Eddie Mitchell P’24 Presents to Finance Academy

By Declan Carroll '25

On Thursday, April 25, Mr. Eddie Mitchell P’24 presented about the company he founded, Image Stream Medical. He started off by talking about his life prior to founding Image Stream Medical in 1999. After some consulting projects, he and his partner Pete Renzi made their first product. The problem this product solved was that surgeons wanted to record video and teach from it. So, they built this recording system that included a medical grade recorder to record the surgery and a custom video editor that allowed the doctors to edit the video and put in on a presentation. He sold it to medical equipment dealers for $14,300 and made it for $1,200 netting a gross margin of 80%.  

In the summer of 2002, 15 medical equipment dealers wanted to sell his product exclusively, so he worked out a one-time buy price. He incentivized the dealers to jump in on the one-time purchase by creating a notion of scarcity by limiting how much they could buy in their first purchase. In a short time, the promotion yielded $600,000 worth of working money, so he bought computer parts and started to build his product in his attic. Eventually, he moved his business out of his house. He started to hire assemblers and vendors all over the country.  

His next product targeted minimally invasive surgery. He made an imaging system that would be able to be used in the surgery. Instead of the wheel-in-monitors that were common at the time, he installed a permanent monitor in the surgery rooms and a custom video switching device that allowed the surgical team to select which image they wanted to see on the monitor. Along the way, he cut multi-million dollar deals with University of Alabama Birmingham and Vanderbilt. He said he needed money to keep the company moving, so it was important for him to cut deals with companies and sometimes sell parts of Image Stream Medical. In 2007, he created another product that allowed the surgical imaging system to be streamed in other rooms in the hospital. After cutting deals with companies, he had a steady revenue flow for the next fifteen years. In 2017, he sold the company for $90 million to Olympus Medical at three times the $30 million revenue of his company.  

At the end of Eddie’s presentation, he gave takeaway lessons for the students. He never once had an argument with his co-founder Pete. It is very important to be careful who you partner with and also who you hire as the company grows. He built a company with a culture, that included a top shelf sales team. Eddie said it is also important to under-commit and over-deliver, satisfying all your customers. It’s easy to let people distract you from the mission of the startup. Instead, as a founder of a startup, remain committed and focused on what you believe in. He ended with a quote that one doctor once told him at the Mayo Clinic, “Start small, dream big, move fast.”  

We thank Mr. Eddie Mitchell P’24 for presenting to the Finance Academy.