June 12, 2024 • 25 mins
Meet Luke Burnett, the innovative mind behind KeraVet Bio, who stumbled upon a brilliant idea that’s transforming pet wound care. In our latest episode, Luke shares the story of KeraVet Gel, a reformulated human medical product now eliminating the need for those pesky Elizabethan collars. Discover how this breakthrough is not only improving compliance but also strengthening the bond between humans and their furry friends. Luke’s journey is a testament to embracing unexpected opportunities and finding joy in the unplanned paths life offers.
Luke also imparts valuable lessons on effective communication and prioritization in entrepreneurship, emphasizing the importance of active listening, teamwork, and finding the right people to support your vision. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a veterinary professional, this episode is packed with insights and practical tips to inspire and guide you.
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Episode Transcript
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Ira (00:19):
Thank you even planning to become entrepreneurs.
In other words, we did this alldespite originally having no
idea what we were doing orgetting ourselves into.
In each episode of this podcast, we will share stories and tips
from our journey and we'llanswer a randomly chosen
question about our experience.
Let's jump right into the show.
Stacee (00:40):
Welcome everybody.
We have quite a treat for youtoday.
We are meeting with our specialguest, Luke Burnett.
He is the founder of a companycalled KeraVet, and we're so
excited to have you on the showtoday, Luke.
Luke (00:55):
Thank you, Stacee, glad to be with you.
Stacee (01:05):
Well, first I want to talk about KervaVet and what
your product is, because let'sstart at the end and then we'll
go back to the beginning.
Tell us what KeraVet is, theproduct that you have founded
(01:48):
sector.
Luke (01:49):
I did not plan this, and I think this will probably be a
theme of our discussion is thethings that you don't plan right
.
But it's essentially.
The product is for wound care,but we've formulated it with a
bittern so that the animaldoesn't lick.
And not only have we found in(clip
our clinical studies and theclinical usage by doctors that
(02:13):
are using the product
now it's on the market now is that you can use the product
in lieu of a cone.
So if used as directed, that'sthe key is you got to break the
licking cycle on day one.
But if you use it as directed,that's the key is you got to
break the licking cycle on dayone, but if you use it as
directed, you don't need to putan animal in a cone, and we
found this for just about everyinjury set that you could
(02:34):
imagine you would use a cone for.
The product is very effectivein doing that, and so our goal
is to essentially remove thecone from clinical practice.
Stacee (02:44):
and who wouldn't love that?
I remember when I rescued thisbig dog, Nacho, out on my
property.
I just saw him out in the otherpasture.
He was emaciated like aNewfoundland mix you.
up naming him Nacho Librebecause we wanted to scream that
out the back door.
I am Nacho the luchador, whoMaybe you have seen me on TV.
Luke (03:27):
Nacho.
Stacee (03:33):
So he came to me.
He was not neutered, he had arope tied around his neck.
You could tell he chewedhimself free from being roped
out.
I'm like I guess I'll keep youRight.
And one of the first things Idid is I took him to the clinic
and removed a bad tooth andneutered him.
And he had the cone on and me,as seasoned vet, I'm like, oh, I
(03:56):
feel so bad for him, I feel sobad.
So I took the cone off and hepromptly, within like a few
minutes, licked out all of hissutures when I happened to not
be looking, and so I had to takehim back in with my head
hanging and explain to my staffwhat happened.
It was a horrible event,because then I had a big mess to
(04:17):
clean up and he was miserable.
So I think what you're bringingto the market here it sounds
like such a game changer.
Luke (04:27):
Yeah, we think so, and your story is not unique.
Stacee (04:33):
Unfortunately.
Luke (04:34):
Yeah, exactly, unfortunately, right, everyone
hates the cone and a lot ofresearch, recent research has
shown that it really impacts thehuman animal bond as well.
b t
Stacee (04:45):
Oh yeah.
L
Luke (04:46):
The animal hates the coach so much, not to mention you're
breaking furniture and you knowall of the kinds of things.
So, compliance, compliance oncone usage.
You talk to clinicians and andand they almost laugh right
Cause like cause.
They know, they know complianceis probably good for the first
two hours and everyone has thesame reaction you have of oh
(05:07):
this is terrible.
You know, and they just take itoff and cross their fingers
that the animal's not going torip the sutures out.
Or you know, got the implant orall of the you know anything
that you've done surgically tohelp.
So you know this.
We, we, we found a lot ofpotential benefits for, for the
(05:27):
use of our product.
Stacee (05:29):
For sure i.
So you probably didn't, youknow graduate high school
thinking I'm going to remove theElizabethan collar situation
for all animals on in the world.
So take us back to how you gotstarted, luke.
Luke (05:44):
Oh yeah, so I told students I'm faculty at a
medical school here and so whenwe do, you know r, talk to
students and career guidance orwhat do you want to be when you
grow up?
You know?
I'll tell them that you know.
You're not going to know, andand if you think you do, you're
wrong.
Yeah, Isn't that the truth,Like I find.
(06:06):
Here we are asking young kids17, 18, what do you want to do
for the rest of your life?
And I'm like, oh my God, justfigure out what you don't want
to do.
Right Until you're like 25,like just figure out what you
hate.
That's a better plan, yeah.
C G And I think you just needto have you.
You need to be open to doorsthat you don't anticipate Right
(06:30):
and and, and then find somethingthat you can be passionate
about and that you enjoy.
But you're not going to knowthat at 17, 18 or even twenties,
right, um and and, even afteryou, you get a degree.
Um, uh, you know, you wentthrough the, the horrors of vet
school.
Um, did you think you weregoing to be doing what you're
(06:51):
doing now when you started your?
No, right, and I, when I wentto grad school for my doctorate,
I didn't think I was going tobe, uh, um, you know, running a
veterinary health healthproducts company at all.
I thought I was going to beacademic faculty.
You know that was the trackthat I was moving.
You know writing grants andsitting on committees and
(07:12):
arguing about parking spaces andall of the you know things that
academic faculty do.
That's what I thought my careerpath was.
But the thing that kind ofchanged for me is I also did 27
years in the military and mostof that was National Guard.
So it was quote unquotepart-time.
But if you remember, right inthe aughts and in the early
(07:36):
2000s, we had some conflictsthat kept getting everyone
deployed.
So I got deployed twice to Iraq, did two tours, both of them
(07:57):
and the second tour.
I got back and really wanted tofocus on trauma.
Trauma and regenerativemedicine started to be a big
thing in that space, becausewhat we were finding is, you
know, the, the injuries.
So there's a, there's a scorecalled the ISS, the injury
severity score, and an emergencyroom doc or you know, just a
trauma clinician, might see anISS in the twenties or so part
(08:21):
of their career.
Well, we were seeing ISS scoreshigh twenties and even thirties
daily.
I mean, the amount of traumathat occurs from an improvised
explosive device, so one by fivemillimeter shell that blows up
underneath your truck, um is ispretty dramatic.
So that, uh, we had, you know,guys that were just busted up.
(08:41):
Oh man, the technologies thatwere available at the time just
weren't able to treat these kindof massive injuries, and so the
Department of Defense was justthrowing money at the problem,
for good reasons, right Tobasically asking product
developers to come up bettertechnologies, better things that
(09:06):
could be used for battlefieldtrauma.
And if you go to an ambulancerig today, you will find that
the configuration as well as theproducts that are carried on
that rig have completely changedover the last 20 years, and
that is because of the directwork that Department of Defense,
(09:27):
through grants and contracts toproduct developers and then
basically testing all of thisstuff out on the battlefield to
find out you know what works andwhat doesn't.
So just how all of that stuff,or how all um worked its way
through, allowed, you know,better trauma care to just
(09:50):
people in Denver, colorado andAtlanta, georgia and the various
cities that you know.
K K K Trauma occurs usuallywith car accidents, but you know
from other things as well.
Um, so I wanted to do that and,uh, so I jumped careers when
and?
Um, you don't do that aftergrad school, right, cause you
have to start over rewarding forme, cause I really wanted to
(10:13):
work on things that, uh, youknow my initial thing.
We were working onnon-compressible hemorrhage, so
basically internal hemorrhagethat could not be stopped.
Um, and we were working on, youknow, a bunch of different
fields of use and we startedfiling a bunch of patents.
(10:35):
And then my university saidwait a minute.
You know, you guys, we put alot of money into all this
patent portfolio.
You all need to make a company.
So so we did that and we didn'treally know where it was going
to go.
We had an idea but, you know,got a bunch of government grants
to help fund the R&D work on itand then started moving the
products through the regulatoryprocess.
(10:58):
And at this point the humanproducts company is a company
called Carenetics.
Carenetics has two productsthat are through the FDA.
One is the wound managementproduct that ultimately became
CareVet gel and another is andyou'll laugh about the
accidental kind of process ofall this happening the other is
(11:23):
a cream product that's used fora condition called radiation
dermatitis and that is the skincondition that you get if you go
through radiotherapy.
And most people of a certainage know people who have had
breast cancer, even theirimmediate family or people they
know and the number onecomplaint of typically women who
are going through breast canceris the pain and the dermatitis,
(11:46):
the skin toxicity that occursfrom radiotherapy.
It's not the scare of thecancer, it's not all the other
things that you assume, it'sthat, and you hear these stories
from women all the time.
I can't wear a bra.
My quality of life is lowerbecause I don't wanna go out in
public.
I've got ulcers on my chestwall and my breasts right.
(12:09):
So we started working, fundedby a government entity called
BARDA, the Biomedical AdvancedResearch Development Authority.
That does biodefense and theywork on products, what they call
medical h countermeasures.
(13:10):
p They c wanted a medicalcountermeasure to radiation
injury and so we started workingon a cream version of our
product for that and found outit worked really, really well.
There's a lot of science behindwhy it works well, but found
out it works really well forthat and the government is
interested in it for what I'llcall unplanned radiation
exposure.
The market is for plannedradiation exposure right when
you go through radiotherapy, butyou can imagine there's a
fairly large need for governmentplanners to deal with the kind
of crazy thing that would happenif a backpack nuke went off in
downtown Manhattan.
You know the casualty rates andthe injuries that we would work
through.
So that's what the HumanProducts Company does.
That's what the human productscompany does.
But as we were going through, Ihad colleagues tell me you know
you really need to look atgetting into animal health and
you know my kind of human healthproduct bias of oh bless your
heart, right, that cute littlemarket.
You know working on dogs andcats, and I mean we were sharing
(13:31):
before we started recordinghere that you know we both have
a lot of animals and you knowthey're our families and we love
them.
But I didn't really, you know,get my head around how big and
lucrative the animal healthmarket is, as well as kind of
limiting some of what I'll callthe barriers to entry to get
(13:53):
your product in, in into themarket, the and the biggest one
of those is is reimbursement.
On the human health side, ifyou're going to start in the
human health sector, I wouldrecommend you start backwards.
Figure out how, how yourproduct's going to be reimbursed
, and then work through.
(14:13):
Okay, then, what clinicalstudies do I need to do?
What's my regulatory path?
But if you can't figure out away the insurance companies are
going to pay for your product, Iwould recommend you do
something different.
Oh, wow, okay, but the animalhealth sector doesn't have that.
No, we don't have HIPAA.
Stacee (14:32):
We don't have a lot of stuff.
That's very nice.
Luke (14:35):
But you know, those kinds of things that create lots of
costs in the human health sector.
They're just not not there umin in the animal health space.
But uh, which is actually, youknow, kind of nice.
It allows a lot more innovation, oh, yeah.
Doesn't create, you know itdoesn't create those barriers of
(14:56):
you know know, tens or hundredsof millions of dollars um to to
figure out if you know yourproduct's going to work and if
the market is going to um goingto adopt it and can you price it
appropriately, and all thosethings that you have to figure
out right.
You can do it pretty quickly,um in the animal health sector,
where it's just very muchdifficult in human health have
you.
Stacee (15:15):
Are you a Seinfeld fan?
Luke (15:17):
Yeah, absolutely.
Stacee (15:18):
Did you see the episode where Kramer has a cough and he
decides to take himself to thevet instead of the MD?
Luke (15:25):
(clip from Seinfeld) Yes, yeah, taking any medication for
that.
Yeah, I got some pills.
They taste terrible, justswallow them, oh my throat's too
(15:45):
tender?
All right, sit down, sit down.
I don't want to come on, justsit down.
Sit down.
What?
Sit down?
Hey, open, lean your head back,open your mouth, open your
mouth, open it, open it.
What kind of pills are theseanyway?
(16:09):
For smuckers May cause pantingand loss of fur.
These are dog pills.
We have the same symptoms, buthe's a dog.
You need to see a real doctor.
No, no doctors.
All right, where are you going?
I'm taking the car.
I've got to run some errands.
(16:29):
You want to go?
I don't know, come on.
You want to go for a ride?
Huh, come on, come on you wantto go for a ride.
Stacee (16:46):
I think we just have less restrictions than we can be
more explorative with ourtherapies and we're not going to
get you know.
Also, the malpractice situationis totally different.
We're not so scared to trythings because we don't have
such huge penalties.
And there's so many things thatmake animal health appealing, I
think to companies that aredoing great things like yourself
(17:10):
, in the human side, likeyourself in the human side.
Luke (17:12):
When we were designing our animal health product KeraVet,
the team and I decided that wewere going to test it to human
standards for permanent implant,even though the product's not
indicated for that and wewouldn't recommend using it for
that.
But in conversations withveterinarians I had a couple say
you know, would it work onhernia repair, you know?
(17:33):
And she's like, well, it's notdesigned to be permanently
implanted.
And you're like, well, I'll trythat out.
And I'm like, oh, I won't giveit a whirl.
I need to have a safety profilewhere I don't care what you do
with this product.
You are, you know, I am notworried at all about what it's
going to potentially do.
For just that exact reason notworried at all about what it's
(17:55):
going to potentially do for justthat exact reason.
Stacee (17:58):
It's like, you know, clinicians who are very good and
have fantastic ideas can justkind of try things out in a way
that you know you obviouslycan't do that in human health
legally, technically, you'resupposed to just only use the
things that have been labeledfor veterinary use, which
(18:19):
drastically limits the amount ofresources and things we can do
for our patients, even though weknow it will work.
And it's funny when covid hitright and then all the people
are taking the cow ivermectinand we're we're like go talk to
the vet now and because whenstuff gets hard and you're not
(18:39):
sure what to do and you havelimited resources, I think if
you're a good veterinaryclinician you're gonna try stuff
logically, with methodically.
You're not just like grabbingrandom stuff off the shelf.
But I don't know.
I I feel like that's definitelyone of the things I've done a
lot in my career too is justlet's give this a whirl and see
(19:01):
what happens.
Got no other choice here.
You're going to die if we don'ttry something.
Luke (19:08):
I one of my recommendations to people
looking at getting into humanhealth is you know you got to
fail fast.
So design your clinicals to bethe hardest possible situation
you know, because if it's notgoing to work in rats with the
hardest possible situation, it'sdefinitely not going to work in
(19:30):
humans right.
So try to break your product.
You know, whatever that productis, whether it's a you know
medical device or a drug orbiologic or et cetera, try to
break it early.
You can do a lot of that in theanimal health sector fairly
quickly with good, almostanecdotal studies, and that will
(19:51):
help inform what your plan is.
Stacee (19:54):
So Kera CareVet was presented to the market.
Luke (19:57):
Yes.
Stacee (19:58):
December, J january.
How's it going?
This right now, here we're inMay.
How's it going?
And where can our listenersfind veterinary people find Kera
CareVet, because you know whatthey're going to do they're
going to go look on theambulance for it if you don't
give it to them, that's right.
Luke (20:17):
We are basically signing with all of the distributors and
we'll be available.
I think we're available withMWI, C ovetrus, I think
Patterson comes on in a coupleof weeks Penn, V victor, M
midwest, all of the all of theusual suspects, and so in the
next couple of weeks, basicallyany distributor that your clinic
(20:39):
uses will have it available andit's it's priced pretty
competitively.
And so what we found is you getbetter outcomes, you improve
the human animal bond becauseyou're reducing the cone, and
our goal, our goal, our goal isto basically remove the cone
from clinical practice.
It's kind of a lofty goal, butour data says that, that, that
(21:04):
it can do that.
And we've priced it to thepoint where you know you're
going to save time, which isgoing to save you your clinic
money.
And if you put all of thethings that you would, you know,
the cone, the dressings,whatever you know topicals that
you may send home with the petparent or the customer, you know
(21:26):
you add all that together andthat's more than what the
product will cost you To theclinician.
The price is, I think, $27 fromour distributors.
Stacee (21:41):
Oh yeah, and that's going to save you from getting
your legs railed in by the conewhen your dog walks into you, or
, it's also bad they hit thedoor, jamb the door away and jar
their neck like, oh my God, souncomfortable.
Luke (21:52):
It's just, you know, we talk to clinicians all the time
and everyone almost laughs at usabout the.
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Iprescribe a cone but or tell
them to go buy a cone, but Iknow they're not going to use it
.
You know, and it's just, it'salmost like this like running
joke of yeah, I need to put iton there to basically say hey, I
told, I told you to go put youranimal in a cone and it's not
(22:13):
my fault.
They ripped the sutures out andyou have to bring the animal
back and re-suture, right.
Stacee (22:17):
Oh, it's a total CYA move.
Luke (22:21):
And the compliance is terrible.
Everyone knows that.
Oh, it is.
Stacee (22:26):
And we we've tried things too, like they make
outfits for dogs, like surgicallittle outfits which have their.
They're great until the dogeats it, you know, like stuff
like this.
Luke (22:38):
Exactly, yeah.
So so we've, we've found that,uh, um, we can improve on a lot
of those situations.
Stacee (22:46):
Fantastic.
Well, that is such a greatstory.
Thank you for sharing that withus today.
Luke, Of course you want tostick around with me and spin
the wheel real quick.
Luke (22:55):
I've heard about the legendary wheel.
I'm looking forward to it.
Stacee (22:58):
All right, well, here we go, okay, okay.
So the question is what keyadvice would you give to new
first-time founders?
Luke (23:25):
I would say that embrace open doors, because you're never
going to know you don't reallyknow how you might walk through
that door and what kind ofopportunities that that may
provide.
Build a network of experts.
I am now in the animal healthsector.
(23:47):
I've been in this sector fortwo years.
I am not an expert, right, I aman expert in human trauma and
regenerative medicine, and so Isurrounded myself with just
fantastic group of advisors andexperts in the space to
essentially say, hey, you know,this is what you need to think
(24:07):
about, because you don't knowwhat you don't know, and a lot
of times you just you need tolisten to as many people as you
can.
And then I think the the onebig piece of advice I would have
to you know, um, aspiringfounders is know your audience.
Before any you walk into anymeeting, and I can give you a
horror story from when I was umwas a brand new company chief
(24:29):
science officer and I got askedto go pitch some of our burn and
wound data to a group at alarge burn conference and I
thought, yeah, yeah, no problem.
It was one of my board membersset it up and so I walked in the
room and it was four pastpresidents of the American Burn
(24:49):
Association.
It was the who's who of and I'mpitching pig data, right, and
we weren't even done with thestudy yet and I got nuked, oh my
gosh, and I walked away fromthat meeting and I'm like that
will never happen again.
I'm not walking into a roomunless I know who the audience
(25:12):
is.
So I know how to tailor thepitch, because you need to be
able to take the same deck andmake that deck relevant for you
know, scientific or clinicalpeers, your potential investors,
bankers you know you name it.
You know you need to be able totake that data and present what
they want out of it.
(25:32):
You know.
So you know.
If it's a VC firm, it's howfast am I going to make you
money?
Right, and and here's all thethings that I've de-risked along
the way to ultimately get you athree-year flip within the time
window of your fund right,versus, if it's a clinical
colleague, I need to take themthrough the clinical data and
(25:52):
why the efficacy that we'reseeing is relevant, right, and
not so much of how we're goingto quote, unquote, make money.
But that's the same deck.
Stacee (26:01):
Ooh, I love that so much because I've seen companies
have multiple decks dependingwho the audience is.
But I love what you'resuggesting is be so in tune with
your product or service thatyou know how to use one deck.
Yeah, and you can leveragecertain slides or certain
(26:22):
stories for each of the pointsand not in.
I've seen also people want toshare all the stories.
Luke (26:31):
Yeah, no, just don't do that.
Stacee (26:34):
don't do that c Cause y ou know, like you're seeing, the
audience generally cares aboutone, maybe two key points.
They don't care about all thepoints.
It's just different audiencescare about different points.
So you got to be versed in thewhole thing.
Luke (26:48):
Exactly, and feel free to skip.
Stacee (26:50):
Slides right, oh yeah, skip slides, please, and the way
you know if you're hitting isif the audience member is doing
more of the talking than you.
Luke (27:01):
Yeah.
Stacee (27:07):
And you might feel frustrated because you're like
thinking to yourself oh my God,I have all these slides to cover
with you and you just won'tstop talking.
But that saying people like tohear themselves talk is kind of
true and what's happening isthey're talking themselves into
your product in their own way.
So just shut up and let themtalk.
Luke (27:25):
That's really good advice.
Stacee (27:28):
Well, thanks for doing this.
Now we're at the part of theshow where we're going to share
with our audience.
A favorite tip, trick toolcould be a quote that really
resonates with you, or a booklike what do you have for us
luke?
Luke (27:42):
So my tip is find great people and keep them, because
this if you think thatentrepreneurship is a you're a
one-man band and you can doeverything, you're wrong, and in
fact, as you get yourorganization gets more mature,
it's going to be harder to raisemoney.
If you're pitching that you'rea one-man or one woman band,
(28:06):
right, you have to have a team.
This is a team sport.
It requires a village if youwill.
And so find great people andtake care of them as best you
can, and don't forget about them.
As you know, I see too oftenthat the person at the top of
(28:26):
the org chart sometimes gets allthe accolades, but it took a
whole lot of people to do all ofthe stuff.
But make sure, when the timecomes, that you take care of
them, both financially, becausea lot of times the junior people
get left out of the cap table,but your success depended on a
lot of their work, and so makesure that you compensate them
(28:49):
along the way.
Stacee (28:50):
Oh, I love that so much .
I'm working with s Startup nNow and they're a two-person
show and they are just likewe're going to try to run this
thing without hiring a bunch ofpeople.
I'm like, oh yeah, no, youcan't really succeed if you
don't grow the team, like itwill definitely limit your
(29:12):
success.
Luke (29:13):
Yeah, yeah, and if you think you can, then you're not
professionally mature enough yetto do the job, because you
don't know that it can't.
Stacee (29:23):
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Luke (29:26):
That's so good and funders know that and they're not going
to give you money.
Stacee (29:29):
Yeah, they know that.
Yeah, exactly, that's so goodand funders know that and
they're not going to give youmoney.
Yeah, they know that.
Yeah, totally w Well, my tip ofthe week is based on my visit
yesterday to the eye doctor andyou know, one thing I did on my
product roadmap is a lesson Ilearned from the eye doctor.
You know, when you're wearingthe, they put the thing in front
(29:50):
of you and you have to look atthe chart with all the letters
and they're telling one or two,three or four.
So when I was building mycompany and there's like an
overwhelming backlog of featuresand bugs, you need to fix all
this work.
Some of the hardest parts areknowing what to work on, and my
(30:15):
advice would be to narrow itdown to maybe your top 10.
And then you need to do thedoctor eye test on it.
Is it going to be one?
I want this feature.
Well, do you want it more thanthis one?
And you prioritize and rank themand if you aren't sure, you
have to do that one or two testsso that you have a clear
(30:37):
prioritization of what you'reworking on for that quarter or
year.
And then you constantly have togo back, and by constantly, I
would probably do this everyeight to 12 weeks.
I'm looking at that list to seeif I still have the rankings
right.
And I would even do this to myteam members, because they would
(30:57):
come to me and be like oh, weneed this feature in the app
right now.
This is the key feature.
I'm like, oh well, you told methis other feature was the key,
so which one?
Is it One or two?
And they'd obviously oh no,it's still that one.
I'm like perfect, then we'restill working on the right thing
today, because you can't do itall.
You just can't.
Luke (31:17):
Can't.
You're right, yeah.
Stacee (31:19):
All right, well, thanks so much.
It's been a great treat.
Luke (31:30):
And we look forward to seeing where Kera CareVet goes.
All right, available now.
Stacee (31:34):
Fantastic.
Thanks for listening to theshow today.
Thank you even planning to become entrepreneurs.
In other words, we did this alldespite originally having no
idea what we were doing orgetting ourselves into.
In each episode of this podcast, we will share stories and tips
from our journey and we'llanswer a randomly chosen
question about our experience.
Let's jump right into the show.
Stacee (00:40):
Welcome everybody.
We have quite a treat for youtoday.
We are meeting with our specialguest, Luke Burnett.
He is the founder of a companycalled KeraVet, and we're so
excited to have you on the showtoday, Luke.
Luke (00:55):
Thank you, Stacee, glad to be with you.
Stacee (01:05):
Well, first I want to talk about KervaVet and what
your product is, because let'sstart at the end and then we'll
go back to the beginning.
Tell us what KeraVet is, theproduct that you have founded
(01:48):
sector.
Luke (01:49):
I did not plan this, and I think this will probably be a
theme of our discussion is thethings that you don't plan right
.
But it's essentially.
The product is for wound care,but we've formulated it with a
bittern so that the animaldoesn't lick.
And not only have we found in(clip
our clinical studies and theclinical usage by doctors that
(02:13):
are using the product
now it's on the market now is that you can use the product
in lieu of a cone.
So if used as directed, that'sthe key is you got to break the
licking cycle on day one.
But if you use it as directed,that's the key is you got to
break the licking cycle on dayone, but if you use it as
directed, you don't need to putan animal in a cone, and we
found this for just about everyinjury set that you could
(02:34):
imagine you would use a cone for.
The product is very effectivein doing that, and so our goal
is to essentially remove thecone from clinical practice.
Stacee (02:44):
and who wouldn't love that?
I remember when I rescued thisbig dog, Nacho, out on my
property.
I just saw him out in the otherpasture.
He was emaciated like aNewfoundland mix you.
up naming him Nacho Librebecause we wanted to scream that
out the back door.
I am Nacho the luchador, whoMaybe you have seen me on TV.
Luke (03:27):
Nacho.
Stacee (03:33):
So he came to me.
He was not neutered, he had arope tied around his neck.
You could tell he chewedhimself free from being roped
out.
I'm like I guess I'll keep youRight.
And one of the first things Idid is I took him to the clinic
and removed a bad tooth andneutered him.
And he had the cone on and me,as seasoned vet, I'm like, oh, I
(03:56):
feel so bad for him, I feel sobad.
So I took the cone off and hepromptly, within like a few
minutes, licked out all of hissutures when I happened to not
be looking, and so I had to takehim back in with my head
hanging and explain to my staffwhat happened.
It was a horrible event,because then I had a big mess to
(04:17):
clean up and he was miserable.
So I think what you're bringingto the market here it sounds
like such a game changer.
Luke (04:27):
Yeah, we think so, and your story is not unique.
Stacee (04:33):
Unfortunately.
Luke (04:34):
Yeah, exactly, unfortunately, right, everyone
hates the cone and a lot ofresearch, recent research has
shown that it really impacts thehuman animal bond as well.
b t
Stacee (04:45):
Oh yeah.
L
Luke (04:46):
The animal hates the coach so much, not to mention you're
breaking furniture and you knowall of the kinds of things.
So, compliance, compliance oncone usage.
You talk to clinicians and andand they almost laugh right
Cause like cause.
They know, they know complianceis probably good for the first
two hours and everyone has thesame reaction you have of oh
(05:07):
this is terrible.
You know, and they just take itoff and cross their fingers
that the animal's not going torip the sutures out.
Or you know, got the implant orall of the you know anything
that you've done surgically tohelp.
So you know this.
We, we, we found a lot ofpotential benefits for, for the
(05:27):
use of our product.
Stacee (05:29):
For sure i.
So you probably didn't, youknow graduate high school
thinking I'm going to remove theElizabethan collar situation
for all animals on in the world.
So take us back to how you gotstarted, luke.
Luke (05:44):
Oh yeah, so I told students I'm faculty at a
medical school here and so whenwe do, you know r, talk to
students and career guidance orwhat do you want to be when you
grow up?
You know?
I'll tell them that you know.
You're not going to know, andand if you think you do, you're
wrong.
Yeah, Isn't that the truth,Like I find.
(06:06):
Here we are asking young kids17, 18, what do you want to do
for the rest of your life?
And I'm like, oh my God, justfigure out what you don't want
to do.
Right Until you're like 25,like just figure out what you
hate.
That's a better plan, yeah.
C G And I think you just needto have you.
You need to be open to doorsthat you don't anticipate Right
(06:30):
and and, and then find somethingthat you can be passionate
about and that you enjoy.
But you're not going to knowthat at 17, 18 or even twenties,
right, um and and, even afteryou, you get a degree.
Um, uh, you know, you wentthrough the, the horrors of vet
school.
Um, did you think you weregoing to be doing what you're
(06:51):
doing now when you started your?
No, right, and I, when I wentto grad school for my doctorate,
I didn't think I was going tobe, uh, um, you know, running a
veterinary health healthproducts company at all.
I thought I was going to beacademic faculty.
You know that was the trackthat I was moving.
You know writing grants andsitting on committees and
(07:12):
arguing about parking spaces andall of the you know things that
academic faculty do.
That's what I thought my careerpath was.
But the thing that kind ofchanged for me is I also did 27
years in the military and mostof that was National Guard.
So it was quote unquotepart-time.
But if you remember, right inthe aughts and in the early
(07:36):
2000s, we had some conflictsthat kept getting everyone
deployed.
So I got deployed twice to Iraq, did two tours, both of them
(07:57):
and the second tour.
I got back and really wanted tofocus on trauma.
Trauma and regenerativemedicine started to be a big
thing in that space, becausewhat we were finding is, you
know, the, the injuries.
So there's a, there's a scorecalled the ISS, the injury
severity score, and an emergencyroom doc or you know, just a
trauma clinician, might see anISS in the twenties or so part
(08:21):
of their career.
Well, we were seeing ISS scoreshigh twenties and even thirties
daily.
I mean, the amount of traumathat occurs from an improvised
explosive device, so one by fivemillimeter shell that blows up
underneath your truck, um is ispretty dramatic.
So that, uh, we had, you know,guys that were just busted up.
(08:41):
Oh man, the technologies thatwere available at the time just
weren't able to treat these kindof massive injuries, and so the
Department of Defense was justthrowing money at the problem,
for good reasons, right Tobasically asking product
developers to come up bettertechnologies, better things that
(09:06):
could be used for battlefieldtrauma.
And if you go to an ambulancerig today, you will find that
the configuration as well as theproducts that are carried on
that rig have completely changedover the last 20 years, and
that is because of the directwork that Department of Defense,
(09:27):
through grants and contracts toproduct developers and then
basically testing all of thisstuff out on the battlefield to
find out you know what works andwhat doesn't.
So just how all of that stuff,or how all um worked its way
through, allowed, you know,better trauma care to just
(09:50):
people in Denver, colorado andAtlanta, georgia and the various
cities that you know.
K K K Trauma occurs usuallywith car accidents, but you know
from other things as well.
Um, so I wanted to do that and,uh, so I jumped careers when
and?
Um, you don't do that aftergrad school, right, cause you
have to start over rewarding forme, cause I really wanted to
(10:13):
work on things that, uh, youknow my initial thing.
We were working onnon-compressible hemorrhage, so
basically internal hemorrhagethat could not be stopped.
Um, and we were working on, youknow, a bunch of different
fields of use and we startedfiling a bunch of patents.
(10:35):
And then my university saidwait a minute.
You know, you guys, we put alot of money into all this
patent portfolio.
You all need to make a company.
So so we did that and we didn'treally know where it was going
to go.
We had an idea but, you know,got a bunch of government grants
to help fund the R&D work on itand then started moving the
products through the regulatoryprocess.
(10:58):
And at this point the humanproducts company is a company
called Carenetics.
Carenetics has two productsthat are through the FDA.
One is the wound managementproduct that ultimately became
CareVet gel and another is andyou'll laugh about the
accidental kind of process ofall this happening the other is
(11:23):
a cream product that's used fora condition called radiation
dermatitis and that is the skincondition that you get if you go
through radiotherapy.
And most people of a certainage know people who have had
breast cancer, even theirimmediate family or people they
know and the number onecomplaint of typically women who
are going through breast canceris the pain and the dermatitis,
(11:46):
the skin toxicity that occursfrom radiotherapy.
It's not the scare of thecancer, it's not all the other
things that you assume, it'sthat, and you hear these stories
from women all the time.
I can't wear a bra.
My quality of life is lowerbecause I don't wanna go out in
public.
I've got ulcers on my chestwall and my breasts right.
(12:09):
So we started working, fundedby a government entity called
BARDA, the Biomedical AdvancedResearch Development Authority.
That does biodefense and theywork on products, what they call
medical h countermeasures.
(13:10):
p They c wanted a medicalcountermeasure to radiation
injury and so we started workingon a cream version of our
product for that and found outit worked really, really well.
There's a lot of science behindwhy it works well, but found
out it works really well forthat and the government is
interested in it for what I'llcall unplanned radiation
exposure.
The market is for plannedradiation exposure right when
you go through radiotherapy, butyou can imagine there's a
fairly large need for governmentplanners to deal with the kind
of crazy thing that would happenif a backpack nuke went off in
downtown Manhattan.
You know the casualty rates andthe injuries that we would work
through.
So that's what the HumanProducts Company does.
That's what the human productscompany does.
But as we were going through, Ihad colleagues tell me you know
you really need to look atgetting into animal health and
you know my kind of human healthproduct bias of oh bless your
heart, right, that cute littlemarket.
You know working on dogs andcats, and I mean we were sharing
(13:31):
before we started recordinghere that you know we both have
a lot of animals and you knowthey're our families and we love
them.
But I didn't really, you know,get my head around how big and
lucrative the animal healthmarket is, as well as kind of
limiting some of what I'll callthe barriers to entry to get
(13:53):
your product in, in into themarket, the and the biggest one
of those is is reimbursement.
On the human health side, ifyou're going to start in the
human health sector, I wouldrecommend you start backwards.
Figure out how, how yourproduct's going to be reimbursed
, and then work through.
(14:13):
Okay, then, what clinicalstudies do I need to do?
What's my regulatory path?
But if you can't figure out away the insurance companies are
going to pay for your product, Iwould recommend you do
something different.
Oh, wow, okay, but the animalhealth sector doesn't have that.
No, we don't have HIPAA.
Stacee (14:32):
We don't have a lot of stuff.
That's very nice.
Luke (14:35):
But you know, those kinds of things that create lots of
costs in the human health sector.
They're just not not there umin in the animal health space.
But uh, which is actually, youknow, kind of nice.
It allows a lot more innovation, oh, yeah.
Doesn't create, you know itdoesn't create those barriers of
(14:56):
you know know, tens or hundredsof millions of dollars um to to
figure out if you know yourproduct's going to work and if
the market is going to um goingto adopt it and can you price it
appropriately, and all thosethings that you have to figure
out right.
You can do it pretty quickly,um in the animal health sector,
where it's just very muchdifficult in human health have
you.
Stacee (15:15):
Are you a Seinfeld fan?
Luke (15:17):
Yeah, absolutely.
Stacee (15:18):
Did you see the episode where Kramer has a cough and he
decides to take himself to thevet instead of the MD?
Luke (15:25):
(clip from Seinfeld) Yes, yeah, taking any medication for
that.
Yeah, I got some pills.
They taste terrible, justswallow them, oh my throat's too
(15:45):
tender?
All right, sit down, sit down.
I don't want to come on, justsit down.
Sit down.
What?
Sit down?
Hey, open, lean your head back,open your mouth, open your
mouth, open it, open it.
What kind of pills are theseanyway?
(16:09):
For smuckers May cause pantingand loss of fur.
These are dog pills.
We have the same symptoms, buthe's a dog.
You need to see a real doctor.
No, no doctors.
All right, where are you going?
I'm taking the car.
I've got to run some errands.
(16:29):
You want to go?
I don't know, come on.
You want to go for a ride?
Huh, come on, come on you wantto go for a ride.
Stacee (16:46):
I think we just have less restrictions than we can be
more explorative with ourtherapies and we're not going to
get you know.
Also, the malpractice situationis totally different.
We're not so scared to trythings because we don't have
such huge penalties.
And there's so many things thatmake animal health appealing, I
think to companies that aredoing great things like yourself
(17:10):
, in the human side, likeyourself in the human side.
Luke (17:12):
When we were designing our animal health product KeraVet,
the team and I decided that wewere going to test it to human
standards for permanent implant,even though the product's not
indicated for that and wewouldn't recommend using it for
that.
But in conversations withveterinarians I had a couple say
you know, would it work onhernia repair, you know?
(17:33):
And she's like, well, it's notdesigned to be permanently
implanted.
And you're like, well, I'll trythat out.
And I'm like, oh, I won't giveit a whirl.
I need to have a safety profilewhere I don't care what you do
with this product.
You are, you know, I am notworried at all about what it's
going to potentially do.
For just that exact reason notworried at all about what it's
(17:55):
going to potentially do for justthat exact reason.
Stacee (17:58):
It's like, you know, clinicians who are very good and
have fantastic ideas can justkind of try things out in a way
that you know you obviouslycan't do that in human health
legally, technically, you'resupposed to just only use the
things that have been labeledfor veterinary use, which
(18:19):
drastically limits the amount ofresources and things we can do
for our patients, even though weknow it will work.
And it's funny when covid hitright and then all the people
are taking the cow ivermectinand we're we're like go talk to
the vet now and because whenstuff gets hard and you're not
(18:39):
sure what to do and you havelimited resources, I think if
you're a good veterinaryclinician you're gonna try stuff
logically, with methodically.
You're not just like grabbingrandom stuff off the shelf.
But I don't know.
I I feel like that's definitelyone of the things I've done a
lot in my career too is justlet's give this a whirl and see
(19:01):
what happens.
Got no other choice here.
You're going to die if we don'ttry something.
Luke (19:08):
I one of my recommendations to people
looking at getting into humanhealth is you know you got to
fail fast.
So design your clinicals to bethe hardest possible situation
you know, because if it's notgoing to work in rats with the
hardest possible situation, it'sdefinitely not going to work in
(19:30):
humans right.
So try to break your product.
You know, whatever that productis, whether it's a you know
medical device or a drug orbiologic or et cetera, try to
break it early.
You can do a lot of that in theanimal health sector fairly
quickly with good, almostanecdotal studies, and that will
(19:51):
help inform what your plan is.
Stacee (19:54):
So Kera CareVet was presented to the market.
Luke (19:57):
Yes.
Stacee (19:58):
December, J january.
How's it going?
This right now, here we're inMay.
How's it going?
And where can our listenersfind veterinary people find Kera
CareVet, because you know whatthey're going to do they're
going to go look on theambulance for it if you don't
give it to them, that's right.
Luke (20:17):
We are basically signing with all of the distributors and
we'll be available.
I think we're available withMWI, C ovetrus, I think
Patterson comes on in a coupleof weeks Penn, V victor, M
midwest, all of the all of theusual suspects, and so in the
next couple of weeks, basicallyany distributor that your clinic
(20:39):
uses will have it available andit's it's priced pretty
competitively.
And so what we found is you getbetter outcomes, you improve
the human animal bond becauseyou're reducing the cone, and
our goal, our goal, our goal isto basically remove the cone
from clinical practice.
It's kind of a lofty goal, butour data says that, that, that
(21:04):
it can do that.
And we've priced it to thepoint where you know you're
going to save time, which isgoing to save you your clinic
money.
And if you put all of thethings that you would, you know,
the cone, the dressings,whatever you know topicals that
you may send home with the petparent or the customer, you know
(21:26):
you add all that together andthat's more than what the
product will cost you To theclinician.
The price is, I think, $27 fromour distributors.
Stacee (21:41):
Oh yeah, and that's going to save you from getting
your legs railed in by the conewhen your dog walks into you, or
, it's also bad they hit thedoor, jamb the door away and jar
their neck like, oh my God, souncomfortable.
Luke (21:52):
It's just, you know, we talk to clinicians all the time
and everyone almost laughs at usabout the.
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Iprescribe a cone but or tell
them to go buy a cone, but Iknow they're not going to use it
.
You know, and it's just, it'salmost like this like running
joke of yeah, I need to put iton there to basically say hey, I
told, I told you to go put youranimal in a cone and it's not
(22:13):
my fault.
They ripped the sutures out andyou have to bring the animal
back and re-suture, right.
Stacee (22:17):
Oh, it's a total CYA move.
Luke (22:21):
And the compliance is terrible.
Everyone knows that.
Oh, it is.
Stacee (22:26):
And we we've tried things too, like they make
outfits for dogs, like surgicallittle outfits which have their.
They're great until the dogeats it, you know, like stuff
like this.
Luke (22:38):
Exactly, yeah.
So so we've, we've found that,uh, um, we can improve on a lot
of those situations.
Stacee (22:46):
Fantastic.
Well, that is such a greatstory.
Thank you for sharing that withus today.
Luke, Of course you want tostick around with me and spin
the wheel real quick.
Luke (22:55):
I've heard about the legendary wheel.
I'm looking forward to it.
Stacee (22:58):
All right, well, here we go, okay, okay.
So the question is what keyadvice would you give to new
first-time founders?
Luke (23:25):
I would say that embrace open doors, because you're never
going to know you don't reallyknow how you might walk through
that door and what kind ofopportunities that that may
provide.
Build a network of experts.
I am now in the animal healthsector.
(23:47):
I've been in this sector fortwo years.
I am not an expert, right, I aman expert in human trauma and
regenerative medicine, and so Isurrounded myself with just
fantastic group of advisors andexperts in the space to
essentially say, hey, you know,this is what you need to think
(24:07):
about, because you don't knowwhat you don't know, and a lot
of times you just you need tolisten to as many people as you
can.
And then I think the the onebig piece of advice I would have
to you know, um, aspiringfounders is know your audience.
Before any you walk into anymeeting, and I can give you a
horror story from when I was umwas a brand new company chief
(24:29):
science officer and I got askedto go pitch some of our burn and
wound data to a group at alarge burn conference and I
thought, yeah, yeah, no problem.
It was one of my board membersset it up and so I walked in the
room and it was four pastpresidents of the American Burn
(24:49):
Association.
It was the who's who of and I'mpitching pig data, right, and
we weren't even done with thestudy yet and I got nuked, oh my
gosh, and I walked away fromthat meeting and I'm like that
will never happen again.
I'm not walking into a roomunless I know who the audience
(25:12):
is.
So I know how to tailor thepitch, because you need to be
able to take the same deck andmake that deck relevant for you
know, scientific or clinicalpeers, your potential investors,
bankers you know you name it.
You know you need to be able totake that data and present what
they want out of it.
(25:32):
You know.
So you know.
If it's a VC firm, it's howfast am I going to make you
money?
Right, and and here's all thethings that I've de-risked along
the way to ultimately get you athree-year flip within the time
window of your fund right,versus, if it's a clinical
colleague, I need to take themthrough the clinical data and
(25:52):
why the efficacy that we'reseeing is relevant, right, and
not so much of how we're goingto quote, unquote, make money.
But that's the same deck.
Stacee (26:01):
Ooh, I love that so much because I've seen companies
have multiple decks dependingwho the audience is.
But I love what you'resuggesting is be so in tune with
your product or service thatyou know how to use one deck.
Yeah, and you can leveragecertain slides or certain
(26:22):
stories for each of the pointsand not in.
I've seen also people want toshare all the stories.
Luke (26:31):
Yeah, no, just don't do that.
Stacee (26:34):
don't do that c Cause y ou know, like you're seeing, the
audience generally cares aboutone, maybe two key points.
They don't care about all thepoints.
It's just different audiencescare about different points.
So you got to be versed in thewhole thing.
Luke (26:48):
Exactly, and feel free to skip.
Stacee (26:50):
Slides right, oh yeah, skip slides, please, and the way
you know if you're hitting isif the audience member is doing
more of the talking than you.
Luke (27:01):
Yeah.
Stacee (27:07):
And you might feel frustrated because you're like
thinking to yourself oh my God,I have all these slides to cover
with you and you just won'tstop talking.
But that saying people like tohear themselves talk is kind of
true and what's happening isthey're talking themselves into
your product in their own way.
So just shut up and let themtalk.
Luke (27:25):
That's really good advice.
Stacee (27:28):
Well, thanks for doing this.
Now we're at the part of theshow where we're going to share
with our audience.
A favorite tip, trick toolcould be a quote that really
resonates with you, or a booklike what do you have for us
luke?
Luke (27:42):
So my tip is find great people and keep them, because
this if you think thatentrepreneurship is a you're a
one-man band and you can doeverything, you're wrong, and in
fact, as you get yourorganization gets more mature,
it's going to be harder to raisemoney.
If you're pitching that you'rea one-man or one woman band,
(28:06):
right, you have to have a team.
This is a team sport.
It requires a village if youwill.
And so find great people andtake care of them as best you
can, and don't forget about them.
As you know, I see too oftenthat the person at the top of
(28:26):
the org chart sometimes gets allthe accolades, but it took a
whole lot of people to do all ofthe stuff.
But make sure, when the timecomes, that you take care of
them, both financially, becausea lot of times the junior people
get left out of the cap table,but your success depended on a
lot of their work, and so makesure that you compensate them
(28:49):
along the way.
Stacee (28:50):
Oh, I love that so much .
I'm working with s Startup nNow and they're a two-person
show and they are just likewe're going to try to run this
thing without hiring a bunch ofpeople.
I'm like, oh yeah, no, youcan't really succeed if you
don't grow the team, like itwill definitely limit your
(29:12):
success.
Luke (29:13):
Yeah, yeah, and if you think you can, then you're not
professionally mature enough yetto do the job, because you
don't know that it can't.
Stacee (29:23):
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Luke (29:26):
That's so good and funders know that and they're not going
to give you money.
Stacee (29:29):
Yeah, they know that.
Yeah, exactly, that's so goodand funders know that and
they're not going to give youmoney.
Yeah, they know that.
Yeah, totally w Well, my tip ofthe week is based on my visit
yesterday to the eye doctor andyou know, one thing I did on my
product roadmap is a lesson Ilearned from the eye doctor.
You know, when you're wearingthe, they put the thing in front
(29:50):
of you and you have to look atthe chart with all the letters
and they're telling one or two,three or four.
So when I was building mycompany and there's like an
overwhelming backlog of featuresand bugs, you need to fix all
this work.
Some of the hardest parts areknowing what to work on, and my
(30:15):
advice would be to narrow itdown to maybe your top 10.
And then you need to do thedoctor eye test on it.
Is it going to be one?
I want this feature.
Well, do you want it more thanthis one?
And you prioritize and rank themand if you aren't sure, you
have to do that one or two testsso that you have a clear
(30:37):
prioritization of what you'reworking on for that quarter or
year.
And then you constantly have togo back, and by constantly, I
would probably do this everyeight to 12 weeks.
I'm looking at that list to seeif I still have the rankings
right.
And I would even do this to myteam members, because they would
(30:57):
come to me and be like oh, weneed this feature in the app
right now.
This is the key feature.
I'm like, oh well, you told methis other feature was the key,
so which one?
Is it One or two?
And they'd obviously oh no,it's still that one.
I'm like perfect, then we'restill working on the right thing
today, because you can't do itall.
You just can't.
Luke (31:17):
Can't.
You're right, yeah.
Stacee (31:19):
All right, well, thanks so much.
It's been a great treat.
Luke (31:30):
And we look forward to seeing where Kera CareVet goes.
All right, available now.
Stacee (31:34):
Fantastic.
Thanks for listening to theshow today.
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