Better Together Podcast Recap: Téa Phillips & Tennessee's Growing Startup Ecosystem

Kosta: Hey y'all, this is Kosta on the Better Together Podcast and today I'm here with my guest, Téa Phillips, CEO of ATS Innovations, Inc. and inventor of MetaFlex gloves.

 

Roughly 20% of adults in America are living with an arthritis diagnosis. When we lose the ability to grip or use our hands as we normally would with conditions like arthritis, our life changes completely.

For almost the past decade, you've worked on engineering, testing, and scaling a glove to help people with such mobility issues. What inspired you to start MetaFlex?

Best Quotes

"Affordable healthcare is like the whole reason why I did this. I grew up in rural Tennessee without much money and I have cried over $40 copay." - Téa Phillips

"I thought, this is such a simple idea. It can help so many people and no one's doing it yet. So it was this huge opportunity. And then once I realized that it was an opportunity, it kind of felt like a responsibility." - Téa Phillips

"Prevention is so much better than treatment. Prevention is what we need to be focused on in health care." - Téa Phillips

"The investment from UCIA is the only reason that I came back to Cookeville." - Téa Phillips

"Building community is how you make things happen." - Téa Phillips

 

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Key Takeaways

• Grip strength naturally declines starting at age 39 for both men and women, making hand health important for everyone, not just older adults.

• MetaFlex combines compression therapy with grip strengthening through adjustable resistance bands, offering a non-medicinal alternative to opioids for arthritis pain management.

• Local investment ecosystems are crucial for retaining entrepreneurial talent - Téa returned to Cookeville specifically because of UCIA's investment and community support.

• Keeping healthcare affordable requires determination and sacrifice - Téa deliberately keeps MetaFlex priced at $39.95 despite pressure to raise prices.

• Women entrepreneurs face significant funding challenges with less than 2% of venture capital going to female-only founded companies.

• Community support and mentorship are essential for startup success - organizations like Eagleworks, Launch Tennessee, and UCIA provided crucial validation and guidance.

• Prevention-focused healthcare solutions can reduce long-term costs compared to expensive treatments, surgeries, and ongoing medical care.

 

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The Origin Story

Téa: Man, decade. And that's right too. I've been doing this for a long time. I started when I was at Tennessee Tech University. I had two co-founders and we came up with the idea for MetaFlex. Well, actually they had the idea. They said, "we need a grip strengthener that people can wear to manage their disease at home."

And as soon as I heard them say this, I thought about my grandma. She was really battling with arthritis at the time. And it was at the stage where she was unable to do things that she liked doing, like knitting and quilting and gardening. She was just like slowly losing the ability to do these things, asking people for help. I was watching her in pain and it just felt really important. Yeah. So that's where it came from.

Kosta: Your background though, when you were at Tennessee tech, like you were obviously an engineer and then you went into developing a product. You were a nuclear engineer.

Téa: I studied mechanical engineering, but after graduating, I did work in nuclear for a while. I was a process engineer at Y-12 National Security Complex. It was amazing. It was so much fun. It was really cool to have a security clearance and be doing really important work to maintain the security of our nation's nuclear deterrents.

Yeah, it was awesome work and really rewarding, and it allowed me to save up money to really fund MetaFlex and bring it to life.

 

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Breaking Through Mental Barriers

Kosta: In 2024 or even in 2017 when you started this project, it would have been so easy to feel like there's nothing new under the sun. If an easy solution to hand pain and weakness did exist, someone would have already thought of it. How did you break out of that mindset?

Téa: Well, I started doing research and I realized that nothing like this was on the market and it kind of blew my mind. I thought, this is such a simple idea. It can help so many people and no one's doing it yet.

So it was this huge opportunity. And then once I realized that it was an opportunity, it kind of felt like a responsibility. Because I knew that if I made it, I would make it affordable. And if someone else had the idea, then a lot of people that needed the device might be priced out of this kind of treatment.

 

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How MetaFlex Works

Kosta: Let's talk a little bit about what the device looks like and how it functions and what separates it from everything else. So typically if I had arthritis and I didn't know about the MetaFlex glove, what would I typically buy to help?

Téa: Well, you'd go to a physical therapist if you can afford it. A lot of people can't. You'd buy compression gloves. And then if you were able to go to a therapist, they would tell you to do grip strengthening exercises. So that's just repetitive motion exercises.

And I found that a lot of people aren't doing those because of the burden required to remember to start and the time required to complete.

And then there's also pain medications. So a lot of people are popping, you know, more than just Tylenol. Opioids are commonly recommended and prescribed for arthritis pain. Really? Yeah. Opioids. And it's dangerous and it's concerning.

So MetaFlex is a holistic way to solve that pain problem. Compression helps with circulation, improving pain, swelling and stiffness. And then grip strengthening - exercise has been shown to reduce pain by up to 40%.

So the exercise portion of it really helps you to improve your overall hand health and reduce pain too. And we combine the two so that when you're exercising, you've got that compression so you're not feeling pain. Compression also helps to enhance muscle recovery when you're wearing it during exercise.

I just tried to put together all of the best pieces that are recommended for managing arthritis pain and improving hand health so that people have an option that's non-medicinal and non-addictive.

Kosta: And so essentially you merged compression and grip strength together into one product.

Téa: Yeah. And no one had done it before. It's wild. It was so crazy. Yeah. So we got the patent and we've got two now.

 

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Surprising Market Diversity

Kosta: When we think about mobility issues, muscle weakness, most of us think of that as a later us problem. As you've continued to scale operations and bring your product to more stores and distributors, are you surprised by the diversity of buyers?

Téa: Yeah, absolutely. I'm writing a proposal to do some research right now. And in my studies, I found that grip strength declines progressively in everyone, men and women, beginning at age 39. Wow. 39. But from then on, your grip strength is progressively declining.

Yeah. And so everyone needs to work on their grip strength to be able to do their daily activities and enjoy their life. So I've got buyers that are in their 30s that do landscaping. So they're really hard on their hands during the day and they use the glove to rehabilitate at night.

And also I wear the gloves. I'm 28 and I'm typing all day and sometimes I get pain in one of my joints in my hands. So I wear the gloves at night. If I don't wear the gloves, I've got pain for like three days. Like I try to rest it and not use it and I still have pain. But if I wear the gloves at night, the next day I'm totally fine.

 

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Product Description

Kosta: So describe the gloves. What does it look like that makes it different?

Téa: So it's a compression glove and it's got resistance bands, like stretchy elastic bands that are sewn into the fingertips of the glove. And then there are channels where it just runs down the finger and then you can adjust that resistance or stretch the band to different lengths with Velcro that you see on the back of the hand.

So every finger is completely adjustable. It's really personalized healthcare. And right now we sell it in black, but we've got a bunch of colors coming out later this year.

And you can check out the glove at MetaFlexglove.com. That's M-E-T-A-F-L-E-X glove.com.

 

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The Entrepreneurial Journey

Kosta: You could have just continued to be a nuclear engineer at Y12. Your life may have been a whole lot easier, but instead you decided to embark on this journey a decade ago. I know just from personal experience, how hard it is to run a business.

Téa: It comes back to responsibility. Like, yeah, my life was great when I was working at Y12 because I got a consistent paycheck and it was significant. It was the most money I've ever made in my life today. I had a set schedule. Like, I wasn't sending emails at 3 a.m.

You know, I'm working constantly. I don't get a break. I haven't had a vacation in God knows how long, but I could really use one. But it's important. So I've got people emailing me saying like, "I can sleep at night and you've changed my life." And I don't have to use this like pain cream that I was using or I actually have a review on Amazon that calls the glove a miracle.

And that's why I do it because it's helping people and it's making an impact. It just feels like my responsibility to bring this to as many people as I can and not just, you know, take the easy way out.

I graduated Tennessee Tech in 2018 and I had the MetaFlex and I had a job offer from Y12. And for a few years, I took the easy way out. I was like, man, I don't want to start a business. I don't want to do all this. This is going to be hard work and nobody else really wants to do it with me.

But, you know, eventually I got to the point where my grandma was getting worse and I was like, this could have changed her life and it would have helped ease her suffering towards the end of her life. And I don't have anything that fits her. I don't have the prototype finished. So I just, I needed to do it.

 

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Keeping Healthcare Affordable

Kosta: In a time when healthcare and new treatments are out of reach for so many of us, one of the best things about MetaFlex is its accessibility and affordability. How are you keeping unit prices low and was this a priority for your business all along?

Téa: I keep unit prices low through sheer determination and willpower. Everybody wants me to raise the price on the MetaFlex and I want to lower the price on the MetaFlex. $40 is good.

Affordable healthcare is like the whole reason why I did this. I grew up in rural Tennessee without much money and I have cried over $40 copay. I know what it's like to not be able to afford the treatment that you need and to watch the people that you love because they can't afford the treatment that they need suffer.

And it makes me angry when I think about the price of healthcare and I think about the insurance companies that are predatory. And I think about just all of the things in this country and around the world that aren't working for the people and are working for some corporate profit.

Yeah, so MetaFlex will always be affordable. I mean, of course I'm going to have additional versions that come out that are more like luxury or more athletic or like filling some specific need, but there's always going to be the MetaFlex that is $39.95 for a pair of gloves so that anyone in the world that is having problems with their hands can pop into their local corner store or my website or Amazon and get a pair of gloves that's going to relieve their pain and improve their mobility and make their life better.

 

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Healthcare and Insurance Commentary

Kosta: What's going to happen is, is if you don't treat the root causes and if you don't have treatment in general, then you're going to end up at that high dollar point where you've got a ton of meds and you've got those surgeries and you've got a routine carousel of doctors that you've got to go see and specialists and so on and so forth. And so I'm just going to call a spade a spade. Insurance wants to get you to that point because then you become somebody that they make a lot of money off of if you're just a 45 year old person that wants to be proactive and ensure that they don't develop arthritis by using MetaFlex glove. They're not going to pay for that.

Téa: Yeah, it's simple. And I work with insurance every single day and I'm like, dude, the shining light to all of this. Okay. Is we're still a young country. So maybe we're just trying to figure it out.

Kosta: Yeah. It is.

Téa: I think we're gonna figure it out.

Kosta: I think so too because so many people are so mad that companies like, you know, I can't, I don't know if I can name companies directly, but some insurance companies that carry a lot of our insurance, like a major population segment, 98% of the revenue comes from the federal government instead of from regular consumers. I know. I know. And it's like, we are paying our tax dollars to these insurance companies to treat us like crap.

Téa: We can't get started on lobbying.

Kosta: Crazy. I'm glad like. Dude, I mean, I would be here all day, but I am glad, though, that people are taking matters into their own hands. You know, they're trying to develop systems that they can still afford the devices and the technology, and they don't have to rely on their insurance. There's a ton of people that don't even have insurance. You know what I'm saying? Especially in Tennessee. So I mean, I think it's great. And.

The only way that you can keep it affordable is, you know, just the through line is obviously you're doing a lot of the work yourself, you know, without hiring people. So that just means that you're putting a lot more of the sweat equity in and the time to keep the price down.

Téa: Yeah, I agree. Prevention is so much better than treatment. Prevention is what we need to be focused on in health care.

 

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Tennessee's Growing Startup Ecosystem

Kosta: You've worked with so many different local and state organizations to help launch MetaFlex and scale your operations. Will you talk about the benefits of working with organizations like Eagleworks, Launch Tennessee, and the UCIA?

Téa: They've all been incredible. I found building community is how you make things happen. We talk about like, I'm doing all the work, but like, if I didn't have these support organizations around me, I wouldn't be able to do the work because there's things I don't know and things I need to learn and ways that these people have lifted me up and helped me.

Eagleworks launched MetaFlex. Eagleworks was the first time my product was validated. Eagle Works, for those who don't know, is Tennessee Tech's student pitch competition. My teammates and I brought MetaFlex to Eagle Works and we called it hands on then, but we renamed it later.

We brought that to Eagle Works in 2018. I worked really, really hard on that. And that was after Eagle Works was the first time I ever experienced burnout because I was finishing mechanical engineering school and then I was trying to develop a business plan and launch a business.

And yeah, so I learned self-care, the importance of that then. But we brought it to Eagleworks and we won. We won first place and we won biggest social impact. That validated my idea.

And then afterwards, after the competition, I had people coming up to me saying, "I have arthritis. Let me know when you launch this."

Launch Tennessee has been incredible too. I got to go to Launch Tennessee's student pitch competition. There I won third place. Ashley and I pitched. We were two undergrad engineering students. And the first and second place were PhDs from Vanderbilt with like professors on their team. So we weren't competing with them and we won third. And so that was validating.

And then the Upper Cumberland Investment Alliance is my first investor. They put money in in March after I had been on the market for a year. I proved traction. I showed that people liked the glove. People will purchase the glove and we're growing and they're the first person that put money in.

Then Launch Tennessee came in and matched that with Invest Tennessee's matching investment. So all of these groups in Tennessee, you think of Tennessee, you don't think of a booming startup ecosystem, but that's changing because there is one.

Kosta: Do you think that the fact that you had the capacity to have a fund like this in Cookeville played into your decision to stay in Cookeville?

Téa: Frankly, the investment from UCIA is the only reason that I came back to Cookeville. That's the truth. Because I needed to be where someone was going to invest in my company and believe in me and help me make it happen. Without that community, you can't grow. And so I was in search of it. And it's the reason that I'm in Cookeville and able to give back to Tennessee Tech and able to shop locally and be a part of this community.

 

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Community Impact and Investment

Kosta: It makes an impact bigger than just me because I then go and like yesterday I went to Jamie's and I bought a sandwich. And like if I didn't get funded in Tennessee, I would have had to go somewhere else to get funded. And then I wouldn't be investing back in the community. And also investing in local entrepreneurs tells your local high school kids, your local, like I came from Shelbyville and I've got a medical device company and I've got investment in it. And I'm a woman and less than 2% of women receive venture capital. So that's a big impact in itself. I think my story and I'm just at the beginning of it. And I feel like I've already been able to inspire some people to pursue their dreams. And so it's pretty incredible.

Kosta: I'm going to plug UCIA just one time. If you are a young entrepreneur or just an entrepreneur in general, you don't have to necessarily be young and you are local and you have a business and a great idea or just a prototype and no sales, please come and pitch to the UCIA fund and put your name in the hat because that's what this fund is all about. It's about making sure that we are identifying people that are local to this community and to the upper Cumberland and that we're able to support them financially so that they can take something that is uninvestable and actually provide them with a little bit of seed money so that they can get to step one or two or three.

Téa: And I'll plug UCIA too. When I pitched, I then was able to meet with like almost every member of the upper Cumberland investment Alliance. Like we walked through my business plan and we walked through, have you thought about this? And if you're going to this trade show, you should consider doing this. And these are kind of the packages and this is like a good introductory price to like get stores started with your gloves. So they offer more than just financial assistance. These are people that have built businesses, scaled businesses, and can help mentor you a bit. So great, great fund.

 

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How MetaFlex Actually Works

Kosta: If someone is listening and still thinking, how does this actually work? Will you walk us through how the product works and who should be using it?

Téa: Yeah. So the MetaFlex is the world's first grip strengthening compression glove. We've designed it with a really gentle compression. So it's not going to be tingly. It's not going to make you numb. You can wear it for hours and hours. You can wear it to sleep.

Gentle compression is going to improve your circulation, circulation of blood and lymphatic fluids. So that's reducing pain and swelling and stiffness. And then we have completely adjustable and personalized grip strengthening. And we do that with resistance bands.

So these elastic bands are sewn into the fingers and you can stretch them on the back of the hand with Velcro. So they're super easy to move. And when you're wearing the glove, whenever you close your hand to grab your water bottle or your phone, cause it's got touchscreen pads, whenever you close your hands, you're working against that resistance to build your grip strength.

So you're working out without having to work out actually. Half of my customers are actually wearing the MetaFlex at night because they have problems with their hand closing into a fist or they have pain in their hands when they're sleeping. So yeah, that's been really surprising actually to see how many people are wearing the glove to bed.

But grip strengthening is important. Your grip will naturally decline at age 39. So improving your grip strength is good for prolonging the life of your hands and staying healthy.

And you can buy it at MetaFlexglove.com. Also, you go to our website and you can find some in-store options. So we're in All Good Family Pharmacy, Family Wellness Pharmacy, Nunnally Drugstore, and we're really expanding. We're in like 25 pharmacies across the nation and a couple of VA medical centers. We're also on Amazon.

 

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Future Projects

Kosta: Before we go, I want to know what other projects and inventions you're working on. Do you want to bring more accessible technologies to market?

Téa: Yeah, I've got a list a mile long. I've got a million things that I'm working on and things that I want to do. The next thing, though, because I only have so many hours in a day, the next thing is the athletic version of the MetaFlex and then the glide version of the MetaFlex, which is just our more luxury version. Both of those will be coming out next year.

But once I get a team going, once I have a little more time, you'll definitely see more healthcare innovations coming out of ATS. And I might even start a few more companies for some of the other ideas that I have that don't really fall into the healthcare side.

Kosta: So you're going to put another 10 years into this.

Téa: Yeah, somewhere around there.

 

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Valuable Lessons from the Interview

 

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Better Together

Kosta: We always like to end the show on a high note. Who is someone that makes you better when you're together?

Téa: That's a good question. There are so many people. I've been lucky to love a lot of good people. I immediately think of my sister. She's like my best friend. She's better than me in every aspect of the word. She is in Fort Lauderdale and she does wildlife rehabilitation.

So she's taking all of the animals that are, you know, getting hit by cars or getting sick, all of the wildlife down in Fort Lauderdale and treating them, you know, just helping out the ecosystem and helping out those animals. So she inspires me. She's way funnier than me. So I'm laughing all the time when we're together. And yeah, that would definitely be my sister, Jocelyn.

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