A prominent leader in the Twin Cities medtech scene has unveiled his next steps.

On Monday, Minneapolis-based Avio Medtech Consulting LLC announced that it has hired Frank Jaskulke as VP of sales and business development. The news comes about two months after Jaskulke departed from his longtime job at Golden Valley-based health tech trade group Medical Alley.

Avio, whose stated mission is to “help medtech innovators take flight,” is the brainchild of local serial entrepreneur Morgan Evans, who was profiled as a next-gen medtech leader in TCB’s special issue on the business of health. The company provides consulting services to entrepreneurs looking to build new medical devices or technologies. In an interview with TCB, Jaskulke noted that roughly 50% of the company’s customers to date have been first-time founders.

During his nearly two decades at Medical Alley, Jaskulke became known as a valued “connector” between startups, investors, and policymakers. He hopes to continue doing much of the same at Avio.

“Avio has a mission that’s akin to Medical Alley, in some ways, of supporting companies and building better models for building startups,” Jaskulke said. “But we’re doing it in a very different way as a for-profit business.” As he sees it, the company, which was founded in 2020, is ultimately a “startup supporting startups.”

Jaskulke most recently served as VP of innovation at Medical Alley and head of the Medical Alley Starts program, which is aimed at connecting entrepreneurs to investors and accelerators. But before that, he also led sales and marketing efforts for the trade group’s membership program. Today, Medical Alley has more than 800 members in and around the health care industry, including titans like Abbott, Mayo Clinic, and even Best Buy.

Avio is based in Minneapolis, but it provides consulting services to founders far and wide.

“[Customers] could be anywhere in the world,” Jaskulke said. “Because we’re right here in the backyard of Medical Alley, a lot of clients are here, and that’ll be a big focus of growth. But the advantage of this model is we can go and work with companies wherever.”

The company currently employs 19 people total, but aims to grow that number to 30 by the end of 2024, president Julie Pritchard-Hedtke said in an email.

Under Jaskulke’s tenure at Medical Alley, the organization partnered with local economic development group Greater MSP to submit a bid in the federal government’s “Tech Hubs” program. Though federal leaders did recognize Minnesota as one of 31 “tech hubs” around the nation, the bid has not yet led to any federal funding. That could change if Congress opts to appropriate all the funding authorized by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which established the Tech Hubs program.

The Greater MSP proposal was known as “Minnesota MedTech 3.0” and called for greater collaboration in the state’s health and medical technology sectors. “The process of MedTech 3.0 was a great demonstration of the leadership of this community,” Jaskulke said. Whether the bid ultimately nets federal funds in the future “has no bearing on this community as the No. 1 health tech innovation community in the world,” he said.