Designing Consumer-Facing Medical Technology: Interview with Indomo CEO Rick Bente

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Rick Bente, co-founder and CEO of Indomo.Indomo’s flagship device, ClearPen, is an investigational at-home corticosteroid injection designed to treat inflammatory acne.Rick has over 20 years of experience as an engineer and operator across medtech and pharma, with leadership roles at Medtronic, Insulet, and YourBio, focused on drug delivery and combination products. He is an inventor on more than 50 patents and has generated over $150 million in investments.In this conversation, Rick discusses how Indomo translated an in-office dermatology procedure into at-home care, why usability had to be engineered rather than trained, how the company decided when to exit stealth mode, and how proof-based milestones shaped its fundraising.Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you’re ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Rick Bente.KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(03:39) - An overview of Rick’s background and the mission behind Indomo (08:24) - The core idea behind Indomo’s ClearPen — bringing dermatologist treatments into patients’ homes (13:32) - Why early-stage startups should fail fast on the hardest technical problems (16:41) - How to design medical devices that are easy to use and difficult to misuse (21:17) - How usability studies with patients and physicians shape better device design (23:59) - When should a startup stay in stealth — and when is it time to tell the story? (28:52) - Rick's fundraising playbook: mapping capital to milestones and real value creation (37:22) - Rick's hiring lesson: why curiosity matters more than pedigree when building an early-stage startup team