Interview with ClearMask co-founder Inez Lam
Inez Lam is a co-founder and CTO of ClearMask. She received her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins, and is now a biomedical engineering doctoral student at JHU and the inaugural JHU-AstraZeneca Scholar.
What is your start-up?
Our start-up is ClearMask. We are focused on creating transparent face masks to reduce barriers and allow access to communication for everyone in both healthcare and other industries.
How was ClearMask founded?
One of our co-founders, Allysa Dittmar, was born deaf. In 2015, she had a negative surgery experience when an ASL interpreter could not be present for her procedure. She relied on lip-reading and facial expressions to understand what was happening, but when the surgeons began the pre-op, they had to put surgical masks on. This made it nearly impossible for Allysa to communicate with the surgeons, and critical information such as blood type or allergies could not be shared. At one point, Allysa was even put under anesthesia without any warning. This was an extremely frightening experience, one that co-founders Allysa (our President) and Aaron Hsu (our CEO) didn’t want anyone else to go through. To that end, Allysa and Aaron began looking at alternative options available for deaf patients to communicate in surgery. To their surprise, there weren’t any transparent face masks on the market, despite it seeming like such an obvious solution. From that point on, our co-founders began working on developing a transparent face mask.
In fall of 2016, Elyse Heob (our COO) and I joined ClearMask as co-founders through a Medial Entrepreneurship class hosted in the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins. While we only worked on developing a business plan during that time, we had every intention to bring our idea to fruition. Since then we have developed our surgical mask and have been growing our venture.
What inspired your personal interest in ClearMask?
Both Elyse and I were interested in Medical Entrepreneurship, which is why we were taking the class at Johns Hopkins. Aaron had actually presented the venture as one of the possible projects for class members to join. As soon as we heard about ClearMask, Elyse and I knew that it was the project we wanted to work on. The solution was elegant yet simple; it was surprising that it hadn’t been done. I have a background in engineering, so I wanted to tackle the challenge of developing a facemask that allowed for lip-reading while also being comfortable and protective.
What has been the most rewarding aspect of working with your start-up?
Working with our team and learning from other people. Our team is a big part of our success. It has been a joy to learn from and be exposed to a lot of different people, and we have met and had help from so many people on our journey so far. Even within our team, we are able to inspire each other to be better. We each have different skill sets and strengths, which really synergize when we come together. It’s helped us get to where we are today.
More recently with the pandemic, we have been able to address a really big need: the need for visual communication through transparent masks. Being able to overcome challenges during the pandemic and growing from them have also been very rewarding for us as a start-up.
What hurdles did you face?
I think nearly every start-up faces this, but it’s the doubters: people who don’t believe in your product or see why it’s necessary. There were a lot of people who didn’t believe in our product at the beginning. People would say, “well it’s only for deaf people” not realizing how many people could be impacted and how many other groups could also benefit. However, through the I-Corps Program, a NSF sponsored customer discovery program, we were able to interview hundreds of potential customers and stakeholders in healthcare. This first step really helped us validate the product need, and we knew then that pursuing our mask was worthwhile and could help millions of people.
Every great idea will have opposition and resistance. As a founder it is important to still believe in your team and the idea. It is important to push past criticism, while also growing from it when it is constructive. Sometimes haters are just gonna hate, and you have to keep moving forward.
Who has played a key role in helping you succeed?
We couldn’t have come as far as we have without support. The I-Corps program was a great launching point for us. The Social Innovation Lab at Hopkins was another great experience. It was wonderful to be around other social ventures and innovators, and the experience really inspired us to keep growing to address our needs. The start-up ecosystem in Baltimore has been super welcoming and supportive. People don’t really think of Baltimore as a hub for start-ups, but we found that the resources and people here have been wonderful. We couldn’t be where we are today without them.
What are your goals for the future? ClearMask has had a lot of growth this year, so where are you planning to go next?
This past year has been a giant launching year for us, mainly because of the need for masks created by the pandemic. One of the next steps for us is to build out our team by hiring more full-time team members. We want to maintain our current company culture while onboarding new talent with diverse perspectives. We also have plans to expand to more international markets.
What’s your advice for JHU students looking to make a start-up?
I know for me I was initially just interested in start-ups; I didn’t have a strong idea of my own. When I was in undergrad at Hopkins, there weren’t any clubs like TCO. I was able to find that entrepreneurial community through the Medial Entrepreneurship class. Joining groups of like-minded people, like your organization [TCO] or entrepreneurship focused classes, is a great idea. Being around like-minded people who have that same drive to start ventures and create is where the magic happens. When you get creative people together to bounce ideas off each other, you can grow something small into something greater. It is also important to use those spaces to develop your idea and find the right team. It’s a common start-up debate: whether it’s more important to have a great idea or great teammates. For me personally, I think finding the right people is the most important aspect of starting a venture. Even if you have a bad idea to start, if you have a good team you can interview customers, learn about the market needs, and pivot to find a better solution. A team that doesn’t work well together probably couldn’t get as far.
What have you learned through working on ClearMask?
I still have moments where I think, “oh, we are a real company now!” I remember those moments when it was just us four co-founders, and we would meet in school conference rooms every Friday evening. We have definitely come a long way from those starting years.
As I mentioned before, finding the right people, the right team, is definitely an important aspect. Always being adaptable and looking for opportunities to become more efficient and better serve customers are also important. Those three are the biggest factors that have helped us push past challenges and grow as a company.
The adaptability aspect has truly shown up this year. Nothing that we were expecting ended up happening. Prior to this year, we talked to a lot of medical supply experts to learn about the pathway of selling a device into hospitals and clinics. What we found is that there is a strict procedure for putting a medical device on the market. Traditionally, developers will use third-party distributors to sell to customers. For us, we found that end-customers have a great need for masks, so we followed the less traditional path of both selling directly to customers and working with distributors. By being adaptable and open to opportunities, we are finding the best way to work with challenges. This has helped us the most with growth. At the beginning of 2020, we hadn’t sold a single mask. Now we’ve sold over 12 million.
One of our team members recently said, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity plus action”. ClearMask had the preparation; we were working towards the goal of releasing our mask before the pandemic even hit. This gave us more credibility over other PPE companies that were started in response to the pandemic. Our initial plan was to begin selling masks in late 2020. As we saw things transpire, we saw that we could act sooner or continue with our original plan. We decided to release our masks sooner to make a difference and help people in need of our product. Having an entire team that could be flexible and adapt to the situation helped us greatly.
Not doing things the traditional way and not knowing completely what you are doing are both fine. Just do your best. Keep learning and absorbing information until you do find that best path forward.
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity plus action”
I actually have this written down on a post-it on my wall. The original quote was, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” which is true, but the “plus action” addition is also super important. An opportunity can come up, but you have to act on it and be decisive. Otherwise, the preparations and opportunities will not result in any change.
