Tips for Otolaryngologists Who Want to Enter and Excel in Entrepreneurship

Build a Team

Natural problem-solving abilities are necessary for those wishing to achieve success in the entrepreneurial space, but they aren’t enough. It’s essential to team up with people who understand and are experienced in the business aspect of turning an idea into a commercial success.

“You need to understand your limits,” said Donald Gonzales, MD, founder and chief medical officer of Cryosa, a company advancing minimally invasive treatment for obstructive sleep apnea. He underscored the critical need to hire the best team possible, people who are experienced in the entrepreneurial arena and understand how the process works. “Hiring the wrong team can make the best ideas fail,” he said.

If you look at the successes in medical [innovation], they’re the result of collaboration.

—Peter Santa Maria, MBBS, PhD 

As a practicing otolaryngologist before starting his first company while he was a resident in 2003, he learned by doing that, after a certain stage in the development process—typically once a company needs to grow and requires venture capital funding and more staff—a different skill set is required than the one that physicians typically have. 

Dr. Santa Maria also highlighted the need to form a team with different backgrounds to “help the problem find a solution. If you look at the successes in medical [innovation], they’re the result of collaboration,” he said.

This focus on the collaborative nature of entrepreneurship is highlighted in the ENTrepreneur Faceoff event held during the annual AAO-HNS meeting (https://www.entnet.org/events/annual-meeting/speaker-resource-center/aao-hnsf-entpreneur-face-off/). Launched two years ago, the event showcases the innovative ideas of members via a competition in which teams are evaluated for how well their innovation meets an unmet medical need and by the work done to meet that need. A key purpose of the event, said Dr. Santa Maria, is to provide education to other members and to encourage networking, which may be particularly important for innovators who practice outside an academic center. 

Patents and Funding 

Once a solution to an unmet medical problem has crystalized, securing a provisional patent early is important, said Dr. Gonzales. “Companies start out with property, so the patent creates that property that you can then build upon.” 

He said that once he thinks an idea will work, he does the legwork himself to see if there’s anything similar already patented by scouring the United States Patent and Trademark Office website (https://www.uspto.gov/). If no other patent is held on his idea, he works with a patent attorney to file for a provisional patent. The provisional patent, which lasts for 12 months and is inexpensive (roughly $2,000), allows time for the research and development that is needed before applying for a more costly permanent patent. Once a permanent patent is secured, it lasts for up to 20 years, with required paperwork updates.