Lessons learned from legend Wayne Gretzky applied to MRI technology company

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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to Calgary's podcast with Mario Tonoguzzi on Canada's podcast network.
[00:12] SPEAKER_00: Joining me today is Sean Prakuski, who is president and CEO of Ninalysis in Calgary.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today, Sean.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: My pleasure, thanks for having me.
[00:22] SPEAKER_00: Let's start with talking a little bit about the company, what it is that you guys do.
[00:30] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we've miniaturized MRI machines for industrial applications, but also healthcare applications.
[00:39] SPEAKER_00: So tell me, what kind of applications are these used for?
[00:44] SPEAKER_00: Sure, so magnetic resonance is not only used in hospitals for reasons that all your audience would be familiar with,
[00:56] SPEAKER_00: but that same technology is also used to image molecules.
[01:02] SPEAKER_00: So if you have olive oil and you want to test to see if it's actually extra virgin olive oil, you know, you can image the molecules and find out quite precisely.
[01:14] SPEAKER_00: If you're a big drug company like Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, you can image molecules in the new drug that you're developing.
[01:23] SPEAKER_00: You might only have a very small amount of it.
[01:25] SPEAKER_00: You put it in a glass tube of about seven inches high, five millimeters in diameter.
[01:31] SPEAKER_00: And then you put it in our product, which is a toaster sized box.
[01:36] SPEAKER_00: And you can image the molecules in that to see if your R&D efforts are going as planned.
[01:41] SPEAKER_00: You know, again, if you're designing a new drug, of course, we seem to be in the age of cannabis.
[01:46] SPEAKER_00: So I much prefer just a vodka martini myself, but I know others feel differently.
[01:53] SPEAKER_00: So we have lots of customers who are in the cannabis industry that are using our product to image the molecules in their cannabis oil or whatever the case may be.
[02:04] SPEAKER_00: So that's just a smattering of applications beyond, you know, human beings in a very large machine in a hospital.
[02:11] SPEAKER_00: So how did you get into this?
[02:12] SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, what did the company start?
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: I founded the company 11 years ago.
[02:18] SPEAKER_00: Okay. And how, how did you get into this field?
[02:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a little bit of a story to tell if you don't, if you don't mind.
[02:25] SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
[02:28] SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's appropriate on a podcast to tell stories, I think.
[02:31] SPEAKER_00: About 11 years ago, a friend of mine, Dr. Michael Okanewski, who's also a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Calgary, called me up and he said,
[02:42] SPEAKER_00: Sean, I want to meet you tomorrow at the Food Hills Hospital in the research center.
[02:46] SPEAKER_00: And I got something to show you.
[02:48] SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I know you pretty well.
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: Mine is short notice.
[02:51] SPEAKER_00: So I met, I met Michael the next day in a specialized room with, and he showed me this gigantic machine that had superconducting magnets and needed liquid helium and liquid nitrogen to keep those magnets cool.
[03:04] SPEAKER_00: And he showed me what scientists were doing with this thing.
[03:08] SPEAKER_00: And we got really excited about it.
[03:10] SPEAKER_00: And I said, hey, this is, this is very interesting.
[03:12] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what one of these machines is, but, you know, what does this have to do with why you wanted to meet with me?
[03:19] SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, I want to start a business and I want to miniaturize one of these things.
[03:23] SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, what are they called?
[03:25] SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't recognize it.
[03:27] SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, they're called a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer.
[03:31] SPEAKER_00: And they're used in all different kinds of industries from petrochemicals to pharma, the food.
[03:38] SPEAKER_00: Law enforcement, all kinds of energy.
[03:42] SPEAKER_00: And, and, and we can miniaturize them and sell them.
[03:46] SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, that's fascinating. He kind of got me going.
[03:48] SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing anything at the time.
[03:50] SPEAKER_00: So he kind of had me hooked and we went for lunch and talked about it further.
[03:54] SPEAKER_00: And, and we kind of started to map out with the, with the plan would be to build the initial team and the race money and, and what our go-to-market strategy would be in everything.
[04:03] SPEAKER_00: And, and I said, this is fabulous. You know, I'm definitely in.
[04:06] SPEAKER_00: And then, and then, and then when we, when we ended the meeting, he said one more thing, Sean.
[04:11] SPEAKER_00: He said, um, that machine that I showed you is exactly the same as an MRI machine.
[04:19] SPEAKER_00: And he showed me a picture of an MRI machine. And I said, well, you don't have to show me a picture of an MRI machine.
[04:25] SPEAKER_00: I know what those are. Everybody knows what those are. And he said, yeah, well, they're, it's magnetic resonance technology.
[04:30] SPEAKER_00: They use the same type of magnet, same type of liquid helium and nitrogen. And so on and so forth. They're just different applications.
[04:37] SPEAKER_00: So we're going to miniaturize the one first that can analyze substances. In other words, image molecules.
[04:43] SPEAKER_00: I'm in cannabis or olive oil or petrochemicals. We can do that. We'll also be of the miniaturized these MRI machines.
[04:50] SPEAKER_00: And what, what will be so inexpensive? They'll be connected to the cloud driven by artificial intelligence.
[04:56] SPEAKER_00: And they'll be in every football stadium, every hockey rink. They'll be all over the place.
[05:02] SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can put your finger in them. If you think you've dislocated your knuckle during a volleyball game,
[05:08] SPEAKER_00: or you can just put your head in them and to see if you have a contortion. And that will be really exciting.
[05:14] SPEAKER_00: And so that won't be our first product. But it'll be our vision. And, and we'll have several tangible steps along the way that we know will satiate investors and so on and so forth.
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: And so on the way to the grand vision of being able to miniaturize MRI machines and making them available for human use.
[05:32] SPEAKER_00: And they'll be proliferated everywhere. And hopefully it'll be a different sort of regulatory environment. Similar to today, you know how you get blood pressure feedback.
[05:40] SPEAKER_00: And, and that sort of thing. You don't have to go to a doctor to do that. Well, one day it's going to be the same for MRI machines.
[05:46] SPEAKER_00: And so while that for sure was, you know, I contacted my lawyer that very afternoon and said, OK, I want you to incorporate this company.
[05:54] SPEAKER_00: Here's what we're doing and so on and so forth. And, and Michael is on our board of directors today, that gentleman that introduced me to this topic and sort of a co founder with me.
[06:03] SPEAKER_00: Although he's not as active as I am. I'm basically living breathing and, and, and sleeping this thing. But, but that's the story on how this business got started.
[06:12] SPEAKER_00: So what were you taking at the University of Calgary? What did you take there?
[06:18] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, so I graduated from with my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering back in the early 90s.
[06:25] SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And then I had a business initiative after that. And, and had a little bit of a successful exit that did us flexibility.
[06:35] SPEAKER_00: And then I went back to do my master's degree in electrical engineering as well. And I completed that in about the year 2000.
[06:42] SPEAKER_00: So that's where I created this relationship with with Michael, who was my supervisor back in back in 2000.
[06:49] SPEAKER_00: And then just became a business associate after that.
[06:52] SPEAKER_00: OK, so when you look at the company from the analysis and into the future, what's what's your vision?
[07:01] SPEAKER_00: Or what do you want this company to be and where it's going?
[07:05] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we even barked on an incredible journey to build a fully vertically integrated scientific instrumentation company.
[07:14] SPEAKER_00: And we started from scratch, the NOIP transfer from anyone.
[07:18] SPEAKER_00: You know, we hired the scientists and developed all the intellectual property and technology platform and then products from scratch.
[07:26] SPEAKER_00: And we're just going to continue to go in that direction.
[07:30] SPEAKER_00: And so my vision is that, you know, we're going to go in, we're going to build a company that, you know, one day we'll go down the path towards being like a, like a seamen, they're like a phillips, at least with regards to magnetic resonance, not, not necessarily the sort of conglomerate aspect of it.
[07:47] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, trading on the NASDAQ one day with 2000 people and providing just incredible miniaturized MRI machines for people all over the planet.
[07:58] SPEAKER_00: And so we've achieved a lot of a lot of that vision already in that, you know, we're a global company, for example.
[08:04] SPEAKER_00: So we sell in over 45 countries around the world.
[08:08] SPEAKER_00: We have succeeded at miniaturizing the basic technology.
[08:13] SPEAKER_00: And now we're just in the process of launching new product families on top of that technology platform.
[08:21] SPEAKER_00: What are some of the, I guess most unique ways these are being used that you've come across.
[08:29] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so, you know, these very large machines that people are used to using, right, have to be in specialized rooms with reinforced, boring, you, they're like mainframe computers, you know, they're right, the actual user of the computer couldn't even get near the mainframe.
[08:48] SPEAKER_00: They would submit their punch cards or whatever to a gatekeeper. And then the gatekeeper would run the contact them three days later and say, sorry, your program didn't work.
[08:58] SPEAKER_00: There was a mistake. They'll come back again. It's kind of like that with these large magnetic resonance machine.
[09:04] SPEAKER_00: But they're the most important technique to analyze. They're the most information rich. They're the most reliable.
[09:12] SPEAKER_00: So everybody who needs a substance, a sass or their image, their molecule of image would want to use those machines if they could.
[09:21] SPEAKER_00: But of course, what if you need to have them in a mobile lab where you're driving around.
[09:26] SPEAKER_00: And so you can't put those giant machines in a mobile lab where you can put our instruments in a mobile lab.
[09:33] SPEAKER_00: In fact, we have a public free disclosed partnership with the German police in bond where they're using it to quickly analyze illicit drugs.
[09:45] SPEAKER_00: Right. So, you know, you're on the side of a road. You see a suspicious powder and you want an accurate measurement right away.
[09:52] SPEAKER_00: You don't want to, you know, you're still going to send it away to the formal lab and wait three days.
[09:58] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, this isn't the 80s where you can kind of dip your pinky in a white substance and put it on your tongue and say, oh, this is, you know, I mean, you're going to die if you do stuff like that.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: You're joking there a little bit. But the point is, these things are very serious. And in our instrument, which is a miniaturized version of the large instruments that everybody trusts.
[10:17] SPEAKER_00: In 15 seconds, you can get a preliminary answer on, you know, this is fentanyl in here. And then you can do what you have to do as the, you know, the form I close up played up.
[10:29] SPEAKER_00: So there's an example of a cool application that was defeated already and we're doing many of those.
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: Another one is, and this is one that I didn't anticipate when I founded the company.
[10:42] SPEAKER_00: A bunker fuel on cargo ships. I never thought one of our instruments that we would sell would be actually be on a cargo ship.
[10:51] SPEAKER_00: But we have a publicly announced partnership with Bosch, the new, the large German company that makes everything from e-vikes to dishwasher.
[11:02] SPEAKER_00: Approach does one day and said, yeah, there's a need for about a hundred thousand of these units to go on cargo ships to analyze bunker fuel.
[11:10] SPEAKER_00: So there, I never thought our instrument could be on cargo ship, but when we hold a pretty important industrial technology leader in the world, approach that with the opportunity to do that type of an application.
[11:24] SPEAKER_00: So I can go on and on about the different types of applications that partners and customers are interested in.
[11:31] SPEAKER_00: Let me just talk a little bit about being an entrepreneur, Sean. You know, you've been at this for a little while now.
[11:40] SPEAKER_00: Along your entrepreneurial journey, what were some of the key things that you've learned from different areas, whether it be people or our examples of other entrepreneurs or reading.
[11:53] SPEAKER_00: Reading certain books, where have you sought, I guess, wisdom and advice from?
[12:01] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm definitely still seeking lots of wisdom, that's for sure.
[12:06] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I never intended to be an entrepreneur, to be honest.
[12:11] SPEAKER_00: Of course, my dream was to be a hockey player.
[12:13] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: Like, like a lot of Canadian boys, I started playing hockey very early.
[12:18] SPEAKER_00: I started playing hockey in, probably not like a lot of Canadian boys.
[12:21] SPEAKER_00: And I don't tell this part of the story very often.
[12:24] SPEAKER_00: I also wanted to be a figure skater.
[12:26] SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
[12:27] SPEAKER_00: So my dad had me into hockey and my mom had me into a figure skating.
[12:31] SPEAKER_00: She really got me interested in watching the Canadian figure skating legend named Paul Rancid.
[12:39] SPEAKER_00: I might remember Paul Rancid.
[12:41] SPEAKER_00: And so, and also Brian Polkart, God rest his soul.
[12:47] SPEAKER_00: And so, I had this dream, I was going to be the first person to make it in the Olympics,
[12:53] SPEAKER_00: in figure skating and hockey at the same time.
[12:58] SPEAKER_00: So, eventually, eventually, the figure skating dream died, but the hockey dream actually longered for quite a while.
[13:06] SPEAKER_00: And so, I devoted my whole life pretty much to being on the ice,
[13:11] SPEAKER_00: whether it was trying to land an axel or my double polo, or trying to make plays in hockey.
[13:18] SPEAKER_00: So, it wasn't really up until, you know, the dream died when I was about 20 years old,
[13:23] SPEAKER_00: after giving it my best shot.
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: And basically, not being good enough.
[13:27] SPEAKER_00: I decided to be an engineer just because my dad was an engineer.
[13:31] SPEAKER_00: And so, it no real intention to be an entrepreneur, but, you know, one of the things I learned actually from my hockey career,
[13:38] SPEAKER_00: and which is absolutely required to be an entrepreneur is perseverance.
[13:43] SPEAKER_00: So, you really cannot get down about, you know, the ends and blows of how things go in a particular game,
[13:51] SPEAKER_00: or in a particular weekend in the business world.
[13:54] SPEAKER_00: You have to have your site set on a vision, and you just have to persevere all through all the ups and downs.
[14:00] SPEAKER_00: And so, probably the biggest thing that I think is that I've learned,
[14:05] SPEAKER_00: and that is a necessity, at least for me, anyways, has been perseverance.
[14:09] SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're going to go down memory lane a little bit here.
[14:14] SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you remember, but I remember as a young reporter with the Calgary Herald in the mid-80s,
[14:22] SPEAKER_00: I was a sports writer, and one of my beats in the mid-80s was the Calgary Wranglers of Western Hockey League.
[14:30] SPEAKER_00: And that's where you played, right?
[14:32] SPEAKER_00: And I try to remember those years, like, who was a coach at that time?
[14:39] SPEAKER_00: One of the coaches that I remember was Wally Kosaak, again, God bless his goal.
[14:45] SPEAKER_00: And he was a fabulous gentleman, very insightful.
[14:49] SPEAKER_00: I really just a great bio around, actually.
[14:53] SPEAKER_00: And another man that I, that year, the Wranglers weren't very good,
[14:56] SPEAKER_00: probably because I was playing for him.
[14:59] SPEAKER_00: But that year, I think we had a couple of coaches and another fine gentleman named Hank Passett.
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[15:05] SPEAKER_00: Was former any-
[15:06] SPEAKER_00: Former any-chiller, right?
[15:08] SPEAKER_00: And Goldie, with the spring penguins, I recall correctly.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a really nice man.
[15:14] SPEAKER_00: And he took control of events during that year as well.
[15:18] SPEAKER_00: So it was a little bit tumultuous.
[15:20] SPEAKER_00: But I remember you actually, and it's interesting that you brought that up.
[15:23] SPEAKER_00: But I remember you working for the Calgary Herald.
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: But I'd sort of lost track of that, you, I think, maybe cut your teeth as a sports writer.
[15:31] SPEAKER_00: So thanks for reminding me about that.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[15:33] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[15:34] SPEAKER_00: I remember those years, because that team, and I don't know if you were part of the transition and coaching.
[15:44] SPEAKER_00: But you did mention Wally, Hank Passett.
[15:47] SPEAKER_00: At some point, there was a guy named Sandy Huckle.
[15:50] SPEAKER_00: And they were all kind of like the-
[15:54] SPEAKER_00: How should I put it?
[15:55] SPEAKER_00: Like the really nice coaches, you know?
[16:00] SPEAKER_00: But then one year, they brought in, and I don't know if you played for a John Chapman.
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: A choppy was a little bit of a tough cookie.
[16:10] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[16:10] SPEAKER_00: And so that was like a transition between, you know, the really easygoing types to the really hard nose.
[16:19] SPEAKER_00: And from that, you played at the University of Calgary.
[16:24] SPEAKER_00: And then you were drafted by the L.I. King.
[16:27] SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about your story and hockey of what happened then.
[16:32] SPEAKER_00: Sure.
[16:33] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[16:34] SPEAKER_00: So just to get the chronology right, I did play for the University of Calgary.
[16:39] SPEAKER_00: But at that point, my career was done.
[16:41] SPEAKER_00: I had already retired, and I was just having fun at yet.
[16:45] SPEAKER_00: You see, I was doing my engineering degree.
[16:47] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[16:47] SPEAKER_00: So, but yeah, when I still had a chance, I did play for the Calgary Wranglers.
[16:53] SPEAKER_00: And I also played for the Spokane Chiefs.
[16:55] SPEAKER_00: I spoke in Spokane.
[16:57] SPEAKER_00: I played with guys like Brent Gilchrist and Nick Bacota, just incredible hockey players that had a quite an impressive stint in the NHL.
[17:06] SPEAKER_00: But when I was done with that, I, during that time, I got drafted by the L.I. King's.
[17:12] SPEAKER_00: And I signed a contract and I played in their, in their pharmacist for a couple years.
[17:17] SPEAKER_00: And at that time, their farm team was in Huhaven, Connecticut.
[17:21] SPEAKER_00: We're at a really amazing opportunity to play with a guy by the name of Kenny Baumgartner,
[17:26] SPEAKER_00: a W-A-W-H-L legend, and just an amazing guy, smart guy.
[17:32] SPEAKER_00: But then I, you know, not really that interesting, wasn't that good.
[17:35] SPEAKER_00: I had a couple kind of, you know, I guess, you know, good, good periods or whatever, but wasn't that good.
[17:43] SPEAKER_00: And so that part of it is sort of boring.
[17:45] SPEAKER_00: But, and I always tell this part of the story.
[17:47] SPEAKER_00: I hope nobody's listening to this is kind of getting sick of me telling this story.
[17:52] SPEAKER_00: But what was interesting about that time was not my part of it, but those are the Wayne Gretzky years in Los Angeles.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[18:00] SPEAKER_00: So I got to go to training camp with Wayne Gretzky.
[18:04] SPEAKER_00: I faced off with Wayne Gretzky and Scrimmage.
[18:07] SPEAKER_00: I've sat beside him on the bench, and you know, one time he said, how you doing, kid?
[18:14] SPEAKER_00: I said good.
[18:16] SPEAKER_00: And so that was really amazing, like, to be on the ice with him, and he, like, with a movie star or that he had, you know, he was, in those days, he was scoring like 210 points a year.
[18:29] SPEAKER_00: I don't remember that a human being, you know, used to do one human being used to do that.
[18:35] SPEAKER_00: So I was just an awe and he was such a nice guy and funny guy and everything.
[18:40] SPEAKER_00: And the kind of joke part of the story that I always tell is, you know, I've showered with Wayne Gretzky, you know, and stuff like that.
[18:49] SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, that was a really interesting time for me.
[18:53] SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot and just an awe of, again, like, a movie star, like, personality in hockey.
[18:59] SPEAKER_00: So just really a fabulous experience that I got to go through.
[19:03] SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, just before I was done and, you know, went back to school and started living real life.
[19:08] SPEAKER_00: What do you think, from that experience, and sort of rubby shoulders with a legend like that?
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: What do you think you learned that carries through with you to this day?
[19:22] SPEAKER_00: You know what? And it wasn't just Wayne Gretzky.
[19:25] SPEAKER_00: It was other people that sort of had the Midas touch, you know, I don't know if you remember Luke Robotai.
[19:30] SPEAKER_00: I certainly do. One of my favorite television shows is called Bones.
[19:35] SPEAKER_00: And Luke Robotai shows up in that, in one of the episodes of this, where the main character has a concussion
[19:44] SPEAKER_00: and he's dreaming and the Luke Robotai comes to do him.
[19:47] SPEAKER_00: So I definitely remember Luke.
[19:49] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and I remember being on the ice with Luke and, you know, him take a pass and the high high squat.
[19:56] SPEAKER_00: It just roots a snapshot underneath the bar and then Wayne would be dangling around out there.
[20:03] SPEAKER_00: So probably what I learned more from them is what I'm not.
[20:07] SPEAKER_00: I don't think I actually learned anything directly from them of things that I would want to apply, but rather just a clear contrast that, okay, you seem to have,
[20:19] SPEAKER_00: there's, there seems to be these people that have these special talents can do all these incredible things.
[20:25] SPEAKER_00: And I'm just not one of them. So I'm going to have to really grind it out.
[20:29] SPEAKER_00: And that's probably one reason why I didn't succeed in my hockey career is that it wasn't enough of a grinder.
[20:35] SPEAKER_00: And so in my business career, I definitely am a grinder.
[20:39] SPEAKER_00: You know, I definitely said, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to, if I'm going to succeed in the business world, I'm not going to succeed as a Luke Robotai or Wayne Redske.
[20:47] SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to be like more like a body part type of the character, but I have any chance.
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: And that sort of dealt pills into my comment before about perseverance and, and so on.
[20:56] SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of the approach that I've taken to my business career.
[21:01] SPEAKER_00: And I continue to do that today.
[21:03] SPEAKER_00: Super. Well, thanks very much. Sean, that was excellent. I appreciate taking the time to talk to us today.
[21:10] SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thanks very much, Mario.
[21:12] SPEAKER_00: Okay, super. That was Sean Cusky. Sorry, president and CEO of an analysis in Calgary.
[21:19] SPEAKER_00: This has been Calgary's podcast with Mario Tony Guzi on Canada's podcast network. Thanks for joining us today.