Michael T. Esquivel

Spend a moment or two speaking with Esquivel and it’s tough to miss his infectious passion.

“It’s just a really cool practice,” he said of his day job. “I love it. Every day there’s something new and exciting I encounter, ... and it’s just an intoxicating experience.”

Co-head of Fenwick & West’s digital health practice, Esquivel worked previously as general counsel for a venture-backed health care information technology company, experience which he relies heavily on today.

“As an in-house general counsel I walked in the client’s shoes,” he said. “I got a chance to see that it’s not just about providing a legal solution; it’s about providing the pragmatic business solution. And having lived on that side of the table ... I see the trade offs, the business risks, and the business considerations.”

Earlier this summer, Esquivel wrapped up substantial work with Omada Health Inc., the creators of a digital health coaching platform helping users prevent or better manage chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, in a $50 million financing deal led by Cigna.

“It really makes it easy for people to track their condition,” he said of Omada’s product. “They’ve had great success as the data has shown, and it’s really exciting to see the potential of this platform for not only diabetes but other chronic conditions and hopefully over time it can help to beat some of them.”

This spring, Esquivel also helped complete a $25 million series B-1 financing agreement for Tile, a smart location company whose Bluetooth devices help consumers find their keys and other misplaced possessions.

“They’ve really scaled this community in a phenomenal way,” he said of the Tile tech. “We’ve just watched it grow to the point where they’ve reached this astounding number of 2 million items a day that are recovered on the platform.”

Esquivel admitted he considers taking a swing at launching a startup of his own from time to time. He was raised, after all, in a family that created its own highly successful small business.

“My wife tells me all the time that I’m an entrepreneur stuck in a lawyer’s body,” he said with a laugh. “I lack the ability to do software coding and I’m not a computer scientist, but I really admire the passion of these entrepreneurs who come to me with these amazing ideas, looking to change the way the world works.”

— Shane Nelson