Navigating the World of Biotech Investments and Entrepreneurship ft. Dr. Michael Deem

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
She had done Deem Joe people, she'd be telling lies,
all right.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
So today it is my pleasure to interview doctor Michael Deem,
a venture Capol Advisor star founder. He's also the former
chair of bioengineering at Rice University. So doctor Dean, thank
you for being part of this episode. And I have
such a successful career game storted, you're taking us back
and tell.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Spell your background for a pleasure to be on your show.
I've seen you've interviewed so many great people in the
last few months, so you really wanted to be on
your list of people as well. I guess some time ago,
I got my BS and Chemic Counschring from cal Tech,
got my PhD, also Chemic Country from UC Berkeley. I
went to Harvard. I did a post talk in physics.

(00:50):
While I was out there, I was director of drug
sign at a company called Puragan. I was the number
ten person. We had a nice one hundred million IPO.
Some time ago I was one to be a professor,
so I went to UCLA. I got tenured there in
four years. A couple of years later, Rice University recruited me.
I helped build their biological efforts. I started the first
PhD program in the US with synthetic biology on the title.

(01:13):
We even beat Harvard on that. Pam Silver was one
of our advisors. She really congratulated us. That was I
guess now ten twelve years ago, we might call that
engineering biology.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
I was chair of the bioentry department a Rise, It's
a top ten department. I was responsible for about four
hundred people, about twenty seven million budget. I always liked
working with small companies. Probably the biggest one was ion
Torrent Systems. I was the number three person there. I
did all the original engineering calculations that eventually was sold
to Thermo Fisher four two point three billion. I enjoyed that.

(01:47):
I liked working with small companies. I decided to join
venture capital as an entrepreneur in residence with Coastal Adventures. There,
I helped evaluate companies for portfolio inclusion. I helped mentor
about five of our companies, one of them the Sea
as my old student, my old TA from a long
time ago. I helped set his go to market strategy
and they just did a potential billion dollar deal with Mark.

(02:08):
I helped start help incubate about five companies at COSLA.
I really enjoyed that, and this is now what I
work on.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, man, so I want to go to So they
got a chemical engineering and BS and MSA, you move
to physics. I'm just asking how do you move from
these two because they seem really different.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Sure, so chemical engineering back in the day, it's a
pretty broad degree. Many of us have gone in very
many different directions. Probably half of us now are in
the bioengineering space. So I sort of transitioned from a
chemical engineer to a bioengineer. My PhD advisor was a
physical chemist, and then my postdoc advisor was a physicist.

(02:49):
So I have a background in statistical mechanics and physics
and this is a nice lens that we can use
to understand and model and engineer the world.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
M h Yeah, I mean so, I mean you mentioned
during that PC director of a drug design at Cure Jen.
So why do you start out in courage In Like,
was it like a friend ask you to work there
or was it something else?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Sure, Curechin was a pretty interesting company. It was started
by two graduates from Yale and then also they had
met each other at Carnegie Mellon as undergraduates, and then
one of them had gone to Berkeley as a PhD student.
So when I was just graduating from Berkeley, that one
the president he was out looking for people and my

(03:33):
name came up. So I had a meeting with Greg went,
the president of Curage, and they went pretty well. I
met the CEO, Jonathan Rothberd. It's a very talented entrepreneur,
and I decided to decided to join them. It was
very early in the days of drug design by what
we now call page display.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, so I when I get to your research, you
did the europe Professional so you developed that this quantified
accent effectiveness and anti in a distance for influenza. So
can describe morvoid methods.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So influenza it's a virus, right that maybe five to
fifteen percent of us get every year. It generally goes
from birds to pigs to humans, so it's evolving not
only in humans, but it's also evolving in the birds.
So we get a vaccine for influenza. It's available every
year in the northern hemisphere. That vaccine. We get it

(04:28):
around October. It's manufactured around July, and the World Health
Organization and the national health bodies decide which strains to
put in the vaccine between January and March. What we
worked on was how can we predict the effectiveness of
the vaccine. The flu mutates from year to year. That's

(04:50):
why we need to redesign the vaccine every year, and
when the vaccine is manufactured, there are differences between the
original strains and the strains that end up in the vaccine.
Those differences between the vaccine and the flu can affect
how well the vaccine pro texas we worked to quantify
the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the r squared between

(05:13):
our predictions and what we see in humans is quite high.
It's about ninety percent, so it's about three times more
predictive than the standard gold standard models in the field,
the ferret models.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
M Yeah, and I just want to ask, so know,
just recently beat covid and the closed vaccines came out,
was your method used quantified COVID effectiveness?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
This future development of our approach. So for the flu
our vaccine effectiveness calculation methods, we call it p empotope.
They're used by national health authorities on six of the
seven continents of the world. The only one that doesn't
use it is Antarctica. That's because there's nobody there, So

(05:59):
this is an natural extension would be to look at
the COVID vaccines, right, because covid is pretty similar to
the flu. It mutates every year. We'll need to redesign
the vaccines for covid, and how do we predict when
new vaccines will be needed? Our approach is one way
to begin to answer that question.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, and the next you also developed the theory of
immune pressure on the virus, So can you talk more
about it?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Sure, So the virus evolves every year, and it's evolving
based upon pressure from the immune system. Our immune system
recognizes the virus, the antibodies will recognize the virus, and
this will prevent the virus from infecting us. And if
the virus is to persist, it's a living organism in

(06:48):
conjunction with the host species. For the virus to continue
to exist, it has to evade that immune pressure, and
it does it by making mutations in the regions of
the virus that the system recognizes. So, particularly in those
epithope regions, there are lots of mutations and it's the
vaccine and our immune system that's putting those pressures on

(07:09):
the virus to evolve.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah, So I know you also did research on predictive
of physiology, So what is it and what framework did
you develop for it?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Sure, so we were working with a critical care surgeon.
One of the issues is in breathing machines. People about
seventy percent of the people in ic US are on
breathing machines, and one of the questions is when they
can when can they be taken off. You'd like to
take the person off the breathing machine as soon as

(07:46):
possible because you'd like to have them breathing for themselves
and developing their lung muscles. You'd rather not have them
on breathing machines if not necessary. But conversely, you don't
want to take them off too early because if they
can't breathe for them, than where we need them on
that breathing machine. So we worked on predicting when people
could be taken off the breathing machine in the general setting.

(08:09):
You know, what we were thinking towards is can you
predict five minutes ahead what will happen to a person.
And really the patients that the doctors need to focus
on are those patients that are going to have an
issue five minutes from now. If you could predict that
it'd be very helpful in the ICU for the nurses
and the doctors taking care of the patients.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, and also I think your lab and rise about
the widely used defacts and zef some ethis for zeolites.
So what is a xolite and what are these methods
used for in xeolites.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Zeolite is a word. It comes from the Greek. It
means boiling stone. You probably use them in the chemistry lab.
They're used as desseconce they dry out liquids. More generally.
We're here in Texas, so we will find a lot
of petroleum. In the process of refining petroleum, zeolites are used.
So zeolytes turn the long oil chain molecules into the

(09:05):
short gasoline molecules. Pretty Much every molecule gasoline that is
burned in a car goes through a zeolite. So I've
worked on zeoltes for quite a while, over thirty years.
One of our specialties is solving the structures of zeolites.
We use the ZEPHSA two method to solve zeolite structures,
and about a dozen zeoltes, about two hundred known zeolytes,

(09:27):
about one hundred and fifty synthetic zelites. About a dozen
of those their structure has been solved with our ZEPSA
two method, and then defacts is a way of calculating
X ray diffraction patterns from zeolites. Zeolites often have a
certain type of defect structure, and that makes the X
ray diffraction pattern a bit blurred. We can calculate that pattern,

(09:52):
all right.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
So my next question now is, like you were in
the chair of the balance and Department of Rice, say
you double the departments funding a thing earlier you mentioned.
I'll just wonder, like, what, why do people like you?
Because I've had a lot of people and they've done
the same thing like you. Why do you go back
to the I guess the entrepreneurship world when you're having

(10:16):
so much success in your lab in essay and academic administrator.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Sure, so this says sort of the second half of
my life here, I'm interested in doing something new. It's
always exciting to help others invent the future. In entrepreneurship,
we are working to make the world a better place.
I'm focused on healthcare, diseases of old age, diseases of infection.

(10:48):
These are all things that affect billions of people in
the world and if we can alleviate suffering, that's fantastic.
M hm.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
So yeah, I want to talk more about Eye on
Tours system. So what's part of the ion turns specifically
make that made it sold for two point three billion of.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Course, or iun TORN systems. There the idea was to
sequence DNA. This is one of the third generation sequencing companies.
We were sequencing DNA by watching the pH change as
the enzyme copies the DNA. So we would put maybe
one hundred thousand copies of the DNA on a bead
in a small well at the base of the well

(11:29):
as a pH sensor, and we watched the pH change
as the DNA as copy. We had about eighteen percent
of the sequencing market. At one point, I TORN was
sold to Life Technologies, and then that part of Life
was sold to Thermo Fisher for two point three billion.
It's still used because it's part of the FDA approval
for a number of commercial products that are sold by

(11:52):
Thermo Fisher.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah. So I want to get into your entrepreneurship life.
I know you founded at the Celtic Tomb ghost or
so my question was what value into consulting.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Sure, so it's interesting to work with companies both large
and small to develop products of the future.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
And so now the surgis you usually advise like early
stage companies or lay stage or big companies are in
the star market. Like what my questions of what what
companies do you you should advise? Is it like startups
or is it like more established unicorns or like public companies.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Sure, in the past I've tended to work with larger
established companies when I was an academic. Now I'm more
involved with entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist, so we'll work
with startups as well.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
How about it? Oh, so surface is like part of
the thing.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Service is one way that we engage with companies, including startups. Yes,
so have you.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Have we heard has the public heard of any of
the companies you probably work with as an advisor.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Sure, we tend to, you know, not talk about that openly.
But again, it's large companies, multinationals as well as small startups.
We love working with people to develop technology and to
make the world a better place.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
M Yeah, so I know. There's also other big consulting
firms orspecan Sy, There's Boston Consulting Group in their center, right,
So my question is what makes search is different from
these big firms that would attract entrepreneurs who choose or
just in not these big four and not the big
four of consulting firms.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Sure, it's interesting. I'll answer that question in a broad sense.
Some of the venture capitalists are coming from the consulting field.
So we'll see people from McKinsey, We'll see people from
the Boston Consulting Group. Some of them even have started
their own venture firms. Boston Consulting Group, for example, has
its own venture fund. We're a small boutique consulting company.

(14:07):
We will be helping large companies where we have specific expertise,
and then we'll be helping startups as they try to
make the world a better place with their technologies.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Mm hmmm. So yeah, I saw you link and has
said you you're you're not working at search us anymore.
So my question is why do you leave Searches like
the consulting company.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Founded so sort of still is active.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
But I saw sets from your linking ballot says you
ended your position as CEO.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
So we're still active at startus. We're still active in
helping companies, you know, pursue their mission to make the
world a better place.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
Mh. So you're I mean, you're the entrepreneur in resident
at the Solo Ventures. So yeah, what you choose the
sole adventure specifically STAF of other wrench capitalist firms.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Costa is a great place. Costla grows the money with
a very high internal rate of the return. They're a
Tier one venture capital firm. They're one of the best
in the world. Banotte himself he can see five years
into the future. He's quite a fantastic person. He's very
connected in Silicon Valley and they've done a great job
of helping others invent the future. It's an inspired place

(15:27):
to be with.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
So what does I mean by the way, I've seen
a lot of this entrepreneur in resident roles that like
on linked In that the VC furbush trying to find
So what so what does the EIR specifically do?

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Maybe it depends on the firm. So an entrepreneur residence
is someone who they work with a usually venture capital firm.
They they bring expertise in some area. It might be business,
it might be scientific, it might be strategy, and then
on the other side they're helping the venture capital firms

(16:07):
evaluate startups, they're particularly looking to incubate companies. So one
of the best investments, one of the best investments a
venture capital firm can do, is to incubate a company.
They can get in very early, they can start the company.
Many of the venture capital firms are focusing on this

(16:29):
these days, and entrepreneurs in residents are one of the
natural ways that a VC firm can incubate a company.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
So, as a venture to the startup companies and worson
advice that you should give to these star up companies
that you work with.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Sure, So let me answer that in two ways. First,
from the venture side, generally, we're looking at four legs
of a stool for a startup. We're looking at the
executive quality. We are looking at market, is it a
large market, is the timing particularly good? Is there a
reason to do this company now? And then finally, what

(17:07):
is the protective moat around the company? In the deep
tech space, that would be what is the intellectual property
of the company. So those are the four things that
the companies want to be focusing on. And for a seed,
startup and incubation, you know you don't have to have
all four, but three out of four would be quite
good to have. That would make you really strong. Then
I would say on the direct advice to the founder side,

(17:32):
it's always difficult to start a company that it's going
to require more persistence than you imagined. So grid at
persistence is a big feature for founders, and really focus
on your mission. Why is it that your company will
make the world a better place? Focus on that.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, And then my Nex's question is have you ever
worked with any founders who were like kind of kind
of hard to work with that, like, like the VC
partners had to take over the company.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Sometimes this will happen, and it also depends on the
VC firms. Some firms are more likely to do that,
some are less likely to do that. Of course, as
a VC, we'd prefer to invest in a company that's
got great management, right, that's one of the four legs
of those stool. If we're doing an incubation, then we
can put in the management. Sometimes that can work well.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
So no, this is more specific to two people who
are having start ups. Now, So what factors do you
think the most important making sure startups are able to
secure more funding? You know, especially in about take few words,
you need a lot of money to do drug trials
and stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
So for founders, think about where the market is going.
If it's a tough market, well then that's a good
time to hire people. But it's also difficult to raise money.
So think about where you will raise money from. Think
about what areas are particularly hot right now, and if
you know if your idea aligns with an area that's hot,

(19:04):
that will be good for you. That'll be good for
your evaluation, may be good for your ability to raise money.
The number of competitors shouldn't be too large, right. You
don't want to have maybe more than five or so
competitors in the area. You don't want to have zero
because that doesn't quite make sense, and you don't want
to have more than five that's too competitive. So you

(19:26):
want to be one of the leaders in the field
and continue to develop your network. Probably your network will
really help you fundraising, That will help you with ideas,
they'll help you with mentoring.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, and then so I have a question. So I
don't know if you are Shark Tank before, but basically
you know shark Tank their entrepreneursy pitched your ideas to
the to the sharks for investments. So is is what
happens in a shark tank kind of similar to what
happens when in real life. I guess in the.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Deep tech area, which I'm most familiar with, we're generally
looking at companies that don't have sales yet. On shark tank,
it's more it is smaller companies, but typically they're already
having a sale, so maybe more of a consumer type
of company. In the deep tech area, we're more looking
at the founders. We're looking at the intellectual property, we're

(20:20):
looking at the idea. We're thinking, can this company be
a leader in this field in three to five to
seven years.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
So I think another care to issue I think post
star ups encounter is cash flow and oh is cash
flow mane. So a lot of botic starts usually have
negative cash flow. I've had some guests on there and
they said their startup when they started, had negative cash flow.
They were picking any money. So what advice do you

(20:51):
usually give to star ops to try to get them
to bring in revenue and have a positive cash flow eventually?

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Sure, so in the deep tech space, it's quite difficult
to have revenue. In the consumer space, yes, you want
to have revenue as soon as possible if you have
a SaaS model. For example, you're selling software as a service,
that's fantastic, that's great for building revenue. The incremental cost
of an additional customer and a SaaS model is almost zero.

(21:17):
So a SaaS model is a really great way to go.
Using artificial intelligence is a great way to go. It
can dramatically reduce costs and increase the range of products
that you can offer in the deep tech space. Generally,
we will be funded by investors for quite some number
of years, five seven years, so we will be having

(21:39):
negative cash flow for a while in the anticipation of
very positive cash flow once the technology is proven it
gets to market. Some companies will go after grants from
the government. In many cases, though this can be a distraction.
My feeling is better to let the academic co founders
continue their academic work on grants, company pursue the implementation

(22:02):
and the development through venture funding.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah, so why you think rants are more distracting? I mean,
I think I know alumna I had the co founder
on there and he said that he was applying grants
to fund the company. So why do you think that's
more of a distraction.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
A lot of times, grants can have aims which are
not really aligned with those of the company, and the
company can get distracted by pursuing the grants instead of
pursuing the technology and pursuing the customers.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
M So, what are some characteris systemic good VC.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Or VC firm? Sure so vcs. If we think about
a VC firm, they have a dual role. One role
is to support founders and to help founders invent the future.
And on the flip side, they have a responsibility to
their investors what are called the limited partners, to invest
that money wisely and to grow the money. So the

(23:01):
general partners of the VC firm, they will see both
sides of that. The general partners will be interacting with
the investors to secure funds for the venture capital firm,
and then they will be designing the portfolio construction. They
will be looking at the types of companies they want
to invest in, what stage the companies are invested in,

(23:23):
what are the size of the companies. And then the
other people in the firm, for example, the partners, they
will be sourcing deals. They'll be looking for good companies.
They'll be supporting the companies that they invest in. So
an understanding of the company formation and company running process

(23:44):
is very helpful. Vcs who are former operators, they can
be very effective because they understand the difficulties of running
a company. And in some sense, VC is a bit
of a service model, right. They're serving both their investors
and the companies they invest in. So for us to
keep that in mind and to maintain some humility is

(24:05):
always a good thing.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, So I just want to talk. I know, I
think last yearsonly Silicon Valley Bank crash. So did it
affect the sella and your starrups in any other way?

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Sure? That was a pretty interesting experience. So Silicon Valley
Bank is a bank that seventy or eighty percent of
startups had their money in. Many of the big VC
firms had their money in that bank. Many of them
sort of required their startups to put their money in
that bank as well, and when their investment strategy ran

(24:41):
into difficulties, it was a big concern for the industry.
Venture capital is helping invent the future economy of America,
so the US wisely decided to help out Silicon Valley Bank. Now,
there are a number of other banks offering services that
are similar Toilicon Valley Bank, So startups don't have to

(25:02):
use just Silicon Valley Bank. There are three or four
pretty good alternative about there right now.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
And yeah, I just want to say regardless startups adventure
so those startups are no problem right with Silicon values.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
For about a week, people work quite nervous, right because
both the venture capitalists had their money in the bank
and the startups had their money in the bank. There
was quite a bit of startup money in Silicon Valley Bank,
So for about a week people were concerned what was
going to happen to all this money.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah, so Baltic starts to face like a downturn, funding
ninepos in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Do
you think it's how do you think it's going to
to be perverse this year?

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Sure? So. The number of deals in biotech startups, especially
pharmaceutical startups, is down about seventy percent in dollar terms
the last two years. The IPO window has been pretty
close os this is a good time to invest. So
historically when there's been a big reset like that, this

(26:07):
is likely the bottom or near the bottom of a trough,
and historically this has been a good time to invest.
So people who are investing now, people who are raising
funds now, this will probably be a good time for them.
They will probably have good returns in the future.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah. So have you ever worked with any longevity companies?

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Course, So, longevity is an interesting area. Longevity has a
big attraction for people who are older. Of course you're
still young, but as you get older you'll begin to
think about longevity. Longevity and the ability to reverse diseases
that prematurely cause aging are pretty interesting areas of investment.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
So I had a scientist one his name is doctor
Eric Rude and of Buck Institute, and he said that
like he thinks a lot of these longevity or anti
aging companies are scammed. Do you think a lot of
them are just scams that.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
I don't know? I know when I was at COSLA,
we did support a longevity study with Eric Verdin at
the Buck. They're one of the premier research institutes on
aging NFX and their general partner OMRI. They did a
nice video series featuring the Buck Institute and talking about longevity.

(27:33):
So I think serious people at tier one venture capital
firms are investing in some longevity companies.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, because just just not gonna lie, but I've seen
a lot of these ANSI aging companies like trying to
market their supplements and it's got me thinking if those
supplements are actually working or is it just or they're
just promoting it, you know, due like the trend or something.
So that's why I side question. You were also the

(28:03):
general partner as Smart Health Catalyzer. So what is smart Health?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
At smart Health, we are a venture studio. Our mission
is to help the inventions of the Midwest access the
venture capital market. About thirty percent of the National Institute
of Health dollars go to the Midwest, but only about
six percent of the biotech venture capital funding goes to

(28:29):
the Midwest. So there's really an underserved opportunity there. There's
a geographic potential for venture capital in the Midwest, and
we are helping the professors and the doctors in the
Midwest who have creative and inventive ideas to begin to

(28:49):
access venture capital. We're helping them invent the future.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, so get the.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Best of the bout Midwest competition. You might see that.
I think about fifty companies were reviewed and we had
the top ten present to VCS. It was about a
month ago and we did it the prior year as well.
It's a very effective event.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
So no, we've working with Casela and Smart Health. Do
you guys work with any students who might have any ideas?

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (29:19):
So.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
One of the key features of our program is we
have internships. We have students from Northwestern, we have students
from the Narsity of Chicago. We have students quite broadly
who help us evaluate the companies. These student interns spend
three weeks per company and they get a pretty good
exposure to what venture capital would be like for a partner,

(29:43):
and many of them now have gone on to work
in venture capital firms. We're quite proud of our interns.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, how many student founders? Have you any worked with
any student founders? Maybe student founders who wanted to have
their own startup.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
At Smart Health, we tend to work more with the
professors or the doctors who have an idea that we'd
like to license. I don't think we worked with a
student founder there yet. We work with the interns of
students who are interested in entering the venture capital industry.
At COSLA, we've worked with student founders from more established labs. Right,

(30:21):
So it might be a student of Eric Forerdean that
you mentioned as president of the Buck and who's got students,
or it might be a student of Francis Arnold at
cal Tech who's got some cool technology for a protein
evolution and that can work well if the student had
comes from a strong group and has a strong network.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
M so d theme Also what he splits from the
ips between the college and the researchers had been unfair.
I've had multiple researchers hee ers complain about it. So
I was asking your opinion.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
I think the general model is it depends on the university,
but typically a third of the revenue goes to the researcher,
a third might go to the department, and then a
third might go to the president of the university. That
now it seems perhaps that's reasonable. The university has been

(31:19):
supporting the professor for a long time. In some cases,
the government also has rights in the invention right. Typically
there was government funding that was used to develop the product,
so oftentimes the government will have some rights as well.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, so, man, now is your CEO of a stealth
star up company. So why do is some startups going
stealth mode?

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Well, until you know we're really ready to go public.
It's better we work, we develop our technology, and when
we're ready to tell the world about us, that's when
we go public. That's when we come out of stealth.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
Okay, what are some similarities in differences between academia and
the entrepreneurship world.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Sure, so that's an interesting question. One is mentorship. This
is a similarity. So in academia, you know, as a professor,
I mentored hundreds of students. At the undergraduate level, I
mentored thousands of students. We're really helping others develop their potential.
And in entrepreneurship that is one of the things that
the CEO of the company is doing, right or she

(32:28):
is mentoring the employees and their colleagues in the company.
As a VC, we're mentoring the founders of the companies.
We're also mentoring our fellow vcs in the firm. One
of the differences is in academia, we tend to work
a little bit more isolated. Right, we're working with our group,

(32:49):
maybe we're collaborating with another group. Certainly we would go
to conferences and we publish our results. We're relatively focused
on our own work. In the VC world, AVC might
have a fund, might have an investment in thirty or
fifty companies, right, So they would have a pretty broad portfolio.
One partner might have three to ten companies that she's

(33:11):
invested in. So it's a little bit of a broader
perspective in the VC world, and the amount of change
that we can bring to the world is a little
bit broader on the VC side, right, VC relative to
all of investment, VC is a tiny fraction of a
tiny fraction of the market, but compared to academic funding,

(33:32):
VC funding is significant. We can have more of an
impact in terms of helping make the world a better
place and helping invent the future from a financial point
of view in terms of the investment point of view
on the VC side, So that's a little bit of
a difference.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, And so I read twenty Footell's biography. He mentioned
that the VC and the starrups when the VC investment
is startup is more like a like a marriage kind
of thing, may we think un certain ways? So how
do you make sure you know you have a good
relationship with the founders who.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Work with This is a really interesting question. So the
VC and the founder will be together for quite a while, right,
It could be five seven, ten years, and that partner
will be the voice of support for the company within
the VC funds, and that partner will be the one

(34:31):
that mentors the founder through all of the difficulties. The
founder might have done this once before, twice before, or
maybe never before, right, but the VC has probably done
this tens or hundreds of times, and it's probably seen
it thousands of times. So the VC has a lot
of experience that she can use and can help guide
and mentor and advise the companies. It's wise for the

(34:55):
companies to spend some time to get to know the vcs,
to talk to the company that have been successful and
have failed under the BC, to hear the experience of
other founders, see if you know, this is a good
firm for her.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, and uh so regarding them more experienced entrepreneurs. Now
I'm talking like uh like uh like Bob Langer from
from you know, I'm talking about like he has a
lot of companies.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
He's a big hero in the chemical engineering. Yeah, I
know he's a bio engineer, but yeah, he's one of
the giants of chemical engineering and now bio engineering. He
was yeah, so vetters of moderna.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, and so he went on my podcast, So I
was wondering, like, let's say your your avengery capolus versus him,
So do you give him a bit more freedom? Like
do you give him less advice?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Yeah? So you know, he is one of those golden founders.
When we look at the four legs of the stool
that management and the founders, he is a check plus
in that column and the gravitas that he would bring,
it's just very substantial. It makes it easier to raise money,
it makes it easier to attract the CEO, makes it
easier to attract employees. So there's a big network effect

(36:08):
when you work with an academic founder like Bob Langer.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
So what advice do you receive during your career that
shaped or professional obsess?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Sure, so early on we're working to develop and to
discover things on our own. But as we get older
and we develop our network, we're really helping empower others.
So our mission changes a little bit. Begin to think
about helping others invent the future and to really understand
how difficult that process is and have empathy for founders.

(36:48):
This is something that's it's helpful for us to learn.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
So what is there any more advice you would want
to give to students you want to become scientists or entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Sure, so, science and engineering is one of the best
ways that we use to improve the world. Right, we
grow the economy, we reduce patients suffering, we're generally inventing
a better future for ourselves through science and engineering, and
entrepreneurship is the practical way of implementing that. So go ahead,

(37:23):
find an entrepreneurship course within your school, maybe something in
the business school. Maybe do an entrepreneurship internship with venture
studio like a smart health catalyzer, or with one of
the other venture firms, and see if you like it.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Well, does anything more to talk about that? No, I'm
a being ever asked the audience or ask you.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
This was great. So my mission now is to help
others invent the future, to really alleviate suffering of a
significant number of patients, and to make the world a
better place. Yeah, so my time with you today.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
So thank you Dark Thing to be part of this episode,
give me giving me the uh opportunity to talk to
you so people can get to know more about your
insights in your bottle tech and the business world.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Sure, of course, thank you for showcase,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Navigating the World of Biotech Investments and Entrepreneurship ft. Dr. Michael Deem

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

All Episodes

Navigating the World of Biotech Investments and Entrepreneurship ft. Dr. Michael Deem

Stuff You Should Know