Build From The Dock: The Last Mile Problem — Why Having a Great Product Isn't Enough
Wednesday, October 14
Venture Dock, 555 University Ave, Palo Alto
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
About the Event
Most founders pour everything into perfecting the product. Fewer spend that same energy on a harder question: who actually delivers it to the customer, and what happens to it once it leaves your hands? In regulated industries like health tech, that gap is harder to see and more expensive to miss.
Holly Uber has spent 20+ years building products that had to survive exactly that gap. As Director of Product at Roche/Genentech, she led one of the company's first FDA-registered software products. It was a remote patient monitoring app that had to work for patients and also for the clinicians, care teams, and compliance reviewers standing between them.
Lauren Opoliner has spent her career on the other side of the same problem: getting a cleared product into hospitals and into the hands of the people who decide whether it gets used. She was on Nevro's commercial leadership team as it grew from $25M to $325M, and has since built go-to-market foundations for early-stage medtech companies, much of that work in women's health.
In this fireside chat, they'll talk through where the "last mile" usually breaks for health tech startups. That covers the product decisions that make adoption easier and the commercial groundwork most founders start too late. Bring your questions.
Featured Speakers
Holly Uber
Strategic leader across healthcare, education, and public-interest technology. Her path runs from Peace Corps service in Cameroon to product leadership at Roche/Genentech to venture diligence today, where she evaluates founder fit and business viability as an active VC limited partner and angel investor. She currently serves on the leadership team at Funding Breakthrough Lab and the Silicon Valley executive board of How Women Lead.
Lauren Opoliner
MedTech commercial strategy executive with 20 years of experience launching medical devices and building companies. She's an Advisory Manager at ZS and runs LRO Consulting, where she helps startups with go-to-market strategy and fundraising. Before that she was VP of Strategic Marketing at May Health, led fundraising and partnerships at ReGelTec, and ran marketing and sales operations at Velano Vascular ahead of its acquisition by BD. At Nevro, she led commercial operations for a 400-person sales force during the company's high-growth years, after starting her career launching first-in-class products at Medtronic. She's active in women's health as a member of In Women's Health, a volunteer with the Women's Health PAC, and a former advisor to Grain Fertility (acquired by Frame Fertility).
Agenda
10:00 AM – Doors Open & Networking
10:30 AM – Welcome & Introductions
10:45 AM – Fireside Chat: The Last Mile Problem
12:00 PM – Audience Q&A
12:30 PM – Open Networking
1:00 PM – Close
About Build From The Dock
Build From The Dock is Venture Dock's weekly founder series. It brings in operators, investors, and builders who've been in the trenches to share what actually works. It's open to founders across the Bay Area, whether or not you're already part of our community.
What Venture Dock Offers Founders
Venture Dock is a founder-first community and fund built to help early-stage teams get closer to the problems they're solving and the people they're solving them for. Members get access to weekly programming, expert sessions, and a network of founders, operators, and investors working through the same hard questions.