Peter Kassel is the CEO and co-founder of Healthysole, a remover of 99.99% of infectious bacteria, viruses, and spores that are tracked on your shoes. As the co-founder of HealthySole Peter has been with the company for its entire journey, which began in 2011. We recently sat down with Peter to discuss his company, the growing Medtech space, and the use of capital raising in this field.
Q: Tell me a little about your experience, company, and your company’s impact on clients and the Medtech space.
A: I have been working in the Medtech space for ten years as CEO and co-founder of Healthysole. Ten years ago, my family started this company on the simple concept that shoes and floors are dirty. We are now hoping to make a significant impact on the Medtech space. My family and I decided to address this issue when a family member acquired a near-fatal infection during a standard medical procedure. While Hospital Acquired Infections and Infection Control are prevalent issues, we found that shoes and floors were regularly overlooked as potential contributors to the problem.
Once we pivoted our product towards the Medtech and healthcare space, top leaders in the field contacted us to test their hypothesis and push the narrative of better protecting the patient and healthcare provider. We see that there is greater value and response for this product within the healthcare setting and beyond. We view the product as simple as washing your hands for the soles of your shoes. When people wash their hands with greater frequency, the environmental presence of pathogens decreases; HealthySole PLUS safely and unobtrusively applies the same principle, only to the soles of shoes in just 8 seconds. This helps limit the pathogens on one of the dirtiest parts of a hospital, shoes. HealthySole can be implemented to lower the amount of infectious pathogens responsible for hospital-acquired infections by addressing and limiting pathogens on your soles.
Q: What excites you most about the sector?
A: It’s one of these examples of a market sector where innovation has very little potential of downside. When working in the Medtech space, you’re trying to improve the experience of patients and healthcare professionals while lowering the chance of infection, better preventing illness, and reducing the spread of germs in facilities.
Q: How do you see the LSI Medtech event having an impact on your company?
A: We have been around for ten years. Once we proved out the device and had momentum, we felt we had a viable tool. Groups that adopted our product to deal with disease infection rates from patient to provider saw the benefits. At the very same time, all these world-shattering events kept occuring, putting a startup like ours at a disadvantage. When we want to put out our results, there’s lots of international news and we are unable to rise above the noise. LSI gives us the opportunity to speak directly to the medical community at large about the threat shoes and floors pose and how HealthySole PLUS can easily and effectively address it.
Q: Now that your company will be using Reg A+ for your next offering, how do you see it impacting your company?
A: It’s night and day. Medtech companies have a very hard time raising money, you need the talent to sell it, but you also need capital to support those sales efforts. Capital is needed for manufacturing at a greater scale, international advertising, researching, and Reg A+ helps us do all these things.
Q: Why do you think education on topics like regulation A+ play such a vital role in expanding access to capital for Medtech.
A: Every human interacts with a medical device, in a multitude of ways, numerous times throughout their life. Medicine is something every human must encounter. As a society, we want better outcomes, and this will never stop. We see during unprecedented events like COVID that the healthcare systems are incomplete. They work during times of calm, but can find it difficult to adapt to rapid change. Investing in a simple, yet effective product within the Medtech space provides an excellent prospect for investors, giving them the opportunity to financially benefit while changing the world of medicine to improve health outcomes all around the world.
Q: How do you see Regulation A+ impacting Medtech companies?
A: I see it transforming medicine as we know it. Medical innovations such as products, procedures and software come with a high cost and a number of difficult regulatory hurdles, leading to large investors’ hesitancy. With Reg A+, we can spread the risk and the reward so the general population can put their money towards a future they want to see. I see the renewed access to capital and alongside the ability for everyday investors to invest in products they believe in, changing the medical industry for years to come.
Q: What advice would you give a young MedTech entrepreneur as they begin their journey through capital raising and building their company?
A: It’s similar to being an entrepreneur in any company. You will need more capital than you expect because the world of medicine moves very slowly. Anything you do will take three times longer, and if it takes three times longer, it will be three times more expensive as well.
Regulation A Disclaimer
This communication may be deemed to be a solicitation of interest under Regulation A under the Securities Act of 1933, in which case the following apply:
- No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response, will not be accepted;
- No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement is qualified, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of its acceptance given after the qualification date;
- A person’s indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind; and
- An offering statement, which would include a preliminary offering circular, has not yet been filed with the SEC.
