idea-012 · viability deck
Every slide states a condition that would have to be true, then reports where it stands using the candidate file's own claim and its own confidence tag. A deck never upgrades a tag, invents a number, or recommends anything, and there is no ask slide.
The chair: the investor, and the operator who has to make a veterinary-only device sale add up to a business with no federal payer anywhere in the chain.
How to read this: every slide is a condition, not a conclusion. A bracketed claim reference points into knowledge-base/candidates/idea-012.md — the number is the claim's position in its ## Claims list, the tag is copied from it and never adjusted here. A [no claim] marker means nothing in the file speaks to this. No number appears here that is not in a claim, and there is no ask slide. See docs/deck-spec.md.
Would have to be true: The owner's own wallet, out of pocket, would have to be the whole of the revenue model — there is no federal payer path for a veterinary-only device, and pet-insurance reimbursement for devices is inconsistent and not established.
Where it stands: Because veterinary devices are not FDA premarket-reviewed, no CPT/HCPCS code or federal coverage policy applies at all; reimbursement, where it exists, would run through pet insurance, and no connector in this repo reaches that data [claim 10: unconfirmed]. Owner and clinician willingness to pay a premium price out of pocket is stated as an explicit design assumption, not a fact, and the adoption connector returns unverifiable for this class of question by design [claim 9: unconfirmed].
What would settle it: A licensed pet-insurance policy review (Trupanion, Nationwide, ASPCA) for any device-coverage precedent — the same gap the desirability deck's Slide 4 carries from the owner's side.
If it's false: There is no institutional buyer to design a sales motion around — every dollar has to be won one owner at a time, out of a discretionary budget.
Would have to be true: Even though this is a veterinary-only device with no federal code path, a private pet-insurance analog to code existence, payment amount, and coverage policy would still have to land for reimbursement to offset the owner's cost at any scale.
Where it stands:
What would settle it: Same as Slide 1 — a licensed pet-insurance policy review; no connector in this repo reaches it.
If it's false: This candidate's model has to run entirely on cash-pay economics; any capital plan that assumes a reimbursement offset would be built on nothing in the file.
Would have to be true: Population x price x reachable share, each factor named separately and each large enough to support a specialty sales motion.
Where it stands:
market connector returns unverifiable by design for
market-sizing questions of this kind, and no proxy connector exists for a veterinary
population.
What would settle it: A veterinary epidemiology report or aggregated EHR study for population; a systematic multi-clinic or manufacturer pricing survey for price; a veterinary CGM adoption survey for reachable share — all human-attached, licensed sources, since no connector in this repo reaches any of the three.
If it's false: TAM below floor is a hard kill condition in the rubric. It has not fired — TAM is blank, not scored below floor — but blank is not the same as clear, and nothing in the file currently rules out a floor-level TAM either.
Would have to be true: Development, tooling, and any voluntary bench/accuracy validation would have to reach a paying owner on a cost and calendar timeline that the "no FDA premarket review" structural advantage is supposed to buy.
Where it stands: No cost or calendar claim exists anywhere in the file [no claim]. The Stage 2 draft scored Capital intensity by inference from Claim 1 (verified: no FDA registration or premarket duty attaches to a veterinary-only device), and the file itself flags that as an inference rather than a verified cost or time figure. This deck's write-back states the inference as a checkable proposition: the absence of FDA premarket review materially reduces this candidate's development cost and time-to-revenue relative to an equivalent human-labeled CGM [claim 29: unverified].
What would settle it: A contract-manufacturer bill-of-materials and timeline quote for a sensor/reader/app system; a comparable veterinary-device launch timeline as a benchmark — neither reachable by any connector in this repo.
If it's false: The "cheap and fast because it's veterinary-only" premise that makes this candidate attractive in the first place is unsupported, and Factor 7 stays exactly as blank as it is now.
Would have to be true: Something beyond the base sensing chemistry — which the file concedes traces to public 1960s research — would have to be defensible: the species-specific adhesive, the calibration algorithm, or a data asset built from continued use.
Where it stands: FTO is an open question, not a cleared one, for two independent reasons: no specific patent has been identified to search against, and the one connector probe attempted is blocked by a missing PATENTSVIEW_API_KEY, so it returns unconfirmed unconditionally regardless of input [claim 6: unconfirmed]. The base chemistry traces to 1960s research and is plausibly off-patent on age alone, but the Generator explicitly did not check whether Abbott, Dexcom, or Medtronic hold newer process, membrane-chemistry, or manufacturing-process patents [claim 5: unconfirmed]. Whether the calibration algorithm is itself a defensible improvement over the off-label baseline is unestablished [claim 30: unverified] — see the feasibility deck's Slide 2. No claim in the file addresses trade dress, trademark, or any data-network effect from continued use.
What would settle it: A formal patent search once the credential gap is resolved; a scan for veterinary-specific CGM patent filings by incumbents.
If it's false: The device is commodity hardware in a new form factor that a fast-follower can copy once it reaches the market — same as the underlying sensing chemistry already is.
Would have to be true: This candidate would have to be entering a genuinely open field, or at least one where the incumbent's position is beatable.
Where it stands: Abbott's FreeStyle Libre is the dominant off-label incumbent by literature volume [claim 11: unconfirmed] through [claim 16: unconfirmed], with a real recall history under product code QLG spanning erroneous-high-glucose results, manufacturing carbon buildup causing erroneous-low results, and a battery fire-hazard [claim 21: unconfirmed], [claim 22: unconfirmed], [claim 23: unconfirmed]. No claim in the file addressed the one purpose-built veterinary competitor identified in the domain research until this deck's write-back: whether ALR Technologies' GluCurve Pet CGM is already commercially available to US veterinary practices at a price and accuracy competitive with this candidate's launch position is entirely unestablished [claim 28: unverified].
What would settle it: A market scan for GluCurve's current US commercial status, pricing, and any published accuracy data; a broader scan for other veterinary CGM entrants, funding, or launches.
If it's false: This candidate is not opening a category — it is a second entrant into one a competitor already occupies, and the desirability case has to clear a "better than GluCurve" bar, not just a "better than off-label Libre" one.
Would have to be true: There would have to be a next test as cheap as reading a public product page.
Where it stands: The GluCurve check [claim 28: unverified] is close to free — a company website and press-release read. Setting PATENTSVIEW_API_KEY and re-running the patent probe [claim 6: unconfirmed] is also cheap relative to everything else on this deck. The TAM and reimbursement gaps (Slides 1-3) are the expensive items on this deck — licensed reports, not free lookups.
What would settle it: Same as above.
If it's false: Nothing here is false; this slide is a work order.
Every condition above with nothing verified behind it — the [no claim] markers, plus the unverified claims this deck itself put on record. Read this slide first.
The only verified claim anywhere in this file is regulatory permission — that veterinary-only devices sit outside FDA premarket review [claim 1: verified]. Every dollar-and-competition question on this deck is unconfirmed, unverified, or entirely unaddressed.
If only one thing from this chair could be checked: the TAM decomposition — diagnosed population x price x reachable share [claim 8: unconfirmed].
Every other viability question — channel, capital, moat, competitive position — is moot if there is no paying population underneath it, and TAM below floor is the one condition on this deck the rubric would treat as an automatic kill if it resolved that way. It is currently blank, not below floor, but nothing in the file rules a floor-level outcome out either.
Naming it is not a recommendation, a gate, or a kill.