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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
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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 -
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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.
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: [email protected]
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: -
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.
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
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. -
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.
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
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. -
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.
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
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.
Shownoteshttps://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.
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/
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: -
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.
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
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. -
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 - Visa fler
