Kevin Saem | Brand Leader, Zapyrus | Childhood Inspiration, Creating Impact, & Curiosity

Kevin Saem is a brand leader at Zapyrus, a lifelong learner, and a passionate problem solver. In this episode, he shares stories from his early childhood in Cambodia and how that inspired his interest in medtech and healthcare, why he's so passionate about creating impact wherever he goes, and why he places a high value on curiosity.

Guest links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-saem/ | https://welcome.zapyrus.com/

Charity supported: Save the Children

Interested in being a guest on the show or have feedback to share? Email us at podcast@velentium.com.

PRODUCTION CREDITS Host: Lindsey Dinneen Editor: Tim Oliphant Producer: Velentium

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Episode 013 - Kevin Saem

Lindsey Dinneen: Hi, I'm Lindsey with Velentium and I'm talking with MedTech industry leaders on how they change lives for a better world.

Diane Bouis: The inventions and technologies are fascinating and so are the people who work with them.

Frank Jaskulke: There was a period of time where I realized, fundamentally, my job was to go hang out with really smart people that are saving lives and then do work that would help them save more lives.

Diane Bouis: I got into the business to save lives and it is incredibly motivating to work with people who are in that same business, saving or improving lives.

Duane Mancini: What better industry than where I get to wake up every day and just save people's lives.

Lindsey Dinneen: These are extraordinary people doing extraordinary work, and this is The Leading Difference.

Hello and welcome to The Leading Difference Podcast. I'm your host, Lindsey, and I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Kevin Saem. Kevin is a brand leader at Zapyrus, a lifelong learner, and a passionate problem solver. Having lived in Asia, North America and Europe, Kevin is a leader that values diversity and believes that the small differences are what give intrinsic value to an individual. Kevin, thank you so very much for being here. I'm just so excited to have you here and learn all about your background and what you're up to these days.

Kevin Saem: No problem, Lindsey. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Lindsey Dinneen: Of course. I would love starting off by just sharing a little bit about your background. I know that, even from your bio, you have had such a cool life so far, all sorts of places that you've lived, and I'd just love to hear a little bit about that and maybe what brought you to where you are today.

Kevin Saem: Yeah, absolutely. How far do you wanna go back?

Lindsey Dinneen: Whatever would make sense in terms of inspiring you to do what you're doing now.

Kevin Saem: Yeah, absolutely. When I look back right in my life, I always think of it as like the movie Inception. I don't know, have you, if you've seen Inception?

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that movie, one of my favorites.

Kevin Saem: So it's like a, yeah, so it's like a dream within a dream. When I look back at my life, cuz I grew up in a third world country. I grew up in Cambodia and it's almost like a different life there. So I almost see like a life within a life when I made the transition over to Canada. I was born in Cambodia, lived there for 10 years, lived through the nineties. And during the nineties, Cambodia experienced a couple things. So in the early days in the seventies, eighties, we experienced the Khmer Rouge, the genocide which my parents and my grandparents lived through. And then right outta that, when I was growing up in the nineties, we experienced the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which was a delayed onset from what North Americans experienced in the eighties.

And so because of the whole genocide and internal warfare, the country was in already recovery while being compounded with a healthcare crisis, right? Super chaotic. Hospitals were not a thing at the time. There were like some, and I lived in the Capitol, and just seeing people that you knew, like neighbors or friends and family be affected by this disease. And nobody kind of knew what was going on until the UN stepped in and brought some aid and support through portable kind of diagnostic testing for this disease, which kind of helped brought the spread down and help control the spread of the disease. And seeing that impact of what healthcare technology, especially in the MedTech space, diagnostic specifically, could do to a small population in a third world country like that really stuck with me from the early days. So when I moved to Canada in 2000, started studying here, really gravitated to the STEM field.

So science engineering, was able to put my thinking cap on in that space, so to speak. So I went to university and studied chemistry. I went in with a life science background and then specialized in chemistry and decided to go to grad school and do my PhD in chemistry and infectious diseases specifically for diagnostics and medical devices, for testing of infectious diseases because I had that in the back of my mind growing up in Cambodia and seeing the impact that those technologies could make.

And I'm a firm believer in chasing impact and creating value at every stage of your life. Like within your inner circle, what value you could create before you move on, what long lasting impact that you could create. So from Cambodia to Canada to my graduate days I was fortunate enough to meet a bunch of intelligent people, be taken in by very talented researchers in the space. I did my studies in McMaster University, which has now become, I believe, the most research intensive university in Canada, if I'm not mistaken, a few years back. So I studied under professor Jose Moran-Mirabal and I had a bunch of other professors as mentors, and they were really great. I was able to touch a lot of different topics in research, which is unconventional from a graduate experience. Usually you're narrowed down into kind of one scope, but I was able to start with kind of material science, materials engineering, like making novel, conductive, stretchable, elastic materials. Moved from there to nanotechnology, biosensing, and then eventually closed off my graduate degree in doing some work on premature 3D printing and tissue engineering work to create synthetic scaffolds for testing or biomimicry, which that work has been able to mature over time.

So that's like my graduate experience. So when I was, I would say in the last year of my graduate study, again going back to the impact theme. I wanted to understand, what was the next step after a research paper. Like how do you go beyond just benchtop work into actually creating a product that could affect people's lives on a day-to-day? And I wasn't able to get that just being in research. And so that got me thinking about the startup path going into industry, you know, the typical challenges you come across as you're nearing your graduation, right? What is the next step? Do I pursue a career in academia, become a lifelong researcher, and just stick in that space? Or do I take a step out and look at the rest of the world and see what other cool things people are doing?

So putting on my curiosity cap again. Got a chance to network when I was doing a sabbatical research with my professor at the time, Dr. Jose Moran-Mirabal. He had a sabbatical in the south of France and he took me along. It was really great experience, right? We had a lot of great wine, traveled everywhere. So again, unconventional, I would say, graduate experience. So I was very lucky to have had all those sorts of experiences. And it was like a France/Canada collaborative research internship where we were starting kind of new project in tissue engineering and really novel biomaterials, right? And this was like at the very start of the early days of 3D printing for medical devices. And so, got a chance to meet a bunch of cool people.

And then one professor that sponsored us there started this liquid biopsy startup company out of the institute that we were working in. And so nearing my graduation, I was presented with an opportunity to be a part of that early day kind of startup life or this novel liquid biopsy startup company that was in the south of France. And so, I spent a bit of my time there again, wearing multiple hats, helping raise capital, managing R&D strategy, managing relationships with industry. So I did that for a little bit of time and got to know the medical device system from an OEM's perspective at an early stage and then the pandemic hit and it threw a wrench in everybody's plan, not just my own.

And so at that time, our Prime Minister gave out a signal to all foreign workers to come back home. So I had to come back home and it was another reset. And I was looking at kind of new opportunities in the space and I stumbled upon this local Toronto bootstrap SaaS company. At the time it was called Zymewire and I did a little bit of digging and found that it was bootstrapped by a couple of guys. The CEO, Pete Bastedo, he came from the pharmaceutical side of the business. And then the co-founder Ryan, the CTO, he had a technical background. So I was really fascinated by this kind of bootstrap company model. And I took a look at their site and fell in love with the culture that they represented. And it aligned really closely with the philosophy that I had as well. And so that got me even more interested and took me down a rabbit hole of like, all right, what are they about?

And so, I made the connection between Pete, the CEO, and a good friend of mine that came out of the same graduate program. And I pinged my friend Faheem. I was like, "do you know anything about this guy, Pete? How is he?" And then he gave me nothing but great reviews on Pete. He's a really intelligent guy, really smart, and he's doing cool, exciting things with the company, right? And so, eventually ended up speaking with both Pete and Ryan and they were telling me about their plans for the company and kinda where they wanna go. And given kinda my background in MedTech, they wanted to expand the product offerings beyond Biopharma and into MedTech. And that's how I came about into Zymewire at the time. But now we recently rebranded to Lumerate. And now Zapyrus was born just last year around this time as a premium MedTech business intelligence tool specifically for the MedTech industry. And so now we have that. Now it's real.

Lindsey Dinneen: Wow. Oh my gosh. That is amazing. First of all, your story is incredible. Thank you for sharing all of that, and it's so fascinating to me to learn about how someone's background and often childhood can really shape who they end up becoming. But it's interesting because for a lot of the guests that I've had so far, there's been something that says, " I wanna make a difference in this area." But then their career trajectory and their education has allowed them to sort of weave in and out of all sorts of avenues of pursuing their dreams in very interesting ways. So I just love hearing about that. So thank you so much for sharing and I would love to hear a little bit more about your company and how it helps MedTech companies now.

Kevin Saem: Yeah, absolutely. The industry is made up mainly of these small players. I would say 80, 85% of MedTech companies are small, medium size businesses, and then they eventually get acquired by the big ones, right? Basically, our platform helps to connect MedTech service providers with MedTech OEMs at the right stage and at the right time so that they can be supported to bring their lifesaving technology to market. And as you know, a lot of medical device companies come from maybe a doctor had an idea, right, that there's this unmet need and they need this device to come to market, but they don't have any business background or they don't know how to get device to market. And so there's a lot of mess that goes into the early days that a lot of service providers can't help these companies and get this medical technology to market and actually affect people's lives in a positive way.

And so for us, we wanted to humanize business development. We were seeing a trend where there's all these solutions that would give you lists of companies, lists of contacts, and then a way to just bulk email them or bulk spam them. And with a industry like MedTech and the community is so small, that doesn't really tend to work well, especially because you're talking to founders and CEOs that are passionate people that are looking to bring medical technology to help and enable patients and better their lives. So we wanted to create something that was a tool, yes, to help the salesperson and the marketing team in service provider companies to be able to identify the right companies to help at the right time. But we wanted a way for them to do it where it reflects the industry-wide belief of like, "hey, we're passionate people helping other people and that's our community." And so our tool was designed for that, right? That's what our philosophy is. That's how it was based around. We have this mission to bring humanity into MedTech business development. And we do so through suppliers.

Lindsey Dinneen: Love it. That's awesome. That is a very needed service that y'all provide, so I'm so glad that you are out there doing that work. And thank you for sharing about it because it's great to learn about the various resources that are available.

Kevin Saem: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Lindsey Dinneen: Well, I'm curious, is there a particular moment that stands out to you because it clearly confirmed that this was the right career path for you?

Kevin Saem: That's, that's a very tough question, Lindsey. For me to pick a time point in my life, honestly, I keep thinking back to a theme. I don't know if there's a particular moment, but I think there is a theme where, for me, I'm always looking for a way to create impact whether it's big or small, whether it reaches globally or it reaches my inner circle. That's always been my driving force of how can I do something that would benefit others around me in a positive way, and that would be long lasting? If I was gonna build something, it should be the best thing and it should do good. It's not enough to just do well. I think we should also focus on doing good. And so that's been my primary driver.

And so a particular moment in my life that I remember, this was back in my Cambodia days, from a very young age, I was always interested in building new things. So if I was presented with some sort of toy I would be disengaged really quickly because the toy was already built. I'm just playing with something like a finished product. I gravitated more towards building new toys out of clay, that was more my style. And so that theme just recurred. Like through research I was building out new projects, new process, I was developing new things. In this role as well, bringing a brand to market, you have to build things. And so that I think is in my DNA, that theme of creating impact through building new things.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Well, And I know you've talked quite a bit about the creating impact theme throughout your life, and I just love that. I think that has clearly shown throughout your career and the various different things that you've done. It seems like having that running theme is really helpful because it guides you as you maybe look towards the next thing or how do I go about this project? If your goal is creating impact, then you always have that guiding light and I think that's really valuable. So I'm curious, how has that affected your leadership philosophy, or is that part of the way that you interact with others including in a leadership capacity?

Kevin Saem: Yeah, that's a great question, Lindsey, and I think it, it does, it really does because in a leadership role I'm always looking to create positive, lasting impact as well for the people and for the business that I'm with. So it helps me to separate leadership from management in a way, if that makes sense.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah.

Kevin Saem: So for me, that helps me to put people at the heart of it all and then it manifests outside of that. So if you're leading a team of people you're constantly thinking and you got your worried hat on of like, "are these people being fulfilled? Is their work enriched? Are they doing well? Am I helping them unlock the next stages of their progression?" That type of stuff lives in my mind when I think about leadership. Essentially empowering people to do great things and helping them achieve their goals. I think that's what it's all about if you're serious about leadership.

Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, I love that. Oh, that's a great definition of leadership. Amazing. How do you prioritize your own continued learning and growing as a leader?

Kevin Saem: Yeah. That's also another great question. You're coming with the heavy hitters here. So, I just wanna take a step back. And I think two people that kind of help me understand what good leadership looks like. The first person was my PhD. supervisor professor, Jose Moran-Maribal. He had a way to approach leadership where it's like an extra layer of inclusion that he has in the back of his mind and his ability to help support his students was amazing. I learned passively just through watching. Another person that currently I report to actually, Pete, I respect as a leader and I emulate a lot of my thinking through these key figures and mentors. Throughout my career, I always have at every stage several mentors that I like to learn from, either passively or actively. And so I guess that's helped shape the meaning of what leadership looks like, and I use that to surround myself with those types of people.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. And so emulating has been a huge component in your own growth as a leader. Do you find that there are other resources that have helped you or continue to help you, or is looking towards those models of great leadership, is that primarily your source?

Kevin Saem: My source is actually in the people that I surround myself with. It's silly to say, but I think throughout my graduate school days I've really finally learned how to learn or how to ask questions the right way. And I guess to summarize that, it's how to think versus what to think. Leading up all the way to graduate school, you're told you know what to think. This is right, this is wrong. And then throughout my graduate school experience, I really understood the mechanisms of how to think.

And for me, my philosophy at continuous learning for leadership is trying to be the dumbest person in the room. It helps to protect me in a sneaky way where if you're the dumbest person in the room, you know there's only one direction, it's up, and you just learn so much. You just absorb everything, you soak everything in like a sponge. I learn things every day from the intelligent people that I have the opportunity to work with. And so yeah, I take that dumbest person in the room approach and ask tons of questions. That's the only way, I think, to really learn. And leadership is a funny thing where it's almost like trial by fire and you have to just go through it. You can read a lot of stuff-- obviously, I do read stuff-- but you kind of have to go through it and experience it and figure it out as you go and continuous process improvement along the way.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yes, absolutely. Yep. Great advice. Okay, just for fun, imagine someone were to offer you a million dollars to teach ambassador class on anything you want. It can be in your industry, but it doesn't have to be. What would you choose to teach and why?

Kevin Saem: Oh, there's so many bad answers to this and there's very few good answers to this question. I don't know if I am skilled enough to teach a quote unquote masterclass in anything, but if I were to pick one thing to teach, and this is probably another unconventional answer, it's probably the application of curiosity to fuel success in anything that you pursue. I think that's very underrated. As as a trait in people that are successful, I think they're intrinsically curious and they continue to be lifelong learners.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that answer. Yeah I absolutely agree with you. I had the good fortune when I was young, I was very curious and I was asking a lot of questions all the time. And I had an adult one time say to me, " You know, it's so good that you ask questions because then you'll always keep learning, so don't be embarrassed about it. Always keep asking those questions." And I'm so glad that someone thought to acknowledge that and point it out because it helped me retain that curiosity and not be afraid to be, like you said, the dumbest person in a room so that I could keep learning. So I love your advice. Curiosity is underrated and it's hugely important.

Kevin Saem: Yeah, absolutely, and I think there was a drastic contrast when I was going to school in Cambodia and when the country was in recovery, it was very authoritative interaction between students and teachers. It was seen as like the teachers know all the answers and you should just be quiet, right? And just absorb knowledge from this beacon of wisdom, so to speak. And I would get in trouble in class all the time, I would be sent home with notes saying, " your son is just a troublemaker. He is asking too many questions in class. He, he is disruptive." And they don't like challenges to what they know in that kind of culture at the time. I'm sure it's changed a lot now, now that it's more modernized as a country. But when I came here, I was very surprised as to how much encouragement in Canada and in North America as a whole to like question ideas and question what's right and what's wrong. And always be very inquisitive and almost skeptical of what's presented in front of you. And I really appreciate that philosophy over in North America.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Yeah, and that's really interesting perspective to have experienced both, so you can contrast and compare. What is the one thing you wish to be remembered for after you leave this world? I think I have a pretty good idea of your answer, but I'd still love to hear it from you.

Kevin Saem: Oh my gosh. I'd love to hear you guess.

Lindsey Dinneen: Okay. I'm gonna guess that it has a lot to do with impact in the various areas, whether it's personal or professional. But I will let you go into detail.

Kevin Saem: You got it. I think you summarize it pretty well. You know, being remembered for having created something or opportunities or memories that has changed the lives of those around me in a positive way, I think that's enough for me. I don't need much more than that.

Lindsey Dinneen: I love that. Absolutely love it. Okay, final question. What is one thing that makes you smile every time you see or think about it?

Kevin Saem: Oh, that's a good question also, and it's a good one to end off on. There's one fond memory and like I said, it's like life-ception. It's like a life in a life. When I was living in Cambodia versus here, you had to really mature quickly when you're living in a developed country. As a young child, you'll understand kinda the risks when you take a step outside. There's dangers all around you. You learn to be quite self-aware at an early age. And I just remember there was a relative that came from France to visit the country and they brought a pair of roller skates back. And this was like a size 10 and we're like eight years old. And there's a group of just street kids playing around on the rooftops and stuff cuz we had concrete buildings with flat rooftops and that's where all the kids would hang out.

And there's like about 10 of us and we remember just, we had a pair of roller skates and we were just taking turns using one each, actually, cause we didn't know how to ride roller skates. We're each just taking turns using one roller skate and just having the best time of our lives. And that reminds me of this, I guess, mantra that I have in my mind of " it's not about what you have, it's about who you share it with" and it's like that part of my life, we didn't have much, but we were so happy. We didn't know that there was anything outside of that. And so it's all about perspective, I think, and that's the memory that comes back to me that makes me smile every time. And I don't think anything else matters once you have things like that, that type of experience.

Lindsey Dinneen: Yeah. Oh, I love that story that I'm just smiling thinking about it too. Thank you so much for joining us, Kevin. I just really appreciate your perspective and advice and bringing such a powerful background to the industry. I'm so thankful for the work that you do. We are honored to be making a donation on your behalf as a thank you for your time today to Save The Children, which works to end the cycle of poverty by ensuring communities have the resources to provide children with a healthy, educational and safe environment. That was the organization that Kevin chose to support. So thank you so much for your time and thank you for all of your great quotable quotes.

Kevin Saem: Quotable. Yeah. No, thank you, Lindsey, for putting all this together. I think what you're doing is incredible. I think you're highlighting the other side of MedTech, right, that is probably less technical, but is just as important. And I think you'd know, as better as I know, that storytelling is a big part of passing on knowledge and sharing with the community. And our community is so small that I think this is gonna really help bring us all together, especially coming outside of a pandemic years. This is a great, refreshing podcast.

Lindsey Dinneen: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that feedback and yeah, that is the hope. It was so fun earlier when you were talking about bringing the humanity into MedTech, I just had to smile 'cause I was like, "there you go." We're very aligned.

Kevin Saem: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

Lindsey Dinneen: Oh man. Again, thank you so very much. We just wish you continued success as you work to change lives for a better world. I know that impact is really important to you, and I know that you're gonna continue to make an impact on the world, so thank you. And thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and if you're feeling as inspired as I am right now, I'd love it if you'd share this episode with a colleague or two, and we will catch you next time.

The Leading Difference podcast is brought to you by Velentium.

Velentium is a contract design and manufacturing firm specializing in the development, production and post-market support of diagnostic and therapeutic active medical devices, including implantables and wearables for neuromodulation and other class three indications.

Velentium's core competencies include electrical design, mechanical design, embedded software, mobile apps, contract manufacturing, embedded cybersecurity, OT cybersecurity, systems engineering, human factors and usability, and automated test systems.

Velentium works with clients worldwide from startups seeking seed funding to established Fortune 100 companies.

Visit velentium.com to explore your next step in medical device development.

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