Michael Friedrich's entrepreneurial journey, highlighting how his past experiences and adaptability shaped his success in founding.
Michael Friedrich's entrepreneurial journey, highlighting how his past experiences and adaptability shaped his success in founding and scaling companies like Distalmotion. It delves into the lessons he learned from setbacks and the importance of evolving leadership as a company grows.
I could have found the solution earlier had I thought about it properly the thing is you need to have a certain amount of ignorance and a lot of perseverance to start a business what I found the hardest is to admit things that a project might not be just the right one to invest time [Music] on all righty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show so today we have a really exciting founder where we're going to be learning a lot about the building scaling financing I mean all of that good stuff that we like to hear you know on this show brace yourself for a very incredible inspiring you know episode that we have ahead of us so without further Ado let's welcome our guest today Michael frederck welcome to the show hey aleandra nice to be here so originally born in burn in Switzerland so give us a walk through Memory Lane how was life growing up for you uh pretty happy childhood uh grew
up in the suburbs of burn um was uh not growing up in an entrepreneurial environment um my dad worked as a dentist went to school back um in burn and uh got in touch with entrepreneurship very early on it was in the mid90s when the internet was born and when we started to program and started the first company in 96 uh which was when we were 15 years old and was the first time that I Got U hooked on to this profession passion that entrepreneurship is about and and 21 years old I mean that's a very young I mean at that point you know the company was a basically a way to help in financing school is that right we yeah well we did it because it was intellectually stimulating building a company is always an incredible Challenge on all dimensions and we just had fun doing it and at the time there was no risk because we still were get getting home in the evening getting dinner from mom um having
a bed and nothing to worry about so no downside and it was just pure pure upside and exploration that's amazing uh eventually you ended up going to loan and and studying engineering so what what prompted that because I mean here you are getting the best Taste of uh you know entrepreneurial the entrepreneurial world and in business so so why going back to studying well we we just um we we knew that this one was not the the the company that we wanted to build our lives on it was a very good gig for us to get experience in entrepreneurship to earn to earn some money to to have fun but we always knew that this was the time then at 20 or 21 to to learn something to get a real job to learn something a true profession and uh that is what we did and then hence we sold the company which financed our studies and I went then to loan while my my co-founders they went to Zurich and uh did that did
that give you any type of exposure or visibility into that full cycle of an entrepreneur of what it looks like you know to reach the finish line and and perhaps some more self-confidence for the next time around it absolutely did and I truthfully had I not had this opportunity during studies I would before during High School I would probably never have dared to build my own company after graduation after my masters and so it really was a very very important moment in my life because I I learned to trust myself on on those topics I learned to trust my skills my intu is intuition and um that really was for me the the enabler to then start something after after school or after University so when you went to University you met a professor there that introduced you to the whole idea of intellectual property that kind of like changed the course of everything how so during my studies I was
leading a student team of about 30 students in which we designed a solar power D car we wanted to participate in a solar car race in Australia but ultimately didn't managed to raise the funds um and that was a bit of a downer um a failure and then I was a little bit depressed at the end of my studies worked for this professor in his lab he he courageously accepted me as an as an engineer and when I then wanted to leave his lab he said well Michael I have these pattern on this blood flow imaging technology wouldn't you want to build a company with me and that's then when I thought oh what what a what a savior what a great opportunity call called back Mark with whom I worked already in my previous company and uh we then together decided with the professor to start IMO the the first medical device company that I built so so there was one one thing that happened there which was you know
another another acquisition no uh but obviously the the outcome was was great you guys sold the company for for how much um 12 and a half million at the time which was um not that big but still it allowed everyone to every investor to earn money which was very important because these investors these early investors without them nothing ever happens and not no company gets Incorporated and um it's super important that the early investors they they make money and fortunately U they were so happy with what we what we did not not necessarily from a financial return perspective but more from how they saw us handling issues solving problems and showing perseverance that when I then uh joined this SL motion as lead investor off a series B financing round U most of these prior investors they then decided to chip in again and and are now part of this incredible story that we are writing with this
SL motion and we we'll talk about that in just a little bit because obviously you know like here with the with the company with Imago you know which was the one that you guys sold for over 12 million essentially when the transaction happened uh and you ended up working you know for the acquirer the pck picture was not the picture that you had thought you know that you were entering you know what what happened there and and what were the sequence the Quin the sequences of events the exit the transaction was a rather unconventional one uh when we developed our blood flow imaging camera uh at the time uh we started a company in 208 and we sold it in 204 just to to to frame it in in time in 2011 we realized that our product was technically very neat from an engineer nearing perspective a Marvel but clinically not sufficiently compelling and hense not generating the sales that we would have
needed to make this company a success so we were very much stuck in a in a very challenging situation where we had from an engineering perspective something great but commercially something that was not really going to going to succeed and this led to a lot of um sleepless nights because obviously we already had money spent and we very worried and then fortunately we discovered a competitor of ours U who had a a similar technology not the same as ours their technology required the injection of a contrast agent into the bloodstream our camera didn't require any injection and and this competitor at the time was already listed at NASDAQ had an enormous market capitalization for very little revenue and and huge losses and what we essentially saw is that there multiple Revenue to market cap uh multiple was so high that uh it was only justified by the market believing that what they had was
really unique and and so we then realized that our own only way of getting out would be to go to the investors of our competitor um to the key opinion leaders of our competitor to the research analysts of the banks covering our competitor and essentially explaining them that we have the Next Generation technology which is uh cheaper doesn't require an injection and could essentially do the same and and we all did that with the with the aim of um educating the market and ultimately potentially creating pressure on the share price uh of our competitor and and that is ultimately what what happened and uh that then forced uh our competitors uh to make us an offer to buy us out and and and so that that is a very aggressive obviously approach that we game that we played as the the David uh the small entity against the Goliath uh but it worked out and but then it was also very clear that when I
joined uh the acquire as an employee as part of the transition that this was not going to be a long-term relationship that I just had to uh hand over the what we what they what I what they Acquired and and then I ultimately left and so that's when even before we signed the final agreements on the trade sale I already started to look out for what I was going to do next and I met the founder team actually two months before the closing of the the exit of of IMO so talking about that too I mean it sounds like you were already getting involved with investing in startups right because I mean you were you were one of the investors of distal motion and that's how you know everything you know led to to where you are today so how did you get involved with with investing in startups as well so I only invested in this motion I I I really just wanted to uh I wanted to prove to myself that I could do
a bigger…