A few falsehoods in post 61461.
"getting a product launched in the U.S. without a sales team, marketing and validation is virtually impossible." Yeah. I know. I bought ISRG in 2003 when they were starting up. Never sold a thing because they didn't have a mature sales and distribution organization. I bet they wish they partnered with one of the big guys back then, huh? I agree Mazor and Medtronic are well paired in their structured deal, but the blanket statement in quotes above, from the article, are provably just crap.
"Companies like Titan and TransEnterix struggle as the process to get approval is time consuming and burns all the capital." Titan isn't trying to get approval. They are preparing for it. Transenterix HAS approval. And they still have some remaining capital. They are going to lose their remaining capital due to their failure to generate revenue with their approved product. The quoted statement here misses the mark in both cases.
"To survive this company needs a partner like Mazor got with Medtronic." Someone's speculation, but point number 1 above is that ISRG already disproved this theory. It might be nice to get a well funded partner to make life a little easier, but that also means sharing the ultimate profits. The real questions are whether or not Titan has sufficient confidence in their technology to attempt to go it alone, and would another organization make an offer that is too good to pass up.
Now for the dumbest quote of the article:
"TransEnterix needs validation by having a sales and marketing partner. With out it the company is another Titan." They can't get validation from simple hospitals who should be looking to buy their equipment. Why would any company partner with a proven failure? They wish they were another Titan, a company that has a technological offering with market potential. They are not. Maybe SurgiBot II will gain more attention if they can get it approved this time, but for now, they have nothing worth selling either to an end customer or to a potential business partner. I hope for their sake they can prove me wrong.
Maybe if they buy a bigger can of Turd Polish for SurgiBot II when it comes back??
