It’s a rare privilege to gain insights from a medtech innovator who has successfully navigated all sides of the industry. Fogarty’s entrepreneurs and community got that opportunity at Fogarty’s recent educational event, a one-on-one conversation between Fogarty CEO Andrew Cleeland and Todd Brinton, MD. Brinton is an interventional cardiologist, former director of the Innovation Fellowship at the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign, co-founder of Shockwave Medical, and current corporate vice president and chief scientific officer at Edwards Lifesciences.
Their wide-ranging exchange yielded a wealth of insight helpful to professionals at any stage of their career. Here are some highlights.
Turning ideas into impact
Raised in a family of engineers, Brinton developed a passion for innovation and earned bioengineering and biomedical engineering degrees at UC San Diego. He launched into the working world as an engineer but, four years later, decided to transition to a career in medicine.
When he arrived at Stanford to finish his medical training, he met Paul Yock, MD, who had recently launched a program that would become Stanford Biodesign. Brinton became a Fellow in the new program and his introduction to the Biodesign process proved to be a huge pivot.
“As an engineer, I thought that innovation was about creating solutions,” he said. “In the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, you have to focus first on finding problems – potential areas of need. During my initial training in Biodesign I worked to identify 20 needs in cardiovascular disease. As I read my initial list to Paul and then-Innovation Fellowship director Josh Makower, they pointed out that I had amassed 20 solutions, not 20 problems. And they were exactly right.” Noting that he had been trained to be a problem solver, not a problem finder, Brinton observed that “flipping it around changed my thinking about how to really characterize problems so I could then set up the possibility of solving them.”
Now Brinton finds that his first question is: “What problem are you solving?” followed by “What’s the value you create by solving it?” As a strategic investor, he recognizes the key question for any new innovation is its commercial value and value to the system overall.
While this focus on “capitalism,” so to speak, may be a big paradigm shift for aspiring innovators focused on improving healthcare, it’s the only way to truly help patients. “You have to work within the constraints we have, which is that you need capital to develop patient solutions,” he says. “I don’t think you can be a successful innovator unless you play within that system and stakeholder community—and today that encompasses everyone from the patient and family to the physician who provides the care, to the provider or the hospital system that provides the infrastructure, to the payer who actually pays for this, and even Wall Street.”
Mentors helped pave the way
Brinton credited his numerous mentors for his success, hearkening back to one of his first ones, Tony DeMaria, MD, who encouraged his pivot from engineering to medicine. A powerful figure in the cardiology community and chief of cardiology at UC San Diego, Dr. DeMaria “took me under his wing to teach me how to do research,” Brinton said. “He was a straight shooter, very insightful and could be brutal with his feedback, but I kept working and finally he told me I had a knack and should go to medical school.”
Next, Brinton mentioned Jay Watkins, who was the first person he met through Yock, and who ultimately funded his first idea for a medical device company. “The biggest thing I got out of that was not the funding, but two hours of learning from Jay every week for four years,” he said. “I work with him now at Sonder Capital and continue to learn from him pretty much every day.”
Finally, Brinton thanked Casey McGlynn, to whom he was also introduced during the Biodesign Fellowship, and who helped support his projects. At Wilson Sonsini, Casey had supported a patent filing for the project until, just a week before it was ready, Brinton discovered that somebody else had filed a very similar idea. “I was basically blocked, yet had a $17,000 bill for all the IP work we’d done. Casey said he would write it off under one condition — that I bring my next project to him. This generous gesture and leap of faith had a huge influence on my willingness to actually try it again. “
While Brinton acknowledged his good fortune in being introduced to these mentors, he suggested that the key for others aiming for similar connections is to build a relationship. The first step, he said, is to be curious. “Ask people about what they do; everybody loves to talk about themselves,” he advised.
Failure is the best teacher
While Brinton has clearly achieved success, he credits his failures for paving the way. And he noted that it’s easy to overlook the power of failure.
“We take success for granted every day. If you walk across the street successfully, you don’t even notice, but if you trip and fall, you think about it.” He continued, “I think this idea that people embrace success is nice, but it’s the failures that you actually learn from and grow from – and that’s how you get better.”
In fact, Brinton believes the failures he encountered and learned from along the way ultimately led to the success of Shockwave. “People laud its success, but the company went through so many ups and downs. It is definitely hard work, no doubt about it. But it’s also preparing for the opportunity to get lucky—you just don’t know when luck’s going to show up.”
It also helps to take the long view, he said. “What helped me through some of the bad times was thinking about my life as a portfolio. At the time, I was working as a clinician, innovator, and teacher. If one particular thing was going badly, I could depend on the fact that I had done something good that day in one of the other areas.”
The secret to pitching success
Brinton is a seasoned presenter, and he boils the craft down to one word: storytelling. “If the person listening to you doesn’t understand the need you’re trying to solve and your value proposition, it means that you haven’t clearly articulated your vision,” he said.
Like most skills, the secret lies in practice, he said, adding that to this day, learnings from each past pitch help shape his next one.
Once again, he stressed that, in essence, you’re working to build a relationship when you pitch. “If you’re successful, you’re going to work with this person for potentially the next decade.”
Now that he’s on the corporate side, Brinton has an insider’s view into what strategics want and need and what moves them. They know what they’re looking for, but it varies for each one. “I guarantee you that Edwards is looking for something different than Medtronic, Abbott, Boston or J&J,” he said. And if you’re not sure, it doesn’t hurt to just ask.
Culture as the heart of successful companies
Most people have a five-year career plan, but Brinton believes it doesn’t always serve them well when presented with new opportunities. Case in point — his initial pivot to becoming a physician. As his career progressed, he says he never envisioned a day he would leave Stanford—until he was approached by Mike Mussallem, then CEO of Edwards Lifesciences.
Brinton was impressed by Mussallem’s renowned focus on culture and team, and he emulates many of his practices, including prioritizing in-person gathering, now that he is a leader at the company.
And while people often think of culture as a big-company issue, Brinton maintains it matters even more in a small company. “At a startup, it might be three of you and a dog, so the culture you create among yourselves becomes fundamental to what you’re trying to accomplish and how you do it,” he said.
One final pearl of wisdom
While the chat brimmed with stories and life lessons, Brinton had no trouble choosing a last piece of advice for the entrepreneurs in attendance.
“You’ve spent your life developing a bunch of skills and now you have an incredible opportunity and precious time, so make it count. Think about the things that are most important to you and make those things be what matters. You’ve been entrusted with this opportunity and this great group of mentors, so find what matters, both to you and in the big picture overall.”
That has been the most fulfilling part of Brinton’s work. “We all try and figure out the meaningful path for our life. To me, the idea of innovation means you’re creating something impactful and seeing what you built or created on the shelf or going into a patient means you’ve done something that matters.”
For more of Brinton’s insight, plan to join us at the Stanford Mussallem Center for Biodesign on Wednesday, April 16, 2025, for the fourth Innovator’s Workbench of 2025, the Tracy Lefteroff Memorial Event. Registration details will be announced soon.