From Inventing Google Chromecast to Reinventing Physical Therapy with AI | Mario Queiroz, Chief Product Officer at Hinge Health | E238

In this episode of The Product Podcast, we chat with Mario Queiroz, VP of Product at Hinge Health and former VP at Google, where he co-invented the Google Chromecast.

Mario takes us on a captivating journey through his diverse career, from building revolutionary hardware products at Google to transforming healthcare with digital physical therapy at Hinge Health. He opens up about the challenges of moving from software to hardware, the complexities of scaling a global product, and the role of AI in personalizing healthcare solutions.

In this episode, Mario dives into the development of Google Chromecast, how Hinge Health is redefining healthcare with AI, and the importance of combining product management expertise with domain knowledge. He also shares his experience in leading cross-functional teams to drive innovation in both the tech and healthcare industries.

CONTENT
(00:25) 🌎 From Brazil to the US: Mario’s Journey to Stanford and HP
(03:10) 📡 Building Chromecast: Lessons in Hardware and Software
(05:38) 🎮 Innovating at Google: Revolutionizing Streaming with Chromecast
(16:22) 💡 Leading at Hinge Health: Digital Solutions for Chronic Pain
(21:04) ⚕️ Aligning Product Success with Health Outcomes
(24:36) 🤖 Leveraging AI for Personalized Healthcare
(36:37) 🚀 Navigating Regulatory Challenges and Scaling in Healthcare

KEY TAKEAWAYS👇:

• Hardware Meets Software: Mario shares the groundbreaking journey behind Google Chromecast and how integrating software into hardware can create game-changing products.
• AI in Healthcare: Learn how AI is reshaping healthcare through personalized treatment at Hinge Health, blending technology with human care for better outcomes.
• Cross-Industry Expertise: Mario reflects on navigating product management in multiple industries, emphasizing the importance of blending product expertise with deep domain knowledge.
• Building Cross-Functional Teams: Insights into how Mario led cross-functional teams to drive innovation, focusing on both business needs and user experiences.

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Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Mario Queiroz

Transcript

Carlos (00:25)
Welcome to the show, Mario.

Mario Queiroz (00:25)
Carlos, thank you very much for having me on the show today.

Carlos (00:28)
Mario, 16 years at HP, 15 years at Google, now at Hinge. I know we're going to cover all of that, but before that, I heard that you moved from Brazil to the US when you were 12.

Mario Queiroz (00:42)
Yeah, that's correct. Carlos, by the way, thank you so much for having me on your show today. I really appreciate what you do for the product management profession and for the community. And it's great that you're contributing in that way. Yeah, was born and raised in Brazil. And as a child, my dad's job took us to the US and I was immersed. I learned English, I learned the American culture.

I liked it so much that later I came back for college, I studied engineering, and then I've been in technology my entire long career, and I love to work. So it's great to be doing the kind of things that I'm doing today.

Carlos (01:24)
Love to hear that story. I'm also an immigrant, moved from Spain and I had to learn English really quickly, got the tech back and never left the US. So in your experience, what was that moment when you were in the US, when you realized, okay, I want to stay here, I want to study, I want to work in tech. What was the moment that triggered you in order to continue your career that way?

Mario Queiroz (01:45)
Yeah, there were several moments that triggered me to stay. When I moved to, when I went to, I privileged to have gone to Stanford, and Stanford, I studied electrical engineering. I wanted to study engineering, I picked the hardest one at the time, which was electrical engineering. And my plan was, me get my undergraduate degree, go back, and then I got the chance to get my master's, and I really loved working on computer architecture and computer science. And one thing led to another, and I...

I got a job to work at what at the time was an amazing technology firm, probably the top tier firm at the time, which was HP. And I worked as an engineer and I got the chance actually to work in Spain for a year. I worked in Germany for a few years. So it was really a great growing experience. And then after that, I got the chance to go to Google, which was also a great way to continue to stay intact.

Carlos (02:42)
Google in 2005. So how big was the company?

Mario Queiroz (02:47)
think Google had probably about 4 ,000 people and about $4 billion in revenue. So was already a larger company almost a year out from the IPO. But in many ways, it was a company very much in the early stages of scaling. And so it was really exciting to be part of participating in the growth of the company.

Carlos (03:10)
One of the things that I noticed is that you work in multiple hardware projects, including the creation of the Google Chromecast.

Mario Queiroz (03:20)
That's correct. I, you know, that was one of the, you know, at Google, when I first came to Google, was, I worked in some projects that I think really helped to scale the company. One was we were building internal products for Google, enterprise software, things like an HR system, a bug management system, systems for approving advertising, billing so that the company could charge advertisers overseas. And then I led the company's

localization efforts. So for three years, how do you internationalize and localize all of Google's products so that Google could expand globally? And then at one point, having had these assignments that were very horizontal in nature, I really wanted to go deep in an area. And that's when I began working in building products for the home, which led to Chromecast. And I'd be happy to tell you that story because it's really a story of success.

Carlos (04:18)
Please tell me more about it.

Mario Queiroz (04:20)
Yeah, so I got into consumer electronics, embedded software, Android by actually working on Google's, the Nexus One, the first phone that Google really developed and mass marketed. And as a follow on to that project, we had this idea to say, boy, if it looks like it's working for us to build Android into smartphones,

What about doing it into TVs? TVs are like big computers and they have screens and people want to experience the entertainment and other forms of the internet on TV. So we started a project called Google Home and I'm sorry, Google TV at the time. I'll get to Google Home a little bit later if we get to that. But it turns out that there was a better solution than what we tried at first. Our first effort was not successful but then we said, how about if we take everything we've learned

and actually create a device that can turn every TV into a smart TV and connect it to the internet in the simplest possible manner. And that's how Chromecast was invented and was born. from then on, I think we helped revolutionize streaming into the home.

Carlos (05:38)
You are the co -inventor of the Google Chromecast, which in a way led a movement to now many other companies to have these type of dongles, right, that you can plug into any TV and automatically stream to so many different other channels.

Mario Queiroz (05:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, there were several insights that were important. One of the things that was, that is still difficult, but was difficult at the time for people to stream content, entertainment, to access the internet on TV was the interface. So we said, well, people already know the interface of their phones. Why can't we just let them use their phones to look for what they want to watch and then magically send it to the TV? And that's how the idea of casting came along. And we built a very simple software stack on a very simple

piece of hardware to make it very easy for everyone to be able to do that.

Carlos (06:24)
I think I'm going to make you laugh because I actually use the Google TV, like the first product before Chromecast. I was living in Mountain View and one of the lead engineers gave me a prototype. So what were your learnings there? You mentioned that that first iteration didn't work. What didn't work about it that then led to creating a more successful iteration in Google Chromecast?

Mario Queiroz (06:29)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

That's a great question. What we learned is that we were applying a model that was extremely successful for smartphones to this day of taking an open source operating system and building it into a computer. the partners, the companies that were building TVs, they had a different structure. They were really very, very excellent at building the displays and the quality of the picture. But the software teams were not

of the same depth of knowledge in terms of building software products like the smart phone companies were. And so we had a tough time actually building the right experience directly into a TV. And then we said, but the TV still has to be there. That's how people want to experience their entertainment. Let's extract the interface from the TV and just use what the TV was good for.

which is to display this amazing content that was being created. And then we brought the experience to the phone and the connection was Chromecast.

Carlos (07:55)
What was Google's rationale to go into hardware? Because traditionally, they were a software company.

Mario Queiroz (08:03)
The goal was not to go into hardware. The goal was, at the time, for Google to enable streaming entertainment into the home and to bring Google experiences into the home because you could really deliver a lot of value for people who were already using Google but deliver it through a different format, through a different experience. So that was really the goal.

the idea of Chromecast and building that piece of hardware was a means to an end. And we never really thought about just building hardware. It was always really a combination of the full stack, the hardware, the software, the applications, and how that all worked together. that went on to what's today a very successful, I think, devices business at Google. I've been gone for...

for almost, you for four and a half years, but it's a very successful business, which really does an excellent job of integrating hardware, software, and now a lot of the AI services. I still use my Pixel phone. I love my Pixel phone. I can't stop using it. So that was the approach that we were taking at the beginning as well.

Carlos (09:17)
Of course, as I think about hardware today for Google, and yes, my house is surrounded by Nest cameras and a bunch of other devices, it wasn't obvious back in the day. This is a big effort because you also need the infrastructure and the partners and all these different cycles and mindsets to build something that hopefully will support additional software. it's a big bet. You think about other companies, they can't afford to go that way.

Mario Queiroz (09:46)
And this is where I, know, Google is such a great company, was such a great company, and we had the space to go innovate and to go prototype, not just the product itself, but how were we going to deliver the product, the partnerships with contract manufacturers, the supply chain, the customer support that we had to build, the distribution channels. And it's really a tribute and credit to Google, which at the time, and I know they still launch some great products today,

We were given the room and the flexibility to go build the complete solution at the time, which again, involved hardware and software, but all of the elements around it. And the company has continued to build upon that today.

Carlos (10:29)
Maybe you can tell us more about those additional layers outside product management that you led as a GM for some of these hardware products. When you talk about distribution channels, localization, or go to market in general, what really is necessary for a product, hardware or software, in order to really be successful in the market?

Mario Queiroz (10:50)
Carlos, that's great question because I think a lot of product managers and a lot of companies, they think, okay, I'll build a product, I'll build a great product, everything else will happen. And certainly, you need to have a great product that delivers value to a user, to a member to be successful, but it's not sufficient. You need to think about go -to -market from day one, especially if you're building something new. Now, if you're in an area where the go -to -market is already established,

and you're just building variations of something that's already in place, that's different, of course. But in our case, we had to be thinking about, okay, let's assume that we build this great experience. How are people gonna get their hands on it? And how do we even build it? Because we don't have factories, we don't procure parts for these things. So the product manager really has really two jobs. One job is to be that pure product person

knowing the technology, being the expert about the user needs and insights about the user in how the experience is going to work, part one. Part two is to be the GM, right? So what are the elements of bringing this product to users, which are going to make sense for the buyer, the user, and the company and the business that you're a part of? So I really think that product managers really need to have those two.

elements in their arsenal.

Carlos (12:20)
So what are the nuances that you experience building hardware products that would you say are different from building software when it comes to either building the product or also bringing it to market?

Mario Queiroz (12:33)
The nuances are, there are a couple of nuances. One is you, consumers today have access to amazing devices and hardware products. So one nuance is you don't have the option of, let me just hack something together and the software will make up for it. You have to build a world -class hardware device as if you were a hardware company. And so that part of it is really important.

But then you, the other, what really differentiates, I think what Google did and continue to do, and I spent two and a half years at Palo Alto Networks, which where we had an experience as well, building a cybersecurity product and service for consumers in small businesses, where we built a hardware device from scratch, but the real value that was brought to

the users, people benefiting from the product, was that integration with the software stack that the company had. And so that combination is what's really important.

Carlos (13:42)
And when you think about enabling other partners, let's say in this case, software partners, you build a hardware infrastructure, you probably build some software on top of it, but then you also want to create an ecosystem where other players can contribute to. Tell me more about those integrations.

Mario Queiroz (13:53)
Yeah.

That's a really great point. when we were, and let's go back to the example of Chromecast, we not only built a product that would run the applications which Google already owned, like YouTube and at the time Google Play Movies, but also we created an SDK. And so we created an SDK for apps to be cast enabled, if you will. An SDK for Android, an SDK for iOS.

And the SDK itself needs to be thought of as a product, the product for developers. So you need to imagine this magical experience that you're delivering and how do you codify that experience into the SDK. And then there's a lot of, you really need to have grit in building an ecosystem because when you have zero partners for your product, in this case, there were entertainment and software partners, you just need to hit the road and go talk to them.

and present your product, present the value, what it's gonna do for their company and for your users. So there's quite a bit of time on airplanes to go do that too. It's not glamorous, but important.

Carlos (15:07)
yeah. I know what you mean. Spending time during flights to do some extra work. But you're right. Like your point about marketing to developers. Cause when I hear the word partner, it can be very broad, but you're right. Like you have to do specific marketing for the developers. You want them to build on top of your platform. And there's a different type of partners. The one that are going to give you distribution or other types of benefits. Otherwise you do not get enough ecosystem. You end up being just the only player in your own platform.

Mario Queiroz (15:37)
That's correct, that's correct. That's very, very important to do in any product development that you're doing. And you need to think about your complete product. So if we think about Hinge Health, where I am now, we have a really, really interesting opportunity. The company's gotten to a size which is where we're impacting the lives of, well actually we've impacted more than a million lives with our.

solution to help people with their joint pain, with their muscle pain, with their pain in their body. And I'm happy to give you just a bit of context on what we do and then talk about how we think about building a complete product there.

Carlos (16:22)
Yeah, so you've worked at HP, then Google doing a lot of hardware stuff, then a little bit of cybersecurity at Palo Alto networks, and now in health. So as a product leader that has touched so many different industries, what's your take on how important domain expertise is in order for these types of PMs to navigate different industries versus developing deep industry knowledge and kind of doubling down on the thing that you're already good at?

Mario Queiroz (16:51)
It's, you know, you really need both things. One is you, I think it's really important to understand the role of the product manager and how the product manager can impact the business and enable the business to scale. know, products is how companies scale the impact of what they do. And the product manager with the right strategy and set of priorities and roadmap is going to make that amplification even greater.

So I've been fortunate to work in different industries. Since I studied electrical engineering all of my time at HP and at Google and at Palo Alto Networks, even at Hinge Health, I've benefited from knowledge of electrical engineering. But I do think it's important to have domain expertise and industry expertise. both at Palo Alto Networks, I had to learn a lot before we were able to...

to deliver the product and service that we were building. And at Hinge Health as well, I came to Hinge Health with a lot of consumer product experience, but the only healthcare experience I have is going to see my doctors. And when I twist my ankle, and I have to fix that, but in the two and a half years that I've been there, the healthcare experience is also very, very important. So as a product manager, you should really strive to know your...

your industry and your users deeply, as well as being excellent at the craft of product management. You really need both.

Carlos (18:26)
In fact, would argue that not having too much experience on a certain industry can be beneficial because if you're trying to disrupt something and you're already too biased, assuming that that's the way it works, maybe it's hard to disrupt. But if you already hate something because you had a horrible experience and you really want to change it from upside down, maybe you can have a shot. So maybe tell us more about hinge head and kind of what's the pain that you're trying to solve.

Mario Queiroz (18:38)
Yep.

Mm

Yeah, pain is a great word, because that's exactly what we're trying to solve, is we're trying to solve people's pain. So Hinge Health provides the world's leading digital physical therapy service. we productize, we package your physical therapist into an app, into a treatment program that you get through an app. Just so you understand a little bit how Hinge Health works, we don't sell directly to consumers, and so we have this amazing commercial team.

that works with large companies, works with health plans to offer Hinge Health as a benefit to the members of the health plan or to employees. So Google is a customer of ours, for example. If you're an employee of a large company and you have your open enrollment and then you say, one day you twist your ankle and you're, I have this benefit, I can download an app and...

and get access to a personalized digital physical therapy program. So we sell B2B and our product is a B2C product. So it's really a B2B to C type of a model that we offer. That's what Hinge Health is. My role at Hinge Health is to lead R &D. So it's product design, engineering, growth marketing or consumer marketing. And we have a hardware team as well. I seem to...

never let go of the hardware. I really enjoy that part of things as well. And the reason consumer marketing is part of what we do is because we only get paid when people actually onboard and use our product. So the product is really the first moment that we present our service to a potential user, to onboarding them, to understanding their physical condition, to providing them a personalized treatment plan.

and then to supporting them all the way through that process, that's the product that we build.

Carlos (20:50)
Let's talk about success metrics, because I think in health, some of those things can get twisted. How do you align success of your product with the success of your patients?

Mario Queiroz (21:04)
So there's a very strong connection between the two. first of all, you need to think about, there's success for different players in your, let's say, different constituents, right? One is an employer who's offering Hinge Health as a benefit to their employees. They're doing it, one is because they want their employees to be healthy, but also because large employers, for example, are self -insured.

And so every dollar of cost of what we call muscular skeletal health, muscular skeletal health is joint and bone and muscle health. That's one of the highest areas of cost that an employer has, a self -insured employer, or a health plan has. And so if you have an alternative to people getting surgery and getting MRIs and so on, which is lower cost,

Then, so that's one of the metrics is, do we provide a service that helps people instead of people having very high cost treatments that they can get better through non -invasive types of treatments like what we offer. So that's one metric of success is, do we provide an ROI for the payer? For the user and for the member, it's all about the outcomes. Are they getting better from their pain?

We're paid for that. So if people believe that we can help them, then they come onto our product and they use our product. The more they use our product, the better they get. And so we were incentivized to make sure that people are actually onboarding and using them.

Carlos (22:46)
So the more they use your product, the better they get. I think that is an important part because in a lot of traditional or reactive health approaches, it's the opposite. It's like you only use the product when you are in trouble. Here it's more proactive. Like you want to use it so you never get in trouble.

Mario Queiroz (23:06)
Yeah, well, our main value proposition is when somebody is in pain, chronic pain, example, chronic back pain. And more than 50 % of people in the United States at any one point have some form of neck pain, back pain, or joint pain. So 50 % of people, and 75 % of those people have pain in more than one part of their body. And so our primary focus is to make sure that these individuals

they know that there is a way for them to treat their pain, which is non -invasive and which is really easy and simple to access. And so that is our primary objective is to help them get well. Now we also offer them the opportunity, once they get well, to make sure that they don't go back and that their pain doesn't come back. And so that they are strengthened and their fitness is improved.

Carlos (24:04)
Just hearing you talk about it is now making me feel some back pain. I'm like, my God. But you're right. mean, there's been so much evolution, right? Especially since COVID, where a lot of these solutions are now digital. And that's totally fine. Back in the day, it's like, how is possible that I'm going to see a doctor online? Well, it is possible. In many cases, it's actually better. So assuming that we are past that adoption frontier, then what is next? What is it going to...

Mario Queiroz (24:06)
Yeah.

Carlos (24:32)
be required for these type of solutions to become even more mainstream.

Mario Queiroz (24:36)
Yeah, it's a great question. So my goal, our goal is for Hinge Health to be your personal physical therapist with you at all times. I like to think of a sports analogy. So if LeBron James is playing a basketball game and let's say he has a pain in his calf, he comes off the court and he's walking towards the locker room in the tunnel.

his personal physical therapist walks up to him and say, LeBron, tell me what's going on. I've got calf pain. He's immediately in treatment, right? So why should LeBron James be the only one who has a personal physical therapist? So Hinge Health is your personal physical therapist. If you have pain, you can go to the Hinge Health app and we have a personalized program for you. You tell us about your pain, you tell us about yourself and your medical condition. We wanna make sure we're not gonna hurt

you, but we also want to make sure we gather data to provide you a personalized plan. So what's next is to make that accessibility immediate, simple, you're immediately in treatment, and it's a perfectly personalized program for you, which is done through a lot of our algorithms, but we're applying more more AI now to personalizing your treatment.

Carlos (25:57)
Ding, ding, ding, ding, we use the word AI, so I need to ask you about it, right? So how are you specifically leveraging AI to provide an even more personalized experience?

Mario Queiroz (26:08)
Yeah, the important thing is AI is a tool for us to deliver the best possible treatment. At a higher level, our program is about the right blend of technology and the human touch. We have a large team of physical therapists and health coaches who help people work through their medical condition as well as to help them with their behavior so that where they're building

building a habit to experience our product. So there's the human side and the technology side. On the technology side, we're applying AI in very targeted ways, in ways that are going to enable that model. Let me give you an example what we do with our health coaches and our physical therapists. We get messages from members all the time, which health coaches and physical therapists...

read and answer. And we have a lot of information about our members, always of course ensuring that we care for the privacy of that information. But what we use AI for, for example, is if you're a health coach and you get a message from one of the people you're treating, we immediately give you a summary of that person's entire experience with Hinch Health, everything we know about that person so that you are up

you're up to date on the latest on what's going on with that person. And if that person messaged you, then we actually suggest a possible message back. the clinician is the ultimate decider in terms of how they interact with the member. So that's one area that we're applying AI. It's really to enable our physical therapists and our coaches to work at what we call top of license, to do the work that they're best at.

Carlos (28:03)
That is a part that gets me really excited as a user of different type of medical solutions. Sometimes I felt like I was treated like anybody else and there was very little personalization. And in many ways I felt like they were doing the A -B testing with me directly. Like, hey, your something hurts, take this and let me know how it goes. And then you come back. If it didn't work, I'll give you something else. And I don't want to A -B test with my brain, right? Or with certain parts of my...

Mario Queiroz (28:20)
You

Yeah.

Carlos (28:31)
my body, so I'm a believer in the use of technology, specifically in this case, AI to have a more holistic approach. But the other piece that I think is sometimes missing is, okay, people usually come to a doctor for a specific problem. My back hurts, but there might be other things that are going on that you might not even know about yet. how can you leverage AI to kind of get ahead of the game and see if there is something else going on?

Mario Queiroz (28:48)
Yeah. Right.

That's, you know, there, we have lots of ideas about how to apply AI. We're not using AI for clinical decision support today. You know, another area that we are applying AI to is in personalization. So, for example, with the information that you provide to us when you fill out your medical assessment questionnaire, we, and based on treatment plans that we've created for more than a million people before, we're able to,

match your condition with the most appropriate set of exercises, education articles, and other forms of treatment. And then based on how you're doing in your program, that's new information for us to update that. So that's how we're applying the AI in another area, which is personalization. But there will continue to be a lot of opportunities for...

for using AI.

Carlos (30:02)
Mario, maybe we can use you as an example here. So if I use it of the product, I know you're a healthy person, you have a really awesome routine. So for people like us who are always in front of a screen, spending way too many hours, not always following the best recipes, like what do you think it's a good way for people in tech, specifically for PMs, to maintain a good physical and mental condition?

Mario Queiroz (30:28)
Well, there are a lot of different ways to go about it. I think it's important to build a habit of physical activity and exercise. This is not gonna be any news for your audience. I'll just share what I do personally. I'm up at five in the morning every morning and I do something seven days a week and I just like to vary it. There's biking and swimming and running and weights and those kinds of things. I like to play 11 aside soccer on Sundays, which is...

a lot of fun, but the point is that it's important to build a habit. And that's what we're trying to do at Hinch Health is to help people build a habit of movement, a habit of physical exercise and complimentary experiences as well. in terms of, and so going beyond what you can do on your own, I'll give you an example of how we're thinking about treatment. We have a product,

called Enzo. Have you heard of Enzo?

Carlos (31:29)
Nope.

Mario Queiroz (31:30)
let me tell you about ENSO. ENSO is a wearable device that uses electrical nerve stimulation to help relieve pain in muscles. ENSO actually comes from a small company we acquired about three years ago, but it's a small wireless FDA clear device that's designed to be comfortable for you to wear and you can wear it during your daily activities and exercise. I actually had a calf problem recently and I...

attached Denso to my calf and I wore it for several hours, attaches to your skin with an adhesive pad and it's activated using the Hinge Health app. And it delivers high frequency impulse therapy to help you through your pain and your condition. The reason I give that as an example is that this is the way that we're thinking about innovating. We're not just innovate, we don't think, okay, we're a software.

healthcare company. We were thinking about what is the condition of the user and what solutions can we bring to address the problem of the users. In many cases people are in such pain that they're not even able to start with physical therapy exercises. And so we offer them ENSO for them to begin treatment and to relieve their pain so that we can on ramp them onto exercises.

And so we're just about to ship our third generation of Enzo and I'd be happy to tell you a little bit about that because there's an interesting product aspect to that.

Carlos (33:08)
Please, and I, I, smile because I'm thinking about the Chromecast story that you were sharing before, right? How a traditional software company went into hardware and how it makes so much sense. So it seems like you are now taking a picture of that playbook now into, into Hinge.

Mario Queiroz (33:24)
Yeah, I think what's important is there's a continuum. There's no such thing as like, there's a hardware product and there's a software product. It's a continuum. And let me tell you how we're really applying, I guess, the equivalent of a traditional consumer electronics model in terms of the technology approach to Enzo. So up until now, up until the second generation of Enzo, you receive your Enzo and the firmware on the device has the treatment and it connects to the app through Bluetooth. Great.

But we've now built a capability. So we've built a software platform. There's firmware on the device that allows for the device to be updated over the air. What a novel concept, right? mean, phones are updated over the air. But what we do is, first of all, this allows for Enzo to get better all the time, just like your phone gets better all the time. But what's also super interesting is we had this idea that there are different

waveforms that you can deliver different electrical simulation waveforms to treat different conditions on different parts of the body. And we haven't invented all those waveforms. So we have some that we've invented. They're part of the product. But over time, if you, let's say, have ENSO and there's a new condition that we've developed a new waveform for, you can easily download that new treatment over the air through software onto your ENSO device. So it's like,

It's like an app, right? But you're taking a medical device and you're connecting it to your phone and the device is getting better all the time through software updates and through new treatments that are delivered through software updates.

Carlos (35:09)
Love that so much. It reminds me of Tesla. They did the software update and suddenly their cars were able to drive by themselves. It's a nice way to update hardware device and demystify this thing that once you ship it, you can't change it.

Mario Queiroz (35:11)
Mm

Yeah.

That's correct, that's correct. In the traditional tech industries, that's something which of course you do that, right? Your phone gets better all the time, your Google Home gets better all the time and so on. But in medical devices, it's really unique for us to be doing this. Now, of course we do all of this in a way that allows for our product to continue to be an FDA cleared device, which is a.

you know, it's really an important for us. The FDA has conducted a thorough review of the safety and efficacy of Enzo and cleared Enzo for the U .S. market as a medical device. So this is an additional consideration for product management.

Carlos (36:07)
Let's talk about that because I think that's pretty unique compared to different type of products where maybe there is no regulatory body or definitely not as strong as the FDA. what is that as you think about building your product, both software hardware, you also have your marketing team, you have your distribution partners, like how do you fit in this regulatory? How do you go about partnering with them in a way that obviously you stay compliant while not slowing down the pace of your development too much?

Mario Queiroz (36:37)
Well, first of all, we hire experts. We have experts in FDA compliance and in the process for the FDA. We take it very seriously because we always assume good intent and the right objective by the FDA. We don't see it as a red tape. We see it as a necessary body for ensuring that the devices are safe and they have the efficacy that they have.

I think the regulation is very reasonable. It helps make our product better. We have a very thorough quality management system, which we're required to have, where not only are you clearing your product for launch, but you need to demonstrate that you're managing the quality of your product on an ongoing basis through very specific actions. And so, as a product person, you're not only shipping a

a device for entertainment, let's say you're shipping something which is for medical purpose, you need to understand that. And this is where the industry depth becomes important, right? If you don't have the industry depth, it's really important to have the experts you're working with as part of your cross -functional team, but it's also important to understand the requirements to a large extent as a product manager.

Carlos (38:00)
Mario, it's been a pleasure to learn from you and spend this time together. Thank you so much for your time.

Mario Queiroz (38:06)
Carlos, it's been a pleasure for me to thank you very much for having me on and I really, I think you have a great product here. Congratulations on your product management work in delivering your product and I look forward to staying in touch.