a lot of networks out there. There's um, there's LinkedIn, there's the National Nurses and Business Association, there's AONL, has a whole innovation space now. Magnet, um, Magnet has a whole innovators row that they're trying to curate. And the American Nurses Association has a whole innovation website and director and all kinds of stuff. And so there's pieces out there you just have to kind of break out of like, I'm gonna, I'm only gonna be an ER nurse and start kind of expanding into those professional organizations because all of them have aspects of innovation in them now.

Marsha 45:01

Yeah. And I and I know that we're so focused when we're in nursing school. Well, as I remember, just graduating, getting finishing our degree, and then trying to decide our biggest decision, usually is trying to decide which unit we want to go into or apply to if we can get even get a job where we want to work. But we, yeah, we don't, I I didn't hear about innovation opportunities outside of the bedside when I was in nursing school. I did an accelerated program, but this was these were topics that were never discussed, never mentioned. Granted, it was 2010, 2011 when I was in nursing school, but these are topics. Uh, well, you're you graduated pretty recently from nursing programs and they're still not being talked about. So um it I guess the onus is on us to sort of, you know, if we have innovative ideas um to sort of do the research ourselves for now. Um, hopefully that will uh be changing in the future. So, question to Dr. Dan What type of innovative ideas are you working on? I know there's something right now, the nurse's dose, which I'm interested in hearing about.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Yeah, you know, today I just got the email from Amazon uh that it's live on Amazon now. So uh yeah, the the Nurse's Dose is a super fun, like super side project of mine and my brother. My brother's a physical therapist. And uh we wanted to make a cocktail book that has all the names of the drinks uh uh related to inside jokes in healthcare. So we have uh it's hilarious. It's 26 recipes in the book. It's on Amazon now, and and we um we have things like the plant the plantar fashionitis, which is an old fashioned with a little bit of fire bitters in it so that it burns just like plantar fashionitis. We have things like code brown in a good way, which is like a chocolate and coffee tiki drink. Um, and we have things like the M out the MI, which is like a hot buttered rum, right? So it was just taking drinks that everyone loves and changing the recipe a little bit and then you know, kind of honoring the fun, playful, dirty humor that healthcare workers have. So that's out there now. That was super fun to write it. And we did the whole self-published thing, like it's it was an experiment in that whole world and it released to today and is out there on Amazon. If you'd love it, it's great for Nurses' Week, all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, the that so that is a fun project. Nurse Capital has really taken up a lot of my um my focus uh as well, which is great. You know, we're trying to figure out invest in companies, grow. We're trying to raise a fund right now for $10 million so that we can um invest more dollars into nurse-founded startups. So we're we're looking for investors and raising money and and meeting with and companies and that kind of stuff. So that that's fun as well. Those are sort of my two big ones. Um, and then I love just mentoring companies. And so I I meet with uh companies regularly um and and support them and try and you know use my expertise to help them grow their company. So those are sort of my my innovations at the moment. Um and uh and it that that takes up all the time that I'm not working full time at my other job. So my weekends are are busy.

Marsha 47:58

So curious about the going into venture capital. I guess most people probably start off as angel angel investors, maybe. I'm not sure if that's how you started off, or did you go straight into a firm like and become limited partner and then general partner? How does that, how does that work if if a nurse were interested in that space?

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of different ways, uh, depending on how you want to manage your finances. Um, for me, uh, you know, uh you can go the angel route. That takes a lot of work and a lot of um of your own time and diligence to sort of vet these companies. And then an angel basically writes a small check um themselves as an individual into uh into a company. And so you have to sort of take on all that work a venture capital company would do for you if you were an investor. Um, I I didn't have time to do that. And so I I, when Nurse Capital was started, I talked with Beth Brooks, who's the other general partner, and Marla Weston, who used to be the CEO of American Nurses Um Association, they founded it and they're like, hey, we're raising money. What do you think? And I went to my wife and I said, Hey, there's an opportunity to be in venture capital. You know, this we have a small amount of money, and you know, should we do it? And she's like, Well, Dan, you've been doing innovation for 20 years now. You should put your money where your mouth is. I was like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. Why stop now? Yeah, I should totally do that. So um, so that's how I got in. So I was in, I was a limited partner. And then uh Beth and I have a good relationship. So and and Marla and I as well. And so Marla wanted to sort of um step back a little bit and sort of enjoy retirement and that kind of stuff. And so uh Beth asked if I would I would step up and sort of take on um a partnership with her in the general partner space and and help, you know, connect my network and and and do some of the fun management with her. And and so I said, yeah. And as of January 1st this year, uh I became a general partner. And the difference is, you know, limited partners, they they put in a certain amount of money and they get paid first when a company in our portfolio exits. So they'll get their money back plus the return. Um, general partners basically make whatever's not paid out on top of that. So it's called carried interest. And and so we would get um we would get income from those sales as well, but we're paid after the LPs are paid. So there's a little bit more risk into it, but also we're we have the decision-making power. So Beth and I and Marla um make the the final decisions on all the investments. So it gives us a little bit more control on where we put the money.

Marsha 50:14

Yeah. How long does it usually take to make a decision with from getting that first deck to due diligence, which is, I guess we can explain what that is as well. How long does it usually take?

SPEAKER_00 50:27

It's um, I I mean, it varies. It depends on how complex the company is. And then there's some timing things that are they raising a round right now? Do they have a deadline to close that round of funding, that kind of stuff? But, you know, I would say we can do it in a couple weeks usually. Um, you know, the first step is the pitch deck. The second step is we get publicly available information and uh ask some basic questions related to your finance and growth and team and that kind of stuff. Uh, if we want to go deeper, then we want to look directly at your, you know, we signed an NDA with you, a non-disclosure, and then we uh agreement, and then we'll dive deep into financials, your leadership team, what vibe you give off, like where you're headed, what do you say, how do you react to, you know, all kinds of different stuff. It's sort of like a really intense interview process that we get full transparency into all of the aspects of your business to try and figure out is the risk and potential worth the money that we give you. Um, and so we have a team that that works on that, which and they're they're great. And then if it if it ends up coming to the point where we want to invest, then um there's a thing called a term sheet, which is basically outlines the terms of that investment. A lot of legalese and and lawyers make a ton of money off like interpreting interpreting that stuff. But at the end of the day, it basically states this is how much we're gonna give you for this much of the company. And here are the rights that we have with um that come along with that check to you, whether that's a board seat or influence in in the company or um or or chances to invest in later rounds so we can keep our equity the same. Those type of things are all in a term sheet.

Marsha 51:58

Lots of terms.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Yeah, there's entire books on this stuff. Um Google Gemini is my friend for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Marsha 52:07

Yeah, lots of terms, lots of different ways to uh take nursing, our nursing knowledge, our nursing skills, our expertise, and turn it into something that can support larger populations on a bigger, bigger scale than we could ever imagine with the assistance of people like you and venture capital and advisors. Uh in a sense. So I know you're you're very, very busy. Like I was looking at everything you do, and I'm just like, how do people have time to do these things? I can barely make it just with my job and podcasting, but how do people do all these things? So we know you're in uh you're you're working with Nurse Capital. We know that you're now the nurse's dose out now on Amazon. And what else is next?

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Yeah, I, you know, I um I don't know what's next. That's sort of been the story of my career, though. Just, you know, sort of take the opportunities that present itself. Um, you know, I do a fair amount of speaking out in the world as well. So I have a couple speaking gigs coming up uh uh this year at different parts of the country at different conferences. I'll be at AORN uh for those OR nurses. Um, I'll be at a pediatric conference in in Orlando this year. And so, you know, really talking about uh, you know, what the blockbuster moment for healthcare is, like blockbuster video. We have a chance to double down on the past like Blockbuster did or build our future like Netflix. And I think nurses can build the future that they want and stop waiting for uh for something to change. And so that's sort of the topic of my keynotes, which is super fun. And you know, people can find me on on drnursdan.com, drnursdan.com, and um, and uh, you know, I have a presence there as well. But you know, I just like having my hands in lots of different stuff, and uh it keeps me grounded and keeps me connected to the network, which is so valuable, and um, I'm just excited to see what 2026 brings.

Marsha 53:54

Awesome. So I have one last question. So if you had to describe yourself in one of the three words, which one would it be and why? So risk taker, innovator, creator. And I have my guess, so I won't you say.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

I would say um, I would say innovator, uh I guess.

Marsha 54:19

Um and I have the sticky note to prove it. Here's my I knew that's what I was gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

I mean, I feel like I'm at you know, I would even call it like a positive deviant. So I like finding people that thrive in systems that are failing and then helping them stand up because I was always that person. Like when the ER was crazy, I was the one that was like, well, we can figure this out. Let's go figure it out. There's a better way to do this. So I think that's really the innovations at my heart. And I love teaching people the lead and helping mentor people on what it takes to lead change successfully, not posting notes on a wall, not having, you know, the pizza party, but really focusing on the science behind change. And if we do that, we can make a lot, a lot happen. Um, and I like enabling those those products and services to get out into the world, which I think is sort of the definition of an innovator. So I I think that's my that's my word.

Marsha 55:06

That was Dr. Dan Weberg, general partner at Nurse Capital. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to rate and review this episode in your favorite podcast app. And then don't forget to click the follow button so you won't miss an episode. This episode was produced and edited by Yorsi Truly with administrative and research support from Liz Alexandri and Renan Silva. I'm Marsha Batti, and you've been listening to the Boston Rose Podcast.