I recently went one-on-one with Matthew de Jonge, Co-Founder and CEO of Fortell.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Matt: It all goes back to my grandfather. He fled Nazi Germany as a child, immigrated to the United States, enlisted in the Army, went to Princeton on the GI Bill… he was my hero – brilliant and witty. By his late 70s, he had expensive hearing aids, but he couldn’t keep up at family dinners. He said less and less until eventually I noticed he was just smiling and nodding. He died in 2011, a shell of his former self. I watched this same story unfold for all four of my grandparents. I couldn’t shake the feeling that their hearing aids had failed them.
I went on to study mechanical engineering at Princeton, worked on AI at Bridgewater, and then spent six years overseeing product and AI at Butterfly Network, where we built a handheld ultrasound machine (it became the bestselling medical imaging system of all time). I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning how to combine AI and custom chips in a way that would ultimately unlock radically better hearing aids. There was a 15-year period when I wanted to make better hearing aids but couldn’t figure out a viable path. To quote one of my investors, ultimately we found a way to turn “science fiction into science fact,” but it took a lot of patience and a lot of time.
Adam: How did you come up with your business idea and know it was worth pursuing? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test business ideas?
Matt: Look for a category with broad, high-stakes dissatisfaction. Make sure it’s important enough that you’d be happy to chase it for years and never regret trying even if you fail. Surround yourself with smart people and stay curious and engaged about new technologies.
Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?
Matt: Our path has been unconventional. We didn’t ship a minimum viable product, and we didn’t launch and iterate. We hunkered down for five years and built a hearing aid that is fundamentally better than what exists at any price point. This wasn’t a personal aesthetic decision. The world doesn’t need a slightly better hearing aid, and a slightly better hearing aid wouldn’t be a viable business. Radical improvement required our own custom silicon and our own neural networks. Then we decided to serve patients directly in our own brick-and-mortar clinics. Our true north: build the experience we wish our grandparents had before it was too late.
My advice is to be your own harshest critic about what it will take to delight your prospective customer base. They don’t care how hard it was for you to ship. They care about what it can do for them and how it compares to alternatives. Your new offering must be considerably better than what’s out there to overwhelm incumbent advantages.
Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?
Matt: We are patient-experience obsessives. The way we make product decisions is to ask: What would the best possible experience look like if cost were no object? Then we use technology and talent to make that experience available at scale. We trust that our patients are smart, compassionate, logical actors. If we improve their lives, they’ll tell their friends. If we don’t, they won’t. Earn the referrals and our business will grow. The goal of our marketing is to make sure the world knows what we’ve created. Then people can try it, and decide if they love it. Thankfully, most of them do.
Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?
Matt: Small teams can now credibly outcompete much larger ones in ways that weren’t possible five years ago. AI has raised the ceiling on what a team of thirty motivated engineers, designers, and clinicians can build. At Fortell, we’re competing with hearing aid companies 100x larger, and so far, we are winning. AI is a big part of our product, but it’s equally important to our operations behind the scenes. Sounds trite: embrace AI – it can solve a lot of your problems.
Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Matt: A few things I think about:
Never expect anyone on your team to work harder, or care more, than you do.
Hire people who are meaningfully smarter than you. If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re doing it wrong.
A large part of the job is saying no. Say no to 100 things so you can say yes to 2 or 3 things that really matter.
Admit when you’re wrong, apologize, and move on.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Matt: We hire for intellect, intensity, and mission alignment before we hire for experience. Experience matters, but the people who have made this company what it is are the ones who combined raw capability with the willingness to work their asses off. An amazing hire will do great work for years; a constant reminder of their excellence – a constant delight. A bad hire will drain your team’s life force every day until you finally get rid of them. Don’t settle on talent and don’t look for discounts on great people. You don’t owe your team a fun time every day, but you want them to look back someday when they’re old and gray and appreciate that, working with you, they did the best work of their life.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Matt: First, don’t start a company for its own sake. Being a founder isn’t intrinsically important. Start one if there’s a real problem you want to spend years of your life on. Make sure you’d be proud of the work you did if, one day, a doctor told you to get your affairs in order.
Second, stay close to your customer. I still spend time on the phone with patients every week. When you delegate that too early, you can start making big mistakes. Don’t let yourself off the hook for taking a position on how and where your products need to improve.
Third, be kind.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Matt: Whether you know it or not, as you go through life, you’re constantly auditioning. One day, if you try to do something hard, you will need throngs of talented people in your life to join on. When that moment comes, don’t expect them to make irrational decisions. If you’ve consistently impressed them, they might just join you.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Matt: I would like to see more inventors and entrepreneurs choosing to work on high-stakes problems. How can you help someone on their worst day? A good answer is often the foundation of a great business.
