Are messaging and branding really important for a healthcare startup? w/ Lonny Stormo

Stepping out of a 30-year career in the world’s leading medical device company takes more than guts - it takes a solid solution and a plan to bring that solution to market.  After building a three-decades-long career at Medtronics, Lonny Stormo took a chance. He parlayed his diverse experience into action and started a new journey as a startup CEO.  But going from a large company with near-limitless resources to a small company was no cakewalk. Add in a saturated market and things get even more sticky. But Lonny and his co-founders believed in their idea, so they applied some solid co-creation fundamentals and did not skimp when it came to messaging and branding. The result? Five years of planning and building translated into differentiator status for his startup and partnerships in the making. Not a bad turnabout. In this episode, Lonny shares the story of how his company of engineers got a crash course in marketing that turned the tide in their favor.  If you’re trying to break into the market, these insights and tips might be exactly what you need to help break away from the crowd!  Here are the show highlights: The importance of focus groups and customer discovery (1:30) Why it might not be a bad idea to bring in a 3rd party for co-creation (4:34) How to guard against infused bias (6:51) Why your product should be more beneficial than a burden (8:08) Saturated markets and how to stand out in them (11:59) Your product won’t sell itself: the importance of branding and messaging (14:15) A good story can be a game-changer for your solution (17:06) Guest Bio Lonny Stormo is Co-Founder and CEO of POPS! Diabetes Care, Inc., a leader in the democratization of healthcare via an AI-driven virtual coach that helps users self-manage diabetes. After 30 years at Medtronics, Lonny left in pursuit of a vision that would set healthcare on its head - that vision is POPS! Lonny earned his BA in Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and his MBA from Arizona State University If you’d like to reach out to Lonny, you can reach him on Twitter @LonnyStormo, on LinkedIn at Lonny Stormo, or on his website at Popsdiabetes.com.