It was an extremely fucking grim existence.

We'll start with the fact that you're designing shit to last two or three years longer than your clients. So. 80% of patients with atrial fibrillation are gonna be dead in ten years. If your gadget lasts twelve you're good.

Then we'll dig into what the prevailing insurance climate is for quality-of-life devices and their deductibles and determine just how much grandma is willing to spend on herself rather than leaving as a legacy to her kids for those extra ten years. That's your budget. Can't make it for that? Then don't make it. Make it for less than that? Charge that much anyway because you're going to need wiggle room.

Is it your IP? Or are you licensing it? Because if you've got the patents, you'll get to sell them when you're blown out of the water. But if you're licensing those patents they're depreciating every year you don't make a sale. If it takes you ten years to bring a viable product to market, there are only ten years for your buyer to recoup the expenses of buying you. I worked briefly for a company that licensed patents in 1996. It took them until 2005 to bring a product to market. By 2006 they'd burned through $70m. By 2012 they'd made $28m in sales. It's safe to say they were a good $100m-$120m in the hole when they were sold for $140m in 2013. That's a company with 80 employees burning a patent for 17 years returning $1m/yr to all its VC founders and if I'm not mistaken, the patents expired last year.

What I remember most is the silicone. Everybody wants 3M. 3M will happily sell their silicone to Nike because nobody is suing Nike out of existence because of the silicone in their shoes. Medical devices? Well, you always look for the deep pockets and in any device involving 3M silicone in its construction, the deep pockets are 3M (unless you're Johnson & Johnson or Philips, who have swallowed up pretty much everybody else). So there was an entire industry that bought 3M silicone, shipped it around, sold it, bought it, resold it, rebought it, processed it, melted it, chopped it up and re-sold it in such a way that it was chemically and physically 3M silicone but not legally 3M silicone. How's that for a cottage industry? "Medical commodity laundering."

Worked nine days straight once. Factory floor - our dozen-or-so talented watchmakers - built 38 whizbangles. I tested all 38 whizbangles. Put them in the designated ready rack. VP of engineering was leading shareholders through on a tour and managed to slam them all in a drawer.

$140m in 2013.