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Fractional product leadership · Health tech & AI

Most startups don't die from running out of money. They die from building the wrong thing.

VZN Designs brings a decade of MedTech product leadership — and hands-on AI building — to founders who can't afford an expensive wrong turn. Strategy, roadmap, and regulatory-aware product development, fractionally.

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  • 43% of failed VC-backed startups died from poor product-market fit — the #1 root cause CB INSIGHTS · 431 SHUTDOWNS · 2024
  • 74% of high-growth startups fail by scaling before validating the core model STARTUP GENOME
  • 93% of premature scalers never break $100K in monthly revenue STARTUP GENOME
Diagnosis

"Ran out of capital" is the symptom. The disease starts earlier.

When CB Insights analyzed 431 venture-backed shutdowns, 70% listed running out of cash. But cash runs out because the product missed: poor product-market fit, bad timing, unit economics that never closed.

The information needed to avoid most of these failures existed before the product was built. It lives in customer conversations that never happened, scope that never got cut, and validation that got skipped because building felt like progress.

In health tech, the stakes compound: regulatory pathways, evidence requirements, and clinical workflows punish teams that discover them late.

Services

Five ways to engage. Every one ends in an artifact you can show investors.

No decks that gather dust. Each engagement produces concrete deliverables — the roadmap, the scope, the audit, the prototype, the plan — that your team executes against and your investors can evaluate.

  • 01Protocol A · 2 weeks · from $4,500

    Product Clarity Sprint

    For founders pre-build or mid-pivot who need to know what to build — and what to skip.

    You walk away with
    • Validation readout: customer signal + market & competitive scan
    • Problem statement & ideal customer profile
    • Prioritized MVP scope — including what not to build
    • 90-day roadmap & build-strategy recommendation

    Outcome: you attack the 43% failure mode before it eats six months of runway.

  • 02Protocol B · Monthly · from $5K/mo

    Fractional Product Lead

    For funded founders with engineers but no product leadership.

    You walk away with
    • An owned, prioritized roadmap tied to your goals
    • Sprint planning, backlog, and written specs
    • User feedback loops that actually reach the roadmap
    • Monthly metrics readout for you and your investors

    Outcome: senior product leadership at a fraction of a $200K+ full-time hire.

  • 03Protocol C · 3–4 weeks · from $7,500

    MedTech Readiness Audit

    For health tech founders heading toward FDA territory — before it heads toward you.

    You walk away with
    • Design-control gap analysis
    • Regulatory pathway map for your product class
    • Usability / human-factors testing plan
    • Evidence & claims strategy + prioritized remediation roadmap

    Outcome: a failed submission costs 10–100x this audit. Find the gaps while they're cheap.

  • 04Protocol D · 3–4 weeks · from $6,000

    AI Product Jumpstart

    For founders who want an AI product but can't scope one — or vet the people building it.

    You walk away with
    • AI MVP architecture & scope
    • Agentic development pipeline, configured for your build
    • Working prototype or clickable specification
    • Cost model for build + run, and a hiring roadmap

    Outcome: skip months of agency roulette. Leave with something real.

  • 05Protocol E · 4–6 weeks · from $12,000

    Idea-to-Investor Studio

    For founders with an idea and no team yet, who need to know if it is worth building and how to sell it.

    You walk away with
    • Cited market, competitor and regulatory research, plus your riskiest assumptions ranked
    • A live landing-page smoke test, survey and interview script
    • PRD, flows, architecture, and a working prototype at a real URL
    • Financial model, go-to-market plan, pitch deck, and a fund, build or kill memo

    Outcome: an investor-ready, prototype-backed concept in weeks, built in a shared workspace you watch move.

Prices are starting points — final scope is set on a 30-minute call. Not sure which protocol fits? Start with the 2-day Product Diagnostic — $1,500 flat: a founder deep-dive, your product risks ranked, and a recommended path. The fee credits toward any sprint booked within 30 days. Book a consult to start.

How every engagement runs

The VZN Method: the design process behind Fightr, run for your idea

One disciplined path from idea to decision, carried out by a product lead and a team of AI agents, with design-control habits from medical devices. Every step produces an artifact and passes a review before the next one starts.

  1. 01DiscoverIntake, cited market and regulatory research, and the riskiest assumptions ranked with the cheapest way to test each.
  2. 02ValidateInterviews, a survey and a live smoke-test page. Free channels run at once; any paid recruiting waits for your yes.
  3. 03Define and provePRD, user stories, flows, architecture, privacy and quality plans, and a working prototype with tests.
  4. 04Commercialize and decideFinancial model, go-to-market, pitch deck, investor list, and a candid fund, build or kill memo.

You see it as it happens. Each client gets a private workspace: follow every stage, open every document, try the prototype, and comment. Regulatory and legal drafts are marked for review by a licensed professional; nothing is sent or spent without you.

Nuvi Njinimbam at his UC Berkeley Haas MBA commencement
About Nuvi

Built products for surgeons. Now building with the tools reshaping software.

Nuvi Njinimbam

MBA, UC BERKELEY HAAS · B.S. BIOENGINEERING · 10 YRS MEDTECH

I've spent a decade taking medical technology from unmet clinical need to global commercialization — surgical robotics, implantable-device software, digital learning platforms. Requirements, design control, usability testing, evidence strategy, go-to-market — the full arc, at companies where a product mistake isn't a pivot, it's a recall.

And I build. Through VZN Designs I ship AI-powered products end-to-end with agentic development pipelines — the same tools your future engineering team will use, run solo. That means when I scope your product, I'm not guessing what's buildable. I've built it.

  • INTUITIVE SURGICAL
  • ACCENTURE
  • LIVANOVA
  • W.L. GORE
Proof

Built, not just advised

Diagram: one founder directs five AI agents (build, QA, research, documentation, debugging) around the Fightr app
Case report · Fightr

An AI boxing coach, shipped by a team of one (plus agents)

Fightr is a mobile boxing training app with an AI coach — real-time audio callouts, personality-driven coaching, subscription monetization. Built end-to-end on an agentic pipeline: five specialized AI agents handling build, QA, research, documentation, and debugging.

It's the working proof behind every engagement: modern AI tooling collapses the cost of building — which makes building the right thing the entire game.

  • 1human on the team
  • 5AI agent roles
  • βlive beta program
The agents I run

Fightr was the first. These systems run my work every day.

Diagram: an idea moves through eight stages from intake to decision, with review at every stage and human gates for spend and the final decision
Agent system · VZN Studio

An idea in, an investor-ready concept out

A pipeline of AI agents that takes an idea through research, hypotheses, customer discovery, product definition, a working prototype, a business plan and a decision memo. Every claim cites a page it actually read. Every stage passes a review panel, gets one automatic fix, and comes to me if it fails twice.

It is the engine behind the Idea-to-Investor Studio: clients follow every stage in a shared workspace and comment as it moves. Money and outreach never move without a human.

  • 8stages, idea to decision
  • 2human gates
  • 1shared client workspace
Illustration: a phone showing a morning ritual, one focus with tasks, an evening close-out with a streak, and reminders at 8 PM and 10 PM
Agent system · Morning Command Center

A calm operating system for the first hour of the day

A phone-first app that opens the day with a short ritual, names one focus, carries yesterday's open tasks forward, and closes the evening with a check-in and a streak. Reminders at 8 PM and 10 PM keep the loop honest.

Next, agents assemble a morning briefing from calendar and email so the plan starts already drafted. The design rule: nothing alarming on open.

  • 3zones: ritual, plan, close-out
  • 1focus a day
  • 2evening check-ins
Field notes

Field notes from the intersection.

Digital health, AI product craft, and health equity — how AI can scale high-quality, low-cost care in the US and across Africa. New notes weekly on LinkedIn.

All field notes
Book a call

Thirty minutes. No pitch. Just product.

Tell me what you're building. I'll tell you what I see — where the risk is hiding, what I'd validate first, and whether one of my protocols fits. If it's not a match, you still leave with a sharper picture.

Book a consult

Pick a time that works. Calls run on video, 30 minutes, founder-to-builder.

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Founder office hours: two free 30-minute slots every week for early-stage founders. Grab an office-hours slot →