The following interview is a conversation we had with Brett Kleger, CEO of Datacubed Health, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $43 Million Raised to Revolutionize Clinical Trial Data
Brett Kleger
Appreciate it.
Brett
Yeah, not a problem. So let’s go ahead and just kick off with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Brett Kleger
Excellent. So I’m the CEO of a company called Datacubed Health, who is what we focus on, clinical trial data collection. My background, I call myself a recovering lawyer. So I was a lawyer throughout the nineties and I simply just wasn’t fulfilled. So I wanted to find something to make a better impact on society and to feel better about what I was doing day to day. And I learned through, learned about clinical trials. I thought it was more about lab rats and then realized more about finding treatments. And the last 25 years, I’d been running various clinical trial software companies.
Brett
Was that hard, making the decision to leave law behind?
Brett Kleger
It was hard for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all, you go to school and you have the debt and you spend the money and say, how do I actually change? But once I started having networking discussions and with colleagues who were also former lawyers, were recovering lawyers like the car, ourselves. At times I realized that the law degree was incredibly valuable to help with analytics. And there are a lot of different ways to apply a law degree. So once I got into the business world, I realized that it was a great degree. But driving and building new businesses was much more of my passion than practicing mall day to day.
Brett
As you made that transition into the business world, what was like the most difficult or challenging thing that you had to overcome?
Brett Kleger
I would say learning that in the business world, timelines and project plans are optional at time. As a lawyer, I tell my team all the time, I couldn’t believe it because as a lawyer, if you miss a timeline, if you miss a deadline, if you don’t file something, then thats malpractice. You cant do things late come in the business world and seeing project plans and realizing that date may or may not get hit. That was interesting to me, just learning that new dynamic. And I still this day, 25 years later, will always challenge teams about how timelines are very different in legal professions than they are in any other profession.
Brett
What was it about the clinical trial space that made you say, okay, I’m going to dedicate my time and then the next phase of my career to this great question.
Brett Kleger
When I was transitioning, I actually met with various career consultants. Did the myers Briggs wanted to figure out what was exciting for me. And what I realized was I really enjoy fixing things, taking a simple problem, and finding solutions for that. The clinical trial space was, and probably still is, incredibly inefficient for a number of reasons. Primarily, its a highly regulated industry, so people were very slow to change and new technologies might take many more years to get introduced than other spaces. So to me, what I really enjoy about the space is theres a lot of room for optimization, theres a lot of people that want to do it, and it’s just about how to overcome various regulatory hurdles or folks that are adverse to change management.
Brett
I’d love to switch gears and dive a bit deeper into the company. So how we like to begin this phase of the interview is really talking about the problem you solve. So at a high level, what problem are you solving?
Brett Kleger
So we’re solving a couple of problems. The first problem we’re solving is how do you make a better patient experience to be part of a clinical trial? And what I mean by that is how to give patient options. So if you scale back or go back maybe 510 years ago, if you were a patient in a clinical trial, you could only be in a trial if you lived in close proximity to a physician running the study, if you had the financial means to be part of that study, if you had the technology enabling to be part of that study. And it almost turned studies into opportunities for people with good wealth or people that lived in areas with good medical treatments to get those options.
Brett Kleger
So it really limited the value of a clinical trial, which at the end of the day is about bringing new medical treatments to people who need them. The primary problem that we solve is allowing people anywhere in the world, in any poverty line, in any type of faith, religion, culture, race ethnicity, to be part of a trial, to get the same type of abilities and access to healthcare that anyone else does. So that’s, I would say, the primary problem that we’re solving. And the second area is there are a number of tech companies out there that try to tackle this problem, but they may not appreciate how to do that in such a highly regulated industry.
Brett Kleger
So we really bring a lot of expertise and experience to make sure that you can do it safely so that the patients are safe and the data collected is accurate.
Brett
I see the company was founded in 2016, and then you came in as CEO in 2020. What was it about this opportunity and this company that made you say, yep, that’s it. I want to go dedicate the next 510 15 years of my life to building this out.
Brett Kleger
So it was founded by an incredible gentleman, doctor, Paul Glimcher, who is a world renowned neuroeconomist. And when I first met Paul and first learned about the solution, what really was key to me and different to me is it was entirely focused on. On the patient. There’s tech companies out there that had built similar type solutions to just collect data, but they were focused more on the technology itself and not creating a good experience for the patient. So when I looked at it, I thought of solutions like noom for weight loss or ifit or peloton or different companies that what they focused on is this concept of behavioral science. How do you use that to create an engaging solution for the patient? So the patient wants to return, and they feel a part of that study.
Brett Kleger
To me, this was the first solution I’ve ever seen in the culture that was hyper focused on creating a good experience for a patient and not just treating a patient like a lab rat that we collect data from.
Brett
And what was the state of the company when you joined? Did they have a product in market yet?
Brett Kleger
They had a product that was getting into market. I would say it was mostly pre revenue. It was mostly pilot testing an incredible product, but they hadn’t really focused as much on the go to market to date. It was more about spending several years to build the product up out to test it on academia, but not necessarily to bring the business case together or the go to market strategies together on how do you make this a much more broad based enterprise solution for the pharmaceutical industry?
Brett
What did you first prioritize and maybe, let’s say, the first 3612 months? What were those top priorities when you came on board?
Brett Kleger
Great question, because I came on board in one of the most interesting times in our lifetime. I joined in early 2020, which, of course, coincided with the beginning of the pandemic. So the very first problem I dealt with is how do I just focus on running a company in the beginning of a pandemic? How do we transition to a remote workforce, how do we support our employees going through various issues? So there’s a lot of, I’d say cultural change, which the entire world was going through it, but from a product perspective, or I say a company perspective, I should say where I really focused on is taking a great product and great culture and surrounding it with incredible experience.
Brett Kleger
So when I look at the space right now, a lot of companies are good technology companies can build it, but you need to understand the exact vertical that you’re in and that buying customer. So whether it was focusing on how do I get a go to market team, a sales and marketing team that knows the buyers, or how do I get a product and operations team that has worked in the space and worked at a physician’s office, has worked with patients so they can understand the users best? My focus from a personnel perspective was bringing in the experience or the knowledgeable talent to surround it with an incredible product.
Brett
How would you describe your marketing philosophy?
Brett Kleger
So I would say there’s two different parts of how we market. Its an interesting industry because we understand most of the buyers in our space, its not a B2C, its a B2B. So we understand the hundreds or thousands of pharmaceutical companies, service providers. So part of the marketing philosophy is Persona based marketing. How do you reach different buyer personalities and market what they need? Part of that is how do you explain this is a solution that will help you because you’re in procurement or this solution will help you because youre in operations. So theres Persona based marketing that goes to specific individuals, but stepping up a layer, ive always been about the philosophy of building a brand.
Brett Kleger
The past company that i’ve been with, we like to say that were always punching above our weight or people think you’re bigger than you are at times. And so building the brand equity with broad based marketing, with thought leadership, just so that our customers can know the brand, can understand what the brands about. And for me, the brand was about safe and reliable data. We don’t want to be a sexy tool. We don’t want to be the shiny object that comes and goes very quickly but cant deliver. We want to be seen as the company that knows the space and can deliver reliably.
Brett
Trey, how do you think about ROi when it comes to brand? And the reason I ask is I work with a lot of founders, I work with a lot of marketing teams and especially the last year or two, i’ve just seen a lot of pushback there. A lot of questions of, okay, were going to do this, but what’s the actual ROI. And what I see a lot is it’s very hard to measure. So how do you think about measuring the ROI of your investments in brand?
Brett Kleger
I love that question because it is the impossible question to answer. When I was talk to my head of marketing and look at ROI, I would split the ROI into two different areas. One, the RoI is the simple ROi for lead management. How much, how many leads come in, what do we spend on it and how does it turn into an end sale? Thats very easy. You hit on the nail directly where understanding the ROI of branding, of getting your name out there is very difficult.
Brett Kleger
The way that I would measure that is really looking at my sales team when they are coming back and meeting with customers, are they having to spend more and more time to explain to the customer this is the company, this is who we are and start from scratch or did they get in and where I call it level three, level four where the customer knows datacube tells already they understand what we do and now about selling the solution. So when I try to measure it, I measure it by feedback from really the go to market teams or the sales teams to say how much of your time are you spending on trying to push the brand versus has the marketing team done an exceptional job to get the brand out there and you can come sweeping in to now just talk about the solution.
Brett
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Brett
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Brett
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Brett
To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines IO podcast. Now back today’s episode. Something else you mentioned there is thought leadership. What do you do to establish and build thought leadership?
Brett Kleger
So a few different things were an industry that is very conference heavy. So wherever we can get speaking engagements at different conferences, we’ll utilize those. Certainly that fell apart during the pandemic and the conference seasons went out of the door for a couple of years. But also I look and say conferences are not the only way to do that. Beyond the thought leadership. At a conference, we may run various webinars, we join different industry associations and take leadership roles. So for example, I’m on advisory boards, different types of boards for industry associations where I can be seen as a thought leader and data Cube health can be seen as a thought leader. I have a president under me who does the same thing. So we try to join different consortium to get our name out there.
Brett Kleger
And then there’s the traditional thought leadership, where we may publish some white papers, may join some podcasts, getting the voice out there.
Brett
What about your market category? How do you think about the market.
Brett Kleger
Category that you’re in within the clinical trial space? The category, or I say this on the subcategory, is patient data collection. In our space, it’s called ECOA, electronic clinical outcomes assessments. I think overall, we’re the clinical trial or e-clinical solutions, which means how do you use technology to improve the clinical trial space? And that’s a very large, quite a significant space. So that’s the overarching category. And a lot of analysts will talk about the e-clinical space and the multi billion, tens of millions of dollars of the space and the growth there. But really, I focus more on is the space around data collection, and the data collection category that we’re in there is all about how do you efficiently and safely collect data with a trial.
Brett
Are you actively engaged with analyst firms to really shape this category?
Brett Kleger
Yes and no. So we’re actively engaged with several analyst firms who have their own definitions of the category and will wind up in various quadrants, the matrixes, whatever they want to call that, in terms of how do they look at the different areas. What I often try to do with them is help them understand and better define the category and better define the area so that it’s more discreet and more specific, rather than just a broad based category that means too much. We often find some of the analysts will create a broad based category because the dollar signs might be bigger and it might be something that they say were dealing with a $40 billion market category versus a $10 billion market category. But at the end of the day, the buyers aren’t looking at the $40 billion area.
Brett Kleger
They’re looking at how do you solve this specific problem? So most of the investor market, most of the buyers, they focus more on the subcategories than the larger categories. And that’s what I do try to help the analysts that we work with to better define that so they could hit a better target audience.
Brett
What are you doing to rise above all the noise that’s out there in the marketplace?
Brett Kleger
That is a great question. The way that primarily answer that is we are focusing on delivery. We’re in a marketplace that there’s many providers that will hire named individuals who will get out there and create a lot of noise in the marketplace. And they look as if they are a big provider because they have big names and they speak at every conference and they’ll have the 50 foot booth at a conference, but at the end of the day, they can’t deliver. So it might be a one and done what we have striven to do, and what I think we’re doing pretty successfully, is we’ll create some noise in the marketplace, enough noise that people know us and respect us, but we really focus on how can we just deliver an exceptional experience.
Brett Kleger
What I tell my team every day is if we can be the easiest company to work with, and we can deliver truthfully and honestly and accurately, and we can provide the clients exactly what we said, we’ll get more and more repeat business. So I want to be the company that is seen as a company that people can rely and trust upon, and they’ll come back to us for more business then a company who’s going to tell everyone how big I am and market all over, but I can’t deliver. At the end of the day, what’s.
Brett
Been the most important decision that you’ve made so far that’s really changed the trajectory of the company?
Brett Kleger
It’s actually a really difficult change that we had in the company. And that pivotal point for us was really when we moved on, the founder of the company stepped away and there was, I’d say a not as mutual discussions we had. The founder of the company is a tremendous person, tremendous individual, beloved individual, hyper focused on the users and team members, and someone who I personally have a great deal of respect for because he really drove the initial part of the company. What happened though is we looked and said, what happens when new CEO comes in, when the founder may not have the same ideals in terms of going to the market and the product?
Brett Kleger
Eventually we decided, lets take the business in a direction so to that we can be hyper focused on the profitability for investors while continuing the focus on the patient success. So to me that was a really pivotal moment. I wouldn’t say it was a transformational moment where that drove success. We certainly had challenges with that. And again, as an incredible individual. But to me I use that as a great example that I strongly believe most companies have successfully. When the founders and executives all know their strengths and weaknesses and they understand when is it time to work together? When is it time to transition?
Brett Kleger
So it wasn’t just an individual there, but its also the transformation where I took the company from the first several years that was focused on innovative individuals and move the company in the direction that weve hired people retain people who are experts in their space, who have been in growth companies and understand and appreciate wearing five different hats. To me, finding the right people in each stage of company is so important. We’re in that growth stage right now. In several years, we might hit the point that next stage of greater maturity where we have to focus on more people who are sop driven, who don’t necessarily want to wear multiple hats. So to me that was the first stage of moving from what id call founder and pure innovation into being more mainstreamed and growth focused.
Brett
So were about two weeks in now to 2024. So im sure youve already done all of your annual planning. What are your top priorities for 2024 and whats keeping you up at night? Yeah.
Brett Kleger
So the top priorities for 2024, one which many companies in the space now, its continually the growth trajectory, but the sensible growth trajectory. We want to grow in an area where we are strong on and not just try to throw everything against the fence. So thats really focusing on how do we use the strengths of the company and how do we continue them. Were also looking for a product perspective. We’ve revamped some of the product team. I brought a new CTO in recently and its about hitting the next level of patient data collection sophistication, I should say so increasing those use cases. And lastly, and one thing that I really feel strongly about with our investors is profitability. I look at it and everyone talks about the dollars. I don’t want to make this more, but the dollars.
Brett Kleger
But to me, we are getting to a point that all of a sudden, once you have profitability, once you don’t have that stress anymore, then it opens things up for the team to look at whats next? What else can we invest in? Id love to be in a position that the pure profitability is happening, the good margins are happening. Obviously, my investor market will be happy there. But the bigger part of that is when can we start dictating what’s the next strategy we’re going to go after? Because to me, the market is much bigger than we’re in right now. So how do we expand that market? And the financials will certainly help that out.
Brett
Trey, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised 43 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey?
Brett Kleger
So fundraising is tough. And I tell you that fundraising, when I did it initially, it was fundraising in the realm of pandemic is particularly tough. But most importantly, there are a number, a great number of PE firms, of VC firms, companies that want to provide various types of funding. The most important thing that I learned in the fundraising was find a partner that has similar beliefs as you and want to go in the same direction. We wound up using a partner who a wonderful investor that went with that had not been in the space before. So I could have gone with various companies that were in the space and could bring networking and said, I’ve done this 16 times.
Brett Kleger
But to me it was more important to bring in an investor that I shared the same philosophy with, that has been through investments before, that understands the trials and tribulations, understand that everything doesn’t always go as planned, but also is with you when you decide we’re going to be more bold than we otherwise would have planned. So having that being, I’d say on the same page of the investor that we are all singularly focused and really an investor, that at the end of the day, when we sit in a board meeting, I feel like we’re all going in the same direction, we’re not pushing against each other. We all have the same goals in mind.
Brett
Let’s imagine that you’re sitting down for coffee with a early stage founder building in the healthcare tech space. Based on everything that you know about the market and everything that you’ve learned so far. What would be the number one piece of go to market advice that you’d give them?
Brett Kleger
Don’t underestimate the change management required if it’s in this space. We all say that we have great solution. We all want to have. A lot of companies can build a great solution, but you need to understand how do you actually penetrate that customer base and the difficulty in change management. Are you in a space that you might have a great solution, but the incumbents have three year contracts generally, and you might not be able to get into that for a while. It might require the company that you’re working with, the customer working with, to change jobs of ten or twelve different people. So I always look and say it’s not just about having a great solution. A lot of people can build that.
Brett Kleger
It’s understanding your market well enough and understanding and creating those relationships, but the change management so that you’re not trying to sell uphill.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building here?
Brett Kleger
To me, the big picture is I want to make sure that in three to five years and five to ten years that clinical trials, and really less than clinical trials, more of access to medicine is available to everyone, no matter where in the world they are. What really drives me is this idea of how do you make sure that the traditional healthcare treatments are not just available to people based on location or financial situation. So to me, the big picture in the trial space, we call it sometimes decentralized trials, and there’s diversity initiatives. But it’s really all the idea that person who lives in a third world country, who doesn’t have running water and has other issues, they should have the same access and ability to get a novel treatment to treat their disease than someone living in New York City.
Brett Kleger
So to me, that is really the big picture. That’s what I want to put in the industry, and that’s what I want my kids to look and say they’re proud of me for any part of the process that I could do to improve that.
Brett
Amazing. I love the vision. All right, Brett, we are up on time, so we’ll have to wrap here. If there’s anyone that’s listening in that wants to follow along with your journey as you build and execute on this vision, where should they go?
Brett Kleger
Certainly they should go to Data Cubed Health. They could look me up on LinkedIn. Brett Kleger. Or they’re more than happy to email me. I don’t know, Brett, if it’s ok, I could certainly share that here, if that’s ok. Yeah, of course. Yep. So you can email me at Brett.Kleger@acube.com
Brett
I hope you don’t get flooded with a bunch of spam now.
Brett Kleger
Happy to do so.
Brett
All right, Brett, thanks so much for taking the time. It’s been a lot of fun.
Brett Kleger
Thanks, Brett. Take care.
Brett
All right, keep in touch.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B founder. Looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit Frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visioners on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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