There is a cohort of medtech entrepreneurs who, as Gen Xers, weren’t around during Tom Fogarty’s heyday as an innovator. They launched their careers in an ecosystem he had already helped shape with transformational technologies: the balloon catheter that ushered in a new era of endovascular and interventional care; the Hancock tissue valve that established the bioprosthetic paradigm; the aortic stent graft, and many others.
Perhaps even more revolutionary than any single device, however, was the mindset he popularized, one that rejected dogged adherence to the status quo in favor of the belief that, with enough time, effort, and persistence, profound advances driven by clinical necessity could be invented and brought to the bedside.
For the luckiest members of this younger generation, Fogarty’s influence was not merely historical. They were mentored by him directly, often meeting him first as Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellows, then launching startups that became companies-in-residence at Fogarty Innovation, the nonprofit medtech incubator he founded in 2007 on the campus of El Camino Health.
There, Tom sat in on their meetings (with or without an invitation), dragged them into his (“maybe you’ll learn something”), and made his rounds, stopping by their desks to pick up and manipulate prototypes, ask questions, and offer ideas and advice.
While the scope of Fogarty’s achievements, most of which bore his name, should have made him larger than life, his mentees—and in fact all who knew him—emphasize that he was utterly down to earth—blunt, outspoken, curious, insightful, and mischievous.
To learn more about what it was like being mentored by Tom, we spoke with a handful of these entrepreneurs:
- Brian Fahey founded Niveus Medical in 2008 to help patients preserve muscle strength and accelerate recovery following a prolonged ICU stay. As the second company to join Fogarty Innovation and the only one on the premises daily, Fahey got to spend an unprecedented amount of one-on-one time with Fogarty.
- Fletcher Wilson founded Intervene in 2010 to improve treatment for deep vein reflux. He pitched Fogarty on joining the incubator while still at Stanford Biodesign but never heard back. Later, Biodesign founder Paul Yock, MD, congratulated him on being accepted. “Apparently Tom had decided I was in and just didn’t tell me,” Wilson recalled.
- Jon Coe co-founded Prescient Surgical to prevent surgical site infections in high-risk abdominal surgery. When his team joined Fogarty Innovation in 2013, they were moving fast with a working prototype, strong early data, and seed funding. Fogarty made it his mission to ensure Coe understood how much he still had to learn and didn’t get “too big for his britches.”
- Gabriel Sanchez spun Enspectra Health (then Zebra Medical Technologies) out of Stanford in 2014 to develop an alternative to invasive skin biopsies. A scientist and academic, he took the only space available at the incubator—a trapezoid-shaped supply closet. He sawed the corner off an IKEA desk to make it work, a scrappy solution that delighted Fogarty.
- Véronique Peiffer co-founded palmm Co. in 2016 to treat palmar hyperhidrosis (excessively sweaty hands). Initially, Fogarty had doubts about the clinical need, until Peiffer showed him a video featuring patient testimonials. “I remember vividly how that changed his perspective,” she recalled. “It also taught me how important sharing the patient experience is to getting others to support your work.”
Following are some of their observations, reflections, and anecdotes that paint a picture of Tom Fogarty in the second half of his career.
What it was like working with Tom
Fogarty was a notoriously straight shooter who liked to get to the point. “He was transparent,” recalled Fahey. “I loved that you could just get into it and not feel that you had to exchange pleasantries for ten minutes before talking about what you came to talk about.”
Coe appreciated both his directness and his substance. “Tom asked these short, probing ‘what if’ and ‘why’ questions that challenged your assumptions and made it clear how much you didn’t know. It was his way of making sure we weren’t developing tunnel vision, where you fall in love with a design and neglect the broader context of how or where your work was going to be used.”
When checking in on his companies and their progress, Fogarty liked to see people hard at work. “If someone wasn’t there, he would call it out,” said Peiffer.
He also had little patience for excuses. “He wanted 100% accountability, good or bad,” said Fahey. “If you said you were going to get something done, you either did it or you didn’t, and the reasons for failing didn’t matter. While that might not always be fair, the approach has merit. If you want to succeed at hard things, you have to deliver even when conditions aren’t ideal. And I really took that to heart.”
While Fogarty was particularly fond of helping with prototypes, he also participated in other daily activities. Coe recalls one memorable morning when Fogarty unexpectedly joined a call they were having with the FDA. “Tom waltzed in and sat down, and right away, started dropping “that’s bullshit” here and there. As my teammate Lisa sat wide-eyed, I tried to cover, saying, ‘That’s the legendary Dr. Tom Fogarty on the call with us – we’re here at Fogarty Institute for Innovation*…’ To this day, I’m not sure how productive the conversation ended up being, but I knew he had our back.”
Sometimes, Fogarty’s spontaneous participation was an unmistakable plus. “I remember interviewing people, trying to convince them to join the company, and he would just walk in, unannounced, and sit down. It was remarkably effective—no one could resist joining a company where this guy, whom everyone knew and admired, was really involved,” said Wilson.
Generosity
As a mentor, either formally at the incubator, or informally elsewhere, Fogarty was remarkably generous with his time. “As long as you were willing to work hard and your mission was to help patients or innovate in healthcare, he was always willing to listen and offer advice,” said Fahey. “He had a reputation for being tough, but he had a huge heart and would go out of his way to help people.”
Fogarty’s generosity often extended to financial support. He was known to write $50,000 investment checks to help companies reach their next milestone. At other times, he leveraged his network—giving fledgling CEOs unfettered access to his venture team at Emergent Medical Partners to hone their pitches and learn what would make them “investable.” “We all know how hard it is to get meetings with investors,” said Coe. “So imagine the privilege of being able to walk over from your office and have regular conversations—disguised as updates—with the ultimate goal of getting them to invest.”
At the same time, Fogarty had a reputation for being cheap. Early on, he stocked the office with his favorite fancy chocolate malt balls—but in a gumball machine that charged 25 cents apiece. “He would actually make people put in a quarter,” Fahey recalled, laughing. “And then he’d want one himself and never had a quarter for his own stupid machine. So we had to keep a roll of quarters around the office.”
Patients First
Fogarty’s many years as a practicing clinician made him acutely aware of the patient experience, and it was the highest priority in all his undertakings. While this perspective came naturally to some entrepreneurs, especially those with a medical background, for others it required a conscious shift.
“Coming out of the university, I was science-driven and very much in the mode of being systematic and objective,” recalled Sanchez, who holds a PhD in mechanical engineering. “After we completed our first prototypes, I remember telling Dr. Fogarty that we were almost ready to start experiments on patients. And that really caught his attention. He stopped me and said, ‘We don’t experiment on people – we investigate solutions and therapies. That patient is a person, their opinion matters, and the way we treat them with dignity and respect matters.’”
“He would tell me, ‘Never lose sight of the reason we do what we do. If the patients win, the company usually will too,’” said Fahey. Fahey also found that putting the patient first was a north star that could help with decision making. “There are times in a startup when you have to make decisions, but you don’t have all the information you need. That’s when you just go back to the question, is what I’m doing today going to help patients?”
Collaboration & Camaraderie
For all his crustiness, Fogarty understood the importance of connection, friendship, and support in something as “damn hard” as medtech innovation. As Fogarty Innovation grew, he deliberately shaped it into a collaborative community—selecting companies that were not in direct competition and actively encouraging shared learning and social connection.
“One of the magic things about being at Fogarty Innovation is the collaboration across startups,” said Sanchez. “I came for the name recognition and proven leadership. But over time, I realized our peer network is one of our greatest resources—there is always someone who knows something you don’t.”
“Everyone is always willing to help,” added Coe. “That’s the foundation of the community. Some of us will win, some of us will lose, but we help each other along the way. It’s a ‘pay it forward’ thing.”
Fogarty also believed in camaraderie, openness, and authenticity—principles that remain foundational at Fogarty Innovation today. “In academia, there wasn’t nearly as much interaction,” Sanchez recalled. “When I came here, I watched how Tom talked with everyone and learned how important that was. When you build relationships and connect on a personal level, people come to trust that you’re driven and committed—and then when you need help, it’s easier to bring others along.”
Sanchez recalls that Fogarty was not only good at bringing people together—he genuinely enjoyed it. “He loved wine and was gregarious and full of life. He showed that you could be a little vulnerable and let people see who you are, and it made you real. That’s why people loved him, and why, to this day, Fogarty Innovation feels more like a family than a workplace.”
Legacy
It’s impressive when a life’s work is so expansive that people can debate what the most significant legacy might be. But after reflection, nearly everyone agreed that for Fogarty it was, as Peiffer put it, “the people he trained, both directly and indirectly.”
“I think there are probably over a hundred people who would consider him their mentor,” said Wilson. “And when you start to think about how many people those individuals are now mentoring—and how much innovation has come from that—it’s hard to even imagine how to quantify the impact. Fogarty Innovation is obviously a huge part of that.”
Noting how much Fogarty enjoyed mentoring in the latter half of his career, Fahey observed, “Mentorship was just his DNA. He had achieved so much, and I think he really valued the opportunity to try to pass those lessons along. He took great pride in knowing he could touch more patients through mentorship than he would ever be able to help on his own.”
One of the attributes that made him such an effective mentor was his ability to instill confidence even while gently steering the mentee in a different direction. “He didn’t want to say anything discouraging, but he would also be very concrete,” Fahey described. “So it would come out like, ‘Hey, you’re a hard worker. This is maybe not the right idea. Don’t take all this brilliance and motivation and waste it on something that might not be there yet.’”
“He was really good at layering the positive with the negative,” said Wilson. “When I first pitched him, he said something like, ‘I love it. This is such a great problem. I tried to solve it before. I think your idea is clever.’ He understood that confidence is just as important as advice.”
Evangelism
Ultimately, Fogarty’s truest legacy may be evangelism.
“What he’s done to make medtech innovation popular and accessible hasn’t been replicated,” said Fahey. “Through both Fogarty Innovation and his own advocacy, he made it seem cool to innovate in medtech so that smart people who might otherwise have chosen different paths take a second look. And by starting a nonprofit incubator specifically to support medtech entrepreneurs and help them overcome some of the field’s most daunting challenges, he lowered the barriers to getting started. The result is better ideas and more hungry, thoughtful people willing to do the work.”
A single product can only touch so many lives, but when you facilitate the growth of an entire field, you help millions.
* Fogarty Innovation was known as the Fogarty Institute for Innovation from its inception in 2007 until 2020, when it was officially rebranded.