From Medtech to Public Safety: A Category Reframe That Worked

0:00Katerina Miras:We're really this public safety technology company that's rethinking the most important 10 minutes of your life.

0:05Andres Figueira:Did you have a hard time or did you have to think about how to market this in order to get the people to understand?

0:11Katerina Miras:We're not just a box on a wall. We're a connected ecosystem. This white device is the defibrillation device. What we innovated is this black part. The system here is what gives us the innovation and allows us to do more frequent updates.

0:25Andres Figueira:There must have been some doubts at the beginning, but the way that you're mentioning that you were able to create this organic acceptance of the product.

0:32Katerina Miras:Yes, this device can be used by everyone. Yes, we want everyone to feel this approachability. But what I would say from a marketing standpoint is you don't want to be everything to everyone. You want to be something to someone.

0:46Andres Figueira:Hey, everybody. Thank you for tuning in. My name is Andres Figueira, and I'm going to be your host for the day. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, helping fast-growing teams hire exceptional remote talent from Argentina, South Africa, and beyond. We connect companies with world-class professionals who bring skill, reliability, and a global perspective to every role. And if your team is looking to expand and maybe hire through the Global Talent Company, just make sure to head on over to theglobaltalent.co, click Start Hiring, and then just get in touch with us. And with that said, I am here speaking today with Katerina Miras, VP of Marketing at Avive Solutions, a venture-backed medtech company that has developed an award-winning next-generation automated defibrillator and software solutions in an effort to significantly increase survival rates from sudden cardiac arrest.

1:37Andres Figueira:So with that said, Katerina, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. How are you doing today?

1:42Katerina Miras:And it's such a pleasure as well. Thank you for having me. Super excited to dive in and discuss all the great things that we're doing here at Avive Solutions.

1:50Andres Figueira:I love that. And I must say that we're also very excited from this side as well, since MedTech is always a super interesting industry to talk to. And just to understand a bit more, Caterina, and get the audience a bit more in context, would you be able to tell us your background, what you do at Avive Solutions and what Avive Solutions is in your own words?

2:10Katerina Miras:Yeah, absolutely. I think let's actually start there. You mentioned MedTech. We entered into the space MedTech, but I think our company has taken a little bit of a shift. So the way we think about ourselves, Andres, is we're really this public safety technology company that's rethinking the most important 10 minutes of your life, right? So the moment when time stops, your heart stops, the clock starts, and we're thinking about this as sudden cardiac arrest, not just as a healthcare issue, but really a public safety problem. So what we're building are solutions that sort of intersect 911 with public safety, with health sort of outcomes.

2:46Katerina Miras:Because saving a life really doesn't start when EMS arrives. It actually starts moments when someone collapses. And we know that every minute or what I want you guys all to take away with today is every minute that goes by, you are a 7 % to 10 % decrease in surviving sudden cardiac arrest. So time is everything, literally everything. And to be clear, we're not here to replace EMS, right? We're here to support them. So in fact, we sort of have this deep respect for incredible work EMS sort of does. And they're one of our key audiences, right? Verticals that we sell into, that we partner with. But the truth is they're understaffed, right?

3:23Katerina Miras:They're overworked. They're carrying a weight of every kind of emergency call from trauma to transport. And the system isn't broken because of the people. It's actually strained because of the pressure. So here at Avive, right, we want to bridge the gap. We want to get help faster before EMS can even arrive on scene. We want to sort of be the buffer of response powered by connectivity. And you'll hear me say this, connected citizens, smarter technology, so that when first responders do arrive on scene, you know, you actually have what you need when you need it and in a timely manner. So, yes, we entered into the space.

4:01Katerina Miras:Funny enough, the birth of our AED was actually a capstone design project at MIT by some of our co-founders. And they wanted to achieve three things. The first, it's got to be a small device, easily accessible anywhere. The second, it should be connected to 911. And the third, how can this device be less intimidating? I'll kind of hold it up here for you so you can see. Yes, it's small. It's approachable. It sort of looks like the devices we know here, a touchscreen device. And we want it to be approachable and not intimidating because this is literally the most stressful moment of your life. Someone has collapsed before you.

4:37Katerina Miras:What do you do? But a little bit about me as well. I think I didn't take the traditional path into tech. If we have a few minutes, I'm happy to walk you through. It's kind of a fun story to share. For sure, for sure. I actually have a master's degree in our history, right? I was on a fast track to get a PhD. Somewhere along the way, Andres, I realized, hey, I don't want to just talk about creators. I want to be a creator myself. The love and craft of building things has sort of always been inside of me. And I didn't really have a name for it back then. But to be honest, I almost dropped out of the grad program.

5:11Katerina Miras:So I went to the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City. It was supposed to be one of the best. Very few people get chosen, but I don't quit. So I wasn't going to go do that. But I had lost my why a little bit. And I will probably touch on the why piece a little bit later because I think it's so integral in marketing and storytelling and everything we do here in consumer marketing. But, you know, my master's thesis was like the works of Golzius and Dürer in the Quattrocento and the antique art, you know, like something that I felt, how is this actually helping humanity. I mean, I love it. I'm an artist myself.

5:43Katerina Miras:I paint, I draw, I do printmaking, but I had a disconnect and I'm not someone who quits. So I finish it. And along the way, I think sometimes when you feel you are off your path, you start to do a side hustle or you start to do something on the side that makes you get that fire in the belly again. And so I started a blog. I said, I love writing, connecting with people and with my best friend. And she goes, so who's going to build our website? And I said, well, I will. And that moment changed everything, right? I taught myself Photoshop, always been a tech geek, basic HTML and CSS. Really kind of got deep into design.

6:20Katerina Miras:I was the first in my family who sort of fell in love with Apple products at the age of like 14, 15. I think my older brothers still tease me about that today because they're like, hey, but those button is on the left side, not the right side. Like it's on the wrong side. But I think I saw what they didn't yet. And that's the power of design and the power of simplicity, right? And how those things can sort of change how we interact with the world, right? My favorite quotes, and maybe this is where I got some benefit from my art degree with my master's degree is, you know, Leonardo da Vinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

6:56Katerina Miras:And I think in the world of marketing and brand and design, isn't that the truth, right? Like simpler something is more refined. A simpler product is more intentional, but it's hard. It's more human, but it's hard to go do. And it takes sort of restraint. It takes clarity. It takes vision really to get the essence of something. And so I think product and brand and even a life-saving device like this AED here is really about how do we obsess over building something powerful enough to save lives, but simple enough that anyone can use it in a moment of total chaos and crisis. So that sort of led me, that design, kind of that input of, hey, I'm not really happy where I am.

7:39Katerina Miras:Let me go take my creativity. Let me go take my love for tech and my geekiness out of tech. And let me mash that together. And somehow, some way, I landed in places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the greatest museums in the world. And what's funny about that is here I am coming with a master's degree, working at a museum and doing design, right? Like totally something different than I even thought was possible, which led me into the New York Times, Google, and then in walks in sort of med tech and startup land for me for the last almost decade. So I got a knock on the door by Butterfly Network, portable ultrasound device.

8:19Katerina Miras:And that why piece again kind of clicked for me, right? This is about people. It's about saving people's lives. Then I walked in Medivis. It's an augmented reality sort of neurosurgery. They found me and they said, who built the brand for Butterfly? We need her. We need that person. They need to go help build our brand. So I went, built their brand, built the sales sort of playbook from scratch. It was a sub 20 in its group of a startup, really small, tight knit. And then a Varsum And Finn's knocked on my door and said, hey, we need someone to come in. How do we think about brand? How do we think about telling these stories?

8:53Katerina Miras:And sort of here I am for the last almost two years now, really thinking about how do we go get this technology in the hands of the right people at the right time? And, you know, Samir Jaffrey, our CEO and co-founder here at Avive, if you have any blessing or luck to have five minutes of his time, it'll turn into five hours in the best way possible. And I was just hooked. I had a conversation with him and I was like, Samir, where do I sign? Let's go. I'm ready. Because it brought me back to a deeper why, which is how do we go help humanity and how do we go do something that is long lasting?

9:28Andres Figueira:Wow. Like, I love the story and how you actually began with what made you like it gave you a lot of passion to know and learn about art and what your major and your master's was. But then I understand that that you felt that you strayed away from what actually made you happy. And I vibe with that because it happens to me sometimes when I feel like I'm not taking care of what my aspirations are. So, for example, every day after work, I just go and I play guitar or I try to write songs because I'm an artist as well, but more on the, what's it called, on the auditive side and the audio side. But I also feel like you've been able to find something that I believe it's really important for people.

10:06Andres Figueira:It's a Japanese term that's called ikigai, which refers to having what makes you passionate, what helps the world and also makes you money. And if you are in the center of those three things, you'll be fulfilled and you'll be happy with your life. So I'm getting that vibe from you. And I congratulate you a lot for being able to find that sweet spot.

10:24Katerina Miras:I love that you said that, Andres. I think I'm familiar with that. And what an honor to hear that from you. I think, you know, and what I want to say is, you know, my background, it's a little different. Yeah, but maybe that's why I care so much about telling these stories, right? To make you feel something. Because when you feel something, you act, right? And when you act, in our case here at Evive, you can actually save a life. And that's sort of what gets me to wake up every morning, work every day. And honestly, I wouldn't change it for the world because I get the pleasure and the benefit and the complete honor to sit in front, kind of do what you're doing with me, sit in front of survivors of sudden cardiac arrest who are alive today because of our device.

11:09Katerina Miras:Got there when it was needed. Streamlined all of their sort of health protocol and their clinical decision making all the way into the ER because of that connectivity. and I'm talking to their children and what that means to have their father still. I'm talking to their wife and what that means to have their husband still. And I get the chills even saying that back to you because it's everything. I mean, I always say this. There's lots of differences in the world, right? And there's a lot of things that we can or cannot do. But I think there's genuinely one streamlined kind of foundation between all humans, no matter what you believe in, what your ethnicity is, what you do for a living.

11:49Katerina Miras:And that's simply, how can I spend more time with the people I love around a dinner table making memories? Like, if we can't all agree to that, I mean, we're doing something wrong. And that is what I think the deepest why here at Avive is, is we give you a second chance at life. We're part of that narrative. and when you save a life, you're not just saving that person's life, you're saving the community around them. You're saving their, if they're a student, the teachers around them, their colleagues, their athletic team, their friends, their cousins, their family. I mean, like, we all know when we lose someone, it's the people left behind that feel something, right?

12:28Katerina Miras:And so when you save someone, it's really that community that is saved more. And I mean, that kind of gets us into like our form in a community program here at Avive. It's just game changing and how we're thinking about taking this device and not just putting it on a wall. I mean, how many of us know AEDs? You go to a different airport, you see the big sign that says AED, AED, AED. Some people don't know what it does. Some people don't know what it's used for. Can I open that box and use it? And what we're trying to do is, hey, there's a problem, right? And the problem isn't AEDs are not out in the world.

13:04Katerina Miras:They are, right? Like there's 300, 400 ,000 AEDs that get sold into the market every single year. And yet survivability has not changed in the last few decades, right? And so Avive actually has entered the space as the newest FDA approved AED in over two decades too. So that just signals innovation in this space has just remained stagnant. And so has survivability. So our founders said to themselves, okay, it's not a device issue. This has to be a connectivity issue because we have AEDs. It's in our school, you know, athletic trainer. I work with athletic trainers with, you know, the Bengals or Miami Marlins or whomever, like lots of sports team leverage AEDs.

13:45Katerina Miras:But it's not just that it's not there or in a time of need. It's just that it's not connected properly. And so when we think about every time, every minute that goes by and you're decreasing survivability, you think to yourself, well, how do I get speed to this conversation? And what we've done is we've actually taken our device, connected it directly into 911. So when 911 gets a call, let's say you're part of our four minute community on this. And for the sake of this, you're in New York City, right? And our county or our city has a four minute community. Well, if we have thousands of these units across Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Seventh Avenue, you will, there will be sort of a ping that goes off that 911 basically sends an alert and says, cardiac arrest nearby take this AED.

14:33Katerina Miras:So you as a lay rescuer basically take your AED, it fires off a signal just like you would your Uber or your DoorDash, right, saying your food is on the way. Your AED is on the way. So now you get a GPS coordination like a Google Maps or an Apple Maps, go right onto this device and it'll take you. Hey, there's a cardiac arrest on Broadway 22nd Street. You as the lay rescuer will take your AED, you arrive on scene, you put pads on patient And you're getting there within minutes because what we're doing is we're placing these AEDs in areas that are residential that don't have actual coverage. And now what we're seeing is the use and eyes of the world are getting to a scene before EMS, before law enforcement, before fire.

15:17Katerina Miras:And that is signaling positivity of survivability because I want to make it very clear. The only thing that keeps you alive in a sudden cardiac arrest is a shock to the heart. Most people think, well, if I do CPR, perfect form CPR for 10, 20, 30 minutes, like they'll be okay, right? The answer is no. You need a shock to the heart. And so people sort of confuse this idea of a heart attack. You went down to sudden cardiac arrest. A cardiac arrest is your heart literally stops. A heart attack is you have plumbing issues, right? So your heart's still working, but there's a plumbing issue happening.

15:53Katerina Miras:This is the only thing, a defibrillator, a shock to the system that can keep you alive in a sudden cardiac arrest. And we just want to get there faster. And so that's really our big why here at Avive and something that I think really is changing, not just the way we take this technology and put it out into the world, but the way we bring communities together. Because again, back to this idea of a community and coming home to your loved ones on a family table dinner. Like, that's what it's all about. Everyone feel connected into this system, that they're part of a safe and they're part of extending another family's loved one's life.

16:33Andres Figueira:Wow. Like, first of all, that is such a noble cause. And I love how you guys are just updating what has happened with automatic defibrillators, as you mentioned. Like, in 20 years, if I heard correctly, it was that nobody had entered and obtained an FDA approval for a new automatic defibrillator. And then my question is, Katerina, when you mentioned that you're having this like formative community, you're taking people like you and I, as you mentioned, and you're instructing them and teaching them how to use it properly so that in a time of need, somebody who is certified or at least understands how to use the AED, they can then just rush on over and wait until the proper health assistance or anybody gets over there.

17:15Katerina Miras:100%. So I think this is a really great distinction, right? Our AED is sort of for trained and untrained users. Now, on the formative community initiative that we're doing, we call them care team members, right? So when a county or a city sort of subscribes into this program, we do all of the teaching, all of the education for them to become even more trained. But you're exactly right. And the approachability of this device is key because it walks you through both visually and in an audible way what is needed to actually deliver the shock. So it's walking you through, if there's clothes, remove the clothes.

17:52Katerina Miras:If it's a female, you know, remove it so there's a bare chest for the female. Put the pads on, it'll give you actual dictation of where you need to go put the pads placed if you've never done this before. I think I'll give you one example. I was just at a trade show down in Florida and an EMS physician walks by our booth and says, oh my goodness, I made a say with your device at my local gym. Your local gym has our AEDs. I had never seen your AED before, never used it, but it was so simple. It walked me through just like anything else that I have modern day electronics, right? Step-by-step guide, automatic defibrillation.

18:28Katerina Miras:So you basically don't have to press a button again. I mean, he was an EMS physician. Some people will be a layman like you and I, and there's trepidation, right? Do I press it now? Am I responsible? And I think this removes that or demystify, it sort of takes the demystification out of, can I do it now? Should I do it now? Is it okay? Is it not okay? These are smart devices. If there is no shockable rhythm and you are not under cardiac arrest, it will not shock, right? It will only shock you if there is a cardiac arrest And your rhythm is an AFib or V-fib and sort of in a state that needs a proper therapy, what we call a shock.

19:08Katerina Miras:So yes, our formative community is all about taking the average person and turning them into heroes. One of our communities down in Texas actually has shifted the name for themselves as Neighborhood Heroes Program because they recognize that this is the ability for our people in our community to go take this device and sort of like a Superman, you know, run to the scene, put the pads on the patient, still maybe potentially be on the phone with 911 if someone has called 911. And so that bi-directionality of integration 911 is critical, right? So now when someone calls in, hey, I don't know what's going on.

19:49Katerina Miras:My husband, he's down. He's bleeding. He's not speaking. He's unresponsive. What do I do? They will go through a checklist and they will determine, okay, this is probably a sudden cardiac arrest. And at that point, they will say, if you have an AED, go grab one. Start administering CPR. I'm going to administer. I'm going to be with you on the phone as we do CPR together. And their next question is, do you have an AED? And there's only one of two answers.

20:14Andres Figueira:Yes, I don't know how to use it. I don't know where it is. It's locked.

20:17Katerina Miras:It's not working. Or no, there's no AED around. But now with the four-minute community, for those communities that are involved in this initiative, the 911 telecommunicator gets to say to that individual whose husband or loved one is on the ground and say, there will be a citizen coming on scene and they'll be arriving in about two minutes with an AED. They're coming here to help before I dispatch EMS and law enforcement. And so, again, I get the chills. We had this incident in Forsyth County, Georgia, where a former Marine, he's part of the care team. He got an alert. He was sitting down with his wife watching the nightly news.