Speaker 2 (00:05.496)
Welcome to the Hard Tech Podcast.

And everybody, welcome back to the Hard Tech Podcast. I'm your host Deandre Hericus with my usual suspect CEO of Glassboard, Grant Chappell. And today we have a super exciting electric guest with us today in Jeff Bennett, the founder and CEO of Morari Medical, is a pioneering sexual health company redefining treatment of premature ejaculation. Jeff, welcome to the show.

How's it going everybody?

Speaker 1 (00:37.976)
Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to be here and talk about sexual wellness, isn't a topic many guys sitting around a table talk about, so I appreciate the opportunity.

Honestly, we're probably less than five minutes into someone listening to this podcast on their drive to work. And they're probably like, this sounds like a very interesting episode. We'd love to just get it started with your background and what got you to start working on this problem set. It seems like pretty taboo in the big scheme of medical devices.

Yeah, sexual wellness, still very much taboo out there in the marketplace. A lot of stigma is attached to it, which is why I decided I didn't need to do something about it. My background is in medical device industry. I spent over 25 years in the medical device space. Started my career at a company called Medtronic where I managed a chronic pain product that used electrical energy to mask the symptoms or mask the pain signals going up to the brain. I then got exposed to other forms of products and therapy.

that use electrical energy and I had this crazy idea of what about a patch that used electrical energy to delay an ejaculation? And I went to a different company called Boston Scientific and spent many years in the urology business and became friends with a urologist and I brought him the idea. Prior to that I kind of sat on the idea, I didn't do anything, I didn't want to disclose it to anybody for obvious reasons. But when I brought it to this urologist's attention he's like, Jeff, brilliant idea. But more importantly, do you understand how big of a problem this is? And I'm like, well I know I

that last longer sometime and he said 30 % of men can't last more than two minutes in the bedroom and I'm like come on be honest with me that can't be true we're friends be honest he's like that's my point is men don't like to talk about this and I as a doctor I don't want to bring it up because I'm not happy with existing treatment options and my job is to you know make people better and he wasn't happy with existing treatment options so that was kind of the start of the journey and here we are many years later

Speaker 1 (02:34.048)
I got FDA approval on the product back in January and we've started our limited commercialization. So long winded answer, but that's kind of the journey so far.

That's awesome. And congratulations on the FDA milestone there. That's a big one that most startups don't even reach before they crater and burn. So you're already off in the top echelon of startups. And I just love that you saw this nerve stimulation technology. We at Glassport have worked on some TENS device and other neuroSTEM devices, both for performance and in the athletic space, both for pain management and another space. So very familiar with the thing here.

I love your, I'll call it the big brain moment, this concept of, hmm, what's one of the biggest, most exciting nerve transmissions that happens in someone's life, and can we make that better? We figured out we can manipulate these nerve transmissions, can we make that better? And I think that connection of just two disparate concepts that lived in your head is how all good ideas are found. So I just want to give you hats off that finding apples and oranges and figuring out they go great together.

And to that, Geoff, I know that I'm curious. So how does the device work for all the men out there that may or may not be lasting two minutes, or want to last longer than 20, or what have you? How does it actually impact how long in making you not go?

Yep. Well, in the end, mean, the body's just one big neural network, right? I mean, it's neurons firing to elicit different responses. So whether it's Parkinson's, whether it's chronic pain, whether it's arrhythmias, what we're doing is we're providing men with a solution where they can put a patch in the perineum. The perineum is that area between the scrotum and the anus. My son likes to it the gooch. We had a reporter call it the taint. But that's the area between the scrotum and the anus where the ejaculatory nerves combine.

Speaker 1 (04:22.832)
from the penis before going up to the brain to trigger an ejaculation. So by putting a patch in that area and having the guy wear that patch during intercourse and having electrical impulses hit that area, those nerves are being what we call confused. I mean, there's a much more scientific term for that and mechanism of action, but we're basically turning down the volume of nerve activity temporarily from the penis to the brain because that normal response for ejaculation is a neural response. Erections on the other hand,

about blood flow. It's about blood flow in and out of the penis. We're not doing anything to adjust and impact erections yet. It's all about ejaculation, which is a neural-controlled event.

Yeah, so you're basically, you know, like RF jamming the nerve transmission, right? This is no different than bringing in like a cell phone blocker to shut down cell traffic, right, in an area and you're blocking anything that's going to fly through your no-fly zone, which is in that perineum and you're introducing so much noise that the brain can't decode the signals that are coming from the penis, right? So it's just saying, I don't know what this data says, so I'm going to ignore it for now. And then what I think is really neat, because I think what you and I shared earlier and one of the common treatments for premature ejaculation day are like numbing

creams and topicals there that just numb the outside nerves. So A, it takes away from your pleasure and that can accidentally get shared to a partner, which I think is a bummer. And the other one is antidepressants, which is let's shut down the whole system, right? Let's not localize this confusion and shut down. Let's just tone down the volume everywhere. And what you do is not only do you do it locally, you give the user control, right? You're an app connected device. So you can turn this blocking signal up or down.

And I think that the control part, how did you get to be, you know, to understand that that was part of the user experience that was kind of the magic for more.

Speaker 1 (06:07.822)
Well, first of all, Grant, you're a natural at this. You got a job if you want with Mirari. I you just nailed it in terms of explaining it. So great job.

I'll apply on Indeed tomorrow.

You probably won't like our pay right now, so you know.

We're still working on that. What we found is that, and this is all pre-FDA feasibility studies that we did, that guys were reporting an ejaculation, but some guys weren't. We, at the time, only had one setting of our patch. The user couldn't change amplitude, they couldn't change frequency, they couldn't change pulse width. We tried to give them a patch that we thought was gonna be strong enough to elicit their desired response. Many guys said, yeah.

It's working, but then we had many others saying no I'm not really feeling it or I wish I could go up in intensity So that kind of led us to the fact that you know we need to develop an app which allows the user to change settings because as We know everybody responds to neural stimulation differently what settings works for me is gonna be different than you guys and That's individual and there's a lot of factors that contribute to that right it there. It's the skin hydration levels It's the fat level in that area. It's you know did you trim the hair to two to four millimeters?

Speaker 1 (07:24.034)
All those factors come into play. So that's why we felt it was important to have the app for that user to customize that experience for them. And once they found the right settings, then they can save it as a favorite in the app and then use that on a go-forward basis.

It's really fascinating. And on the side of the business development role that Grant is obviously going to be signing up for. We're both signing up for it as fast as we can, No, with the product, 30 % of men are dealing with this, which is a huge, wait, you said maybe even more than that.

We're going to race to that role.

Speaker 2 (07:56.898)
Well, it's Jeff, what are the stats again? How many men can't last two minutes? And then what are the stats in men that are trying to fix this?

Yeah, 30 % of men can't last more than two minutes in the bedroom. And then we estimate there's another 40 % of men that don't meet that clinical definition, but simply want to last longer. And I want to make sure that I cover myself here in that our first product more is not indicated to treat premature ejaculation. FDA considers premature ejaculation to be a disease or disorder. So what our approach was when we submitted to the FDA was let's just go in from a safety perspective, get that approval, and then we can add indications at a later

point. So our indication from the FDA is to enhance or improve sexual performance. We don't talk about a disease or disorder, we can't. But it's up to the user, it's up to the doctor, it's up to whomever to decide how they want to use this product. But the indication, I just want to make sure it's clear from my perspective, is we can't treat premature ejaculation with this product yet. We're going to be collecting data post-market to submit to the FDA to then get indication expansion at some point in the future.

Sure, but it certainly could potentially help if you were to use it for that.

The hypothesis is that it may help this. But Jeff, I love that the way you've positioned the product as a sexual wellness device, it leaves the keys in the hands of the driver, the user of the device. And they can use it for whatever they want. If they want to attempt to change the time they last, if they want to change their experience, they can control that in the app. And it allows the user to experiment without having tell a user what it's for.

Speaker 2 (09:32.046)
And I think that's the power of your device, that you're not a pure med device play at all. You're a wellness device and there are some people that might get different benefits than another user. And your approach is, I'm going to use the FDA as a safety and efficacy tool to build confidence in my user base that this is a real product, it's safe to use, like this is, we've passed all the tests. And then use those users that you have an app and connect to control that you can collect surveys or data from to build a data set that you may one day take to the FDA for, to truly have this be a prescription for treatment.

for disease and I think that stepping stone we always try and coach our clients that have what I call a new mechanism which is what you have here, right? That you kind of want to do that crawl walk run approach which I think goes quite well with your branding on you know ready set slow like you know choose your own adventure along the way.

know, 100 % there. And one of the things that we found early on is guys were saying, yeah, this is delaying ejaculation, but whoa, I've never felt something that felt that intense before. So we heard that a few times. I experienced it early on, but I kind of blew that off to being biased. But when I heard it several times, I then went to our medical advisor at the time and I said, does this make sense that we're hearing this? And he's like, well yeah, especially if the patch is placed more towards the anus. That's where the prostate is.

electrical energy which is probably causing the muscles in the prostate to contract which then leads to a more forceful and more powerful ejaculation. And I was like wow that's every guy in the world I mean who wouldn't want to have a more intense ejaculation if you could get it. But it's just not there's not a product out there for guys right. I there's guys that last longer and you know maintain erections but can amplify the ejaculation. I mean there's nothing ever like that in the world and it's similar to the female side of things. There's all kinds of vibrators being used out there.

help with orgasms. What's that male equivalent of that? you know one of the test lines we're testing is you haven't had an orgasm until you've had a morgasm.

Speaker 2 (11:28.904)
are targeting more.

Yeah, so we're kind of testing that messaging out there, but our product name, to your point, Grant, is I can't tell you what your More is. I don't know if you want more time, more intensity, more communication, more intimacy. Honestly, I don't care what your More is. We're going to give you a product that's been approved by the FDA from a safety perspective, and you and your partner go figure out what that More is. And that's private, that's special, that's something that you should enjoy with your partner, and have fun while you're doing it, right? It will take you several attempts to find that perfect setting, but

have fun, sex should be fun, it is fun, everybody enjoys it. So that's kind of the idea behind the more product name.

Sure, yeah. I think to my statement earlier, and to jump off what Grant was saying as well, just around the go-to-market, right? So you've got this 30 % of men deal with this. They don't really want to talk about it. And going to market with a product like this in the wellness space, you don't necessarily have to go through distributors, though you maybe potentially could. You could go direct to consumer. I'm curious how you're positioning the product to be well-adopted.

How do you get discovered?

Speaker 3 (12:35.658)
That's right. How do you get discovered? you taking the playbooks that you see like Roe and Hymn's taking? Are you looking at a different direction? Just curious how you're thinking about that.

Yeah, great question. know, our FDA clearance is over the counter, so we can sell directly to consumers without having them go to the doctor or getting a prescription. And that was an important event for us, is to get that designation. Because we knew that in general guys don't like to go to the doctor, right? And then to bring up a sensitive topic like this, and many doctors just don't have the time to ask people about their sexual health and wellness. So for us, over the counter was important. So what we're doing right now is we've got our own e-commerce site set up. It's called yourmore.com.

and that's where people can go to become educated on the product, but also order. So we're basing our platform off of a standard e-commerce solution out there, built a website around that, and again, that's where people can go and order it. Now moving forward, we're absolutely looking at distribution options to help move the product and grant awareness. So, you know, can't get into many of those discussions at this point, but why reinvent the wheel for things that have already been done out in the marketplace? Because as we're finding

And again, I'm a med device guy. I've launched to doctors for many years. How you talk to doctors is completely different on how you talk to consumers. Physicians in general want to see data. They want to see published data. And we don't have that yet. We're going to collect that data post-market. But consumers, on the other hand, generally buy on emotion. So there's not a lot of data that's going to be needed to sway a consumer. It's more of what problem do they have? Have they tried different solutions?

they willing to give something else a try? And our market research with men that suffer from this issue, they're desperate. They've tried all kinds of different things and they're looking for that next innovative solution to help them for something that doesn't require a drug, that doesn't require a spray or a cream. And for us, using electrical simulation, that's the natural body workings, if you will.

Speaker 2 (14:36.918)
Right. And I love that going to that direct consumer app for you and who you're targeting as a consumer has allowed you to build a fun brand. Right. Like as we've already dug into, I don't care what your more is, more could be anything for you. But we provided, I joke, a knob to turn. Right. You give them a lever to pull on to change their experience and find what experience works best for them. And you were sharing with us earlier, you've had some pretty fun accidental exposures to the world in media. I'd love to share that story. I just loved it when you first told me, know, kind of lucking into a very public

exposure of your product.

Yeah, well, I mean, kind of the foundation of the brand that we set early on is that we don't want to be seen as a medical device in the sense that you have to go to the doctor to get a prescription. We also don't want to be seen as a sex toy. Nothing wrong with sex toys. I just came back from a meeting where it was unbelievable. All the different technologies are out there. It's a multi-billion dollar space in the sex toy category, but we're trying to solve an issue that affects millions of people. So we want this to be a playful yet serious tone to the brand. So that's what you see in the characters behind me. The rabbit is

running fast, you're trying to slow that rabbit down. And then we got the tortoise, which is kind of laying back saying, all's good. I'm fine. I'm happy. So that's kind of that playful, serious tone that we're trying to take with a brand. And so far it seems to have stuck. But you mentioned unexpected opportunity. Several years ago, Jimmy Kimmel and his monologue spent about a minute, 46 seconds talking about the product, making fun of me in a good way, and ultimately acknowledging that this was an issue that faced men.

And we had no idea that that was going to happen. Nobody from their team reached out from us. We didn't reach out to them. I woke up literally a Friday morning, my phone's buzzing, my commercialization advisor's like, Jeff, you and the company just got roasted last night on Jimmy Kimmel. I'm like, no, what does that mean? So I finally found that and I'm like, this is gold. I this is free advertising to millions of people that watch the show. So what that really told us is that

Speaker 1 (16:37.824)
Again, it acknowledged it was an issue. And it also acknowledged and validated my approaches. When I talked to guys about this, you gotta joke about it first.

You have to destigmatize the topic.

100%. And then once you do that, people's guards come down and you're able to have this conversation. And there's been many conversations where I've had with guys. like, dude, I appreciate that. I don't know you. I don't need to know that level of detail of your sexual health. But I'm glad I can put you in a state where you can feel comfortable talking about it. But I'm not a sex therapist. So I'll do what I can to help. But I don't need that level of detail. But it makes me feel good that I can have that opportunity where someone's free and willing to open up.

And again, I think that's an amazing.

you know, founder story for you is eliciting a founder that can have direct consumer with their target market conversations that allow them to open up about their problems. Again, getting someone to talk about their problems is the first way to help them find a solution. Coming from the consulting space and product development, I totally understand that is my first barrier to entry with my, you know, any new potential client that I may meet is getting them to say open and honestly, what have been their problems in doing product development and what has been their high points and what are they looking for in the future? Because, you know, it's a business opportunity.

Speaker 2 (17:49.872)
It's a closely guarded secret. What you're working on or what you're struggling with could be embarrassing to share with another professional in the space. But it's key to get that out there. So Jeff, hats off to you to take a conversation that's way harder than the conversations I have to have and get people to be upfront and open about it. think that is just the ultimate founder-led sales business development highlight that you guys are probably riding that success on. And so pivoting the conversation from go to market, bringing up that topic of product development, you built

what I would say is a very complex medical, know, wellness device, but complex device that has to go through regulatory scrutiny. You have adhesives and skin contact and, you know, biocompatibility. You have small electronics with wireless transceivers that have also, you know, power delivery to the human and that control loop is pretty tight. And then you had to go build a software platform and an app and all these things. You know, I'd love to chat about, you know, how your journey was, because I know you've worked in Meddevice, but you weren't the engineer.

You're able to lead some disparate teams and learn how to do that outside of a large structure for the first time, I think, in your history. So how was that experience?

Yeah, maybe before going down that path, let me just show you what the product is. yeah. This right here the patch system. This is our pulse generator. Inside this is our Bluetooth chip, our rechargeable battery, all the circuitry necessary to deliver power to the patch. This is reusable, rechargeable. It attaches to a single use patch. So we've got this connection mechanism here where you literally just clip it into the patch.

You're watching.

Speaker 1 (19:24.992)
And then on the skin facing side of the patch, we've got four electrodes. And in our app, we have pre-programmed how we deliver the energy. So we can go back and forth, up and down, or across depending upon where the nerves are. So we're trying to capture a large number of nerve fibers to cause that confusion. And some people said, well, can you make this patch smaller? Well, yeah, maybe in the future we can. But having this width,

and this length allows us to capture as many different nerve fibers in that area as possible. how this works is once you attach this to the patch, you apply it to the perineum and it's strong enough to hold in place. I mean, it's not gonna fall off as I do this and it's conformable as the body moves, but it's gentle where you remove it. It's not ripping out skin. So to your point, we had spent a lot of time trying to find this right adhesive that's strong enough to hold in place, but gentle enough. that...

took some time and effort but fortunately we landed on our Minneapolis in our own backyard 3M is here and that's the product that we're using.

That's awesome. My wife and I are personally working on a product that has a human contact adhesive problem and we have been iterating for last six months to try and find the right adhesive that is the Goldilocks zone as we joke, strong enough to do the job but not so strong that it sucks to remove. yeah, I can definitely say as much as the rest of the product might seem more complex, that's the one that takes the most iteration to get perfect.

For sure. And then you got, as you can appreciate, and then you got hydrogel options out there. And then it's the form of this and then it's the electrical, it's this. And then on the software side, it's the firmware, it's the app. There's so much to it, right? And I'm a product marketing guy. I'm not an engineer. So we could not do this ourselves. So we had to contract that work out to a local design firm here who basically owned the, we owned it, but they managed the design history file, the product specs, all the detail. We had a project manager.

Speaker 1 (21:20.346)
which led the team, so that resource had electrical, software, mechanical, all the different engineering functions with it to get us to the point of testing. And then the testing, as you can appreciate, we had TUV testing, bio-compatibility testing, animal testing, all these batteries of tests that we had to do to get the data necessary to submit to the FDA to get that clearance.

Yep. No, and again, that's it's mirroring exactly what Glassware does for our clients. So I know the story all too well. you know, I think that some of the powers that come with using a firm that's external to the founder is there's some really healthy, I'll joke, knife fighting about feature set complexity time that can occur if, you know, if their communication channels are open, because it's not everyone eating their own dog food, right? As a consultant, I have no shot on the upside. So I'm not married to some possible idea.

my job is to help my clients get to market fast, get the best product out there on their budget, and it leads to really fun, healthy back and forth of what features do we include in V1? What do we focus on? What do we need to stop iterating on because it's good enough? And move on to the risks of the timeline. think that that's part of the experience of using an outside firm, and I'm sure your program manager and you spent many afternoons or evenings or mornings on a Zoom call or in person talking about where do we put the effort, where do we need to iterate again, and how good is good enough?

Yeah, no, 100%. And that's where me being a marketing guy and the CEO, I'm like, I want all this stuff. I want all this stuff. Well, Jeff, if you do that, then it's going to add this amount of time. It's going to add this amount of cost. So what's the minimum? What's that MVP, Minimal Viable Product, versus what's nice to have? And that, for me, was a challenge because I wanted it all, right? And I wanted it at a cheap price. I wanted it fast. Well, you can't get all three of that, right? I wanted more. There you go. Love it.

So you wanted more.

Speaker 2 (23:07.429)
that's awesome.

I'm not a very patient guy, but I've learned to be very patient in this process because one of the downsides I believe of working with a consultant is that you know my priority isn't necessarily everybody's priority and and how do you just you know understand that and You we had a couple of times where we had to pause you know based on cash flow Coming into the business and then that restart process doesn't happen overnight right those resources were redirected to other projects And you can't take them right off of that and on to yours away, so that adds months

worth of additional time and or expense to be able to do that.

Yeah, well, I think one of the most difficult challenges with any new hardware product, whether you're doing this all internally and you hired all the engineers or you're using a firm, is the estimation process of how long, how much and what features, right? Like getting that balance right at the beginning, I will truly honestly say as a consultant, it's impossible. If I had a crystal ball that could tell me exactly how long and how much this product will take and what features we're actually going launch with, I wouldn't be here on a podcast, I'd be on an island somewhere, it would be great. But it's a, you know, in the consultant's job,

At least we believe this at Glassboard that you got to estimate based on all of your experience and knowledge and build the best plan you can and then say, hey, this is the rosiest. This is as we joke at Glassboard, we pitch any amount of like road mapping. This is the cheapest and the fastest this will ever get done. Let's plan for between this and 150 % of this. And if you help me either, you know, if we can make the right choices along the way and you can listen to where I'm highlighting risks, I can keep you in this 150 % bucket. But if you want to iterate and perfect or add a feature in the middle,

Speaker 2 (24:41.238)
That's all out the window and I'll update you every week on the data I know today to where I think the finish line is going to be in the future and that's going to perpetually move into the future. But you know every week we can make choices together and we can cut features that would bring the timeline back in along development and it's our job to highlight risk. think Jeff, that's the thing that as a marketer that is probably hard for you to internalize is what does risk mean? Right? How risky is high risk? How risky is medium risk? And it's such a tough thing without the intuition of having done the engineering side to internalize those risks.

Speaker 1 (25:13.186)
Yeah, and that was...

and still is, the hardest part for me to accept is that uncertainty of cost, right? mean, when we first set out to form the company and raise money, I mean, we're asking investors for a certain amount of money, and we were basing that money based on the projections and the estimated project costs that our partner came to us with. Well, ultimately, that ended up being two times what we thought it was gonna be and taking twice as long. And I didn't know that at the time because this is my first gig as a startup CEO, and it was hard for me to accept that because it's

wait a second you said it was gonna cause this that's how much we asked for from an investment perspective now if we do this we're gonna run out of money I got to go back to investors and say no we need more I look like an idiot I look like a fool but that's just kind of as I have learned that's the natural way that the startup world works in this space I don't know if there's a way to get around that it's just the reality of that and so what that means is you moving forward anybody in the startup space that's just starting I think you just make sure you add to exit as to what

whatever someone's telling you it's gonna cost and hope that that's gonna be enough to get you to that next phase. But don't take whatever that quote was and say, okay, that's what I need. You're gonna need more than that.

I remember so clearly. for my first company, I raised our first round. was like a junior in college, like the summer of my junior year. I ran a sports technology company. And my goal was to raise 300 grand. Right? 300 grand. I thought, you know, this is a software platform. None of us were engineers. And we shopped around some local software development firms here in Indianapolis. Found one. I took the lowest bid. Of course, I knew nothing. I'm not even, I'm 20 years old.

Speaker 2 (26:39.982)
And you thought you'd make it to market.

Speaker 2 (26:49.902)
took the lowest bid.

Speaker 3 (26:55.248)
And I'm still going to Spanish class. And I'm waking up at 6 AM having conversations with Ukrainian developers. This was great. so anyways, they quoted us, think, something to the tune of like $90,000 to build our MVP. And it was going to have all the features and things like that. And Jeff, you'd never guess. We were well into probably $150,000 worth of software development work. And I was still at the point where I was manually signing up teams to the platform because we had no way for them to properly sign up. The database wasn't quite right.

And so I know Oso Well, the experience of a founder having to go raise capital from investors, seeing typically things that you pay for. There's a price, you pay for it, and then you get the good back. this case, it's good away. And so honestly, the question I have for you, Grant, is how do you kind of explain how you think about that and how you position it.

And development does not work though.

Speaker 2 (27:48.12)
how as a founder would I position it differently?

And how, I feel like you do things at Glassboard that is different than other firms. Can you just explain that? Because I do think that that was structurally different than anything I had seen from consultants in general.

Oh, and all these new motions or the new ways I pitch this, which is all negative Nancy, it's all I'm in a wet blanket when I'm delivering quotes and people hate it. But it comes from a decade of having gotten it wrong and seeing the disappointment in my clients eyes and knowing I actually couldn't have predicted this. Like there's no way I could have estimated that this is how we got here. So I need to advertise risk. And I need these startup founders to understand where the risk lies, where I can be certain where I'm

Mediocrly certain and where there is like well, we might get it right the first time we might get it right the tenth time there's a lot of risk here and I think the the magic is all about communicating risk and instilling in the founder or the new manager of this company that Hey when you advertise this to your investment team like whoever's you know raising funds you need to advertise that This is our current plan. We know this is going to change our goal is hey our quote was X. We're planning for 150 percent of X

But something might come up that we need 200 % and that's what a bridge round is for later. I don't want to raise it yet and dilute all of us this early. We can get further along, get de-risked and go back to the well at a slightly higher valuation with slightly less risk because now there's more clarity in the timeline. And it's all about expectation setting. I mean, yeah, I said a lot of words. It's just set in expectations that no one knows how long this is going to take. No one knows how much is it going to cost. Even the experts in the building or the room or the world couldn't to the penny tell you what it is. And Jeff, I want to give you feedback that you said you're like about 2x over. That is awesome.

Speaker 2 (29:24.684)
We joke internally that if an engineer tells you a timeline, multiply by pi, 3.14, and that is usually the sweet spot about how wrong they were by the end and hindsight.

Yes. Well, I don't know if that makes me feel that much better, Grant, but, you know, that's good to hear. But yeah.

No, honestly, you did great. And again, the lesson you'll learn and carry forward is just setting expectations with you and the investors early that, hey, we got a quote for X, we're going to plan for 2X, and we may need more. But we'll tell you when we know we're certain. And there won't be certainty until we reach the milestones and the certainty points.

And to dive on this point too, Jeff, so you guys have raised over $3 million for the organization. You guys are currently out, I think, raising an A, an A round, think. For those who are listening, if you guys are already tuned into the Hard Tech Venture Network, tune in. There may or may not be a pitch coming through. There may or may not be for more. So tune into that if you guys are part of that network. yeah, give us an update on the process for raising capital in this space that you're in. And to add a note here, I do think it's pretty genius, not just on the side of

the go-to-market and not quite positioning yourself as a sex toy, but really kind of living that wellness line. think the other piece that's really fascinating is that actually, I think, opens up opportunities for investors to invest. Because if you were purely a sex toy, think you might cut off a certain subsect of hard tech investors. But please, I'll let you go ahead.

Speaker 2 (30:35.522)
Pure Wellness by

Speaker 1 (30:50.284)
Yeah.

No, I'd be lying if I say that the fundraising process has been easy and quick. mean, there's been a lot of factors, macro factors out there since we started. We started during the COVID era. We're raising for a sexual health wellness company, which VCs for the most part don't have experience with. There's not a lot of exits that you can point to in the sexual wellness space to say, OK, if you invest in here, look at these exits. This is what you can expect. It's not a new market. It's been around forever. But it's evolving in terms of new players getting into it.

think it's still immature in terms of where sex tech is as an investment category compared to some of these other approaches. And then of course you add AI onto it and everybody's in a frenzy about AI and you know, we don't really know yet what that means for us. Uh, and you know, how do we evolve our message to capitalize on, that momentum that's going out there. So, you know, that 3 million that we've raised have come from friends, family, angel investors, couple of family offices. We've yet to raise from a BC and part of that

by choice, but now we're at the point where we need that VC money. We're looking to raise five million dollars to get through a Series A to really put gas on this and then make some product improvements. So we know we need to make some changes on the app. Not necessary must haves, but nice to haves from a consumer standpoint. And we've got some ideas of another product that could be complementary to this that avoids someone having to put a patch on because that's going to be a factor that's going to limit some people from using the product. I mean, we're not kidding ourselves and it's not everybody's

is going to be comfortable putting something on down there and manscaping. So what if we put something at the base of the penis that has some electrodes? So we'd love to fund that and get that going.

Speaker 1 (32:31.406)
And you we need that VC money, you know, to get to us the five million dollars. So we had to be creative. And again, that's reaching out to friends, family, and we also did crowdfunding. We did two crowdfunding raises on WeFunder, which got us a little under a million dollars in the three million dollars. And that allowed us to not only raise from a different source, but also build this community. So these are investors, but they're also likely customers. And we've had several of those WeFunder investors, you know, buy our product.

Congratulations, that's such a great blend of what I'm gonna call not all your eggs in one capital basket, right? Your diversification of people you're talking to raise from is broad. You're getting generally wide acceptance, right? You're raising from each of these family office are not the same as angels, are not the same as individuals, friends and family are not the same as we funder. And if you can prove market traction with investment with them.

and your sales here now that your congratulations on market, if those numbers are going up and to the right, you're going have a really fun narrative to say, people believe in me getting here because they thought the idea of the company was solid. Customers are buying the product because they think the idea of the product is solid. And I just need inventory, sales, and marketing to continue to sell this one. And if we raise enough money, I can go make the next one even more adoptable, right? You know, it's always what beachhead market and you get your main market and you fully expand.

And Jeff, I think your story you're telling there is just going to be such a different story than you probably had to tell the first time you went out for capital or the second time. Right?

We hope so. believe so. We're counting on that and we're kind of taking a crawl, walk, run approach with our launch. We're not going to go national until next year. We are in a very slow rollout right now. Part of that's inventory constraint to your point. And as we look to place the next inventory order, now there's new challenges, right? There's deposits that are necessary in order to build that. There's some long lead time items. So there's a whole new set of challenges when it comes to the manufacturing and operation side of the business that I'm learning and trying to navigate.

Speaker 1 (34:32.815)
through. But again, we were fortunate that we've got that FDA clearance, which is so, so important. It validates the technology. It gives that consumer that confidence that an authority, regulatory agency looked after this, approved it. And now we just got to make sure from a marketing standpoint that we've got a story that will get men to do something. It's a huge market, right? But we know us guys, hey, whatever. No. It takes a lot to motivate you to get something done. the biggest competition, in my opinion, are men not doing anything.

acknowledging they have the problem, but saying, I'm not going to worry about it.

Sure. No, Jeff, mean, think there's some really couple thoughts as we wrap up the episode here. The first thing that I've learned is like your ability to navigate very complex scenarios, especially in this market and like get to where you are as a company has been really well done. think that for founders listening to this podcast, really kind of listening back to this and kind of seeing the way that you talk about navigating through what would to some people be like these insurmountable hurdles. know, going through getting the FDA is a huge hurdle working with the development firm to extra costs, which means you have to go back to the world and raise

more capital. All those things are feathers in your cap there. think that

Whenever we wrap it I'd love to just for a couple of pieces of advice that you could give to like startup founders that are in similar spaces to you. But I think that that trigger point, I was just in a conversation yesterday. It was like a hardware AI summit with the founder of Magical Toys. And they are basically making this AI toy for kids that they don't have to be in front of like an iPhone or what have you. But they kind of figured out how to create viral media. And it is like kind of an iterative process.

Speaker 3 (36:12.656)
And the thought that came to mind for you guys in terms of an opportunity to really focus it on the pain point. mean, truly, probably the biggest video version of a pain point that your clients could experience, at least me as a man, I can think about this being an experience is, right after that two minutes, right, in the look.

you could potentially get after that, you know, and that you've kind of seen that look before you might get from your partner. That's enough of a trigger to get me to go buy just about anything, I think, or at least folks that really deal with that. And so I think that could be an opportunity. You could capture that moment in the first two or three seconds of a short and then test that on regular posting. And then if that actually works, goes viral, then you could back that with paid spend. And then maybe you see the ROI on the ROAS on a really successful ad campaign. But that was just an idea that I had as

I was thinking about that really focusing on that core pain point.

Yeah, love it. that's exactly, you know, the path that we're going down are these short reels, videos, know, testimonials, you know, we're not going to need, you know, brochures or anything like that. I mean, things have changed and we're not going to have, uh, you know, a Tom Brady or Peyton Manning be the voice behind this. They're not going to put their name around this, but what if we reached out to comedians that their job is to make people laugh and they make people laugh about premature ejaculation or any sexual dysfunction, then maybe bring it up like Jimmy Kimmel did. He laughed about it.

joked about it, but then ended with acknowledgement. that's an influencer channel that we're considering moving towards. But, hey, all this requires money, right? And, you know, we raised $3.2 million to get us to the start of commercialization. We're there. Now we need more money in order to to build these tools and to do this fun work. Because this is a marketing, marketers dream project, right? There's so many elements of it. It's a partner impact. You know, how do we speak to their partner, whether the partner's

Speaker 1 (38:05.816)
male or female because ultimately this is about partner satisfaction and if someone lasts 30 seconds their partner's like really that's it there's frustration disappointment so there's a there's an influence there and we need to better understand that for sure moving forward but that all takes money and cash and team so

Absolutely. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being on the Hard Tech Podcast, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jeff Bennett, the CEO of Get Your More with More. If you guys haven't checked him out, go ahead and check out the website. And then if you guys are a part of the VC network, the Hard Tech Venture Network, definitely tune into an upcoming update that's coming out that may or may not have his pitch on there. I'm not sure we can publicly announce raising capital. But Grant, any final thoughts here?

Yeah, this is not a solicitation for investment. I'll just lay in front, get out of that. no, Jeff, this has been a great, phenomenal journey meeting you through this podcast and you joining the Hardtick Venture Network pitch, learning about your product, how you found it, story. mean, hats off from connecting disparate dots and then putting in the grit and the grind to get it to market and then finding a fun, super hilarious way to market it. I mean, I can't wait to watch the story. thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with us.

My pleasure and do me a favor and go have this conversation with your network, your friends, your neighbor, your family parties that you go to or the neighborhood parties. You will be the talk of the party there when you raise this topic, because most people don't want to talk about it. But when you open up and my poor wife, we go to all these neighborhood parties or gatherings and that's all people want to talk about. And she's like, can we go anywhere where people don't have to talk about this and ask you about this? I'm like, I'm sorry. I mean, and she's my chief support officer. So she, she, she helps.

helps make it work and also deal with all the ups and downs that come with startups.

Speaker 2 (39:51.286)
No, that's awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for joining us and everyone else. We'll catch you on the next episode.