Navigating the Future of Healthcare Innovation with Steven Collens, CEO of MATTER

[00:00:02] Hey everyone, welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. So excited that you tuned in to another episode of our podcast. Today I have the privilege of hosting Steven Collens. He is the CEO at MATTER. I'm so excited to have him here because MATTER is doing such an incredible job as a global healthcare startup incubator. It's a community nexus and corporate innovator accelerator headquartered in my hometown of Chicago.

[00:00:32] So such a pleasure to have you here on the podcast, Steven, and super excited to get into it. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Oh my gosh, man. I appreciate you. And so look, to kick things off, help us understand you a little bit better. What got you into healthcare and what got you into the startup and accelerator ecosystem? Yeah, well, so unlike most of the entrepreneurs we work with, I actually fell into healthcare.

[00:01:00] Most of the entrepreneurs we work with are very intentional. They're very focused on solving something in healthcare. I came out of business school with a background in public policy and politics and was looking for a company that would value that in the context of their strategy and their direction. And so I was looking at regulated industries and ended up with a really interesting opportunity at a big medical products and pharma company called Abbott.

[00:01:27] And I ended up spending 10 years there. And that was my introduction to healthcare. So I came at it from that different angle. And when I left there, I went to work for a venture capital firm and sort of a broader investment firm. And the guy who was running it really wanted there to be an incubator in Chicago that was really for the tech community. He wasn't really a healthcare guy, but that was my project to get that thing going.

[00:01:56] And I just dove in and immersed in the entrepreneurial world and got to know hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, that whole community. And then there was an opportunity a few years later to look at the same type of concept, but focused on healthcare. I was like, well, I should do that. I love it. I love it. Well, you did get into healthcare right after you finished school, right? I mean, with Abbott. After business school. Yeah.

[00:02:26] More or less. Yeah. After business school. And were you with Abbott before they split into Abbott and AbbVie? Yes. Yeah. So I started in Abbott's Pharma business and then had a couple jobs there. I had actually several jobs there. I had a job in their nutrition business, had a couple jobs in corporate. And then I think it's about two years after I left, they separated it out into Abbott and AbbVie.

[00:02:53] Very cool. Very cool. Well, and then you got into the VC world and now you're here. Man, first of all, like I love the building that you guys are in. The merchandise mart is such a cool place. I love why you guys, where are you guys located? Yeah. We picked it when it was built in the twenties or thirties, whenever it was the largest building in the world. It's got this amazing art deco sort of infrastructure. It's a landmark. You just say the merchandise mart, everybody knows where nobody knows the addresses. Nobody cares.

[00:03:21] They just know where the building is. And it's been a great home for us. We, the background right now is terribly exciting. I'd say something better, except we're in temporary space. We're moving from one spot in the bar, merchandise mart to, to another one in a few months that we're really excited about. That's awesome, man. For us for the last, for 10 years. It's such a great place. And then you got 1871, like a couple of stories above, which is also for the people that don't know, like, so Steven and I are Chicago guys.

[00:03:50] 1871 was a Chicago fire and, and it's like the rebuilding from the ashes of the second city. And I love the whole concept. I love everything. That was the incubator that I started when I was working. You started 1871. That's free. That's amazing, dude. I didn't even know that. I mean, there was a group, but it was still, it was basically, I was tasked with creating an incubator for the city of Chicago that was focused on, on tech and figuring out what's it going to be.

[00:04:18] What's it going to be? Where's it going to be? How's it going to work? How are we going to staff it? How are we going to? And that was the, then the impetus for me just diving into the entrepreneurial world. And I was like, oh my gosh, where have I been doing it for the last 10 years? I've learned a lot, but, but, but just being surrounded by and being able to work with people who their passions are so closely aligned with what it is that they're doing on a day-to-day basis.

[00:04:44] And they're just running through walls to change the world is something that gets me going every day. Well, that's inspiring, Steven. I love what you've created. You and the teams that you've put together, both at 1871, which I was not aware of, and then also MatterHealth. So let's zoom into MatterHealth for a bit here. Help our audience understand what is it that you guys do? And how do you add value to the healthcare ecosystem?

[00:05:12] So our mission is to accelerate the pace of change of healthcare. And we started with this core premise that the only real way to do that is through collaboration.

[00:05:22] So we are structured as a nonprofit entity set up to be able to maximize collaborations between entrepreneurs at every stage, between every type of large company that's focused on healthcare innovation, work with investors, with doctors, with scientists, to try to accelerate the development of solutions that can improve either health or the business of healthcare.

[00:05:47] So we work at this point, we work with companies that are all over the world. They're every size and stage, and we've got a suite of services to help them. We run an incubator for healthcare startups. We don't take equity. It's a membership model. There's no strings attached. It's very straightforward. We want to help entrepreneurs with interesting ideas go farther and go faster and do it more efficiently.

[00:06:12] And then we work with large companies that are trying to innovate more effectively in healthcare. And it's hard. The things that make big companies really effective at being big companies almost inherently make them not effective at rapid iteration and adoption of new technologies.

[00:06:32] And so we help them do that. We create collaborations between startups and the industry, really all focused on trying to improve ultimately health, but really healthcare, which in the United States, there's around the world. But we're really focused on the world, but we're really focused on the U.S. healthcare system. And there's truly an endless list of things that need improvement.

[00:06:59] Well, a big amen to that, Stephen. And look, there's the amount of opportunities that exist. And it is so hard for large players to really innovate. It just does become hard, like you said. Those things that make you great at being big don't make you great at innovating. So talk to us about some of those programs. And by the way, folks, like you make it to the meetings and all the meetings that we go to, at least most of them, you always see matter health there.

[00:07:26] And they always have like a bunch of booths with companies there. And you're wondering, what do they do? Well, Stephen's breaking it down for us, but help us understand the players, Stephen. So you've got payers, providers. Tell us who you help create accelerators for. It's like an accelerator as a service, right? It is. Yeah, that's become a huge part of what we do is this. You said it exactly right. It's like an accelerator as a service.

[00:07:52] So we work with big pharma companies, med device companies, health systems, payers. And they're looking for different things, but it all comes back to they know that there are entrepreneurial solutions out there, that if they could figure out which are the right ones, vet them in the right ways, get to know them in an efficient process, and figure out exactly what it would take to work with them.

[00:08:20] Again, doing that in an efficient way, that they could improve their goals and whatever those goals are. If it's a health system, it's probably their clinical outcomes. If it's a pharma company, they have a different set of objectives, but it all revolves around doing that. And so they fund us to build accelerators for them. And they're all focused on very particular topics, particular areas of health or healthcare that they're really passionate about, that they're really interested in.

[00:08:49] And we recruit. There's a big marketing effort that we put behind each one of these. We recruit the most interesting entrepreneurs that we can find from all over the world. And then we custom develop a program for them. It's usually three months long that is aligned with what the larger company that we're working with, that's aligned with their goals and their needs. Some of these experiences, because we're so plugged in with the industry,

[00:09:18] the entrepreneurs come back and some of these entrepreneurs have been through a number of other accelerators or incubators, either with their current company or with previous companies. And we frequently get them saying, this program was the most valuable thing that I've been part of as an entrepreneur. And it's because of that sort of deep integration with the established industry, which in healthcare is just so critical. Because if you want to actually accomplish something and you're an entrepreneur,

[00:09:47] you need to be really plugged in to understand how the industry works, what kinds of things they're looking for, how they're going to pay for it, get those insights. And we help them provide those insights. Then the bigger companies, they're like, wow, this is like a rounding error of a line item for us, what they pay us. But they just get very, we've got this kind of down. We've done 50 or more of these accelerators now. And so we've got this stuff.

[00:10:14] And they, so we can very efficiently help them get visibility and access insight and collaborate with the right entrepreneurs to help them with the, with what it is that they're trying to achieve. Well, I love it. And with 50 plus accelerators under your belt, like there's definitely know-how, there's expertise and it's all healthcare, correct? All healthcare. Yep. Love that. Love that. The focus in healthcare is so critical.

[00:10:43] You're not dabbling in any other industries, your healthcare period. So that's super valuable. What are some of the typical obstacles and pain points that you're helping solve for some of these large organizations that seek the help of what you guys are doing? There, there's two primary things. One is they know that there's a bunch of entrepreneurial activity and some of them just want to know what it is to have a radar.

[00:11:11] Some of them really know that they've got a challenge in XYZ space. And so the more that they can, more efficiently that they can figure out who to work with, whether it's to buy a company, invest in a company, contract with a company. And they just don't really know how to do that. It's not what, they're not configured for that. They don't have the resources and the bandwidth. We're a really efficient way for them to do that.

[00:11:36] But the other thing that we end up actually doing with a lot of these companies is helping them actually build better innovation muscles. I worked at Abbott for 10 years. I did not learn how to innovate in that company. I learned a lot of things. It's an amazing company and the way that it worked and all. And, but the things you learn, things I learn, things that, that almost everybody learns when they're working in these large companies,

[00:12:02] they're not the ways that entrepreneurs work to very rapidly develop concepts and test them in the market and come back. And, and that, that's a process that we worked with entrepreneurs for years on. We found that there's a lot of big companies. There's teams within big companies. There's, you know, different levels, different perspectives that they have. And there's a, there is an interest in, for the right kind of project, for the right kinds of opportunities. It's like, hey, we want to go fast and got a big problem.

[00:12:31] And if we do things the way that we've always been doing it, we're going to be sitting here in a year and we're still going to have a big problem. Or we've got an opportunity and we know we want to create something that can fit into this space. And we go spend millions of dollars and take 18 months and do our best to develop something. Or we can take a much more agile, efficient approach. And, but we just don't know how to do that. And we do. So we help them. We help them do those things.

[00:13:00] And, and then through now a decade of doing this, we have a huge network across all of healthcare. We've had, we've incubated more than a thousand startups. We have relationships with hundreds of investors. We have relationships with all these payers and providers and pharma companies and others in the industry.

[00:13:18] And so we can tap into that network to help whoever it is that we're working with, go faster, go farther, be more efficient, get, generate better insights into how to capitalize on emerging technologies. So that's what they're approaching us for. That's awesome. And look today, more than ever with the rise of AI, the capabilities, a lot of organizations have questions. And you guys probably have questions.

[00:13:48] If you're a large company, large organization, med tech, pharma, payer, provider. This is something to think about because I don't think you guys want to be the reason why you lost a hundred million dollars of market share. And to Steven's point, like if you could literally invest in a program like this and get one idea and all it takes is one idea or one company to take your business to the next level. I think it's worth taking a look.

[00:14:17] So love this, Steven. Tell us a little bit about like, okay, you've built these two incubators, the incubator, now the accelerator as a service and services. Tell us about one of the biggest setbacks you've had and a key learning that's come from that. Because we learn a lot more from our failures. Yeah.

[00:14:38] Honestly, the most, the one that like pops into mind is that my experiences before this, I worked at, I worked in Capitol Hill. I worked for a Senate office. Oh, cool. Have a defined, I was there for five plus years. We didn't have like a defined mission and values and vision and stuff that was like articulated in documents. It's like, we all worked for the same Senator and we were all aligned around her priorities.

[00:15:08] Boom. Then I was at Abbott for a decade and they had a mission and a set of values. And frankly, they were nonsense. It had nothing to do. I had lots of different jobs. I had great managers. I had okay managers. I had amazing company. Not, it is not an amazing company because everybody on their day-to-day is aligned around the same set of core values and the same mission. And so I thought that stuff was kind of not, I didn't really understand the value of it.

[00:15:38] Now I was at an investment firm, which is a pretty small, tight thing. There were core values and we knew what they were, but it wasn't like people talked about it all the time. So anyway, I'm getting the answer to your question. So I started Matter and I, yeah, I was like, I don't need values and to articulate a mission. I know what we're doing, where we're going. It's not a huge team.

[00:16:05] And that was fine in the very beginning when it was a handful of people and we were all just like immersed in each other and figuring out how to get this thing off the ground and open. But after, I was probably a year in, we hired a bunch of people who were part of that kind of founding DNA. One day I just was talking to somebody and I'm like, geez, this, sorry. Like, this is our culture.

[00:16:34] Like, this, I mean, how did this happen? Like, how is it that people are acting this way that are making these kinds of decisions? It's a small, mid, 20-person organization. It's not like we're a huge company. It's not like I didn't know everybody and I interviewed everybody. And I'm like, oh, okay.

[00:16:54] I guess we need a set of core values that we, that everybody knows what they are, that we recruit against, that we measure performance against, that we talk about and practically have like tattooed on everybody. We don't really do that, but you know. And we need a mission because people are, again, like I knew what our mission was, but we needed to articulate it and write it down and like hammer it into people

[00:17:20] and then cascade that throughout the way that we set our goals and our objectives for the year, for the quarter, what people are doing on a day-to-day basis and how that all aligns. And it was just a huge learning for me because I learned about this stuff in business school. And then just my core, my experience over in the working world over the years hadn't taught me the, or the real value of this stuff. So I was a little late to the party and understanding that.

[00:17:49] And now we, I talk about our mission. I'm sure people are just like roll their eyes. I talk about it constantly. And we do all that stuff. We hire against it. We measure people against it. We built in all of the systems that we, that we have. And I think we have a really strong culture here. And that's incredibly important to me. I love that, Steven. Yeah. Funny enough, like I went through a similar feeling about the mission, visions and values, but it does make a difference.

[00:18:18] And so as a leader, I think it's important that we take your point home. For everybody listening, this stuff could seem soft, but the reality of it, there's actually hard scalability behind a clear mission, vision and values. So definitely, if you're going through the same thing, struggling like Steven did, like I did at one point as well. Like just know that there's a big value here and something you should consider.

[00:18:45] If you don't already have it hyper clear and memorable, tattooable, you should definitely do that. Steven, I really love what you do. I love how you do it and grateful that you were able to join us today. What closing thought would you leave our audience with and where can they reach out to you and learn more about the great services and opportunities that you have? For anybody to reach out to me, my email is Steven at matter.health. They can go to matter.health and learn more about the organization.

[00:19:14] The thing that I started to appreciate shortly after I joined Abbott is just how complex and challenging and difficult and frankly screwed up our healthcare system is. And it can be now working just so closely with entrepreneurs for just years and years.

[00:19:39] And I see the cycles that they go through of especially ones that are like first time entrepreneurs and they're jumping in and they're just so passionate about something. Every entrepreneur runs into walls, roadblocks, but in healthcare, they just seem sometimes so insurmountable. And so for them, it's like, yeah, and the funding environment's bad now.

[00:20:04] But there is hope and it just requires a lot of grit and a lot of perseverance and there's a lot of ups and a lot of downs. And unfortunately, there's no shortcut around that. And then I'd also say for the, we work with, again, lots of people at these big companies and we're usually working with people who are trying to push boundaries in some way.

[00:20:29] And they get stymied by just layers of bureaucracy or regulations or rules, all of which are there for very good reasons.

[00:20:37] A lot of which aren't in a lot of cases, but there's, what we've found is that when we can really help empower somebody to do something novel, that the reception that they get inside the company is often exceeds their expectations of like, wow, I'm actually able to get something done in this innovative way and people aren't killing me for it.

[00:21:04] And so it's going to take a lot of innovation from big companies, a lot of innovation from entrepreneurs in order to just really continue to chip away at the problems that we have in healthcare and make a difference. And we look forward to working with folks who are trying to harness innovation in different ways to improve healthcare and just don't want them to give up because it can be a real challenge. I love that, Steven. Great way to close our show today.

[00:21:29] And for everybody out there, make sure you check out matter.health. Email Steven. He shared his email. And look, this is the year for you to make some moves. So you don't have to make them alone. There's a team over at Matter Health to help you. Steven, thanks for doing what you do. It's a huge resource for our ecosystem. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you and getting to know you through this process and love what you do.

[00:21:56] And hopefully you'll be back in Chicago someday and we'll get to spend some time together. Let's do it, Steven. You can count on it. Thanks again.