Some product bets fail because the idea was wrong.

Some get a lot messier because the world around it changed.

Gabriela Cordero joins Marco and Jonas to talk about building health and fitness products where that kind of thing happens. One launch had the product, the inventory, and the plan. Then COVID hit, gyms closed, and the team had to work through what happens when a hardware product is ready, but there’s nowhere for the inventory to go.

That leads into a bigger conversation about hardware and software product work. Software can move fast, at least in theory. Hardware asks for more commitment. Sensors, manufacturing, inventory, timelines, and physical design all make the product calls feel a little less reversible.

Gabriela also talks about what she’s building now at MedWatch Technologies: a needle-free glucose wearable. She gets into the process behind bringing that kind of product to market, from the science behind the signal and the hardware constraints to validation, FDA positioning, and how glucose data becomes useful beyond traditional disease management.

Gabriela breaks down:

→ What happens when a hardware product launches into conditions no one planned for
→ Why hardware product decisions are harder to unwind than software decisions
→ How customer research and market feedback shape product roadmaps
→ Why AI changes parts of software development faster than hardware development
→ Why product teams need to separate a good idea from the right feature to build now
→ How acquisition dynamics can create product conflict inside larger companies
→ What she learned from helping bring Nix Biosensors’ hydration wearable to market
→ Why form factor matters more as wearables move into more personal health use cases

Follow Gabriela:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriela-cordero1

Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/
LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/

Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us
Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/

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1:50 - Hardware, software, and why Gabriela likes B2B2C
5:40 - The highs and lows of building hardware products
6:20 - Launching fitness equipment during COVID
11:10 - Hardware vs software product cycles
12:50 - Where AI helps, and where hardware is still very hands-on
14:20 - Sensor miniaturization and the future of wearable form factors
15:20 - What MedWatch Technologies is building
17:10 - The needle-free wearable Gabriela’s team is developing
20:40 - Chasing the founder vision when the product has never existed before
21:45 - Clinical trials, scientific validation, and building from data
24:45 - Managing product, commercial, marketing, and brand work in an early-stage startup
26:30 - How Gabriela thinks about roadmap tradeoffs
27:20 - What happens when leadership wants a feature the market may not need
30:45 - The product Gabriela is proud of helping bring to market
36:10 - The feature that will save us: glucose visibility
37:00 - Connecting glucose data to food, movement, sleep, and behavior
38:20 - Where to find Gabriela and MedWatch Technologies