Nov 21, 2023
Steve Goetz is now the Chief Technology Officer at Motif Neurotech which is developing a minimally invasive neural implant for the treatment of depression and mental health issues. Steve was at Medtronic for 26 years before moving over to the startup landscape.
Top 3 Takeaways:
"We know stimulation of the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex is very efficacious in treatment-resistant depression. Our question is, can we develop a cranial stimulator that can do that in the comfort of a patient's home on demand and with a dosing profile that is matched to that patient's acuity and severity that both treats depression and at some point in the future turns into a maintenance therapy that prevents relapse altogether. And what that looks like to us is a pea-sized stimulator that fits in a minimally invasive burr hole that sits on top of the dura, so not brain penetrating, that delivers this therapy powered externally from a wearable, like a hat or a headband."
"For deep brain stimulation, there's a subspecialty of neurosurgery called functional stereotactic neurosurgery with on the order of hundreds of surgeons in the US. There are more that have the specialization to make a burr hole. You go from a few 100 to several 1000 people in the US who can do a burr hole. Over 200,000 burr holes are made in a given year in the US"
1:00 Do you want to introduce yourself better than I just did?
3:00 What was that smaller group within Medtronic?
8:30 What does the organizational structure look like at a place like Medtronic?
11:30 What do those teams look like?
16:00 Is each team working on a project?
18:15 CEITEC Nano Ad Sponsorship
18:45 What is Motif all about?
24:15 What is the success rate of TMS and what do you hope to achieve?
25:15 This isn't brain surgery but it is close to it, what's involved in this?
29:15 Could this surgery be done by a lower-skilled person than a neurosurgeon?
31:00 How does insurance reimbursement look like for Motif?
36:15 Why is this technology possible now?
41:30 Your technology seems bikini-ready
42:45 What is the progress of your company?
45:00 What's the small company vs large company life like?
47:30 How long do big decisions take in a big company?
48:45 How is the pace in a small vs small company?
51:00 What is the perfect recipe for working in a meaningful company vs learning in another company?
53:45 Anything else you wanted to mention?