Shlomo Assa is one of the leading and most experienced laser experts in the world, with more than 30 years of business development and entrepreneurial expertise in both healthcare and industrial sectors. He served as the Chief Technology Officer in Syneron-Candela and helped triple the company’s revenue in four years by driving innovations and developing effective clinical marketing. Shlomo is very experienced at aligning the latest technologies with market demand to transform companies by successfully launching innovative products across culturally diverse environments in the U.S., Europe, and APAC.
Prior to joining Candela, Shlomo founded and successfully sold four companies with game-changing inventions in the laser industry, including LaserInk, which was sold to Dover, a Nasdaq-listed company. He has invented a number of leading aesthetic platforms, including CO2RE (sold to Syneron-Candela) and PicoWay, two of the best-selling facial rejuvenation platforms in the global market and the current gold standards in the industry.
Shlomo holds a BSc in both mechanical and electrical engineering from Technion in Haifa, Israel, and an MSc in lasers and optics from Tel Aviv University. Shlomo holds 20+ published patents in both medical and industrial laser technologies. Shlomo is the Chairman, Co-Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer of Acclaro Medical the pioneering medical technology company that founded UltraClear.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET FEATURED?
All interviews are 100% FREE OF CHARGE
Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to Valiant CEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Shlomo Assa: I am an engineer by trade and have been in medical devices for all of my career. Over the past 30 years, I have focused on business development and entrepreneurial expertise in the healthcare and industrial sectors. Before I started at Acclaro Medical, I was the Chief Technology Officer at Syneron-Candela. I left in 2018 to start Acclaro Medical, which specializes in developing and delivering novel solutions that address the most challenging needs in the medical aesthetics and surgical fields. We have built this industry-leading device called UltraClear, which today is the most disruptive product on the market. It’s a workstation that provides all the necessary tools to treat skin appearance including wrinkles, acne scarring, sunspots and blemishes. It truly covers it all. It’s a device that can treat three generations of patients including grandmothers, mothers and children. Additionally, it can treat all skin types and is a never-before-seen innovation on the market.
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Shlomo Assa: The first success I’d love to celebrate with my team is achieving our market goals by setting our revenue targets and financials. We have achieved 100% of our goals even though 2023 and 2024 have been challenging with geopolitical pressure, interest rates, and an election year. I’m proud of my team as we have achieved these goals despite the climate the world is in. The second success I’d like to celebrate is our market penetration. We have a portfolio of loyal patients and providers who are committed to UltraClear. It’s a great achievement because we have become one of the most successful and fastest-growing companies with the highest patient and provider satisfaction rates since starting in 2022. I will continue to celebrate these two successes with the team.
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Shlomo Assa: It’s all about execution, quality leadership, decision making and navigating challenges by making the right decision for the company. As a company, we’ve seen a growth rate of 300% year after year. A lot of people are seeing their roles and responsibilities expanding and are learning how to grow into them. Guiding and mentoring my team to make good and effective decisions and find the balance to minimize mistakes has been essential. We have a terrific team that is very coachable, and we know how to handle curveballs. One piece of advice I wish I had received earlier is how to navigate my company’s rapid growth, as it was challenging, especially at a growth rate of 300%. When you grow so fast, some problems will arise internally as well as with suppliers. You must figure out how to problem solve and forward-think on how to overcome these challenges.
Here is a two-fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Shlomo Assa: There are two books I would give to anyone wanting to get into the business world. The first, and most influential to me, is “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andrew S. Grove, who was the CEO and Founder of Intel. What strikes me about his story is his depiction of how painful and rewarding commercial success is and how most people don’t understand the importance of achieving commercial success. The author taught me that there isn’t a single day that he wouldn’t worry about making payroll. I didn’t realize that would be a concern until later in my career, I’d be worried about the same thing. The key takeaway for me, and what I try to teach other people, is that cash is king, and businesses rise and fall with cash. There are other important metrics, but they aren’t going to improve the health of your business. If you’re generating cash, you have a healthy business. Another book that influenced my career is “Jack: Straight from the Gut” by Jack Welch. It summarizes his 25 years as a CEO. From him, I learned how to run a business based on managing growth, customers, revenue, and all the additional aspects that keep a business and team in harmony.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Shlomo Assa: The uncertainty of the climate we’re in globally is a challenge for every business right now. There is immense monetary pressure, 2023 and 2024 provided many obstacles such as investments and credit lines. Unfortunately, this economic pressure will continue. Additionally, the commercial wars between countries have also been a hurdle to the supply chain. Because of the climate we’re in and these global challenges, the supply chain crisis won’t be going away, especially if you have clients in other countries. All we can do is provide better solutions and products that our customers want and need during this time.
2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 threw a lot of curve balls into businesses on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past, how can businesses thrive in 2024? What lessons have you learned and what advice would you share?
Shlomo Assa: You need to be attentive and support your organization to be adaptable. You need to have a deep understanding of the current challenges we are facing and make the right choices. My best advice is to build a resilient operation where there are well-guided and mentored people, along with ensuring that you seem approachable for your team. You need to focus on how to be successful in a world that is changing and find creative and flexible solutions to better your business.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Shlomo Assa: To me, success in 2024 means continuing our journey and phenomenal track record of patient and provider satisfaction. We are very patient and provider-focused, so we need to continue to be driven by listening to the market. It’s all about commercial success with our technology. I would like to thrive as a company while growing faster, being more flexible and executing our vision.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Shlomo Assa for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Shlomo Assa or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
