In the Spotlight: Jeff Cummins of Immersive Hearing Technologies

Morning, friends - Logan here. I hope you’re safe and warm after the weekend snow storm. Grateful for all those that keep our world moving in times like these.

This week, I sat down with Jeff Cummins, Co-founder of Immersive Hearing Technologies, a Louisville-based startup using VR to transform how hearing aids are demonstrated and sold.

Jeff's path to founding Immersive is deeply personal. Two weeks before his 40th birthday, he contracted shingles - and it took most of the hearing in his right ear. With young daughters at home whose tiny voices he could no longer hear, he became a hearing aid user. That experience gave him firsthand knowledge of one of the industry's biggest pain points: buying a $4,000-$6,000 medical device based on a brochure.

Immersive Hearing Technologies is changing that. The company's VR-based demonstration tool lets patients actually hear how different hearing aids perform in real-world environments - a noisy restaurant, a crowded street - before making a purchase. It's the kind of "try before you buy" experience that exists for almost every other major purchase, but has been conspicuously absent from audiology. The technology caught the attention of Sonova, the world's largest hearing aid manufacturer, and Immersive is now deploying its system across Sonova's World of Hearing retail stores in Western Europe.

The conversation also traces Jeff's 25-year startup career, including scaling Keys Express from $15M to $70M in revenue as CFO, a near-miss with NIH-funded cardiac technology (VCardio), and the lessons he's learned about commercializing university research. Jeff is a product of Kentucky's innovation ecosystem - Transylvania undergrad, UofL MBA, former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UofL - and he makes a compelling case for why the state's resources (KSTC, Key Horse, SBIR matching funds, Awesome Inc) are among the best in the country for early-stage founders.

What We Discussed:

Why hearing aids are still sold like it's 1995 - The industry has relied on brochures, verbal descriptions, and month-long trial periods. Jeff explains why that's a problem and what Immersive is doing about it.

The difference between assistive and corrective - Hearing aids aren't like glasses. You don't walk out of the audiologist's office and suddenly hear perfectly. Jeff breaks down what that means for patients and why setting realistic expectations matters.

Commercializing university research is a different game - From VCardio's computational cardiology to Immersive's VR acoustics, Jeff shares what he's learned about taking "zero to one" technology from the lab to the market and why it requires different funding, timelines, and risk tolerance.

Landing a deal with the world's largest hearing aid manufacturer - After a frustrating SBIR near-miss (they scored a 24, well under the funding threshold, and still didn't get funded), Jeff pivoted to pursuing Sonova directly. He shares how finding an internal champion made the difference.

Why reputation compounds in Kentucky's ecosystem - In a smaller market, your network and your word travel further. Jeff talks about the state resources that have helped him and why showing up for other founders pays back directly.

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