Episode 11 | Sabotaged and Still Building (Klaus Weinberger)

Christian: If I had met you 20 years ago, what would you have thought that healthcare looked like today?

Klaus: Difficult question. I think I would have been more optimistic than I am today in certain aspects. But then on the other hand, we achieved quite a lot technologically, not always process related, but technologically at least. Mixed feelings. I would have predicted that all these functional genomics technologies would have had more impact or at least have their impact more quickly.

But now looking back, 20 years, say 26, then it's the year when the human genome draft was published. And there was this famous news conference in the Oval Office and Bill Clinton was there and pronouncing that all the major lifestyle related diseases would be a matter of the past very quickly, because now we understand how humans work. And of course that didn't turn out to be the case. So there were some humble learnings on the way as well.

Christian: So is there some sense of disappointment that I hear?

Klaus: No, no, I don't think it's disappointment. I would rather call it humility. It's rather the humility or the understanding that biology is so much more complex than we always tend to think when we have a new tool in our hands, and we should never underestimate that.

In the time when I was educated, we had a whole bunch of people who were publishing in journals like the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and where people were thinking a set of differential equations is eventually doing the trick. And it simply didn't work out that way. It's not like having a sequence and then predicting everything on top of that is a straightforward process.

And in many ways, I think it's a very similar situation nowadays where we think now we have these very mighty AI-based tools, but I think it's the same situation. We overestimate the actual impact and may have to learn the hard way that it still needs a lot of actual evidence to support all these systems.

Christian: Staying in that time, 20, 26 years ago, who were you back then? I mean, you were a scientist. What was important to you this time?

Klaus: I was a scientist. I was working at the university, but also for the WHO. We had the lucky situation that we had the WHO Reference Center for Viral Hepatitis in our group, which made us a little more independent from the rest of the institute. It was a huge clinical virology institute, actually. 180 people on the payroll. So a massive organization in comparison to many other academic settings.

But we could really focus on what was going on in our minds and where we saw the biggest impact or at least the chance for translation. One other important learning happened at that time. We developed and also implemented one of the first diagnostically used real-time PCR assays. We had one of the first TaqMan systems in Europe.

And both myself, I mean, I can apologize, I was young and stupid, but also my academic supervisor never even thought about spelling the word patent or anything like that. So we published that assay. It was widely used in many diagnostic labs, commercial diagnostic labs, in blood banks and so forth. And we never made a dime of it. So that was probably the most important learning. It's a present to the public. Why everything else afterwards had to work out in biotech companies instead of in academia.

Christian: So what did this lesson do with you?

Klaus: Well, it gave me, I think it gave me the entrepreneurial spirit. In what way? Not just because I wanted to earn money with what I'm doing. I mean, that's not the main driver. It's a nice side effect, of course, but it's not the main driver. But it really told me that if you want to reach a wider distribution for what you're developing, this very rarely happens in academic settings.

Of course, I can remember we probably reached, I don't know, a dozen blood banks, maybe something between 10 and 20 commercial diagnostic labs with that assay. But it's not a universal standard. It's not something that is distributed worldwide and actually pushed by a commercial distribution organization. And I think we would have had much more impact if we tried to look for a diagnostic company as a partner organization, anything like that.

Christian: Probably it's easier these times because you get more exposure to the different business models, partnering tools right now. Maybe it's also the experience that you have right now. But let us keep that topic for a little bit later. What I'm trying to understand is, was there a specific moment when you realized that better knowledge or better technology doesn't automatically translate into better science, but also into better decisions?

Klaus: That came a little later, I would say. I was already in the biotech community. I was already developing products for the market. We came up with this concept, you know about that, with this concept of standardized sample prep and analytical procedures for what was then pretty new, metabolism, metabolomics, targeted metabolomics at that. So targeted workflows that only generate quantitative data sets, essentially. And we had established that as an R&D tool for the pharmaceutical industry, essentially.

And we made money with that and that was nice and dandy. But then we were more and more concerned with the pathway of getting that into the clinical routine, which seemed straightforward. Everybody was so convinced that the content, that the information that these assays deliver, were so close to an actual biochemical phenotype. Everybody bought that story, but not everybody bought the products that came with that story, unfortunately.

And so when we tried to figure out what a first actual diagnostic product, an IVD, not an RUO, what an actual IVD product could look like, we talked to a lot of opinion leaders. We did our homework in terms of market research. And I vividly remember we were in Boston and talked to the head of the ICU of a major research hospital there. You can guess which one that is.

And we were trying to pitch the idea of having a metabolic signature to, first of all, early detect warning signs of sepsis and then probably even distinguish between different strains or different bacterial genera that would cause the sepsis. And we were there and the first thing he said was, look, in our routine work, and I mean, this is not some country hospital, this is MGH. In our routine work, we don't wait for any lab results.

We don't even use procalcitonin on a routine basis. And that was kind of the big thing in sepsis diagnostics at the time. And that was really kind of disillusioning to say, well, two-tenths of a degree on body temperature are more important, because then everybody rushes in and they start broadband antibiotics, no matter what a more detailed lab result would ever look like. And we didn't do that product in the end, I should say that.

Christian: Well, one explanation could also be you build something that the market didn't need at this time or the market didn't want.

Klaus: That is probably true. That's something I'm teaching a lot of entrepreneurship courses by now, almost as many as I do science classes. And of course, that's the big thing that we always tell potential founders first, even when they just come in to be mentored. That's always the big thing. Well, product market fit, or a lack of product market fit, is of course the big hurdle and the most common reason for startup projects to fail.

But then, and of course I understand that and I teach that and I support that notion, but the point is, sometimes you have new scientific insights and you're too early for the market, but you still believe that that could make a big impact and you need to go and educate your markets. It's against all the business school teachings, of course. But sometimes, if you're really convinced, somebody has to do it. Otherwise, there is no actual progress.

Christian: Is the technology not good enough or is it human behavior that is not aligned?

Klaus: Yeah, exactly. It's difficult to know that up front, of course. Sometimes you can seem to be just stubborn and hold on to your ideas, even if nobody wants them. But sometimes you may have a situation where you may actually be right and then you need to have that conviction and see it through to the end.

The problem is, in a setting where you need venture capital financing or anything like that, hardly anybody is patient enough to see that through. Maybe that is part of the story why some scientifically solid innovations really don't make it to the market, or at least not quickly enough.

Christian: Is there something you would have loved to do differently looking back on that episode?

Klaus: Not on that particular panel. We had a couple, and then in the end we worked on steroid hormones instead of the sepsis markers and we got the first IVD registered metabolomics kit out. And in the end, I was happy with that decision. Would I have done something differently?

I think in the whole story of, and I mean, you know what company I'm talking about, in the whole story of these early days of metabolomics, we would have needed more focus. We had a very diverse team of founders and everybody brought their interests and often it took us a long time to figure out where the train was really going.

This is something, and I was involved in company setups afterwards, one of the most important things that I tried to implement every time was everybody needs to be on board with one vision and one mission statement and one idea of where the crow is flying, actually.

With that first company, it seemed like a very attractive setting to have these very renowned co-founders and they all had kind of complementary skill sets and political relationships and all that stuff. And we even had a big company on board. They were running the university hospital in Innsbruck at the time, and they even had a very well-established research center, which was very attractive and inspiring.

But then in the end, it was difficult to get their individual commitments to a point where they would really contribute to the actual progress in everyday work. But you have to learn. You have to learn the hard way sometimes.

Christian: You've been involved in teams, setting up teams, in team setups very early, very early after your scientific career, after your scientific academic episode. I'm wondering, is there a wisdom on your side?

Klaus: Yeah. I'm not speaking on some statistical basis. It's anecdotal evidence, of course. I didn't have that situation like a hundred times, and then I can come up with percentages or anything. But I had two very formative experiences, at least for myself, that make me believe now that personal chemistry is really important for the efficiency with which a team follows its goals.

And one was with an employee, and he was a database manager, database administrator in our company. And we had at least a year, year and a half or so where we weren't quite okay with the performance. He wasn't quite okay with the way we viewed his performance. And then in the end, we had to let him go.

And on the last day when he worked in the company, he scrambled the database of all our patient samples and patient lab results as a farewell message. Now, in the end, we kind of found a way out of that. He agreed. And it was actually just a coincidence that I found out, because I worked on data from a couple of patients where I actually remembered the IDs. That's all anonymized data.

But I remembered some of the IDs. And I found that this did not match at all what I knew about these samples. And then we went back and we compared timestamps and all that stuff. And we found out that the scrambling had happened. There was a high likelihood we never found out about that, and we would have generated just crap results for the longest time afterwards. But we found out.

And then we went back to him and said, look, if you restore the database, because we didn't find out exactly what he had done, then we won't press legal charges. And in the end, he agreed to that. So he walked free. And we had our intact database back.

So yeah, the lesson that came with that is really, if you feel that something isn't working, of course, it's always worth putting an effort in and trying to get along with people. But if you see it doesn't work, end it before it can cause a major issue. Well, in this case, we were simply trying too long. And in the end, the fronts on both sides were so hardened that it simply didn't work out anymore.

Christian: What are the patterns there? What are the patterns that leaders tend to ignore?

Klaus: I think many leaders, and I would count myself there as well, at least at that time, believe that it's part of their qualification that they can make things work with everybody, at least on a professional level. It is a manager's performance to make things work with everyone, even if it's difficult. And by now, I wouldn't subscribe to that idea anymore. By now, of course, you can make something work, but you won't be at peak efficiency.

Neither you as the manager nor somebody working for you in a team. If the chemistry doesn't fit and if you don't like other people, you're not putting every last bit of effort into your project. I'm highly convinced of that by now. Of course, if you look for somebody for your team, excellence is important and experience is important, everything.

But the gut feeling about whether this can work with this person on a daily level is just as important. In a startup, particularly in a startup where everybody needs to wear different hats and has to cover for all the gaps that are there, and there are always gaps, it's important that the motivation is intrinsic, not just incentivized by, I could make a lot of money in 20 years when we have a product in the market. That's not enough.

Christian: Yeah. What do you think about ego? Ego of leaders who think of themselves, I'm the best in hiring. I'm the best in pitch. I'm picking the right candidates. And after six months, it turns out, well, it's not a good one. It would automatically, I mean, it seems like it will automatically negate their ability to pick the right people.

Klaus: Do you know of anybody who can do everything right all the time? Nobody can. Nobody can. You can have a high likelihood, of course. That's your performance indicator. But you can't always pick the right person. You can't always predict how team dynamics develop. I think the major qualification is being able to admit that you were wrong. But isn't that something that you would always have in a management situation?

I mean, actually, you don't see that right now. I have a black sheep back there on my desk, just a stuffed one, a black sheep on my desk, and the main point is, whoever in the team screws something up comes and fetches the black sheep and puts it on their desk to say, look, I screwed up and I'm sorry for that. Most of the time it's on my desk. The more responsibility, the more chance you have to screw something up.

Christian: It's good. It's valuable. It's also playful and not that serious.

Klaus: Yes, I think you're absolutely right. The ego aspect is a very important factor here. And I can't see how a leader who always pretends to be infallible could work efficiently in the long run. That can work for a while, can be fascinating maybe as a personality, but I don't think it will work in the long run.

Christian: Let's make your wisdom a little bit more practical for a moment. If a founder met you at a conference and said, Klaus, how should I build my team? What would you tell them?

Klaus: That there is no simple recipe. First of all, a single founder doesn't work usually. You know that. There's hardly an investor who would put money into a startup with a single founder just for risk mitigation reasons. The second point is, of course, first of all, the skill sets must be there. You must have complementary skill sets as much as possible. You have to cover all your bases.

There's only so much you can really cover just with advisory roles. In the end, some of the, or at least most of the questions, core knowledge and know-how and strategy and so forth must be within the actual management team. So I firmly believe that.

There are more and more situations, and you probably know about that, where we see funds, for instance, set up venture builder systems where they take all of that commercial and administrative burden off the scientific founders and try to guide them. I'm not 100% sure that everybody's built for that, to be honest. Sometimes I think it really needs this bond between a founding team to really share all the hardships as well.

Because there will be hardships, no matter how successful something looks. But that was mainly about finding your co-founders or choosing the right co-founder. As far as the team that you will manage goes, it's actually a repetition of what we talked about before. They need to be excellent, of course. There is this old saying, A's hire A's and B's hire C's.

So if you consider yourself an A, hire A pluses, hire people that know more than you, because otherwise you don't gain anything. It's always a huge risk if you try to maintain your superiority. This is exaggerated. But if you try to be the king of the hill by only hiring dumb wits, that doesn't get you anywhere, obviously. That's the most obvious one.

But then I think the second aspect of trying to see whether you can build a working team, whether you can build this bond, not just with your founders, with your co-founders, but also between the team members. I think that's just as important as the objective.

Christian: In my LinkedIn bubble, I have many comments or many, many posts where people say likability cannot be such an important issue because if you just hire by likability, you will avoid true diversification. I'm not sure.

Klaus: I'm not sure either. Of course, if you only hire people who you would consider your social bubble, everybody just agrees on everything. That may be great for a private partnership. I pretty much live that example in my marriage. My wife is an immunologist by training. We have very similar views on the current vaccine situation and everything. In a private situation, I find this very comforting.

Actually, it's a main reason why I think I work well to have that background. In a company, of course, somebody needs to make the difficult calls. Somebody needs to identify the issues. And as I said, in an early stage company, you never cover all the bases. You never have enough money. You never have enough time. And so somebody needs to point that out.

The actual issue, in my opinion, is not to identify the issues, but how to deal with them. And once an issue is identified, either everybody gets together and says, we can do that together, or there is a chronic naysayer. There is a chronic bad attitude guy in the room who spoils the mood for everybody else. And that is what does not work. As you know, we talked about that.

We had a situation like that as well in a previous company of mine, where two members of the supervisory board brought a third member of the executive board onto the company against the explicit opinion of both existing members. And he was the classical example of always seeing the glass half empty. He clearly had a mental situation or predisposition where he could only see the problems and not the potential solutions. It cost us at least two years or so of development time to overcome.

Christian: Wow, wow. But how did the investors react?

Klaus: Well, in the end, they kicked him out very swiftly once we had another general assembly. But it took them a very long time. Actually, to this day I still don't understand what they saw there. The guy was in a legal court case with his previous company at the time, and we got some opinions from people who knew him before and they all told us the same story.

I'm not a psychologist, I can't make a diagnosis, but there was a psychological situation here, and I really don't understand what happened at the time.

Christian: Let's create a learning of this. Let's create a learning. What's the good part of it?

Klaus: Well, the main learning afterwards was we should have, my co-board member and I, we should have been much more forceful in making our opinion heard. One of the two supervisory board members who pushed for that third person so strongly was actually the representative of the main investor. And so we tried to maintain a peaceful relationship with him, of course. We were in a situation where we needed another financing round every other year or so.

And so we didn't want to be too brisk. And then he also tried to do some moderating meetings with the three of us and get us to talk to each other. But every time we did something like that, the gap just widened. And we should have called an end to that much earlier. We were in a crucial situation, just that transition that I mentioned before between purely RUO applications and an actual in vitro diagnostic setting.

And it cost us not just time but also a lot of money to just deal with these internal hiccups.

Christian: Have you seen that investors evolved into a more cooperative collaboration with startups already? I think this is a very conservative, old way of governance, of working together. I give the money, I decide who comes to the company. What I've seen right now, there are many younger investors on the board, trying to have a very cooperative way of building the C-level. What's your experience here?

Klaus: No, no, I fully agree. And I wouldn't make that a general description of the situation at the time either. In many ways, we were very lucky with the pick of the lead investor. They were pretty patient. They stayed with us even when things got fairly difficult. There was a hiccup after I left the operational role. There was a big hiccup with a merger.

We took over a daughter company of one of the largest German chemical companies, and the due diligence was quite obviously not done as diligently as it should have been. And so afterwards we saw that there was not enough value in that acquisition to really keep it. And that was a major financial issue for the company as well. And in this situation, the investors were actually pretty calm.

We had a down round in the end, but still they stayed with us. So it's not like I'm saying they played a bad role. It was one staff decision that was really a hiccup. But then again, also a board member doesn't take all the right decisions all the time.

Christian: How do we distinguish between conviction and stubbornness, not letting go? Maybe in other situations, right?

Klaus: I really don't know. As I said initially, some of the developments that we're looking at in the whole biomedical field, particularly, you know, I have a focus on diagnostics and vaccines, and many of the developments in that field are just much too slow for my liking. And so you have to be stubborn to a certain degree in order to make things happen in the end.

Of course, that means that in some cases, and I'm involved in some startups in a business situation and so forth, and also as a co-founder, sometimes that means you're burning money because you believe in an idea, and in the end you have to admit it doesn't work out. Part of the game. But in order to get a few things right, you have to accept that you will do a couple of things wrong as well.

That cannot, that must not keep you from following things that you are, or ideas that you are really convinced of.

Christian: So you're talking about patience, you're talking about perfection, not letting yourself down by your own belief that you shouldn't make mistakes.

Klaus: Yeah, no, no, you always make mistakes, of course. The point is, sometimes you're the only one who knows your story so well that you can actually try and convince other people that this is the way to go. If you're not convinced enough to be prepared to go that way, you shouldn't found a company about the story. I think so.

Christian: You said you're working as business angel, you said you're working as co-founder, investor, scientific advisor, also with the Helge and Edwin Hartle Foundation, I think. Are you looking particularly for that conviction in founders, in leaders? Are you asking them to show their conviction? How do you do that?

Klaus: It's also just gut feeling. I can't predict how people will react if, years down the track, there is a difficult situation and they're asked to make personal sacrifices, and every founder hits that point at one time. But at least if I'm talking to people that I want to work with, I want to feel their conviction in a very convincing way. I want them to burn for their ideas.

If the main motivation is, well, I'm not happy with my university salary and now let's try to find a different way, then go into a different industry. Most life science topics develop so slowly and they cost so much money in the development phase. If you think about a new drug candidate, chances are you will never see that on the market under your own management, of course. You will have to out-license, you have to be able to let go at that point.

Christian: That's an important point. That's a very important point.

Klaus: First you need to burn for the idea, otherwise you don't put everything in.

Christian: So what's the blueprint? You just mentioned it. You burn for the idea, you develop it to a certain point, and then you have to let go because you're not able to develop the next phase. That's painful, I think.

Klaus: Yeah. Actually, I thought about that. We sold one company, as you know, last year.

Christian: Yes, congrats. After a long time. Tell me about it.

Klaus: Mixed feelings. After a long time. There would have been technological alternatives that might have been a better fit for the product portfolio, without saying too much in terms of technical details. There would have been other companies where the fit of the instruments and the consumables probably would have worked better. But that's a different story. I'm happy with the outcome.

But the point is, that was not a tough goodbye, surprisingly, because what I see now is, I go to conferences and to trade fairs, and now there's a big company showing the products that I helped develop, that I co-invented and helped develop, and distributed much more widely than before. So that's actually a happy notion. What was difficult for me personally was when I stepped out of the operational leadership role.

With that first company, it was after something like nine years or so. We had the first four generations of kit products in the market. But then I got a very attractive offer to get into late stage vaccine development. And that was my second academic anchor. And I took that job and it was successful in the end. So I had no regrets.

But leaving the first baby that you were bringing to existence, leaving that first baby was much tougher than now selling it.

Christian: Does it help if you explain the story to new founders? Would it help you if somebody told you, well, this is the usual path? I don't know. You have to go through.

Klaus: I think to a certain degree, you have to make your own experience. I doubt that there are too many personal stories that repeat themselves. But of course, part of the consulting role, part of the mentoring role that I'm also doing here at the Health Hub in Innsbruck. Now we have a couple of very young, crazy, dedicated, innovative founding teams here in the building.

And part of the mentoring for them is to try and avoid easy mistakes, of course. Like looking at the composition of the founding team, like focusing on a lead product idea instead of going everywhere and then trying to mitigate the risk within the company and stuff like that. Or avoiding the setup of a quality management system for too long and then repeating all of the busy work under proper documentation later on.

So there is stuff that you can give the next generation. There is stuff that you can pass on. But with these personal stories, I think they are more anecdotal than textbook style wisdom that you can pass on. But maybe it makes the relationship a little more personal. I think that's actually something that can work.

If you're working with an early stage team, and I'm in a lucky situation, some of them have been my students before, and then I'm extremely proud of these guys, of course. But if they see that there are these hiccups and these issues in my past, it makes it much easier for me to relate to them or for them to relate to me and see this is not just somebody who has a standard book of rules, but this is somebody with a past and with learnings from personal failures or successes.

Christian: Oh, yes. And it makes it more credible. Yeah, I think so. You're still involved in so many activities, startups, advisory roles. You just mentioned. Why?

Klaus: I haven't started asking myself that question yet. Well, let me think about a couple of answers. First of all, it's fun. I have kind of the liberty to do what I enjoy, at least within some boundaries. And it's great fun. The second part is, I'm still convinced that there is a lot of science and a lot of evidence and a lot of innovation that would not make it to the patient if we didn't try and create the commercial setting for that to work out.

There is hardly anything that really makes it from a purely academic environment to the market. Exceptions granted, but usually you need to set up a company situation for that. And the main point is, I believe there are still huge unmet needs and gaps in our current tools for disease management. I think we have a huge disbalance between the money we spend on diagnostics and the money we spend on therapeutics development.

And so I'm just motivated because I think I can still make a difference. I feel in a shape where I can still share a little of the workload. And so why wouldn't I do it? And the third part is probably curiosity about interesting innovations. And that applies both for my teaching and for my company related activities.

If I want to explain a technology, a method, any kind of science or technology to somebody else, I need to understand that more deeply than if I read it up just for my own curiosity. If I want to teach about something in a lecture for advanced students, I need to think that through to the very end. And that's part of my curiosity to stay up to date with what's going on.

And the same goes if you want to explain something to a client, to a customer. If you want to clearly describe the benefits of a new technology, you have to be fully on top of that. And that's a challenge that I still seek.

Christian: Very nice. You said something that's very important. Maybe we can focus a little bit on that, the diagnostic and therapeutic market. There's a disproportional difference in funding and in attention. Tell me more about that.

Klaus: Yeah, that's something that's really making me crazy, to be honest. Very basic statement first. There are many indications, clinical situations, where early diagnosis may lead to prevention, may lead to better disease management, may lead to more efficient treatments. And that is not just true in the obvious case of oncology. That's probably the most striking example, right?

We spend a huge amount of money on developing cancer drugs and then on buying them and using them in a clinical setting. And many of those just give the patient a couple more weeks or months of puking. Of course, the point is that many of those, most of them, are not curative, they're not even intended to be curative, but they prolong suffering.

And we spend a lot of money on developing them and on buying them for the patient. And of course, I'm not saying don't treat end stage cancer patients. But the point is, if we spent the same amount on developing early stage cancer diagnostics, we would probably make more use of a very simple curative strategy or therapeutic intervention. And that is, take a scalpel and cut the whole damn thing out.

Most cancers that you find in stage one and that can be surgically removed have a brilliant long term survival rate. And therefore, I think that's the most striking, but not the only example of this disbalance. We really need to make up our minds whether we can find a strategy to make the diagnostics market more attractive, because there is plenty of science.

But if many investors with very deep pockets tell you, I wouldn't touch an IVD project, not even with my gloves on, this is risky, this takes a long time and it has low return, then you can't be surprised that this isn't working. Actually, a very similar situation as with antimicrobial resistance. Most of the big pharma companies simply don't see a business case in a new antibiotic, and we would need that so direly.

So I think it's not just between diagnostics and therapeutics, it's a disbalance between the actual unmet needs and the way we distribute funding and financing.

Christian: What kind of future do you wish? Healthcare, I mean, we are in the middle of Europe. What kind of healthcare do you wish for the next 15 years?

Klaus: Most of what we just said is actually going in that direction. I can really see a future where high resolution diagnostics, actually a pretty broad biochemical phenotype of the individual, will be part of the standard procedure. It will be difficult to implement that. The point is, of course, it's initially additional spending, and maybe the same politicians and the same managers of healthcare systems will no longer be in their office when the payback comes. But in the end, I think this must happen, otherwise our healthcare systems simply become unfinanceable.

Christian: Is preventive medicine something that you envision?

Klaus: Of course. But this is just one aspect. It all comes down to the quality of the diagnostic workflow and to the information that you generate there. And sometimes this will lead to proper prevention. Sometimes this will lead to just a better stratification of the patient population and a more informed choice of the therapeutic approach. But it all comes down to having these data available to start with.

And then actually, I'm really worried about the whole antimicrobial resistance thing. I was involved with a big research network in Bavaria, and I know how many very interesting and promising and groundbreaking technological ideas there are, and I see hardly any of them receiving the funding and the financing that they need to bring something like that to the market. So it's a very similar story as with the diagnostics.

On a more, well, not even regulatory, more commercial note, we certainly need to get our act together in terms of harmonizing reimbursement schemes. I'm actually not so worried about the other regulatory hurdles. Everybody is complaining about the IVDR must be revised and the MDR must be revised and everything. Yes, of course we overshot a little, but eventually this will work out just fine. I'm not mainstream here.

I think high quality standards can also be just a seal of excellence and can eventually be a USP on the global market. So I'm not so worried there. But seeing how difficult it is to understand what the reimbursement for a new product can actually be like, and then finding out in medical devices, in diagnostics, then finding out that it's 20 different situations in Germany and another 100 throughout Europe and so forth, that can be very discouraging for anybody who brings a new product.

Christian: Yes, thank you for pointing that out. Before wrapping this up, I'm trying to understand, in your personal life, is there something small that makes your day instantly better that you may use or do?

Klaus: That's a tough one, actually. I had a very important experience roughly 10 years ago when a very dear friend, a close friend, suffered from a brain hemorrhage. And she was at the airport in Munich, broke down, and was lucky enough that people were there around her, got her into intensive care very quickly. She survived after half a year in coma. And that was a real wake-up call for me.

I decided I don't need crazy things to be excited about or to celebrate. I celebrate every single day. I try to enjoy every single day. I'm sitting here, I'm looking out of the window, there are snow-capped mountains and a little sun on it, and that's already enough to make me go. So of course seeing young teams and trying to pass on some experience to them, that's what's actually giving me the big kick.

But I try to enjoy the small things as well. I think that's really important. It's called intrinsic motivation, right? To give yourself a positive setting whenever you can.

Christian: I love that. Thank you very much.

Klaus: Great conversation. Very welcome. It was fun to be here. Thank you, Christian.