How Richard J. Linder Founded Xenter: And melded digital and medical technologies to create "smart" medical devices.

• Author: Linder, Richard J.

"HE MAY NOT MAKE IT ANOTHER DAY."

I wasn't fully alert when the doctors gave that bad news to my wife, Marla. At the time, I was in an ICU battling a life-threatening illness that I had been fighting for several years.

I had lived a good life and had an amazing spouse for over 20 years with five great kids in our family. And by all accounts, I had had a pretty successful career, having built and sold two medical device companies and was now leading a third.

But that was all about to come to an inglorious end; at least, that's what the physicians were telling my wife.

Thankfully, that God-like prognostication proved inaccurate. In fact, although I now go through life without pancreatic function and no spleen, it was that moment (and the moments leading up to it) that put me where I am today as founder, CEO, and chairman of Xenter[TM].

THE BEGINNING: MERIT MEDICAL TO STARTING MY FIRST COMPANY

Although I was born in northern Virginia and spent my earliest years in the shadow of Washington, D.C., I moved with my mother and siblings to Utah after my parents divorced in 1983.

After high school, I attended Ricks College for a brief time, then continued at Brigham Young University before moving on to the University of Utah. When I first met my future wife, Marla, I was head over heels in love with this beautiful girl from Texas, and she's supported me in doing the things I've done in my career. Over the years, I have traveled the world, often working seven days a week for two months straight. Thankfully, Marla was very patient, accommodating, and encouraging.

Merit Medical was my first real job out of the U. When I started at Merit, I was very impressed with the way CEO Fred Lampropoulos motivated his people. Back then, I didn't know much about medicine at all. Everything I learned in the early days about interventional radiology labs, interventional suites, or cardiac catheter labs I learned at Merit Medical.

I started Rubicon Medical in 1996, but I didn't have any money.

I wondered, "How is this young, driven individual going to go out and build a company when he doesn't know venture capital, he doesn't know a lot of the physicians, and he doesn't have physician contacts?"

So I literally had to learn on the job. I could recall a lot of the things I had seen Fred do, but I didn't have the benefit of climbing the ladder of a big company--going from organizational development to sales, or from sales to marketing, or marketing to clinical, all the varied leadership roles that would give me a well-rounded perspective of the business.

GETTING A CALL FROM USC

The first thing we did at Rubicon was contract manufacturing of medical device sub-assemblies for other companies, something I had experienced at Merit.

One day I got a call from the tech transfer office at the University of Southern California (USC), and they asked, "Have you heard of embolic protection?" I had not.

They said they'd like me to build an embolic protection device for carotid artery stent procedures--essentially an occlusive balloon on a guidewire. I said, "Great, I'll come down and take a look at it." So I went down and met with the physician inventor and the tech transfer team at USC. That was around 1997/1998.

As I learned about embolic protection in the carotid artery stenting field, I found it absolutely...