Jul 17, 2026 · 58 min · 19 segments
In this episode, your host, Jordan Burgin, is joined by Brandon Allen a cardiovascular commercial leader who is CCO at Atraverse Medical, the transseptal-access company acquired by Johnson & Johnson…
Brandon AllenGuest
Jordan BurginHost
I think the scariest moment was a realization that we had three months of cash left and we had to do something fast.
So anytime you are running out of cash and you have, an entire company, depending on what your next move is, that certainly brings out a lot of scariness.
And how long had you been at the business when you found out about how much money you had and how much runway you had?
It was about nine months, which, you know, then I learned to ask different questions as we went into other ventures, for sure.
But just the realization that something could go so quickly and, you know, what the ramifications of that were.
You know, the other thing that's always scary early in a commercialization is,
you
know, when you've got to pivot and have reorgs, rifts, layoffs, whatever you want to call them, you know, because these people leave stable companies to come to startups.
And how would you react to that as a CCO? What's your first port of call there?
Well, you find out how you can cut other ways, like is it through budgets? What are our other options? If there's poor performing folks, then you can look at who's on a PIP, things like that.
Then at least those people, if you're on a PIP or you've been not hitting your number for a long time and you have to see something's coming.
But then you just got to be honest and upfront and transparent with the folks and say, look, you know, whenever I interview people to come to startups, I always say, look, you know, we could be acquired in a month.
Like with Ageiverse, you know, one of the things that when we would interview folks is say, look, there's a strong possibility we're going to be acquired soon.
You know, we don't know when, but, you know, we've been having lots of conversations and, you know, just very upfront with folks.
I think the scariest moment was a realization that we had three months of cash left and we had to do something fast.
So anytime you are running out of cash and you have, an entire company, depending on what your next move is, that certainly brings out a lot of scariness.
And how long had you been at the business when you found out about how much money you had and how much runway you had?
It was about nine months, which, you know, then I learned to ask different questions as we went into other ventures, for sure.
But just the realization that something could go so quickly and, you know, what the ramifications of that were.
You know, the other thing that's always scary early in a commercialization is,
you
know, when you've got to pivot and have reorgs, rifts, layoffs, whatever you want to call them, you know, because these people leave stable companies to come to startups.
And how would you react to that as a CCO? What's your first port of call there?
Well, you find out how you can cut other ways, like is it through budgets? What are our other options? If there's poor performing folks, then you can look at who's on a PIP, things like that.
Then at least those people, if you're on a PIP or you've been not hitting your number for a long time and you have to see something's coming.
But then you just got to be honest and upfront and transparent with the folks and say, look, you know, whenever I interview people to come to startups, I always say, look, you know, we could be acquired in a month.
Like with Ageiverse, you know, one of the things that when we would interview folks is say, look, there's a strong possibility we're going to be acquired soon.
You know, we don't know when, but, you know, we've been having lots of conversations and, you know, just very upfront with folks.
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