Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk (Part 6)

Andy Gotshalk: We have good sales skills and we want to make sure we give constant pricing. But if there’s something that I can do to help make that researcher’s life easier, I do a lot of that on the front-end. I call it building collateral – doing things that, at the end of the day, the other person would feel that they owe you something. I do this personally and it parlays into business. I make sure that at the end of whatever activity we’re doing, I’ve done more than the other person so that if you were to look at it, someone would say, “I owe him.” That just pays benefits hugely down the road.

Sramana Mitra: You said earlier on in the conversation that you spun off some vertical businesses.

Andy Gotshalk: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Is that correct?

Andy Gotshalk: We did. I ran a company from 2008 to 2012. In 2012, we saw an opportunity where we could take the same kind of technology – the ability to record these single neurons – integrate it and package it with a full portfolio of EEG systems and actually start selling this technology, not just to the animal researchers, but to hospitals as well. Hospitals actually use EEG every day. If we could now add on this single component, that would be very advantageous because our existing customers – animal researchers – were already crossing that line and trying to translate their research into clinical research and implement some of the experiments they were doing with humans.

It was a natural fit for us to expand this and try to promote this technology for human use. In 2012, we spun off a separate company and it’s called Blackrock Neuromed. I chose to lead that company. We raised $1.3 million to start that company up. We found a partner in Italy. They had existing EEG software and hardware. They were strong in Europe and had been in Europe for 25 years but didn’t have any presence in the US. We then married the two and integrated the simple basic EEG stuff with this more sophisticated single neuron recording and put on the market a full portfolio of EEG systems. We started that in 2012. We did $500,000 in revenue in 2012 and 2013. In 2014, we did $2 million. Now, we’re targeting $4 million.

Sramana Mitra: Who runs the other company now?

Andy Gotshalk: It’s more strategic. We brought in a Managing Director. You can consider me somewhat of a consultant or advisor.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk
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