Welcome to Key Axioms

Large healthcare entities have been looking to partner, acquire or invest in us, and thus we've been privy to more internal bureaucratic discussions than ever before. It's been an eye-opening experience.

Every demo we do of our product for hospitals reinforces the strong need for someone to solve this problem. At one of the 'very eager' organizations, executives under the CEO need no more convincing. Still, they are grasping at straws for extra demos to pad their argument for the CEO to move forward with the deal. The internal conflict within the organization makes me skeptical of a deal being done at all.

Max Hodak addresses a similar situation in his writing (https://maxhodak.com/nonfiction/2012/12/22/fundraising.html):

Lesson: find investors who can make decisions, yes or no, and move on. When someone is stringing you along, don’t wait up. If someone wants to do a deal, they’ll do it.

What is the number of demos required for the CEO to ammass enough market research data and pass the purchasing decision threshold? The answer should be 0. Sometimes consumers cannot articulate their needs properly. Given that time is of the essence, and the cost of failure is low - it's obvious why the other executives feel frustrated by the CEO's behaviour.

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Out job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?”

― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs