The Biotech Startups Podcast
The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr features weekly conversations with founders, scientists, and investors driving biotech innovation. Host Jon Chee dives into the challenges of building biotech startups, from pre-seed to IPO. New episodes are released every Monday and Thursday.
Episodes
The Hard Part Starts After the Demo | Scott Chetham (1/4)
Scott Chetham traces the influences that shaped his path into life sciences, from growing up on Australia's Gold Coast and watching his parents build careers through work and education to studying the intersection of engineering and medicine. He shares how a combined degree, early exposure to hospitals, and an unusual appetite for difficult problems pushed him toward biomedical research.
Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)
As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.
The Employee Number Five Leap That Built a Relationship Business | Leslie Loveless (3/4)
Leslie Loveless joined Slone Partners after a major personal transition, leaving a large healthcare company to become employee number five at a small recruiting firm. She hadn't worked in recruiting before, and at the time, she didn't fully appreciate how big the leap would be.
Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)
Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one to one.
How Teaching High School Prepares You to Run a Company | Leslie Loveless (1/4)
Leslie Loveless starts at the beginning: growing up in a close-knit Indiana family, watching her father build a career as a pharmacist, and learning early that education mattered even if the eventual career path was left up to her.
The Catalyst Mindset Behind a Lean Biotech | Örn Almarsson (4/4)
He then turns to company building at Axelyf: in vivo cell reprogramming for solid tumors, modular lipid nanoparticles, AI-informed discovery, external partners, and a deliberately lean operating model. The conversation closes with the mentors, expectations, and leadership philosophy shaping his next chapter.
The Delivery Problem Behind Moderna's Breakthrough | Örn Almarsson (3/4)
The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.
Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)
At Merck, a three-month visa detour exposed Örn to another laboratory and reinforced the value of adaptability. He then describes leaving a secure role for Transform Pharmaceuticals, building a small team and collaborative culture, developing new formulation technologies, and helping create the patents and assets that led to a Johnson & Johnson acquisition.
How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)
He describes his first research opportunity at the University of Iceland, an early industry project in Copenhagen, and the mentors who pushed him toward bioorganic chemistry. The conversation follows his move to UC Santa Barbara, his work with Tom Bruice and Alex Klibanov, and the networking connection that led to Merck.
Don't Build Your Own Cathedral: The Hidden Cost of Lab Space | Philip Borden (4/4)
Philip breaks down the hidden costs of traditional lab leases, from equipment maintenance and utilities to medical waste, freezer alarms, and unused square footage. He explains how flexible space can help emerging companies stay focused on milestones while preserving critical capital.
The Biotech Deal That Became a Leadership Crisis | Philip Borden (3/4)
Philip Borden describes leaving Frazier Healthcare Partners for Harvard Business School, where the case method broadened his perspective beyond healthcare and investing. He explains why he returned to healthcare investing after graduation.
Cold Calling Your Way Into Venture Capital | Philip Borden (2/4)
Philip Borden explains how realizing he did not want to pursue a PhD or spend his career at the lab bench led him toward venture capital. With a molecular biology degree, limited finance experience, and a list of biotech VC firms, he picked up the phone and cold-called his way into Frazier Healthcare in Seattle.
What Rural Indiana Can Teach Biotech Founders About Trust | Philip Borden (1/4)
Philip Borden grew up in Plymouth, Indiana, in a family shaped by agriculture. He talks about his grandparents' farms, his father's work as an agricultural lender, and the early lessons he absorbed about local businesses and long-term relationships.
🧬 Making Lab Data Actionable Through Automation | Nathan Clark Rerelease (4/4)
In this part of the podcast, Nathan Clark explains how Ganymede approaches data integration and automation in life sciences. He discusses why lab instruments and workflows require customized connectors, how a developer platform can help teams adapt integrations quickly, and why moving data online is only part of the challenge.
🧬 Why Wet-Lab Data Needs More Than ETL | Nathan Clark Rerelease (3/4)
Nathan Clark walks through his work at Benchling, where he managed the Insights business intelligence product and helped develop an early machine learning effort. He explains why operational wet-lab data is fundamentally different from omics data, and why the relationships between samples, programs, instruments, locations, and people matter as much as the experimental results.
🧬 Product Thinking, Scientific Progress, & the Work of Building | Nathan Clark Rerelease (2/4)
The conversation then turns to product management. Nathan describes the discipline as understanding why a product should exist, grounding decisions in user needs, and translating research into what a team builds. His advice for early-stage founders is direct: stop coding until they've done enough customer research to understand the problem.
🧬 Execution, Liquidity, & Founder Lessons | Nathan Clark Rerelease (1/4)
Nathan Clark reflects on the formative influence of his entrepreneurial father, who showed him that business and even home building are learned through research, effort, and execution rather than secret insight. Nathan also discusses his unconventional high school experience, his decision to study business and finance at the University of North Carolina, and the early interest in biology and futur
🧬 AI, Mechanisms, & the Next Wave of Drug Discovery | David Li Rerelease (4/4)
David Li explains how a research question about mischaracterized drug targets became the starting point for Meliora Therapeutics. He describes how CRISPR experiments and follow-up biology challenged the accepted mechanism for cancer drugs, and how the company uses AI and machine learning to connect chemistry, biology, biomarkers, and patient populations.
🧬 De-Risking Biotech's Biggest Bets | David Li Rerelease (3/4)
In this part of the podcast, David Li, CEO and co-founder of Meliora Therapeutics, reflects on his experience helping build Everest Detection around the challenge of finding lung cancer earlier. He discusses the potential of a noninvasive, blood-based test, why lung cancer can be difficult to detect in blood, and how access to early-stage clinical samples helped the team investigate the problem.
🧬 Choosing Conviction Over Convention in Biotech | David Li Rerelease (2/4)
In this part of the podcast, David Li reflects on leaving finance after realizing that an investing career would not give him the tangible impact he wanted. He explains what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
🧬 The Outsider Mindset Behind Successful Biotech Founders | David Li Rerelease (1/4)
In this part of the podcast, David shares how the Roy Vagelos Life Sciences and Management dual degree program at the University of Pennsylvania opened his eyes to the possibilities of combining scientific discovery with business acumen. A pivotal summer internship with Arie Belldegrun at UCLA—during which Kite Pharma was born—planted the seed for his future in life sciences entrepreneurship. He a
🧬 This Ex-Googler Replaced a Whole Drug R&D Team | Javier Tordable (4/4)
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable unpacks why he left Google to solo found Pauling AI and how its agentic platform automates computational chemistry—from docking to ADMET—collapsing months into days.
🧬 From Games to Cancer Research: Why Drug Discovery Is an Economics Problem | Javier Tordable (3/4)
In this part of the podcast, Jon and Javier explore Javier's years as technical director in Google's Office of the CTO, where he worked with the world's biggest gaming companies—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Unity—helping them leverage Google Cloud technology. Javier then shares the deeply personal story of how his father's passing from cancer became the turning point that pulled him int
🧬 16 Years at Google Taught Me How to Scale From 1 to 150 People | Javier Tordable (2/4)
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable shares his early career journey—from starting at Microsoft to spending 16 years at Google as a Staff Engineer and Technical Director. He reflects on the engineering-driven culture at Microsoft and the welcoming environment that shaped his foundation in tech.
🧬 Video Games & a Whim Led Me to Microsoft | Javier Tordable (1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Javier Tordable, founder and CEO of Pauling AI, a company building the first fully autonomous drug discovery platform that enables scientists to go from a research idea to validated drug molecules in days, not years. Named after Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, the company reflects J
🧬 Crossover Investing, Gene Therapy & LP Trust | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (3/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she traces RTW’s evolution from a lean public-equity fund into a major life sciences platform spanning crossover investing, company creation, and global commercialization. Stephanie explains how RTW built the modern cross
🧬 Cycles, Conviction & Royalty Capital in Biotech Investing | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (2/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she reflects on her path from Lehman Brothers investment banking to macro hedge funds and ultimately biotech-focused investing and firm building. Steph shares how journalism training shaped her strategic thinking, what sh
🧬 Competition, Coaching & Curiosity: The Investor’s Mindset | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (1/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Stephanie Sirota, partner and head of strategic partnerships at RTW Investments, to explore how a coddled yet cosmopolitan upbringing, years of elite tennis competition, and a humanities-rich education at Columbia shaped her mental toughness, leadership style, and approach to partnering with life sciences innovators. From spo
🧬 Transforming Food Systems with Lactoferrin & Precision Fermentation | Fengru Lin Rerelease (3/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Fengru Lin, CEO & co-founder of TurtleTree, who is leveraging precision fermentation and a people-first culture to bring the high-value milk protein lactoferrin to market while reshaping how the food system serves both consumers and farmers. They discuss TurtleTree's strategic refocus from cell-based milk to commercially viab
🧬 Sales Funnels, Patents, & Cell-Based Milk: TurtleTree’s Early Bets | Fengru Lin Rerelease (2/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Fengru Lin, CEO and co-founder of TurtleTree. Fengru shares how rigorous sales training at Salesforce and entrepreneurial autonomy at Google Cloud shaped her approach to customers, investors, and organizational change—then traces how a cheese-making hobby, poor dairy supply chains, and exposure to cell-b
🧬 From Hong Kong Childhood to Global Sales: Connecting the Dots | Fengru Lin Rerelease (1/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Fengru Lin, CEO and co-founder of TurtleTree, a biotech company using precision fermentation to produce LF+, the world’s first sustainably made lactoferrin, and ultimately reimagine how food is produced. Drawing on a nontraditional path into biotech—from Girl Guides in Singapore to sales roles in transactional security and gl
🧬 AI in Biotech: When Sustainable Growth Replaces Hype | Mati Gill (4/4)
In this final episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast series, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs, to unpack where AI value is actually being created in biopharma—and what comes next. Mati lays out three pillars driving a post-hype phase of sustainable growth, explains why the industry is structurally conservative for good reasons, and shares how AION Labs is already preparing for
🧬 Venture Studio Model: Building the Future of AI Drug Discovery | Mati Gill (3/4)
Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs — an Israeli venture studio backed by AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, AWS, and the Israel Biotech Fund. Mati breaks down how AION Labs builds AI-native pharma companies from the ground up: industry-grade problem statements, multidisciplinary teams, and pharma partner POC commitments locked in before a startup is formed.
🧬 From Law School to Teva: Learning a 45,000-Person Organization | Mati Gill (2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs. Mati traces his path from juggling a minister's bureau with Israeli law school to joining Teva as an intern with no private-sector experience, then learning a 45,000-person org from the chart up — until Teva's financial crisis handed him the mandate to build the innovation program that became AION
🧬 The Rule of Three: Career, Family & One Other Thing | Mati Gill (1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs—a first-of-its-kind AI venture studio backed by Teva, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Amazon Web Services. Before AION Labs, Mati spent six years in the IDF, ran a minister's bureau, and rose from legal intern to global legal COO at Teva over more than a decade. Part one covers the formative years:
🧬 From Reactive Data to Predictive Intelligence: Inside Convoke's Platform | Alex Telford (4/4)
In part four, Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, covers the platform architecture and roadmap. He walks through Convoke's modular system—building validated structured datasets from trial registries, regulatory filings, and patents, then stitching them with workflow tools for competitive intelligence and document generation. He breaks down how pharma and biotech customers engage differently, why an
🧬 Pharma's Coordination Tax & the 2 Paths That Could Actually Disrupt It | Alex Telford (3/4)
In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, to examine why large pharma resists AI transformation. Drawing on seven years at Charles River Associates, Alex maps the coordination tax of siloed orgs, the tacit knowledge lost when experts retire, and why software efficiency is the wrong axis to compete on. His frame: factory electrification — the gains don't arrive unti
🧬 AI Psychosis, Coordination Tax & the Limits of LLMs | Alex Telford (2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, who spent nearly seven years in biopharma strategy consulting before what he calls "AI psychosis" set him on a different path. Alex traces the arc from biochemistry at Bristol and synthetic biology at UCL to discovering consulting existed only after graduating, joining a boutique Swiss firm t
🧬 From Expat Kid to Founder: Science, Curiosity & the Long Road to Conviction | Alex Telford (1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, who raised $8.6 million to build the AI-native operating system for biopharma. Part one traces his path from an expat childhood across Switzerland, Germany, and Spain — shaped by international schools, disappearing friendships, and a New Scientist subscription — through biochemistry at Bristo
🧬 The Groomed Trail: Building a Women's Health Pipeline the Bold Way | Sabrina Johnson (4/4)
In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of DARÉ Bioscience, to unpack the founding arc of a company built on a singular conviction: women's health is not a niche. Sabrina explains the choice to go public via reverse merger in 2017 to access capital in a space where only 1% of private healthcare investment funds women-specific conditions, and breaks down the groo
🧬 From CFO to Founder: Building a Women's Health Biotech | Sabrina Johnson (3/4)
In this episode, Jon Chee continues with Sabrina Johnson, DARÉ Bioscience CEO, tracing 13 years at Cypress Bioscience — from a hallway eavesdrop that earned her an FDA panel seat, to VP of Marketing, an "interim" CFO role held for nearly a decade, and COO. She covers a fibromyalgia Phase 3 that missed at p=0.058, the disclosure gap, and a hostile takeover that forced the sale — then shares the Mon
🧬 Pharma Marketing, Compounding, and the GLP-1 Gray Zone | Sabrina Johnson (2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of DARÉ Bioscience. Sabrina traces her path from a name-tag encounter that led her to Advanced Tissue Sciences to joining Cypress Bioscience in 1998. She unpacks pharmaceutical marketing regulation, the medical-regulatory-legal review process, and the gray zone of compounded
🧬 Betting on Women's Health | Sabrina Johnson (1/4)
In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of Daré Bioscience, a Nasdaq-listed biopharma advancing women's reproductive health. Daré's team of 25 executes the groomed trail approach — matching therapeutic gaps to FDA-approved actives — with a non-hormonal contraceptive in pivotal Phase 3 and $75M+ in non-dilutive funding from the Gates Foundation, NIH, and ARPA-H.
🧬 Resilience, Reinvention & Next-Gen Antibody Discovery | Martin Brenner Rerelease (3/3)
Martin Brenner, CEO & CSO of iBio, closes out his three-part conversation with Jon Chee by tracing the arc from Stoke Therapeutics to Recursion to Phenex — and into the reinvented iBio. Martin unpacks the resilience required when nothing works, the line-of-sight portfolio system he built to run 100 programs with 20 biologists, and how a team of opposites at Phenex became the most effective R&D uni
🧬 Pfizer, AstraZeneca & Merck: Building Biotechs Within Big Pharma | Martin Brenner Rerelease (2/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Martin Brenner, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of iBio, tracing his career through Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Merck. From re-engaging demoralized scientists after layoffs to a Moderna encounter when the company was just eight people strong, Martin offers a rare insider view of what it actually takes to drive
🧬 Engineering a Drug Hunter: From Vet School to Big Pharma | Martin Brenner Rerelease (1/3)
Jon Chee sits down with Martin Brenner, CEO and CSO of iBio, an AI drug discovery company building immunotherapies for difficult-to-treat cancers. Before biotech leadership, Martin built one of pharma's most unconventional careers—electrical engineer in Stuttgart, vet medicine at LMU Munich, PhD embedded at Eli Lilly, youngest scientist to lead a 20-person team there. Part 1 covers his formative y
🧬 Strategic Optionality: M&A Hygiene & Investor Fit | Mike Stadnisky Rerelease (Part 3/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital, a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. A veteran of four-plus M&A cycles as CEO of FlowJo and Phytonix, Mike walks through the mechanics founders most often get wrong: when to call in partnership favors, how shared customers become acquisition seeds, what IP and cap t
🧬 Decision Makers vs. Champions: The Real BD Playbook | Mike Stadnisky Rerelease (Part 2/3)
In this episode, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital, on his transition from academic scientist to BD leader. Mike unpacks what business development really means in life science, why chasing "the decision maker" is the wrong frame, and how to identify the technical and business champions who actually move deals inside large organizations.
🧬 Care Before You Share: Sales, Science & the PhD Ultra-Marathon | Mike Stadnisky Rerelease (Part 1/3)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital — a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. Before Thielsen, Mike was CEO of Phytonix (acquired by Thermo Fisher) and FlowJo (acquired by BD Life Sciences), and has taught at MIT Sloan. In Part 1, Mike traces his path from growing up with a chemical engineer father who ga
🧬 AI & Capital Efficiency: Building a Lab-Free Biotech | Caitlyn Krebs (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we dive into how Nalu Bio CEO and co-founder Caitlyn Krebs is harnessing AI and the largely untapped endocannabinoid system (ECS) to build the first nonhormonal therapeutic for the two hundred million women living with endometriosis, while running an ultra-lean company with no lab, no university royalties, and a fully outsourced CRO/CMO model. She e
🧬 Small Community, Long Journey: The Power of Relationships in Biotech | Caitlyn Krebs (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Caitlyn Krebs traces her path from a gut-punch company shutdown on maternity leave — which unexpectedly forged a key cofounder relationship — through the digital health boom at Rock Health, to her role as COO at Neurotrack, where an eye-tracking Alzheimer's test launched to 137 countries within days and led to selling cognitive risk scores to Japane
🧬 The Hidden Skills Scientists Need to Build Real Companies | Caitlyn Krebs (Part 2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Caitlyn Krebs, co-founder and CEO of Nalu Bio, traces her path from building the Bay Area's biotech ecosystem to operating at the cutting edge of science and business. She shares how launching BayBioNEST taught her what it really takes—beyond great science—to build durable companies, before diving into her time at Entelos, where she helped pioneer v
🧬Unconventional Career Moves in Biotech: Finding a Path to Leadership | Caitlyn Krebs (Part 1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Caitlyn Krebs, co-founder and CEO of Nalu Bio, traces her journey from tagging endangered sea turtles on the Big Island of Hawaii to leading an AI-powered company designing novel cannabinoid-inspired small molecules for pain, inflammation, endometriosis, and metabolic disease. She reflects on being humbled at Brown University, where she fell in love
🧬 The Founder Identity Trap: Navigating the Hidden Mental Cost of Leadership | Nicole Paulk (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Siren Biotechnology CEO & Founder, Nicole Paulk unpacks why being a first-time female technical academic founder CEO — "the worst possible thing you could be" — was actually the best CEO training imaginable. She breaks down how her scrappy academic mindset stretched a $6M seed round across three and a half years, why going all-in on unglamorous CMC
🧬 Let the Science Lead: Building Successful Biotechnology | Nicole Paulk (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Nicole Paulk recounts her unlikely evolution from frustrated academic to biotech founder — driven by years of watching gene therapy companies wastefully rebuild the same tech stack from scratch, a pandemic lockout that barred her from her own UCSF lab, and a sneaky incorporation scheme that was less grand vision, more workaround to get back to the b
🧬 The Dark Side of Postdoc Culture Nobody Talks About | Nicole Paulk (Part 2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we continue founder, CEO, and president of Siren Biotechnology, Nicole Paulk's journey from small-town farm kid to pioneering gene therapy scientist. Nicole recounts how a Craigslist ad landed her in the lab of one of the most celebrated stem cell scientists in the country, Markus Grompe — blissfully unaware of his fame, she spent months calling him
🧬 2 Identity Crises, 1 Mission: From Broken Shoulder to Biotech Career | Nicole Paulk (Part 1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we sit down with Nicole Paulk, founder, CEO, and president of SIREN Biotechnology, a company pioneering universal AAV immunogene therapy to fight solid tumor cancers. Nicole takes us back to her roots — a scrappy, off-the-grid upbringing in the Pacific Northwest where a lumberjack dad raised her like a son and sports were everything, until recurring
🧬 The Competitive Threat Reshaping US Drug Discovery Strategy | Richard Yu (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, Richard Yu reflects on how processing grief after losing his co-founder, Gustavo Pesce, brought clarity and renewed focus — stripping away the inessential and driving him forward at Abalone Bio. He unpacks the strategic thinking behind the pipeline, from developing CB2 agonist antibodies that reverse fibrosis and r
🧬 Resilience After Loss: Leadership Lessons for Biotech Founders | Richard Yu (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Richard Yu, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, reflects on building a company around a bold scientific vision — and the personal moments that shaped his leadership along the way. He unpacks the core insight behind Abalone Bio's yeast-based screening platform: that conventional antibody discovery optimizes for binding over function, like grabbing sci
🧬 The Science of Persistence: Why Biotech Founders Can’t Quit | Richard Yu (Part 2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we continue our conversation with Richard Yu, CEO and co-founder of Abalone Bio, as he traces his path from academic scientist to entrepreneur—starting with the 2008 alternative energy boom that led him to co-found algae biofuel startup Green Pacific Biologicals and deliver a two-slide, science-only VC pitch that sparked a new sense of purpose. He r
🧬 Quitting Physics to Treat Biology Like an Engineering Problem | Richard Yu (Part 1/4)
"The magic is always at the intersections."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore CEO & co-founder of Abalone Bio, Richard Yu’s journey from his Midwestern and New Jersey upbringing as the son of Chinese immigrants to UC Berkeley and Yale, tracing how living at the intersection of cultures and disciplines shaped his identity as a scientist and founder. He shares how a friend'
🧬 You Don’t See the Path, You Take the Next Step | Sujal Patel (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Sujal Patel recounts his transition from enterprise data storage to co-founding Nautilus Biotechnology — sparked by a 2016 email from scientist Parag Mallick declaring "I think I've come up with something important." Sujal breaks down why proteomics is one of science's most urgent unsolved challenges, explaining that while 95% of FDA-approved drugs
🧬 "Be On It”: High-Stakes Deals & Building World-Class Teams | Sujal Patel (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we dive into part three of Founder and CEO at Nautilus Biotechnology, Sujal Patel’s story—zooming in on the high-stakes path to Isilon’s acquisition by EMC and what it really feels like to negotiate while your company, your board, and the market clock are all in motion. Sujal walks through how the “strategic partnership” conversations revealed thems
🧬 If You Knew What Could Go Wrong, You’d Never Start - The Founder’s Leap | Sujal Patel (Part 2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we dive into Sujal Patel's bold decision to leave RealNetworks and co-found Isilon Systems, a distributed storage company built to solve a problem he witnessed firsthand — enterprise customers spending millions on storage systems that simply couldn't handle media files. Sujal shares how a pair of scissors on his desk became the unlikely symbol that
🧬 How Open-Source Programming Teaches Company Building Skills | Sujal Patel (Part 1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Sujal Patel — co-founder and CEO of Nautilus Biotechnology and former founder and CEO of Isilon Systems — takes us back to his upbringing in suburban New Jersey, where his engineer father and an older brother's love of computers set him on a path toward a life in tech. From self-teaching programming on a budget Apple II clone to building operating s
🧬 Staying Focused During Biotech Funding Ups & Downs | Roy Maute (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we follow Roy Maute’s journey from the Gilead acquisition of Forty Seven Inc. through COVID-era corporate life—where he spent over a year at Gilead without meeting colleagues in person—to co-founding Pheast Therapeutics in 2021, clarifying his passion for early-stage company building. He unpacks how he, Amira Barkal, Irving Weissman, and Ravi Majeti
🧬 Trust Over Control: Building Teams Like the Best Scientists | Roy Maute (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we dive into Roy Maute's journey from academic scientist to biotech entrepreneur, exploring the founding and acquisition of Ab Initio Biotherapeutics and his subsequent roles at Forty Seven Inc. and Gilead Sciences. Roy reflects on the lasting influence of Irv Weissman's hands-off, trust-driven lab culture at Stanford and how it shaped his philosoph
🧬 Why Comfort Is the Enemy of Scientific Growth | Roy Maute (Part 2/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we follow CEO and co-founder of Pheast Therapeutics, Roy Maute’s graduate school journey in Riccardo Dalla-Favera’s demanding Columbia lab, where he dives into genetic rearrangements in B-cell lymphoma and chooses intensity over comfort to accelerate his growth alongside clinician-scientists. He shares how brutal weekly Friday lab meetings, where im
🧬 “Get the Info, Take the Shot”: The DIY Mindset Behind Success | Roy Maute (Part 1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Roy Maute's foundational years—from a curious kid in Dallas, Texas, to an aspiring scientist at UC Berkeley. Roy, CEO and co-founder of Pheast Therapeutics, takes us back to his childhood home where an architect father and artist mother fostered a DIY ethos through weekend home renovations and creative projects that taught him no task was
🧬 How Curiosity Creates Breakthroughs in AI, Data & Biotech | Caleb Appleton (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton shares how Bison Ventures is rethinking biotech investing through “TechBio,” backing revenue-generating platforms that validate product-market fit like software rather than relying solely on therapeutic risk. He lays out a practical framework for data platform founders—when to sell their technology versus bu
🧬 From VC to Operator: The Career Move Nobody Recommended | Caleb Appleton (Part 3/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton's journey from venture capital to operations and back again. Caleb shares his experience joining Innovation Endeavors during its spinout from Eric Schmidt's family office, where minimal structure forced him to rapidly master sourcing, diligence, and thesis-building—including a cold email that land
🧬 People Over Place: A Lesson in Career Success | Caleb Appleton (Part 2/4)
"People outweigh challenging environments. A great environment cannot outweigh challenging people."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton returns for Part Two to share how early research experiences in nanotechnology, genome editing, and concussion biomechanics pushed him to question whether engineering could solve problems with poorly defined
🧬 The Serendipity Mindset: Unlocking Career Opportunities | Caleb Appleton (Part 1/4)
"You have to learn to embrace serendipity. You can't plan everything out because it will never go to plan."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton's formative years growing up in College Station, Texas, where being surrounded by Texas A&M University shaped his worldview and exalted academia as the ultimate career path. Now a Partner
🧬 Big Pharma to Startup: Chasing a Patient‑Centric Future | Judy Chou (Part 4/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Dr. Judy Chou shares how she walked away from leading global biotech operations at Bayer to take a risky first‑time CEO role at AltruBio, transforming a struggling predecessor company—alongside a “Genentech mafia” of former colleagues—into a lean, patient‑centric startup built around a novel PSGL‑1 immune checkpoint mechanism aimed at restoring immu
🧬 Biosimilars, FDA Risk-Taking & Billion-Dollar Deals | Judy Chou (Part 3/4)
“If you want to make money, really follow your passion rather than follow the money, because the money later on will come.”
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Dr. Judy Chou shares her journey as employee number one at Tanvex, walking into an empty 50,000 square foot facility and building a biosimilar company from scratch after a close friend’s death from metastatic lung cancer resh
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In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, President & CEO of AltruBio, Judy Chou, shares her pivotal transition from academia to industry, revealing how she left AbbVie when the company went idle after Humira's launch to pursue more meaningful work at Wyeth. Despite Humira becoming one of the most successful drugs in history, the company's uncertainty about biologics left Judy feeling unabl
🧬 Inner Rebel: Art, Physics & Purpose-Driven Leadership | Judy Chou (Part 1/4)
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr, AltruBio President and CEO Judy Chou traces her journey from an arts-driven childhood in politically tense, conservative Taiwan to leading a clinical-stage biotech company in the U.S., sharing how an “inner rebel,” a love of physics, and two pivotal uncles redirected her from an elite engineering track into medicine and biology at National
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In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Amy Hay, Chief Business Officer at CTMC, shares how CTMC bridges academia and industry to help lean cell therapy teams reach the clinic faster and more capital-efficiently through a co-development model that bundles manufacturing, regulatory, and operational support so scientists can stay focused on the science while building scalable, commercializa
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In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Amy Hay's remarkable evolution from a longtime leader at MD Anderson Cancer Center to an entrepreneurial consultant and medtech executive. Amy shares the deeply personal and professional challenges of leaving an institution that defined her for two decades, describing how a "painful" leadership change became the ultimate catalyst for her
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"If you're persistent, you can get there. If I think it's gonna be meaningful, I'm willing to do whatever it takes."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Amy Hay, Chief Business Officer at CTMC, shares how she transformed ground-level patient care experience at MD Anderson into high-impact leadership that reshaped cancer treatment delivery. She traces her path from MD Anderson's first
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