DeviceTalks Q & A: Verb Surgical CEO Scott Huennekens

Few CEOs have been given the mandate Scott Huennekens was charged with as employee No. 1 at Verb Surgical, the robotics spinout backed by Google (NSDQ:GOOG) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ): Go forth and change the world. “Don’t worry about capital, don’t worry about funding,” Huennekens told MassDevice.com publisher Brian Johnson recently. “Just go out and change the world.” Many CEOs might find that daunting. Then again, most CEOs don’t have a $400 million war chest and the backing of 2 of the world’s most innovative companies. And, as you’ll find out in this interview, Huennekens may not be your average CEO, having been involved in medical device startups for some 20 years. His previous company, Volcano, was acquired by Philips in 2015 for more than $1.2 billion. Huennekens also discusses the mission at Verb Surgical to change the way surgery is performed and how their solution is less a product than a platform. Below are the highlights, edited for clarity, of our chat with Huennekens at the DeviceTalks West event Dec. 12, 2016 in Newport Beach, Calif.: Brian Johnson: Let’s talk about Verb Surgical. I think it touches on so many things that fascinate us. First, it’s the collaboration between Google and Johnson & Johnson, and it deals with robotic surgery. It’s hitting all these awesome buzzwords. In [an earlier] discussion we talked about 1 of the premises that Verb Surgical is built upon, that there are something ...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tags: DeviceTalks Q&A Robot-Assisted Surgery Wall Street Beat Alphabet Google Inc. Johnson & Johnson Medtronic Verb Surgical Volcano Corp. Source Type: news