About Aidan Thompson, PhD

Fello is incredibly lucky to have Aidan Thompson sit down with us for this conversation. More than just an expert in impact investing and medtech, Aidan has been a long-time friend and trusted advisor to our agency. He’s an exceptional communicator, sharp strategist, and someone we’re proud to associate with.

Aidan’s background is as impressive as it is diverse. He holds a PhD in Neuroscience and Biomechanics, where he developed a deep understanding of how science and innovation intersect with real-world clinical challenges. Today, Aidan is the Chief Commercial Officer at Stead Impact Ventures and Foundation, where he focuses on guiding social enterprises through strategic growth and scaling impact.

Previously, he was the VP of Marketing at Intellijoint Surgical, helping bring advanced surgical navigation technologies to global markets. His expertise bridges the gap between complex technical concepts and clear, customer-centric messaging, a skillset that aligns perfectly with the kind of thoughtful storytelling we value at Fello.

Medtech Marketing & Growth: A Q&A

1. In medtech, strict regulatory oversight (think FDA rules on promotional claims) often seems to stifle marketing creativity. How do you design a strategy that stays effective and engaging within those bounds, and have you ever turned a regulatory constraint into a creative advantage?

Regulatory constraints definitely force precision in the messaging, but they don’t have to kill creativity entirely. The best medtech marketers treat compliance like a design challenge: How do you tell a compelling story without exaggerating claims?

One effective tactic is to shift the spotlight to the clinician. Peer-to-peer education – whether it be through case studies, advisory boards, conference talks, site visitis – can say what the marketing team can’t. If your product delivers real clinical value, clinicians will become your best marketers. Finding champion users and helping them become evangelical can be key.

Having a lack of head-to-head data (or having head-to-head data that only shows non-inferiority to the current standard) is a common situation. So instead of leading with product superiority, lead with something more abstract like confidence in outcomes – focus on the value delivered rather than the feature set.  Share impact on clinical decision pathways and workflow improvements. Often “technically better” isn’t as important as something like “trustworthy”.

2. For early-stage medtech startups, moving from a handful of pilot customers to a scalable commercial operation is notoriously challenging. From your experience guiding companies through that transition, what critical steps make the difference in scaling up, and can you share a lesson from a venture that made that leap?

The leap from pilot to scale isn’t as much about more customers, as it is about repeatable motion. Critical things to focus on (amongst others) to make this successful transitions are:

1. ICP discipline: Saying no to misaligned pilots is hard, but essential. Your early customers must mirror your ideal customer profile, or you’ll waste resources chasing edge cases.  As above, we need these pilot users to become evangelical – they can’t be mismatched.

2. Sales process clarity: At the pilot stage, deals close through hustle. To scale, you need a codified process that maps decision-makers, objections, timelines, and proof points. This needs to be airtight or else you end up scaling a losing model.

3. Repeatability in implementation: If onboarding takes a heroic lift every time, growth will stall. Standardize what you can early, even if it’s rough, and continue to iterate.  Better to take longer on your first implementation so the next 3 are seamless, rather than trying to struggle through four simultaneously.  Again, frustration at this stage doesn’t help build champions.

If you’re looking for traction in a niche surgical workflow, don’t start by chasing network-wide (or even hospital-wide) rollouts. Focus on your one specialty with a defined champion and clear economic ROI. Clarity will transform your pipeline, and your conversion rate.

3. You have a PhD in neuroscience and biomechanics, giving you deep insight into the science behind medtech innovations. How do you bridge the gap between complex clinical value and customer-centric messaging so that even highly technical benefits are communicated clearly and credibly to stakeholders?

 I think the key here is knowing that credibility doesn’t require complexity – it requires clarity.

Clinicians care about accuracy, efficiency, and outcomes, and they’re also human. They want to feel understood. They want you to appreciate their particular pain points and the problems that they’re trying to solve for. Always translate technical features into surgical intent. Instead of saying “Our algorithm fuses pre-op and intra-op data with submillimetric precision.”, say “You can avoid re-imaging intra-op, and make faster decisions.”

Internally, I often push teams to do two things:

• Write the feature, benefit, and clinical purpose in plain language. Since reading Tony Fadell’s book Build, I’ve suggested formatting these as a press release for the feature or feature set – this can provide a great deal of clarity especially when done early in the development process. 

• Validate messaging (and utility) with clinicians outside your inner circle. If a skeptical user wouldn’t echo it, scrap it. Some of the most useful advisory board members and KOLs I’ve worked with haven’t loved the product and have been willing to tell me exactly why.

You earn trust by sounding like someone who’s done the work, not a brochure that’s read the manual.

4. Having steered multiple medtech startups from early product-market fit to successful exits, what’s one go-to-market lesson you learned that medtech marketers won’t find in a typical playbook—something that only became clear to you after facing a tough challenge?

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

Speed kills when it’s aimed in the wrong direction.

Early in my career, I believed strong clinical results and early pilot wins justified a full commercial push. But I’ve learned that even promising products die when go-to-market doesn’t match the buying behaviour of the category. In medtech, that means knowing who controls the budget, how decisions get made, and critically what triggers off-cycle purchasing. Often the end-user isn’t the buyer but they influence each other. Don’t forget to include IT early in the conversation.

If you have a product that is technically sound and loved by users, but you fail to map the decision flow within the hospital, you’ll lose all momentum. Engaging the economic buyer early and layer in a reimbursement narrative whenever you can.

Don’t just validate usage. Validate the path to purchase. Map it ruthlessly. Don’t skip steps.

5. What is one common mistake or blind spot you see medtech marketers fall into—something that can derail an otherwise promising strategy—and how would you advise them to avoid that pitfall?

A very common blind spot is over-relying on luminary KOL enthusiasm as a proxy for market readiness.

It’s easy to get caught up in glowing feedback from top clinicians. But many KOLs are outliers. They often don’t face the same budget constraints, time pressures, or resistance to change that average users do. They also often use workflows that aren’t representative of the field, so what works for them won’t be helpful to many (or most) others. Building your strategy around them can lead to inflated assumptions and a false sense of momentum. And sometimes, building products that only help a minority of the market.

Treat KOLs as influencers, and not necessarily as validators. They’re critical for credibility and education, but market readiness should be tested with more representative rank-and-file users and budget holders. Pilot with mid-tier hospitals. Pressure test value props with skeptical procurement teams. If these groups buy in, the broader market will follow.

6. Medtech marketers have to win trust on multiple fronts—clinicians who use the product, payers who reimburse it, and investors who fund it. How do you build credibility across all three groups, and can you share an instance where addressing their distinct concerns helped secure crucial buy-in?

Each of those audiences has a different threshold for belief:

• Clinicians want proof it works (in their hands, not just in trials or case studies).

• Payors want predictability in cost offsets, utilization data, and clarity on coverage.

• Investors want evidence that traction can scale.

These shouldn’t be collapsed into one pitch. You have to layer them. You also have to appreciate that incentives for payors, providers, and patients are often misaligned, so the messages need to not only clearly address the need of the audience but can’t contradict the others.

If you’re launching a platform with strong clinical buzz but ambiguous payor fit, rather than lead with a “better outcomes” narrative (what the clinicians really care about), frame the pilot around cost containment (e.g., fewer complications, shorter stays, lower imaging volumes). This earns payor buy-in, which in turn gives the hospital confidence to allocate budget. Investors then have line-of-sight to a clear TAM and reimbursement moat.

Trust builds in sequence, so if you get the right early adopters, show economic value, then turn that into investor conviction, each audience unlocks the next.

Fello Thoughts.

What stands out most in this conversation with Aidan is how everything is rooted in trust—earned through clarity, championed through discipline, and built step by step across every stakeholder in the medtech journey. There’s real wisdom in his words, and a quiet confidence that reflects the care great medtech marketers take in their work.

At Fello, we’re blessed to work alongside some of the most forward-thinking companies in the medical device space, including Prollenium Medical Technologies. We see firsthand how complex innovation becomes meaningful when paired with thoughtful storytelling and strategic execution.

Medtech isn’t just about devices, it’s about outcomes, systems, and people. And the best in the industry, like Aidan, remind us that growth isn’t rushed. It’s mapped. It’s earned. And it’s always personal.

We’re grateful for leaders like Aidan who continue to shape the future of this industry with clarity, integrity, and purpose.