Adam Mendelsohn On Raising $100 Million To Develop A Portfolio Of Miniature, Long-Term Implants To Deliver Drugs More Efficiently And Consistently

In the bustling world of biotechnology and venture capital, few stories are as captivating as that of Adam Mendelsohn, the CEO of Vivani Medical.

Adam’s journey demonstrates an inspiring blend of vision, perseverance, and adaptability required to navigate the complex landscape of building and scaling a company–particularly one that transitioned from a private entity to a publicly traded powerhouse.

Adam’s company, Vivani Medical, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like the National Institutes of Health.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Adam’s journey from Santa Monica to bioengineering was shaped by early exposure to music and influential science teachers.
• Working with Alfred Mann taught Adam the importance of perseverance and innovation in entrepreneurship.
• Nano Precision Medical’s success began with a groundbreaking drug delivery technology and a winning business plan competition.
• The reverse merger with Second Sight Medical Products provided crucial capital and resources for Nano Precision Medical.
• Transitioning to a public company, rebranded Vivani Medical, involves heightened scrutiny and offers increased visibility and investment opportunities.
• Adam emphasizes focusing on market impact and execution when communicating with investors rather than just technical details.
• Despite market fluctuations, Vivani Medical remains optimistic, with plans to leverage its innovative technology in upcoming clinical studies.

 

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About Adam Mendelsohn:

Dr. Mendelsohn has served as a member of the Vivani Medical Board and the Chief Executive Officer since the company’s merger was completed in August 2022.

Prior to the merger, Dr. Mendelsohn was a co-founder of Nano Precision Medical and its Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, setting the strategic vision for the company since 2011.

Dr. Mendelsohn received his Ph.D. in bioengineering at the UC San Francisco/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering, Class of 2011, during which he was awarded an NSF fellowship to perform research at Kyoto University.

Dr. Mendelsohn published multiple peer-reviewed articles describing new treatment options for Type 1 diabetes through the immuno-isolated transplantation of insulin-producing cells under the direction of Professor Tejal A. Desai.

While in graduate school, Dr. Mendelsohn served as the director for the Venture Innovation Program in Life Sciences and completed his certificate in Management of Technology with the Haas School of Business.

Dr. Mendelsohn has served as a Technical Advisor to the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC, a fellow of the Startup Leadership Program, the President of UCSF’s Graduate Division Alumni Association, and is currently a board member of the Maestro Foundation.

Connect with Adam Mendelsohn:

• LinkedIn
• The Org
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: alright Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Deal Maker Show. Today, we have an really an amazing founder, really. i mean The company that he’s writing is quite the ah the company. you know It’s a very interesting sequence of events there when it comes to reverse mergers and transactions that they’ve done, and now they’re a publicly-traded business.

Alejandro Cremades: But we’re going to be certainly talking about all of the good stuff that we like to hear about building, scaling, financing, also what inspires him and what inspire him do ah to be but have that perseverance as a founder, as well as how to articulate the value of what you’re selling you know and and your business, ah also growing into becoming a public company CEO, and many other um really incredibly inspiring topics that we’re going to be covering today.

Alejandro Cremades: ah Without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, and that is Adam Mendelsohn. Welcome to the show.

Adam Mendelsohn: Thank you for having me Alejandro. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: ah Originally born in California, in Santa Monica, give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up?

Adam Mendelsohn: Oh, it’s hard to complain. It’s only after I moved away from Santa Monica for my graduate school did I learn to appreciate how good that I had it. Um, really incredible weather all year round. Uh, it’s a wonderful place to be connected to a lot of inspiring people. Um, and I, you know, can’t really complain about my childhood. I, uh, went to the local, uh, you know, public schools, which I thought gave me a lot of interesting experiences and helped, uh, prepare me for, uh, the real world going forward. And yeah, it was an incredible childhood.

Alejandro Cremades: So then talk to us about how music and and physics as well you know played ah quite a role in your upbringing.

Adam Mendelsohn: Well, you know, I started playing piano since I was five years old and violence since I was eight years old. um ah And at that time I thought I was going to go into music professionally, um but I then discovered my love of sciences as I was in probably middle school. I had a really terrific science teacher and in high school a chemistry teacher um who ah really opened my mind to ah what science and technology ah can achieve. um And I want to tell you a little bit about um my my parents because my father ah was able to ah connect with some incredible medical device entrepreneurs and one in particular whose name is Alfred Mann.

Adam Mendelsohn: He’s no longer alive, but he ah you know developed devices that deliver insulin, that restore hearing to the deaf, um that restore sight to the blind. And he made himself a billionaire. And I had the opportunity to get to know him and be inspired by him and work at his companies as early as being in high school. And I think that really sparked my desire and interest for finding a way for me to make an impact um in health care with new technology.

Adam Mendelsohn: um And it was just just an incredible ah beginning to what I hope will continue to be a fruitful career going forward.

Alejandro Cremades: And that’s a tremendous opportunity, working alongside with someone that has had you know that tremendous amount of success. I guess, what were some of the key ingredients that you took away from the experience of working with him that you knew you would apply you know being a leader?

Adam Mendelsohn: Well, so let let’s take one example of this company that he founded called Minimed, which is the company that I interned at when I was in high school. um they developed an insulin pump for type one people with type 1 diabetes. And up until that point, the only method for people with type 1 diabetes to receive treatment was to monitor their glucose as best as they could and administer insulin to maintain their blood sugar levels. And if they didn’t do it in just the right way, it could have pretty drastic consequences.

Adam Mendelsohn: um so um When Al was developing this insulin pump, he was you know ahead of his time. People didn’t appreciate the value that this type of technology could provide until after he had already essentially developed the product and some studies were conducted that showed that this type of technology can really have a dramatic improvement in the efficacy and the outcomes for patients. And at that time, although he persevered for a long time to be able to develop this product,

Adam Mendelsohn: And that’s when everyone became interested and that ultimately led to Minimed being acquired by Medtronic in 2001 for $3.7 billion. dollars And so what I learned was you know not necessarily to just focus on what everyone else is thinks is hot right now, but instead to try to peel back the layers and identify the real opportunities to have an impact, have conviction in what you’re doing, persevere, be resilient, and obviously you have to be correct at the end of the day that what you’re working on is going to be valued and important. um But it gave me the motivation ah to persevere through all of the you know efforts that I’ve been through, including the PhD, the company that I’m building now,

Adam Mendelsohn: um And i I always keep that in mind. and And when you think about these kinds of medical technology or biopharmaceutical innovations, the life cycles are very different than a technology company where you can build a software, you can get some traction with users quickly and identify whether or not it’s going somewhere. In our case, we we aren’t allowed to um sell to a single individual until we’ve gone through a very lengthy and expensive regulatory approval process.

Adam Mendelsohn: ah So there have to be other ways to be able to articulate the value of what you’re working on. And his inspiration definitely has played a large role in my willingness and motivation to ah continue to work on on what I’m working on.

Alejandro Cremades: and Eventually for you, you know what you did is you went to get your PhD in bioengineering, but that was quite the pivotal moment because you had the opportunity of meeting your two co-founders. So how was that?

Adam Mendelsohn: so Yeah, well, it was it was an interesting story. I went to UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley to do a PhD in bioengineering. um And just a little bit of context was before doing the PhD, I worked for a couple of years after my undergraduate, which I think provided some pivotal perspective for me because I went into the PhD program knowing that I did not want to become a professor and I did not want to continue in academia. But the reason that I went into the PhD program was so that I could become familiar with all of the new science and technology, and particularly related to drug delivery because that’s the company

Adam Mendelsohn: ah that I was working on, that’s what they were focused on. um So I ended up in this lab that was at the intersection of micro and nano structured materials um and how that can be applied to studying biology, tissue engineering, and joint delivery. And my co-founder, Kate Fisher, ah was the president of the UC Berkeley Nano Club, and they were hosting a business plan competition for nanotechnologies. And ah late one night in the lab,

Adam Mendelsohn: she given what we were working on in the lab she said surely we there must be some idea that we can put together to apply for this competition and I was there late and my two co-founders were there late and we liked working with each other and one of my other co-founders and I had the same idea for applying this nanoporous membrane technology for sustained continuous delivery of medicine from a ah small implant. um And we put this idea together into a business plan presentation and ended up winning that competition, ended up ah sharing first place in the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition. We took that around the country and around the world.

Adam Mendelsohn: and ultimately with the positive feedback we received, developed the confidence to start a company um right kind of after we finished the PhDs.

Alejandro Cremades: So then talk to us about how this company came about, you know because this ended up becoming nano precision medical, you know which obviously went through like a sequence of events that we’ll talk about in just a little bit. But how do you guys arrive you know to, hey, this is what we want to do. Let’s do it together and let’s go.

Adam Mendelsohn: Yeah, so at first it was an exercise. We had this idea. ah I had written about it separately in one of the courses I took through um this management of technology certificate program at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley hosted allowing graduate level engineers and MBA students to take it together.

Adam Mendelsohn: I had written about this idea of applying this ne type of new type of nanoporous membrane, new type of drug delivery technology for um you know helping really chronic diseases be treated in a more you know easier and convenient manner. um But the business plan competitions and and winning them um and really understanding more about the market and beyond just the science and technology, which we were focused on at the time when we were in the PhD program,

Adam Mendelsohn: ah and a lot of encouragement that we received from those around us, as well as, again, as I mentioned before doing my PhD, my knowledge that I wanted to go back in the industry. I wanted to either work for a company developing a product or start my own. um I immersed myself in all of the opportunities to network. I joined all of the entrepreneurial organizations that existed at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

Adam Mendelsohn: um And all of that ah came together for us.

Alejandro Cremades: you

Adam Mendelsohn: We were able to to attract some financing to um get started, ah limited amounts at the very beginning. ah But that’s kind of how it all came to happen.

Adam Mendelsohn: And I haven’t looked back since.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s incredible. so then So then talk to us about what was the one ended up being the um the model for nano precision medical, and then also at what point does it become you know perhaps an opportunity to become a public company?

Adam Mendelsohn: Yeah, so, you know, I should mention that while we had this idea ah for this new type of technology, that’s really all it was in the early days. um We were ah familiar with a concept that this type of nanostructured material could achieve this performance with the material that wasn’t so well suited for implantation. And we identified and we discovered a way of making it with a more suitable implantable material, but that’s all it was. So the first few years of the company were research where we were doing it in very inexpensive facilities that the universities enabled us to rent. ah We initially started with a bench and a desk in the basement of the bioengineering building of UC Berkeley campus and then we moved off campus

Adam Mendelsohn: And it wasn’t really until at some point along that journey that we demonstrated that our thesis was turning out to be correct, that this type of material was indeed able to provide you know constant delivery of medicine over many months, um that more capital was willing to ah you know be invested in our in our venture, including bringing on and a strategic investment from one of the large pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca um along the way. Now, the way that we became a public company was through a very interesting a series of events that had to do with a another company, actually one of the Alfred Mann companies. ah He was one of the founders of Second Sight Medical Products. This is a company that

Adam Mendelsohn: developed a prosthetic retina and received ah FDA authorization for a rare population of patients with a genetic disease called retinitis pigmentosa um to stimulate their optic nerve and provide them with some artificial vision ah where they were completely and profoundly blind prior to this this type of device being used. Now right now there’s some buzz about because Elon Musk and his company Neuralink is discussing applying their technology for restoring vision to blind people as well. But many people may not realize that this company Second Sight Medical Products already did that and brought it through clinical trials and received an FDA authorization. Now, that first product for a variety of reasons was not a commercial success. That company ended up winding down their operations, but keeping a skeleton crew and keeping the ability to resuscitate

Adam Mendelsohn: ah what they were working on going forward. um and ah that But after they had wound down their operations, they received approval for a new set of of external eyeglasses that were more comfortable and had a longer battery life um that they had filed for prior to winding down the operation.

Adam Mendelsohn: Now that announcement they made ah turned the company into a meme stock. This was in the GameStop era ah and they there was a lot of activity in their stock and they were able to raise about $75 million dollars of capital into this company that didn’t really have a leadership team anymore, had kind of unclear prospects with the application they were pursuing with their technology.

Adam Mendelsohn: um but a lot of capital. So ah what happened was they started to look at um opportunities to invest that capital into related companies so that they could find a path forward for second-site medical products. We were one of the companies that they were evaluating in part because some of the directors of Nano Precision Medical were also directors of second-site medical products.

Adam Mendelsohn: Second site formed a special committee of non conflicted directors to evaluate nano precision medical as an investment opportunity and after getting to know us ah that special committee proposed that we bring the companies together primarily to focus on what nano precision medical my company was developing but also because our team was maybe in a position to try to put the technology behind this prosthetic retina on a path towards success. um And what we’ve done is since we became a public company and the merger closed a couple of years ago, primarily focused on these long-term drug implants for chronic disease treatments, primarily for weight management and diabetes with the very exciting GLP-1 class ah in which Ozemptic and Wigovi household names nowadays

Adam Mendelsohn: are a part of, but we’ve taken the assets from second-site medical products, um transferred them into a wholly-owned subsidiary called Cortigent. The team had identified prior to the merger a different application of the technology, stimulating the visual cortex and ah being applicable to possibly 50 times the number of patients.

Adam Mendelsohn: so that the technology which has been in an FDA-authorized ah application may be able to have a commercially viable business. And we are, right now, we’ve filed an S1 for Cordigit, and we’re we’re going to see if we can’t independently finance the subsidiary around a new application of that technology. But we’re primarily focusing on the drug implants ah for chronic disease treatments that Nanoprecision Medical, my company, ah has been working on.

Alejandro Cremades: At what point the where you guys were like, hey, maybe we we do this deal? Because i mean it’s is is not an easy you know transition, going from being a private you know company, then all of a sudden you’re a public company, reporting, you know all of that stuff.

Adam Mendelsohn: Yeah, it’s it’s a very good question. We certainly weren’t aspiring to quickly become a public company. ah But at the time ah that we negotiated ah this merger, um the capital that seconds I was bringing to the table, and you know in addition to that, my own desire to see if we couldn’t put the prosthetic retina ah technology to good use as well,

Adam Mendelsohn: because I had been familiar with Second Sight from its beginning days because of my father’s involvement with Al Mann and the founding of that company. um But and all both of those reasons, and given the other kind of investment and financing opportunities that we had available to us at that time, ah let us decide to proceed with going through the reverse merger.

Adam Mendelsohn: um And ah the capital that ultimately was available um you know has sustained us for for for you know quite a while. um And it turned out that we negotiated that right at the peak of the markets. I think it was December of 2021.

Adam Mendelsohn: um when, I’m sorry, December of 2022, when, sorry, December of 2021, when that deal was negotiated. And since then, ah the markets had, you know, went through the last couple of years of pain. And hopefully now with ah kind of the macro conditions changing and inflation coming down, maybe interest rates coming down, ah you know, very soon, things can change. But it did get us through this period of time that has been very challenging for biotech companies for smaller pre-revenue early stage biopharma companies.

Adam Mendelsohn: ah to be able to raise money. And now that we’re about to begin ah clinical studies, we have FDA clearance to to do so with one of our programs, and we’re expecting ah clearance for the obesity program and the obesity study ah that we expect to be able to initiate in the fourth quarter of this year. um you know Maybe now we’re we’re ready to take advantage of being a public company and the kind of exposure ah that being a public company can provide, although the downsides of the public reporting aspects and being at the whim of the public markets and and our sector and what’s happening, which can be either in your favor or out of your favor, is something that we have to manage. And ah ultimately, that’s where we are. I think we’re in a good position going forward. ah But that’s how that all came to be.

Alejandro Cremades: And how has it been through the experience of being the CEO of a public company?

Adam Mendelsohn: you know it’s interesting because we are a public company because we have a listing on the nasdaq um and there have been some moments when it’s felt like we are a public company as an example earlier this year we announced some weight loss data in obese mice and that the market reacted to you extremely favorably but i think being a public company today is very different than it was 20 years ago in that there are so many more public companies and just because we announced something doesn’t mean the public actually knows it. So but right now we think we have such a compelling value proposition. And currently we’re, we have an internal project called Project Radar Screen. We want to get ourselves on the radar so that people can be made aware of what it is that we’re developing, because even though we’re public, it’s still a challenge to really feel public.

Adam Mendelsohn: um With that said, ah I definitely have, we and we have incredible experienced advisors. Everyone else on the C-suite of the company has decades of successful experience doing this. I’ve been learning.

Adam Mendelsohn: like drinking from a fire hose from all of them. And it’s been a couple of years now. ah So I’ve been through the full cycle of all the quarterly and annual reports and you know been to investor conferences and cultivating analysts to write research reports. All of these are experiences and capabilities that were just unnecessary as a private company.

Adam Mendelsohn: ah But ultimately, I appreciate the value in these activities because it’s much more important for ah but for a public company. So it’s been a it’s been an opportunity for me to learn a new set of skills, a new set of considerations, which I think will be valuable um just to understand that more intimately in anything that I do going forward. Of course, you know continuing to build this company is continuing to be my primary focus. But it’s been definitely an adventure.

Alejandro Cremades: And how much capital have you guys raised to date for the overall entity and how has it been the experience too of raising money?

Adam Mendelsohn: Yeah, so we’ve raised money in a variety of different ways since Nano Precision Medical was first founded. The amount of capital outside of the capital that came to us from the reverse merger ah has been on the order of $50 million, dollars and there was about $50 million dollars in second-site medical products at the time that we went through the merger.

Adam Mendelsohn: um And these financings have been, you know, initially friends and family, other rounds in which, you know, other family offices came on board, AstraZeneca, making an investment was a fascinating experience dealing with a big pharmaceutical company.

Adam Mendelsohn: um And earlier this year, we we raised money through an investment bank as a public company on the back of the preclinical weight loss data that we obtained. And that took you know one day to do um on the back of a lot of stock activity. So there have been very different means of obtaining financing that we’ve conducted.

Adam Mendelsohn: um But it it’s ah definitely has not always been easy, ah particularly in the earlier days. um It takes a long time to cultivate relationships, ah to ah convince people that ah this is a good investment opportunity. um And it’s ah particularly as a private company,

Adam Mendelsohn: It’s a very inefficient ah marketplace for to be able to connect investors to opportunities. it’s It’s a little different as a public company. It’s somewhat more efficient. But as a small public company, there still are, I think, ah more efficiencies that we hope to be able to obtain as we grow as we go bigger.

Alejandro Cremades: So obviously there’s a lot of founders that that are listening now. So I’m wondering, what could you tell them about how to articulate the value of what you’re doing?

Adam Mendelsohn: Well, let me first say that when I first, as ah an an initial entrepreneur, would pitch our company, I think in the first sentence I would use the words titanium oxide nanotubes because that is the material that we have developed that we were so excited about.

Adam Mendelsohn: um I think that I probably don’t even use those words at all anymore until I get to the very end of a picture, maybe not even in the first conversation at all because it’s not, um one needs to focus on the value that investors may realize, the market opportunity that exists, the problems that you’re addressing and how you’re going to address them uniquely and effectively.

Adam Mendelsohn: how you do that, the nuts and bolts of the technology and the science behind it, um become secondary. And that evolution in my articulation of our value proposition, I think, reflects the judgment I’ve gained through the experiences in in figuring out how to effectively articulate value. So I think for a first-time entrepreneur, my suggestion would be to focus on focus on value.

Adam Mendelsohn: um I also want to I don’t think that um I can emphasize enough how important it is that the management team is seen as credible and that the investors are going to oftentimes think about who the people are just as much if not more than what it is that they’re trying to develop because in the entrepreneurial journey,

Adam Mendelsohn: maybe the first idea that you’re working on is going to be a home run, but that’s not usually what happens. And being able to be nimble and to pivot when necessary and to demonstrate to investors that you’re capable of assessing the situation and making intelligent decisions about what the next step should be as you go forward, I think is a critical ah attribute that you want investors to be able to perceive that you have.

Alejandro Cremades: So, obviously, talking about vision too, because I think that vision has a big component there. If you were to go to sleep tonight, Adam, and you wake up in a world where the vision of the company is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Adam Mendelsohn: Well, um I think that world is one in which anyone who could benefit from not having to worry about taking a pill or injection to manage their chronic disease can live their lives freely, can be healthy because they have a tiny implant in them that’s easy for them to get and receive and replace. um And really allow people to, this used to be one of our tag lines, the freedom to live healthier. um and And so that vision that I just articulated has more to do with the external a result of us succeeding in what we’re doing as opposed to internally ah what our company would look like.

Adam Mendelsohn: um But as far as our company, that’s what that’s what I focus on. That’s what’s most important is what are we going to be doing for people? And of course, being able to do that would would mean that we have a ah very efficient ah scaled operation internally that allows us to have multiple programs developing products that enable us to improve treatment options options for chronic diseases.

Adam Mendelsohn: um that are able to leverage a lot of the infrastructure that we’ve already built and more infrastructure that we do build. um But that’s ultimately the vision has to be on what it is that we’re doing for people.

Alejandro Cremades: So let’s say I was to bring you back in time now. you know Let’s talk about the past. So let’s say I bring you back in time maybe to 2010 when you were thinking about starting something of your own. and Let’s say you’re able to go back in time and have a chat with that younger Adam, and you’re able to give that younger Adam one piece of advice before launching a company. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Adam Mendelsohn: I think that the one thing that I wasn’t prepared for, um I knew that it was going to be ah very challenging in a lot of respects, but one area that I didn’t really appreciate was the challenge of people.

Adam Mendelsohn: um the challenge of cultivating people, managing people, and creating the right culture. And I would probably encourage that Adam to be prepared beyond the uncertainties and the challenges ah from ah from financing, technology, manufacturing, regulatory, but to make sure that the people that are being brought to the table at the beginning of the company that the there is the investment in assessing them and making sure that they’re the right people long-term cannot be overlooked. um And that’s probably the one thing that that Adam ah didn’t ah understand or appreciate as much as I wish he did, although I think we’ve managed fine with the people that we brought. That was something that I i could have, um that Adam could probably have understood better.

Alejandro Cremades: So, for the people that are listening, Adam, that would love to reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so?

Adam Mendelsohn: They can contact me by email at just my first name Adam at vivani.com and I would be happy ah to hear from anyone. I’ve had a lot of people give me advice over my career and I am always happy to pay it forward. I wish everyone luck. It’s not easy but it’s very rewarding and fulfilling and um I definitely encourage people that want to make an impact on the world to put themselves out there and try their best. And just the trying is going to be fulfilling, I think, in and of itself. um And I wish everyone the best. Please feel free to contact me.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Adam, thank you so much for being on the Deal Maker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.

Adam Mendelsohn: Thank you for having me. It’s been my honor.

*****

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