Hi! I'm Bill Gruber and I recently retired after working in sales and management for over 30 years. I had the opportunity to work with incredible people who have become lifelong friends and taught me a lot about sales, marketing, management, raising money for startup businesses, and selling companies. It wasn't always easy, but anything that's worth it usually isn't. I was successful because I worked hard and had some good luck along the way. I wish I had known then what I know now, so I've decided to write a book.

My two brothers and I were raised by a single mom (Liz) who worked as a secretary. Much of who I am is because of her. She was a no BS woman, with a talent for salty language and a magnetic sense of humor.

In high school I ran cross-country and track, was involved numerous school activities and student government, graduating in 1982. I attended Washington State University majoring in finance and minoring in economics. My family had little money so I worked and took out student loans to pay for my education. In college I was a Fraternity President and Student Body Vice President among other on campus activities.

After graduating, I was delighted to join Procter and Gamble as a Sales Representative in Portland, Oregon selling soap (Tide, Dawn, Cascade…) to grocery stores. It was a humbling experience but one that taught me about perseverance and listening. I was promoted twice, to District Field Representative and Unit Manager in the Paper Division (Bounty, Pampers, Always Pads…). After five years at P&G, I was recruited by Boston Scientific.

I joined Boston Scientific in 1991. After a great deal of training, I began selling medical devices to Radiologists, Cardiologists and Vascular Surgeons. It was extremely rewarding standing in medical procedures with amazing doctors and staff discussing what tools would work best for the situation at hand. I moved to Boston and held the positions of Product Manager, Market Manager and Director of Atherosclerotic Diseases. In 2000 I left to try my hand at venture funded startups.

I spent five years as the VP of Sales and Marketing for Cortek, a company developing products for spinal fusion. The company sold to AlphaTec.

From there, I spent twelve months raising money for an MIT startup in the cerebrovascular monitoring field before joining Spray Venture Partners as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. While in this role, I founded Interlace Medical. Interlace created a device for removing fibroids in women with abnormal uterine bleeding. The product was a smashing success and the company was purchased by Hologic in 2011, providing a 7-10x return on $28 million of invested capital. Today, over 500,000+ women are helped by the procedure annually.

After Interlace, I joined Solace Therapeutics, an underfunded company focused on creating a device to solve stress urinary incontinence in women. I raised over $50 million and hired an amazing team of committed people. However, after multiple redesigns and four randomized controlled trials over ten long years, the product was incapable of producing results necessary to obtain regulatory approval. This was a devastating failure but certainly worth the effort and anguish because of the many people we could have helped. It taught me some of the best lessons in my career.

Now it is time to write about it.