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Vishnu Vasudev

Ms. Kelli Secord

ISM I

November 5th, 2021

Interview Assessment #4

Name of Professional: Ronald Scott

Professional/Title: CEO

Business/Company: Ronald G. Scott, LLC

Date of Interview: 10/19/21

Assessment:

My fourth interview was with Dr. Ronald Scott, who is the President of his own

company, and is also a medical director at two other companies, where he advances research.

Before becoming involved in the business side of medicine, Dr. Scott was, like Dr. Cunningham,

a physician. His specialty was treating diabetic foot ulcers. Since he has stopped practicing, Dr.

Scott has been researching and developing better wound care and management technologies for

diabetic patients. I actually had met Dr. Scott before this school year when he had reached out to

me after reading about my science fair project in the local news. Since my last year’s science fair

project was a foot health monitoring device, including monitoring for diabetic foot ulcers, Dr.

Scott was interested in talking to me. Because we had talked before, I was able to simply talk to

Dr. Scott about how to write a business plan because he already had an idea of the scope of the

device I was making.

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First, I asked Dr. Scott about market research and funding. Using diabetic foot ulcers as

an example (which is not the business I’m doing this year, but what we’ve talked about in the

past), Dr. Scott explained how many people around the world are affected by this condition and

hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars have been spent in its care. Since the business idea

I’m pursuing is a communication device for stroke survivors, the equivalent statistics for strokes

is that about 800,000 people in the US are affected by a stroke each year. Through the market

research that I had previously conducted, I found that about 17000 adults in Collin County have

had a stroke. Dr. Scott then explained statistics more exclusive to diabetioc foot ulcer prevention,

but I was able to take away that since my device was a treatment for a condition and not a

preventative, it wouldn’t make as large of a financial savings impact.

Afterwards, we discussed marketing claims and the associated testing. Some of the things

we discussed were not particularly relevant to this idea and this class’s scope, but an important

point he brought up was if engaging in clinical testing and regulatory approval, know that it is a

long wait. He described one company that didn’t plan for the amount of time it would take for

approval, and simply ran out of money because their funding did not account for that many years

of expenses before they could make a profit. We went back to discussing funding and Dr. Scott

detailed his various experiences on this topic. He serves on the board of an angel fund, and

explained how entrepreneurs have to be very careful because many angel funds are very strict,

and not really much of an angel. He also described how incubators are a good resource for

entrepreneurs in very early stages. The next thing I asked him about was the staffing plan

component of the business plan. He explained how one company he was involved in failed

because its CEO tried to do everything and essentially interfered in all of the technical aspects of

the business. This distracted him from completing clinical testing and other regulatory hurdles,
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and resulted in the eventual failure of the company. He then explained how another company

made the mistake of hiring expensive FDA consultants who claimed they could help the

company ease through regulatory approval. The consultants did not get their work done in time

and the company ran out of money. Although I have currently decided to pursue a sole

proprietorship as my company’s organization, I asked him about LLCs and if they had any

important benefits. Dr. Scott explained that the tax benefits associated with an LLC are in his

experience minimal, rather, its primary benefit is that it lends legitimacy to a business. We

discussed funding yet another time, this time talking about profit margins. Dr. Scott affirmed

what Dr. Cunningham had told me: that venture capital firms are looking for significant returns

on investments, and only invest on devices with large profit margins.

We discussed the early detection of diabetic foot ulcers and other diseases some more,

and then about resources for patents, but again, mostly content not highly relevant to this specific

business idea. I’m glad I was able to learn important information about the components of my

business plan in this interview, while also being able to discuss another topic I’m interested in. It

certainly was a productive interview in that sense. I’ve periodically discussed various topics

about biomedical engineering and patenting with Dr. Scott since May, so I imagine I’ll continue

to do so, whether I ask him to be my mentor or not.