How Aether Biomedical Found PMF by Redefining Their Value Proposition

The Outcome

‍After this lesson, you will be able to distinguish between superficial improvements and genuine problem-solving, and know when to pivot your product strategy based on customer feedback.

Why This Matters

‍Most founders fall in love with their first solution and try to force market adoption rather than listening to what customers actually need. This lesson shows how recognizing the difference between "10% better" and "genuinely solving pain points" can determine your startup's survival.

Core Learning

Aether Biomedical's story demonstrates the emotional journey from initial pride to strategic humility - feeling both proud and ashamed of your first product, then using that tension to drive better customer discovery and product development.

Paweł Michalski: Let's talk about your prosthetics company. I'm really excited about startups with tangible products because it's easy to imagine a story behind them. You've said you don't have any background in prosthetics; can you tell us more about how this product came to be and how it has evolved over the years?

Dhruv Agrawal: Yeah, definitely. We started building some basic devices just out of curiosity. Luckily, my background in medicine does help here, although prosthetics are much more on the technical side—mechanical, electronics, robotics. But there is a clinical component that's important, which I did have from medical school.

Initially when we started the company, we had a completely wrong problem statement. We thought, "Yeah, prosthetics are expensive.We’re going to build something that's ten times cheaper and everybody will want to buy that." That's how we initially started.

But as we got close to launching that product in the market, as we got a better understanding of what people really want, and as we listened to customers and understood their pain points, we built a much better knowledge base of what a good prosthetic hand should look like and what the market needs right now. It's always been about iterating over and over again until you solve the real pain points of customers.

Paweł: I imagine your first client must have been quite something for the company history. You build a product and then finally somebody buys it. Can you tell us about how this affected you? Was there an aha moment when you first sold the product? Did it change how you approach building it?

Dhruv: The first time we fitted our hand to a patient was in Poland, at a prosthetic clinic in Kraków. When we launched this product, we were proud of it, but we were ashamed of it at the same time. It's a weird feeling to explain.

You're right, there was this aha moment of "Hey, somebody is using a prosthetic hand that a group of eight, nine guys built." That was really cool. But on the flip side, that also motivated us to question ourselves: "Is this the best that we can do or can we do something better?" Because we're building things that people are going to depend on. That's what propelled the company forward—making sure that me as a founder, our founding team, our engineers always ask that question: "Is this the best we can do and what more can we give back to people?"

Paweł: This is very interesting, and I think it matters to the overarching theme of product-market fit. How do you manage this feeling of fear and shame when building what you think is the best product you can, but then getting feedback from the market before you learn "Okay, this is it. We've built something great"? How do you manage this whirlwind of feelings—"We're excited, but at the same time, we're ashamed"?

Dhruv: This is one thing I've really learned from my co-founder: as an entrepreneur, you really have to throw away the part of your brain that houses shame. When we go to conferences sometimes, we see somebody we want to approach and I'm generally hesitant, trying to be professional. But he will just go straight to the person and start talking. Doesn't matter if the person is in a conversation or drinking or eating—he has absolutely no inhibitions. That's great because he's able to get the information we actually need.

That's something I've learned from him: to put aside that feeling of "Should I ask that question? Should I approach him or her?" In the field of startups, as you're raising money, hundreds of people are going to say no to you. So somehow you just get that resilience of asking again and again and again.

Paweł: So you put your shame away, basically?

Dhruv: Absolutely.

Paweł: Perfect. Now let's talk about the proverbial product-market fit. I really loved the story you shared in an interview or TED Talk, where you said at some point you had a product that you deemed really cool, only to learn that you probably wouldn't go to market with this product. Can you tell us more about your thinking there, and how did you basically kill your baby then and there?

Dhruv: Absolutely. We started with version one of the product back in 2018 when we started the company. When we launched the product for the first time, we realized it was a decent product, but we had not really solved any of the core customer problems. It was just like any other prosthetic hand, just 10% cheaper. That's not a good enough rationale for bringing a new product into the market.

As we got feedback from the market, we understood that there are actual pain points across the different devices in the market right now. At that point, we had to decide: "Do we continue with what we have and try to push that into sales? Or do we try to make those changes and use the remaining capital we have to build something based on the feedback we've gotten?" But that would mean delaying the start of the sales process.

We chose to make sure we build a product that customers really, really want—that solves the real problem. Some of the main features that make our product really good today are things that didn't even exist in the first version. These are all things that customers told us: "It will be great if the hand could have more strength. It will be great if I could repair it on site, because otherwise I'm spending four to six weeks waiting for a replacement. It will be great if I can connect with the prosthetic device when the patient is at home, so I can see if the patient is actually using the hand or not."

All these were challenges, needs, or wants put forward by customers. We made a very good decision to listen to those and make changes in the product rather than just push something that had already been built.