How One Company Transformed a Medical Device into a Mass Market Phenomenon

I first heard about Normatec at Unbreakable Performance Gym in West Hollywood nearly a decade ago.

One of the Jonas brothers was in the recovery room raving to a friend about how the Normatec compression boots allowed him to do two leg workouts in one day. I was intrigued. Usually, I'm done for a couple of days after a leg workout. I had to find out more about this product.

Turns out, I wasn't alone. Once the exclusive, must-have recovery tool for celebrities and elite athletes, the device is now becoming popular with everyday people. Building on this momentum, Normatec's parent company, Hyperice, launched the Normatec Elite last month—a fully integrated, wireless version of their popular compression boots that eliminates the need for external hoses and control units.

"This is like our ninth or 10th product launch for the Normatec brand," says Gilad Jacobs, Chief Innovation Officer at Hyperice and founder of Normatec. "This is by far the most excited I've seen athletes and individuals be about the products."

I spoke to Jacobs on the most recent episode of the One Day with Jon Bier podcast about the story behind the brand's evolution and the valuable lessons he's learned about entrepreneurship and building a successful company.

Never give up

When Jacobs was growing up, he remembers seeing a magnet in his mother's office with Winston Churchill's famous quote: "Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in."

He's been inspired by this quote and how his mother, Dr. Laura F. Jacobs, put it into action. A rehab physician and bioengineer, the late Dr. Jacobs was frustrated with the methods available to improve circulation for her patients recovering from breast cancer surgery who would often suffer from lymphedema, a condition whose main symptom is swelling. So she invented a device—the first iteration of Normatec (named after his grandmother, Norma)—that uniquely deploys air compression to the body and mimics a person's physiology.

"She figured out how to move fluids in the body in the most effective way possible," Jacobs explains.

Later, Gilad Jacobs introduced this technology to the athletic community, targeting college sports programs and triathletes. They didn't bite right away. The early version of Nomatec was expensive and cumbersome. Jacobs stresses that uncertain times like these are inevitable in entrepreneurship.

"You're gonna have those bad streaks days, weeks, months, where you're just like, I can't do this anymore," he says. "But unless the bank is literally taking out the furniture and the electric company has shut off the lights, you gotta keep going."

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Focus on the next two weeks

Dr. Jacobs had a saying: "In two more weeks, we're going to know the outcome of this." This mantra has helped him stay focused on short-term goals and milestones, pushing through challenges by always looking ahead to the next breakthrough. Whether it was waiting for a new prototype or FDA clearance, the two-weeks-at-a-time approach kept them moving forward.

"As an entrepreneur, you take two weeks and then another two weeks, and you keep going," Jacobs says.

Prioritize hard work over smarts

While intelligence is valuable, "I take hard work over smarts any day of the week," Jacobs declares.

He's seen many brilliant people give up too early while less intelligent but more determined individuals have killed it over time. "There are a lot of not very smart people who have done very well because of their persistence." This philosophy has driven Normatec's approach to product development and market expansion.

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Build strong partnerships

The decision to partner with Hyperice was based on a long-standing relationship and mutual respect between Jacobs and Hyperice founder Anthony Katz.

If you're thinking about partnering or selling to anybody, I highly recommend really getting to know them," Jacobs says.

He recalls having deep conversations with Katz for years before he sold the company to him, trading questions and war stories. The two were so tight before their union that Jacobs's and Katz's lawyers said it was the fastest M&A they'd ever worked on.

Says Jacobs, "It's always been my overall mission to do cool shit with cool people in a way that can impact people."

Be one step ahead

The recovery market is hot, with products like cold plunges and massage guns becoming more popular than ever. But it wasn't always this way, Jacobs says. He notes that 20 years ago, people didn't think much about recovering. "It wasn't really a thing. You would maybe jump in an ice bath, or you would take a day off."

That never made sense to him. "I started to think, what could we be doing to enhance the other 20 hours of the day when you're not actually competing or training?"

Now, Normatec devices are commonplace in the training rooms of major professional and collegiate sports programs.

With his new Elite product, Jacobs wants to take this forward-thinking approach to the next frontier of the recovery revolution.

"Being able to be at Best Buy and Target, where individuals are picking it up for their aunt, who's a nurse and on her feet eight to 10 hours a day and is coming home and wants to get her legs underneath her the right way. To me, that's the coolest thing," he says.

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