The Evolution of Medical Alley with Frank Jaskulke

Tyler Mason  01:11

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Medical Alley Podcast. My name is Tyler Mason. I am not Frank Jaskulke, the usual host, but he is on the podcast today. He's going to be on the other side of the questions for a change. I thought it'd be fun to mix it up. But as we're talking here about Medical Alley's 40th anniversary, Frank has been here for just about half of that 40 years. So we're gonna dive into kind of his history here and just things that have changed with Medical Alley over that time. So Frank, how are you doing as the guest today?

 Frank Jaskulke  01:47

Yeah, it's feels a bit odd, sitting on the other side of the microphone. And I've got to wait for your questions. A little bit relaxed, actually. Not as much pressure.

 Tyler Mason  01:47

Yeah it's more work for me than usual. But that's alright, I enjoy it. So let's take it back. We were just talking before we started, this month actually marks 19 years when you joined Medical Alley, 2005. Go back to that point, why Medical Alley at that point in your young career?What jumped out to you? What drew you to the organization?

 Frank Jaskulke  02:15

Right. You know, it's weird to think it'll be 19 years on April 28, of 2024. And when I started what really attracted me to it, I was looking for a job. I was recently out of college. I worked at the state capitol briefly on the Commerce Committee and was learning about the industry a little bit. Went and interviewed. And the thing I remember was Don Gerhardt, who was our CEO at the time, and he just passed away last year, actually, he said to me, if you come work here, you're gonna get paid to hang out with smart people who save lives. And if you do your work right, they'll save more lives. And that for 20 years has stuck with me and really has been my motivation along the way. We get to do work where we're literally hanging out with smart people who are saving lives every day. And if Medical Alley does its job, they save more lives. And until that gets boring, I'm going to keep going.

 Tyler Mason  03:11

And you said when you joined you were one of I guess five or six at the time? It was pretty small.

 Frank Jaskulke  03:15

Yeah, Medical Alley had four employees. And then they hired me and a guy named Ryan Baird, who now works over a Weber Shandwick. He was our marketing guy. We got hired on the same day. We made employees number five and six. It was a very small organization at that time, even though it had been around for about 20 years, even then,

 Tyler Mason  03:34

What was your first role or first title? Do you remember?

 Frank Jaskulke  03:36

I was the front desk, I was the staff assistant. So I was at the front desk. And this is far enough back, some of you listening will remember this. We didn't have smartphones. Registrations, many of them were done by people calling in. And we would take their info and then they would mail a check in. And so I would receive the checks. I would process the registrations. I would greet people when they came in, distribute mail. It was the classic, you know, entry level job, do whatever needed to be done to help others out and learn along the way. 

 Tyler Mason  04:12

And you've had a couple other roles since then. We'll get into that in a minute. But I'm curious when you first joined how much you knew about Medical Alley the organization. Sounds like you maybe knew about the ecosystem of it. But what tell me what you knew about it. 

 Frank Jaskulke  04:21

Yeah. When I joined, I knew very little. Like, I'd learned a little bit working at the state capitol, but here's what I remember. So we all know Boston Scientific. Back then, I thought Boston Scientific was the company that made cable boxes. And some of you will get this because you'll remember it actually was a company called Atlanta Scientific. So I was thinking like, what are we doing with cable boxes here? So I knew very little. I didn't realize how prominent the industry was. You know, I grew up in Minneapolis. My dad's a mechanic. My mom was a teacher. We just weren't around it. But very quickly, my eyes were open to how amazing and big and important this industry is.

 Tyler Mason  05:03

It feels like everybody in this industry has met you are known you at some point. And you've said that you've gotten to know so many people because you did some sales and membership earlier on, too. What were those days like when you're trying to just make those connections and meet as many people as you could?

 Frank Jaskulke  05:16

Yeah, you know, it's weird to think about looking back at it. But when I started going into the membership side, so right, going out and recruiting companies, working with the existing ones, getting them involved, there was a time where LinkedIn didn't exist, finding someone's email was really hard. Finding someone's phone number was more important. And that was also hard. You didn't have all these tools where we could find information. So what I actually used to do was I would go and have a member meeting. And then I would drive around the neighborhood. Like, often the companies were in an office park. So I'd drive up and down the office park and look for companies that had names that sounded medical, and I'd write them down and write the address down. And then when I get back to the office, I try and look them up on, you know, Google was around, but often it was on Alta Vista or other tools. Try to find some info and then reach out to the company. And slowly but surely, we were adding new members we were getting into biotech. But yeah, it was much harder than than it is now where, right, we can go on Google, we go on LinkedIn, and you can find the info and 30 seconds

 Tyler Mason  06:30

I'm just picturing you driving around and trying to find companies that maybe were a fit. 

 Frank Jaskulke  06:34

Oh yeah. I mean, this is, you know, when Mapquest was the thing, right. So you're like trying to look at the map, figure out where you're going in these like suburban cul de sacs, no straight roads. And you just over time, though, you'll learn like when you see a company name, all of the health care companies, the names sort of sound healthcare-like and so you'd figure out like, oh, that's probably a health care company, I should look them up.

 Tyler Mason  07:03

What was the kind of healthcare ecosystem like in Medical Alley back then, the early days when you were here?

 Frank Jaskulke  07:09

In many ways the same and very different. So same in the sense that you had a lot of entrepreneurs, a handful of big companies, the suppliers, and you had all kinds of people who are really committed to making health better. What has changed is it's a way more diverse community. There's a lot more diverse leaders, women leaders. There's a lot of new entrepreneurs that have come in, a lot of new companies that weren't here 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, and a lot of companies that are still here, but you know, a different name from acquisitions and mergers. So the same, committed to public health growing in Minnesota, but a lot of different people and like a new generation. I think in 20 years it's long enough to see a new generation come in 

 Tyler Mason  08:02

Yeah. And how about Medical Alley the organization? You mentioned it was five or six people back then. Did it operate pretty pretty bare bones, I imagine? Or what was kind of the the function I guess of the organizatio back then? 

 Frank Jaskulke  08:12

Yeah, also the same and very different. So when I started, the name was Medical Alley MinnBio medical ally had merged with a biotech association called min bio brought the biotech industry in. We also had the hospitals and the payers. A year later, we changed the name to be Life Science Alley to represent diversifying beyond healthcare. Ten years after that, we would change back to Medical Alley, refocus on healthcare. But the core business, a lot of it was similar, right? Government affairs was a fundamental thing. This is a highly regulated industry. Our job is to make sure you always have a voice in that process. Old lobbyist saying, if you're not at the table, you're soon on the menu. We make sure that companies are always at the table. We put on events, we'd bring people together. We were doing Alley Chats even before I started. I think we've done ally chats for 25 years now. But what was very different was a big part of the business then was delivering educational events, mainly for medical device, regulatory and clinical professionals. At our peak, we did 134 events in one year, almost 10,000 people through the door, training on mainly what was going on at the FDA.

 Tyler Mason  09:35

I see how much work goes into our events today. I'm trying to imagine how that went back that. I mean probably not quite as grand scale as you know, an Alley Chats or a Summit.

 Frank Jaskulke  09:44

Right. Smaller events. And they were, they had a lot in common. So it was kind of honestly like a factory. We knew how to do them. And we just did it over and over and over and over again until the world changed as online education became a thing You didn't need as much in-person training. And so we shifted the business about 2017.

 Tyler Mason  10:07

I didn't know the Alley Chats went back that far. That goes to show just goes to show just how important kind of that connection within the community has been. I mean, have you seen that stay the same?

 Frank Jaskulke  10:14

That's gotta be the common thread. Yeah, you go all the way back to the founding. And one of the premises of Earl Bakken, of Lee Berlin, of Governor Perpich was connectivity. I always think of it as business is done by and among people. And it's easier to do business if those people know and trust each other. So one of the foundational values that Medical Alley provides is building up the level of trust in the ecosystem in Minnesota, nationally and globally, right? We want to make sure that you know the people you'd want to work with, or hire or partner or invest in, so that when you have that need, you already know them, you already trust them. It's just a phone call or an email away. And over the years, using our events, using referrals and other tools, we've made probably millions of connections by this point that have led to acquisitions and hires and investments and global business. And I feel really good about saying that our team has made that thing that Don Gerhardt said true. We did work that helped those companies save more lives.

 Tyler Mason  11:19

I wanted to touch on kind of a one off here. But speaking of the connections and meeting people, I think your red shoes were a trademark for a long time. You now have kind of the Medical Alley colored shoes. But am I correct that you would just the way for you to say hey, I'm the one with red shoes. And that was an easy way to meet people at different events and things or coffee shops or whatever?

 Frank Jaskulke  11:37

You know, so a number of years ago, right, before LinkedIn, before our images were everywhere online, if you are arranging a meeting with someone and you had not met them before, and often this was with small companies. So we were meeting at a coffee shop. It could be hard to find the person. And you know, I was much younger back then, you know, early 20s, often meeting with CEOs who are in their 50s. They'd come in and they weren't always looking for me. So I started wearing the red shoes as a way to say like, Hey, just look for the guy in red shoes. And it stuck. They became a little bit of a signature. They've now adapted. I've got the yellow and black shoes, make sure I stay on brand to match Medical Alley. But same idea always an easy way to find me at any event and make sure we can connect.

 Tyler Mason  12:25

Was it red for Medical Alley or just because it kind of stood out? 

 Frank Jaskulke  12:28

Honest to God, it was randomly red. I just bought a pair of sneakers and they were red. And it sort of like stuck. And then when medical ally did the rebrand in '16 and red became our color, it worked out.

 Tyler Mason  12:39

Oh, gotcha. So it was before that, okay. Now startup work has become kind of one of the big things you're focused on these days in recent years. How would you describe the med tech startup world maybe 5, 10 years ago compared to what it's become now?

 Frank Jaskulke  12:52

You know that there has been this amazing resurgence in the community of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate leaders, government officials who are really committed to making Minnesota, to making Medical Alley as we say the epicenter of health innovation and care and to do that you need startups, you need new ventures. And so many people have stepped up and advocated for the community, opened their doors, welcomed new companies, built a true community, which has then made the ecosystem more powerful. There are still challenges, right, it is still harder to raise capital than it should be. It is harder to find the right partners than it should be. But it's getting better. Actually, at this moment, as we're recording, in our conference room, there's about 15 CEOs meeting with an investor who's in town. This investor was coming to town and connected with one of the CEOs and that CEO said, Hey, why don't we get some others together, you can meet those companies, they can learn from you, you can learn from them. That's building community and paying it forward. And I feel fortunate that we were able to offer them just a simple conference room space and some coffee to make it happen. But that kind of activity happening today is making the ecosystem so much better. And I feel good that, you know, we get to play a small part in that and helping them organize, helping them come together and amplify the work that they, that you our listeners are doing to make this the best place in the world for health innovation.

 Tyler Mason  14:25

Yeah, I know that a lot of roles that Medical Alley has played in kind of the startup success stories, the Angel Tax Credit has been a big one too. When you look at the startup work, what do you enjoy most about what you get to do with that and the companies you get to meet and the people you get to talk with?

 Frank Jaskulke  14:38

You know, the part I enjoy the most really is the the innovations. There are truly mind blowing crazy sci fi like things out there in this ecosystem, and that are applied to save and improve lives. And we get to do work that helps make that better. That Angel Tax Credit has been one of the highlights of my career. That was actually, it was my grad school project back in 2009, was putting together the strategy and the language behind the original tax credit. Medical Alley went and advocated for it. We got the members together. We were the only organization that was advocating for that legislation at the time. We got it through. And since it's passed, healthcare companies, med tech, biotech digital health, have used the credit and leveraged it to raise $1.5 billion of capital. That feels really good that we did something that had that kind of impact on the community.

 Tyler Mason  15:35

I think that's kind of similar, I mean, the language of that has stayed the same most of the years?

 Frank Jaskulke  15:40

Little tweaks over the years. Some made it better, some not so much better, but we continue to work on it. And we continue to advocate now with a much bigger coalition of support. But it feels really cool to be able to say like, we were there first, we made sure it got through and we partnered with this community to make it happen. 

 Tyler Mason  15:59

Yeah, that's cool. Well, that's certainly a success story of the organization. I'm curious other just kind of looking at the ecosystem success stories that over your 19 years you've seen whether it's, you know, a company making an exit or just the invention or anything like that. Is there anything that stands out to you over the years that is just kind of a cool, breakthrough, or anything that stood out for that?

 Frank Jaskulke  16:19

You know, a couple other highlights. The Medical Device Innovation Consortium is a DC based organization that Medical Alley launched and spun out back in 2011. And came from those of you who are around at the time probably remember, it was very challenging to bring new products through the FDA if you were a medical device company, and especially if you were a PMA, a premarket approval company. Minnesota having such a strong position in PMAs, about 40% of all PMAs ever, we decided we needed to do something more concrete about it. We were lobbying for regulatory change like every other group, but that really didn't seem to solve the problem. So we approached the CDRH, Center for Devices Radiological Health, and had a discussion about science. Could we develop better ways of evaluating safety and efficacy so that we could approve products, good products, and do it faster at lower costs. That led to a partnership with the CDRH and our industry to create what is now the Medical Device Innovation Consortium. And they work on the regulatory science, the underlying science, the clinical study designs, the bench test methods that are used to prove safety and efficacy. And while it was not the only reason, it was a significant factor contributing to what is now a much improved FDA process for medical devices, ones that particularly in light of what's been going on with EU MDR, across Europe, has made the US such a strong market. And when you think about the kind of impact that has, right, that's not one company, that's literally thousands of companies every year that are benefiting and being impacted, because of work that Medical Alley pioneered with its members, with this community to improve public health. Like that, along with the Angel Tax Credit are probably one of the highlights of my career. And when I think about more recently, I think about the amazing work that our international community has been doing, right? Medical Alley's mission is always going to be about making Minnesota the epicenter of health innovation and care. But to do that, we need innovation and people from around the world. And we've now been successful at attracting a growing number of companies from outside the United States to put their US bases here and to partner with the suppliers, the consultants and the strategics that are in this ecosystem so that new technology and new people is flowing into the market. And the companies that are here, have relationships to be able to expand globally and bring their life saving innovations to patients around the world. 

 Tyler Mason  19:04

Very cool. And I just recently learned the connection with Medical Alley and MDIC. We did an event with them last year, but I didn't know kind of that it was Medical Alley played a hand in the formation, so that was cool. We're talking about anniversaries here: 40th anniversary, of course, for Medical Alely, your 19th anniversiary. July of this year marks four years of the Medical Alley Podcast, which is maybe a slightly less significant anniversary, but still nonetheless. I know you haven't hosted all of them. I think at the beginning there was some other hosts but you've done the good majority of them. I'm curious what you've enjoyed most about being on the microphone. 

 Frank Jaskulke  19:33

You know, I love hearing the stories of all the interesting people that are out there. It's such a nice way to be able to sit down one on one usually with someone and hear their story, hear about what they're working on and share that story with others. There's incredible people, incredible innovators in this community and it really is a pleasure to be able to share their stories. I'd do it all day if I could.

Tyler Mason  20:00

Well last one here, as we talk about the past 40 years, let's get your crystal ball out for a second. Looking at the next 40 years, which I know might be kind of a big question, but how do you see this ecosystem and this organization continuing to drive healthcare innovation? Maybe what are the challenges that need to be addressed? Or what are the things that you think this community and this organization do well that we'll continue to do well?

 Frank Jaskulke  20:18

Well, so 40 years ago, when we were created, it was in the wake of the computing industry collapsing and our founders tasked Medical Alley with making sure that this community becomes the disruptors and not the disrupted. That remains our job today. And it's what we'll always work on: how do we ensure that this community is the cutting edge of healthcare and health innovation? And I'm really excited about it. We have a fast growing emerging biotech industry, particularly in cell and gene therapy, truly advanced, potentially curative therapies for very rare, very complex diseases. We have massive investments being made by the University of Minnesota and by Mayo Clinic, our two big research institutions. And there's growth that is occurring at almost every one of the companies here. So if I look forward, I think there's a lot of opportunity to save and improve lives. I think there's always risk that if we aren't vigilant, we won't remain on the cutting edge. But I'm very confident that we have the community here that cares enough about the next generation to spend the time, to spend the money to ensure that what we have today is great, but what we have tomorrow is even better. And that's what I'm most excited and most hopeful about in our work.

 Tyler Mason  21:39

I think that's a great place to wrap it up. And I think you're officially off the hot seat now for this. 

 Frank Jaskulke  21:44

Ah it's not so bad! 

 Tyler Mason  21:45

Next time in the studio, you'll be back on the asking questions side of things. But Frank, our VP of innovation, thanks so much for taking the time, sharing about your history here and looking at the 40 years of Medical Alley. 

Frank Jaskulke  21:55

Thank you. 

Tyler Mason  21:56

And thanks, everybody, for tuning into this episode of the Medical Alley Podcast. Be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, also at medicalalleypodcast.org. If you're not already registered for our annual dinner, that's coming up on May 16 at US Bank Stadium with special guests Brooke Shields as the keynote speaker so head over to medical alley.org/events. Get your tickets for that. We hope to see you all there. Until next time, have a great day.