Vision is Everything with Samsara’s Tom Ruggia
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Thomas Ruggia, President & CEO of Samsara Vision, has used his experiences as a a lifelong athlete to create a path to success. Part of that experience comes from playing football in college and now as an Ironman triathlete.
In this episode of the OIS Podcast, Ruggia tells our host Ehsan Sadri, MD, that having “vision for what great looks like” and a “relentless work ethic” are top priority of a good entrepreneur, which he got from his football days.
Family was another major influence in Ruggia’s life. “As the brother of a special needs person you learn to have a deep degree of compassion but also a sense of purpose”.
Ruggia also talks about his excitement at the prospect of rolling out the next generation of Samsara Vision’s implantable miniature telescope, the SING IMT.
Click play to hear Tom Ruggia’s fascinating story about growing up a self-proclaimed “Jersey guy” and how sports led to a career in eye care!
Transcript:
Ehsan Sadri: Hi everybody, I’m Dr. Ehsan Sadri Board Certified Ophthalmologists, Co-Founder and General Partner of Visionary Ventures and I’m here in lovely Newport Beach, California. And I’m very excited by my next guest and friend who’s joined us recently, we had a good conversation about his company, he so I got really excited about having him join us on this podcast. What I really like about our next guest is he’s got the basically both ends covered, big company experience. And now startup company. And as you know, we’re in the Innovation Summit space. And we support a lot of the startup companies, and we have a lot of strategics. So I love to get I’m really excited about diving in and getting to know him and yet for you to get to know him a little bit about his experience. So, Tom, welcome aboard. It’s good to have you, how you doing?
Tom Ruggia: Thank you, Ehsan for having me. I’m just honored to be here happy to represent Samsara Vision and the team and the things that we’re trying to accomplish. But you know, also just pleased and thrilled to be part of the group that’s done OIS Podcast, it’s a star-studded group. And I’m happy to put my name in that mix.
Ehsan Sadri: Well, we’re just we’re delighted to have you. We all work for Craig. So it’s just, it’s his baby. And we’re just we’re just delighted to have you and tell us a little bit about your personal background because I know you and, but I want the audience to get to know you a little bit. Where did you grow up? You know, tell us about some of the earlier influences in your sort of development.
Tom Ruggia: Sure, I’m a Jersey guy. Anybody that really knows me knows I’m a Jersey guy. Exit nine on the turnpike representing East Brunswick, New Jersey, born and raised. I, you know, I was a lifelong athlete. I’m so Jersey I married my high school sweetheart, who also East Brunswick, New Jersey, we have three kids, and we live in New Jersey now after many years of traveling around with work, and not all of my kids are from New Jersey. But we got back here as fast as we could for family and everything. But a Jersey guy went to school in Jersey, and that’s been a big influence on my life. Most of the lifelong athlete, and I think that’s where quite a bit of my influences through my life have come from coaches and players. And, you know, I think you learn a lot about the entrepreneurial spirit from I played college football, and now I’m an Iron Man triathlete. But in Chi in football, you, you learn that, you know, you begin the season, and you’ve got 10 opportunities, or 11 or 12 opportunities to win football games and to make a meaningful season, out of your goals and ambitions. And for that you need a vision for success. I think that’s probably the first priority of any good entrepreneur is to have that vision for what great looks like, you see these examples of people that started in their garage, but they knew that phase wouldn’t last long. And it was a hurdle that they would overcome. And I think that you go back to football, you start a summer training for a season, and you have this vision for what you want this season to be, but you know, that it’s not on that track, and it’s not in 100 degree heat in East Brunswick at a track, it’s on the football field in the fall, wherever that might be. And you know that I think point number two and what makes an entrepreneur, fantastic is that relentless work ethic, and again, sports, I think, can that gave that to me. But another influence in my life really was my parents and my brother, my brother is born with special needs. And as a brother of a special needs person, you learn to have, you know, deep degree of compassion, but also a sense of purpose. And that I think also an entrepreneur needs to bring in that, that passion for what they’re doing. And it can’t be about the dollar in the end, it has to be about what you’re delivering to patients and people I learned that from my brother and my mother and father who helped raise these. I mean, my brother’s still around 40, you know, I’m 45 years old now. He’s 41. And he’s doing great under the wonderful example my parents said as to how to be, you know, a lifelong caregiver for someone with special needs. And, you know, I think you bring that into entrepreneurial ship you’ve got this vision and pat vision for the future. You got this relentless work ethic, and you’ve got that sense of meaning and purpose. But, you know, also and I think we’ll probably talk about this quite a bit as we talk and you know, as an entrepreneur, that road you’ve seen that classic graph where you think the roads gonna be straight, but it takes several zigzags before you get to success and overcoming adversity is another thing that, you know that you have to have as an entrepreneur. And I think I learned that both from sports and my family in the sense that you’d have you have setbacks that you have to overcome, whether it’s in a season where you lose a game or whether it’s with a family member who gets ill or something you have to work together to as a unit with heart and enthusiasm to overcome that adversity and get towards get back on track for that vision for success and not let it bring you down. So, you know, a long way to say a Jersey boy with deep roots and you know, I great examples throughout my life, but I think that really the driving force has been my family and being an athlete.
Ehsan Sadri: That’s terrific. And so when you’re now you’re in Jersey, and I, you know, I have a lot of good common friends that that are from Jersey studies science, and he got a Bachelor’s in Science and the College of New Jersey, and he graduated in ’98. Is that correct?
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, the College of New Jersey is a wonderful story. I’m actually a first-generation college students. So my we didn’t grow up with expansive means in my household. And I got the opportunity to play sports and to go to school at the College of New Jersey, which I’ll say that the New Jersey State College system is wonderful for so many reasons. But the College of New Jersey is an up-and-coming place. I had a great academic experience there. I studied Kinesiology, I also was, was just fortunate to be able to play division three football, but it was high level, we went to the playoffs every year finished fifth two of my four years, and I was a Captain and an all-American two-time college football, all American. And that was just a wonderful experience. And I’m blessed to say that today. I’m actually a board member at the school. And I’m a mentor for people coming through athletics, with intent to go on into the workforce and be leaders. I just think it’s a wonderful breeding ground for people that are successful and like to stay involved as much as they can. But Kinesiology, I’m sure your next question is going to be well, that’s not exactly business. And it’s certainly not Harvard Business. But it’s not a business. And, you know, how do you make that next step. And you know that it was interesting. So I went and studied Kines, and my goal in life was to be a physical or occupational therapist, and I was saving up my money to pay for physical therapy school, and I was doing a volunteer ship locally with a physical therapist. And she, we had a great couple of weeks and learned a lot shadowing, I think we hit it off. Because she, as we were completing the task, she had to sign off. And she pulled me into her office and said, look, the one piece of advice I’m going to give you today, take it or leave it is run far away from physical therapy. And I was like, This, my lifelong dream is to be a physical therapist. Yeah, I don’t want to my career dream, at least was to be a physical therapist. And now I have to think about this. And the example she gave was, I think will hit home for you Ehsan, is managed care was starting to really overtake physical therapy and reducing the fee for service that they got. And it was harder for her every year to make a living versus the prior year. And she said that medical legal with the orthopedic surgeons that she worked with, limited her professional creativity and a person if you know me, you know that’s to say, I do like to make a living, of course, I like to be successful. But I like when the playing field is set up for me to be successful. And so that limitation made me really think. And then the second thing was personal and professional creativity and having a limit on my professional creativity made me really consider, you know, what am I going to do at the time, I was working also as a personal trainer trying to pay for school, and one of my clients was an Alcon Rep. And just so happened, here’s an Alcon Rep working out with me in the morning, we’re talking and he’s getting promoted to be a manager in Georgia. And he’s leaving a vacant territory. He says, hey, you should consider you know, thinking about doing this role and backfilling me and so I didn’t, I took it seriously, but I went home and talked to my wife, and I was if you again if you know me, I overdo everything. So as a personal trainer, I was not a nine to five personal trainer I was my first client was usually 4:35 o’clock in the morning, I was finishing up at 11:30 at night sleeping in my car Sunday trying to make you know success for my business and so I told my wife about this guy in the gym and he offered me this role and she’s like, you better take that. So I always think go back and blame her for all the things that God says all the travel and everything that we do, but yeah, so I took the role with Alcon as a pharma sales rep. backfill, the guy named Todd Zavodnick and Todd went on to be a manager in Georgia. Then he moved on through his career and hospital division at Alcon went to China for Alcon for a bit, went to Galderma went to Revance. And now he is the CEO of Dermavant in Southern California company working on a topical for psoriasis. So I backfill Todd in his position, and he didn’t you know, he left tough shoes to fill, and I worked my butt off and was pretty good sales rep and enjoyed it. That was the big thing is that I didn’t have you have that passion for what you’re doing. And we had great quality products. And we were doing well with the products with purpose. But it also was competitive. And it really hit that athletic spirit, you know, so competing with my fellow reps and competing with the competitors in the marketplace, and all that really hit that athletic gene pretty hard and set me up to move on with Alcon where, where I had a great 14 years there. Person that backfield me and my territory, actually, as a footnote, is now my VP of Worldwide Marketing for Samsara Vision. So the lineage in that Trenton, New Jersey, our con territory was strong, a lot of good leaders.
Ehsan Sadri: That’s terrific. I mean, there’s so much there, you know, for young entrepreneurs to learn, you kind of jumped on opportunity, even though you didn’t have all the answers. And you’re, you know, you’re working really hard and successfully as a personal trainer, but just jump to this whole new career. And I think being so open, right, having open mindedness so important in business to be able to try something new, even though that’s sort of you may be comfortable. I think that’s another thing. It’s like when I interview new doctors or new employees, either they have that drive or they don’t and it’s either way, it’s just know thyself, right?
Tom Ruggia: That’s right.
Ehsan Sadri: So tell us about so you got this. So you got, you know, you’re the Alcon pharma and then, you know, you and I work together in J&J, so you’ve got kind of that experience on the consumer side. A lot of good experience there. And then tell us about sort of those positions that were critical. You have to probably go through all Yeah, or more salient ones that now led you to the current role at Samsara.
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, sure. 14 years at Alcon. I was there at a wonderful time. It was early 2000s. You know, take him back to restore resume days it was, you know, prior to interlace, always erase and easy these are, you know, we still had refractive radio commercials during the afternoon sports radio talk shows, right? So it seems like a long time ago now, but it was its still recent past, but that decade of the 2000s at Alcon was super special, you had 30 somethings, all the men, women that were driving and trying to make a career and now if you look at the startups all over ophthalmology, you find us everywhere. And then that was, I think, indicative of the talent that Alcon had brought on. And what they did wonderfully was they never led they moved us and pushed us to different things and it wasn’t, they had opportunity right so you had pharmaceutical you had consumer products and you had surgical products but not limited to cataract you had retina you had refractive coming back in with the Wavelight acquisition so you had this breadth of opportunity inside one company inside one organ and you could do marketing and so my career was you know, sales in the US Sales Management in the US, Marketing in the US but then also Marketing Director Asia Pacific where I took on 19 countries I had the full line front to back so I had everything from contact lens care, all the way through retina surgical so I had the entirety of the line and learn all of those regulatory environments and what it takes to make a winner in China versus making a winner in India and Southeast Asia and all the you know, the richness of that experience for three and a half years, what was more than you could get even in an MBA or something like that, because you felt that lived it and breathe it on a daily basis. But, you know, you had that’s today I still draw back on those experiences in surgical but also, you know, understanding the differences between pharma and consumer and healthcare and you know, all the things that go into that and you know, then move from there to running a country I had vision care business in Canada for Alcon where, you know, you learn to the responsibility of running a P&L for a country and you know, that those were all extremely rich experiences. And I did that along with some people I think you talked about mentorship; you can look at mentorship in two ways. And I’ll bring that the example back to athletics, you have your coaches of course, and their mentors but on the field, you’re playing with players that you respect for a lot of different reasons and those years at Alcon having those other people that are that are my age out there performing with we had friendship competed against each other in a healthy way, but we were achievement oriented. We learn from each other’s experiences, and you know, the lunch conversations and the morning run and the you know, the evening cocktail or whatever we that the experiences we had as a group learning from each other, I think still each person in that day and age would go back to that experience and say, you know, I learned a lot during that it made me who I am today. But, you know, just today, I mean, you know, the names that it’s Bill Burns, it’s Stewart Raetzman, Tom Dooley, to recreate who’s on our board now, Christian Roesky with his Novaliq. And these are all people that you would sit and Todd Zavodnick and CEOs and these are top people. And we just were at a point in our career where we were learning and growing together. And that was super special. And leaving there I got the chance to go to J&J and come back to New Jersey from Toronto, lived in Toronto for 3 and a half years, moved back to Jersey brought the family back and you know, joined on with Janssen Pharmaceuticals. So I had a retina cell therapy, it was pre commercial, I was in charge of the commercial designing the commercial efforts, which was complicated with the supply chain, nature of a cell therapy and in such a way a lot of good experiences. But a mentor I had there was Susan Orr don’t know if you know Susan, but Susan has the knowledge she taught me that the subject matter was important. And you needed to be deep in the area of expertise where you were dependent upon. And, you know, I still look at Susan, as someone who’s one of the foremost experts in our field for you know, many different things. And she taught me quite a bit about the business during that time and got the opportunity during my Janssen days to do a night job as the commercial lead to acquire a AMO from Abbott. And that’s where I met Tom Frinzi. He was across the desk, and we were trying to do the deal and he did not think J&J would be the one that that could pull it off. But we did, we had 6 weeks to do due diligence on a 4 and a half billion-dollar transaction. And we pulled that off, thanks to some strong market modeling, which is a skill I still use today and learn that from, you know, some people that were involved in that project and, you know, I think they’d be proud of the models we put together these days. But yeah, I think you know, I think it’s a great question. And I’ve just been always so blessed to be around great people. Ashley McAvoy, a mentor of mine at J&J, Frinzi you know, I worked in directly for Frinzi for years and, and the list goes on and on. It’s sometimes, it’s your teammates. I know sometimes it’s your coaches, but I’ve just been just blessed with great mentors and great examples for what good looks like.
Ehsan Sadri: Yeah, we could go on. So I mean, the names you mentioned, you know, Tom and Ashley. There are just some incredible leaders and there’s so much there. So you know, for those of you listening this it’s important to have good mentorship. You know, I always say your egos not your amigo. So you need to know what you don’t know and learn. And always be a student show up and learn. Tell me, so what makes you excited now about Samsara Vision? I know it’s an Israeli company. And there’s a lot of amazing pipeline innovation technology coming out of Israel tell me about, was it something, what was it that drew you in to this technology, the company and tell me the challenges of working with a team that’s in Israel versus let’s say we were in Jersey or in Santa Ana?
Tom Ruggia: I think the COVID experience has gotten us all used to working at distance but that still does have some challenges I were at where I fell in love with at the time it was VisionCare Inc. and if you remember back and the I met the, Oh I knew Wolfgang Tauss from Wavelight days when Alcon was acquiring Wavelight but Wolfgang and I met at, it was JP Morgan conference and I can’t remember what year but I was still at Janssen and he was talking about the technology he was CEO and you know he’s when you he’s talking about the visual response from the patients and you know the telescopic implant brings three and four lines of vision gain to late stage A and B patient so he had me there you know, I’m listening now remind you my influence really is that patient we were talking about my brother right and the you know his experience as a person with special needs and so blindness means something to me and fighting blindness, you know means something to me in my career I need to be attached to a purpose and I always have had a purpose with the organ that we work in, you know, vision is everything I think you know that and you know this to me, okay, you have my attention, three, four lines gained and late stage AMD you know, at the time, I’m working on a cell therapy for geographic atrophy and these are the patients that are in line for the IMT. And so I’m interested so we were talking and then you know, the questions start coming up, but tell me about the reimbursement. Reimbursement’s great. We’ve established reimbursement. So that’s wonderful. Okay, well tell me about your commercial challenges. And, you know, then you started to hear there was there was a surgical delivery issue with some trauma related to the generation 1 technology, and patients were more difficult to find because of the label limitation in the US market. You know, there were some and then there’s the post op care that needed to happen. And, you know, the go to market strategy and branding and such were quite challenging. So, I thought I always thought that from that day, I thought, this is a technology that needs to win, right. And I followed it along with under Wolfgang’s leadership throughout the years and during my time at J&J Vision Surgical, I was still an advocate for the technology and attended some of the BD meetings and not always really sung the praises of the idea. If we can get that implant to be less dramatic, easier for the surgeons to deliver and a better patient experience. Then you bring three and four lines of vision back to patients with late-stage AMD, you know, that’s a meaningful purpose. And, you know, it’s a great business too, because you have, you know, you start with the 200 million patients that have AMD, but then you whittle that down, and you come to 10 million patients of late-stage AMD. And today, there are about 3 million patients worldwide, that suffer from a, we call it non preventable blindness, right? But this our technology can be a tool in the toolbox for surgeons trying to treat, you know, those patients, these 3 million patients. And now, you know, turning the page I was off I was talking to about the CEO role, went through the process. COVID was just starting as I was doing some interviewing. And, you know, I was thinking to myself, and I’m at J&J, and, you know, you got, people would say, you’ve got big company, you’ve got a good job and a big company COVID this global pandemic, you know, why in the world would you choose, you know, that moment in time to make a jump and its purpose, right? It’s you know, you’ve got an opportunity to take a company that does good for people and take the lead and drive the new technology, which we can get into in a minute, but to do to kind of correct the shift, get it on track, and make a difference in people’s lives. And surgeons lives as well, because I think, you know, this alternative for treating AMD is an important add to the armamentarium in surgery. But so yeah, I start with VisionCare Inc. And I think the first thing we need to do is a brand change, and a go to market strategy change. And that’s where Samsara Vision comes in. From my days, in Asia Pacific, I got to know my friends in India quite well, we were doing a lot of extensive work in India during those days. And Samsara is actually Sanskrit for rebirth. And it’s a nod to the patient experience where they’re going from the dark to the light. And it’s a nod to the company’s future where we were something and now, we’re introducing a new generation technology that’s going to be meaningful, and it’s a rebirth for the company as well. So, you know, it was exciting time to interview, and I just can’t it’s been a year I can’t believe it’s been a year. But it’s been the most rewarding year of my life.
Ehsan Sadri: It seems like a flash, I know, it’s funny, because the symbolism there the company is very impactful. You know, the definition of the terminology, I think has a lot of meaning. And actually purpose. So that’s really fits in with what you’re what you’re describing and probably the in-laws. We’re looking at a little funny middle of pandemic, which good startup, I’m sure. I’m sure that it causes go and say.
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, it was on vacation. Right. And I accepted a job on vacation with my in-laws. Say goodbye to J&J that Yeah, the next week, I got a call from the Wall Street Journal, and they wanted to do a story about why the hell would you leave a great role during a pandemic? So that was a Yeah, do I think that was good connection?
Ehsan Sadri: Yeah, that’s a good selling, right? That’s a validation of the move, as they say, No, but you’re a good sales guy, man. I mean, if you ever want to sell that to the in laws and the wife, pandemic, that’s great. But you know, honestly, you know, all kidding aside, you and I both know, that life is all about calculated risk, right? It’s so you’ll never get anywhere if you’re just play it safe. Right? And they can see your, you know, your buddy that introduced you to ophthalmology is now the CEO here in Orange County will tell you that it’s just those incremental risks that I think all of us have to take in order to achieve the unmet need, which is what you’re doing, which is we’re very proud of and, you know, the technology has, you know, is very crude. It hasn’t been moved for a long time, even though for sighted patients, we’ve had great technology improvement. And I think it’s really wonderful that you’re in that space. It’s a near and dear passion of mine. Clinically, it’s funny because, you know, you mentioned resume restore, I used to, we had nothing so I would put, you know, make these patients you know, I would risk All bilateral restore on them like making, you know, minus 2.
Tom Ruggia: Oh my gosh, yeah!
Ehsan Sadri: I’m telling you; closure was a full disclosure we’re not, you know, you, you’re basically legally blind or worse. And, you know, we’re there’s no guarantees here and, you know, the data, I actually published that, that we had some really good results at the time. I mean, they were pretty, again, daring. But, you know, that’s all we had. And some of those patients are the happiest patients, I get the letters I got, yeah, those patients, but this unbelievable getting a reading back, I’m like, gosh, it’s so you know, and we don’t really know what we’re doing.
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, you know, the, you know, the patient x, and you were getting probably one and a half times magnification la where we’re sitting at 2.7 times magnification of light. So you get we have patients that you know, the stories either as a patient that returned to skiing, there’s patients that returned to golf, but the ones that are most rewarding, tell the story about not no longer being sort of captive at home, we’re reliant on family members being able to be free. And that’s the word we use quite a bit here is we don’t bring vision back; we bring freedom back for the patients to enjoy the remainder of their lives. And the enemy we fight against is the concept of non-preventable blindness. I mean, that’s just a life sentence that no one needs to hear. And, you know, we bring that technology and your pioneer ship of piggyback in the restores, you know, that still goes on, and I think will be our original technology made it challenging because of the nature of the procedure. But, you know, now we’re 11 procedures in with our smaller incision, new generation IMT, we’re seeing IMT, which is a wonderful brand name, I think it taught it’s really simple brand name that that talks to the patient experience, but plus, the OR experience for the surgeon is far different, it’s half the time it took the original, it’s so much less trauma, we’re averaging 7.8% ECD loss, the original technology was up around 20 plus percent ECD loss. So we’ve improved that impact on the eyes so much. The we’ve now got patients back to two years clinically, and you see that lens is just fixed right in the in where it was implanted and doesn’t move. And it’s great. I mean, it’s a good opportunity to have a new option for these folks and the GA side of this. So you’ve got, you’ve got with AMD patients, where we’re medication or injections are no longer effective, and they’re no longer bleeding, those are late-stage AMD, but the GA side of this equation, I mean, these folks, they never had anything, right. So they had vitamins, and maybe there was the hope of a trial or two but, but they never really experienced that hope of getting their vision back. And here we are with something that’s a little different.
Ehsan Sadri: So, you know, as we’re, you know, kind of coming on the clothes, tell us about what your portfolios look like, I know you and I had talked offline about where you are, financially and what you’re doing and all the success you’re gaining. But tell us what the portfolio looks like. And tell us about some of the financing you’re raising now.
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, we’ve got a wonderful ownership with the Innovatus Capital Partners who owns 99% of the company believes in the technology, believes in the leadership team and knows we’re on the right path. We are looking for; I would prefer to raise capital privately. And that’s what we’re working on today. We need some money; we need $30 million or so to breakeven but I think with strategic investors is really what I’m interested in finding the right investors that no ophthalmology or that no medical device or know how to put us on the path to success and can bring something to the team. If you look at the changes, we made recently to the Board of Directors over the year that we’ve brought in people that that can help us in certain areas. Tracy Valorie, Jon Talamo, David Schiff, they bring new skill sets that we didn’t have prior, and you know, they’ve made us all the better over the year and I want it I want investors that are like that, that want to take this journey to build this company into something meaningful. I see us bringing Singh IMT. We’re working with Ora to submit for their PMA supplement that’s necessary for us approval and we will continue along that journey this year. We’ll be in trial hopefully by the end of the year. So you know there’s some meaningful value to create once we’re in trial once we get approval in Europe and Asia Pacific, we’re beginning commercialization now. Fast and Furious getting Centers of Excellence onboard to be treatment centers. But you know, as we build this business, I like to have people that are bringing things to the table that set us on a path that’s beyond what we could do on our own and today we’ll be the company that’s innovating for late stage AMD, but can we be the company that innovates long term for late stage retina condition, so not limiting it to the telescopic implant not limiting it to AMD but broadening that out with people that think differently about problems and not accepting non preventable blindness, whether that’s from diabetic retinopathy or from AMD or inherited retina diseases, surgical technologies can treat these diseases and we don’t have to accept that blindness is a sentence that people have to live with for the rest of their lives. So yeah, I’m looking for investors that will take that journey with us for the short term and the long term. I think this company is just getting started on value creation. So I think we’re a great from a financial point of view, I think we’re a great de risked, because we had 700 implants. Prior to this technology coming aboard, I think people see new technology, and that’s the risk that they’re evaluating. But for us, we have established reimbursement and 700 procedures already done with the original technology. So you kind of jump on de risked train. And, you know, we do need something we need, we do need some, you know, some strategic help in certain areas. And we always value that with new teammates and not to, you know, be cheeky, and bring it back to that athletic example in the beginning. We do need new teammates and more talent on the team to push us to those heights that we know this company can go.
Ehsan Sadri: Very good. And it was so tell us about some pearls for you. Yeah, you meet a young Tom working on the gym sleeping in his car, trying to get make a living his kids. What are you telling him? What do you got a bigger car? What have you done?
Tom Ruggia: I’ll say the backseat of a Nissan Altima is not a comfortable place to sleep. But if you’re the kind of person that can spend a few days there, then you’re on my team right and so yeah, I think frenzy for NGOs used to complain about people that he will interview and he’d say, oh, that guy was he was born on third base yelling that he hit a triple I that sticks with me. And it’s that that person that was that doesn’t want to do the work but wants that easy life. That’s don’t not go to startups stay wherever you’re at, you know, and thank God, you’ve got what you got going on. But if you’re the kind of person that can wake up every day, and kick and scream till success happens and I listen to a podcast about no zero days. And that if you’re the kind of person that can’t go to sleep, unless you’ve taken a step forward or removed something in your life forward, then startups are a really good place for you. And I would say, say yes, and go and you’re never, if you’re waiting for the perfect opportunity, and that you know, the CEO job at Amazon, when it’s $1 a share. Those aren’t, they’re not going to come to you first of all, because you’re your new CEO, but they don’t exist, and they don’t come up often. So you got to go find something and you got to make it yours and make it a success and prove that you can do it. And once you know the satisfaction and confidence that comes from that, if its purpose driven, especially can just catapult the career. So if you’re that kind of person that hit the triple, and then needs to be pinch run for because you ran out of gas headed to third startups are for you and there’ll be plenty of people that can be that can pinch around for you and close the deal and get home.
Ehsan Sadri: Yeah, very good. Very good. So this, we you and I can talk for hours, man, I just it was just so great to get you on, you know, with us. And so it’s just so good to get your insight. And I wish all the success and I look forward to bringing you back on and give you all the wonderful things you’re doing.
Tom Ruggia: Yeah, I look forward to coming on maybe in a couple of years telling you, the blueprint for success that we’ve done here over the years at Samsara but I’m also looking forward to seeing you at meetings. We’re getting back to that now. And it’s nice to go back and public and see people that you know and love throughout your career. So it’d be great to see you again coming out but maybe of the 2021 second half should be great.
Ehsan Sadri: Yeah, we’ve got some lineup coming up, coming up and it’s going to be good to break bread with everybody else. So great to see you, Tom.
Tom Ruggia: Yes, sir. Have a great one!