Lab to Startup

Jenn Gustetic is the Director of Early Stage Innovations and Partnerships at NASA. 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