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The resilient entrepreneur: How this Aussie medtech start-up went global

Podcasts | 30 October 2024

Juliet Bourke

Professor of Practice

Barney Tan

Professor and Head of School

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Tech entrepreneur Hayley Saddington recounts the genesis of her first company, Halo Medical Devices, and explains how an entrepreneur’s purpose builds resilience

About the episode

At seven years old, Hayley Saddington experienced an incident that became the catalyst for her whole career.

Decades later, Hayley founded two companies – HALO Medical Devices and Peak Medical – but she’s not your typical tech entrepreneur. For one thing, she doesn’t come from a tech background.

Both companies have tested her patience, her drive and her sleep schedule, but her deeply personal purpose has kept her going. And as a mentor to budding entrepreneurs, Hayley wants to help others determine their purpose and find that same drive to succeed in business.

The Business Of podcast is brought to you by UNSW Business School, produced with Deadset Studios.

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Transcript

Hayley Saddington: At seven, my dad had a farming accident, and it was at that age... I didn't know I was going to go into health tech, but I got a sense of the problems in the health system.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Hayley Saddington's entrepreneurial spirit was driven from a very young age.

Hayley Saddington: I was out in the paddock with my dad. His arm got caught in this big piece of machinery, and I was the only child out there that day. The person helping the paddock...

Dr Juliet Bourke: Living rurally meant Hayley and her dad were a long way from the nearest hospital, so they put in a call to the Royal Flying Doctor Service who would meet the pair on the other side of the paddock. But with no way of getting there, seven-year-old Hayley jumped into the driver's seat and drove her dad over to meet them. That accident demonstrated to Hayley the difficulty people have accessing medical care. It ignited a passion in her that would see her going from physio student to successful medtech entrepreneur, a journey that would land her on Shark Tank and see her pitching a product to the NBA.

A founder’s story can be a powerful thing. It's what drives you to succeed and on your toughest days, it's what drives you to keep going. And it's not just a tool for motivation, leaning into a personal connection with your product or service can be what gets you over the line with customers and also investors.

This is The Business Of, a podcast from the University of New South Wales Business School. I'm Dr Juliet Bourke, a Professor of Practice in the School of Management and Governance.

So Hayley, tell me about your dad's rehab process because it sort of became the catalyst for your career.

Hayley Saddington: We started to have to go to a lot of medical appointments and the follow up, you know, post amputee. It was at that point I was like, ‘Okay, it's so disruptive’. We were 500 kilometres from the nearest hospital that could help, so really sort of looking at what we could do to people, our loved ones, to get them the care at ease was inground very early.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Fast forward to university, you're studying physiotherapy, and do you have an idea for a product? Where did the idea come from?

Hayley Saddington: Study really never came naturally or easy for me. I was very much the kind of creative... the business sort of person, which I didn't really know at the stage when I started uni. But I guess it was at the point where I saw this problem, I saw this tool that we were using – and having the background of experiencing a loved one who needed these kind of physiotherapy tools – it was the only tool we would use to get range of motion on a body. It was protractor-like, very archaic, often up to 30 degrees out and this is what we use as a gold standard on our loved ones. So my brain has always been wired to sort of laterally think, ‘How can we do it better?’ So started the idea.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I saw that Shark Tank episode that you were on – and we have to talk about Shark Tank – but it's literally like a ruler along one part of your body and a ruler on another part. And then there's a central, you know, pivot point.

Hayley Saddington: It's so simple, exactly right. The one you've just described is the tool we used to use and now the Halo, which I came up with, I guess the problem solving was how do we make it more accurate? How do we bring it into the digital age? How can we get tools to physios, you know, that were up with the age and really accurate?

Dr Juliet Bourke: How did you land on that? Why that tool? I'm assuming there are other tools which are equally archaic, or maybe that's the only one.

Hayley Saddington: No, there's so many. Just something inside me was like, ‘I'm going to go on this. I'm going to go on this’, and I'm very much that person on 'if I see the problem I'm going to finish it'. The way I did that, I talked to heads of departments of physios, I talked to other physios, I talked to other physio students, and they all thought the problem was also a problem, and so it, I guess, it allowed me to cascade into that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So how do you get from that idea – and you said ‘we’ then... what's the ‘we?’ How do you do research and development around it? How do you get a team together?

Hayley Saddington: Our pathway with that first company was really around let's raise some awareness. Let's go out and apply for every opportunity possible. And I remember writing the Shark Tank application thinking I would never get in. We did that with WA Innovator of the Year Award and that just sort of allowed us to be seen at a very... like it didn't cost anything other than time, and that attracted mentors. It attracted some startup capital to get going.

Dr Juliet Bourke: But even on the Shark Tank show you had this little device that was now using, sort of, laser to measure the angles in someone's limbs. How did you develop that device?

Hayley Saddington: When we won an award in Western Australia, I had a person in the room come up – he ended up being our first investor – he said, ‘I know how to do this. I know how to make this idea into mass production. I've got a manufacturer I'll introduce you to’. And so that was the approach. We went down, sort of looked at, you know, do we need regulatory and that was just using advisory services. We had some in-kind support, so we lent on those supports to learn as well as this incredible advisor who really stepped us through those first parts.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So you had this random investor who turned up at a presentation you were giving. How else did you get your investment to do what you needed to do?

Hayley Saddington: So at the time, before I started Halo and Halo Medical Devices, my partner at the time had passed away. So I really pivotal point to go ‘What do I do here?’. I had a very small and painful inheritance from it, I could have done something sensible with it – which has never been my pathway – it was only going to be taken in one direction. So I used that small amount to start Halo and I matched that with a grant that I applied for which doubled it and I was really careful on where every dollar went, because it was money from the heart.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Did you have to do your own research and development, or did someone come along and do that for you as well?

Hayley Saddington: No, I did it all. We did it all. So I think the first process was, you know, we went to Bunnings and I brought some parts for this very manual, analog-looking device, which, you know, evolved into this beautiful looking, white Halo with lasers. But that was the first process. And then, you know, there's all the other elements of the business, how do you name it? What product do you go with? What company name? How do you place this through the regulatory submission? How do you write a grant? And I Googled a lot of that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So were you working at the same time? Was this sort of a side hustle that you had going, or was this you had enough investment to just completely focus?

Hayley Saddington: No, no. We made a few units, so we did a small little production run, which were just samples. And at six in the morning I would take them around to physiotherapists who would open early, literally in a big IKEA bag, and I would say, ‘would you like to try this for the day?’ And we slowly built up customers, testimonials. So we started very, very slowly, and then realising that is not the business model of growth we then moved to distributors to get it out to physiotherapists.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And I'm sure being on a big show like Shark Tank, which you mentioned before, would have earned you some credibility when you're approaching distributors. What was that experience like?

Hayley Saddington: Do you know what, it was so fun. It was one of those moments, you know. We weren't prepared in terms of, you know, we didn't spend hours rehearsing. I sort of rocked up to the studios and I knew my product so intimately, it was one of those experiences where it didn't matter what questions came up, and Steve Baxter fired these incredible technical questions and I'd been sitting with our engineers for two years talking about accelerometers and goniometers prior. So it was like anything that came up, we could just answer authentically. And the experience was great, a great advert, and we gained our first distributor by being seen on it. So it has a great reach. We did a deal online and then that didn't go through.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Oh, so let me just pause there. So in the studio there was going to be some investment, I think, from two of the judges and you're saying that didn't actually come to fruition.

Hayley Saddington: It didn't come to fruition. And it was an interesting point of view. I feel it was... it's probably for television, really sort of making sure that we did a deal, we got a deal. And offline, even before we entered the due diligence process, we were told by one of those Sharks that they need to be seen to invest in female leaders, and this will probably be the end of it because that had been visualised on TV. So that was what had happened.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Good for people to know, right? That that is the behind the scenes.

Hayley Saddington: Absolutely so great for people to know to be prepared and not, I guess, hang everything on that Shark Tank experience. Like it is what it is – it's a great advert, incredible experience, great for you to be very quick and know your business and be really confident in it.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And it was so... I mean, your product is very visual. You can see this old protractor-like thing, and then you can see your own Halo with the laser lights. It's much better to see that than describe it in some ways. I'm sure people are Googling right now ‘Halo’...

Hayley Saddington: Halo. Halo goniometer. And I think it came across just like that on the show as well. We had the manual protractor, and, you know, the sharks were like, ‘wow, I can't believe everyone is using that and not this’. So it was an easy show.

Dr Juliet Bourke: How long did it take you to develop the digital goniometer?

Hayley Saddington: I had the idea for about two years. I think that's a really important note to make. We have these ideas, and it's the same as my current company, it took three years to come to fruition. You talk about it, you start to get people on board, you start to raise capital, bring some awareness and validate it. It takes time.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So with that goniometer you're building it, you're getting validation. And then what happens?

Hayley Saddington: It was around, you know, how do we get this out to more people and how do we build a trusted brand? Who do we align with? And I think in that first company I really took risks and one of those risks was going over to a physiotherapy roadshow in San Diego, hiring the cheapest booth at the very back. But there was 10,000 physiotherapy students coming through and I knew that. So we made a great video, had these incredible bright turquoise shirts, and we spoke about it and we showed them and got it in people's hands. And that led to a trial with the Mayo Clinic. Like there was just these cascading moments by putting ourselves out there on a shoestring as well, on a budget.

Dr Juliet Bourke: The Mayo Clinic. I mean, that's a major brand to suddenly be in your orbit. How did that happen?

Hayley Saddington: One of the students at that particular conference said, ‘Look, I've got to get my professor’. So he happened to be a professor who was also at the Mayo Clinic and I asked him about validation, and he's like, ‘Well, we'd like to take it through validation’. So we ended up doing a paper with them. So it was just through conversation, right timing, and I think putting ourselves out there.

Dr Juliet Bourke: A couple of times now, I'm almost expecting you to use the word luck. Because you talked about there was an investor who just happened to hear your presentation, and then you're at a trade conference and there just happens to be a student who's got a professor at the Mayo Clinic... but you're putting yourself in the way of luck. Is that how you think about it?

Hayley Saddington: I think so. I hesitate to use luck because I believe, I strongly believe, that it's around timing and being prepared and flexible in that moment. And it's understanding what you need to move forward and having the ability to have a conversation with that right person who can perhaps grant that. Or obviously not everything comes to fruition and we're just talking about the lucky moments, but yeah I think, you know, timing is everything.

Dr Juliet Bourke: That is a good point. We do talk about the peak positive moments; we don't talk about the other side. And so are there other side moments that you've learned from that you would want to share with other people?

Hayley Saddington: It's often the moments where I have prepared the most or gone in with the direction I want to come out with, in business the most that fail. The thing that's worked continuously from now is going in and really being flexible in the conversations, doing as much research as we can on a partner, for example, or a potential partner. It's doing as much, and looking at how you can really understand their pain points, or really understand what they want to do. Do they want to grow? Do they want to sell more implants? How do I align with that? And I come in with solutions to do that for them. That's something that's worked really well.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Why do we only talk about the good times? Sure, it's more pleasant to celebrate success, but what do we really learn from that? Like all successful entrepreneurs, resilience has been Hayley's secret weapon. Hard times and tough breaks are inevitable, so being prepared and adaptable is crucial. But how do you actually develop resilience? Barney Tan is the Head of the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at UNSW. He's been looking at some research out of the Business School that will help you and your organisation weather the storms ahead.

Barney Tan: So resilience is vital for entrepreneurs and startups due to the challenges that they face, such as fluctuating markets, uncertainty, financial constraints and unexpected setbacks. The financial constraints is especially big one because, you know, with startups they're always looking for resources. They need resources, and as a startup, they're actually the most vulnerable to setbacks. Any setback could potentially be fata for startups. I think Haley's journey especially demonstrates the importance of resilience. So for example, after her deal with Shark Tank fell through, she didn't let it derail her plans, right? Instead, she used the exposure from the show to gain her first distributor to show how, basically, resilience can turn disappointment into opportunity.

The key to nurturing resilience is first you have to develop a growth mindset. Entrepreneurs with a growth mindset view challenges and failures as opportunities to learn and grow. But it's not just a mindset. It's not just a mentality. A growth mindset is actually backed by the ability to acquire resources, financial support, and to manage these resources and financial support effectively.

So it's a bit like this, if you're an entrepreneur and if you are not great at acquiring funding from investors, what you end up with is a situation where you're using your own money. And when you're using your money in an entrepreneurial venture what tends to happen is that you would tend to pinch pennies, you will look for ways to save because every cent you spend is going to hurt. And that's why a lot of successful startups having acquired the funds from external investors, they tend to invest into the best R and D. They tend to invest in optimizing their processes, optimizing the distribution channels. They do not mind spending, right, to achieve these strategic benefits for their organisations. It's a growth mindset, but that is backed by the ability to acquire funding and resources and the ability to manage funding and resources.

And not only that, of course, you know, with funding and resources there's a need to build a support network, right? So resilience is nurtured by surrounding yourself with supportive mentors, advisors and peers. A lot of startup founders will be very much part of incubator setups. Now these networks will provide guidance, feedback and even emotional support during difficult times, helping entrepreneurs stay grounded. Joining startup communities and accelerators would be very beneficial to gaining access to a reliable support network. People who have experienced the same things as you have, people who have walked the walk that is able to show you the way.

Another critical aspect of nurturing resilience is really not just focus on the immediate business viability of the business. The most powerful startups, those that have the ability to rally investors and other resource owners to the course, are those whose mission are aligned with a higher purpose. When people believe in your cause, they're more likely to invest in you, right? If you're just a business looking to make money, then it becomes a very transactional relationship with your investors, where their investment decision is solely motivated by your revenue or income generation capabilities. But by aligning your startup's mission with a higher purpose, this also actually helps entrepreneurs stay motivated as well. A clear sense of purpose will serve as basically a guiding post to provide focus and direction even when the journey becomes difficult. Research conducted by my colleagues at UNSW Business School have shown that purpose-driven entrepreneurship is critical and entrepreneurs like Haley, who are motivated by a strong mission, tend to be more resilient to external challenges, including market downturns and competition. This mindset and this alignment with a higher purpose is important because these entrepreneurs would be able to draw on their sense of purpose to navigate difficult decisions and remain committed to their long-term vision.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So to start a business you need a great idea and you need investment. What else do you need?

Hayley Saddington: Mentors, advisors. People you can trust, people you can bring into the fold who can either streamline you to the next stage – and that may be they introduce you to a manufacturer, they may be someone who opens a door at a health fund – really being careful on who they are. It may just be someone who you trust, and you can almost... as a sole founder, in my current situation, someone I could trust and almost treat like a co-founder and just bounce ideas off. The way I work is, as I'm speaking I'm making decisions and that mentor for me is someone who can sort of anchor things down or allow me to consider things I hadn't considered. So someone who's trusted, or I feel a deep trust with someone who I can say anything to, and it's just available.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And so now you're on the other side, right? I think you're a mentor as part of the UNSW Founders program?

Hayley Saddington: Yes, I have been with the inaugural Health 10x team. Originally, I was the entrepreneur in residence for three years and then now I'm doing that program ourselves so.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what's the advice you give, as a mentor to your mentees, around blending this story of purpose as well as finance?

Hayley Saddington: I give the advice of you must have that story and that problem and that patient or who you’re solving this for at heart and really visualise so you can connect to it every day. Because going on a health tech journey is incredibly hard, incredibly long, it's a marathon. So we need to be able to connect to that, but we also need that ability to talk about numbers and consider other possibilities of getting to market.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Your journey is full of unconventional ways of putting your product out there and getting to market. How did Halo end up being used in America's National Basketball Association?

Hayley Saddington: Yeah we went over and I spent a week in New York, and I got as many appointments as I can – one of the NBA teams was one of them – and I talked to the athletic trainers who get what we were doing really, really quickly and I left a unit with them. And since then the NBA ordered Halo, so it was sort of understanding where their problem was, making sure I could get that meeting while I was over there. I think we spent our last dollar to get on that plane and make that trip happen, but I packed it full of incredible opportunities, really using my network, so meeting with the physiotherapist at the Boston Ballet, and then hence we sold to the Boston Ballet.

Dr Juliet Bourke: But how did you know the physiotherapist at the Boston... like this sort of luck theme, but you make your luck.

Hayley Saddington: You do. I think you have to be creative. We have to be authentic and creative, and the process is ‘Okay, who is the physiotherapist at the Boston Ballet?’ You're only ever two or three points of separation from them. And I think if you are authentic in your approach and you clearly establish why you’re going to help them, people are pretty open in connecting you. And it was just one meeting, and I understood the issues they were going through, and that's it.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And Boston Ballet leads to NBA leads to...

Hayley Saddington: Well, we then were in the major baseball league as well. The codes over here as well – the AFL and the Roosters. So it just, I think, kind of cascaded because it's a small world, the elite sports, and they all like accuracy and ease, and that was... it was a nice fit.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So as you've scaled your business, I think you got some advice when you were overseas about changing your narrative from that very personal story about your father to where you are now?

Hayley Saddington: Yeah, there was a pivotal moment – we were doing an accelerator in the US – and it was the first time I'd been challenged to move away from my story. And I'm a believer, and it's you know... your story leads you to here, and it, you know, allows you to grow or go through certain experiences and achieve certain things. It shapes who you are. But they said, ‘Let's disconnect from it.’ And so for the first time, I was like what is company without that? Who am I without that? And so it was really challenging to go, ‘Okay, this is, you know, this is what we are’. It was almost like removing the depth and all those years of connection. But I think the biggest thing, I think if I look at my sort of history, there were dad's accident and other things that have happened in life were drivers. Every morning I'd get up and I would make sure that dollar was working really, really hard in the business, because I had those drivers on why I was there and what I was doing. So to separate from that was extremely challenging, and I don't think it's right. I think the story is, what makes you unique, it still drives you. So I think staying to that should be encouraged, not discouraged.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So tell me about success. How do you measure success?

Hayley Saddington: My first company, Halo, I defined success around financial metrics – how many units we could sell, what multiple of revenue could we get, and how much we would exit for. So all around finance. The second company, Peak Medical, is almost a flip of that. So success is more about, as a CEO, am I there with my four-year-old each night? How am I balancing that out? Yes, we have financial metrics. Yes, we have, you know, how many customers we want to meet, how many people we can help, but there's a more holistic approach in the second company. I guess that comes from... maybe because it's my second company, maybe it's because I've changed as a person and very much grown. I don't know, but it's a more rounded success metric.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what does Peak Medical do?

Hayley Saddington: Peak Medical is an AI rehabilitation platform for care – for anyone who needs it, anywhere, anytime. It's clinical advice using artificial intelligence in the home. So this we wrap around lots of segments, but we're starting with total knee replacement patients. So if you're a rural patient or someone who's busy in the city, we're going to give you all the care points you need to get stronger, adjust your fear, post-operatively understand your pain and make sure we're giving you that care pathway from physical and mental.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So why did you decide to shift from Halo to Peak Medical?

Hayley Saddington: Peak was something unique in the sense that it was a clear medical software. Halo was a medical hardware. I decided to move away from the medical hardware element because logistics and the world shut down a little bit over covid, and it was hard to get parts. It was hard to get shipments delivered. So I thought, how can we reliably get patients care at home, and software's the answer. It just has no barriers. We can get it anywhere, anytime. We can run updates. It's highly scalable.

Dr Juliet Bourke: But the origin story for you is about your dad. And the origin story for Peak Medical was about?

Hayley Saddington: Oh I love the origin of Peak because it is so dear to my heart. So I sat with hundreds of patients who have been sitting on a waitlist to get a new knee for years – well, at least 12 months – and it's heartbreaking. They wait for a year, they have a list of questions, and they go in to see the surgeon and the care team. They get around 10 minutes in a group setting. This is a public hospital. People travel hours to get there and they don't really know what to expect. And they're rushed in, rushed out – no fault of the care team, they've got other patients on the table waiting they've got to get back to. They walk out often with higher anxiety, high fear and often more questions. So we wanted to change that. Healthcare equality is the heart of Peak and those patients who I connect with every day.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what are the learnings, or what's a top learning, that you would take from Halo into Peak Medical?

Hayley Saddington: Think big, think bigger. And that can only be encompassed or enabled if you personally, as a person, can think bigger and so I'd say the advice is to make sure you're working with a mentor or someone who has gone bigger before you to, sort of, allow your thoughts to expand there. Otherwise, you can design something that's quite niche, which is okay in some circumstances. But I think thinking bigger and putting yourself in that position would be my advice to myself back then.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And is there one thing that you now know that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your career?

Hayley Saddington: Just to listen to my own intuition. At the beginning of my career, I hadn't done anything before in the health tech space, before I started my first medical device company. And so I really had to, as you do, listen to people who have done it, or advice givers to sort of take you in a certain direction. And I think if I had anchored to my intuition a little bit more it perhaps would have streamlined. So it's really important to be clear on that and centre there.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Was there a moment that you realised that? That you should have listened to yourself.

Hayley Saddington: Yeah, so does that come from age or experience? Maybe a bit of both. I think it's just a point in my life where I became just confident in my intuition because when I did listen to it, things worked out. I don't know if that's after motherhood, I don't know if that's after the second company, or just age, but probably around 38 it kicked in.

Dr Juliet Bourke: That's very precise, around 38.

Hayley Saddington: Around 38. Just before my first child, probably, so that makes sense.

Dr Juliet Bourke: The Business Of is brought to you by the University of New South Wales Business School produced with Deadset Studios. If you enjoyed this conversation with Hayley Saddington, we have another female founder story you might like to listen to next. It's our episode with Alexandra Smart, the co-founder of fashion brand Ginger & Smart:

Alexandra Smart: Large organisations now not only require but desire leaders who can think creatively, think quickly, think in a dynamic way, with an element of risk to get things done.

Dr Juliet Bourke: You can find that episode linked in our show notes.

The Business Of podcast is brought to you by UNSW Business School, produced with Deadset Studios. To stay up to date with our latest podcasts as well as the latest insights and thought leadership from the Business School, subscribe to BusinessThink.

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<h1>The resilient entrepreneur: How this Aussie medtech start-up went global</h1>

<figure><img src="?w=1320" /><figcaption></figcaption></figure>
 <h2>About the episode</h2>
At seven years old, Hayley Saddington experienced an incident that became the catalyst for her whole career. 
Decades later, Hayley founded two companies – HALO Medical Devices and Peak Medical – but she’s not your typical tech entrepreneur. For one thing, she doesn’t come from a tech background. 
Both companies have tested her patience, her drive and her sleep schedule, but her deeply personal purpose has kept her going. And as a mentor to budding entrepreneurs, Hayley wants to help others determine their purpose and find that same drive to succeed in business.
The Business Of podcast is brought to you by <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/business" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">UNSW Business School</a>, produced with <a href="http://deadsetstudios.com/" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Deadset Studios</a>.
<h2>Want to know more? </h2>
For the latest news and research from UNSW Business School and AGSM @ UNSW Business School, <a href="https://www.businessthink.unsw.edu.au/subscribe" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">subscribe</a> to our industry stories at <a href="https://www.businessthink.unsw.edu.au/" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BusinessThink</a> and follow us on LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/school/unswbusiness/mycompany/" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">UNSW Business School</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/school/agsm-nswbusinessschool/" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AGSM @ UNSW Business School</a>.
<h2>Transcript</h2>
Hayley Saddington: At seven, my dad had a farming accident, and it was at that age... I didn't know I was going to go into health tech, but I got a sense of the problems in the health system. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Hayley Saddington's entrepreneurial spirit was driven from a very young age. 
Hayley Saddington: I was out in the paddock with my dad. His arm got caught in this big piece of machinery, and I was the only child out there that day. The person helping the paddock... 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Living rurally meant Hayley and her dad were a long way from the nearest hospital, so they put in a call to the Royal Flying Doctor Service who would meet the pair on the other side of the paddock. But with no way of getting there, seven-year-old Hayley jumped into the driver's seat and drove her dad over to meet them. That accident demonstrated to Hayley the difficulty people have accessing medical care. It ignited a passion in her that would see her going from physio student to successful medtech entrepreneur, a journey that would land her on Shark Tank and see her pitching a product to the NBA. 
A founder’s story can be a powerful thing. It's what drives you to succeed and on your toughest days, it's what drives you to keep going. And it's not just a tool for motivation, leaning into a personal connection with your product or service can be what gets you over the line with customers and also investors.  
This is The Business Of, a podcast from the University of New South Wales Business School. I'm Dr Juliet Bourke, a Professor of Practice in the School of Management and Governance.  
So Hayley, tell me about your dad's rehab process because it sort of became the catalyst for your career. 
Hayley Saddington: We started to have to go to a lot of medical appointments and the follow up, you know, post amputee. It was at that point I was like, ‘Okay, it's so disruptive’. We were 500 kilometres from the nearest hospital that could help, so really sort of looking at what we could do to people, our loved ones, to get them the care at ease was inground very early.  
Dr Juliet Bourke:  Fast forward to university, you're studying physiotherapy, and do you have an idea for a product? Where did the idea come from? 
Hayley Saddington: Study really never came naturally or easy for me. I was very much the kind of creative... the business sort of person, which I didn't really know at the stage when I started uni. But I guess it was at the point where I saw this problem, I saw this tool that we were using – and having the background of experiencing a loved one who needed these kind of physiotherapy tools – it was the only tool we would use to get range of motion on a body. It was protractor-like, very archaic, often up to 30 degrees out and this is what we use as a gold standard on our loved ones. So my brain has always been wired to sort of laterally think, ‘How can we do it better?’ So started the idea. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: I saw that Shark Tank episode that you were on – and we have to talk about Shark Tank – but it's literally like a ruler along one part of your body and a ruler on another part. And then there's a central, you know, pivot point. 
Hayley Saddington: It's so simple, exactly right. The one you've just described is the tool we used to use and now the Halo, which I came up with, I guess the problem solving was how do we make it more accurate? How do we bring it into the digital age? How can we get tools to physios, you know, that were up with the age and really accurate?  
Dr Juliet Bourke: How did you land on that? Why that tool? I'm assuming there are other tools which are equally archaic, or maybe that's the only one.  
Hayley Saddington: No, there's so many. Just something inside me was like, ‘I'm going to go on this. I'm going to go on this’, and I'm very much that person on 'if I see the problem I'm going to finish it'. The way I did that, I talked to heads of departments of physios, I talked to other physios, I talked to other physio students, and they all thought the problem was also a problem, and so it, I guess, it allowed me to cascade into that.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: So how do you get from that idea – and you said ‘we’ then... what's the ‘we?’ How do you do research and development around it? How do you get a team together?  
Hayley Saddington: Our pathway with that first company was really around let's raise some awareness. Let's go out and apply for every opportunity possible. And I remember writing the Shark Tank application thinking I would never get in. We did that with WA Innovator of the Year Award and that just sort of allowed us to be seen at a very... like it didn't cost anything other than time, and that attracted mentors. It attracted some startup capital to get going. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: But even on the Shark Tank show you had this little device that was now using, sort of, laser to measure the angles in someone's limbs. How did you develop that device? 
Hayley Saddington: When we won an award in Western Australia, I had a person in the room come up – he ended up being our first investor – he said, ‘I know how to do this. I know how to make this idea into mass production. I've got a manufacturer I'll introduce you to’. And so that was the approach. We went down, sort of looked at, you know, do we need regulatory and that was just using advisory services. We had some in-kind support, so we lent on those supports to learn as well as this incredible advisor who really stepped us through those first parts. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So you had this random investor who turned up at a presentation you were giving. How else did you get your investment to do what you needed to do? 
Hayley Saddington: So at the time, before I started Halo and Halo Medical Devices, my partner at the time had passed away. So I really pivotal point to go ‘What do I do here?’. I had a very small and painful inheritance from it, I could have done something sensible with it – which has never been my pathway – it was only going to be taken in one direction. So I used that small amount to start Halo and I matched that with a grant that I applied for which doubled it and I was really careful on where every dollar went, because it was money from the heart. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Did you have to do your own research and development, or did someone come along and do that for you as well?  
Hayley Saddington:  No, I did it all. We did it all. So I think the first process was, you know, we went to Bunnings and I brought some parts for this very manual, analog-looking device, which, you know, evolved into this beautiful looking, white Halo with lasers. But that was the first process. And then, you know, there's all the other elements of the business, how do you name it? What product do you go with? What company name? How do you place this through the regulatory submission? How do you write a grant? And I Googled a lot of that. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So were you working at the same time? Was this sort of a side hustle that you had going, or was this you had enough investment to just completely focus?
Hayley Saddington: No, no. We made a few units, so we did a small little production run, which were just samples. And at six in the morning I would take them around to physiotherapists who would open early, literally in a big IKEA bag, and I would say, ‘would you like to try this for the day?’ And we slowly built up customers, testimonials. So we started very, very slowly, and then realising that is not the business model of growth we then moved to distributors to get it out to physiotherapists. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: And I'm sure being on a big show like Shark Tank, which you mentioned before, would have earned you some credibility when you're approaching distributors. What was that experience like? 
Hayley Saddington: Do you know what, it was so fun. It was one of those moments, you know. We weren't prepared in terms of, you know, we didn't spend hours rehearsing. I sort of rocked up to the studios and I knew my product so intimately, it was one of those experiences where it didn't matter what questions came up, and Steve Baxter fired these incredible technical questions and I'd been sitting with our engineers for two years talking about accelerometers and goniometers prior. So it was like anything that came up, we could just answer authentically. And the experience was great, a great advert, and we gained our first distributor by being seen on it. So it has a great reach. We did a deal online and then that didn't go through. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Oh, so let me just pause there. So in the studio there was going to be some investment, I think, from two of the judges and you're saying that didn't actually come to fruition.  
Hayley Saddington: It didn't come to fruition. And it was an interesting point of view. I feel it was... it's probably for television, really sort of making sure that we did a deal, we got a deal. And offline, even before we entered the due diligence process, we were told by one of those Sharks that they need to be seen to invest in female leaders, and this will probably be the end of it because that had been visualised on TV. So that was what had happened. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Good for people to know, right? That that is the behind the scenes. 
Hayley Saddington: Absolutely so great for people to know to be prepared and not, I guess, hang everything on that Shark Tank experience. Like it is what it is – it's a great advert, incredible experience, great for you to be very quick and know your business and be really confident in it. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: And it was so... I mean, your product is very visual. You can see this old protractor-like thing, and then you can see your own Halo with the laser lights. It's much better to see that than describe it in some ways. I'm sure people are Googling right now ‘Halo’... 
Hayley Saddington: Halo. Halo goniometer. And I think it came across just like that on the show as well. We had the manual protractor, and, you know, the sharks were like, ‘wow, I can't believe everyone is using that and not this’. So it was an easy show. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: How long did it take you to develop the digital goniometer?  
Hayley Saddington: I had the idea for about two years. I think that's a really important note to make. We have these ideas, and it's the same as my current company, it took three years to come to fruition. You talk about it, you start to get people on board, you start to raise capital, bring some awareness and validate it. It takes time. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So with that goniometer you're building it, you're getting validation. And then what happens?  
Hayley Saddington: It was around, you know, how do we get this out to more people and how do we build a trusted brand? Who do we align with? And I think in that first company I really took risks and one of those risks was going over to a physiotherapy roadshow in San Diego, hiring the cheapest booth at the very back. But there was 10,000 physiotherapy students coming through and I knew that. So we made a great video, had these incredible bright turquoise shirts, and we spoke about it and we showed them and got it in people's hands. And that led to a trial with the Mayo Clinic. Like there was just these cascading moments by putting ourselves out there on a shoestring as well, on a budget. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: The Mayo Clinic. I mean, that's a major brand to suddenly be in your orbit. How did that happen?  
Hayley Saddington: One of the students at that particular conference said, ‘Look, I've got to get my professor’. So he happened to be a professor who was also at the Mayo Clinic and I asked him about validation, and he's like, ‘Well, we'd like to take it through validation’. So we ended up doing a paper with them. So it was just through conversation, right timing, and I think putting ourselves out there. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: A couple of times now, I'm almost expecting you to use the word luck. Because you talked about there was an investor who just happened to hear your presentation, and then you're at a trade conference and there just happens to be a student who's got a professor at the Mayo Clinic... but you're putting yourself in the way of luck. Is that how you think about it? 
Hayley Saddington: I think so. I hesitate to use luck because I believe, I strongly believe, that it's around timing and being prepared and flexible in that moment. And it's understanding what you need to move forward and having the ability to have a conversation with that right person who can perhaps grant that. Or obviously not everything comes to fruition and we're just talking about the lucky moments, but yeah I think, you know, timing is everything. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: That is a good point. We do talk about the peak positive moments; we don't talk about the other side. And so are there other side moments that you've learned from that you would want to share with other people? 
Hayley Saddington: It's often the moments where I have prepared the most or gone in with the direction I want to come out with, in business the most that fail. The thing that's worked continuously from now is going in and really being flexible in the conversations, doing as much research as we can on a partner, for example, or a potential partner. It's doing as much, and looking at how you can really understand their pain points, or really understand what they want to do. Do they want to grow? Do they want to sell more implants? How do I align with that? And I come in with solutions to do that for them. That's something that's worked really well. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Why do we only talk about the good times? Sure, it's more pleasant to celebrate success, but what do we really learn from that? Like all successful entrepreneurs, resilience has been Hayley's secret weapon. Hard times and tough breaks are inevitable, so being prepared and adaptable is crucial. But how do you actually develop resilience? Barney Tan is the Head of the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at UNSW. He's been looking at some research out of the Business School that will help you and your organisation weather the storms ahead.  
Barney Tan: So resilience is vital for entrepreneurs and startups due to the challenges that they face, such as fluctuating markets, uncertainty, financial constraints and unexpected setbacks. The financial constraints is especially big one because, you know, with startups they're always looking for resources. They need resources, and as a startup, they're actually the most vulnerable to setbacks. Any setback could potentially be fata for startups. I think Haley's journey especially demonstrates the importance of resilience. So for example, after her deal with Shark Tank fell through, she didn't let it derail her plans, right? Instead, she used the exposure from the show to gain her first distributor to show how, basically, resilience can turn disappointment into opportunity.  
The key to nurturing resilience is first you have to develop a growth mindset. Entrepreneurs with a growth mindset view challenges and failures as opportunities to learn and grow. But it's not just a mindset. It's not just a mentality. A growth mindset is actually backed by the ability to acquire resources, financial support, and to manage these resources and financial support effectively.  
So it's a bit like this, if you're an entrepreneur and if you are not great at acquiring funding from investors, what you end up with is a situation where you're using your own money. And when you're using your money in an entrepreneurial venture what tends to happen is that you would tend to pinch pennies, you will look for ways to save because every cent you spend is going to hurt. And that's why a lot of successful startups having acquired the funds from external investors, they tend to invest into the best R and D. They tend to invest in optimizing their processes, optimizing the distribution channels. They do not mind spending, right, to achieve these strategic benefits for their organisations. It's a growth mindset, but that is backed by the ability to acquire funding and resources and the ability to manage funding and resources. 
And not only that, of course, you know, with funding and resources there's a need to build a support network, right? So resilience is nurtured by surrounding yourself with supportive mentors, advisors and peers. A lot of startup founders will be very much part of incubator setups. Now these networks will provide guidance, feedback and even emotional support during difficult times, helping entrepreneurs stay grounded. Joining startup communities and accelerators would be very beneficial to gaining access to a reliable support network. People who have experienced the same things as you have, people who have walked the walk that is able to show you the way. 
Another critical aspect of nurturing resilience is really not just focus on the immediate business viability of the business. The most powerful startups, those that have the ability to rally investors and other resource owners to the course, are those whose mission are aligned with a higher purpose. When people believe in your cause, they're more likely to invest in you, right? If you're just a business looking to make money, then it becomes a very transactional relationship with your investors, where their investment decision is solely motivated by your revenue or income generation capabilities. But by aligning your startup's mission with a higher purpose, this also actually helps entrepreneurs stay motivated as well. A clear sense of purpose will serve as basically a guiding post to provide focus and direction even when the journey becomes difficult. Research conducted by my colleagues at UNSW Business School have shown that purpose-driven entrepreneurship is critical and entrepreneurs like Haley, who are motivated by a strong mission, tend to be more resilient to external challenges, including market downturns and competition. This mindset and this alignment with a higher purpose is important because these entrepreneurs would be able to draw on their sense of purpose to navigate difficult decisions and remain committed to their long-term vision.  
 Dr Juliet Bourke: So to start a business you need a great idea and you need investment. What else do you need? 
Hayley Saddington: Mentors, advisors. People you can trust, people you can bring into the fold who can either streamline you to the next stage – and that may be they introduce you to a manufacturer, they may be someone who opens a door at a health fund – really being careful on who they are. It may just be someone who you trust, and you can almost... as a sole founder, in my current situation, someone I could trust and almost treat like a co-founder and just bounce ideas off. The way I work is, as I'm speaking I'm making decisions and that mentor for me is someone who can sort of anchor things down or allow me to consider things I hadn't considered. So someone who's trusted, or I feel a deep trust with someone who I can say anything to, and it's just available. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: And so now you're on the other side, right? I think you're a mentor as part of the UNSW Founders program? 
Hayley Saddington: Yes, I have been with the inaugural Health 10x team. Originally, I was the entrepreneur in residence for three years and then now I'm doing that program ourselves so. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So what's the advice you give, as a mentor to your mentees, around blending this story of purpose as well as finance? 
Hayley Saddington: I give the advice of you must have that story and that problem and that patient or who you’re solving this for at heart and really visualise so you can connect to it every day. Because going on a health tech journey is incredibly hard, incredibly long, it's a marathon. So we need to be able to connect to that, but we also need that ability to talk about numbers and consider other possibilities of getting to market. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Your journey is full of unconventional ways of putting your product out there and getting to market. How did Halo end up being used in America's National Basketball Association? 
Hayley Saddington: Yeah we went over and I spent a week in New York, and I got as many appointments as I can – one of the NBA teams was one of them – and I talked to the athletic trainers who get what we were doing really, really quickly and I left a unit with them. And since then the NBA ordered Halo, so it was sort of understanding where their problem was, making sure I could get that meeting while I was over there. I think we spent our last dollar to get on that plane and make that trip happen, but I packed it full of incredible opportunities, really using my network, so meeting with the physiotherapist at the Boston Ballet, and then hence we sold to the Boston Ballet.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: But how did you know the physiotherapist at the Boston... like this sort of luck theme, but you make your luck. 
Hayley Saddington: You do. I think you have to be creative. We have to be authentic and creative, and the process is ‘Okay, who is the physiotherapist at the Boston Ballet?’ You're only ever two or three points of separation from them. And I think if you are authentic in your approach and you clearly establish why you’re going to help them, people are pretty open in connecting you. And it was just one meeting, and I understood the issues they were going through, and that's it.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: And Boston Ballet leads to NBA leads to...  
Hayley Saddington: Well, we then were in the major baseball league as well. The codes over here as well – the AFL and the Roosters. So it just, I think, kind of cascaded because it's a small world, the elite sports, and they all like accuracy and ease, and that was... it was a nice fit. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So as you've scaled your business, I think you got some advice when you were overseas about changing your narrative from that very personal story about your father to where you are now? 
Hayley Saddington: Yeah, there was a pivotal moment – we were doing an accelerator in the US – and it was the first time I'd been challenged to move away from my story. And I'm a believer, and it's you know... your story leads you to here, and it, you know, allows you to grow or go through certain experiences and achieve certain things. It shapes who you are. But they said, ‘Let's disconnect from it.’ And so for the first time, I was like what is company without that? Who am I without that? And so it was really challenging to go, ‘Okay, this is, you know, this is what we are’. It was almost like removing the depth and all those years of connection. But I think the biggest thing, I think if I look at my sort of history, there were dad's accident and other things that have happened in life were drivers. Every morning I'd get up and I would make sure that dollar was working really, really hard in the business, because I had those drivers on why I was there and what I was doing. So to separate from that was extremely challenging, and I don't think it's right. I think the story is, what makes you unique, it still drives you. So I think staying to that should be encouraged, not discouraged. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So tell me about success. How do you measure success? 
Hayley Saddington: My first company, Halo, I defined success around financial metrics – how many units we could sell, what multiple of revenue could we get, and how much we would exit for. So all around finance. The second company, Peak Medical, is almost a flip of that. So success is more about, as a CEO, am I there with my four-year-old each night? How am I balancing that out? Yes, we have financial metrics. Yes, we have, you know, how many customers we want to meet, how many people we can help, but there's a more holistic approach in the second company. I guess that comes from... maybe because it's my second company, maybe it's because I've changed as a person and very much grown. I don't know, but it's a more rounded success metric. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: So what does Peak Medical do? 
Hayley Saddington: Peak Medical is an AI rehabilitation platform for care – for anyone who needs it, anywhere, anytime. It's clinical advice using artificial intelligence in the home. So this we wrap around lots of segments, but we're starting with total knee replacement patients. So if you're a rural patient or someone who's busy in the city, we're going to give you all the care points you need to get stronger, adjust your fear, post-operatively understand your pain and make sure we're giving you that care pathway from physical and mental.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: So why did you decide to shift from Halo to Peak Medical? 
Hayley Saddington: Peak was something unique in the sense that it was a clear medical software. Halo was a medical hardware. I decided to move away from the medical hardware element because logistics and the world shut down a little bit over covid, and it was hard to get parts. It was hard to get shipments delivered. So I thought, how can we reliably get patients care at home, and software's the answer. It just has no barriers. We can get it anywhere, anytime. We can run updates. It's highly scalable.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: But the origin story for you is about your dad. And the origin story for Peak Medical was about? 
Hayley Saddington: Oh I love the origin of Peak because it is so dear to my heart. So I sat with hundreds of patients who have been sitting on a waitlist to get a new knee for years – well, at least 12 months – and it's heartbreaking. They wait for a year, they have a list of questions, and they go in to see the surgeon and the care team. They get around 10 minutes in a group setting. This is a public hospital. People travel hours to get there and they don't really know what to expect. And they're rushed in, rushed out – no fault of the care team, they've got other patients on the table waiting they've got to get back to. They walk out often with higher anxiety, high fear and often more questions. So we wanted to change that. Healthcare equality is the heart of Peak and those patients who I connect with every day.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: So what are the learnings, or what's a top learning, that you would take from Halo into Peak Medical?  
Hayley Saddington: Think big, think bigger. And that can only be encompassed or enabled if you personally, as a person, can think bigger and so I'd say the advice is to make sure you're working with a mentor or someone who has gone bigger before you to, sort of, allow your thoughts to expand there. Otherwise, you can design something that's quite niche, which is okay in some circumstances. But I think thinking bigger and putting yourself in that position would be my advice to myself back then.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: And is there one thing that you now know that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your career? 
Hayley Saddington: Just to listen to my own intuition. At the beginning of my career, I hadn't done anything before in the health tech space, before I started my first medical device company. And so I really had to, as you do, listen to people who have done it, or advice givers to sort of take you in a certain direction. And I think if I had anchored to my intuition a little bit more it perhaps would have streamlined. So it's really important to be clear on that and centre there. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: Was there a moment that you realised that? That you should have listened to yourself.  
Hayley Saddington: Yeah, so does that come from age or experience? Maybe a bit of both. I think it's just a point in my life where I became just confident in my intuition because when I did listen to it, things worked out. I don't know if that's after motherhood, I don't know if that's after the second company, or just age, but probably around 38 it kicked in. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: That's very precise, around 38. 
Hayley Saddington: Around 38. Just before my first child, probably, so that makes sense. 
Dr Juliet Bourke: The Business Of is brought to you by the University of New South Wales Business School produced with Deadset Studios. If you enjoyed this conversation with Hayley Saddington, we have another female founder story you might like to listen to next. It's our episode with Alexandra Smart, the co-founder of fashion brand Ginger & Smart: 
Alexandra Smart: Large organisations now not only require but desire leaders who can think creatively, think quickly, think in a dynamic way, with an element of risk to get things done.  
Dr Juliet Bourke: You can find that episode linked in our show notes.
The Business Of podcast is brought to you by UNSW Business School, produced with Deadset Studios. To stay up to date with our latest podcasts as well as the latest insights and thought leadership from the Business School, <a href="https://www.businessthink.unsw.edu.au/subscribe" data-new-window="true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">subscribe to BusinessThink</a>.

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