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Join us as Sam Pai, Vice President of Product and Operations at Sana Health, sits down with host Kyle Rand, Co-Founder and CEO of Rendever. Sam shares the inspiring story behind Sana Health, a company dedicated to improving the lives of those suffering from anxiety, depression, PTSD, neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, and sleep issues. He explains how Sana Health’s innovative technology uses visual and audio stimuli to adjust the brain’s response to sensory inputs, providing relief and improving quality of life, especially for older adults. He also delves into his personal journey to joining Sana Health, the company’s mission, and the importance of cultural fit and diverse skill sets in building a successful startup team. Sam signs off by giving aspiring entrepreneurs valuable advice on leveraging networks, maintaining good communication, and understanding their goals.
Tanya Perkins, Host:
Welcome to AgeTech Talks, conversations about AgeTech, powered by AgeTech Collaborative from AARP, leading a global mission to drive innovation at the nexus of longevity and technology. You are tuning in to a series of discussions recorded live at CES 2024 that highlight the dynamic startup founders who are making aging easier for everyone by pioneering innovative AgeTech solutions. In conversation with fellow startup founders, Kyle Rand and Tanya Perkins, each episode invites an AgeTech Collaborative startup founder to discuss their journey and share the invaluable lessons they’ve learned along the way. Today, we’re thrilled to have Sam Pai, Vice President of Product and Operations at Sana Health to share their story.
Kyle Rand, Host:
All right. Hello everybody. We are here on the show floor at CES talking about some of the amazing products and technologies and what it takes to build them. So I’m joined now by Sam Pai with Sana Health. Sam, how are you today?
Sam Pai:
Very well, thank you very much.
Kyle Rand:
Cool. Well, you are here today representing Sana Health, and I’m curious, if you had to summarize what Sana does and who Sana influences and impacts, could you do that in a quick 60-second pitch?
Sam Pai:
Sure. Basically, anybody who suffers from anxiety, depression because they’re all associated with PTSD, as well as people who have pain issues like neuropathic pain and fibromyalgia could benefit. Basically because the brain is so attuned to all the different sensory inputs that are coming in, by adjusting how the brain responds to those inputs, we can reduce people’s perception of pain, as well as their anxiety levels, the depression levels and how they react to various stimuli.
So in terms of who can be affected, almost everybody can be affected and they could benefit from this. It’s especially useful for, since we’re here at AARP, the older generation. As you get older, you tend to have more trouble sleeping. Our device helps you sleep. So the idea is that it provides stimuli in the visual and audio portions of your senses, and by using those patterns, it entrains your mind into deeper levels of brainwave patterns, like delta patterns, which are typically associated with deep sleep. As well, it could be theta level patterns, which are associated with things like the flow state. When you’re meditating, you enter into a flow state, so where you’re more present in the now as opposed to thinking about the report that’s due, things like that. A lot of people could benefit from this technology.
Kyle Rand:
Okay, so Sam, you are not one of the founders of Sana. What brought you to Sana in the first place?
Sam Pai:
What brought me to Sana in the first place was the desire to be someplace that has more balanced lifestyle, which with being in Colorado, that is a great benefit. But more importantly, it was the and the target market that Sana is approaching because it can be beneficial to whole swaths of the market. If you have a lot of issues, like the serious issues like fibromyalgia, it’s beneficial for them and it actually allows them to live life properly. If you are like me with just the occasional insomnia periods, that it helps me get to sleep and be able to focus. Those two coming from one device is fantastic. And that’s one of the reasons that I enjoy working on this product is that it can benefit so many people in so many different ways.
Kyle Rand:
What was the original why for Sana and how has it evolved to where we are today?
Sam Pai:
The original why hasn’t really changed that much. Richard explains it best in the video that’s on our website, where he explained how he was heading down a road and he had a choice between running into a petrol truck or running off the bridge into a gorge, and he chose the gorge. And he came out of it being a paraplegic with intense pain, chronic pain. What he noticed was while he was watching a particular movie, there were periods where he was interested and uninterested, and during those periods, his pain reduced. And so he spent his lifetime trying to figure out why that was the case, and he landed on these entrainment patterns of sound and lights that allow you to feel less pain. So that’s been at the core of what our focus is. The whole dealing with insomnia and sleeping was a side effect of that. Using the pain, right now we are finishing up a clinical trial on neuropathic pain, so we’re pretty close to our core of pain relief.
Kyle Rand:
That’s awesome. One of the things that we talk about for a lot of companies and for a lot of investors, what you’re really looking for is incredible founder market fit, and what that often means is that the founder has to have a really, really deep personal attachment to whatever it is that they’re building. What I don’t think we talk about it enough is how important that translates from the founder to the rest of the team as you build out an organization. And I’m curious how you’ve seen that be successful as Sana has been growing over the past eight years.
Sam Pai:
The success, I think, comes from the fact that the market and device we’re working on has so much benefit to a lot of people, and that’s what attracts a lot of the employees is that whole providing a benefit and working on a device that helps generally people at large, a broader market of people. So we’ve been able to find people who culturally fit to that and then with the skill set that understands working in a startup environment, which is very dynamic. So those two pieces help find people that are appropriate and then a good fit for our company.
Kyle Rand:
Remind me your role.
Sam Pai:
Oh, my role is the VP of product and operations. So I’m responsible for product design, as well as the manufacturing of devices.
Kyle Rand:
Okay, so those are two very, very different things and I imagine that also in a leadership position you have to be bringing new people into the team, getting them trained on, so you have to train two very different styles of skill sets. How does that why come together when you think about onboarding a new team member?
Sam Pai:
Once you’ve got the cultural fit, there’s definitely a skill set, the dichotomy. The operation side, you’re definitely focused more on people who are process-oriented, detail-oriented, who follow the procedures according to the way it’s written and who can notice issues and help raise those issues to have the engineering team then look at a solution for them. On the design side, it’s definitely about documentation as well. Since the output of engineering is documentation, drawings, bell and materials, et cetera, but the process ahead of time though, the design process, definitely relies on a lot of left-brain creativity, like putting two things together and seeing if they work and realizing, no, it’s not going to work, so what lessons have we learned and then building on that. So definitely a whole different skill set. We find that a lot of younger engineers actually have that understanding, that whole design thinking. When you’re doing the hiring for both sides of the company, you definitely have to pay attention to those skill sets and how they fit.
Kyle Rand:
Yeah, one of the realities of every single startup team is that, especially on the leadership level, is you have to be able to put on multiple hats. If you were to give any advice to somebody who’s listening, who’s maybe earlier on in their startup journey and they’re currently swapping hats left and right, what would you tell them?
Sam Pai:
Main one is you can’t do it by yourself, so look to your partners, any advisors, anybody you have trust in terms of providing advice and feedback. So leverage your networks and connections as much as possible. The other part of it is having good communications, understanding what your goals are and what you’re trying to achieve, and making sure that you are providing enough information for the other party to help you figure out a solution. Those are, to me, the two key ones.
In terms of running the business, the whole big part of running the business is understanding your business model. Where are your revenues going to come from and how hard is it going to be to get those revenues, especially in the medical field because you have more parties than you would normally do in a consumer electronic device. So things like the insurance company, at the end of the day, insurance companies don’t exist if you want to just go out and buy a stereo system, you don’t care. So the two, focus for the team leadership and the business model for the business itself of trying to figure out what you’re trying to do.
Kyle Rand:
You definitely can’t do it yourself. No matter what stage you’re on, you need help. Where have you been able to find good help over the past four years?
Sam Pai:
In our case, the investors. Our investors, especially the AARP, I’m definitely very glad to have their support.
Kyle Rand:
Shout out.
Sam Pai:
So we’re looking forward to working with them once we get our approval to get the marketing and the word out. The other place to look would be your vendors. A lot of your vendors can help you with any solutions to particular problem that you want to represent to them, that you’re able to define for them. And then obviously the employees have sometimes great ideas on how to change or modify because they’re the closest to it. And then last but not least, your customers, your users, you got to go to them and find out what is acceptable to them and what they think is important and what they think you’re working on is unimportant, we don’t spend any time on it.
Kyle Rand:
I want to dive in on one of those four, which is the employees. So I think for a lot of, especially first-time founders, no founder A, knows everything that they’re supposed to be doing and probably are going to make a lot of mistakes, and this is where the employees come in, this is where the team comes in. What would you say to a first-time founder? How would you help them frame this need to find help and how to work with their employees?
Sam Pai:
Yeah, that’s a hard one because a lot of times for first-time founders, identifying the problem is the biggest issue, framing the problem in a way that allows somebody else to contribute. So that’s the biggest challenge. And for that, besides the employees, part of the team is the board of directors. You can go to them since they should be intimate with your company and everything that’s going on and have them help you frame the question and what questions should be passed on to the employees, as well as maybe which ones should go to the vendors.
So framing the question is always the tough part. Once you have that, making sure your employees understand the frame within which these solutions have to fit. A lot of them also will have ideas outside the frame, and so definitely recognize those as well, because sometimes things that are outside the frame, you give it the second thought, you realize, “That actually might be a better solution.” And then you go ahead and reframe your problem. So the key part is understanding where you’re headed and then making sure and communicating proper amount of information to the people who are trying to help solve it, whether it be the investors, vendors or employees.
Kyle Rand:
What happens when stress is high, pressure is high, what have you seen really come to ruin that approach?
Sam Pai:
There’s always, always the deadline issues, and part of that, obviously, is the funding side of it as well. So the time and money balance is the area that you have to focus on. And at the end of the day, it really is being the founder. It is your call, so the buck stops with you, but the idea is that hopefully you got enough information from all the various sources that you can make a rational and knowledgeable judgment as to which way to go. And sometimes the actions that you have to take are pretty hard. You like laying off people and canceling projects. That’s just the way startups work, unlike the larger companies where you got a budget, but yeah, you can cross the line every once in a while and not have too many problems.
Kyle Rand:
How do you get comfortable with that?
Sam Pai:
How do you get comfortable with that? I don’t think you ever really get comfortable with that. You just learn how to deal with it. In terms of the activities, it’s try not to focus on the stress and the anxiety producing outcome, but focus more on what the issue is and trying to figure out what a solution might be, looking at all the possibilities, talking to various people, sharing problem with other people and then getting their perspective on it. Don’t have your mind in that little track about, “Oh, we’re going to crash, we’re going to crash, we’re going to crash.” And basically get you out of that and just think, “Okay, how do I get out of it so I don’t crash?”
Kyle Rand:
In those tough moments, say a layoff happens, say that we decide to cut budget for a certain project, part of your job on the leadership team is to take that moment and then ease it, communicate it out, and navigate what happens for the rest of the employees. How do you approach making that successful?
Sam Pai:
The main part is making sure that you communicate it as soon as possible, what’s going to happen or what is likely to happen, and then explain the various options and activities and tasks that are trying to mitigate those issues. That is the best you can do. And when people drop off, when they realize things are not going the way they would like it to go, so making it simple and not too much of an issue for people to resign and move to other jobs or helping pave the way through your own connections to create positions in other companies, that makes the transition easier.
Kyle Rand:
What advice would you give to founders everywhere to cultivate towards a successful next move?
Sam Pai:
Definitely more of the communication type of things. Have a regular communication meetings status. And when you hit that point, have created enough of a relationship that they’re open about what the issues are that they’re battling with and they’re dealing with. And then be open to ideas that you originally may not have wanted to consider, maybe taking out the commercial loan with a high interest rate that you really didn’t want to. Those types of ideas, being able to communicate with the leader and understand what the situation is, and then together as a team working through what the possible solutions might be.
Kyle Rand:
One of the things that you’re really touching on is as founders, the reality is that it can be quite lonely. We know this going into it, and I think in really tough moments, the loneliness spikes at a level that’s really hard to navigate in the moment. But what you’re saying and what’s so important to remember in those moments is that you don’t have to be alone.
Sam Pai:
No, you don’t. Hopefully you’ve created a team around you to help support you in those moments.
Kyle Rand:
That’s why you’ve hired these people.
Sam Pai:
Exactly.
Kyle Rand:
Yeah. All right, well, let’s say you pivoted successfully. Let’s talk about those high-flying moments. Have there been any days or hours or weeks where Sana did something so incredible that are worth sharing? I’m sure there’s countless.
Sam Pai:
Yeah, there are quite a few. Getting through clinical trials is a big one.
Kyle Rand:
It’s huge. It’s hard.
Sam Pai:
All the people involved, all the paperwork involved, the documentation, it’s remarkable.
Kyle Rand:
What are your takeaways? What made you successful through all of that?
Sam Pai:
Having good leadership that was able to adapt to the dynamics. And unfortunately, we did have to go through a layoff because of the extended timeframe, then the extended runway that we had to deal with. But we’ve narrowed ourselves down to a point where we’re ready to go and as soon as we get the FDA approval, we will be able to get some good financing on the next round and be able to take off from there. The next generation device built through the whole 510k thing all over again.
Kyle Rand:
Yeah, that’s awesome. As you look to the future, what excites you? What are you really focused on dialing up as you get to this next level?
Sam Pai:
On this next level, once we get the FDA approval, it’s dialing up all the marketing side of things. We have to go through the whole regulatory, looking at physicians, signing up physicians and getting them trained. So we’ll be doing CMEs and all that type of thing. So there’s a whole slew of post-acceptance activities that we’re planning on. And at this point, it’s just waiting for the approval before we trigger all that, because we have to redesign the device, we have to redesign the packaging, we have to figure out the marketing channels and how we want to go about what journals and articles, what things we want to put out there as part of the marketing activities.
Kyle Rand:
If you’re talking specifically to companies that were maybe just finding product market fit, just maybe about to go into growth mode, what would your advice be?
Sam Pai:
The main one in terms of growth is managing your growth. You don’t want to grow too fast because, at least for a device company, there’s a lot of investment that you have to do. Working capital in terms of materials, you have to get purchase and things like that, commitments you have to make. So balancing that rate of growth with the minimum you need to make it a viable business, so that’s going to be the hard part. Finding out what that growth level is that’ll make you successful and not overreach.
Kyle Rand:
Any words of advice for people who are going through that? You know a lot of money has been poured on companies and then that money got pulled away over the past couple of years.
Sam Pai:
Plan for the miserly approach. Hit your minimum viable target, whether it’s data that you want to collect or a product that you want to offer and test with, but usually after the minimum viable product, you have to actually improve it and actually deliver a product that can deliver on the value that your product is supposed to represent. So definitely plan for the minimum viable side of things, but allow yourself room to add in discoveries as you go through and you realize, “Oh, that feature that we talked about, the customer really, really wants it.” And so now it becomes a new target. So keeping things small so that your ability to flex and to modify in the future is definitely the key.
Kyle Rand:
All right. Any final words or advice you would give to anybody who’s listening, who is working on a project that maybe is going to take a little bit more work than they might be expecting, especially now that they’re listening to, “Oh gosh, we have to think about FDA approval. That might take four years?” What’s your final parting thoughts?
Sam Pai:
The final one is definitely communicate. Make sure everybody that is on your team is aware of what’s going on, and that way they can help you when you hit those rough spots. Have a plan, not too high a level, but not too low a level either because then you’re going to change it. You don’t want to waste your time on too many details. And then definitely get the right partners, either investors or vendors or consultants, whatever, get the right advisors, but you get the partners that you can trust and then that can go along with you on the ride.
Kyle Rand:
Yeah. I think one of the resounding things that we’re hearing is that ultimately success comes down to community, it comes down preparedness, and it comes down to teamwork and trusting each other.
Sam Pai:
Exactly.
Kyle Rand:
And I think that is the best message that we could send to anybody.
Sam Pai:
Definitely.
Kyle Rand:
All right, Sam, this has been an amazing conversation. I really appreciated it.
Sam Pai:
Thank you very much.
Tanya Perkins:
Thanks for listening to AgeTech Talks from AgeTech Collaborative from AARP. You can learn more about today’s guests and all of the innovative startups in the AgeTech Collaborative by visiting the startup directory on agetechcollaborative.org.
