EXECUTIVE SPOTLIGHT
Shockwave Medical Founder on Innovation and Attracting $120M in Financing This article was adapted from an interview with Daniel Hawkins by Scott Nelson, cofounder, Joovv and founder, Medsider In 2009 it seemed that there were numerous medical devices available to address peripheral vascular disease— from self-expanding stents to plain balloon angioplasty, atherectomy, drug-coated balloons, and others. What, then, inspired Daniel Hawkins and his Shockwave cofounders, John Adams and Todd Brinton, to enter what looked like a crowded marketplace? Insight. But before we get to that, a little background. Daniel grew up in what he describes as a “medical entrepreneurial household.” His father is a primary care physician who began his practice out of their Philadelphia home, treating a lot of Department of Public Assistance patients. Daniel and his brother and sisters did the coding on the DPA forms, and Daniel moved on to his own entrepreneurial pursuits, from selling Christmas tree clippings to operating soda machines. That paid for his Wharton undergraduate studies. He was simultaneously fascinated by both science and business. When he discovered what 9 | HS&M FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018
venture capital was, he joined a leveraged buyout house upon graduation from Wharton. He became attracted to the deals they made in medtech. “The prospect of being able to move the clinical needle on millions of patients versus one at a time, like my father, was compelling for me, very compelling,” says Daniel. He went back to business school at Stanford, and afterward investigated medical technologies, medtech and medical devices. Around that time, angioplasty balloons were $600 apiece, stents hadn’t been invented yet, and the hottest areas were orthopedics and interventional vascular. Daniel
says “I was fortunate enough to get a position in marketing at ACS, Advanced Cardiovascular Systems, a division of Eli Lilly at the time. I joined there pre Palmaz-Schatz Stent, so that was a long time ago. The first indication of that stent was abrupt closure, or threatened abrupt closure, that comes from high-pressure dilation of the vessel due to calcium. The IVUS studies, intravascular ultrasound studies, in the mid-90’s confirmed all of that and really, that laid the groundwork for what I later traded on when I came up with the notion for what is now Lithoplasty, to avoid those dissections and see if we could get better results long term. I’ve stayed in it and have been fortunate enough
