The Company Helping Paralyzed People Move And Thrive Again - EP 64 Dave Marver

**Dave Marver** (0:00)
Our expertise is understanding how to stimulate the spinal cord to restore movement and other functions, and the addition of a BCI may make that more effective.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:25)
Welcome to the Core Memory Podcast. This is Ashlee Vance. Thank you for joining us for another episode. We have a friend on the podcast this week, Dave Marver, CEO of Onward is here in town in San Francisco. How are you?

**Dave Marver** (0:41)
Doing well, Ashlee, thank you.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:43)
Usually we see each other in, I'm gonna lean into it, and then you correct me in Lausanne.

**Dave Marver** (0:51)
Lausanne. You know, but you did better. Most people say Lucerne, so they confuse the city completely.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:57)
Oh, I'm always trying to French it up, but I'm going too far. You did a good job. So we usually meet in Switzerland. I think I met you, I think four years ago.

**Dave Marver** (1:08)
I think it was your Hello World series where we're highlighting innovation that happens. We don't talk about that anymore.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:13)
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we do, we do. Yes, when I was at Bloomberg doing Hello World, and yeah, we were shooting an episode in Switzerland and I'd seen what you guys are doing, which I should explain to people really quick. You got, well, we're going to get deep into it. I'll go quick on this part and then we'll get into it. But you guys make a spinal implant and there's an external device, there's an internal device. They do different things from helping paralyze people move again to regulating blood pressure and things like that, and now it's connecting into a brain computer interface as well.
This is how we met. I'd seen videos of people. It's miraculous stuff, people walking again. It definitely catches your attention. So we came out and we filmed with two people, Michel, who's an Italian gentleman, and then Julie, who's from Belgium.

**Dave Marver** (2:10)
Exactly. Very good French pronunciation of Julie.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:15)
I'll tell her story.

**Dave Marver** (2:16)
She's memorable.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:16)
Yeah, she's a memorable thing. So that was the first time we shot, and then we've been back a couple of times, and we're kind of chasing some other stuff now, and watching how you guys, the journey of the technology develops and everything.

**Dave Marver** (2:31)
Well, we appreciate you highlighting some of the innovation that occurs outside the Silicon Valley here, which is great. And we're very much a med tech company. Our leadership is steeped in med tech experience, and our cap table is comprised of med tech investors. So this is great for me, because I think we can accelerate and pursue our mission faster and more effectively, if maybe if we incorporate some tech. So I appreciate getting some exposure here on the Core Memory podcast today.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:03)
You come to the right place for brain computer interfaces and all biotech. I assume you're in town this week for JPM, which for people who don't know is this massive, I guess it's like beyond biotech, but kind of biotech everything.

**Dave Marver** (3:19)
Yeah, I feel like my headphones are slipping out the back of my head. You ever feel that way?

**Ashlee Vance** (3:24)
There we go.

**Dave Marver** (3:25)
Okay. Yeah. Got to get the tech right here. Yeah, in for this JP Morgan conference, which for the last couple of decades has been the number one life science business slash investor conference. So it's a great place to meet with your investment bankers and equity research analysts and current and prospective investors and partners. And it's sort of the best and worst of San Francisco because it's a beautiful city and everyone is here for this conference and you can meet scores of people in just a few days. But then you try to save some money on the hotel in the tenderloin and it gets super interesting, super fast.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:03)
Yes, I used to live in the Tenderloin, I'm familiar. Yeah, the conference looks exhausting.

**Dave Marver** (4:09)
Yeah, I think everyone went home but me. So I'm here chatting with you and it's what, nine hour time difference with Switzerland. So I have my espresso and as we approach midnight body clock time, let's talk NeuroTech.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:22)
Okay, okay. We'll pump you full of caffeine and then I'll try to keep it interesting. But yeah, well, there's all kinds of places we could go. I think we should maybe describe some of the tech in a little more detail because I've always found the story funny in some ways. You see the videos, we've talked about this before. It's like, just so people know. I mean, there's a woman we've been hanging out with lately, Suzanne Edwards, right? I think, yeah, she's British and she was paralyzed in her early 20s. It wasn't actually as she was surfing, but it wasn't a surfing accident. She had this really unfortunate incident where a building collapsed and she fell a couple of stories. And then, so she was paralyzed for about even longer than 14 or 15 years. There's somewhere around there, I think. And then came to you guys and she gets a spinal implant. It has electrodes on this implant. They place them on the spine.