Lab to Startup

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.

• 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

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. 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.

• 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

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. 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. Shownotes

• 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

https://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. 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:

• 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/

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