MEET
BRETT & KIRK
Kirk Zeller, President and Co-Founder, has thirteen years of neurovascular experience at Micrus Endovascular, Johnson & Johnson and Progressive NEURO, Inc. He built the Micrus business in Asia to tens of millions and during that time successfully launched many neurovascular products across the region. Micrus was approaching #1 market share in several of the countries when it was acquired by J&J. Kirk was one of the integration leads, transitioned the business to direct sales, and then led international market development for the J&J division.
Kirk has three decades of medical device experience in sales and marketing, market development, and business development having successful developed markets and launched products around the world. Kirk has traveled to more than 50 countries and studied business in seven countries.
His management experience and ongoing career executive education focus on the three largest markets – the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He has a Doctorate of Business Administration from the International School of Management (Paris) and an MBA from Imperial College London (London) focused on Health Technology Entrepreneurship. His doctoral dissertation and master’s thesis were focused on the medical device industry and the topics were respectively, “European Market Entry Strategies for Venture Capital Financed Medical Device Companies” and “Financing and Beyond: The Role of Venture Capital in Silicon Valley Based Medical Device Companies.
Kirk is the founder of the Silicon Prairie Center and serves on the boards of several companies.
Brett Follmer, CTO and Co-Founder, has designed and developed medical devices for numerous start-ups from funding through profitable exits.
His three decades of medical device industry experience and cross-functional skills span the entire product development process including: product development from concept to market launch, post marketing surveillance and field support including: physician training, sales training and clinical support.
Brett has worked for 5 neurovascular companies including; Micro Interventional Systems, Lazarus Effect, Micrus Endovascular Medina Medical and Q'pel. He has invented and designed several neurovascular devices including the co-development of the first generation balloon guide catheters and balloon micro catheters. These devices were the first of their kind and helped transform Ischemic and Hemorrhagic treatment methods.
He has also designed several micro catheters including the industry’s first a .027” ID micro catheter that has become an industry standard for neurovascular stent delivery. Additionally, Brett was a key design engineer for Fox Hollow Technologies for the development and commercialization of the world’s first atherectomy catheter that cut arterial plaque out of cardiac and peripheral arteries and removed it from the patient. Brett holds a BSBA from California State University, Hayward.
Brett and Kirk met while working at Micrus Endovascular and continued working together through the integration into J&J. They worked closely together with physicians to understand their clinical needs so that products could be effecively developed to meet those needs. They kept hearing the same theme "we want a device that will get all the clot in one pass without any of it breaking off and going distal."
While none of the devices the company was working on at the time could achieve that objective Brett and Kirk continued to stay in touch after leaving J&J and continued to brainstorm how to achieve that objective and after much discussion led to the development of five different concepts and their eventual focus on OMBRELLOTM Enclosed Thrombectomy which in animal and bench models has been show to get all the clot in the first pass. Progressive NEURO, Inc has six issued patents covering the devices developed by the company.