ISRG is a very tough company to work for. The sales force had extremely high growth expectations, 15-30% growth over the previous quarters procedures. Coming from me and recruiters that I have good relationships with, this is one of the Top 3 toughest sales jobs in med device sales. Even though is was a very stressful job, the good part was that you were paid pretty well. The most stressful part was If you didn't make your number in the quarter you were on the chopping block radar in the next quarter. You probably wouldn't believe the conversations that I had at the beginning of a quarter when you sat through a 4-7 hour meeting going over your quarterly review and your next 90 day business plan. The reality was if you miss your quarterly number more than once in a year, you are most likely fired. It was also very tough to balance your growth because if you hit your number, the bonus money was great, but you were stressed the next quarter because the growth expectation was added to the blowout number you just achieved.
On top of your commissions were the stock options that you received on your hiring date. These would mature every month. You also would receive bonus stock options at the end of the year based off of performance. Sales reps compensation became very lucrative when you tied these two types of options together, especially when your hire date grant price was below $80. As time passed expectation placed on you grew even higher as the stock price climbed and your options became more valuable, meaning around 25K+ a month.
Management ruled by intimidation and fear. If you are interested in getting a glimpse of the culture read some of the former and current reps blogs on CafePharma. www.cafepharma.com/boards/forumdisplay.php?f=532
But I have to say, there are a lot of disgruntle employees, as well as competitive reps that are robot bashers. This would include JNJ and Covidien reps that are losing instrument sales to ISRG.
As a former ISRG robotic surgery sales rep, I can say that the market is ripe for a direct competitor and TITXF has most of the right variables to be a good company.
-Technology (Haptics). I think ISRG will have this as well as a new single site robot. (See links of video below) -Price is less than ISRG, atleast for time being -Leadership (executive and surgeons) -ISRG has burn some bridges with surgeons and hospital executives for strong arming their robot because of the monopoly that they have. ISRG is trying to change their arrogance and strong arm tactics with hospitals
If TITXF can prove to have decent product and does 10% of what ISRG has done, all of us shareholders should make a good profit from this stock. Because of this they could very well be a buyout candidate for one of the big general surgery/OBGYN/ENT companies such as MDT, COV, JNJ, Applied Medical etc etc.... (I hope this doesn't happen before the stock hits $50 or more).
One thing is for sure, it is not going to be easy. ISRG has their own next generation single site robot. Below is the link to a video that was posted on a robotic society website around 2 years ago. I hope Titan doesn't run into any patent infringements.
A couple of other points regarding robotics and ISRG:
-There are at least 10 other companies/Universities working on robotic technology.
-One thing that scares me is TITXF's focus on cholycystectomies. I have a hard time finding the value prop in this procedure except in difficult Chloe cases. Time, cost, etc, etc compared to lap Chloe.
-for emerging procedures in general surgery surgeons need robotic stapling and vessel sealing. How will TItan compete with ISRG's instruments?
ISRG is going through some tough growing pains. How to better train surgeons to recognize situations where they could cause damage to a patient. I think that procedure specific video simulation can help with this. All of the bad press will go away with time. TITXF will help define the future landscape of robotic surgery. From what I have heard, Titan is addressing this with robotic simulation
In the years that I was at ISRG, I did not see a complication caused by the robot malfunctioning. The da Vinci S & SI systems are unbelievable piece of technology that has many safeguards to prevent adverse events. Some of these include the robot freezing up if you head comes out of the viewing console, as well as the robot being connected to ISRG's home office for real time fault diagnoses etc...etc.
I hope this helps give you some more insight to the great opportunity that TITXF in front of them. I'm looking forward to collaborating with you all
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