Raphael Michel - Co-Founder and CEO of Eargo and Onera Health

On this episode of Health Explorers, we talk with Raphael Michel. Raphael is a 2x Health Tech Founder and CEO. His first company, Eargo,  is a pioneer in direct to consumer hearing aids. He led the company from inception through commercialization raising over $70M in financing. Eargo went public in 2020.  He then co-founded Onera Health where he led an international team that  brought the sleep lab into the home. Raphael grew up in France, but has called Silicon Valley his home for over 20 years. He is a graduate of Stanford and the University of California - Berkley. Most recently, he worked at Google X where he led the transition of breakthrough technical projects into commercial companies. 

Highlights from this episode:

✓ Being intentional in your career choices in order to train to be an entrepreneur.

✓Understanding the difference between a great idea and a great business.

✓The necessity for a start-up to have an unfair competitive advantage to be successful.

✓Thinking about distribution from Day 1.

✓Front-loading the biggest risks to validate your business as early as possible.

✓In the age of AI, there is still a need for the human touch.

✓Focus on the customers job to be done, not on the competition.