July 30, 2024 • 47 mins
In our latest episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Omid Moghadam, a seasoned innovator and entrepreneur whose career has spanned impressive stints at major companies like Eastman Kodak and Intel, and who holds over 40 patents. Omid's journey is particularly fascinating due to his involvement in spawning companies directly from within Intel—a testament to his unique blend of creativity and strategic execution within corporate structures.
The Genesis of Innovation
Omid shared captivating stories about his early fascination with inventions, sparked by the British TV series "Connections," which illustrated the progressive evolution of technology through historical vignettes. This early inspiration is a thread that has run through his entire career, highlighting the seamless blend of history and innovation that has fueled his professional endeavors.
A Spotlight on Namida
Perhaps most intriguing is Omid's current venture as CEO of Namida, a company rooted in significant breast cancer research. Namida leverages scientific discoveries to facilitate early detection of breast cancer through a direct-to-consumer product that analyzes protein biomarkers found in tears. This innovative approach addresses the critical gaps in cancer screening, particularly in remote or underserved areas, and exemplifies how technology can radically improve healthcare delivery.
The Challenges of Corporate Innovation
Omid and I delved into the inherent challenges of nurturing innovation within large corporations. He illustrated this with his experiences at Intel, where he initiated the development of new business ventures. He recounted the creation of healthcare IT solutions and the challenges of aligning radical innovations with corporate structures predominantly geared towards incremental improvements. His insights into the cultural and operational barriers that stifle innovation in large companies are particularly enlightening, underscoring the delicate balance required to foster transformative ideas within established entities.
The Entrepreneurial Journey
Transitioning from a corporate environment to launching a startup presents a unique set of challenges and rewards. Omid discussed the pivot from leveraging corporate resources to navigating the entrepreneurial landscape where capital, talent, and market fit are perpetual concerns. His journey underscores the resilience and adaptability required to succeed outside the corporate safety net.
Lessons in Leadership and Innovation
Through our conversation, Omid underscored a critical lesson for both corporate leaders and entrepreneurs: the importance of market fit and the ability to adapt and respond to market needs effectively. His reflections on the successes and missteps of large corporations versus nimble startups provide valuable lessons in agility, strategic thinking, and the relentless pursuit of innovation.
Conclusion
My discussion with Omid Moghadam on the podcast was not only a deep dive into the life of a remarkable innovator but also a broad examination of the complexities of leading and innovating in both corporate and startup environments. His journey offers profound insights for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and leadership.
For those intrigued by the nuances of innovation and the strategic foresight required to navigate both established and emerging markets, this episode is a compelling exploration. Remember, the drive towards innovation isn't just about creating new products; it's about reshaping industries and improving lives through thoughtful, innovative solutions.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Matt Waller (00:10):
Welcome to the Matt Waller podcast, where we
look at success at theintersection of technology,
logistics, supply chain, retailand CPG, also known as the
retail value chain.
I want to clarify that thispodcast is distinct from my
responsibilities as a professorin the Sam M Walton College of
Business.
Nonetheless, it aligns with myaspiration to provide practical
(00:31):
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(00:53):
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I'm very pleased with theirservices and now, without
further ado, let's get into theexciting episode.
I have a really exciting episodetoday.
I have with me today OmniMoghadon, who has an extensive,
interesting career in innovationand entrepreneurship.
(01:40):
He has over 40 patents.
He's worked for companies likeEastman, Kodak and Intel.
In fact, he started a couple ofcompanies that were spun out of
Intel that you'll get to hearabout.
So if you're an investor, ifyou're an inventor, if you're an
entrepreneur, If you're aninventor, if you're an
(02:03):
entrepreneur, if you'reinterested in health care,
direct consumer, et cetera, etcetera, you should listen to
this podcast.
Omi talks about so many reallyinteresting things.
He talks about the story ofactually spending out these two
(02:29):
companies from Intel.
He talks about one story thatyou'll love.
He talks about how Intel'smarket cap is about the same as
it was 20 years ago.
Nvidia's, though, has gone uptremendously, from $3 billion to
$3 trillion roughly, and hetalks about why that might be
it's a very interesting story.
He's served on dozens of companyboards and now, with his new
(02:56):
company that he started fiveyears ago and he's the CEO of,
which is based upon some sciencethat came out of breast cancer
research from some surgeons,he's got a company that can,
namita, that can identify breastcancer early, and he talks
(03:20):
about how.
You know, right now the kindsof approaches to identifying
breast cancer, like imagingmammography, are really rough.
They're not able to pick up.
They can have false positivesvery easily and then a biopsy
(03:42):
has to be done, but there's noteven enough equipment or
professionals out there to doall the mammographies that need
to be done and consequently, alot of times the breast cancer
is discovered in later stagesand then the treatment's
expensive.
It's expensive, very expensive,and so his company has a direct
(04:07):
consumer product that you canbuy online that basically solves
this problem.
It does screening real early andyou know, some people may not
even want to do a mammographybecause of, maybe, the distance
they have to go to town orbecause of how uncomfortable it
is.
They can do this and getscreened and, you know, could
(04:30):
save lots of lives.
So I think you're going to findthis interesting.
You'll also hear about how Omidhas been interested in
inventions since he was sevenyears old.
It's a very interesting story,so, thank you, you're going to
like it, omi.
Thank you so much for joiningme today.
Omid Moghadon (04:47):
Well, thank you, Matt, I appreciate it.
You know, being on the MattWaller show it's sort of like
being there playing the Caesarroom in Vegas.
I know I've made it.
Dr. Matt Waller (04:58):
Yeah, right, Well, thank you.
But OK, now I want to startwith an interesting story that I
know about you and that iswhere your interest in
inventions came from.
Would you mind sharing thatstory with?
Omid Moghadon (05:13):
us.
Oh yes, I was seven years oldand there was a British TV
series called Connections, doneby the presenter.
James Burke was also the writerof the show and every episode
started with a new technologyand during that one-hour episode
(05:33):
he would take us through timeand how one invention led to
another, led to another and ledto another, and sometimes it
would go back to Greeks, romans,middle Ages.
Dr. Matt Waller (05:44):
You just have the best shows Because when I
was young I watched I think itwas 1979, there was a show
called Free to Choose and it waslike a series of 10 shows and
it affected my future.
Yes, that was back in 1979.
Omid Moghadon (06:01):
But go on Around the same time.
For me I was 7 years old, so itwas mid-70s, and that show, by
the way, he made Connections 2,connections 3, the Day the
Universe Changed.
So James Burke actually went onto making a lot more of those
and write books about all ofthem.
I invited him to speak to mygroup at Intel at one point.
(06:23):
Did he come?
He did.
Is he still around?
I believe he would be a veryold man at this point.
But all those shows are onYouTube.
If you decide to watch them,they're all free.
Dr. Matt Waller (06:38):
So you had him speak to your team at Intel.
What did he talk about?
Omid Moghadon (06:44):
Inventions.
I mean, he was at Intel, soit's technology and he basically
same theme of how one inventionleads to another and sort of
like quoting Sir Isaac Newton,you know, standing on the
shoulders of giants, and hownone of these things that we do
(07:04):
today are done by themselves andthey have roots in history.
And I've always loved history,even as a child, and marrying
history to invention, sort oflike the two things that I
really liked, sort of cementedthe direction that my career was
going to go.
Dr. Matt Waller (07:23):
That's really neat, do you?
Omid Moghadon (07:29):
think that's a big reason why you wanted to
work at Intel.
I usually take jobs based onprojects, not on the location,
and I've always been interestedin new things, creating new
things.
And out of graduate school Iwas graduate school, I just
(07:50):
wanted to get a PhD and teach,be an academic.
That was my goal and throughsome happenstance, I took a year
of leave of absence because myPhD advisor took a year of leave
of absence and I ended up atEastman Kodak, which at the time
was this conglomerate very muchlike Google today, that had
many different divisions workingon many different type of
technologies, and I was givenopportunities with something
(08:13):
really interesting and somethingnew.
And at the end of that one year,which was in cardiology, was in
cardiac imaging and at the endof that one year, I remember
this conversation with the headof that division that why do you
want to go back to academia?
Look at the things you can dohere.
Any technology you create,anything new you create here in
(08:37):
academia, would be a couple ofpapers and a grant and it might
never go anywhere here.
A hundred million, a billionpeople could be using it every
day, Neat, and that cemented my.
That was the end of myfull-time academic career.
I've gone back to academiapart-time and on an adjunct
basis, but never full-time.
(08:59):
So that was very interesting,that was very interesting to me
and I basically have neverlooked back.
Dr. Matt Waller (09:07):
Well, I know, when you were at Intel.
I remember you telling me aboutsome of the innovative things
you were working on, and thenyou actually started a business
for Intel at one point.
Omid Moghadon (09:22):
Could you tell that story.
I actually started twobusinesses.
One of them was a spinoff.
We spun out a healthcare ITcompany called Dossier, which
was a new concept that we hadcreated ourselves, which was a
personally controlled healthrecord, and that spinoff was in
2005.
And that's what brought me toNorthwest Arkansas for the first
(09:45):
time, because Walmart was myafter Intel.
Walmart was the second investorin the company and eventually
its largest client.
At the time, walmart was tryingto get into healthcare.
I think it was their second orthird attempt to get into
healthcare.
Was that that you moved here?
Well, I moved here.
(10:05):
Well, I moved here much later,but I started going back and
forth from Boston where thecompany was based here, because
our largest client was here, andthat was 05.
Xna had two gates and one smallbuilding.
Well, at least XNA existed.
Dr. Matt Waller (10:22):
Yes, yes, that's true.
When I moved here, it was DrakeField and it was terrible.
Omid Moghadon (10:27):
I've heard those stories.
Yeah, that's the dark times.
Yeah, so you were flying backand forth, I was, I was, and
then, you know, we had Walmartexecutives who would come to our
board meetings in Boston.
So that was the first company,and the second one was a company
(10:48):
called Intel Genomics it'sactually called Intel Analytic
Services, but doing business asIntel Genomics and we were doing
basically what's today's calledmachine learning and big data,
but for the next-gen sequencingmarket.
At the time there was thisspoon.
There was three differentcompanies that had just came up
(11:08):
with next-gen sequencers.
These are whole sequencingmachines, whole genome
sequencing machines, and eachmachine would drop about a
terabyte of data a night andsomebody had to sort out that
and we built a business aroundthat.
Dr. Matt Waller (11:26):
Why do you think they picked you to start
these businesses?
Omid Moghadon (11:32):
It's a little bit like Harry Potter the wand
picks the wizard the other wayaround.
I was always the instigator,I'm the one who went looking for
things and then looking for alittle corner of sanity where I
could actually work on thesethings, and that's innovation.
(11:53):
Or doing really radicalinnovation inside a large
company requires and there's nottoo many companies that can
pull.
Actually, almost no company canpull that off.
The only one I can think of isthe ones that have a mercurial
founder CEO that's still incharge and it's his vision or
her vision and did really pushit.
(12:14):
Someone like Edison, like Musk,steve Jobs, that are willing to
bet the company on that.
No one else can pull it off.
That's why large companies canonly do incremental improvement,
because that's just the waythey're set up.
They're set up for incrementalimprovement.
A lot of them talk about doingradical innovation or innovation
(12:37):
in general, but that usuallythey fail at it.
They fail at it.
Dr. Matt Waller (12:42):
So you're right .
Tons of companies talk aboutinnovation and entrepreneurship
and it's very clear that most ofthem fail at it.
Why do you think that is?
Omid Moghadon (12:58):
I think business professors would say company
culture.
But if you dig a little bitdeeper, what is company culture?
Company culture is what youvalue, who you promote, how you
promote people, on what basisand how you reward people.
And if the reward is for takingrisks, even if they don't pay
off, and not at the other side,which is you punish people for
(13:23):
taking risks.
Nobody ever gets punished in alarge organization for not
taking a risk that could havemade something, but you will get
punished for taking a risk thatdid not pay off.
Dr. Matt Waller (13:35):
What an insight .
That's a good point.
Omid Moghadon (13:38):
Yeah, that's why lawyers do so well in Fortune
500, because their job isbasically risk management.
Well in Fortune 500, becausetheir job is basically risk
management.
So before I got into healthcareat Intel in 05 and end up
spinning off Dacia, thathealthcare IT company, I was in
the proper business of Intel,which was semiconductors and all
the technologies surroundingand deploying it.
(14:00):
And Intel has these few itemsthat they pick every year called
the corporate strategicdiscussions, and the company's
future depends on the results ofthe CSDs so-called CSDs.
And once you get a CSD assignedto you, you get to pick a team
and you work for months and youbasically come back with a case
(14:26):
for an investment for doingsomething or for not doing
something.
And one of the CSDs that one ofmy colleagues and myself ran had
to do with the way Inteldesigned chips and we
manufactured them and thecomparable.
I mean we were looking atNVIDIA as the company that we
(14:48):
were comparing ourselves to atthat time.
Intel's design cycles formicroprocessors took five years,
so we had to invent a whole newarchitecture for the chip,
learn how to build it and thenequip the manufacturing sites or
build completely newfabrication sites to build that
(15:10):
technology.
So end-to-end because we hadin-house manufacturing.
Now what Intel rewarded was thecomplexity in design.
So the engineers, the designers, the chip designers, who
designed the more complex system, always won the promotion.
Dr. Matt Waller (15:29):
Why did they reward?
Omid Moghadon (15:30):
that Because for the longest time when computing,
the cycles that you used incomputing and software were for
things like Excel and SAS andother things, that complex
system won the day, becausethat's how they won the risk-sys
(15:55):
wars.
With that design and thatcomplexity and the fact that we
invented the manufacturing thatwent along with it was a barrier
to entry from other people.
But NVIDIA started in graphicchips, which is a different type
of computation, and the warningsign that we brought to the
(16:22):
table to the executive staff in2004, was that more of computing
is going in that direction.
More computing is becomingimaging, it's becoming video,
it's becoming computer vision,it's becoming AI and machine
learning, and the trajectory isthat more of computing is going
(16:44):
to be what NVIDIA is good at andless of what we're good at.
But our chips are not designedfor that, and the way NVIDIA
designs its chips because theydid not have their own
manufacturing, which meant everybit of complexity in their
(17:04):
chips, meant highermanufacturing costs at TSMC and
UMC in Taiwan meant that theyrewarded simplicity in design
rather than complexity in design.
As a result, they could come upwith a new chip every six
months to Intel's five years.
Dr. Matt Waller (17:18):
So do you think that difference drove the
difference we see?
Omid Moghadon (17:23):
today, absolutely .
At the end of that CSD, andyGrove told me that I'm not as
stupid as I look.
He was a charmer and absolutelyso.
I went back, just forhistorical reasons.
I went back and looked atmarket cap of NVIDIA and Intel
back then and then I looked atmarket cap of NVIDIA and Intel
(17:46):
today, so over the past 20 years, 20 years.
So Intel's market cap isexactly where it was Are you
serious?
Absolutely About $143 billion.
Nvidia was $3.2 billion and nowit's $3.4 trillion.
Dr. Matt Waller (18:06):
Whoa, that's an unimaginable market cap.
Omid Moghadon (18:11):
Absolutely.
They won the day.
The way innovation works inlarge companies.
I mean, our project wasapproved.
We got the money to go and makewhat we call the mini core chip
, because the way NVIDIA's chipsare different than Intel is
(18:32):
that instead of one very complexcore, they have these cores
that are replicable, so it'slike pieces of mosaic that you
put on a substrate.
It's the same core.
Software has a much bigger roleon those chips in managing what
goes where on the chip.
And that is an easy chip toreplicate, because if you design
(18:55):
a new core, you put a hundredthof them on a substrate and
that's your new chip.
You need one for a mobiledevice you put ten of them on a
chip.
You need something for a server, you put a thousand of them on
a chip, and that sort ofsimplicity in design and
manufacturing is what won themthe day.
And you get about.
(19:19):
In a large corporation,typically for doing radical
innovation, you have aboutsomewhere between 18 to 24
months and after that theantibodies come after you.
They either come to poach yourpeople, they either come to
after your budget or they justlike what you're doing but they
want to incorporate into whatthey're doing, which is the
(19:39):
radical?
It's not radical, it'sincremental improvement.
So I'm reminded of that, thestory of the Bradley fighting
vehicle and the debacle thatthat went through in the
Pentagon because it was supposedto be a joint forces armored
personnel carrier, and in thedepiction of that story that was
(20:00):
made for HBO, a little humorinvolved in.
There they are, you know, allthe admirals and generals from
the various forces are sittingaround the table and while the
generals from the army, from thearmored corps, are saying we
need these features in thisvehicle, the admiral from the
(20:20):
Navy says we need some portholesin there and it needs to float,
and it needs to float.
So when they first, you know,after a few billion dollars of
expenditure, the first one thatthey put sank to the bottom, so
that's when they basicallyoutsourced it to an Israeli
company, and that's the Bradleyfighting vehicle that we have
today.
And that's basically radicalinnovation versus incremental.
(20:47):
And in large companies theytake something like the
mini-core chip that we weretrying to design, they take it
into a regular microprocessordesign group and they basically
try to incorporate it as anadd-on, as a sidecar to a very
complex core, because now itneeds to do all that other stuff
too.
It's like that's not the point.
Dr. Matt Waller (21:06):
This is supposed to be a new chip design
, so that was quite a saga forthat you mentioned Elon Musk
earlier and I had just a fewmonths ago finished reading his
biography by Walter Isaacson.
I really liked it, but it'sinteresting your point.
(21:27):
Liked it, but it's interesting,your point.
I mean he really gets involvedin some details that like he'll
ask a basic question like whydoes the fin on that have to be
so big?
Couldn't it be smaller?
I mean, you know he'll askobvious things, almost like a
child would ask you know, but alot of times they unveil issues
(21:52):
or opportunities, sometimesnothing, but he questions
everything, obviously, and hehas high hopes for things.
But the other thing I'venoticed in reading the book is,
for example, with Tesla orSpaceX or many of the other
(22:15):
companies that he has, includingNeuralink, you know well, let's
take Tesla just as an example.
The people who are involved indesigning the cars have their
desks out on the factory floorso that they can be aware of you
know what's going on.
(22:35):
Similarly, even for making youknow things like SpaceX products
, spacex products, the sourcingmanagers, not just the engineers
, the sourcing managers are onthe floor and so they know.
(22:56):
So everyone's involved,thinking about the production of
whatever it is, and so whenissues come up, it's not through
a long line of people and theytend to be very vertically
integrated where they're.
Yeah, yeah, they can changethings pretty quickly, but their
(23:16):
innovations are quiteremarkable.
Now he's had a lot of failures.
I remember when he was firsttrying to launch various
spacecraft they would blow upand people kept thinking this
isn't going to work.
He eventually got it to work,but he wasn't afraid to keep
(23:36):
trying.
And now with the rockets, theboosters that land vertically,
this is a very tricky thing toaccomplish.
Omid Moghadon (23:46):
It is, it is.
And if he was an employee of arocket company, he would have
been fired by now, definitelyAfter the second, you know,
after the second launch vehicleblew up, he would be fired.
So he would never get a chanceto do this.
And having everyone in the viewof the product sourcing
(24:09):
managers, engineers and factoryworkers building things that is
a very startup scale model,because in a startup, everyone's
around the same table.
You have a small team, everyoneknows what's going on, and
large companies fail becauseinformation just doesn't get
(24:30):
through the different layers ofmanagement.
Who was that old-timey GMmanager, ceo who talked about
the frozen middle?
Oh yeah that there was thisfrozen layer of middle
management that does not allowinformation from lower level
workers and from line workers toactually get to where the
(24:51):
larger decisions are made at theexecutive level.
Dr. Matt Waller (24:55):
Well, you know, I even think about X.
No, Twitter, not really Twitter.
You know, Elon Musk improved itso quickly, Like, for example,
sometimes.
I remember one time I was usingit, he made a post.
He said, if you want to dosomething I don't remember what
(25:17):
it was no, this was not longafter he bought it Look down the
lower right-hand corner and youclick there.
So here it is there and hedescribed.
So here it is.
The CEO of the company ismaking a post about how to use
some functionality.
(25:38):
I think it was, uh, it wasabout um, casting the video
you're watching onto your tv.
They made it real easy and Ihad wondered about there was
something on there.
I had found that I wanted toshow my wife and I was like, try
and figure out what to.
I gave up.
I see this post of his and Itry it and boom, it works.
I thought how many companies ofthat size have a CEO that would
(26:01):
do something like that?
You know.
Omid Moghadon (26:05):
Yeah, that's why there's not a lot of people like
him.
Not a lot.
It's like aonce-in-a-generation type of
people like Edison or Hughes.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:19):
Even Benjamin Franklin.
I know he wasn't a scientist atall, but he came up with so
many great ideas and innovations.
Omid Moghadon (26:28):
Well, those guys at that time, those guys were
everything they were scientists,they were businessmen, they
were farmers, they weremusicians.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:36):
Printers.
Omid Moghadon (26:37):
Printers.
I mean, they were highlyeducated men.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:43):
You know, I sometimes think that engineers
today you know we trainengineers in a certain way but
it seems like it would be niceif they got their hands dirty
while they were studyingengineering and got involved in
soldering and welding andputting things together.
Omid Moghadon (27:06):
Yes, I absolutely think that is a good part of
the education.
Dr. Matt Waller (27:12):
A lot of times people don't think so.
They think well, that's like atrade.
You're not going to be weldingif you're a mechanical engineer,
but welding if you're amechanical engineer could give
you insights and also an abilityto create a prototype.
Omid Moghadon (27:29):
Barely quickly.
Yes, true, I like engineeringas a discipline.
I find it much more useful thanscience, because science never
ends.
You're always trying to lookinto new questions, because once
(27:51):
you answer one question youhave to go for another one,
because it's never ending theknowledge needs.
You know you don't always haveall the knowledge in one field,
but engineering is thediscipline of making things with
incomplete data, because you'renever going to have all the
(28:12):
data that you need, but at somepoint you have to say I have
enough and I need to makesomething work.
And figuring out all theparameters that need to be taken
into account with incompletedata is a discipline of
engineering, and getting yourhands dirty and actually
building things gives you aphysical feel for that, and I
(28:33):
think that's very important.
Dr. Matt Waller (28:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
Omid Moghadon (28:37):
I mean I got interested in.
I mean I did welding, I didwood shop, I tinkered with
motors and I was alwaysinterested.
So that's why I studiedengineering and engineering has
helped me in everything in lifesciences and diagnostics and
(28:57):
medical devices and everythingthat I've done.
Dr. Matt Waller (29:01):
So you know, as an entrepreneur both within a
company and outside of a company, like you're doing now, what
are some of the most challenginglessons?
Omid Moghadon (29:15):
you've had to learn I think this applies to
both being inside a largecompany or doing things on your
own that coming up with a newthing is the easiest part of
your work.
So that's that flash ofbrilliance that creates a new
invention or a new businessmodel or anything.
(29:37):
That's just the beginning andthat's probably the easiest part
.
Finding a market fit for whatyou have done that's the hard
part.
Market fit for what you havedone that's the hard part.
And as someone who was enamoredwith inventions 40 or so
patented inventions, and I hadto learn that lesson very early
(30:02):
in my career that just becausehere, look, I've invented
something new and you all needto adopt it just doesn't work.
You actually have to find amarket fit for it, and that's
where the real art is.
Some of the most successfulpeople that we have just talked
(30:23):
about.
They were not the inventors andthey were not the first ones
with that tool or with that newtechnology.
They were fast followers, veryfast followers.
Steve Jobs Apple didn't inventany of the stuff that we use
today of Apple.
They looked at failures ofothers with that technology and
(30:43):
they learned how to figure out abetter market fit.
Elon Musk came to Tesla afterhe was a 10-year-old technology
and they learned how to figureout a better market fit.
Elon Musk came to Tesla afterit was a 10-year-old company.
Yeah, he bought it.
Yeah, he was making roadsters.
Dr. Matt Waller (30:57):
One other interesting thing about that is
that when Elon Musk was workingat PayPal in the early days, he
was pushing for it to be afinancial tool, not just for
(31:20):
paying but for doing all kindsof things way beyond paying, and
he lost the battle.
He also wanted to change thename from PayPal.
Because he didn't, he saidwe're not going to be just about
pain.
He wanted to change the name toX Interesting and so he had the
(31:43):
first.
You know he had xcom way backthen and he had the first email
address with xcom, and so whenhe bought Twitter, you know a
lot of people some people werethinking, okay, this is about
(32:04):
freedom of speech and thingslike that.
But a lot of people that werefamiliar with his story were
thinking, oh, it gives you anidea of what he wants Twitter to
be.
Omid Moghadon (32:15):
Right right.
I heard that maybe it was an exor tweet by him that said his
dream is to make this similar toWeChat in China.
That does you know that?
It's a social network, it's apayment network and other things
, so I guess he gets to executeon his PayPal dream.
Dr. Matt Waller (32:37):
You do wonder.
Sometimes it's like, how couldhe have all of these different
companies?
I mean, you really think aboutit X compared to SpaceX,
neuralink compared to Tesla Allthese companies he's involved in
are pretty different.
(32:57):
Yeah, yeah, oh, the BoringCompany.
Oh, boring, yeah, the BoringCompany, which is a Friday day.
But you know he's got big ideasabout making boring tunnels
more efficient.
But these are reallychallenging ideas.
Omid Moghadon (33:17):
It is, and Musk is different than sort of like
the rest of Silicon Valley,which right now is basically
software, software and socialmedia.
Yeah, he's actually makingthings, and it is not a very
popular thing to do in SiliconValley, especially among venture
(33:37):
capitalists.
Nobody is funding making things, they just want a SaaS business
model that they can cash out ofquickly.
But he's actually making bigthings Cars, rockets, Solar
panels, solar panels, batteries,boring equipment.
Dr. Matt Waller (33:58):
Now that you're the founder and CEO of Namita,
you're really off on a differentpath than starting a company
from a big company like Intel.
This is really challenging.
First of all, tell me about howyou got into that and where
(34:25):
you're going with it, what theproduct is.
Omid Moghadon (34:31):
Let me answer your first question Starting
something new in a large companyand then doing something
outside of a large company onyour own and then doing
something outside of a largecompany on your own.
I believe that sort of like.
If you put a sigma on thatequation, the pain points are
(34:53):
all the same, it's just that thenumbers are a little different,
the scales are different, butat the end the sigma is the same
.
So it is difficult.
There's a lot of challenges.
Of course, there's a lot ofrewards.
That goes along with both ofthem.
In a large company, gainingaccess to capital is easy
(35:15):
Because you have the big companyname and the resources behind
you.
Finding people is also easier.
But then the pain of finding aspot for your new invention or
new technology inside a largecompany that is very challenging
because large companies are notequipped to handle radical
(35:36):
innovation or new inventions.
Anything outside of incrementalimprovement is very difficult
to find a spot for it Outside.
You basically have many degreesof freedom, but you have to
find capital, you have to findpeople and you have to find the
market, and so I think just thelevel that you have to put into
(36:03):
all of those things, level ofeffort is different, but at the
end of the day it's all the same.
You still are working 60,70-hour weeks and not sleeping
at night because you're worriedabout something going wrong in
that equation.
Nida is a five-year-old companythat was founded here in
Northwest Arkansas based on anidea and a concept that came
(36:31):
from Dr Suzanne Klimberg, aworld-famous breast cancer
surgeon and oncologist.
She's the head of oncology nowat UTMB in Texas.
At the time that she thought ofthis concept, in the mid-2000s,
she was the head of breast andovarian cancer program at UAMS.
She noticed that her patientscoming in from rural areas of
(36:59):
Arkansas always had much highergrade and more advanced breast
cancer than the ones frommetropolitan areas, and that's
because they don't screen.
They live too far away fromscreening centers that are
usually in larger cities, andshe was looking for a way of
screening women for breastcancer that did not require
(37:20):
imaging equipment andradiologists and can be done at
an OBGYN or at primary carelevel.
And around that time, sort of amutual friend of both of ours,
Dr Suzanne Love at UCLA, also abreast cancer surgeon.
She had found breast cancermarkers in milk of lactating
(37:44):
women, which is a very unusualthing, but it was there and, as
a surgeon, our Suzanne SuzanneKlimberg realized that the
process that the body goesthrough to make milk is very
similar to the process of makingtears.
So if you can find thosemarkers in milk, can you find
(38:04):
them in tears, and that wasbasically the genesis of this
idea, and so many years almost20 years of work has gone into
this.
We took over this work in 2013.
And in 2019, we establishedNamedEDA to commercialize it,
and we've been in the market nowwith a product called Aria and
(38:27):
it's a direct-to-consumer andavailable through some employers
and some B2B channels.
We look for protein biomarkersthat are found in tears and
based on that, we recommend afollow-up imaging test, and
(38:48):
there are many gaps in what weoffer for women in breast cancer
screening.
Part of it is that there's justnot enough radiologists or
radiology technicians to screeneverybody and there's just not
enough equipment out there.
Technicians to screen everybodyand there's just not enough
equipment out there.
So our screening rates for thecountry it's below 50%, even
(39:08):
though we spend about $16billion a year in the US on
screening and, as a result,cancers are found late.
There's mortality among USwomen because of that.
Plus, cancer is moving toyounger populations.
Where maybe 30 years ago cancerwas a disease of the middle age
(39:32):
to old age, it has become adisease of the young to old age,
and half the mortality in womenin the US in breast cancer is
under the age of 45, and many ofthem never screen.
So our test is filling some ofthe gaps in care that exist
today, and we were the firstones to actually bring this
product to market.
Dr. Matt Waller (39:54):
I know one time you were telling me a metaphor
about the difference between amammogram and this kind of
screening, and would you mindtalking about that?
Omid Moghadon (40:09):
Oh, I have a lot of metaphors when it comes to
mammograms.
Dr. Matt Waller (40:11):
This one was like the forest metaphor.
Omid Moghadon (40:15):
Oh, yes, yes, yes .
So, coming from an imagingbackground and child of the Cold
War, the big thing during theCold War, as you might remember,
matt, was all the Warsaw Pactarmor that was basically on the
borders of West Germany, theEast Germany, and all the
(40:38):
Russian tanks and such, and theUS routinely, routinely
photographed those forests inthe folder gap for presence of
tanks and you know.
But from 30, 40, 50, 60,000 feetabove ground a lot of things
look like tanks and you have togo in there and find them.
(40:58):
So when you use imaging as yourfirst line of screening,
there's a lot of things that canshow up in an x-ray that are
not cancer but the way falsepositives.
You have to go in there and doa biopsy, see what it is that
you saw.
Just like during the Cold War,we probably had to send someone
across the East German border tosee if that's a tank or it's
(41:20):
just a I don't know a tractorthat was misplaced.
So using imaging as a firstline of screening is inefficient
and there's a lot of newtechnologies, including lab
tests like ours, that are goingto solve that problem.
Dr. Matt Waller (41:42):
Lab tests like ours, that are going to solve
that problem.
So, yeah, I could see howthere'd be lots of false
positives with that kind ofimaging.
It's also very uncomfortablefor women.
Omid Moghadon (41:54):
Yeah, some people probably don't want to do it
because of no, I mean we getfeedback from our clients who
have used our test and many ofthem complain about the pressure
, because you have to put about50 pounds of pressure on the
breast tissue to flatten it.
So you can image it better withx-rays.
Dr. Matt Waller (42:15):
Wow, I didn't realize it was that much.
So would you mind talking alittle bit about your channel of
distribution?
I know your direct-to-consumeris one of them.
Would you talk about that one?
Omid Moghadon (42:32):
Sure, we went to market last year as a
direct-to-consumer product.
It's something that COVIDreally opened up that door for a
lot of offerings as adirect-to-consumer test.
There are a lot of companiesout there that offer a lot of
different types of tests asdirect-to-consumer.
So we started goingdirect-to-consumer and in our
(42:52):
first year we have shipped acouple of thousand units and it
has been a success you know,comparing ourselves to other
companies that have come up withnovel tests, they're lucky if
they sell a few hundred teststhe first year out.
So there is a need for that.
And direct-to-consumer comeswith its own challenges.
(43:15):
There's a lot of education thatgoes on, plus the consumer
behavior online, which is youhave to see something and then
you have to see something again,and you have to see something
maybe a second or third orfourth time and then get
educated about it, and each oneof those steps means you have to
write another check to Googleor Meta for an Instagram post or
(43:40):
for a Facebook ad, and so itgets expensive.
So if you're trying to keepyour price down, your customer
acquisition costs in that sortof consumer behavior online gets
very expensive.
And in order to get around thatand not run out of cash, we
have come up with some newmodels of going after consumers.
(44:02):
The same consumers that arebuying our tests are probably
also clients of medical spas,concierge doctors or functional
medicine physicians, and theseare all the cash-paying side of
US healthcare.
And so going through thosechannels, we are reaching the
same consumers just at the much,much lower customer acquisition
(44:27):
cost.
But we believe our biggestimpact is going to be through
our B2B channels, largeemployers.
So for large employers, healthcare is now their number.
Cancer is their number onedriver of costs in their health
care.
Cancer is their number onedriver of costs in their
healthcare.
As a matter of fact, we weretalking to one employer today
(44:48):
that their costs of cancer carehas gone up by 80% in one year,
and most of it has to do withfinding cancers in late stages
and then using very expensivedrugs and therapy.
Almost every visit at thatstage of cancer costs the
company somewhere between$40,000 to $50,000.
Dr. Matt Waller (45:07):
Oh my goodness, I had no idea it was that high.
Omid Moghadon (45:11):
There are a lot of biologic drugs now that cost
a million dollars per course oftreatment, so it's very easy to
get to that number now.
So employers want to findcancers early and if less than
50% of the population isscreening, for example for
breast cancer, they want a toolthat would get more people to
(45:33):
screen.
So our test is inexpensive,it's accurate and it gets people
to go screen.
Same with accountable careorganizations, Same with health
plans.
The goal is to get more peoplescreened and to find cancers
early, because cancers that arefound early are treatable,
survivable and inexpensive totreat.
Dr. Matt Waller (45:57):
Omid, thank you so much for taking time to
visit with us.
Your stories about innovationand entrepreneurship are just
really interesting, and I lovedyour story about Intel versus
NVIDIA.
That's an amazing story.
Thank you, matt.
Thank you for the invitation.
If you're finding value in thispodcast, we greatly appreciate
(46:20):
your support by subscribing toour YouTube channel.
Additionally, following us onApple and Spotify and leaving up
to a five-star review would beimmensely helpful.
We welcome any feedback orquestions related to the podcast
, as well as suggestions forfurther topics and guests.
You can leave your comments onour YouTube channel and rest
(46:40):
assured that I will read eachand every one of them.
Please also take a moment tocheck out our podcast sponsors,
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For more information onspecific topics, timestamps or
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mattwallerpodcastcom.
Welcome to the Matt Waller podcast, where we
look at success at theintersection of technology,
logistics, supply chain, retailand CPG, also known as the
retail value chain.
I want to clarify that thispodcast is distinct from my
responsibilities as a professorin the Sam M Walton College of
Business.
Nonetheless, it aligns with myaspiration to provide practical
(00:31):
insights to professionals andbusiness by showcasing companies
and people that can enhanceyour ability to manage, lead and
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services they provide for thesepodcasts.
I'm very pleased with theirservices and now, without
further ado, let's get into theexciting episode.
I have a really exciting episodetoday.
I have with me today OmniMoghadon, who has an extensive,
interesting career in innovationand entrepreneurship.
(01:40):
He has over 40 patents.
He's worked for companies likeEastman, Kodak and Intel.
In fact, he started a couple ofcompanies that were spun out of
Intel that you'll get to hearabout.
So if you're an investor, ifyou're an inventor, if you're an
entrepreneur, If you're aninventor, if you're an
(02:03):
entrepreneur, if you'reinterested in health care,
direct consumer, et cetera, etcetera, you should listen to
this podcast.
Omi talks about so many reallyinteresting things.
He talks about the story ofactually spending out these two
(02:29):
companies from Intel.
He talks about one story thatyou'll love.
He talks about how Intel'smarket cap is about the same as
it was 20 years ago.
Nvidia's, though, has gone uptremendously, from $3 billion to
$3 trillion roughly, and hetalks about why that might be
it's a very interesting story.
He's served on dozens of companyboards and now, with his new
(02:56):
company that he started fiveyears ago and he's the CEO of,
which is based upon some sciencethat came out of breast cancer
research from some surgeons,he's got a company that can,
namita, that can identify breastcancer early, and he talks
(03:20):
about how.
You know, right now the kindsof approaches to identifying
breast cancer, like imagingmammography, are really rough.
They're not able to pick up.
They can have false positivesvery easily and then a biopsy
(03:42):
has to be done, but there's noteven enough equipment or
professionals out there to doall the mammographies that need
to be done and consequently, alot of times the breast cancer
is discovered in later stagesand then the treatment's
expensive.
It's expensive, very expensive,and so his company has a direct
(04:07):
consumer product that you canbuy online that basically solves
this problem.
It does screening real early andyou know, some people may not
even want to do a mammographybecause of, maybe, the distance
they have to go to town orbecause of how uncomfortable it
is.
They can do this and getscreened and, you know, could
(04:30):
save lots of lives.
So I think you're going to findthis interesting.
You'll also hear about how Omidhas been interested in
inventions since he was sevenyears old.
It's a very interesting story,so, thank you, you're going to
like it, omi.
Thank you so much for joiningme today.
Omid Moghadon (04:47):
Well, thank you, Matt, I appreciate it.
You know, being on the MattWaller show it's sort of like
being there playing the Caesarroom in Vegas.
I know I've made it.
Dr. Matt Waller (04:58):
Yeah, right, Well, thank you.
But OK, now I want to startwith an interesting story that I
know about you and that iswhere your interest in
inventions came from.
Would you mind sharing thatstory with?
Omid Moghadon (05:13):
us.
Oh yes, I was seven years oldand there was a British TV
series called Connections, doneby the presenter.
James Burke was also the writerof the show and every episode
started with a new technologyand during that one-hour episode
(05:33):
he would take us through timeand how one invention led to
another, led to another and ledto another, and sometimes it
would go back to Greeks, romans,middle Ages.
Dr. Matt Waller (05:44):
You just have the best shows Because when I
was young I watched I think itwas 1979, there was a show
called Free to Choose and it waslike a series of 10 shows and
it affected my future.
Yes, that was back in 1979.
Omid Moghadon (06:01):
But go on Around the same time.
For me I was 7 years old, so itwas mid-70s, and that show, by
the way, he made Connections 2,connections 3, the Day the
Universe Changed.
So James Burke actually went onto making a lot more of those
and write books about all ofthem.
I invited him to speak to mygroup at Intel at one point.
(06:23):
Did he come?
He did.
Is he still around?
I believe he would be a veryold man at this point.
But all those shows are onYouTube.
If you decide to watch them,they're all free.
Dr. Matt Waller (06:38):
So you had him speak to your team at Intel.
What did he talk about?
Omid Moghadon (06:44):
Inventions.
I mean, he was at Intel, soit's technology and he basically
same theme of how one inventionleads to another and sort of
like quoting Sir Isaac Newton,you know, standing on the
shoulders of giants, and hownone of these things that we do
(07:04):
today are done by themselves andthey have roots in history.
And I've always loved history,even as a child, and marrying
history to invention, sort oflike the two things that I
really liked, sort of cementedthe direction that my career was
going to go.
Dr. Matt Waller (07:23):
That's really neat, do you?
Omid Moghadon (07:29):
think that's a big reason why you wanted to
work at Intel.
I usually take jobs based onprojects, not on the location,
and I've always been interestedin new things, creating new
things.
And out of graduate school Iwas graduate school, I just
(07:50):
wanted to get a PhD and teach,be an academic.
That was my goal and throughsome happenstance, I took a year
of leave of absence because myPhD advisor took a year of leave
of absence and I ended up atEastman Kodak, which at the time
was this conglomerate very muchlike Google today, that had
many different divisions workingon many different type of
technologies, and I was givenopportunities with something
(08:13):
really interesting and somethingnew.
And at the end of that one year,which was in cardiology, was in
cardiac imaging and at the endof that one year, I remember
this conversation with the headof that division that why do you
want to go back to academia?
Look at the things you can dohere.
Any technology you create,anything new you create here in
(08:37):
academia, would be a couple ofpapers and a grant and it might
never go anywhere here.
A hundred million, a billionpeople could be using it every
day, Neat, and that cemented my.
That was the end of myfull-time academic career.
I've gone back to academiapart-time and on an adjunct
basis, but never full-time.
(08:59):
So that was very interesting,that was very interesting to me
and I basically have neverlooked back.
Dr. Matt Waller (09:07):
Well, I know, when you were at Intel.
I remember you telling me aboutsome of the innovative things
you were working on, and thenyou actually started a business
for Intel at one point.
Omid Moghadon (09:22):
Could you tell that story.
I actually started twobusinesses.
One of them was a spinoff.
We spun out a healthcare ITcompany called Dossier, which
was a new concept that we hadcreated ourselves, which was a
personally controlled healthrecord, and that spinoff was in
2005.
And that's what brought me toNorthwest Arkansas for the first
(09:45):
time, because Walmart was myafter Intel.
Walmart was the second investorin the company and eventually
its largest client.
At the time, walmart was tryingto get into healthcare.
I think it was their second orthird attempt to get into
healthcare.
Was that that you moved here?
Well, I moved here.
(10:05):
Well, I moved here much later,but I started going back and
forth from Boston where thecompany was based here, because
our largest client was here, andthat was 05.
Xna had two gates and one smallbuilding.
Well, at least XNA existed.
Dr. Matt Waller (10:22):
Yes, yes, that's true.
When I moved here, it was DrakeField and it was terrible.
Omid Moghadon (10:27):
I've heard those stories.
Yeah, that's the dark times.
Yeah, so you were flying backand forth, I was, I was, and
then, you know, we had Walmartexecutives who would come to our
board meetings in Boston.
So that was the first company,and the second one was a company
(10:48):
called Intel Genomics it'sactually called Intel Analytic
Services, but doing business asIntel Genomics and we were doing
basically what's today's calledmachine learning and big data,
but for the next-gen sequencingmarket.
At the time there was thisspoon.
There was three differentcompanies that had just came up
(11:08):
with next-gen sequencers.
These are whole sequencingmachines, whole genome
sequencing machines, and eachmachine would drop about a
terabyte of data a night andsomebody had to sort out that
and we built a business aroundthat.
Dr. Matt Waller (11:26):
Why do you think they picked you to start
these businesses?
Omid Moghadon (11:32):
It's a little bit like Harry Potter the wand
picks the wizard the other wayaround.
I was always the instigator,I'm the one who went looking for
things and then looking for alittle corner of sanity where I
could actually work on thesethings, and that's innovation.
(11:53):
Or doing really radicalinnovation inside a large
company requires and there's nottoo many companies that can
pull.
Actually, almost no company canpull that off.
The only one I can think of isthe ones that have a mercurial
founder CEO that's still incharge and it's his vision or
her vision and did really pushit.
(12:14):
Someone like Edison, like Musk,steve Jobs, that are willing to
bet the company on that.
No one else can pull it off.
That's why large companies canonly do incremental improvement,
because that's just the waythey're set up.
They're set up for incrementalimprovement.
A lot of them talk about doingradical innovation or innovation
(12:37):
in general, but that usuallythey fail at it.
They fail at it.
Dr. Matt Waller (12:42):
So you're right .
Tons of companies talk aboutinnovation and entrepreneurship
and it's very clear that most ofthem fail at it.
Why do you think that is?
Omid Moghadon (12:58):
I think business professors would say company
culture.
But if you dig a little bitdeeper, what is company culture?
Company culture is what youvalue, who you promote, how you
promote people, on what basisand how you reward people.
And if the reward is for takingrisks, even if they don't pay
off, and not at the other side,which is you punish people for
(13:23):
taking risks.
Nobody ever gets punished in alarge organization for not
taking a risk that could havemade something, but you will get
punished for taking a risk thatdid not pay off.
Dr. Matt Waller (13:35):
What an insight .
That's a good point.
Omid Moghadon (13:38):
Yeah, that's why lawyers do so well in Fortune
500, because their job isbasically risk management.
Well in Fortune 500, becausetheir job is basically risk
management.
So before I got into healthcareat Intel in 05 and end up
spinning off Dacia, thathealthcare IT company, I was in
the proper business of Intel,which was semiconductors and all
the technologies surroundingand deploying it.
(14:00):
And Intel has these few itemsthat they pick every year called
the corporate strategicdiscussions, and the company's
future depends on the results ofthe CSDs so-called CSDs.
And once you get a CSD assignedto you, you get to pick a team
and you work for months and youbasically come back with a case
(14:26):
for an investment for doingsomething or for not doing
something.
And one of the CSDs that one ofmy colleagues and myself ran had
to do with the way Inteldesigned chips and we
manufactured them and thecomparable.
I mean we were looking atNVIDIA as the company that we
(14:48):
were comparing ourselves to atthat time.
Intel's design cycles formicroprocessors took five years,
so we had to invent a whole newarchitecture for the chip,
learn how to build it and thenequip the manufacturing sites or
build completely newfabrication sites to build that
(15:10):
technology.
So end-to-end because we hadin-house manufacturing.
Now what Intel rewarded was thecomplexity in design.
So the engineers, the designers, the chip designers, who
designed the more complex system, always won the promotion.
Dr. Matt Waller (15:29):
Why did they reward?
Omid Moghadon (15:30):
that Because for the longest time when computing,
the cycles that you used incomputing and software were for
things like Excel and SAS andother things, that complex
system won the day, becausethat's how they won the risk-sys
(15:55):
wars.
With that design and thatcomplexity and the fact that we
invented the manufacturing thatwent along with it was a barrier
to entry from other people.
But NVIDIA started in graphicchips, which is a different type
of computation, and the warningsign that we brought to the
(16:22):
table to the executive staff in2004, was that more of computing
is going in that direction.
More computing is becomingimaging, it's becoming video,
it's becoming computer vision,it's becoming AI and machine
learning, and the trajectory isthat more of computing is going
(16:44):
to be what NVIDIA is good at andless of what we're good at.
But our chips are not designedfor that, and the way NVIDIA
designs its chips because theydid not have their own
manufacturing, which meant everybit of complexity in their
(17:04):
chips, meant highermanufacturing costs at TSMC and
UMC in Taiwan meant that theyrewarded simplicity in design
rather than complexity in design.
As a result, they could come upwith a new chip every six
months to Intel's five years.
Dr. Matt Waller (17:18):
So do you think that difference drove the
difference we see?
Omid Moghadon (17:23):
today, absolutely .
At the end of that CSD, andyGrove told me that I'm not as
stupid as I look.
He was a charmer and absolutelyso.
I went back, just forhistorical reasons.
I went back and looked atmarket cap of NVIDIA and Intel
back then and then I looked atmarket cap of NVIDIA and Intel
(17:46):
today, so over the past 20 years, 20 years.
So Intel's market cap isexactly where it was Are you
serious?
Absolutely About $143 billion.
Nvidia was $3.2 billion and nowit's $3.4 trillion.
Dr. Matt Waller (18:06):
Whoa, that's an unimaginable market cap.
Omid Moghadon (18:11):
Absolutely.
They won the day.
The way innovation works inlarge companies.
I mean, our project wasapproved.
We got the money to go and makewhat we call the mini core chip
, because the way NVIDIA's chipsare different than Intel is
(18:32):
that instead of one very complexcore, they have these cores
that are replicable, so it'slike pieces of mosaic that you
put on a substrate.
It's the same core.
Software has a much bigger roleon those chips in managing what
goes where on the chip.
And that is an easy chip toreplicate, because if you design
(18:55):
a new core, you put a hundredthof them on a substrate and
that's your new chip.
You need one for a mobiledevice you put ten of them on a
chip.
You need something for a server, you put a thousand of them on
a chip, and that sort ofsimplicity in design and
manufacturing is what won themthe day.
And you get about.
(19:19):
In a large corporation,typically for doing radical
innovation, you have aboutsomewhere between 18 to 24
months and after that theantibodies come after you.
They either come to poach yourpeople, they either come to
after your budget or they justlike what you're doing but they
want to incorporate into whatthey're doing, which is the
(19:39):
radical?
It's not radical, it'sincremental improvement.
So I'm reminded of that, thestory of the Bradley fighting
vehicle and the debacle thatthat went through in the
Pentagon because it was supposedto be a joint forces armored
personnel carrier, and in thedepiction of that story that was
(20:00):
made for HBO, a little humorinvolved in.
There they are, you know, allthe admirals and generals from
the various forces are sittingaround the table and while the
generals from the army, from thearmored corps, are saying we
need these features in thisvehicle, the admiral from the
(20:20):
Navy says we need some portholesin there and it needs to float,
and it needs to float.
So when they first, you know,after a few billion dollars of
expenditure, the first one thatthey put sank to the bottom, so
that's when they basicallyoutsourced it to an Israeli
company, and that's the Bradleyfighting vehicle that we have
today.
And that's basically radicalinnovation versus incremental.
(20:47):
And in large companies theytake something like the
mini-core chip that we weretrying to design, they take it
into a regular microprocessordesign group and they basically
try to incorporate it as anadd-on, as a sidecar to a very
complex core, because now itneeds to do all that other stuff
too.
It's like that's not the point.
Dr. Matt Waller (21:06):
This is supposed to be a new chip design
, so that was quite a saga forthat you mentioned Elon Musk
earlier and I had just a fewmonths ago finished reading his
biography by Walter Isaacson.
I really liked it, but it'sinteresting your point.
(21:27):
Liked it, but it's interesting,your point.
I mean he really gets involvedin some details that like he'll
ask a basic question like whydoes the fin on that have to be
so big?
Couldn't it be smaller?
I mean, you know he'll askobvious things, almost like a
child would ask you know, but alot of times they unveil issues
(21:52):
or opportunities, sometimesnothing, but he questions
everything, obviously, and hehas high hopes for things.
But the other thing I'venoticed in reading the book is,
for example, with Tesla orSpaceX or many of the other
(22:15):
companies that he has, includingNeuralink, you know well, let's
take Tesla just as an example.
The people who are involved indesigning the cars have their
desks out on the factory floorso that they can be aware of you
know what's going on.
(22:35):
Similarly, even for making youknow things like SpaceX products
, spacex products, the sourcingmanagers, not just the engineers
, the sourcing managers are onthe floor and so they know.
(22:56):
So everyone's involved,thinking about the production of
whatever it is, and so whenissues come up, it's not through
a long line of people and theytend to be very vertically
integrated where they're.
Yeah, yeah, they can changethings pretty quickly, but their
(23:16):
innovations are quiteremarkable.
Now he's had a lot of failures.
I remember when he was firsttrying to launch various
spacecraft they would blow upand people kept thinking this
isn't going to work.
He eventually got it to work,but he wasn't afraid to keep
(23:36):
trying.
And now with the rockets, theboosters that land vertically,
this is a very tricky thing toaccomplish.
Omid Moghadon (23:46):
It is, it is.
And if he was an employee of arocket company, he would have
been fired by now, definitelyAfter the second, you know,
after the second launch vehicleblew up, he would be fired.
So he would never get a chanceto do this.
And having everyone in the viewof the product sourcing
(24:09):
managers, engineers and factoryworkers building things that is
a very startup scale model,because in a startup, everyone's
around the same table.
You have a small team, everyoneknows what's going on, and
large companies fail becauseinformation just doesn't get
(24:30):
through the different layers ofmanagement.
Who was that old-timey GMmanager, ceo who talked about
the frozen middle?
Oh yeah that there was thisfrozen layer of middle
management that does not allowinformation from lower level
workers and from line workers toactually get to where the
(24:51):
larger decisions are made at theexecutive level.
Dr. Matt Waller (24:55):
Well, you know, I even think about X.
No, Twitter, not really Twitter.
You know, Elon Musk improved itso quickly, Like, for example,
sometimes.
I remember one time I was usingit, he made a post.
He said, if you want to dosomething I don't remember what
(25:17):
it was no, this was not longafter he bought it Look down the
lower right-hand corner and youclick there.
So here it is there and hedescribed.
So here it is.
The CEO of the company ismaking a post about how to use
some functionality.
(25:38):
I think it was, uh, it wasabout um, casting the video
you're watching onto your tv.
They made it real easy and Ihad wondered about there was
something on there.
I had found that I wanted toshow my wife and I was like, try
and figure out what to.
I gave up.
I see this post of his and Itry it and boom, it works.
I thought how many companies ofthat size have a CEO that would
(26:01):
do something like that?
You know.
Omid Moghadon (26:05):
Yeah, that's why there's not a lot of people like
him.
Not a lot.
It's like aonce-in-a-generation type of
people like Edison or Hughes.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:19):
Even Benjamin Franklin.
I know he wasn't a scientist atall, but he came up with so
many great ideas and innovations.
Omid Moghadon (26:28):
Well, those guys at that time, those guys were
everything they were scientists,they were businessmen, they
were farmers, they weremusicians.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:36):
Printers.
Omid Moghadon (26:37):
Printers.
I mean, they were highlyeducated men.
Dr. Matt Waller (26:43):
You know, I sometimes think that engineers
today you know we trainengineers in a certain way but
it seems like it would be niceif they got their hands dirty
while they were studyingengineering and got involved in
soldering and welding andputting things together.
Omid Moghadon (27:06):
Yes, I absolutely think that is a good part of
the education.
Dr. Matt Waller (27:12):
A lot of times people don't think so.
They think well, that's like atrade.
You're not going to be weldingif you're a mechanical engineer,
but welding if you're amechanical engineer could give
you insights and also an abilityto create a prototype.
Omid Moghadon (27:29):
Barely quickly.
Yes, true, I like engineeringas a discipline.
I find it much more useful thanscience, because science never
ends.
You're always trying to lookinto new questions, because once
(27:51):
you answer one question youhave to go for another one,
because it's never ending theknowledge needs.
You know you don't always haveall the knowledge in one field,
but engineering is thediscipline of making things with
incomplete data, because you'renever going to have all the
(28:12):
data that you need, but at somepoint you have to say I have
enough and I need to makesomething work.
And figuring out all theparameters that need to be taken
into account with incompletedata is a discipline of
engineering, and getting yourhands dirty and actually
building things gives you aphysical feel for that, and I
(28:33):
think that's very important.
Dr. Matt Waller (28:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
Omid Moghadon (28:37):
I mean I got interested in.
I mean I did welding, I didwood shop, I tinkered with
motors and I was alwaysinterested.
So that's why I studiedengineering and engineering has
helped me in everything in lifesciences and diagnostics and
(28:57):
medical devices and everythingthat I've done.
Dr. Matt Waller (29:01):
So you know, as an entrepreneur both within a
company and outside of a company, like you're doing now, what
are some of the most challenginglessons?
Omid Moghadon (29:15):
you've had to learn I think this applies to
both being inside a largecompany or doing things on your
own that coming up with a newthing is the easiest part of
your work.
So that's that flash ofbrilliance that creates a new
invention or a new businessmodel or anything.
(29:37):
That's just the beginning andthat's probably the easiest part
.
Finding a market fit for whatyou have done that's the hard
part.
Market fit for what you havedone that's the hard part.
And as someone who was enamoredwith inventions 40 or so
patented inventions, and I hadto learn that lesson very early
(30:02):
in my career that just becausehere, look, I've invented
something new and you all needto adopt it just doesn't work.
You actually have to find amarket fit for it, and that's
where the real art is.
Some of the most successfulpeople that we have just talked
(30:23):
about.
They were not the inventors andthey were not the first ones
with that tool or with that newtechnology.
They were fast followers, veryfast followers.
Steve Jobs Apple didn't inventany of the stuff that we use
today of Apple.
They looked at failures ofothers with that technology and
(30:43):
they learned how to figure out abetter market fit.
Elon Musk came to Tesla afterhe was a 10-year-old technology
and they learned how to figureout a better market fit.
Elon Musk came to Tesla afterit was a 10-year-old company.
Yeah, he bought it.
Yeah, he was making roadsters.
Dr. Matt Waller (30:57):
One other interesting thing about that is
that when Elon Musk was workingat PayPal in the early days, he
was pushing for it to be afinancial tool, not just for
(31:20):
paying but for doing all kindsof things way beyond paying, and
he lost the battle.
He also wanted to change thename from PayPal.
Because he didn't, he saidwe're not going to be just about
pain.
He wanted to change the name toX Interesting and so he had the
(31:43):
first.
You know he had xcom way backthen and he had the first email
address with xcom, and so whenhe bought Twitter, you know a
lot of people some people werethinking, okay, this is about
(32:04):
freedom of speech and thingslike that.
But a lot of people that werefamiliar with his story were
thinking, oh, it gives you anidea of what he wants Twitter to
be.
Omid Moghadon (32:15):
Right right.
I heard that maybe it was an exor tweet by him that said his
dream is to make this similar toWeChat in China.
That does you know that?
It's a social network, it's apayment network and other things
, so I guess he gets to executeon his PayPal dream.
Dr. Matt Waller (32:37):
You do wonder.
Sometimes it's like, how couldhe have all of these different
companies?
I mean, you really think aboutit X compared to SpaceX,
neuralink compared to Tesla Allthese companies he's involved in
are pretty different.
(32:57):
Yeah, yeah, oh, the BoringCompany.
Oh, boring, yeah, the BoringCompany, which is a Friday day.
But you know he's got big ideasabout making boring tunnels
more efficient.
But these are reallychallenging ideas.
Omid Moghadon (33:17):
It is, and Musk is different than sort of like
the rest of Silicon Valley,which right now is basically
software, software and socialmedia.
Yeah, he's actually makingthings, and it is not a very
popular thing to do in SiliconValley, especially among venture
(33:37):
capitalists.
Nobody is funding making things, they just want a SaaS business
model that they can cash out ofquickly.
But he's actually making bigthings Cars, rockets, Solar
panels, solar panels, batteries,boring equipment.
Dr. Matt Waller (33:58):
Now that you're the founder and CEO of Namita,
you're really off on a differentpath than starting a company
from a big company like Intel.
This is really challenging.
First of all, tell me about howyou got into that and where
(34:25):
you're going with it, what theproduct is.
Omid Moghadon (34:31):
Let me answer your first question Starting
something new in a large companyand then doing something
outside of a large company onyour own and then doing
something outside of a largecompany on your own.
I believe that sort of like.
If you put a sigma on thatequation, the pain points are
(34:53):
all the same, it's just that thenumbers are a little different,
the scales are different, butat the end the sigma is the same
.
So it is difficult.
There's a lot of challenges.
Of course, there's a lot ofrewards.
That goes along with both ofthem.
In a large company, gainingaccess to capital is easy
(35:15):
Because you have the big companyname and the resources behind
you.
Finding people is also easier.
But then the pain of finding aspot for your new invention or
new technology inside a largecompany that is very challenging
because large companies are notequipped to handle radical
(35:36):
innovation or new inventions.
Anything outside of incrementalimprovement is very difficult
to find a spot for it Outside.
You basically have many degreesof freedom, but you have to
find capital, you have to findpeople and you have to find the
market, and so I think just thelevel that you have to put into
(36:03):
all of those things, level ofeffort is different, but at the
end of the day it's all the same.
You still are working 60,70-hour weeks and not sleeping
at night because you're worriedabout something going wrong in
that equation.
Nida is a five-year-old companythat was founded here in
Northwest Arkansas based on anidea and a concept that came
(36:31):
from Dr Suzanne Klimberg, aworld-famous breast cancer
surgeon and oncologist.
She's the head of oncology nowat UTMB in Texas.
At the time that she thought ofthis concept, in the mid-2000s,
she was the head of breast andovarian cancer program at UAMS.
She noticed that her patientscoming in from rural areas of
(36:59):
Arkansas always had much highergrade and more advanced breast
cancer than the ones frommetropolitan areas, and that's
because they don't screen.
They live too far away fromscreening centers that are
usually in larger cities, andshe was looking for a way of
screening women for breastcancer that did not require
(37:20):
imaging equipment andradiologists and can be done at
an OBGYN or at primary carelevel.
And around that time, sort of amutual friend of both of ours,
Dr Suzanne Love at UCLA, also abreast cancer surgeon.
She had found breast cancermarkers in milk of lactating
(37:44):
women, which is a very unusualthing, but it was there and, as
a surgeon, our Suzanne SuzanneKlimberg realized that the
process that the body goesthrough to make milk is very
similar to the process of makingtears.
So if you can find thosemarkers in milk, can you find
(38:04):
them in tears, and that wasbasically the genesis of this
idea, and so many years almost20 years of work has gone into
this.
We took over this work in 2013.
And in 2019, we establishedNamedEDA to commercialize it,
and we've been in the market nowwith a product called Aria and
(38:27):
it's a direct-to-consumer andavailable through some employers
and some B2B channels.
We look for protein biomarkersthat are found in tears and
based on that, we recommend afollow-up imaging test, and
(38:48):
there are many gaps in what weoffer for women in breast cancer
screening.
Part of it is that there's justnot enough radiologists or
radiology technicians to screeneverybody and there's just not
enough equipment out there.
Technicians to screen everybodyand there's just not enough
equipment out there.
So our screening rates for thecountry it's below 50%, even
(39:08):
though we spend about $16billion a year in the US on
screening and, as a result,cancers are found late.
There's mortality among USwomen because of that.
Plus, cancer is moving toyounger populations.
Where maybe 30 years ago cancerwas a disease of the middle age
(39:32):
to old age, it has become adisease of the young to old age,
and half the mortality in womenin the US in breast cancer is
under the age of 45, and many ofthem never screen.
So our test is filling some ofthe gaps in care that exist
today, and we were the firstones to actually bring this
product to market.
Dr. Matt Waller (39:54):
I know one time you were telling me a metaphor
about the difference between amammogram and this kind of
screening, and would you mindtalking about that?
Omid Moghadon (40:09):
Oh, I have a lot of metaphors when it comes to
mammograms.
Dr. Matt Waller (40:11):
This one was like the forest metaphor.
Omid Moghadon (40:15):
Oh, yes, yes, yes .
So, coming from an imagingbackground and child of the Cold
War, the big thing during theCold War, as you might remember,
matt, was all the Warsaw Pactarmor that was basically on the
borders of West Germany, theEast Germany, and all the
(40:38):
Russian tanks and such, and theUS routinely, routinely
photographed those forests inthe folder gap for presence of
tanks and you know.
But from 30, 40, 50, 60,000 feetabove ground a lot of things
look like tanks and you have togo in there and find them.
(40:58):
So when you use imaging as yourfirst line of screening,
there's a lot of things that canshow up in an x-ray that are
not cancer but the way falsepositives.
You have to go in there and doa biopsy, see what it is that
you saw.
Just like during the Cold War,we probably had to send someone
across the East German border tosee if that's a tank or it's
(41:20):
just a I don't know a tractorthat was misplaced.
So using imaging as a firstline of screening is inefficient
and there's a lot of newtechnologies, including lab
tests like ours, that are goingto solve that problem.
Dr. Matt Waller (41:42):
Lab tests like ours, that are going to solve
that problem.
So, yeah, I could see howthere'd be lots of false
positives with that kind ofimaging.
It's also very uncomfortablefor women.
Omid Moghadon (41:54):
Yeah, some people probably don't want to do it
because of no, I mean we getfeedback from our clients who
have used our test and many ofthem complain about the pressure
, because you have to put about50 pounds of pressure on the
breast tissue to flatten it.
So you can image it better withx-rays.
Dr. Matt Waller (42:15):
Wow, I didn't realize it was that much.
So would you mind talking alittle bit about your channel of
distribution?
I know your direct-to-consumeris one of them.
Would you talk about that one?
Omid Moghadon (42:32):
Sure, we went to market last year as a
direct-to-consumer product.
It's something that COVIDreally opened up that door for a
lot of offerings as adirect-to-consumer test.
There are a lot of companiesout there that offer a lot of
different types of tests asdirect-to-consumer.
So we started goingdirect-to-consumer and in our
(42:52):
first year we have shipped acouple of thousand units and it
has been a success you know,comparing ourselves to other
companies that have come up withnovel tests, they're lucky if
they sell a few hundred teststhe first year out.
So there is a need for that.
And direct-to-consumer comeswith its own challenges.
(43:15):
There's a lot of education thatgoes on, plus the consumer
behavior online, which is youhave to see something and then
you have to see something again,and you have to see something
maybe a second or third orfourth time and then get
educated about it, and each oneof those steps means you have to
write another check to Googleor Meta for an Instagram post or
(43:40):
for a Facebook ad, and so itgets expensive.
So if you're trying to keepyour price down, your customer
acquisition costs in that sortof consumer behavior online gets
very expensive.
And in order to get around thatand not run out of cash, we
have come up with some newmodels of going after consumers.
(44:02):
The same consumers that arebuying our tests are probably
also clients of medical spas,concierge doctors or functional
medicine physicians, and theseare all the cash-paying side of
US healthcare.
And so going through thosechannels, we are reaching the
same consumers just at the much,much lower customer acquisition
(44:27):
cost.
But we believe our biggestimpact is going to be through
our B2B channels, largeemployers.
So for large employers, healthcare is now their number.
Cancer is their number onedriver of costs in their health
care.
Cancer is their number onedriver of costs in their
healthcare.
As a matter of fact, we weretalking to one employer today
(44:48):
that their costs of cancer carehas gone up by 80% in one year,
and most of it has to do withfinding cancers in late stages
and then using very expensivedrugs and therapy.
Almost every visit at thatstage of cancer costs the
company somewhere between$40,000 to $50,000.
Dr. Matt Waller (45:07):
Oh my goodness, I had no idea it was that high.
Omid Moghadon (45:11):
There are a lot of biologic drugs now that cost
a million dollars per course oftreatment, so it's very easy to
get to that number now.
So employers want to findcancers early and if less than
50% of the population isscreening, for example for
breast cancer, they want a toolthat would get more people to
(45:33):
screen.
So our test is inexpensive,it's accurate and it gets people
to go screen.
Same with accountable careorganizations, Same with health
plans.
The goal is to get more peoplescreened and to find cancers
early, because cancers that arefound early are treatable,
survivable and inexpensive totreat.
Dr. Matt Waller (45:57):
Omid, thank you so much for taking time to
visit with us.
Your stories about innovationand entrepreneurship are just
really interesting, and I lovedyour story about Intel versus
NVIDIA.
That's an amazing story.
Thank you, matt.
Thank you for the invitation.
If you're finding value in thispodcast, we greatly appreciate
(46:20):
your support by subscribing toour YouTube channel.
Additionally, following us onApple and Spotify and leaving up
to a five-star review would beimmensely helpful.
We welcome any feedback orquestions related to the podcast
, as well as suggestions forfurther topics and guests.
You can leave your comments onour YouTube channel and rest
(46:40):
assured that I will read eachand every one of them.
Please also take a moment tocheck out our podcast sponsors,
as they play a critical role inkeeping this podcast running.
For more information onspecific topics, timestamps or
links to articles mentionedduring the podcast, head over to
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