Dana Foss and Ross Wilson are the cofounders of Editpep, a biotech startup focused on developing CRISPR-based therapeutics. They are using a proprietary peptide-based delivery platform that enables targeted delivery to specific cell types, particularly for hard-to-reach areas like the brain.

While Dana Foss is the CEO, Ross Wilson is also an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and also the Director of Therapeutic Delivery at the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. He is one of those very few academics that co-founded a startup and is very active in building Editpep. Ross explains how he does it all so well!

Dana was  previously a postdoc in Ross Wilson’s lab, where she developed the technology. Ross was a postdoc in Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna’s lab. Now he has his own lab and collaborates with Jennifer Doudna at the Innovative Genomics Institute. 

In this episode of lab to startup, we will explore their initial decisions that lead to launching the startup; existing CRISPR delivery technologies, their challenges, and then do a deep dive into their delivery technology. opportunities,; fundraising efforts, and their future goals.

Shownotes

• https://www.editpep.bio/
• CRISPR Delivery problem and current solutions
• Existing solutions like AV, LNPs are mostly limited to mice
• Ribonucleoprotein, a complex of RNA and protein (RNP): Technology deep dive
• Outsiders bringing in fresh perspective
• Dana transitioning out of academia: working on a shared goal
• Hard to shepard the technology towards the patient by depending on a third party
• Self motivation and gumption: Ways to move technologies out of the lab
• Early stage co-founder chemistry
• Ross’s innovative role being an academic and entrepreneur
• Fundraising journey
• Open mindedness to non-traditional investors
• Investors: Berkeley Skydeck,  Lindonlight Collective
• Filters for selecting investors
• Getting to market: Parallels from other delivery companies like Alnylam
• Counterintuitive decisions
• Future goals
• Connecting the dots

Chandana Haque is the Executive Director of Altitude Lab, a healthcare startup accelerator building a community of diverse entrepreneurs in Utah. Altitude Lab was cofounded in 2020 by Chandana and Chris Gibson, the co-founder & CEO of Recursion in Salt Lake City. They recently announced the launch of a pre-seed venture fund aimed at supporting early-stage biotech startups impacted by recent federal funding policy shifts.

 

This pre-seed venture fund is dedicated to funding the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry. In partnership with Altitude Lab, they provide capital, lab space, and mentorship to high-potential SBIR reviewed companies, offering continuity for startups affected by recent funding policy changes while strengthening Salt Lake City’s position as a national biotech hub.

 

We talk about the Altitude fund, Altitude lab, lessons learned from other ecosystems; support from Recursion, better ways to support healthcare founders and many other topics.

 

Shownotes

• Altitude lab fund: a pre-seed venture fund dedicated to funding the highest impact ideas transitioning from basic research to industry. 

• Fund announcement: https://ir.recursion.com/news-releases/news-release-details/altitude-lab-launches-pre-seed-venture-fund-anchored-recursion

• Altitude labs: a health care accelerator building a community of diverse entrepreneurs in Utah

• Lessons learned (and unlearned) from Boston and Bay Area startup ecosystems

• Criteria for selection: Technology vs market readiness

• Founder fit, connecting founders to the right resources

• Turning a scrappy startup to a fundable one

• Overhyped areas in biotech

• Finding winners and lost opportunities

• Support from Recursion Pharma 

• Supporting diversity: Anecdotes of diverse founders

• Support from the University of Utah

Monica Rosoff, the founder and CEO of LBBAL™ Alianza. Prior to launching Alianza, Monica was a partnering executive with roles of increasing seniority at Genentech, Gilead, Kite and Exelixis. Over the course of over two decades, she had the opportunity to lead and participate in a wide diversity of deals, negotiations, diligence exercises, alliances, technology transfers, M&A integrations, dispute resolution negotiations, amendments and terminations–at all stages of the drug development and commercialization lifecycle and in multiple therapeutic areas.

Dr. Rosoff earned a doctorate in Pharmacology from the University of Washington and conducted her postdoctoral work at Stanford. We talked about lessons learned from her experiences in alliance management, especially for early stage startups. 

Shownotes

Monica Rosoff https://lbbalalianza.com/

• Monica’s entry into alliance management

• Principles that guide a good partnership: What’s best for the patient? Find synergies, timing and motivations

• Who to approach at a big pharma when identifying a partner?

• Evaluating motivations of a big pharma: Get specific

• Building trust

• Performing due diligence-How?

• Power dynamics: How to deal with a big partner when you have a power imbalance?

• Role of lawyers

• Communicating failures

• Have a list of “To-dont’s” as opposed to “To-do” list

• Conflicts might be important

• Repeating problems: Lessons learned

• How to prepare for unexpected changes at big companies?

• Conflict resolution: What to pick fights on?

• Allocating resources

Zack Shildhorn is an investing Partner at venture firm Lux Capital. He played multiple key roles that helped the firm scale from less than $100M to more than $4B in assets under management. After witnessing thousands of pitches, he saw that even the most disruptive startups often struggled to develop effective narratives.

Having worked closely with leading technology companies as an investor and Board member, he brings a unique ability to connect with key stakeholders and distill complex ideas into engaging and relatable presentations.

In order to help founders beyond Lux, He launched a firm called Series Z, to help a select group of tech companies and funds bring their vision to life. Zack also recently partnered with Khosla ventures to help founders there as well. 

Zack kindly agreed to share some of the lessons from his experience teaching the art of storytelling to founders and VCs. I think you will benefit tremendously from this episode. 

Show Notes:

Series Z: https://www.series-z.co/

Zack Schildhorn: https://x.com/zacktrak

• Most founders are in a challenged position

• Repetition, iteration, feedback

• Founders have the disadvantage of not knowing an investor’s mindset

• Selling vision: Why should investors care?

• Framing your pitch: Ways to capture investor’s attention

• How to appeal to the emotions of an investor? Fear and greed

• Starting a presentation with words and not slides

• Presenting technical idea: How not to inundate listeners with too much data

• Reframing problems: Addressing known apprehensions

• How to not get offended by a question or being defensive?

Media links:

Power of Narrative for Entrepreneurs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-llii7frwco

Framing your pitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4V89rywlR0

Pitching investors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYkOoRJGuvk

Corey Goodman, Ph.D., is the managing partner of venBio, a venture capital firm he cofounded in 2011. venBio already has 7 FDA approved drugs on the market, saving and improving lives.

Corey spent 25 years as Professor of Biology at Stanford University and Evan Rauch Chair of Neurobiology at U.C. Berkeley, where he was a HHMI Investigator, Head of the Neurobiology Division, and co-founder and Director of the Wills Neuroscience Institute.

Corey co-founded seven biotechnology companies, and led one of them (Renovis) as President and CEO from a private to public company until its acquisition by Evotec. Two of the companies he co-founded have been acquired and three have done IPOs to date.  He then moved to Pfizer, where he was President of the Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center and a member of the executive leadership team.

We talk about transformation of UC Berkeley as a startup powerhouse;  his entrepreneurial journey starting with the founding of Exelixis while being a faculty at UC Berkeley; role played by mentors and co-founders; lessons learned from founding startups that founders today could benefit from; changing careers at various stages of his life as he turned 50 and 60 (he recently turned 73); lessons from big pharma; experiences and lessons from partnerships and acquisitions by big pharma; and his experiences investing.

Show Notes:

• Corey Goodman, Ph.D.

• Corey Goodman’s autobiography: https://www.sfn.org/-/media/SfN/Documents/NEW-SfN/About/History-of-Neuroscience/20220914_HON_volume12_goodman.pdf

• Turn around story of UC Berkeley entrepreneurship: remarkable 10 years

• People and leadership matter

• Carol Christ

• Exelixis: Corey’s first startup, co-founded with Gerry Rubin. George Scangos joined the company as CEO in 1996; 

• Learning from genetic modeling organisms

• Find a big brother/sister who can help you: Role played by Stelios Papadopoulos and Ed Penhoet

• Donald Kennedy: Corey’s mentor

• Taking risks at various stages of life: Turning 50, 60, and now 73

• Life as an executive at Pfizer and lessons learned in that space

• Big pharma companies are unbelievably inefficient in early stage drug discovery

• James Allison: Immune checkpoint inhibitors

• Importance of academia and startup ecosystem in drug discovery

• Lessons from big pharma acquiring biotechs: What, when, how and what not to do

• Lessons learned from biotech partnering with big pharma: Don’t partner on everything- keep some to yourself

• Operator VCs: Investors/board members who went through building companies are more valuable than those who come from consulting backgrounds

• Building teams

• Transition to Pfizer and out: “Come change the world”

• Launching VenBio: Everybody’s voice matters

• Investment thesis

Abhishek Tripathi, is the Director of Mission operations of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Abhi is also the Chair of the Air and Space track startups at Skydeck, which is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator program.

For over two decades, Abhi has been at the forefront of human and robotic space exploration. At SpaceX, he spearheaded the certification of both the cargo and crew Dragon programs, a pivotal achievement in commercial spaceflight. His expertise was further showcased as Dragon Mission Director, where he orchestrated a dozen critical cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. Abhi's technical acumen reached new heights when he assumed the role of Dragon Chief Engineer for Flight Reliability on the groundbreaking Crew Demo 1 and Demo 2 missions. Prior to his transformative work at SpaceX, Abhi honed his skills during a decade-long tenure as an Aerospace Systems engineer at NASA, laying the foundation for his remarkable career in space technology. 

We talked about the lessons learned from Abhi’s journey at NASA, SpaceX and his work at the University of California, Berkeley, where he continues to lead several space missions. He shared some of the lessons learned from working at a highly demanding job at SpaceX; and also translated his experiences into lessons for startups and life in general. And Yes, he did share some of his experiences working with Elon Musk.

Show Notes:

• Abhishek Tripathi https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/
• Setting overarching goals that ties with the vision for a company
• Building factories to vow consumers and the larger population (new age moats)
• Journey at NASA
• Try to work at a cutting edge company before launching a startup, (except if you are a deeply involved in a research area during postdoc or similar compelling situation)
• Picking advisors: Pick tactical advisors instead of strategic ones
• End all instances of gatekeeping (one of the rules set by Musk)
• Leading the Dragon mission to deliver cargo to ISS
• Regulations: Working with NASA/government for approvals ‘Bring me a rock exercise”
• Experiences working on Falcon 9 mission
• Transition to academia https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/
• “Other than the brutal pace of Space X, we have many of the elements of Space X at Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.”
• Space track https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/
• What startups in the space track should possess
• Timing, funding, technology readiness
• SSL LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACTS
• https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/administrative-contacts/
• https://x.com/SpaceAbhi

Richard Lyons, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer, at the University of California, Berkeley. Rich is an economist and the former dean of the business school. Rich will become the next chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. 

We talk about a wide variety of topics around the Evolution of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Berkeley. We covered topics like paradigm shifts, cultural transformations, overcoming inertia; global impact and many others. 

I hope you get some insights from this story, and walk away with appreciation and potentially actionable steps if you are trying to build startup ecosystems on your campuses.

Show Notes:

• https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/rich-lyons
• Report on entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley from the Faculty Entrepreneurship Committee: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2018-08/Entrepreneurship_at_Berkeley.pdf 
• UC Regents taskforce report: From Discovery to Societal Impact: A Roadmap to Unleashing UC Innovation and Entrepreneurship: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may21/g1attach.pdf
• Cultural transformation at UC Berkeley: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/berkeley-named-top-university-for-number-of-venture-backed-companies-founded/#:~:text=PitchBook%20has%20ranked%20Berkeley%20%231,public%20university%20for%20startup%20founders.
• Bakar fellows program: https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/
• Cultural transformation to embrace entrepreneurship
• Mission of academic institutions is impact
• Overcoming inertia at academic institutions
• Ecosystem dynamics & talent pipeline
• Start with “Yes, if” framework to address difficult questions
• Pilot programs
• Berkeley RIC 
• I&E Council
• Inclusivity: Dual degree program 
• Berkeley Changemaker program
• Failures and hurdles
• Ethical considerations
• Parts of the ecosystem that could be replicated and hard to do so by other universities
• Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET)

Shahram Seyedin-Noor is the founder and managing partner at Civilization Ventures. Shahram received a JD from Harvard and worked at Wilson Solsinis and Cooley before going into investment banking at firms like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. He then entered the startup world co-founding several startups. He eventually ended up Angel investing and in 2017, launched Civilization Ventures, focused on supporting cutting-edge innovations in health tech and biology. Shahram has over a dozen exits under his belt, which is a phenomenal achievement. Here are some of his investments: Rewrite (acq. by Intellia), Replace (acq. by Tome), Lemonaid (acq. by 23andme), Singular Bio (acq. by Invitae), Rocket Pharma (listed on Nasdaq), Palamedrix (acq. by SomaLogic), Foresight Diagnostics, BillionToOne, Omada and others. Shahram takes an active role in company building. Prior to founding CV, Shahram was the founding CEO/Chairman of Inspirna, an oncology therapeutics company currently in Phase 2 human trials, and the CFO and VP of Corporate Development at NextBio, a genomics software pioneer acquired by Illumina. Shownotes:

• https://www.civilizationventures.com/
• Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan
• Accountability: Few people blame themselves for failure and give credit for success to others
• Evolution of mindset: Don’t let others dictate what you can or supposed to do in life
• EQ is more/equally important than IQ
• Transition from law school to startups
• Advice for recruiting a non-scientific co-founder
• Rewrite therapeutics acquired by Intellia
• Investment thesis at Civilization Ventures: Drive to do things differently
• Lessons learned from exits
• Contact email: [email protected]

Leo Polovets is the Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Leo focuses on enterprise software and technical products at Susa. About two years ago, He also started Humba Ventures, a fund that invests in deep tech and critical national sectors like energy and defense at Humba.  

Leo led Susa's investments in Mashgin, People Data Labs, Scalyr, and Treasury Prime. Having been a software engineer for 10+ years, Leo approaches challenges with an engineering mindset and supports portfolio companies in vetting and hiring technical talent. Prior to Susa, Leo was the second engineering hire at Linkedin, where he worked on the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups. Leo then worked on payment fraud detection algorithms at Google, and was also an early engineer at Factual, where he built data processing software. Leo received a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science) from Caltech.

We talk about lessons that translate from investing in traditional startups; explore lessons learned about market sizing, pricing, team dynamics, managing burn, scaling, valuation and many other topics in the deep tech space.

  Shownotes:

• https://humbaventures.com/
• Leo’s presentation on “Exploring Startup Ideas” https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C-JFkqsY40tidqPD1OZbV3-OXPAyrsPIV5Q_00PkToQ/edit#slide=id.g221d008c440_0_35
• Thinking about making money for scientific founders
• Thinking about market attributes for a potential startup
• Intro to Humba ventures
• Investing in deep tech
• Founder-market fit; Time to make money
• Investment thesis
• Communication: between team members, to investors and beyond
• Working with startup teams: Commercialization
• Pricing in deep tech: Think of value being created
• How to ask for money for your product?
• Aloha robot- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaaZ8ss-HP4&t=5s
• Story telling
• Manage your burn!
• Scaling: Calibrating on talent; learning to delegate; firing Bs and B+s on the team
• Keeping up with new technologies
• Thoughts on valuation
• What Leo likes to hear while being pitched to

Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of Berkeley Skydeck, a startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. Skydeck started as a mentoring space in 2012 and soon translated into one of the leading startup accelerators in the world. SkyDeck was Formed as a partnership between UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. While it offers all the benefits of a traditional accelerator, what makes Skydeck special is the vast resources of the world’s number one ranked public university. The robust and vibrant ecosystem includes a deep network of advisors, industry partners, and attracts some of the best investors. I have seen its evolution first hand because of my own association since my postdocs days at UC Berkeley We discuss the evolution of the startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley and then dive into how Skydeck has been supporting deep tech startups, challenges and lessons learned.  

Shownotes:

• Berkeley Skydeck: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/
• Startup resources at Berkeley: https://begin.berkeley.edu/
• Berkeley named top university for number of venture-backed companies Evolution of startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley: Pre & post Skydeck
• Changing academia-industry relations
• Skydeck is just not for UC Berkeley community
• Support for deep tech startups at Skydeck
• Criteria for picking deep tech startups for accelerations
• Lessons learned from working with scientific and faculty founders
• Scalability and market potential of deep tech startups
• Partnerships with corporations: realistic expectations
• Picking advisors
• Commercializing deep tech startups
• Investing in deep tech: Evaluating founders
• Tips for applying to Berkeley Skydeck
• Apply here: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/apply/