August 27, 2025

Meet the Team: Dave Sonders, Entrepreneur in Residence

What drew you to the Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) role at i-Cubed?

What drew me to the EIR role was really the people involved. From the very first meeting, when I met Donna and Micky, I was struck by how amazing they were. They're a rare combination – very accomplished, really smart, and also incredibly open-minded and collaborative. That combination is hard to find. They're operating at the top of their game, but they're also curious and open to different ways of working, and to points of view that don’t necessarily align with their own.

That was really interesting to me because I’d never worked in research before. I’ve worked across many product categories, launched products, businesses, and brands, so I had things I could bring to the table, but I knew I’d need to come up to speed in this world.

What attracted me most was the culture of the team, their openness to new ways of thinking, and the access to this storehouse of expertise, IP and capabilities that DCRI has developed over many years. In many ways, those assets are just bottled up, waiting to be unleashed in the form of new businesses and new products.

How would you describe your role as an i-Cubed EIR, and how does it align with the rest of your work?

My role as the EIR is interesting, it's not exactly what I thought it would be coming in. I’d say my role is, first and foremost, to represent the point of view of the business opportunity. There’s a lot of cool stuff that DCRI and i-Cubed could do, but the real focus needs to be: what’s the actual problem we’re trying to solve? Is it a worthwhile problem? Do we have a unique angle? And why should DCRI be the one to solve it?

Those might sound like obvious questions, but in the world of innovation and new ideas, they’re easy to overlook. Everything’s exciting, especially now, when tools like AI can make almost anything better, faster, cheaper. It’s easy to get caught up in that. But my job is to bring teams back to the fundamentals: Is this a problem worth solving? Is it motivating enough that someone would actually change their behavior, change their workflow, make a new purchase, or work in a different way?

That’s the first hurdle. The second is: can we solve this problem in a way that’s unique? What does DCRI bring that gives us a true advantage? Because there are a lot of companies chasing the same opportunities, so what gives us the right to win?

Those are the questions I try to keep front and center, to help guide the team in a more entrepreneurial direction.

How do you help innovators at i-Cubed think more like entrepreneurs from day one?

One way I try to model the entrepreneurial mindset and help the team think more like entrepreneurs is by always asking: what can we do to advance this idea today? We don’t need to have all the answers, we just need to make forward progress.

A lot of entrepreneurship is simply hustle. It’s not about having the shiniest product or the biggest network. It’s about grinding through the hard stuff that others might avoid. Sometimes, it’s just about showing up and putting yourself in a position where, even if you don’t have it all figured out, you try something, run an experiment, test a hypothesis, and learn from it.

If we can learn something every day or every week, we can turn those learning cycles into real progress. And the faster you can go through those cycles, the better. If you can learn faster than others chasing the same opportunity, you’re going to win.

What is something you look for to determine if a new idea has real potential?

When I’m evaluating a new idea—whether it’s mine or someone else’s—one of the first things I look for is whether the people who have that problem are actively searching for a better solution. That’s a strong sign there’s real potential.

If they just say, “Yeah, this sucks, but it’s the way it is,” or they’ve come up with their own workaround, that’s less encouraging. But if they’re actually trying new things, and you show them a sketch, a prototype, or even just describe the idea—and they lean in and say things like, “I’d use that,” or “Can I try it?”—that kind of interest and willingness to act is a really good sign.

What is the most common early misstep you see in startup thinking and how do you help teams course correct?

There are countless ways for startups to fail, I've seen them, and I've made many of those mistakes myself. But one of the most common early missteps I see is jumping into a well-known problem without a clear, unique angle. At i-Cubed, many of the challenges we’re working on, like recruitment in clinical trials, are widely acknowledged across the industry. They’re important, persistent problems that plenty of people have already tried to solve.

Take, for example, PreMatch, an i-Cubed solution I’m supporting that focuses on prescreening and recruitment. Everyone in clinical research knows recruitment is slow, expensive, and a major cause of trial delays. But because it's such a familiar problem, the bar is high, if we can’t articulate why our approach is different or what specific advantage we bring to the table, then we probably shouldn’t pursue it. It’s not enough to have a solution. You need a unique insight or edge that either resonates with your target users or gives you a functional advantage you can prove with real results. Helping teams find and sharpen that angle is a big part of how I support them.

Why is customer discovery especially critical in clinical research, and how do you help innovators get it right?

Customer discovery is important in every market. When I say customer discovery, I mean really just learning about the people in the world adjacent to the problem and understanding their whole context, not just their workflow, demographic profile, or job title, but getting into their life a little bit. That’s where some of my design background comes into play.

Understanding someone on a deep level, what are their true motivations? Are they worried about letting down their team? Are they nervous because this is a big opportunity and they might get promoted? Is their company going through job cuts and they’re just trying to preserve their livelihood? Really understanding those basic human motivations is where you have to start.

You build up from those motivations to understand workflows, use cases, features, and functions. But understanding what people are trying to accomplish, or avoid, matters. What are they worried about? What gets them excited? Those things translate into your ability to create a product or solution that taps into those emotions, makes them feel safe, more confident, and brings some joy.

It might sound corny to talk about human emotions in product development, but that’s what motivates people to change. And you need that when you're selling to big companies.

You advise startups both inside and outside of Duke; what's different about working with academic innovators at DCRI?

I’ve worked with a lot of startups and a lot of different teams over my career, internal startups at big companies, small startups with just a couple of people in a garage, and product development teams. There are a lot of similarities. Anybody trying to create something new that hasn’t existed before, I’d consider a startup.

What’s common across all those contexts is uncertainty, really not knowing. You don’t have an established customer. Nothing’s set. Going from zero customers to one is a giant leap. It’s really hard.

What’s different here is the industry. Clinical research is, in some ways, very conservative. There’s a lot of regulation. Things move slowly. You don’t get a lot of swings at the plate. If you’re selling to research sponsors, some of these trials last for years, and they might not have many opportunities to change how they work.

But what makes it exciting is that if you can get into that stream and bend it just a little, you can make a really big impact. It might be easier to get more cycles in a smaller team or an industry where it’s easier to sell a small solution. But when you’re talking about massive, multi-year trials, if you can influence the course of that work, make things easier, speed things up, or make them more efficient, there’s a massive opportunity for impact. That’s pretty exciting.

How do you see the healthcare and clinical research innovation landscape evolving?

The innovation landscape in healthcare and clinical research is evolving in a similar way to many other industries right now. Everyone is talking about AI, how it's going to change things, and whether it will affect their jobs or even replace them. There’s a mix of excitement and concern.
In clinical research specifically, AI has huge potential. A lot of the work involved in trials is tedious and inefficient, grinding, repetitive tasks that no one really wants to do. Things like calling through a list of participants, leaving messages, and comparing datasets for hours. That’s where AI can help, by taking over the kind of work that machines are better suited for.

If we can eliminate that kind of administrative burden, we can free up people to do what humans are uniquely good at: connecting with others, guiding them through difficult decisions, and supporting them in vulnerable moments. Helping someone navigate their health is a much better use of human capacity than spending hours making phone calls.

How do you build innovation cultures that last?

Culture, especially innovation culture, is a big, complex topic. It’s hard to pin down what makes a culture truly innovative over the long term. You see companies that are successful or launch a breakthrough product, and everyone points to their culture as the reason, but sustaining that energy is much harder.

What I’ve seen across big companies, startups, design-led teams, and engineering-led teams is that innovation tends to come from very human dynamics, not technical ones. The teams that consistently innovate usually have a few things in common: trust, disagreement, and affection.

They trust each other deeply. They like each other. And they argue productively. They don’t just go along with things; they challenge each other because they care. That creates a certain intensity and joy in the work. You’re testing each other, pushing each other to be better, and keeping each other sharp.

That mix: trust, disagreement, and affection, is what I’ve seen drive lasting innovation. Some of it comes from who’s on the team. Some of it grows over time. A lot of it depends on leadership. But if you have that, you’re in a good place.

What excites you about clinical research innovation?

I’m drawn to the excitement and adventure of startups. At this point in my career, I don’t want to work on anything I’m not genuinely excited about; I’m looking for meaningful problems to solve with good people.

What I bring to the table is that early-stage energy, figuring out what the real problem is, whether it’s worth solving, and whether we have a unique angle on it. Then testing those answers in the real world. That might mean building a prototype, drafting messaging, spinning up a website or pitch deck, and putting it in front of actual users or buyers to see what sticks.

If the feedback’s positive, you lean in. You add more energy, maybe invest a little more, build the first feature, or launch a pilot. That’s the part I love, going from a blank page to the first real version of something, alongside people who share the same drive to make a difference. That’s what brought me to this work.

Outside work, what is something you love to do that recharges or inspires you?

Outside of work, I just like to make stuff. I’m always tinkering – both physically and digitally. I’m constantly playing with new technologies, prototyping apps, and testing out little business ideas to see what gets traction.

And when it’s not business-related, I’m in the shop making things with my hands. I love working with wood, building projects with my kids. Creation, in any form, is its own reward. Whether it leads to something or not, the process itself recharges me.