Middle Tech

Two weeks before his 40th birthday, Jeff Cummins contracted shingles - and it took most of the hearing in his right ear. With young daughters at home whose voices he could no longer hear, he became a hearing aid user. A decade later, that experience led him to co-found a company changing how hearing aids are sold.In this episode, Jeff Cummins joins us to share how Immersive Hearing Technologies is using VR to let patients experience hearing aids in real-world environments before they buy - replacing the brochures and guesswork that have defined the industry for decades.The conversation traces Jeff's 25-year career through startups (including scaling Keys Express from $15M to $70M in revenue), a near-miss with NIH-funded cardiac technology, and the path to landing a deal with Sonova - the world's largest hearing aid manufacturer - now deploying Immersive's system across Western Europe. Jeff also shares hard-won lessons on positioning pain over innovation and why Kentucky's startup resources are