Founders usually reach us when the product works and the number hasn't moved. Start below with whichever piece is stuck.
Founded by someone who sold surgical robots into hospitals before he built an agency.
Usually it looks like this. The 510(k) came through. There's published data, and a surgeon who'll tell anyone who asks. And there's a board asking about the number.
And the number isn't moving.
So the sensible things happen. Reps get hired. An agency comes in, produces content and rebuilds the site. Maybe a VP of Marketing arrives. The work looks fine. But the pipeline stays flat, and nobody can say why.
Here's what we usually find. Ask five people in the company what it does, and you'll get five answers. Not five bad answers. Five different ones.
That sounds like a communication problem. So companies buy a new deck and a new website, and nothing changes.
It isn't a communication problem. It's the reason nobody buys.
A hospital committee has to answer three questions before it can say yes to your device. What is this? What does it replace? And what happens if we do nothing?
If your category has no name, they can't answer the first one. So they never reach the other two. Deferring becomes the safest thing available, and that's what most of your stalled deals are.
Your reps feel this every day. They spend the first half of every meeting explaining the category, then try to sell inside it in whatever time is left.
Meanwhile every campaign you fund pays to explain the same thing again. So the spend never compounds.
"You don't have a demand problem. You have a definition problem."
Omar Khateeb, CEO, MarketCraft
Bruce Cleveland ran product and marketing at Apple and Oracle, then became a founding partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. He kept watching the same thing happen. Companies with real products and real funding died between shipping and getting traction.
He named that space the Traction Gap, and he's written two books about it. The second is Market Engineering: Because Markets Don't Engineer Themselves, out in June 2026. MarketCraft is acknowledged in it.
His finding is uncomfortable. Most companies only ever do go-to-market, and they do it late, once the product is finished. But the work of defining and leading a market happens much earlier. Almost nobody does it at all.
Market engineering is that missing work. And it matters more in medtech than anywhere else, because your regulator won't let you pivot out of a category you chose badly.
Founders arrive with one thing stuck. Start there. The other two become obvious later.
For companies whose market doesn't exist yet. Investors say the technology is interesting, then stop returning calls. Different people describe the product in incompatible ways.
We name the category and frame the problem for both the clinician and the person holding the budget. Then we build the narrative that makes your position feel inevitable. Category leaders capture roughly 76% of the value in their category, so deciding yours by accident is expensive.
For companies that are cleared and still not selling. Clearance is the starting line. Most cleared products die in the year and a half after it, usually while the company is adding sales headcount.
We build the demand that arrives before your rep does. That means go-to-market sequencing and search visibility on the terms committees use. It also means founder-led content that compounds, plus KOL programs that reach the people who sign purchase orders.
For companies raising the next round or building toward an acquisition. Stalled rounds are rarely data problems. The numbers hold up, and the story doesn't make the company feel inevitable.
We build the narrative investors underwrite, and the deck architecture that moves the belief they need to hold. Exit positioning gets more than one acquirer competing.
Explore Investor and Exit Readiness
Omar Khateeb sold surgical robots into hospitals before he built an agency. So he knows what happens in the room after your rep leaves.
He hosts State of MedTech, now past 400 episodes, and the investors and strategics you're trying to reach already listen to it. He also speaks at the summits where those funds gather.
That access is the part a generalist can't replicate, and it changes what we know about how this market decides. A generalist agency will learn medtech on your budget. We already live here.
"MarketCraft joined the board of investors meeting, they were very impressed by MarketCraft's results."
Lloyd Mencinger, CEO, Aqua Medical
We embed rather than deliver from a distance. Engagements run as a monthly retainer across about a year, because this work compounds and none of it survives as a one-off project.
The first six to eight weeks are foundational. Kickoff, then a working session with your team, then category and narrative development with your review at every milestone.
After that we move to a monthly rhythm, so you always know what shipped and what's coming.
You get a working team rather than an advisor with opinions. That's the whole point.
We'll say this on the first call rather than take the engagement.
If you're pre-clearance, you're early rather than too early. It's usually the cheapest moment to define a category, and the market takes longer to form than your device does.
Both, and in that order. We define the category first, then execute against it. Agencies that start at execution are the reason most founders reach us already burned.
They usually end up running the system we build. Most in-house medtech marketers have never been handed a category definition to work from, which is why their tactics feel scattered.
A fractional CMO gives you advice, and then somebody still has to build the thing. We do both halves. There's a full comparison on the fractional CMO page.
Foundational work lands in six to eight weeks. Commercial traction is a longer curve. Any agency promising pipeline in thirty days is selling demand generation into a market that hasn't formed.
A monthly retainer, and the number depends on scope. You'll have it on the first call.
You don't have to buy the whole picture. Bring us the problem you've got today, and we'll tell you honestly whether it's the real constraint or a symptom of something upstream.
Thirty minutes with a founder who has sold medical devices himself. No deck.
P.S. If you'd rather see how we think before you talk to anyone, run your deck through the Pitch Deck Analyzer or take the MedTech Exit Positioning Score. Both are free, both take a few minutes, and plenty of founders use them and never book a call. That's a fine outcome.