February 08, 2020

Bugworks: Creating an end to the Superbug with CEO Anand AnandKumar

46 minutes

I had an amazing conversation with Anand AnandKumar, who is the CEO & Co-Founder of Bugworks. Bugwork's mission is to bring innovation into Antibiotics (which hasn't seen any in 60 years) and to stop the spread of Global Superbugs. A superbug is any disease that can't be treated through existing antibiotics. The importance of Anand's work is magnified given the current spread of the coronavirus. Anand is driven by a passion to solve one of the greatest challenges that face our planet today and a deep purpose that was brought from 2 near death experiences.

Some of the key takeaways I took from the podcast were:

Passion and meaning will drive you toward waking up everyday to solving such an enormous problem. Getting drugs to market, especially for small companies, only have a 5% success rate and take 10 years. You need passion to get through thatThis will also help push through rejection. To get funding for Bugworks, Anand pitched to over 200 people to get enough funding for Bugworks and the same was for Cellworks

The People you surround yourself with are so important - Good people are the difference between successful and unsuccessful teams.

It’s never too late to pivot - Anand was in very deep into his career before switching to the Bio-Medical field from semi conductors. If you're looking to solve an enormous problem and don't know how to start, this episode is for you as Anand dives deep into the challenges he's faced and how he has got through them.

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