The Biotech Startups Podcast
NewIf It's Getting More Complex, You're Going the Wrong Way | Scott Chetham (4/4)
- Episodes
- 288
- Released
- several times a week
- Latest episode
- Oct 22, 2026
About the podcast
The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr features weekly conversations with founders, scientists, and investors driving biotech innovation. Host Jon Chee dives into the challenges of building biotech startups, from pre-seed to IPO. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
Episodes 288
If It's Getting More Complex, You're Going the Wrong Way | Scott Chetham (4/4)
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.“If things are getting more complex, you're …
Show notes
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“If things are getting more complex, you're going in the wrong direction.”
Scott Chetham explains why he left Google and Verily to tackle the unglamorous planning work that slows clinical development. He recounts sketching the company in Costa Rica, raising a pre-napkin-stage round with Polaris, finding an early customer, and adapting when COVID-19 disrupted pharma economics.He also traces Faro's evolution from a scenario-planning calculator into a broader platform for protocol review, data transformation, automation, and research support. The conversation covers regulated AI, the limits of historical data and trial simulation, customer trust, founder stamina, enterprise transformation, and the shift from pushing a market to being pulled by it. Scott closes with the advice that has stayed with him: fight complexity everywhere.
Key Topics Covered:- Leaving Google and Verily to solve clinical development's planning bottleneck
- Building a company from a Costa Rica planning retreat
- Raising a pre-napkin-stage venture round with Polaris
- Finding early customers during COVID-19 disruption
- The realities of second-time founding and balancing family life
- Referral-driven enterprise sales in a trust-sensitive industry
- Faro's evolution from a clinical trial cost calculator to an automation platform
- Knowledge graphs, data transformation, and constrained LLM workflows
- Automating protocol review and electronic data capture programming
- Why pre-2019 clinical data may mislead modern trial design
- The limits of replacing clinical trials with simulations
- Transforming large pharma organizations under pressure
- Moving from pushing automation to responding to customer demand
- Founder leverage, sustainable pace, and organizational scale
- Why increasing complexity is a warning sign
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep287
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/Polaris: https://www.polaris.vc/Verily: https://verily.com/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.com/Verily: https://verily.com/Polaris: https://www.polaris.vc/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/Meta: https://about.meta.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:44 Leaving Google and Verily02:50 A Company Sketched in Costa Rica03:28 COVID Disrupts the Early Market04:39 The Older Founder Advantage05:44 Trust, Referrals, and Scaling10:21 From Fancy Calculator to Platform12:52 Regulated AI Needs Guardrails14:45 Why the Ecosystem Must Work Together17:29 When More Data Makes Things Worse18:44 The Limits of Trial Simulation24:40 Transforming Pharma Before Costs Break It27:30 From Pushing to Being Pulled37:20 Fight Complexity Everywhere39:16 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Clinical Trial Bottleneck Is Not Discovery | Scott Chetham (3/4)
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.“Our problem is the clinical funnel to shove …
Show notes
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“Our problem is the clinical funnel to shove things through this 12 year development cycle and the amount of capital it takes.”
Clinical development is not a simple scale game. Scott explains why large pharmaceutical companies can behave like highly optimized development machines, while smaller biotechs absorb the full cost of delays, amendments, interim analyses, and underused teams.
The conversation then moves to the decisions that determine whether a trial succeeds: what to measure, whom to enroll, and when to measure it. Scott uses Amgen's osteoporosis strategy to show how a focused endpoint and staged market entry can outperform an attempt to capture everything at once.
Scott also breaks down adaptive trials, global trial planning, patient consent, and the role of AI in compressing months of research into rapid scenario analysis. Automation can map the landscape, but judgment remains essential when the biology is new and the stakes are high.
Key Topics Covered:- Nonlinear clinical development economics
- Why large pharmaceutical companies gain efficiency from fixed development infrastructure
- The cost burden of amendments, interim analyses, and idle clinical teams
- The division of labor between biotech discovery and pharmaceutical development
- mRNA manufacturing and Moderna's personalized vaccine production model
- Clinical endpoints as a strategic and competitive differentiator
- Amgen's staged osteoporosis strategy
- Adaptive trials and preplanned endpoint changes
- Clinical trial failure rates and increasing biological complexity
- Why clinical development, rather than molecule discovery, constrains the drug pipeline
- The human realities of patient consent and family trust
- Using AI and machine learning for protocol research and scenario modeling
- Global trial sequencing, country selection, cost, and enrollment optimization
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep286
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/Amgen: https://www.amgen.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Merck: https://www.merck.com/Amgen: https://www.amgen.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Verily: https://verily.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:47 Why Clinical Economics Are Nonlinear01:51 The Pharmaceutical Development Machine04:29 What Makes Moderna Scalable07:13 The Endpoint Is the Differentiator08:07 How Amgen Beat the Broader Strategy09:10 Where Human Judgment Still Wins10:41 Why Clinical Trials Fail11:53 The Bottleneck Is the Clinical Funnel12:35 The Parts of Trials AI Cannot Automate14:43 Adaptive Trials and Planned Pivots16:19 Automating the Research Behind Trial Design21:56 Why Domain Expertise Still Matters26:03 Optimizing Global Trial Scenarios29:09 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Knowledge Is Now a Commodity | Scott Chetham (2/4)
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.“Knowledge is now a commodity, and it's your …
Show notes
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“Knowledge is now a commodity, and it's your ability to ask the right question and the right next question that is really where the value is.”
Scott Chetham explains why he left academia, how applied physics and industry-sponsored research prepared him for commercial healthcare, and what he learned leading technology and commercialization at ImpediMed. He discusses lymphedema detection, body composition monitoring, early GLP-1 research, and the long path from clinical measurement to drug development.
The conversation then turns to scaling teams through uncertainty. Scott shares how company growth creates organizational whiplash, why founders often underestimate the need for change management, and how leaders can stay close to what employees and customers are actually experiencing.
Scott also describes the shift from software and AI as coding problems to problems of product judgment, prioritization, alignment, and quality assurance. He outlines how better automation could cut roughly half the internal work involved in clinical development, while explaining why rigorous verification and human decision-making remain essential.
Key Topics Covered:- Leaving academia for direct impact in healthcare
- Applied physics, biomedical engineering, and industry-sponsored research
- How asking the right scientific question shapes clinical development
- ImpedMed's lymphedema detection technology
- Body composition monitoring in obesity and drug research
- Early GLP-1 clinical research and pharmaceutical partnerships
- The progression from diagnostic devices to clinical development software
- Change management inside fast-growing healthcare companies
- Founder comfort with uncertainty, pivots, and execution
- Keeping leadership connected to employees as teams scale
- AI-driven shifts in product development and engineering bottlenecks
- Front-loading quality assurance for regulated workflows
- Reducing clinical development time, labor, and cost
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep285
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:ImpediMed: https://impedimed.com/Novo Nordisk: https://www.novonordisk.com/ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/Google X: https://x.company/Verily: https://verily.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:ImpediMed: https://impedimed.com/Novo Nordisk: https://www.novonordisk.com/Novartis: https://www.novartis.com/Versant Ventures: https://www.versantventures.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Google X: https://x.company/Verily: https://verily.com/DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/Meta: https://about.meta.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:36 Why Scott Left Academia03:42 Applied Physics in Clinical Research04:52 The Value of Asking Better Questions04:56 From Research to Industry07:17 Scaling Through Change Management09:30 The Whiplash of Company Growth13:20 Staying Close to the Front Line15:46 ImpedMed's Clinical Applications19:14 Following the Clinical Research Thread20:25 How Google Changed the Thesis24:00 The New Prioritization Problem27:24 Why QA Must Come First30:46 The Economics of Faster Development32:46 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Hard Part Starts After the Demo | Scott Chetham (1/4)
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.“Two-thirds of our work is QA. It's not the …
Show notes
Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“Two-thirds of our work is QA. It's not the development anymore. It's how do you ensure it's doing what you think it's doing and that it will keep doing it, it won't drift.”
Scott Chetham traces the influences that shaped his path into life sciences, from growing up on Australia's Gold Coast and watching his parents build careers through work and education to studying the intersection of engineering and medicine. He shares how a combined degree, early exposure to hospitals, and an unusual appetite for difficult problems pushed him toward biomedical research.The conversation then moves into the rapid evolution of cardiac electrophysiology, including early catheter mapping, implantable devices, and clinical trial work at St. Andrews War Memorial Hospital. Scott and Jon also examine a problem that has become central to deploying AI in regulated fields: polished outputs can still be wrong, models can drift, and rigorous QA, source grounding, and human judgment are not optional.
Key Topics Covered:- Growing up on Australia's Gold Coast
- Lessons from early work at SeaWorld
- The influence of Scott's parents and their path into higher education
- Biology, functional anatomy, computers, and the decision to pursue healthcare
- The value and limits of a highly regimented boarding-school education
- AI-generated misinformation in venture research and company diligence
- Why human interviews still matter in an AI-saturated research process
- Guardrails, source-of-truth data, and degradation across repeated AI generations
- Scott's combined engineering and medical training
- Early neural-network research for cardiac signal interpretation
- Cardiac electrophysiology, pacemakers, ICDs, and catheter ablation
- The transition from open-chest procedures to closed-chest 3D cardiac mapping
- Why AI deployment requires extensive QA, model monitoring, and human judgment
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep284
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Stanford Medicine: https://med.stanford.edu/Google Model Cards: https://modelcards.withgoogle.com/aboutMedtronic: https://www.medtronic.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:SeaWorld: https://seaworld.com/KPMG: https://kpmg.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Stanford University: https://www.stanford.edu/Medtronic: https://www.medtronic.com/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:38 Growing Up on the Gold Coast03:05 The SeaWorld Production Line04:02 A Family Built Around Education07:18 Biology, Computers, and Healthcare08:24 Learning to Lead Outside the Classroom10:51 When AI Gets the Story Wrong14:49 Guardrails Against Model Drift16:27 Bridging Engineering and Medicine18:24 Neural Networks Before the Boom19:11 Inside the Cardiac Cath Lab19:48 From Clinical Work to Research24:58 The Revolution in Cardiac Mapping29:43 Why QA Is the Real AI Work33:47 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks …
Show notes
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“If you can overthink all the bad stuff, why can't you overthink all the good stuff?”
As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.
Leslie also explains how Slone protects culture by listening for what different people need. The firm's culture ambassador helps turn that feedback into action, while Leslie reflects on when leaders should solve a problem, when they should simply listen, and why some issues need time to breathe.
Looking ahead, Leslie sees growing demand across medtech, healthtech, AI, and machine learning. She discusses the limits of recruiting from the same blue-chip companies, the realities of relocation and family decisions, the tension between remote and on-site work, and the people who helped her build the firm.
Key Topics Covered:- Delegation and the difficulty of letting go as a company grows
- Accepting different communication and work styles
- Listening before jumping into problem-solving mode
- Using a culture ambassador to gather and act on employee feedback
- Building executive team leadership inside a growing search firm
- AI and machine learning hiring demand in medtech and healthtech
- Why technology can improve executive search without replacing human intuition
- Expanding candidate searches beyond blue-chip companies and primary biotech markets
- Relocation, family considerations, and executive hiring decisions
- Balancing remote, hybrid, and on-site work models
- The value of documenting institutional knowledge in distributed organizations
- Gratitude toward family, employees, and long-term clients
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep283
Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:53 The Hard Part of Growing Beyond Five People02:43 Learning When to Speak Up03:25 Different Ways of Doing the Work04:09 A Type A Leader Learns to Slow Down04:36 People Need Different Things05:07 The Culture Ambassador Role07:39 When Listening Beats Problem Solving09:43 Giving Problems Time to Breathe12:32 Slone's Next Growth Areas12:55 Creating an Executive Team Mindset13:58 Technology, Efficiency, and Human Intuition17:33 The NBA Draft Mentality in AI Recruiting19:16 Looking Beyond the Usual Biotech Markets24:19 Remote Work, Relocation, and Role Fit33:53 Overthinking the Good Stuff35:38 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Employee Number Five Leap That Built a Relationship Business | Leslie Loveless (3/4)
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks …
Show notes
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“People are our clients. People are our product, and connecting them is what we do.”
Leslie Loveless joined Slone Partners after a major personal transition, leaving a large healthcare company to become employee number five at a small recruiting firm. She hadn't worked in recruiting before, and at the time, she didn't fully appreciate how big the leap would be.
Leslie revisits the firm's early startup days, when meetings ran through improvised conference calls and the team relied on paper, notebooks, and spreadsheets. She also explains how Slone expanded beyond laboratory and diagnostics recruiting into biotech, research tools, pharma services, healthtech, digital health, and academic medicine.
At the center of that growth is a relationship-driven approach to search. Leslie discusses investor and portfolio-company relationships, the importance of long-tenured teams, the difference between an experienced candidate and the right fit, and why attitude matters when the work is inherently unpredictable.
Key Topics Covered:- Leaving a large healthcare company to join a five-person recruiting firm
- Adopting Leslie's daughter during her first year at Slone Partners
- Evaluating whether candidates can thrive in startup environments
- Slone Partners' expansion beyond laboratory and diagnostics recruiting
- Executive search relationships with venture capital and private equity investors
- Hiring across biotech, genomics, research tools, pharma services, and healthtech
- The changing role of diagnostics, liquid biopsy, prognostics, and early detection
- Why long team tenure can compound relationships and industry knowledge
- Reading candidate motivations, behavior, and company fit beyond the resume
- Why attitude and resilience matter in a people-centered business
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep282
Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/Labcorp: https://www.labcorp.com/Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:LabCorp: https://www.labcorp.com/NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/Jensen Huang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen_HuangPurdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:39 The Promotion That Coincided With Adoption02:16 A Phone Call, Then a New Baby02:36 Reconnecting With Adam03:01 Becoming Employee Number Five03:33 A Leap She Didn't Fully Understand07:17 Hardcore Startup Mode07:44 Who Can Really Thrive at a Startup?08:49 Why Leslie Still Uses Notebooks11:31 When the Original Market Changes11:54 Building Around Investor Relationships12:32 The Expanding Life Sciences Footprint14:22 How Consolidation Reshaped Diagnostics15:23 Growing One Connection at a Time17:03 People Are the Product19:52 The Difference Between Experience and Fit32:03 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks …
Show notes
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“No one looks at a teacher's resume and thinks they can go sell.”
Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one-to-one.
The transition wasn't easy on paper. Recruiters and hiring managers saw that Leslie lacked sales experience, but they missed the skills she had built teaching: public speaking, preparation, performance, and the ability to hold an audience's attention. At Takeda, those skills helped her win President's Club in both of her first two years.Leslie then explains how a call from Adam Slone led her to Quest Diagnostics, where she moved quickly from individual sales into national sales training. The selling motion was completely different: hospital and laboratory deals required service, economic value, and buy-in from medical, operational, procurement, and financial stakeholders.
Key Topics Covered:- Translating classroom teaching skills into pharmaceutical sales
- Pharmaceutical sales training and role-playing
- Takeda and the importance of partner reps
- Winning President's Club without prior sales experience
- Why scientific founders need commercial awareness
- Working backward from market adoption and investor sentiment
- Moving from provider sales to hospital and health system sales
- Enterprise sales in laboratory medicine
- Stakeholder alignment across procurement, finance, lab services, and clinical leadership
- Service quality, turnaround time, and specimen reliability
- Economic value propositions in healthcare sales
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep281
Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Takeda: https://www.takeda.com/Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Takeda: https://www.takeda.com/Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:37 Choosing Pharmaceutical Sales02:38 The Teacher Resume Problem02:54 Two Weeks Of Training In Chicago04:04 Learning The Territory04:27 Freedom Outside The Classroom05:07 Public Speaking As A Sales Skill05:53 Selling One To One08:47 Two Presidents Club Wins08:54 The Value Of Orthogonal Experience10:16 Connecting Science To The Market13:12 Adam Slone's First Call14:50 Joining Quest Diagnostics15:25 An Unexpected Training Role18:05 Selling Into Health Systems20:39 Service And Economics Win Enterprise Deals26:22 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.How Teaching High School Prepares You to Run a Company | Leslie Loveless (1/4)
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks …
Show notes
Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“You need to really be in tune with what's being heard and received and understood.”
Leslie Loveless starts at the beginning: growing up in a close-knit Indiana family, watching her father build a career as a pharmacist, and learning early that education mattered even if the eventual career path was left up to her.She explains how high school shifted her interests from mathematics to English, grammar, and writing, then describes the college experience that deepened her love of literature, stories, and critical thinking. A full scholarship close to home shaped her university decision, even as she sometimes wondered what it might have been like to leave Indiana.
Leslie also takes us inside her years teaching ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders while earning a master's degree at Butler University. Managing crowded classrooms, mixing current events with drier material, and keeping students engaged taught her a leadership skill she still relies on: read the room, then adapt.
Key Topics Covered:- Leslie Loveless's Indiana upbringing and close-knit family
- The influence of her father's career as a pharmacist
- Why Leslie shifted from mathematics to English in high school
- Grammar, writing, and sentence structure as a bridge between analytical and humanistic thinking
- Choosing a nearby university with a full scholarship
- Studying literature, interpretation, and critical thinking
- Earning a master's degree in English at Butler University
- Teaching ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade English
- Balancing classroom teaching, graduate school, grading, and coaching
- Keeping teenagers engaged through varied lesson formats and current events
- Reading the room as a transferable leadership skill
- Why teaching began to feel too structured and all-consuming
- The freedom and financial considerations behind a possible career change
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep280
Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Butler University English: https://www.butler.edu/academics/college-of-liberal-arts-sciences/english/Purdue University College of Pharmacy: https://pharmacy.purdue.edu/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/Butler University: https://www.butler.edu/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:59 Growing Up in Indiana03:27 A Close-Knit Family05:02 The Pharmacist Influence05:46 Lessons From Her Parents07:10 When Math Stopped Clicking07:41 Falling for Grammar and Writing11:42 Choosing a University Close to Home15:26 Discovering Literature16:02 A Future in Education16:18 Teaching While Earning a Master's19:18 Inside the High School Classroom20:32 The Reality of Teaching20:52 Keeping Teenagers Engaged24:40 Reading the Room27:04 Considering a Change33:25 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Catalyst Mindset Behind a Lean Biotech | Örn Almarsson (4/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“If I can sum up my reason to be on this Earth, it's to be a catalyst.”
Moderna's rapid COVID-19 response was years in the making. Örn Almarsson explains how quiet work in mRNA manufacturing, lipid nanoparticles, bioinformatics, and vaccine development created the capabilities needed when the moment arrived.
He then turns to company building at Axelyf: in vivo cell reprogramming for solid tumors, modular lipid nanoparticles, AI-informed discovery, external partners, and a deliberately lean operating model. The conversation closes with the mentors, expectations, and leadership philosophy shaping his next chapter.
Key Topics Covered:- Moderna's preparation for COVID-19
- Personalized cancer vaccines
- In vivo cell reprogramming
- CAR T for solid tumors
- Lipid nanoparticle delivery
- AI-informed drug development
- Capital-efficient company building
- Virtual biotech operations
- CDMO and CRO partnerships
- Hepatocellular cancer
- Mentorship and leadership
- Catalyst mindset
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep279
Find our guest, Örn Almarsson, at these links:Website: https://www.axelyf.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orn-almarsson
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:National Cancer Institute: CAR T-cell therapy: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t-cellsBioNTech: https://www.biontech.com/Pfizer: https://www.pfizer.com/NCBI Molecular Biology reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Moderna: https://www.modernatx.com/BioNTech: https://www.biontech.com/Pfizer: https://www.pfizer.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/Transform Pharmaceuticals: https://www.transformpharma.com/Alkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/Lyndra Therapeutics: https://www.lyndra.com/Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/Copel Farm and Biotech: https://www.copel.co/University of Iceland: https://english.hi.is/UC Santa Barbara: https://www.chem.ucsb.edu/MIT: https://www.mit.edu/Slone Partners: https://www.slonepartners.com/Quest Diagnostics: https://www.questdiagnostics.com/AmeriPath: https://www.ameripath.com/
Timestamps:00:06 Intro01:17 Moderna's Overnight Success Was Years in the Making01:28 The Capabilities Behind Moderna's Rapid Response01:52 From Prototype Vaccines to Personalized Cancer Vaccines02:45 Why Moderna and BioNTech Were Ready04:46 Leaving Moderna for the Next Challenge06:16 Axelyf's In Vivo Cell Reprogramming Strategy07:49 Building a Modular Lipid and Cargo Toolkit08:09 Targeting Difficult Cancers and Faster Development10:06 Staying Small, Virtual, and Capital Efficient10:26 Using AI to Improve Lipid Nanoparticle Models12:22 Choosing Specialized Partners Over One-Stop Shops13:05 External Collaborations and the Path to the Clinic20:12 Mentors, Growth, and the Catalyst Philosophy23:06 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Delivery Problem Behind Moderna's Breakthrough | Örn Almarsson (3/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“You've gotta get in the house without the alarms going off.”
Örn Almarsson compares therapeutic mRNA delivery to a covert package drop: the payload has to reach the right room, release its contents, and leave without triggering the immune system.
He looks back at Johnson & Johnson, Alkermes, and the relationships that shaped his next move. A referral from Bob Langer led him to Moderna, where he joined a small team working through one of biotech's hardest engineering problems.
The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.
Key Topics Covered:- Johnson & Johnson's acquisition-driven model
- Organic and inorganic growth
- Alkermes company transformation
- Leadership through layoffs and change
- ARISTADA and long-acting injectables
- Biotech volatility and patent cliffs
- Regulatory exclusivity and biosimilars
- Asset-focused biotech investing
- Moderna's early delivery team
- Therapeutic mRNA delivery
- mRNA manufacturing scale-up
- Modified mRNA and immune response
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep278
Find our guest, Örn Almarsson, at these links:Website: https://www.axelyf.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orn-almarsson
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Nobel Prize: discoveries concerning mRNA vaccines: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2023/press-release/Alkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/NCBI Molecular Biology reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/MIT: https://www.mit.edu/Eli Lilly: https://www.lilly.comAlkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/Moderna: https://www.modernatx.com/Flagship Pioneering: https://www.flagshippioneering.com/Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/UPS: https://www.ups.com/
Timestamps:00:06 Intro01:28 Johnson & Johnson's Acquisition-Driven Model02:25 Organic Growth, Acquisitions, and Commercialization04:20 Why Pharma's Growth Strategy Keeps Changing05:05 Leaving Johnson & Johnson for Alkermes07:45 Transforming Alkermes Through a Hard Reset10:03 ARISTADA and the Case for Embracing Change10:38 Biotech's Volatility and Patent Cliffs14:26 Regulatory Exclusivity and Biosimilars16:00 The Shift Toward Asset-Focused Biotech17:16 The Call That Led to Moderna20:35 The Delivery Challenge for Therapeutic mRNA22:48 Scaling mRNA From Micrograms to Kilograms25:29 Modified mRNA and the Future of RNA Medicine27:47 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“You gotta build that over time thoughtfully.”
Örn Almarsson explains why thoughtful networking matters, especially when you don't need anything right away. He also reflects on evolving professional networks, learning from failure, and the entrepreneurial culture that drew him to the United States.
At Merck, a three-month visa detour exposed Örn to another laboratory and reinforced the value of adaptability. He then describes leaving a secure role for Transform Pharmaceuticals, building a small team and collaborative culture, developing new formulation technologies, and helping create the patents and assets that led to a Johnson & Johnson acquisition.
Key Topics Covered:- Thoughtful networking
- Professional relationships
- Learning from failure
- Entrepreneurial culture
- Merck R&D
- Visa challenges
- Interdisciplinary collaboration
- Startup formation
- Hiring and company culture
- Pharmaceutical materials discovery
- Patents and licensing
- Johnson & Johnson acquisition
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep277
Find our guest, Örn Almarsson, at these links:Website: https://www.axelyf.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orn-almarsson
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Merck: https://www.merck.com/Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/MIT: https://www.mit.edu/Excedr partner network: https://www.excedr.com/partners
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Merck: https://www.merck.com/Transform Pharmaceuticals: https://www.transformpharma.com/Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/Massachusetts Institute of Technology: https://www.mit.edu/
Timestamps:00:06 Intro02:10 Networking Through Curiosity03:46 Growing A Living Network04:54 Learning From Failure06:05 Entrepreneurial Risk And Meritocracy07:01 The Merck Visa Detour09:21 Merck's Fast R&D Culture12:08 Working Across Disciplines13:48 The University Of Merck15:20 Leaving A Secure Role19:42 Building Transform21:53 Experience Before Startup Leadership23:40 Transform's Mission And Culture26:42 Patents, Licensing, And Exit29:49 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“Perfect is the enemy of good. How do we get there?”
Örn Almarsson traces the early experiences that shaped his approach to science, from growing up in Iceland and Denmark to playing electric guitar and discovering a deeper curiosity about chemistry.He describes his first research opportunity at the University of Iceland, an early industry project in Copenhagen, and the mentors who pushed him toward bioorganic chemistry. The conversation follows his move to UC Santa Barbara, his work with Tom Bruice and Alex Klibanov, and the networking connection that led to Merck.
Key Topics Covered:- Growing up in Iceland and Denmark
- Electric guitar and playing in bands
- The influence of family in pharmaceuticals
- Studying chemistry at the University of Iceland
- First research experience with lipids
- Haraldsson as an early mentor
- Early exposure to industry
- Practical and applied science
- Choosing graduate school in the United States
- Bioorganic chemistry at UC Santa Barbara
- Mentorship and solving overlooked problems
- Networking and finding a role at Merck
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep276
Find our guest, Örn Almarsson, at these links:Website: https://www.axelyf.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orn-almarsson
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:NCBI Molecular Biology reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/UC Santa Barbara Department of Chemistry: https://www.chem.ucsb.edu/MIT Department of Chemistry: https://chemistry.mit.edu/University of Iceland: https://english.hi.is/Merck: https://www.merck.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:University of Iceland: https://english.hi.is/Novo: https://www.novonordisk.com/Novozymes: https://www.novonesis.com/UC Santa Barbara: https://www.chem.ucsb.edu/MIT: https://www.mit.edu/Merck: https://www.merck.com/Transform Pharmaceuticals: https://www.transformpharma.com/Alkermes: https://www.alkermes.com/Lyndra Therapeutics: https://www.lyndra.com/Moderna: https://www.modernatx.com/Johnson & Johnson: https://www.jnj.com/Berklee School of Music: https://www.berklee.edu/UChicago: https://www.uchicago.edu/
Timestamps:00:06 Intro03:06 Growing Up in Iceland and Denmark05:05 Electric Guitar, Bands, and the Pull of Science08:40 A Family Connection to Pharmaceuticals09:33 Choosing Chemistry at the University of Iceland11:06 Haraldsson and the First Lipid Research Experience12:40 An Early Introduction to Industry14:03 Why Practical Science Mattered14:46 Finding a Graduate Program in the United States16:11 Tom Bruice and the Foundations of Bioorganic Chemistry18:13 Inside a Demanding Chemistry Lab19:38 Music, Visibility, and Academic Witness Protection21:12 From Santa Barbara to an MIT Postdoc22:53 Networking, Mentorship, and the Path to Merck24:37 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Don't Build Your Own Cathedral: The Hidden Cost of Lab Space | Philip Borden (4/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“Don't build your own cathedral.”
After more than two decades in healthcare investing, Philip Borden decided to become an operator. He explains how a conversation with longtime friend Jeff Behrens led him to Labshares and why the shared lab model immediately resonated with his experience watching biotech companies struggle with infrastructure.
Philip breaks down the hidden costs of traditional lab leases, from equipment maintenance and utilities to medical waste, freezer alarms, and unused square footage. He explains how flexible space can help emerging companies stay focused on milestones while preserving critical capital.
The conversation closes with lessons from Labshares' first day under new ownership, including the loss of a major customer, the evolution of the company's value proposition, and the importance of transparent relationships with vendors. Philip also reflects on resilience, family, and the advice from his father to dream big.
Key Topics Covered:- Becoming a Biotech Operator
- The Acquisition of Labshares
- Shared Lab Space
- Capital Efficiency
- Total Cost of Lab Ownership
- The Cathedral Problem
- Flexible Contracts
- Founder and Vendor Relationships
- Search Funds and Private Equity
- Resilience Through Biotech Cycles
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep275
Find our guest, Philip Borden, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipbordenWebsite: https://www.labshares.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Labshares: https://www.labshares.com/LabCentral: https://labcentral.org/UW CoMotion: https://comotion.uw.edu/Pacific Lake Partners: https://www.pacificlake.com/Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/Duke University: https://www.duke.edu/Excedr Partner Network: https://www.excedr.com/partners
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Riverside Partners: https://www.riversidepartners.comGalen Partners: https://www.galen-partners.comFrazier Healthcare Partners: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comLabCentral: https://labcentral.orgUW CoMotion: https://comotion.uw.eduPacific Lake Partners: https://www.pacificlake.comHarvard Business School: https://www.hbs.eduDuke University: https://www.duke.eduWells Fargo: https://www.wellsfargo.comJPMorgan: https://www.jpmorgan.comModerna: https://www.modernatx.comLyndra Therapeutics: https://www.lyndra.com
Jeff Behrens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbehrensPaul Graham: https://www.paulgraham.com
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:43 The Post-2008 Crash and Changing LP Base03:16 Riverside, Galen, and the Impact of COVID04:25 How Jeff Behrens Started Labshares05:19 Why Labshares Resonated with Philip07:55 Let Scientists Focus on Science10:01 The Total Cost of Owning Lab Space11:54 From Incubators to Flexible Lab Space16:12 Capital Efficiency in a Boom and Bust Industry17:00 The Cathedral Problem and Staying Alive25:22 Flexibility, Communication, and Trust27:33 The Search Fund Partnership28:41 A Brutal Welcome on Day One29:38 Refining the Value Proposition and Scaling41:00 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.The Biotech Deal That Became a Leadership Crisis | Philip Borden (3/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“Sometimes like it is not a straight line, man. You know, that things can go in wildly unexpected directions.”
Philip Borden describes leaving Frazier Healthcare Partners for Harvard Business School, where the case method broadened his perspective beyond healthcare and investing. He explains why he returned to healthcare investing after graduation.
At Riverside Partners, Philip moved from venture into private equity, focusing on control investments in profitable, founder-owned healthcare businesses. He discusses why the model fit his personality better than venture's power-law dynamics and high failure rate.
Philip also revisits BioAgilytix, his first fully solo deal, where a founder conflict forced an unexpected leadership transition shortly after the investment. He shares lessons on crisis management, vulnerability, team trust, fundraising from LPs, and investing through the 2008 to 2009 downturn.
Key Topics Covered:- Harvard Business School
- The Case Method
- Healthcare Investing
- Transition From Venture to Private Equity
- Control Investments
- Founder-Owned Businesses
- Riverside Partners
- BioAgilytix
- Leadership Transitions
- Limited Partner Fundraising
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep274
Find our guest, Philip Borden, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipbordenWebsite: https://www.labshares.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Harvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/Duke University: https://www.duke.edu/BioAgilytix: https://www.bioagilytix.com/GSK: https://www.gsk.com/JPMorgan: https://www.jpmorgan.com/Yale University: https://www.yale.edu/Excedr Partner Network: https://www.excedr.com/partners
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Frazier Healthcare Partners: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comHarvard Business School: https://www.hbs.eduMIT Sloan: https://mitsloan.mit.eduOxford Bioscience Partners: https://www.oxfordbioscience.comRiverside Partners: https://www.riversidepartners.comGSK: https://www.gsk.comBioAgilytix: https://www.bioagilytix.comJPMorgan: https://www.jpmorgan.comAetna Healthcare: https://www.aetna.comDeWalt Power Tools: https://www.dewalt.comDucati Motorcycles: https://www.ducati.comSpaceX: https://www.spacex.comYale: https://www.yale.edu
David Swensen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_SwensenJeremy Griffin: https://www.linkedin.com
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:51 From Frazier to Harvard Business School02:46 The Case Method and Socratic Learning04:05 Building a Broader Business Foundation05:38 Returning to Healthcare Investing08:23 From Venture to Private Equity12:37 Control Investments in Founder-Owned Businesses14:32 Building Riverside's Healthcare Practice15:36 Sourcing Under-the-Radar Businesses17:37 BioAgilytix's Growth Opportunity18:15 A Founder Conflict and Leadership Change18:56 Navigating Crisis and Leading with Vulnerability24:25 Raising Capital from LPs27:22 Investing Through the 2008 to 2009 Downturn28:44 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.Cold Calling Your Way Into Venture Capital | Philip Borden (2/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“What I could offer is I'm willing to work hard. I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to be a good contributor.”
Philip Borden explains how realizing he did not want to pursue a PhD or spend his career at the lab bench led him toward venture capital. With a molecular biology degree, limited finance experience, and a list of biotech VC firms, he picked up the phone and cold-called his way into Frazier Healthcare in Seattle.
Philip shares why personal relationships, phone calls, and in-person conversations matter more than email when building trust. He discusses selling as communication and listening, the humility required to ask for an opportunity, and the culture lessons he learned from working alongside experienced investors.
He also explains why investors owe founders timely, respectful answers, including a clear no. The conversation closes with the small customer rituals Labshares uses to honor entrepreneurs, from ribbon cuttings to creating a fun place to work.
Key Topics Covered:- Career Exploration
- Molecular Biology
- Cold Calling
- Venture Capital
- Frazier Healthcare
- Personal Relationships
- Phone Communication
- Founder Respect
- Investor Responsiveness
- Customer Experience
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep273
Find our guest, Philip Borden, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipbordenWebsite: https://www.labshares.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Labshares About Us: https://www.labshares.com/about-usHarvard Business School: https://www.hbs.edu/Duke University: https://www.duke.edu/University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Frazier Healthcare Partners: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comRiverside Partners: https://www.riversidepartners.comGalen Partners: https://www.galen-partners.comLongfellow Healthcare Partners: https://www.longfellowhc.comDuke University: https://www.duke.eduHarvard Business School: https://www.hbs.eduAmazon: https://www.amazon.comMicrosoft: https://www.microsoft.comModerna: https://www.modernatx.com
Alan Frazier: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comNader Naini: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comPatrick Herron: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comÖrn Almarsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ornalmarsson
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:31 Choosing Not to Pursue Graduate School03:40 Finding a Path Into Venture Capital04:10 Cold-Calling Frazier Healthcare04:54 Why the Phone Still Matters06:49 Selling as Communication and Listening08:10 Humility and the Frazier Culture09:47 Moving to Seattle11:57 Learning Through Partner Meetings12:26 Screening Deals and Meeting Entrepreneurs12:55 Respecting Founders in Vulnerable Moments15:37 The Importance of Closing the Loop18:30 Manufacturing Luck19:04 Honoring Customers With Ribbon Cuttings19:51 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.What Rural Indiana Can Teach Biotech Founders About Trust | Philip Borden (1/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“It's the relationships that have always mattered a lot more to me on selecting a partner on that front.”
Philip Borden grew up in Plymouth, Indiana, in a family shaped by agriculture. He talks about his grandparents' farms, his father's work as an agricultural lender, and the early lessons he absorbed about local businesses and long-term relationships.
At Duke, an introductory biology class sparked Borden's interest in molecular biology and the underlying causes of disease. He explains why he chose Duke, how swimming and campus life shaped the experience, and why the relationships he built there mattered as much as what he learned in the classroom.
Borden also reflects on the growing importance of communication, trust, and social judgment in a workplace increasingly influenced by AI. He closes with the independent study that took him into his family's history through Oliver Borden's journals and rural Indiana life before the Civil War.
Key Topics Covered:- Growing Up in Rural Indiana
- Agriculture and Community Banking
- Relationships Over Transactional Deals
- Choosing Capital Partners
- Discovering Molecular Biology
- Studying Biology at Duke
- Swimming and College Life
- The Value of Personal Relationships
- AI and Social Skills
- Researching Family History
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep272
Find our guest, Philip Borden, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipbordenWebsite: https://www.labshares.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Duke Cell & Molecular Biology: https://biology.duke.edu/undergraduate/major/concentrations/cell-molecularMolecular Biology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21054/Borden Family Collection: https://archives.isl.lib.in.us/repositories/2/resources/110William Wesley Borden Papers: https://indianahistory.org/wp-content/uploads/william-wesley-borden-papers-1824-1895.pdf
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Frazier Healthcare Partners: https://www.frazierhealthcare.comRiverside Partners: https://www.riversidepartners.comGalen Partners: https://www.galen-partners.comLongfellow Healthcare Partners: https://www.longfellowhc.comDuke University: https://www.duke.eduHarvard Business School: https://www.hbs.eduUniversity of Chicago: https://www.uchicago.eduJPMorgan: https://www.jpmorgan.comDoorDash: https://www.doordash.comGoogle: https://www.google.com
Oliver Borden: https://archives.isl.lib.in.us/repositories/2/resources/110
Timestamps:00:00 Intro03:06 Growing Up in Plymouth, Indiana03:24 An Agricultural Family Background03:28 Lessons From a Local Agricultural Lender04:32 Why Relationships Matter More Than Twenty-Five Basis Points05:13 Capital Partners and the Cost of a Bad Fit08:17 Discovering Molecular Biology in College08:51 Choosing Duke University08:58 Balancing Science, Swimming, and Fun11:24 Why Relationships Became His Richest College Experience11:42 AI and the Rising Value of Social Skills14:48 Moving From Molecular Cell Biology to Family History14:52 Oliver Borden's Journals16:27 Rural Indiana Before the Civil War16:34 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Making Lab Data Actionable Through Automation | Nathan Clark Rerelease (4/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“The other half is, okay, what do you do with that? Because you just got a bunch of, you got this huge dump of uncontextualized lab data. What does it mean?”
In this part of the podcast, Nathan Clark explains how Ganymede approaches data integration and automation in life sciences. He discusses why lab instruments and workflows require customized connectors, how a developer platform can help teams adapt integrations quickly, and why moving data online is only part of the challenge.
Nathan also describes Ganymede's two-tier product approach, the role of scientific software engineers, and a consultative go-to-market strategy built around explanatory materials and custom demonstrations. He explains which biotech companies may benefit most from the platform and why data strategy becomes increasingly important as organizations grow.
The conversation looks ahead to data products, asset utilization, predictive maintenance, automated quality-control checks, and the practical value of connecting multiple laboratory systems. Nathan also shares his perspective on incremental digital transformation, building toward AI with contextualized data, the mentors who shaped his career, and why he would have taken entrepreneurial risks sooner.
Key Topics Covered:- Custom connectors for laboratory instruments
- Data transformation and analysis workflows
- Scientific software engineers
- Ganymede's two-tier product model
- Consultative sales and custom demos
- Biotech data strategy and infrastructure
- Why data lakes can become data swamps
- Incremental automation before AI
- Asset utilization and predictive maintenance
- Automated quality-control checks
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, subscribe and leave us a review.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1518627361Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Y4Zc8tJYq5Yxw1uH8nJ9AYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBiotechStartupsPodcastWebsite: https://www.excedr.com/podcast
Find Nathan Clark at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-clark-4b850134/Website: https://ganymede.bio/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro/Outro music:OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:NIST Design of Experiments: https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pri/pri.htmAWS Data Lakes and Analytics: https://aws.amazon.com/big-data/datalakes-and-analytics/Benchling Resources: https://www.benchling.com/resourcesElemental Machines: https://elementalmachines.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/Affirm: https://www.affirm.com/Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/Elemental Machines: https://elementalmachines.com/SAP: https://www.sap.com/Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/Ramp: https://ramp.com/Benson, Ganymede co-founder; surname not statedNikki, Affirm product manager; surname not statedSanjay, Benchling product manager; surname not stated
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:06 Building the Technical Team02:36 Why Lab Integrations Require Customization04:01 Turning Raw Bioreactor Data Into Analysis06:40 The Developer Platform and Two-Tier Product07:07 Maintaining Fragile Integrations Quickly08:28 Ganymede's Consultative Go-to-Market10:33 Who Benefits Most From the Platform14:30 Data Lakes, Context, and Data Swamps16:14 Building Incremental Value Before AI20:33 The Future of Data Products24:55 Debugging Laboratory Environments27:43 Walking Before Running With AI29:38 Career Advice and Closing Reflections33:37 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Why Wet-Lab Data Needs More Than ETL | Nathan Clark Rerelease (3/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“What matters is that you say, okay, this sample is part of this program and that program is part of this area.”
Nathan Clark walks through his work at Benchling, where he managed the Insights business intelligence product and helped develop an early machine learning effort. He explains why operational wet-lab data is fundamentally different from omics data, and why the relationships between samples, programs, instruments, locations, and people matter as much as the experimental results.
The conversation then moves into product discovery in scientific software. Nathan contrasts high-volume experimentation at Affirm with the slower, more qualitative process of working with research labs, where product teams need to study customer behavior, understand hidden needs, and show users what structured data can make possible. He also discusses why adoption requires tangible demonstrations when a category has no established name or buying process.
Nathan traces the thinking that led to Ganymede, including the problem of biotech companies rebuilding the same AWS infrastructure, instrument parsers, and data connectors. He describes the cost of data decay, the value of turning unstable experimental information into structured design-of-experiments data, and the need to make scientific knowledge easier to share instead of repeatedly recreating the wheel.
Key Topics Covered:- Benchling Insights and business intelligence
- Operational wet-lab data and relational models
- Product research with scientists
- Electronic lab notebooks and LIMS
- Instrument integration and data pipelines
- Design of experiments and data capture
- Data decay in biotech
- Sharing scientific knowledge
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1518627361Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Y4Zc8tJYq5Yxw1uH8nJ9AYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBiotechStartupsPodcastWebsite: https://www.excedr.com/podcast
Find Nathan Clark at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-clark-4b850134/Website: https://ganymede.bio/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro/Outro music:OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:NIST, What is design of experiments?: https://itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pmd/section3/pmd31.htmNIST, What are the steps of DOE?: https://itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pri/section1/pri13.htmJournal of Biomedical Semantics, ELN data provenance: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13326-021-00257-xSnowflake, Modern data stack: https://www.snowflake.com/guides/modern-data-stack
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/Databricks: https://www.databricks.com/Fivetran: https://www.fivetran.com/AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/Ginkgo Bioworks: https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:43 Benchling Insights and Machine Learning03:55 Why Operational Data Matters04:26 Benchling as a Relational System05:10 The Modern Data Stack for Wet Labs07:27 Finding a Business in Data Integration07:46 Product Management in the Lab10:31 Learning From Customer Behavior11:26 Getting Scientists to Adopt New Tools13:39 Showing the Value of a New Category16:56 The Spark Behind Ganymede18:22 Capturing Hidden Variables20:22 Turning Experiments Into DOE Data24:01 The Problem of Recreating Infrastructure26:49 Data Decay in Biotech28:16 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Product Thinking, Scientific Progress, & the Work of Building | Nathan Clark Rerelease (2/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“The formative stages of a pre-seed startup are like no code allowed.”
Nathan Clark explains why he left Goldman Sachs for a technology-focused role at Affirm, where he worked across capital markets and product management. He discusses how financial mechanics carried over into fintech, while working with software engineers pulled him deeper into systems, data, and debugging.
The conversation then turns to product management. Nathan describes the discipline as understanding why a product should exist, grounding decisions in user needs, and translating research into what a team builds. His advice for early-stage founders is direct: stop coding until they've done enough customer research to understand the problem.
Nathan also reflects on the difficulty of measuring willingness to pay, the decision to leave Affirm, and his frustration with the slow pace of scientific progress. He explains why that frustration led him toward biology and Benchling, including an early attempt to build a plasmid editor, and why improving science requires more than simply putting money into the system.
Key Topics Covered:- Nathan's move from Goldman Sachs to Affirm
- Capital markets and point-of-sale loans
- Securitization, liquidity, and recycling capital
- Working with software engineers
- Product management and user needs
- Customer interviews and market research
- The no-code approach to early startup validation
- Small product increments and willingness to pay
- Leaving Affirm during the COVID and IPO period
- The slowing pace of scientific progress
- The cost and difficulty of developing FDA-approved drugs
- AI safety, machine learning, and incremental progress
- Why Nathan moved toward biology
- Benchling and building a plasmid editor
- Financial infrastructure for lab equipment
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep269
Find our guest, Nathan Clark, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-clark-4b850134/Website: https://ganymede.bio/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro/Outro music:OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Affirm: https://www.affirm.com/ProductPlan, What Is Product Management?: https://www.productplan.com/learn/what-is-product-management/National Center for Biotechnology Information, Drug Development: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216501/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/SnapGene: https://www.snapgene.com/Machine Intelligence Research Institute: https://intelligence.org/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/Affirm: https://www.affirm.com/PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/Max Levchin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-levchin/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/SnapGene: https://www.snapgene.com/Machine Intelligence Research Institute: https://intelligence.org/Ray Kurzweil: https://www.kurzweilai.net/Patrick Collison: https://patrickcollison.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:04 The Finance Side02:50 Finding a Technology-Focused Role03:17 Capital Markets at Affirm07:14 Explaining Point-of-Sale Loans08:09 Moving Into Product Management09:23 The Deep Mechanics of Loans09:31 Data Products and Infrastructure11:18 What Product Management Means12:20 No Code Allowed16:39 Testing Willingness to Pay19:27 Leaving Affirm21:13 The Pace of Scientific Progress21:30 Why Biology?25:13 Benchling and the Plasmid Editor26:38 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Execution, Liquidity, & Founder Lessons | Nathan Clark Rerelease (1/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“There's no secret. It really is just doing.”
Nathan Clark reflects on the formative influence of his entrepreneurial father, who showed him that business and even home building are learned through research, effort, and execution rather than secret insight. Nathan also discusses his unconventional high school experience, his decision to study business and finance at the University of North Carolina, and the early interest in biology and futurism that stayed with him.
Nathan explains how his quantitative interests led him to Goldman Sachs, where he worked on a collateralized loan obligation trading desk. He breaks down market making, liquidity, bid-ask spreads, inventory, risk management, and the importance of balancing books in an illiquid market.
The conversation also explores the habits Nathan developed on the trading desk, including rigorous reconciliation, attention to detail, understanding the mechanics behind the numbers, and making disciplined decisions under pressure. He connects those lessons to entrepreneurship, emphasizing execution, diligence, capital allocation, and learning from other industries.
Key Topics Covered:- Nathan's upbringing and entrepreneurial father
- Execution over secret insight
- Imposter syndrome and taking action
- An unconventional high school and college path
- Studying business, economics, and finance at UNC
- Early interest in biology, futurism, and OpenWorm
- Recruiting for investment banking versus trading
- Goldman Sachs and collateralized loan obligation trading
- Market making and providing liquidity
- Bid-ask spreads, fair pricing, and bond liquidity
- Risk management and balancing a trading book
- Attention to detail and operational diligence
- Transferable lessons for founders
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep268
Find our guest, Nathan Clark, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-clark-4b850134/Website: https://ganymede.bio/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro/Outro music:OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Ganymede: https://ganymede.bio/OpenWorm: https://openworm.org/UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School: https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/Affirm: https://www.affirm.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/Affirm: https://www.affirm.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/OpenWorm: https://openworm.org/University of North Carolina: https://www.unc.edu/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:00 Early Life and Family Influence03:06 No Secret to Business03:30 Execution and Imposter Syndrome07:53 Choosing an Entrepreneurial Path09:03 Early Interest in Biology11:11 Unconventional High School Experience11:51 Choosing UNC13:48 Business, Economics, and Finance14:33 Joining Goldman Sachs15:36 How Bond Trading Works20:07 Liquidity and Risk28:10 Attention to Detail at Goldman34:07 Lessons for Founders35:19 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 AI, Mechanisms, & the Next Wave of Drug Discovery | David Li Rerelease (4/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“Think bigger. Don't worry about what others are thinking about. Think about exactly what you want and then work like hell to try to make it happen.”
David Li explains how a research question about mischaracterized drug targets became the starting point for Meliora Therapeutics. He describes how CRISPR experiments and follow-up biology challenged the accepted mechanism for cancer drugs, and how the company uses AI and machine learning to connect chemistry, biology, biomarkers, and patient populations.
David also talks through the move from private equity and life sciences software into company building. He shares how Meliora built a founding team around computational science and drug discovery, why the company is focused on creating clinically differentiated assets, and how internal programs and external partnerships fit together.
The conversation closes with fundraising in a more demanding biotech market, the psychological resilience required to lead through uncertainty, and Meliora's plans to move from seed toward a Series A. David also reflects on the Penn program that changed his path and offers one clear piece of advice: think bigger.
Key Topics Covered:- The transition from private equity to founding Meliora Therapeutics
- Jason Sheltzer's research on mischaracterized drug mechanisms
- CRISPR knockout experiments and target validation
- Using AI and machine learning to identify mechanisms of action
- Connecting mechanism, chemistry, biomarkers, and patient populations
- Building a computational platform alongside drug discovery capabilities
- Meliora's transition into a full-stack therapeutics company
- Traditional drug discovery workflows and their blind spots
- Internal pipeline development and external partnerships
- Fundraising discipline in a difficult biotech environment
- Psychological resilience as a biotech leader
- Thinking bigger and pursuing an independent path
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep267
Find our guest, David Li, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-9aa210bWebsite: https://www.melioratherapeutics.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Websitehttps://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:NCI: The Serendipitous Off-Target Explorer, Researcher Interview with Jason Sheltzer: https://www.cancer.gov/ccg/blog/2021/interview-off-targetY Combinator Co-Founder Matching: https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matchingYale Ventures: Jason Sheltzer, PhD: https://ventures.yale.edu/node/3875
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Jason Sheltzer: https://ventures.yale.edu/node/3875KKR: https://www.kkr.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/Yale: https://www.yale.edu/Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matchingBiogen: https://www.biogen.com/company.htmlUniversity of Pennsylvania: https://www.upenn.edu/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:10 Leaving Private Equity for Meliora07:29 How David Met Jason Sheltzer07:33 From Angel Investor to Founder09:16 Building the Founding Team11:38 Why Drug Discovery Must Be In-House12:20 Rethinking the Drug Discovery Status Quo13:59 The CDK11 Mechanism Discovery15:45 Why Mechanism Matters Before the Clinic17:47 Internal Pipelines and Partnerships20:11 Fundraising in a Tougher Market21:09 Psychological Resilience as a Leader22:37 Meliora's Next Development Stage24:17 The Penn Opportunity That Changed David's Path25:42 Think Bigger26:34 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 De-Risking Biotech's Biggest Bets | David Li Rerelease (3/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“You need to be able to project into what will happen when you arrive at the finish line, if and when you arrive at the finish line.”
In this part of the podcast, David Li, CEO and co-founder of Meliora Therapeutics, reflects on his experience helping build Everest Detection around the challenge of finding lung cancer earlier. He discusses the potential of a noninvasive, blood-based test, why lung cancer can be difficult to detect in blood, and how access to early-stage clinical samples helped the team investigate the problem.
David also compares biotech development with software innovation. Instead of releasing a product, gathering customer feedback, and iterating quickly, life science teams have to define a product profile, test core hypotheses, and de-risk the path to a prototype. He explains how parallel experiments, decision trees, and the distinction between one-way and two-way decisions can help teams move with urgency without treating every choice as irreversible.
The conversation closes with a look at fundraising and capital allocation in biotech, where time, money, and risk are closely linked. David shares why raising enough capital to run experiments in parallel can accelerate progress, and why knowing when a project will not reach its next value inflection point is one of a founder's most important responsibilities.
Key Topics Covered:- The case for earlier lung cancer detection
- Noninvasive blood-based diagnostics
- Clinical samples and biological signals
- Life science innovation versus software development
- Biotech's slower, engineering-led business cadence
- Balancing urgency with deliberate decision-making
- Parallel experiments and decision trees
- One-way and two-way decisions
- Defining biotech product-market fit
- De-risking core hypotheses
- Fundraising and capital allocation
- Value inflection points and knowing when to stop
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep266
Find our guest, David Li, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-9aa210bWebsite: https://www.melioratherapeutics.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:USPSTF Lung Cancer Screening Recommendation: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/lung-cancer-screeningStemcentrx Acquisition Announcement: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrxAmazon 2016 Letter to Shareholders: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2016-letter-to-shareholdersEverest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Stemcentrx: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrxGoldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/KKR: https://www.kkr.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:31 Why Early Lung-Cancer Detection Matters03:41 The Case for Blood-Based Screening04:18 Clinical Samples and the Lung-Cancer Signal05:22 Life-Science Innovation Versus Software05:40 A Different Business Cadence06:59 Balancing Urgency and Deliberation07:38 Parallel Experiments and Decision Trees08:12 Reducing Serial Work and Burn09:04 One-Way and Two-Way Decisions10:55 Biotech Product-Market Fit11:11 Defining the Right Biotech Product14:57 De-Risking Core Hypotheses17:04 Fundraising and Capital Allocation18:40 Value Inflection Points and Knowing When to Stop19:18 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Choosing Conviction Over Convention in Biotech | David Li Rerelease (2/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
“I think having that internal conviction is everything.”
In this part of the podcast, David Li reflects on leaving finance after realizing that an investing career would not give him the tangible impact he wanted. He explains what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
David also discusses the timing behind Benchling’s growth, the rise of new cell and gene therapy workflows, and the luck involved in joining a company at the right moment. He shares what it meant to build sales, marketing, customer success, and culture from the ground up.
He then looks back on the early-stage lessons that shaped his next move toward more directly patient-facing life science work, including the importance of conviction, strong teams, and seeing what winning looks like.
Key Topics Covered:- Long-term career decision-making
- Patient impact in life sciences
- Evaluating early-stage teams and markets
- Benchling’s life science informatics platform
- Cell and gene therapy market timing
- Luck, conviction, and career risk
- Building early-stage teams
- Sales and go-to-market in biotech software
- Everest Detection and cancer early detection
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep265
Find our guest, David Li, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-9aa210bWebsite: https://www.melioratherapeutics.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Benchling Online Lab Notebook: https://www.benchling.com/notebookBenchling at MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2016/benchling-google-docs-life-sciences-managing-sharing-data-1207Cell and Gene Therapy Report: https://www.iqvia.com/insights/the-iqvia-institute/reports-and-publications/reports/strengthening-pathways-for-cell-and-gene-therapiesAbbVie and Stemcentrx Acquisition: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrxEverest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/KKR: https://www.kkr.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/Stemcentrx: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrxAbbVie: https://www.abbvie.com/Everest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:03 KKR, Recruiting, and Long-Term Career Thinking03:03 Finding Patient Impact in Investing03:57 The Personal Truth Behind a Career Switch05:48 Choosing Early-Stage Entrepreneurship06:33 The Team-and-Market Test07:46 Digitizing the Lab’s Chaos08:44 Benchling’s Market Timing11:58 Luck, Networks, and the Right Wave13:32 Conviction Behind the Leap14:34 Learning Leadership at Benchling15:54 Returning to Patient-Facing Life Sciences18:24 From Benchling to Everest Detection20:54 Wearing Every Early-Stage Hat22:28 What Winning Feels Like24:03 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 The Outsider Mindset Behind Successful Biotech Founders | David Li Rerelease (1/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network—special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
"It's a tricky balance. You kinda have to be both an oddball out, but it's the combination of the two that's important. Being able to think independently is perhaps oftentimes the harder one to get right because you're growing up, you wanna fit in and have friends and be popular. But channeling that into a way that is really laser-focused on ultimately what you wanna do and the impact, those are things I think about all the time."
David Li's journey begins in Wuhan, China, and takes him to Louisville, Kentucky, at age three, where he learned what it meant to be an outsider. Moving from one culture to another at a formative age taught him adaptability and self-confidence—qualities that would later define his approach to leadership and entrepreneurship. His early fascination with science, from reading biology textbooks cover to cover to conducting research at the University of Chicago while still in high school, set the stage for a career at the intersection of science and business.
In this part of the podcast, David shares how the Roy Vagelos Life Sciences and Management dual degree program at the University of Pennsylvania opened his eyes to the possibilities of combining scientific discovery with business acumen. A pivotal summer internship with Arie Belldegrun at UCLA—during which Kite Pharma was born—planted the seed for his future in life sciences entrepreneurship. He also discusses his transition into finance, landing at Goldman Sachs, and the lessons learned from sitting in boardrooms alongside C-level executives at critical moments in companies' life cycles.
David's experiences as an immigrant, researcher, and financier shaped his perspective in biotech. He reflects on the importance of being comfortable as an outsider, the value of mentorship, and how each step of his journey contributed to his eventual path toward co-founding Meliora Therapeutics.
Key Topics Covered:- Childhood in China and Kentucky
- Early passion for biology and chemistry
- High school research at the University of Chicago
- UPenn Life Sciences and Management Program
- Kite Pharma internship with Arie Belldegrun
- Investment banking at Goldman Sachs
- Leadership and being comfortable as an outsider
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep264
Find our guest, David Li, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-9aa210bWebsite: https://www.melioratherapeutics.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Early Childhood Leadership: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=akron1744394447429272&disposition=inlineBiology Research: https://biology.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/doing-research/biology-summer-undergraduate-research-program-bsurpUPenn Roy Vagelos Program: https://lsm.upenn.edu/curriculum/dual-degreeScience to Investment Banking: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012160619305640Life Sciences Entrepreneurship: https://wewillcure.com/insights/entrepreneurship/how-to-start-a-biotech-companyHigh School Research: https://med.stanford.edu/genecamp/process
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/Kite Pharma: https://www.kitepharma.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/Everest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:50 Childhood in China and Kentucky05:13 Early Passion for Science06:54 High School Research and Competitions07:39 Parents' Influence on Science09:23 Being Comfortable as an Outsider10:12 UPenn Life Sciences Management Program11:22 Kite Pharma R&D Internship13:22 Choosing Finance and Goldman Sachs15:50 What Is Investment Banking17:11 How to Enter Investment Banking19:24 Valuation Lessons for Biotech20:36 Balancing Innovation and Value Creation28:43 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 This Ex-Googler Replaced a Whole Drug R&D Team | Javier Tordable (4/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network—special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
"We not only run agents that do the computational chemistry for our customers, but we run agents for building our own systems."
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable unpacks why he left Google to solo found Pauling AI and how its agentic platform automates computational chemistry—from docking to ADMET—collapsing months into days.
Javier walks through building a company alone with AI: filing patents with LLMs, writing sales processes, and running agents to build the systems customers depend on. He and Jon dig into why human-written communication will command a premium and how biotechs use Pauling to run screens faster.
Looking ahead, Javier outlines a vision for unbiased AI that explores targets and modalities—small molecules today, peptides and antibodies tomorrow—in autonomous loops measured in days, not years.
Key Topics Covered:- Leaving Google to Found Pauling AI
- Automating Computational Chemistry with Agents
- Solo Founding in the Age of AI
- Agents Building the Builders
- Go-to-Market Realities
- Physics-Based Multi-Modality Vision
- Economics Over Pure Science
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep263
Find our guest, Javier Tordable at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtordableWebsite: https://www.pauling.ai/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:AlphaFold 3 for drug discovery: https://alphafoldserver.comOpenAI Agents and Agentic Workflows: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/agentsSchrödinger computational drug discovery platform: https://www.schrodinger.com/platformSolo Founder's Journey: Building with AI: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6f-building-a-solo-startupEconomics of Pharmaceutical R&D (KFF): https://www.kff.org/rx-drugs/issue-brief/explaining-the-prescription-drug-pricing-process/Agentic AI for Multi-Modality Drug Design (Nature): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02371-6
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.comDeepMind: https://deepmind.googleOpenAI: https://openai.comAnthropic: https://www.anthropic.comApollo: https://www.apollo.ioClay: https://www.clay.comZoomInfo: https://www.zoominfo.comElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.ioHubSpot: https://www.hubspot.comWellcome Sanger Institute: https://www.sanger.ac.ukAmerican Medical Association: https://www.ama-assn.orgEndpoints News: https://endpts.comSTAT News: https://www.statnews.com
Linus Pauling: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1954/pauling/biographical/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:00 Knowing When to Leave Google07:26 Solo Founding Pauling AI08:11 Early Days Doing Everything09:24 Solo Founding in the AI Age10:53 Building With LLMs and Agents14:20 Voice Agents and Human Latency17:06 Premium on Human-Crafted Work20:24 Regulation and Human Doctors25:13 China Economics Disrupting Innovation29:04 Pauling Platform and Go-to-Market36:33 AI Objectivity Versus Human Bias38:59 Status Quo Comp Chem Workflows43:36 Modality Optionality and GLP-1s51:54 Shoutouts and Best Advice55:59 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 From Games to Cancer Research: Why Drug Discovery Is an Economics Problem | Javier Tordable (3/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network—special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
"Pessimists are often right, but optimists are often wealthy."
In this part of the podcast, Jon and Javier explore Javier's years as technical director in Google's Office of the CTO, where he worked with the world's biggest gaming companies—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Unity—helping them leverage Google Cloud technology. Javier then shares the deeply personal story of how his father's passing from cancer became the turning point that pulled him into life sciences, and how he taught himself biochemistry and pharmacology through Harvard Medical School's HMX program.
The conversation takes a sharp turn into the economics of drug discovery and healthcare. Javier argues that the biggest failures in biotech are not scientific but economic—nobody wants to pay $10,000 for an antibiotic, so companies stop researching them. Jon and Javier unpack the misaligned incentives, administrative bloat, and rising costs that plague the US healthcare system, and debate whether AI can help solve problems that are fundamentally about money, not science.
Key Topics Covered:- Working With Gaming Companies: How Javier partnered with Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA, and Unity as technical director in Google's CTO office.
- From Gaming to Life Sciences: How the death of Javier's father from cancer became the turning point that redirected his career.
- Self-Taught Biochemistry: Learning biochem, pharmacology, and physiology through Harvard Medical School's HMX courses while working at Google.
- Life Sciences Gatekeeping: Why the field is uniquely unwelcoming to outsiders—and why Jon compares academic science to fiefdoms.
- Drug Discovery Is an Economics Problem: Why the biggest barriers to new cures are funding, incentives, and economics—not science.
- Antibiotics and the Profit Problem: Why no company will develop novel antibiotics because nobody will pay $10,000 for one.
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep262
Find our guest, Javier Tordable at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtordableWebsite: https://www.pauling.ai/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Best practices for using Spanner as a gaming database: https://docs.cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/best-practices-gaming-databaseBiochemistry Fundamentals: https://learn.hms.harvard.edu/programs/biochemistry-fundamentalsComputational Platform for Molecular Discovery & Design - Schrödinger: https://www.schrodinger.com/platform/Why 90% of clinical drug development fails and how to improve it? - PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9293739/How Does Health Spending in the U.S. Compare to Other Countries? | KFF: https://www.kff.org/health-costs/health-spending-in-the-u-s-as-compared-to-other-countries-slideshow/Current economic and regulatory challenges: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44259-025-00123-1
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.comNintendo: https://www.nintendo.comUbisoft: https://www.ubisoft.comElectronic Arts: https://www.ea.comUnity: https://unity.comHarvard Medical School: https://hms.harvard.eduSchrödinger: https://www.schrodinger.comMEDITECH: https://www.meditech.com
Marc Andreessen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:08 Working With Gaming Companies at Google Cloud05:17 Pivoting to Life Sciences After Father's Passing07:30 Self-Studying Biochemistry & Pharmacology08:42 Life Sciences Not Welcoming to Outsiders09:37 Jon's Experience With Academic Fiefdoms10:47 Drug Discovery's Biggest Failures Are Economic15:12 The Broken Economics of US Healthcare16:27 Antibiotics & the Profit Problem18:14 Can AI Solve Healthcare's Economics?19:30 Systems You Can't Vote Your Way Out Of20:38 Pessimists vs. Optimists21:27 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 16 Years at Google Taught Me How to Scale From 1 to 150 People | Javier Tordable (2/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network—special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
"You had this combination of being able to move fast, make changes quickly, but at the same time, responsibility and empowerment."
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable shares his early career journey—from starting at Microsoft to spending 16 years at Google as a Staff Engineer and Technical Director. He reflects on the engineering-driven culture at Microsoft and the welcoming environment that shaped his foundation in tech.
Javier recounts joining Google in 2008 when the company was still under 25,000 people, and details his work building key features for Webmaster Tools (now Google Search Console), including the Fetch as Googlebot feature. He and Jon also swap stories about the scrappy early days of building products with limited resources.
Key Topics Covered:- Javier's early career at Microsoft and its engineering-driven culture
- Transitioning to Google in 2008 and the interview process
- Building features for Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console
- Google's culture of empowerment and moving fast
- Comparing early startup resourcefulness with big-tech engineering scale
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep261
Find our guest, Javier Tordable at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtordableWebsite: https://www.pauling.ai/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Engineering Leadership and Tech Lead Responsibilities: https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/careers/ic-leadership/tech-lead/Google Search Console and Webmaster Tools: https://search.google.com/search-console/aboutOrganizational Design in Tech Companies: https://a16z.com/scaling-your-technical-org/Scaling Engineering Organizations and Process Documentation: https://stripe.com/guides/atlas/scaling-engSEO Tools for Business Growth: https://www.semrush.com/seo/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.comMicrosoft: https://www.microsoft.com
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:56 Adjusting to US Culture from Spain04:06 Microsoft's Engineering-Driven Culture05:20 Joining Google in the Post-IPO Era06:40 How the Google Opportunity Came About08:46 Working at Google: Speed and Scale09:12 Building Webmaster Tools and Search Console10:06 Jon's Early Days Starting Excedr12:26 Transitioning to Ads as Staff Engineer16:58 Management Roles and Team Leadership18:59 Operating at Google's Massive Scale20:29 Documentation and Knowledge Management21:05 Office Culture and In-Person Collaboration27:16 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Video Games & a Whim Led Me to Microsoft | Javier Tordable (1/4)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr—helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network—special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
"I think so many of us started playing video games as young adults or as teenagers. And that leads you to a path where you think, well, how does this work?"
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Javier Tordable, founder and CEO of Pauling AI, a company building the first fully autonomous drug discovery platform that enables scientists to go from a research idea to validated drug molecules in days, not years. Named after Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, the company reflects Javier's conviction that first principles engineering can be applied to one of science's most consequential problems.
Before founding Pauling AI, Javier spent sixteen years at Google, rising to staff engineer and serving as technical director in the office of the CTO, partnering with companies like Nintendo, Ubisoft, and Electronic Arts. In Part 1 of this four-part conversation, Javier traces his early years in 1990s Spain, where a love of video games sparked a self-taught journey into programming, a father who taught high school mathematics planted a deep love of the discipline, and a chance encounter with a university poster led to a Microsoft internship that permanently redirected his career.
Key Topics Covered:- Early Years in Spain: How a childhood curiosity for science and engineering set the foundation for a career in technology.
- Video Games as a Gateway: How playing classic LucasArts adventures and Nintendo 64 games sparked a self-taught journey into programming.
- Self-Taught Programming: Navigating the early internet in 1990s Spain to learn Visual Basic and game development without formal instruction.
- The Golden Age of Gaming: How the late 90s explosion of creative, risk-taking game development shaped a generation of technologists.
- Gaming Skills in Modern Tech: How resource management and optimization instincts from games like StarCraft translate to managing AI agents today.
- A Father's Influence: How a high school math teacher parent planted a deep love of mathematics that underpinned a career in computational science.
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep260
Find our guest, Javier Tordable at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtordableWebsite: https://www.pauling.ai/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Operating Lease: https://www.excedr.com/blog/operating-leaseMolecular Biology: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-molecular-biologyNDA Process: https://www.excedr.com/blog/new-drug-application-processIND Application: https://www.excedr.com/blog/ind-application-processFDA Drug Approval: https://www.excedr.com/blog/fda-drug-approval-process-guide
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.comMicrosoft: https://www.microsoft.comPauling AI: https://www.pauling.aiNintendo: https://www.nintendo.com
Linus Pauling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling
Timestamps:00:00 Intro04:18 Childhood in Spain & Early Interests06:14 Parents Supportive of Gaming Habit07:37 First Computer & Golden Age of Gaming11:40 StarCraft Skills & Agent Management13:34 Self-Taught Programming & Early Internet15:14 Father's Influence & Love of Mathematics17:54 Spotting the Microsoft Internship Poster19:03 Applying on a Whim Before Deadline20:11 Only Spanish Hire at Microsoft24:14 Early Microsoft Experiences & Career Pivot25:14 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Crossover Investing, Gene Therapy & LP Trust | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (3/3)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr-helping life sciencestartups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing.Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr-helping life sciencestartups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing.Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network-specialsavings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
"Drug development is not a linear process."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she traces RTW’s evolution from a lean public-equity fund into a major life sciences platform spanning crossover investing, company creation, and global commercialization. Stephanie explains how RTW built the modern crossover ecosystem, why they chose to found Rocket Pharma instead of a fleet of gene therapy startups, and how a disciplined, science-first research process underpins the firm’s long-term, concentrated investing strategy and deep alignment with LPs and portfolio founders.
Key Topics Covered:- Building the biotech crossover investing ecosystem: RTW’s early role in late-stage private rounds.
- Gene therapy deep dives & Rocket Pharma: Why RTW built one platform company instead of many.
- Thesis-driven company creation in China: Licensing Western assets to tackle cardiovascular & ophthalmology.
- Conviction, position sizing & non-linear drug development: How RTW underwrites multiple inflection points.
- Educating LPs & tracking a 60% batting average: Process, data libraries & domain expertise.
- Navigating cycles with transparency & trust: Berkshire-style moments, metabolic disease opportunities & backing science through downturns.
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review,or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep259
Find our guest, Stephanie Sirota at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephsirota/Website: https://www.rtwfunds.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Jesse Gelsinger case & early gene therapy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907126/AveXis (Zolgensma) gene therapy overview: https://www.novartis.com/news/media-releases/novartis-agrees-acquire-avexis-inc-expand-leadership-gene-therapyRocket Pharmaceuticals pipeline overview: https://www.rocketpharma.com/pipeline/GLP-1 receptor agonists in metabolic disease: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1907937Metabolic disease & obesity drug landscape: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-021-00556-9Biotech market benchmark XBI profile: https://www.ssga.com/us/en/institutional/etfs/spdr-sp-sbx-biotech-etf-xbiIMG Academy tennis training program: https://www.imgacademy.com/sport-camps/tennis
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:RTW Investments: https://www.rtwfunds.com/AveXis: https://www.novartis.com/our-products/avexisNovartis: https://www.novartis.comRocket Pharmaceuticals: https://www.rocketpharma.com/Ji Xing Pharmaceuticals: https://www.jxpharma.com/IMG Academy: https://www.imgacademy.com/Lehman Brothers (archived): https://www.lehman.comValhalla Capital Management: https://www.valhallacap.com/Berkshire Hathaway: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/Excedr: https://www.excedr.com/University of Pennsylvania: https://www.upenn.edu/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:45 RTW’s crossover strategy & gene therapy09:37 Building Rocket Pharma as a platform company11:43 Creating Ji Xing to unlock China’s market14:15 RTW’s thesis-building & conviction process18:04 Educating LPs & proving a repeatable edge20:12 Market cycles, batting averages & investor trust24:26 RTW’s outlook on biotech & metabolic disease26:11 Long-term horizons, generalists & first-principles thinking28:34 Being first-dollar capital & partner through downturns29:44 Career shout-outs & mentors who shaped Steph29:48 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.🧬 Cycles, Conviction & Royalty Capital in Biotech Investing | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (2/3)
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr-helping life sciencestartups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing.Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on …
Show notes
🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr-helping life sciencestartups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing.Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network-specialsavings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners.
"When you're at the top of your game, you have to change your game."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she reflects on her path from Lehman Brothers investment banking to macro hedge funds and ultimately biotech-focused investing and firm building. Steph shares how journalism training shaped her strategic thinking, what she learned from navigating multiple market crises, and how those lessons inform RTW’s approach to cycles, institutional architecture, and innovative funding models like royalty vehicles in today’s prolonged biotech bear market.
Key Topics Covered:- Sell Side vs. Buy Side: A clear breakdown of advisory banking, hedge funds, and fiduciary capital.
- Mentorship & Inflection Points: How candid feedback at Lehman unlocked Steph’s strategic strengths.
- Pivoting to the Buy Side: Institutionalizing a macro hedge fund and building firm architecture.
- Entering Biotech: Meeting Rod Wong, learning science in a slower era, and falling in love with the sector.
- Navigating Market Cycles: Dot-com, 2008, and today’s biotech bear market through a “steady hand” lens.
- Innovating Capital Structures: RTW’s royalty fund & non-dilutive financing for emerging biotech companies.
If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep258
Find our guest, Stephanie Sirota at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephsirota/Website: https://www.rtwfunds.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/james-kerr/legacy/9781472103536/RTW Investments Royalty & Credit Strategy Overview: https://www.rtwfunds.com/royalty-and-creditRNA Interference: Gene Silencing by Double-Stranded RNA: https://www.nature.com/articles/35079145Global Financial Crisis Overview: https://www.imf.org/external/pubind/glofincrisis/Dot-Com Bubble Background: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dotcom-bubble.asp
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Lehman Brothers: https://www.lehman.comColumbia University: https://www.columbia.eduNestlé: https://www.nestle.comPepsiCo: https://www.pepsico.comL'Oréal: https://www.loreal.comRTW Investments: https://www.rtwfunds.comValhalla Capital Management: https://www.valhallacapital.comGoldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.comDavidson Kempner Capital Management: https://www.davidsonkempner.comAll Blacks (New Zealand Rugby): https://www.allblacks.comFTC (Federal Trade Commission): https://www.ftc.govFDA (U.S. Food & Drug Administration): https://www.fda.gov
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:33 Journalism training, Lehman London & consumer M&A03:30 What investment banking is vs. the buy side05:57 Working with sell-side & prime brokers as a hedge fund06:56 Feedback on being a “lousy” junior banker & discovering strategic strengths09:55 Leaving Lehman, layoffs & pivoting to the buy side12:09 Institutionalizing a macro hedge fund & firm operations14:42 Joining RTW as the fourth team member & designing firm architecture19:42 Meeting Rod Wong & entering biotech without a science background23:18 Learning core modalities like RNA interference in a slower biotech era26:34 Biotech bear markets, conviction & sector-specialist funds29:16 Innovating RTW’s model with royalty funding in a down market31:41 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.
These are the latest 100 of 288 episodes. You’ll find older episodes in the podcast’s feed.
