At 71, Richard Brown has taken on a new career as a product entrepreneur after decades working as a nuclear medicine physician and professor.
Brown formally retired from the University of Michigan in 2020, but started a new role at the University of Utah School of Medicine the following week before joining venture-backed health-tech company Covera Health.
He is now working on Poka Snack, a skewer-like product designed to make it easier to freeze and eat fruit, particularly bananas.
The product was launched on Kickstarter earlier this year and has raised more than 90% of its initial $4,000 funding target. Brown has also built a following of more than 14,000 people on TikTok.
For Brown, however, the venture is less about selling frozen fruit skewers and more about continuing to learn and experiment.
“My hobbies tend to be learning something new,” Brown told Fortune.
“I think I never want to retire. Why would you do that? You spent all this time learning something—and things get easier for you when you get older in some ways because you’re a little bit wiser.”
Brown graduated from the University of Michigan’s medical school in 1980 and spent two decades in private practice before returning to the university as a professor in 2004.
He also served as director of clinical nuclear medicine and molecular imaging before retiring in 2020.
Rather than stepping away from work, Brown took up a new position at the University of Utah, where he became vice chair of clinical operations in the department of radiology. He held the role for three years before joining Covera Health, where he is now chief health strategy officer.
Brown said that continuing to take on unfamiliar challenges has helped him maintain a sense of growth.
“When something becomes routine, you probably have stopped growing,” he said.
The approach has also shaped his attitude towards entrepreneurship. During the dot-com boom, Brown launched several internet businesses while continuing to practise medicine, including websites selling college textbooks and hotel rooms.
He also created an educational website for cancer patients and their families.
Most of those ventures ended when the dot-com bubble burst, but Brown said the experience taught him not to be put off by the possibility of failure.
“I think the problem with most people is they’re afraid to look stupid,” Brown said. “If you think that something should be done, just do it. Don’t worry about what other people think, because you may be wrong, but you also may be right.”
That attitude eventually led to Poka Snack.
Brown said he had struggled to find a suitable product for eating frozen bananas, with existing options sometimes breaking or leaving splinters in the fruit.
“I wanted something better,” he said. “When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I decided to see if I could create it myself.”
After testing around 40 prototypes, Brown settled on a design using patent-pending semi-helical geometry. He is now working with a US manufacturer on production while finalising the packaging.
The project has also given Brown the opportunity to use AI to build a business largely by himself.
He has used the technology across the development of Poka Snack, including the product concept and design, branding, creative work, marketing, business plan and launch.
Brown said that without AI, becoming a “solopreneur” would not have been possible.
For him, the latest venture is another example of a career built around trying new things rather than following a fixed path.
“People are always asking: ‘What should I go into?’ and that’s the wrong question,” Brown said. “The question is: ‘What are you excited about?’”
