Lab to Startup

Dana Foss and Ross Wilson are the cofounders of Editpep, a biotech startup focused on developing CRISPR-based therapeutics. They are using a proprietary peptide-based delivery platform that enables targeted delivery to specific cell types, particularly for hard-to-reach areas like the brain. While Dana Foss is the CEO, Ross Wilson is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and also the Director of Therapeutic Delivery at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of those very few academics that co-founded a startup and is very active in building Editpep. Ross explains how he does it all so well! Dana was  previously a postdoc in Ross Wilson's lab, where she developed the technology. Ross was a postdoc in Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna's lab. Now he has his own lab and collaborates with Jennifer Doudna at the Innovative Genomics Institute.  In this episode of lab to startup, we will explore their initial decisions that lead to launching the startup; existing CRISPR delivery technologies, their challenges, and then do a deep dive into their delivery technology. opportunities,; fundraising efforts, and their future goals. Shownotes https://www.editpep.bio/ CRISPR Delivery problem and current solutions Existing solutions like AV, LNPs are mostly limited to mice Ribonucleoprotein, a complex of RNA and protein (RNP): Technology deep dive Outsiders bringing in fresh perspective Dana transitioning out of academia: working on a shared goal Hard to shepard the technology towards the patient by depending on a third party Self motivation and gumption: Ways to move technologies out of the lab Early stage co-founder chemistry Ross's innovative role being an academic and entrepreneur Fundraising journey Open mindedness to non-traditional investors Investors: Berkeley Skydeck,  Lindonlight Collective Filters for selecting investors Getting to market: Parallels from other delivery companies like Alnylam Counterintuitive decisions Future goals Connecting the dots

Chandana Haque is the Executive Director of Altitude Lab, a healthcare startup accelerator building a community of diverse entrepreneurs in Utah. Altitude Lab was cofounded in 2020 by Chandana and Chris Gibson, the co-founder & CEO of Recursion in Salt Lake City. They recently announced the launch of a pre-seed venture fund aimed at supporting early-stage biotech startups impacted by recent federal funding policy shifts.   This pre-seed venture fund is dedicated to funding the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry. In partnership with Altitude Lab, they provide capital, lab space, and mentorship to high-potential SBIR reviewed companies, offering continuity for startups affected by recent funding policy changes while strengthening Salt Lake City's position as a national biotech hub.   We talk about the Altitude fund, Altitude lab, lessons learned from other ecosystems; support from Recursion, better ways to support healthcare founders and many other topics.   Shownotes Altitude lab fund: a pre-seed venture fund dedicated to funding the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry.  Fund announcement: https://ir.recursion.com/news-releases/news-release-details/altitude-lab-launches-pre-seed-venture-fund-anchored-recursion Altitude labs: a health care accelerator building a community of diverse entrepreneurs in Utah Lessons learned (and unlearned) from Boston and Bay Area startup ecosystems Criteria for selection: Technology vs market readiness Founder fit, connecting founders to the right resources Turning a scrappy startup to a fundable one Overhyped areas in biotech Finding winners and lost opportunities Support from Recursion Pharma  Supporting diversity: Anecdotes of diverse founders Support from the University of Utah

Monica Rosoff, the founder and CEO of LBBAL™ Alianza. Prior to launching Alianza, Monica was a partnering executive with roles of increasing seniority at Genentech, Gilead, Kite and Exelixis. Over the course of over two decades, she had the opportunity to lead and participate in a wide diversity of deals, negotiations, diligence exercises, alliances, technology transfers, M&A integrations, dispute resolution negotiations, amendments and terminations–at all stages of the drug development and commercialization lifecycle and in multiple therapeutic areas. Dr. Rosoff earned a doctorate in Pharmacology from the University of Washington and conducted her postdoctoral work at Stanford. We talked about lessons learned from her experiences in alliance management, especially for early stage startups.  Shownotes Monica Rosoff https://lbbalalianza.com/ Monica's entry into alliance management Principles that guide a good partnership: What's best for the patient? Find synergies, timing and motivations Who to approach at a big pharma when identifying a partner? Evaluating motivations of a big pharma: Get specific Building trust Performing due diligence-How? Power dynamics: How to deal with a big partner when you have a power imbalance? Role of lawyers Communicating failures Have a list of “To-dont's” as opposed to “To-do” list Conflicts might be important Repeating problems: Lessons learned How to prepare for unexpected changes at big companies? Conflict resolution: What to pick fights on? Allocating resources

Zack Shildhorn is an investing Partner at venture firm Lux Capital. He played multiple key roles that helped the firm scale from less than $100M to more than $4B in assets under management. After witnessing thousands of pitches, he saw that even the most disruptive startups often struggled to develop effective narratives. Having worked closely with leading technology companies as an investor and Board member, he brings a unique ability to connect with key stakeholders and distill complex ideas into engaging and relatable presentations. In order to help founders beyond Lux, He launched a firm called Series Z, to help a select group of tech companies and funds bring their vision to life. Zack also recently partnered with Khosla ventures to help founders there as well.  Zack kindly agreed to share some of the lessons from his experience teaching the art of storytelling to founders and VCs. I think you will benefit tremendously from this episode.  Show Notes: Series Z: https://www.series-z.co/ Zack Schildhorn: https://x.com/zacktrak Most founders are in a challenged position Repetition, iteration, feedback Founders have the disadvantage of not knowing an investor's mindset Selling vision: Why should investors care? Framing your pitch: Ways to capture investor's attention How to appeal to the emotions of an investor? Fear and greed Starting a presentation with words and not slides Presenting technical idea: How not to inundate listeners with too much data Reframing problems: Addressing known apprehensions How to not get offended by a question or being defensive? Media links: Power of Narrative for Entrepreneurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llii7frwco Framing your pitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4V89rywlR0 Pitching investors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYkOoRJGuvk

Corey Goodman, Ph.D., is the managing partner of venBio, a venture capital firm he cofounded in 2011. venBio already has 7 FDA approved drugs on the market, saving and improving lives. Corey spent 25 years as Professor of Biology at Stanford University and Evan Rauch Chair of Neurobiology at U.C. Berkeley, where he was a HHMI Investigator, Head of the Neurobiology Division, and co-founder and Director of the Wills Neuroscience Institute. Corey co-founded seven biotechnology companies, and led one of them (Renovis) as President and CEO from a private to public company until its acquisition by Evotec. Two of the companies he co-founded have been acquired and three have done IPOs to date.  He then moved to Pfizer, where he was President of the Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center and a member of the executive leadership team. We talk about transformation of UC Berkeley as a startup powerhouse;  his entrepreneurial journey starting with the founding of Exelixis while being a faculty at UC Berkeley; role played by mentors and co-founders; lessons learned from founding startups that founders today could benefit from; changing careers at various stages of his life as he turned 50 and 60 (he recently turned 73); lessons from big pharma; experiences and lessons from partnerships and acquisitions by big pharma; and his experiences investing. Show Notes: Corey Goodman, Ph.D. Corey Goodman's autobiography: https://www.sfn.org/-/media/SfN/Documents/NEW-SfN/About/History-of-Neuroscience/20220914_HON_volume12_goodman.pdf Turn around story of UC Berkeley entrepreneurship: remarkable 10 years People and leadership matter Carol Christ Exelixis: Corey's first startup, co-founded with Gerry Rubin. George Scangos joined the company as CEO in 1996;  Learning from genetic modeling organisms Find a big brother/sister who can help you: Role played by Stelios Papadopoulos and Ed Penhoet Donald Kennedy: Corey's mentor Taking risks at various stages of life: Turning 50, 60, and now 73 Life as an executive at Pfizer and lessons learned in that space Big pharma companies are unbelievably inefficient in early stage drug discovery James Allison: Immune checkpoint inhibitors Importance of academia and startup ecosystem in drug discovery Lessons from big pharma acquiring biotechs: What, when, how and what not to do Lessons learned from biotech partnering with big pharma: Don't partner on everything- keep some to yourself Operator VCs: Investors/board members who went through building companies are more valuable than those who come from consulting backgrounds Building teams Transition to Pfizer and out: “Come change the world” Launching VenBio: Everybody's voice matters Investment thesis

Abhishek Tripathi, is the Director of Mission operations of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Abhi is also the Chair of the Air and Space track startups at Skydeck, which is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator program. For over two decades, Abhi has been at the forefront of human and robotic space exploration. At SpaceX, he spearheaded the certification of both the cargo and crew Dragon programs, a pivotal achievement in commercial spaceflight. His expertise was further showcased as Dragon Mission Director, where he orchestrated a dozen critical cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. Abhi's technical acumen reached new heights when he assumed the role of Dragon Chief Engineer for Flight Reliability on the groundbreaking Crew Demo 1 and Demo 2 missions. Prior to his transformative work at SpaceX, Abhi honed his skills during a decade-long tenure as an Aerospace Systems engineer at NASA, laying the foundation for his remarkable career in space technology.  We talked about the lessons learned from Abhi's journey at NASA, SpaceX and his work at the University of California, Berkeley, where he continues to lead several space missions. He shared some of the lessons learned from working at a highly demanding job at SpaceX; and also translated his experiences into lessons for startups and life in general. And Yes, he did share some of his experiences working with Elon Musk. Show Notes: Abhishek Tripathi https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/ Setting overarching goals that ties with the vision for a company Building factories to vow consumers and the larger population (new age moats) Journey at NASA Try to work at a cutting edge company before launching a startup, (except if you are a deeply involved in a research area during postdoc or similar compelling situation) Picking advisors: Pick tactical advisors instead of strategic ones End all instances of gatekeeping (one of the rules set by Musk) Leading the Dragon mission to deliver cargo to ISS Regulations: Working with NASA/government for approvals ‘Bring me a rock exercise” Experiences working on Falcon 9 mission Transition to academia https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/ “Other than the brutal pace of Space X, we have many of the elements of Space X at Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.” Space track https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/ What startups in the space track should possess Timing, funding, technology readiness SSL LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACTS https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/administrative-contacts/ https://x.com/SpaceAbhi

Richard Lyons, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer, at the University of California, Berkeley. Rich is an economist and the former dean of the business school. Rich will become the next chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.  We talk about a wide variety of topics around the Evolution of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Berkeley. We covered topics like paradigm shifts, cultural transformations, overcoming inertia; global impact and many others.  I hope you get some insights from this story, and walk away with appreciation and potentially actionable steps if you are trying to build startup ecosystems on your campuses. Show Notes: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/rich-lyons Report on entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley from the Faculty Entrepreneurship Committee: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2018-08/Entrepreneurship_at_Berkeley.pdf  UC Regents taskforce report: From Discovery to Societal Impact: A Roadmap to Unleashing UC Innovation and Entrepreneurship: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may21/g1attach.pdf Cultural transformation at UC Berkeley: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/berkeley-named-top-university-for-number-of-venture-backed-companies-founded/#:~:text=PitchBook%20has%20ranked%20Berkeley%20%231,public%20university%20for%20startup%20founders. Bakar fellows program: https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/ Cultural transformation to embrace entrepreneurship Mission of academic institutions is impact Overcoming inertia at academic institutions Ecosystem dynamics & talent pipeline Start with “Yes, if” framework to address difficult questions Pilot programs Berkeley RIC  I&E Council Inclusivity: Dual degree program  Berkeley Changemaker program Failures and hurdles Ethical considerations Parts of the ecosystem that could be replicated and hard to do so by other universities Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET)

Shahram Seyedin-Noor is the founder and managing partner at Civilization Ventures. Shahram received a JD from Harvard and worked at Wilson Solsinis and Cooley before going into investment banking at firms like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. He then entered the startup world co-founding several startups. He eventually ended up Angel investing and in 2017, launched Civilization Ventures, focused on supporting cutting-edge innovations in health tech and biology. Shahram has over a dozen exits under his belt, which is a phenomenal achievement. Here are some of his investments: Rewrite (acq. by Intellia), Replace (acq. by Tome), Lemonaid (acq. by 23andme), Singular Bio (acq. by Invitae), Rocket Pharma (listed on Nasdaq), Palamedrix (acq. by SomaLogic), Foresight Diagnostics, BillionToOne, Omada and others. Shahram takes an active role in company building. Prior to founding CV, Shahram was the founding CEO/Chairman of Inspirna, an oncology therapeutics company currently in Phase 2 human trials, and the CFO and VP of Corporate Development at NextBio, a genomics software pioneer acquired by Illumina. Shownotes: https://www.civilizationventures.com/ Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan Accountability: Few people blame themselves for failure and give credit for success to others Evolution of mindset: Don't let others dictate what you can or supposed to do in life EQ is more/equally important than IQ Transition from law school to startups Advice for recruiting a non-scientific co-founder Rewrite therapeutics acquired by Intellia Investment thesis at Civilization Ventures: Drive to do things differently Lessons learned from exits Contact email: shahram@civilizationventures.com

Leo Polovets is the Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Leo focuses on enterprise software and technical products at Susa. About two years ago, He also started Humba Ventures, a fund that invests in deep tech and critical national sectors like energy and defense at Humba.   Leo led Susa's investments in Mashgin, People Data Labs, Scalyr, and Treasury Prime. Having been a software engineer for 10+ years, Leo approaches challenges with an engineering mindset and supports portfolio companies in vetting and hiring technical talent. Prior to Susa, Leo was the second engineering hire at Linkedin, where he worked on the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups. Leo then worked on payment fraud detection algorithms at Google, and was also an early engineer at Factual, where he built data processing software. Leo received a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science) from Caltech. We talk about lessons that translate from investing in traditional startups; explore lessons learned about market sizing, pricing, team dynamics, managing burn, scaling, valuation and many other topics in the deep tech space.   Shownotes: https://humbaventures.com/ Leo's presentation on “Exploring Startup Ideas” https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C-JFkqsY40tidqPD1OZbV3-OXPAyrsPIV5Q_00PkToQ/edit#slide=id.g221d008c440_0_35 Thinking about making money for scientific founders Thinking about market attributes for a potential startup Intro to Humba ventures Investing in deep tech Founder-market fit; Time to make money Investment thesis Communication: between team members, to investors and beyond Working with startup teams: Commercialization Pricing in deep tech: Think of value being created How to ask for money for your product? Aloha robot- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaaZ8ss-HP4&t=5s Story telling Manage your burn! Scaling: Calibrating on talent; learning to delegate; firing Bs and B+s on the team Keeping up with new technologies Thoughts on valuation What Leo likes to hear while being pitched to

Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of Berkeley Skydeck, a startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. Skydeck started as a mentoring space in 2012 and soon translated into one of the leading startup accelerators in the world. SkyDeck was Formed as a partnership between UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. While it offers all the benefits of a traditional accelerator, what makes Skydeck special is the vast resources of the world's number one ranked public university. The robust and vibrant ecosystem includes a deep network of advisors, industry partners, and attracts some of the best investors. I have seen its evolution first hand because of my own association since my postdocs days at UC Berkeley We discuss the evolution of the startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley and then dive into how Skydeck has been supporting deep tech startups, challenges and lessons learned.   Shownotes: Berkeley Skydeck: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/ Startup resources at Berkeley: https://begin.berkeley.edu/ Berkeley named top university for number of venture-backed companies Evolution of startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley: Pre & post Skydeck Changing academia-industry relations Skydeck is just not for UC Berkeley community Support for deep tech startups at Skydeck Criteria for picking deep tech startups for accelerations Lessons learned from working with scientific and faculty founders Scalability and market potential of deep tech startups Partnerships with corporations: realistic expectations Picking advisors Commercializing deep tech startups Investing in deep tech: Evaluating founders Tips for applying to Berkeley Skydeck Apply here: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/apply/

Paul Grand is the founder and CEO; Ayelet Marom is the Program Director for BioTools Innovator, which focuses specifically on biotools; and Jim West is the Associate Director, BioTools Innovator, who was previously the Co-Founder and CEO of, Clara Biotech, which was founded in 2018 and was acquired by Innovaprep in the summer of 2023. Jim was the first founder to go through the biotools program. In this episode of lab to startup, we first discuss some of the challenges that affect medtech and biotool technology startups, and then go into ways that medtech innovator, an accelerator program is helping founders in this space, especially around lessons learned and how the program has evolved into one of the best accelerators in this space. https://medtechinnovator.org/about-us/ Founding story of Medtech Innovator Things medtech startups struggle with: Articulating value proposition; understanding reimbursement; having the wrong CEO; staying in stealth mode; choosing the wrong indication Medtech innovator “Value program” Value coaches from established companies like J&J How startups get accepted to the program No equity, no fees and no strings attached for being a part of the program Bringing the right investors to the table to support founders Biotools innovator program: https://biotoolsinnovator.org/ Challenges in the biotools space How investors are different in this space Pay for Service as a model Story of Jim West, Founder and CEO of Clara biotech, that went through the program Advice on slide decks Info session videos: https://www.youtube.com/@Medtechinnovatorchannel

Kenichi Nogami is the co-founder and CEO of Metcela, a clinical-stage biotechnology startup pioneering the research and development of fibroblast and stem cell-based therapy for chronic heart diseases that currently have limited therapeutic options. We talk about the current treatments for heart failure and how the fibroblast technology could help this space. We explore the founding story; setting smaller milestones and fundraising to meet those goals; the role of recruiting firms in hiring in japan; building a flat structure at the startup, as opposed to a hierarchical system that Japan is generally known for; and how Ken's investment banking experience helped with acquisition of another biotech startup; and many other stories. Shownotes https://www.metcela.com/en/ Fibroblast technology for treating Heart failure Current treatments and potential of regenerative capabilities Founding story: Investment banker meets a PhD student and launch a startup Nedo, Japan: Technology-Based Startup Support Program https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/activities/activities_ZZJP_100091.html IP: University waives its right to file a patent and the startup files the patent Co-founder chemistry Business model evolution Immune response challenges developing cell therapy for heart diseases Fundraising stories: Raising money from Japanese investors vs those outside Japan Raising from university derived VCs Cell manufacturing challenges Acquiring a startup while being a startup Evolution as a CEO Team and hiring process: Supply drove the hiring more than demand in many cases Building culture Hierarchy vs flat structure: decision making process Challenges building a biotech startup in Japan- talent, infrastructure; and need to expand globally

Caleb Bell III, Ph.D., is a venture partner at Corundum Systems Biology and also the President of Corundum convergence institute. We talk about the founding story of Bell biosystems; how they were able to work at various labs around the country with very little money; building teams, culture; raising money, interacting with investors, leadership transitions; and also how the company filed for bankruptcy, although after he left the startup;. Kalub agreed to dip into his experiences both as a founder and investor, and share some of the lessons learned around all these topics, which I believe will be very helpful for aspiring or current founders out there. Shownotes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb3/ Early life as an entrepreneur and grad school training Thoughts on working with law firms: corporate vs IP attorneys Inspiration for launching Bell Biosystems (hint: Listening to NPR science Friday) Labs around the country helped perform the initial proof of concept experiments Market hypothesis Convincing the right kind of people to work with you: challenges and lessons learned Advice on recruiting and growing teams Culture: Two types of sins Becoming a manager from a founder Communicating with investors: Being a good steward of money Magnetic cells Thoughts on charging early customers;price discovery Sophisticated vs unsophisticated investors: Do your research! Leadership transitions Transitioning to investing: PE, VC Lessons learned from time at the PE firm Corundum systems biology https://www.csb.co.jp/

Chaeyoung Shin was the Co-founder and CEO of NAMUH, a startup focused on developing yeast fermentation technologies to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). HMOs are crucial, fiber-equivalent macronutrients that are currently lacking in most formulas. Integrating them in sufficient amounts could significantly close the nutritional disparity between human milk and formula. We talk about the story behind the origin of NAMUH; transformation of Chaeyoung from a freshly minted Ph.D. to a CEO; lessons learned in that process; fundraising efforts; lessons learned from building the team; experimenting with business models; partnerships developed; realities of the markets and the forces driving the adoption (or not); and the unfortunate shutting down of the startup Shownotes: -  https://wearenamuh.squarespace.com -  NAMUH is HUMAN read in reverse -  Developing yeast fermentation technologies to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) -  HMOs help build the gut microbiome of babies and basically set them up for life -  Babies are born with pristine gut, without a microbiome -  Applied for a job and ended up becoming a co-founder -  Stigma behind scientists becoming CEOs -  Team building was hard -  Hiring decisions based on fear and lessons learned -  Support system -  Bringing on a business leader on to the team -  Startup incubator journey -  Being an immigrant+scientist+female founder -  Lessons learned from working with investors -  Getting advice: signal vs noise -  Experimentation with business models -  Working with infant formula companies -  Regulations: Maybe the bar is too low -  Role of pricing -  Mistakes that other founders could learn from

Jenn Gustetic is the Director of Early Stage Innovations and Partnerships at NASA. In this episode of Lab to startup, we will learn about various funding mechanisms that NASA provides to support innovation, primarily to support NASA space missions. We talk about the funding process through contracts; differences between grants and contracts; NASA's involvement once they fund to support researchers and startups; funding dual use technologies; surprising speed of their funding process; partnership opportunities they offer; procurement of technologies by NASA and end with learning about how one can license technologies from NASA.  Jenn shared so many stories like that of the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, and other technologies they funded. Shownotes: - Jenn Gustetic - NASA SBIR/STTR - Who we fund - Process of funding - Awards given as contracts, because NASA is one of the customers - Grants vs contracts - Heavily involved with the grantee - Strong touch points with NASA - Process of granting monies and funding levels - NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program - NASA Curiosity Rover landing -  Mars helicopter - NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Successfully Completes First Flight - Dual use technologies: 80 problem statements for small businesses; 3 months to decision: https://sbir.nasa.gov/ignite - Success stories - Reviewers- their composition and assessing business proposals - Partnerships: Resources beyond money - Facility use agreement; Flight opportunities program - Procurement of technologies by NASA post funding - Licensing NASA technologies - NASA I-Corps - Resource from NASA: Early-Stage Innovation and Partnerships (ESIP): ESIP 101 and Program Cadence

Ryan Caldbeck, is the COO of Dune, a powerful analytics platform for blockchain research. It can be used to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data on the Ethereum blockchain. Ryan was previously the founder, and CEO of CircleUp, a technology platform focused on finding and evaluating private companies. He is also an angel investor in several high-growth technology companies. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the role of independent directors at startups; how to find them and work with them; how they can mediate between the other board directors like investors and the CEO; when and how long to bring them on for. We do a deep dive into the topic of building trust, not only with the IDs, but also other members of the startup like employees, co-founders, board of directors and others. Shownotes: - https://ryancaldbeck.co - Tweet storm about independent directors:  https://twitter.com/ryan_caldbeck/status/1651441866213318656 - Who is an independent director (ID) - How to pick them - What and where do you look for them? - Trust = (Reliability x Credibility x Authenticity) / Self-Interest. - Building trust - Writing the job description for an ID - How IDs can mediate between investors and the CEO - Receiving and offering feedback - What point of the startup journey should we bring on an ID? How many? - Etiquette to building a relation with independent directors - IDs and board members interacting with upper management

Vickie Kloeris is a food scientist with an out of this world career. She worked at NASA in space food systems for 34 years. She served as the NASA manager of the Shuttle first and then the International Space Station food systems. She and her teams worked through the complex challenges of creating tasty, nutritious, long-lasting, easy-to-prepare meals that support the dietary and psychological needs of astronauts living on the space station. Vickie has worked with 100s of astronauts to plan their favorite meals and holiday specialty meals for space travel. We talk about the history of feeding our astronauts; working with the US military; evolution of food systems at NASA to feed our astronauts; depending on the Russian space agency in the initial days and also working with other space agencies. Vickie shared the challenges for the future manned mission to Mars; and how food science and technology has been at the core of so many food preparation and packaging technologies we take for granted. We also talk about how we might be able to use these technologies to address hunger and reduce food wastage. Shownotes: - https://vickiekloeris.com - Only 16 of the 105 space flights had flown by the time Vickie camke to work for NASA - Food sessions for shuttle crew members: 100% personal menus - Commercial off the shelf items (COTS) - MRE: Meals ready to eat made by army contractors (high salt and fat content) bad for astronauts in microgravity - Changes for the space station Freedom - Challenges with refrigeration: Freezers for food or science - Moving away from canned food - Academia, industry and US military came up with a retort pouch - "It's not gourmet food but pretty good" - Commercially sterile food - Testing the food for the bad bacteria like E.Coli, Salmonella, etc. - Downside of freeze dried food - Challenges for the mission to Mars - Standardized food menu - Challenges packing beverages - Taking tortillas to space: challenges with bread -  NATICK -  Reflections on collaboration with Mir space station - No insights into Chinese systems - Using this technology to feed the poor and prevent food wastage - A lot of people don't even know what food scientists do - Vickie Kloeris's book: Space Bites: Reflections of a NASA food scientist https://ballastbooks.com/purchase/space-bites/

Jay Keasling, the CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). He is also a Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and also the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.. He's also a Senior Faculty Scientist @ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also holds other prestigious positions around the world. We talk about Jay's initial foray into startups; working with grad students and postdocs; challenges translating lab research to startups; funding; partnerships; equity splits; lessons learned from failures and other topics. Shownotes: - Jay Keasling CV: https://www.jbei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019.10.19-Keasling-CV.pdf - Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) - Initial foray into startups: Amyris - Deciding which research projects become startups - Working with graduate students and postdocs - Building partnerships - Working with investors: Philanthropy, angel investors, VCs and corporate VCs - Faculty co-founders and equity split challenges - Pivots & networking - Lessons from failures

Donna Rainone and Mike Rainone are the founders of PCDworks. PCDworks is a technology development company that helped develop hardware for over 50 big companies in the oil and gas, transportation, healthcare and several other industries; and now helping startups with a new incubator model. We first talk about lessons learned from building innovative hardware products for big companies; how they use principles of epistemology while developing new products; how they borrow lessons from their training in psychology, architecture and engineering in this process; challenges with innovation at big companies; and then talk about their transition to helping startups with all this experience, where we talk about their ideation sessions; how they work with founders; their observations on common mistakes that founders make in the hardware space; infrastructure they provide and related topics. Shownotes: - https://www.pcdworks.com - Work with big companies - Tracking down the best around the world - Using psychology while working with people you don't know - Epistemology: Everything in product development process is a hypothesis - Ideation sessions - Oil companies learning from human biology: Pumps and pipes conference - Decomposing problems - Working with startups - Common mistakes and dipping into experiences to build better products - How could startups work with PCDworks -  "Letter of intent" is worth the toilet paper that it is written on - Infrastructure at PCDworks - Intellectual property agreements - What would it cost to work with PCD? - Mistakes to avoid - Contact: https://www.pcdworks.com/contact

Jo Varshney, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of VeriSIM Life, a startup developing disease-specific simulation software designed to replace animal drug testing by using artificial intelligence. We talk about translational gap in drug discovery, the technology VeriSIM is developing, especially their virtual mouse models; some of the mathematical models being used in the process of drug discovery, challenges building partnerships with big pharma; How FDA is evolving their thought process about accepting data from AI; acquiring another startup while being a startup; and finally about spinning out a pharma company as a subsidiary. Shownotes: - https://www.verisimlife.com - Translational gap & current technologies - Verisim's technology: -Building virtual mouse - Avoiding the royalty trap early on - What made investors trust a solo founder? - Mathematical models for biology - Building a startup not spun out of a university or without a PI a part of it - Filtering investors: Understanding the No's - Building partnerships - Lessons learned about commercialization - Things that didn't work while working with partners - Comparing apples to oranges - Product evolution: Translational index - Data sources - FDA efforts: How FDA is evolving their thought process about accepting data from AI - Team - Acquiring another startup - Spinning out a therapeutic company - https://www.verisimlife.com/careers

Manny Stockman is a Partner at Osage University Partners. OUP exclusively invests in startups spun out of university research. We talk about the investment thesis of Osage University Partners; technology readiness challenges; lessons learned from investing in early stage technologies at universities; challenges with the current market research used to evaluate product market fit; and spend some time talking about equity splits involving non-operating faculty members that co-founded startups. Shownotes: - https://oup.vc - No better time to launch a startup in the deeptech space - Startup hubs - Fund background - Investment thesis - Thoughts about market readiness - Being better prepared while approaching Osage: help them get to yes - Preparing to building startups at universities - Advice on amount for money that needs to be raised - Knocking out risks at early stages - How to differentiate signal from noise while talking to experts about new technology - Art of questioning to get to why a technology might not work - Challenges identifying product market fit and a need for new models - Investment amounts and stages: $250k-$8M - Patience while investing - Challenges with equity splits: Evaluating past vs future contributions - Past talk about equity splits at university startups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtCe2x12OFI - Incubator models and thoughts about diluting equity

Debkishora Mitra and John Waldeisen are the co-founders of Lucira Health. Lucira Health, which was originally founded as Diassess, is the first company to get an FDA approval for at-home PCR based test for COVID. We talk about the story of Lucira from its founding stage to raising; the technological and market based pivots; raising over $250M (including an IPO); COVID; leadership transition; regulatory affairs; ups and downs of the journey; FDA approval of at-home flu and covid test and the unfortunate bankruptcy. Shownotes: - https://www.lucirahealth.com - Educational backgrounds of the founders & how they met - Market exploration in search of billion dollar markets: markets for diseases like Malaria not big enough (~$50M) - Technology development: Disposable RT PCR; Passive Fluid actuation; Colorimetric PCR- Visible DNA amplification - Deborah Dean, MD, UCSF - Running PCR in the second bedroom at home; struggling to pay rent - Raising seed round - Visa struggles- Detour to deal with immigration struggles - Growing the team; mistakes - Transparency, radical candor - Ego - Fundraising: Kissing the frogs; building soft circles - Diagnostics market is super hard - Non-dilutive funding; mental models - Venture capital: Lessons learned - Pivots: Technological and market driven (STD, flu, COVID) - Challenges: Regulatory, customer centric thinking, scalability (manufacturing, distribution) - Deep dive into regulatory challenges: Issues with comparing with predicates - "In the diagnostic space, 'you don't want to be the first in the market" - Selecting an advisor to provide regulatory guidance for a startup - Deep dive into product development - Understanding the value of luck: Having a plan B - Evolution of the "Go to market" strategy - Government policies: Macroeconomic factors that affect pricing for startups - Create options as the CEO - Building the narrative - Leadership transition; journey towards IPO - VCs tie your personality to your startup- something to keep in mind for founders - Highs and the lows

Nick Dorsey and Amanda Gold are partners at Cravath, Swaine and Moore, LLP. Cravath has been known as one of the premier law firms in the US for more than two centuries. We talk about a wide variety of topics involving legal aspects for startups from incorporation to exit- incorporation, picking a law firm, equity split, vesting, hiring first employees or consultants, creating the right incentive structures using equity, valuation, negotiating with investors,  dilution of equity and safeguarding founder and employee equity. This is meant to be a primer on legal aspects for aspiring founders and also early stage founders listening to this podcast. Show notes: - https://www.cravath.com - Nicholas Dorsey, Amanda Gold - Incorporation:LLC, S-Corp, C-corp, Up-C structure - How to find a law firm to work with? - Charter, Bylaws, Shareholders agreement, 83b - Question to ask a potential co-founder: "How long do you intend to be at the startup?" - Can a startup pick more than one firm? - Equity split, vesting, rights - Hiring your first employees or consultants, creating the right incentive structures using equity - Restricted stock, RSU, stock options - Seed funding- Convertible notes, SAFE - Valuation, 409A, post-valuation, pre-valuation - Don't get stuck on valuation - Negotiating with investors, M&A, IPO - Tag along lines, drag along rights, consent rights - Liquidity, secondary sale - Trying to safeguard employee equity- providing liquidity to employees

Richard Wang, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of Cuberg, a startup building the world's first aviation-certified lithium metal battery pack. Robert is also the CEO at Northvolt America, which acquired Cuberg in 2021. We talk about the current challenges around battery innovation and solutions that are being worked on followed by Richard's journey from being a PhD student at Stanford where he also picked up his startup education; the technology behind the lithium metal battery they developed; lessons learned from customer discovery exercise; and also from Validation of battery performance claims by the Department of Energy; the reason for going after aerospace industry; stories about his fundraising journey; and finally about being acquired by Northvolt. Shownotes: - https://cuberg.net - Challenges in the battery industry on the technology innovation aspect - Overview of technologies being developed to address the challenges - Thought process behind launching Cuberg - Influence of Peter Thiel's class (Zero to One) and Stanford Ignite -  Cyclotron road - Lithium metal anode technology (Cuberg) - Validation of battery performance claims by the Department of Energy - Team, early hires, cultural fit, and lessons learned -  Blog on hiring https://www.carbonlighthouse.com/hire - Incubators/accelerators considered, and why Richard picked Cyclotron Road - Grant funding - VCs are probably not a good fit for battery technology startups - Lessons learned from grant submissions - Granting agencies:  https://www.afwerx.af.mil, https://calseed.fund, https://www.energy.ca.gov/funding-opportunities - Interactions with VCs - Strategic investors - Customer discovery process and how they ended up in aerospace industry - Lessons learnt from pursuing the wrong early adopters- lessons learnt from NSF ICorps - Acquisition by Northvolt - Careers at Cuberg: https://cuberg.net/careers

Vince Romanin, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Gradient. They are developing a new heat pump technology to address the impact that air conditioners impose on our climate. We talk about the problem with the current HVAC systems and air conditioners, the energy consumption and pollution they cause, history of heat pumps, and then learn about the new heat pump technology that gradient has developed to address some of those challenges. We then get into the details about the founding story; lessons learnt from grant writing; working with policy makers; crucial lessons learnt from customer discovery; role that timing plays and about why building hardware is hard.   - https://www.gradientcomfort.com - Building decarbonized HVACs - Sticky problems with HVAC: Emissions from electricity; use of fossil fuels for heating buildings; use of refrigerants - History of heat pumps - Problems with current heat pumps - Lessons from failed grant applications - Grants validate other granting agencies and private investors - Founders should align the funding agencies and investors - Pivot: Driven by the discovery that customers care more for the price than efficiency - Customer discovery process, I-Corps - Timeline for achieving the product market fit. - Working with government agencies/policy makers - Biggest takeaways from being accelerated at Activate - Pitch to VCs: Explain why your company exists - Role of timing - Hardware is hard & scalability - Careers

Wesley Jackson, Ph..D., is the co-founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Valitor. Wes was the founding CEO and led the startup through its Series B financing where they raised over$30M to date. Valitor is a biotech startup that uses a novel protein-biopolymer conjugation technology that was licensed from the University of California, Berkeley. Professors Kevin Healy and Dave Schaffer were the inventors of the technology and ended up co-founding the startup. We talk about Wesley's decision making process to launch the startup, the conjugation technology and the problems it is capable of solving; customer discovery process; lessons learnt from working with partners; finding product market fit; fund raising; importance of work-life balance while building a deeptech startup, a very important topic that is generally frowned upon at startups; and programs that helped Wes grow his startup, leadership transition and many other lessons. Shownotes: -  https://www.valitorbio.com - Decision making process to launch Valiant Bio - Working with faculty at UC Berkeley to spin out a technology - Multivalent Polymer conjugation for tissue localization to develop therapeutics - Customer discovery process - Speaking with physicians, feedback from grant submissions - Noise vs signal - Dissecting "No" from potential customers/investors - Speaking with potential partners: Timing and alignment - Questions to ask potential partners - Product market fit - Funding journey - Lessons learnt from grant proposal writing - Too much data: Mistakes in the pitch deck - Focus on markets - Building a biotech startup is mostly a marathon with a few sprints - Balancing life and family: Raising twins while building the startup - Doesn't make sense to burn employees as they carry. lot of institutional/intellectual memory - Role of the board and insights into independent board members - Leadership transition - Programs that helped- https://skydeck.berkeley.edu, California FAST Advisory program

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III is the President Emeritus of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) who served as president from 1992 to 2022. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance.. He was named in 2012 by President Obama to chair the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.  In 2022, Dr. Hrabowski was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In Addition, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) also launched the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program, a $1.5 billion fund to help build a diverse scientific workforce. We talk about the state of diversity in academia, the challenges, experiments and outcomes; how diversity is a hard problem; and topics like the pipeline issues, hiring, mentoring, building culture and several others, that academia has made some progress in and how the tech industry could extract lessons from the work done in academia. Shownotes - State of the union on diversity in academia and industry - Tech industry has done an abysmally bad job when it comes to diversity -  Diversity is hard: -  Majority of students taking STEM courses in the first two years of college do not graduate in those fields - Empowered university - Meyerhoff Scholars Program - Idea of Grit - It takes a long time to build a program; bring about change; small wins matter - Challenging ourselves and asking hard questions is super important to solve tough problems - Pipeline problem: Need industry to work with colleges early on by providing internships, so they can evaluate and build the pipeline - Hiring practices: Hiring people who don't look like you - Don't treat it as a way of giving a chance- a deficit model - We need mentors and champions - One should be able to talk about weaknesses and how to address - What could tech companies do to accommodate diversity once they hire them? - Success is never final - Need for role models - Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett- COVID vaccine - Hypothetical tool box for the tech industry - Dr. Hrabowski Bio, selected talks, publications and selected speeches: https://president.umbc.edu/freeman-hrabowski/ - TED talks: https://www.ted.com/talks/freeman_hrabowski_4_pillars_of_college_success_in_science?language=en                                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYMLt4MQ0Y - Articles and case studies on Meyerhoff scholars program: https://www.science.org/content/article/vaunted-program-boosting-diversity-us-academic-scientists-starting-spread https://www.proquest.com/openview/41df52ce92df0c921ff0dcd10e73da7f/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5008895/

Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. We cover the lessons learnt from Martin's journey as an academic entrepreneur founding Nicira and factors that aspiring entrepreneurs planning to translate their research to products should consider. - Story of an accidental Ph.D., turned into an accidental but very successful entrepreneur - Shares how working with others during grad school helped his entrepreneurial efforts later - Titles don't mean anything- Forget titles and make sure decision makers are responsible for their decisions long term. - Enterprise version of Product market fit means you have to be piped into the product, the market and the tech trends - Discount the advice given by technology advisors who don't understand product market fit. - Academics need to understand how people (customers) do their day to day processes and their current technology before proposing their new technology. - Thoughts about timing and persistence. - Advice on how to hire executives at startups. - Picking board members. - Thoughts on exits and how founders should think about exits - Ph.D.'s can make great CEOs but remember that business problems are harder than technology problems

Anjali Ramaswami, Tobias Schmid and Miroslov Gasparek, are leaders at Nucleate Bio, a nonprofit educational organization that empowers the next generation of bio-entrepreneurs to launch successful life sciences ventures. Their program connects early-career scientists with business students and provides a structured educational framework with one-on-one mentorship that leverages their world-class network & resources. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the pain points this group is addressing; understand how they match co-founders, their application process; guidelines and challenges for others considering launching a chapter of this organization at their universities; and subjects like diversity, cross pollination between campuses and many others. Shownotes - https://nucleate.xyz - Problems that Nucleate is addressing and back story to build this organization - Matching co-founders - Lessons learnt from team formations - Genesis: Developing a venture thesis based on an idea - Application process - Clinical track program - Speech language program to teach scientists how to talk about their research without revealing any key technology - Challenges initiating local chapters - Pairing MBAs with PhDs- what works? Cross pollination between campus - Addressing diversity -  Mentorship: From faculty, VCs, operators - Nucleate 2023 Activator application: https://nucleate.typeform.com/activator2023?typeform-source=nucleate.xyz - General Inquiry: contact@nucleate.xyz

Matt Price is the co-founder and President of Activate, a program teaching scientists how to bring their research to market. He was previously the Managing Director of Cyclotron Road, and comes with experiences in the  Renewable Energy space , Materials Science, and Venture Capital industry. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the Activate fellowship program, its origins, especially how they navigated carving out a niche but much needed space for supporting scientists to build startups. We will discuss details about the application process, challenges that the fellows generally face in this space, the support they provide, and what they actually look for in an idea or a founder trying to commercialize research. We will then find out more about the recently announced NSF fellowships for scientists and engineers in collaboration with the Activate fellowship program. Shownotes https://www.activate.org - What is Activate? - Origin story and Cyclotron Road - Business model of Activate vs incubators/accelerators - How VC funding model might not be appropriate for scientific entrepreneurs exploring technology translation - Activate fellows receive money, time and space t find out what kind of capital will help them build a company - Solving the brain drain problem - Types of industries covered - Activate fellowship: application process and selection criteria, timelines, fellowship amounts, and other benefits the program offers. - What success looks like: Economic value created; understanding market dynamics-capture value; identify the right source of capital - What they look for in an idea/founder - Scratching the intellectual itch - Activator readiness level - NSF Fellowships: https://beta.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-launches-entrepreneurial-fellowship-engineers - Hit milestones and receive funding from partner VCs - Delivering intimacy at scale - Apply to the program: https://www.activate.org/apply

Salvador Badillo-Rios, an Associate at the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC). We talk about the origins of the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC); funding priorities; criteria for funding; application process; and insights into best practices for applicants. Show Notes: - Website: National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) - Building hardware is hard - A new DoD initiative that enables dual-use hardware startups - Help product development by addressing the shortfall of private investment from trusted sources. - Some of the founders were looking to China for funding innovations - Areas of interest: Autonomy, Space, Sensors, Power, Communications - Selection criteria - Rolling applications - Application and Review process - Support post funding - Intellectual Property - Tips to Apply- Focus on the why; include risk and mitigation plan - Commercial Acceleration Opportunity (CAO) - Email: sbadillorios.ctr@diu.mil - Linkedin profile:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-badillo-rios/   Sub-contracting: Companies are allowed to subcontract some work since this is often needed for hardware startups (specialized manufacturing, etc). NSIC had several portfolio companies do this. However, subcontracting should not be the majority of the product development we are funding (the majority should be performed by in-house talent). NSIC looks at companies on a case-by-case basis.

Arkady Hagopian is an experienced professional in the market intelligence reports space both in industry and academic startup sectors. In this episode of lab to startup, we will talk about what market intelligence reports are; the building blocks of these reports; how startups could build one; mistakes to avoid; how to decide on hiring a firm if you are looking to do so.  This is going to be a master class for startups on this subject Shownotes: - What are market intelligence reports? - Breakdown of a typical market report - Good reports and not so good reports - TAM, SOM, SAM - How to size markets? - Rubric for market analysis- Bottom up approach, top down approach, competitor approach - Which method to choose? - Deep dive into competitive analysis - How investors view market reports by entrepreneurs- what to do and not to do? - How founders can avoid developing tunnel vision - KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) - Who should indulge in market research and build market reports at startups - Market research is not exactly science! - How do truly innovative startups present future markets? - How do you pick boutique market research firms to build a report for you? - Qualifying questions for market research firms - Arkady's LNKD:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkadyh/

Xiaoxi Wei, Ph.D (CEO) and Mark Kline, Ph.D. (CTO) are the cofounders of X-Therma, a biotechnology startup developing a breakthrough technology for regenerative medicine and organ preservation. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the challenges around  organ preservation and transplantation; and how a technology they developed at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory is being used to increase the life of organs to up to a week.We will talk about the inspiration to launch the startup, unique success around raising non-dilutive funding; creating a culture, and the importance of freedom to take decisions not driven by investors; Last but not the least, we will also get into their personal life briefly, as Xaoxi and Mark are unique co-founders on that front. Show notes - https://x-therma.com - Peptoid research originally developed for a DARPA project formed the basis for the underlying technology - Biomimicking chemistry in nature (fishes) to overcome freezing problems - Solid organ transplant still very inefficient due to limited amount of time to transport and transplant an organ - Product evolution - Determining the first product to develop, timing and timelines - SBIR grants and VC funding - Building the startup as an outsider (non-cryobiology experts) & role of KOLs - Turning down term sheets - The power of freedom while building startups by taking in the right money - Challenges in the organ preservation space - X-Therma assisting cell and gene therapy. - FDA Breakthrough device status - Culture and lessons learnt from hiring - Being partners at work and at home - Careers: https://x-therma.com/join-us/

Regis Kelly and Doug Crawford have been instrumental in building the Bay Area life sciences startup ecosystem over the past two decades. They continue to grow this ecosystem, making it easier for aspiring founders to translate their research to products at startups. In this episode of Lab to Startup, we talk about the story behind building QB3 that started over two decades ago; the challenges they had to overcome; the evolution of academia and biotech startups from 1970's to the current day; macroeconomic conditions that are shaping the funding and growth of this sector; government policies; lessons learnt from the Massachusetts biotech ecosystem; evolution of new research centers like the Arc Institute, Altos and others; and finally discuss ways to move more technologies out of academia to benefit the society. Shownotes: - Story of how Reg and Doug started working together - Story of how QB3 was built - Story of not believing in productizing university research to becoming champions of building startups - Concerns about curiosity driven research vs translational research - Herb Boyer and Bob Swanson founding Genentech - Changing markets and influence on biotech - Conversations around alternative research institutions like Altos Labs and Arcadia - Progress of academic entrepreneurship - You need public support to build startup ecosystems, especially in the biotech space - Credit card is a sufficient source of capital to start a biotech startup - Better interface between academia and business -  Ideas to getting technologies out of academic labs - Ways big pharma and biotech are working with startups - Need for looking beyond cancer - Workforce development to support biotech startup ecosystems - Lack of role models - Lessons learnt from Massachusetts biotech ecosystem - Addressing the lack of diversity in the botech space - Flexible space has been hugely beneficial in building biotech startups - Academic vs non-academic leaders leading startups ecosystems

Alice Zheng is a Principal at RH Capital, a venture fund investing in early-stage high-impact companies across the reproductive and maternal health landscape. Alice holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and MD and MPH from the University of Michigan. Alice was previously a women's health practice leader at McKinsey & company. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about femtech and women's health which is gathering some momentum of late; investment thesis of RH Capital and ways they work with founders; opportunities and challenges in this space; and also try to cover some topics that can help encourage aspiring female founders and investors not yet in this space. Shownotes: - https://rhiaventures.org/rhcapital/ - RH Capital, a Rhia Ventures fund, invests in early-stage high-impact companies that are driving innovation, access, and equity across the reproductive and maternal health landscape - Femtech/Women's health - Huge white spaces for investments into women's health - Networking for aspiring female founders - How other VCs can invest in this space - Making a business case for women's health - Areas ripe for investments - Roe v Wade: How innovation ecosystem can help the consequences - Hot off the press article written by Alice in HBS healthcare blog: https://www.hbs.edu/healthcare/blog/post/doubling-down-on-womens-health-innovation-and-leveraging-the-private-sector-in-a-post-roe-v-wade-era -- A few articles Alice co-authored while at McKinsey on women's health needs and innovation trends: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/the-dawn-of-the-femtech-revolution https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/unlocking-opportunities-in-womens-healthcare

My guest today is Rachel Haurwitz, co-founder, President and CEO of Caribou Biosciences. Caribou is a CRISPR genome editing company spun out of Jennifer Doudna's lab at the University of California, Berkeley. In this episode of lab to startup, we will talk to Rachel about how she built Caribou right after finishing her PhD in Jennifer Doudna's lab, and went all the way to taking the company public last year in the midst of a pandemic. We will talk about how she took a very nascent idea of CRISPR, built a team, raised funds, built collaborations with big companies; and built this very successful company that has recently reported phase I clinical study results. Shownotes - Caribou Biosciences - Rachel founded Caribou Biosciences right out of grad school, as Jennifer Doudna's first graduate student working on CRISPR - chRDNA technology enhances the specificity of gene editing and at multiple locations - Targeting cancers- both liquid and solid tumors - Autologous CAR T cell therapy is hard to scale - Caribou is working on off the shelf cell therapies- Allogeneic CAR T therapy - Massive pivot as an organization- started as a pure platform technology company to help other companies - Found real opportunity to help patients directly by developing therapeutics - chRDNA has provided several orders of improvement in specificity- no off target effects observed within the limits of detection - Phase I clinical trial ANTLER : https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04637763?term=cb-010&draw=2&rank=1 - The most important ingredient in building is not technology- it is team! - The first ten hires are the most terrifying hires for any startup - Analysis paralysis - Incoming interest in technology and money came from Dupont Pioneer and Novartis - Raise more money than you need! - Building the team and role played by Jennifer Doudna -  Lessons learnt from building and serving on boards - Job opportunities

Karthik Balakrishnan (CEO) and Anand Kesavaraju (Chief Strategy Officer) are the co-founders of Nodexus, a Biotechnology startup that is developing scientific tools to accelerate biological workflows and make them universally accessible. Their first product is a single cell sorting and dispensing machine. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the problems around single cell sorting and the solution they have come up with; the evolution of technology, challenges and advantages of growing a lean operation; identifying markets, mentors, and investors; and some of the lessons learnt building a scientific tools company. Show notes: - https://nodexus.com - Biotechnology company that commercializes tools to accelerate biological workflows and make them universally accessible. - Benchtop single cell sorting and dispensing - People who built something previously are a good fit to recruit - Some of the programs that helped: Berkeley SkyDeck, StartX, QB3, NSF I-Corps - Targeting right partners, investors is super important - How to convince people to use innovative products - Feature based on customer feedback - Being a part of incubators/accelerators gives a network around you to share and learn from problems that others are going through - Careers: https://boards.greenhouse.io/nodexusinc

Dr. Neil Ray is the Founder and CEO of Raydiant Oximetry, a medical device company that has developed a safe and non-invasive technology that directly monitors babies' oxygenation during childbirth. This prevents unnecessary C-sections for women during childbirth, while keeping the newborn safe. Neil is a clinical anaesthesiologist by training, who gave up his medical practice to build this startup. We talk about the underlying technology, the challenges Nail had to face while transitioning to the role of a founder; naive assumptions he made; innovation in women's health; Interactions with investors and fundraising; challenges that entrepreneurs in the medical device space face trying to get pilots at hospitals; go to market strategy and lessons he learnt being a physician entrepreneur. Shownotes: - https://www.raydiantoximetry.com - Raydiant Oximetry uses the principles of pulse oximetry to measure fetal oxygen levels - Uses light to measure the differences in the color of oxygenated vs deoxygenated blood - Built the solution based on his experience being a clinical anaesthesiologist - Very little innovation in women's healthcare - Naively (at the beginning) focused on the patients rather than thinking about the market size - Concept of market size is not hard. It just needs to be taught - Realize that selling is a big part of becoming an entrepreneur (always selling) - Making decisions with incomplete information - Colleagues were not too supportive during the transition to becoming an entrepreneur - Giving up a full time paying job as a doctor and becoming a founder is hard - Breaking down silos in medical practices and bringing other experts to the table - Investors want to see how you're putting your skin in the game before they invest- Neil gave up his job and invested from his savings to build the prototype! - Lessons learnt from interacting with investors as a physician - Angel MD, MD Angels, Mass Medical Angels, D Capital, Avestria Ventures, etc. - CITRIS Foundry helped tell a good story that helped them get into Fogarty Institute - 90% of the companies from Fogarty institute have been successful - Network effects at play - Working with hospitals to test prototypes is hard- Need a champion - Work on something transformative- not on incremental innovations - Sales cycle of medical devices are long at hospitals- need big, established players - As a small player, focus on clinical data and find someone else to sell - NSF I-Corps helped identify/understand stakeholders - It's easy to get into echo chambers. You need to become intellectually honest - Investors tend to say that there is no need for a product like this, but those in the space realize how important the innovation was. - Advice to physicians planning to launch a startup

Dr. David Kirn MD, is the founder, CEO and Chairman of Ignite Immunotherapeutics, which was recently acquired by Pfizer. David is a Physician-scientist and a serial biotech entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the industry with a focus on viral vector-based therapeutics including gene therapy and oncolytic virus cancer immunotherapy. We talk about acquisition models in the pharma and biotech industries; the origins of the idea behind Ignite, how the relationship with Pfizer was initiated in a novel “Build to buy” model; details of how the relation worked; benefits of working with big pharma, and how startups should think about such relationships. Show notes: 1. Business models for biotech companies 2. Oncolytic viruses to attack tumors and stimulate patient specific immune response 3. 100 year old technology to use viruses to lyse cancer cells 4. Onyx pharmaceuticals and use of Adenoviruses 5. Viruses didn't evolve enough to destroy cancer cells completely 6. Traditional nude mice not good enough for predicting behaviour in humans 7. PDX or mouse tumor models with intact immune systems slightly better- not one mode is good enough 8. Viruses good for oncolytic capabilities: Large transgene carrying capacity 9. Systemic delivery is important 10. Financing biotech startups- strengths and weaknesses 11. Pharma partnerships: Things to consider and how Ignite arrived at agreement to work with Pfizer (https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/pfizer-backs-cancer-vaccine-startup-ignite-immunotherapy) 12. Terms of the business agreement 13. The role that Pfizer played in the relationship, and the acquisition 14. Track record and connections help with partnerships 15. Way to think about fundraising, success, resources in biotech startups 16. Mistakes to avoid and lessons learnt from partnering with big pharma/biotech

My guest today is Hunter McDaniel, the founder and CEO of UbiQD, a startup exploiting quantum dots to improve agricultural yield in greenhouses and generating electricity by embedding them into windows. In this episode of Lab to startup, we talk about how non-toxic quantum dots were developed at Los Alamos; the evolution of the use cases; fundraising trials and tribulations; the complications of convincing multiple stakeholders in the solar space; and how Hunter's grit and persistence helped in building this startup. Show Notes: - UbiQD: https://ubiqd.com - Using quantum dots to modify sunlight to enhance photosynthetic efficiency and boost fruit and flower production - Help plants get more from the sun in a greenhouse and boost crop yields and quality without the cost or energy impact of lighting - UbiQD solar windows are made from glass laminated with a quantum dot doped interlayer to generate electricity - Translated research during his postdoc at Los Alamos national labs to products at his startup - Licensed some technology from MIT and the rest from Los Alamos - Technology evolved from trying to solve the problem of toxicity from cadmium and lead in quantum dots - Swapped Cadmium with Indium and Copper - Once the toxicity problem was solved, the hope was that companies would line up for the new solution - Initially funded by NSF SBIR grant (10th attempt) - While generating electricity from windows was funded, NSF I-Corp program helped find the greenhouse market - Increases crop yield by 10-30%; 6 Watts/sq.foot while maintaining transparency of windows (half of traditional solar cells) - https://ubigro.com - Understand all the people that had to be convinced to adopt the products - Ask for advice and you get money - Investors: Breakout labs, Scout Ventures, Keiretsu Forum, Sun Mountain Capital, Epic Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Arcview Collective Fund, Nanosys. - Relations with Nanosys, NASA, SpaceX, US Air Force - Contact: https://ubiqd.com/contact/

In this episode of lab to startup, we talk to Marcus Lehmann, the Co-founder and CEO of Calwave Energy. Calwave is unlocking the power of the ocean by harvesting the dense energy packed in waves, which is about 30-60 times more dense than solar or wind! We will talk about the underlying technology development, engineering challenges, partnerships that helped them learn faster and how they are currently testing their product under water near San Diego, California. One of the biggest surprises for me and their team is how reliable the product has been since it was installed under water last September!  This speaks for the meticulous planning and engineering prowess of the team from the design phase of the product development. Shownotes: - https://calwave.energy - Wave power has about 30-60X energy compared to solar and wind. - Wave energy hasn't became mainstream commercially because of a lack of scalable solutions - Research originally performed at MIT and UC Berkeley led to technology behind Calwave Energy - Extensive simulation studies helped - Original testing was made possible by funding from NSF and Wave energy prize - Startups tend to go too big too fast and fail- find out how they avoided that mistake, mostly guided by the Wave energy prize - Productive partnerships with DoE, naval architects, oil and pipeline industry, etc., that helped learn quicker (not reinventing the wheel) - Having MBA students from Cleantech to Market program at UC Berkeley, helped avoid the general push back from potential customers - DoE determines the locations for highest wave energy in the oceans - Lessons on fund raising- Lean operations, government grants, crowd funding and competitions funded Calwave for the longest time - Shortsighted view of some investors and technology evaluators comparing wave energy to solar and wind hurts - In the US, 50% of the population lives within 50 miles of coastline, makes transmission cheaper - Lessons learnt from other renewable sources of energy generation - Careers: https://calwave.energy/careers/

Sandy Kory is a Managing Director and co-founder of  Horizon Partners; and most recently announced a new Seed Stage Venture Capital Fund HorizonVC, where he is a General Partner.  Sandy has been advising bootstrapped technology companies for over 15 years and co-leads every client engagement. HIs approach is informed by actively investing in technology startups such as Palantir, Canva, and Zoox that went on to become unicorns. This episode is going to be an M&A 101 class for startups. Show notes: - Horizon Partners: https://horizonpartners.com; Horizon VC: https://horizon.vc - High-touch, “Artisanal M&A” model - Working with bootstrapped companies - How should startups think about M&A in their early stages- Understand negotiations? - Interests, options, criteria (Book referral: Getting to yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton) - Psychology of buyers and sellers- how they think and act - Signaling - Obvious, but never look desperate to sell - Game theory dynamics - Common mistakes that sellers make - What should a startup do when a buyer knocks at their door? - Tough and relatively easier negotiations- what was involved - How not to learn from past deals? - Role of relationships- past and present - How to pick an M&A firm? - Investment thesis at Horizon VC

Keis Ide is a partner at UTEC, a Japanese Venture capital firm investing in deep tech across the world. Keis focuses on innovative technologies as well as IT-enabled solutions. He spent 15 years in the US, half of which in Silicon Valley. He was awarded Forbes Japan Midas List (2017, 2020), Japan Venture Award (2021). UTEC has been working with academia in Japan and abroad including the University of Tokyo. They have supported technology ventures that are pioneering frontiers to solve global issues of humankind, by bringing together capital, talent, and knowledge; around science and technology. Their latest fund, UTEC 5, raised over JPY 30 billion in 2021. They provide hands-on support from the seed/early stages in cooperation with their partners in academia in Japan and abroad. Show notes: University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners - Founded as a VC firm because of a regulation change around universities in Japan - Startup marketing and whole product thinking - Characters they are looking for in founders - Investing in technologies that are applicable worldwide - Assessing technology risk vs market risk in deep tech startups - Segmenting customers- Finding the right maret vertical when you have multiple markets - Assessing market costs at early stages - How UTEC helps founders - Creating business plans in collaboration with founders - Difference between founders in Japan vs the US - A nice support system for early stage founders in Japan compared to the US - Areas that UTEC likes to invest - Discussion around the concept of speed for deep tech startups - Creating appropriate milestones and focus on solving specific problems rather than spreading thin solving many problems - Hiring external CEOs for deep tech startups - Contact: https://www.ut-ec.co.jp/english/contact

Alexandra Wright Gladstein is the founding CEO of Ayar Labs. Alex met her co-founders, Chen Sun, and Mark Wade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was pursuing her MBA. We talk about the research that resulted in launching Ayar labs, the learning curve that she had trying to master the technology while being a non-technologist and successfully driving the company; licensing, fundraising trials and tribulations; being a woman in tech; Me too movement; how to differentiate between good and bad advice; leadership transition; leadership lessons; and future goals. Show Notes: - Ayar Labs - Moore's law is going to come to an end and moving to optical technologies is inevitable - How we move data between chips hasn't evolved (over copper). So, Ayar labs came up a way to move data with light - Technology developed at MIT, UC Berkeley, Colorado University Boulder - Winning a startup competition at MIT helped spin off the startup. The underlying technology was originally funded by a $20M DARPA grant - Alex realized that this technology has the power to transform an entire semiconductor industry - Readiness of a technology is hard to evaluate - Interacting with engineers and speaking their language is important to understand how ready a technology is to hit the market - Product-market fit exercise - How to take advice and pick advisors? - Most VCs invest in software. So, focus on ones experienced in the semiconductor industry, who are more patient with capital - Patents and licensing agreements - Hard to know the reasoning for discrimination in the moment, especially as a female founder - Me too movement relly helped and it actually changed the way investors act now - Questions that investors ask differ if the founder is male vs female - Don't talk too much time about the downside risk, instead focus on the upside potential - Leadership transitions - Didn't want the VCs dictating a leadership change - Partnerships take a lot more time in the semiconductor industry - Patience is a virtue - If you are talking to a competitor, talk about results/outcomes rather than the process - No one built your startup previously. So, trust your tea, technology and gut than advice you receive

Prof. Amy Herr is the Executive Director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub (BBH) and Prof. Regis Kelly is the Director of Bakar Labs at the University of California, Berkeley. BBH is a new campus initiative that aims to launch the startups at  Bakar Labs, a world-class incubator. The facility is open to teams from around the world — a space where anyone can leverage all that Berkeley has to offer. Bakar labs will rent labs and offices to as many as 80 startup companies. The incubator will also provide extensive equipment with additional access to core facilities at UC Berkeley, so startups can bring life changing technologies to fruition. We talk about the origin story, the effort needed to transform a former Berkeley Art Museum to a biotech incubator; patient capital and resources being deployed to support the startups; partnerships being developed internally and externally; programming to benefit students and faculty on campus; intellectual property; changing biotech landscape and the vision for this magnum opus experiment. Shownotes Bakar Bioenginuity Hub and Bakar Labs Speaker Bios: Prof. Amy Herr, Prof. Regis Kelly - Trainees complained about not providing training or pathways for non-academic career pathways - Faculty couldn't fill much about public service in their promotion packages - Reg comes out of his retirement to head QB3 - Entrepreneurship was more vibrant on the engineering side of the campus but not much on the life sciences side - Born out of a vision for maintaining and expanding UC Berkeley's research eminence by growing on the innovation and entrepreneurship front - Easiest way for university research to work with big pharma and biotech was through startups - Convergence of ideas from different points of view made BBH happen - There is a need for building academic innovation centers to benefit the people funding academic research - A historic art museum (artistic heritage) was converted to a life sciences incubator - There was no money to renovate the museum! Some innovative thinking and generous donors helped transform it to a life sciences incubator. - Lessons for other universities could potentially learn to build such innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems - How does one get accepted to BBH? - BBH is open to problem solvers all over the world- not just to UC Berkeley affiliates - Women have been excelling at building companies. A lot more needs to be done to support Latino and other underrepresented minorities to build startups - Big philanthropies are investing in deeptech to deploy patient capital - A new Ph.D. fellowship program to support entrepreneurship efforts of PhD students for the last two years of their program - Phenomenal partnerships with every possible player in the ecosystem being built- biotech, pharma, VCs, law firms and more - Intellectual property will be owned by the startups - Get in Touch

Liam Berryman (CEO) and Lance Brockway, Ph.D. (CTO) are the co-founders of Nelumbo, a startup developing an advanced materials platform focused on improving the energy performance and minimizing corrosion challenges with heat exchangers in Air Conditioners and also mitigating icing on outdoor units and refrigeration. They are also developing water repellent material to replace PFAS in millions of products. We talk about the need for anti-icing technologies, the solution they have developed; and the impact the adoption of this technology could have on the environment. Since this is a problem that the whole world is trying to solve, we will explore the challenges in adoption of such technologies; funding that helped them get off the ground and the team that is driving their mission. We will take a deep dive into partnerships they developed to bring the product to market. Show Notes: Nelumbo - Impact: reduce CO2 emissions and usage of PFAS. - One of the first anti-ice technologies for heat transfer technologies and fluoro chemicals. - The Icing problem has generally been ignored, but it is time to address this problem hurting our environment. - Nelumbo's technology  could prevent 1-1.2 gigaton (2.2 trillion pounds) of Carbon Dioxide emission in the next 20-30 years! - Also, usage of upto 100 metric tons of fluoro chemicals/year could be avoided (from the current usage of PFAS) - Technology developed at UC Berkeley. - Nelumbo has developed a multi-layered, tunable, and scalable suite of surface modifications that provide superior fluid and corrosion control. - They partnered with manufacturers to bring their technology to the market. - Business school case studies on partnerships were not helpful in building partnerships with the right folks in the supply chain. - Important aspects of partnership: Understand motivations, cultural barriers, manage communications well, identify decision makers, have a point of contact. - It takes seven meetings to close a deal. - European industrial companies have been faster in adopting technologies in this space- Most first world countries are adopting faster than the US. - Entrepreneurs generally think that people really care about efficiency, but usually it comes down to cost and other motivating factors. - First funds into the startup were from a startup competition. - Team: An undergrad (drops out of college) and teams with two PhD's, and ends up becoming the CEO. - You need a certain level of naivety when you are launching a startup. - Evolution of VCs in the cleantech space. - Good investors don't try to come in and change the course of the startup. - Example of a startup with extreme transparency with team members.

Jalel Sager, Ph.D. (CEO), Austin Cappon (Networks & hardware), and Jonathan Lee (Senior R&D Engineer) are the co-founders of a California based startup, New Sun Road (NSR). They develop cloud-based technology systems designed to distribute energy (clean technologies), and internet connectivity issues for off-grid communities around the world. We talk about how New Sun Road originated from a class at UC Berkeley that led to the evolution of various products that now is able to provide renewable electricity and internet to several communities around the world for the first time in their lives. The founders share their experiences building NSR with grants, under extremely resource-limited geographical locations in Vietnam and Uganda; prioritizing technology development rather than taking on new projects; how grit, resourcefulness, and patience helped them persevere; about how important it is to be on the ground when you build this kind of a startup, even though it is hard; and the lessons learned from building NSR. Show notes: -New Sun Road -Job Openings: https://newsunroad.com/careers/ - Problems being solved: Building distributed energy systems for clean technologies; provide internet and energy access to remote and developing communities - Founders first met in a class at UC Berkeley - Grants from the governments and UN catalyzed the initial research - Started the company by building a microgrid in Vietnam - A visit to the United Nation to receive an award led them to another project on a remote island in a fishing village in Uganda- lit up their main street with 20 connections! - Guests talk about the ground reality of working in a resource limited village - While off the shelf components helped them build the initial product (in one of the founder's mon's garage), the team had to pivot to building more robust hardware - Working on the ground is super important while building a startup in this space. No alternative! Cannot build a startup working remotely - Where do you start if you are trying to build a startup in an under-resourced country? - You will get your butt kicked! - Need grit and extreme planning, especially when you don't have funding - How do you get help on the ground in places like Uganda or Vietnam? - Building something in a tough geographical location has to happen before a big partner like Microsoft can trust early stage founders - CITRIS Foundry, a startup incubator at UC Berkeley was very helpful in terms of infrastructure to build and learning about startups - Microsoft was an incredible partner that helped build the first systems and also with the pivot -Microsoft  initially provided a grant; develop software for control of remote power systems and microgrids; ultimately became an investor in New Sun Road - Unconventional funding path- focused on generating revenue than trying to raise a lot of venture capital - How they treat competition - What scares them and keeps them on their toes? - “Helping a community get electricity for the first time in their lives is extremely satisfying.”

Irene Griswold-Prenner, Ph.D., is the founder and CSO of Nitrase Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company deploying its unique NITROME platform to unlock the therapeutic potential of nitrases, a new class of enzymes discovered in-house that offer the promise of a pipeline of therapies against a broad variety of diseases. Their breakthrough discovery of the enzymatic nature of protein nitration by nitrases, as well as our understanding of their exquisitely selective and specific mechanism of action, enables the identification of novel and differentiated small molecule drugs that target the core biologic processes of many diseases, starting with Parkinson's Disease. We talk about the origin of Nitrase Therapeutics, unique insights that led to founding the startup, breakthrough discovery, past experiences, funding, teams that helped build successful ventures, latest Series A funds raised and lessons learnt in her journey as a scientist and entrepreneur. Show Notes: Unique insight: Nitration, the addition of a nitro group to proteins was considered as just another chemical reaction. Irene from her own research long ago believed that the nitration is actually an enzyme mediated reaction and the startup idea was to identify the enzyme. responsible for nitration and drug it for therapeutic benefit.  It was just an idea, a hypothesis that originated 18 years ago (2002), which gave her sleepless nights over the years that ultimately led to launching Nitrase Therapeutics in 2017. Nitrase Therapeutics - Trained as an oncologist but brought in Athena and then to Elan pharmaceuticals to study signals transductions that were going haywire in Parkinson's disease. - Came across nitration and worked on a side project at Elan pharmaceuticals - There will be naysayers and so did Irene, who talks about her coping mechanism and how the idea survived and got funded. - Program Lead for iPierian's R&D Tau Program acquired by BMS for up to $725 million. - Elan was sold to Perigo, from whom Irene and her partners were able to license and start Imago pharmaceuticals - How does one approach a company to ask if you can license their preclinical programs that were about to be discontinued? - Lessons learnt from working at pharma and biotech companies, and starting your own company - Had a blast working with two other female co-founders - San Francisco Bay Area still has the best people to work with-scientists or otherwise. - Used to do everything from payroll to ordering at Imago. Moved to Trinet at Nitrase - Seed money came from Caspar, Wyoming, in spite of having VC connections in her previous life (contacted about 40-50 VCs, who expressed interest but gave no money). - Money came from non-biotech investors in the middle of Wyoming, because they believed in Irene and the idea - Fund raising had very clear milestones - It took 8 months of grueling work to identify the first nitrase- an idea translated to reality! - Every gene in the human genome has been discovered but we are yet to grasp their functions completely- far from it. Experts behave as if they do know it all! - Recruited the first team two members: One had the best hands in experimental techniques and the other that helped with protein purifications - Raised Series A of $45M - Brought in investors that could help Irene - Clear from the beginning that she was going to bring in an external CEO when the time was right. It was important that the company does well. - Naysayers probably thought- "How did you come up with the idea if I couldn't". Just show the data and don't bother too much

Summary: Marija Vrljic, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Scalmibio, an early-stage biotechnology startup that developed a transformational technology focused on oncology applications. We talk about the inspiration for launching the startup, how she was able to bootstrap the company, raised non-dilutive funds which ultimately led to being acquired in October, 2020. Show notes: - ScalmiBio is a startup that was born when Marija was diagnosed with thyroid cancer - Technology: Antibody prodrugs that could target only cancer tissues and remain inactive around healthy tissues. - Startup was based on unique insights (around protein folding and publicly available protein databases) that came from deep understanding of work during graduate and postdoctoral research. - Founding story - Bar for founding a startup for scientists with data packages from their research is much lower. In terms of fundability- In vivo model as a proof of concept seems to be more fundable for life sciences startups. - SBIR/STTR funding Small Business Transition Grant For Early Career Scientist: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-CA-21-001.html NCI SBIR Concept Award https://sbir.cancer.gov/funding/concept NCI SBIR writing assistance program: https://sbir.cancer.gov/programseducation/aap?cid=eb_govdel - Writing out a grant gives clarity and helps builds a business case - The whole scientific field would say that the technology might not work because there was not enough data - Talking to folks (once you filed provisional patent) in the industry usually helps entrepreneurs understand potential issues on both the technology and business fronts. - You need to have a lead product before talking about platform plays - Raising VC funds to take a product to the market might not always be the fastest way. Working as a part of a bigger company with the right resources - Recruited by Pat Brown as one of the first scientists to work at Impossible Foods - Understanding the concept of scaling and costs/pricing is super important as you embark on the startup journey - It is hard to stay competitive- You have to move fast and get better results than the competition - Network with engineers, law students, MBA students and others while in grad school/postdoc- a valuable skill!   Startup Pitch ubiqd.com Email: Hunter McDaniel- hunter@ubiqd.com

Douglas Crawford, Ph.D., is the General Manager of MBC Biolabs, Managing Partner of Mission BioCapital, a VC fund investing in life sciences startups at the seed and Series A stages. We talk about the facilities that help scientists at MBC Biolabs, how to get accepted to the labs, partners, golden tickets and stories of startups; funding hypothesis, the impact, and investment criteria to get funded. Show Notes MBC Biolabs  Mission Bay Capital - Started with a realization that nothing that is discovered in a lab at a university by itself cannot benefit a patient without a company in between. - Startups are the most efficient engines to turn an idea into something very practical and useful for society. - Experiment: If we provide a Minimum Viable Space to a scientist, could they do something catalytic to their idea or project? - In the mid 2000's, 100% of VCs in the Silicon Valley said that it is a terrible idea to start a life sciences incubator. They said a biotech incubator will be like an ICU for startups. - Biotech companies don't have market risk- They mostly have technical risk. - The startups that incubated at MBC Biolabs (since 2013) raised over $10 Billion, brought 54 programs to the clinic, 13 approved diagnostics, and 71 products to market. - Selection criteria to get accepted to MBC Biolabs. - If a scientist was lucky to be funded by a VC in the mid 2000's, she/he would have spent about 6-12 months getting their lab up and running, which was fixed by incubators like MBC Biolabs. - Incubators give an opportunity for scientists to prove themselves. - Strategic advice isn't very popular with life sciences entrepreneurs. They are mostly looking for technical validation. - Different definition of pivot. - Golden Tickets - Origin story of Mission Bay Capital- How Jack Wadsworth, Honorary Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Advisory Director of Morgan Stanley globally. encouraged them to raise a fund to invest in startups Doug and his team were incubating. The fund evolved into Mission Bio Capital. - Invest in therapeutics (70%), diagnostics, medical devices, and food. - How they look at risks and insights, and how they invest. - Checkout stories of Caribou Biosciences- Jennifer Doudna & Rachel Haurwitz; Alector- Arnon Rosenthal, Ph.D. - Nitrase Therapeutics- Irene Griswold-Prenner. Story of how a whole new class of enzymes were identified - Areas of interest for investment. - Thoughts on ways the investment funds need to change. - Book recommendations: Noise, Super forecasting

Rocket Fund: https://rocketfund.caltech.edu/ Email: Stephanie.yanchinski@caltech.edu Application process and background information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ubtkD1ziVeXqDChnL00gP6wDFWTsQGb/view?usp=sharing Application: https://platform.younoodle.com/competition/caltech_rocket_fund_2022 - A program that has a way to introduce startups to decision makers at utility companies, who can help discuss their needs and adopt new technologies. - They grant $25,000- 75,000 to startups that provide much needed support for designing prototypes, buying equipment, and getting certifications, which other grants don't cover. Prefer startups with TRL 5-7 based on Department of Energy guidelines. - Program partners like IN2 Wells Fargo and Shell Game Changer offer $250,000 of in kind support that gives you access to technology advice from The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Access to their facilities; customer validation, etc. - The other partnership is with the Electric Power Research Institute - A new Technology Early Deployment (TED) program in collaboration with Southern California Edison (SCE)- Brings Rocket Fund companies access to program managers at SCE. - Lessons learnt from successful and not so successful startups - How scientists/engineers should move away from loving their technology and working towards market adoption (Inventions turning to innovations). - Seed funding landscape for climate tech. Prime Movers lab, Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office - Requirements to apply and focus areas for this granting period - 20% of grants will be made to teams with diverse leadership