A knee injury changed Dave Johnson’s life forever. Connecting with business partner Evan Eckersley and the Central Virginia SBDC to launch Icarus Medical Innovations turned that tragedy into triumph.

Dave’s injury — sustained while playing high school football at age 15 — led to early onset osteoarthritis, decreased mobility and chronic pain. As his symptoms progressed, and surgery proved ineffective, he began modifying his own braces by installing springs that offset the load on his knee. His first prototype allowed him to return to his longtime passion of snowboarding and bend his knee without pain. It also proved to be the foundation for Icarus.

“I knew I was onto something, and then every year I tried to make it better,” says Dave, who filed his first patent in 2016. He soon realized that his problem was one that impacted one in ten Americans seeking knee pain relief.

With a novel design but minimal experience running a business, Dave first met entrepreneur Evan Eckersley at a local accelerator program in 2020. Powered by the pair’s complementary skillsets and mutual excitement in driving impact through innovation, Icarus Medical Innovations took flight that same year.

When the two connected with Central Virginia SBDC Director Rebecca Haydock, Icarus began to soar.

“I come from a background of believing there’s nothing free out there,” Dave says. “But every time I met Rebecca, she was genuinely interested in what we were doing. She always asked how she could help and what we needed. She made introductions, got us mentors, got us connected to this or that. She’s been such a huge help.”

Rebecca had previously mentored Evan during his first entrepreneurial venture, Lytos Technologies. He knew she could connect their fledgling company with market contacts for manufacturing, sales and more.

“Rebecca was always bringing valuable guidance and connections to our team. Her mentorship is a big reason that I have continued down this path as an entrepreneur” Evan says.

Four years later, Icarus has expanded to nearly 50 employees, five lines of innovative braces with market-leading outcomes, and a growing national footprint. They have also been able to leverage other SBDC resources, such as the Innovation Commercialization Assistance Program (ICAP) mentors and International Business Development Program (IBD). Through the IBD Program, Dave and Evan visited an industry-heavy region in Northern Italy in October 2024. That trip put them in contact with Italian manufacturing companies seeking to collaborate with businesses eyeing international expansion.

“It’s interesting to us because we need a launchpad into Europe,” Dave says. “We can make any custom device from an iPhone scan using our software, instantly and anywhere in the world, so we’re looking at establishing 3D printing capability there. In the meantime, we’re trying to build demand and a distribution network, first throughout Italy but really all of Europe.”

That IBD Program trip weaved seamlessly into Icarus’ business model, which has leveraged digital technology with advances in 3D printing manufacturing to streamline production of bespoke devices at scale.

“We started out building braces practically in a closet,” Evan says. “Now we’ve established a print farm right here in Charlottesville using some of the most advanced software and additive technology in the industry. We’ve cracked the code on how to scale through our software.”

As Dave and Evan have proven, with the SBDC in Icarus’ corner, the sky is the limit.