Lab to Startup

Vince Romanin, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Gradient. They are developing a new heat pump technology to address the impact that air conditioners impose on our climate. We talk about the problem with the current HVAC systems and air conditioners, the energy consumption and pollution they cause, history of heat pumps, and then learn about the new heat pump technology that gradient has developed to address some of those challenges. We then get into the details about the founding story; lessons learnt from grant writing; working with policy makers; crucial lessons learnt from customer discovery; role that timing plays and about why building hardware is hard.

- https://www.gradientcomfort.com - Building decarbonized HVACs - Sticky problems with HVAC: Emissions from electricity; use of fossil fuels for heating buildings; use of refrigerants - History of heat pumps - Problems with current heat pumps - Lessons from failed grant applications - Grants validate other granting agencies and private investors - Founders should align the funding agencies and investors - Pivot: Driven by the discovery that customers care more for the price than efficiency - Customer discovery process, I-Corps - Timeline for achieving the product market fit. - Working with government agencies/policy makers - Biggest takeaways from being accelerated at Activate - Pitch to VCs: Explain why your company exists - Role of timing - Hardware is hard & scalability - Careers

Wesley Jackson, Ph..D., is the co-founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Valitor. Wes was the founding CEO and led the startup through its Series B financing where they raised over$30M to date. Valitor is a biotech startup that uses a novel protein-biopolymer conjugation technology that was licensed from the University of California, Berkeley. Professors Kevin Healy and Dave Schaffer were the inventors of the technology and ended up co-founding the startup. We talk about Wesley's decision making process to launch the startup, the conjugation technology and the problems it is capable of solving; customer discovery process; lessons learnt from working with partners; finding product market fit; fund raising; importance of work-life balance while building a deeptech startup, a very important topic that is generally frowned upon at startups; and programs that helped Wes grow his startup, leadership transition and many other lessons. Shownotes: - https://www.valitorbio.com - Decision making process to launch Valiant Bio - Working with faculty at UC Berkeley to spin out a technology - Multivalent Polymer conjugation for tissue localization to develop therapeutics - Customer discovery process - Speaking with physicians, feedback from grant submissions - Noise vs signal - Dissecting "No" from potential customers/investors - Speaking with potential partners: Timing and alignment - Questions to ask potential partners - Product market fit - Funding journey - Lessons learnt from grant proposal writing - Too much data: Mistakes in the pitch deck - Focus on markets - Building a biotech startup is mostly a marathon with a few sprints - Balancing life and family: Raising twins while building the startup - Doesn't make sense to burn employees as they carry. lot of institutional/intellectual memory - Role of the board and insights into independent board members - Leadership transition - Programs that helped- https://skydeck.berkeley.edu, California FAST Advisory program

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III is the President Emeritus of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) who served as president from 1992 to 2022. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance.. He was named in 2012 by President Obama to chair the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. In 2022, Dr. Hrabowski was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In Addition, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) also launched the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program, a $1.5 billion fund to help build a diverse scientific workforce. We talk about the state of diversity in academia, the challenges, experiments and outcomes; how diversity is a hard problem; and topics like the pipeline issues, hiring, mentoring, building culture and several others, that academia has made some progress in and how the tech industry could extract lessons from the work done in academia.

Shownotes - State of the union on diversity in academia and industry - Tech industry has done an abysmally bad job when it comes to diversity - Diversity is hard: - Majority of students taking STEM courses in the first two years of college do not graduate in those fields - Empowered university - Meyerhoff Scholars Program - Idea of Grit - It takes a long time to build a program; bring about change; small wins matter - Challenging ourselves and asking hard questions is super important to solve tough problems - Pipeline problem: Need industry to work with colleges early on by providing internships, so they can evaluate and build the pipeline - Hiring practices: Hiring people who don't look like you - Don't treat it as a way of giving a chance- a deficit model - We need mentors and champions - One should be able to talk about weaknesses and how to address - What could tech companies do to accommodate diversity once they hire them? - Success is never final - Need for role models - Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett- COVID vaccine - Hypothetical tool box for the tech industry - Dr. Hrabowski Bio, selected talks, publications and selected speeches: https://president.umbc.edu/freeman-hrabowski/ - TED talks: https://www.ted.com/talks/freeman_hrabowski_4_pillars_of_college_success_in_science?language=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYMLt4MQ0Y - Articles and case studies on Meyerhoff scholars program: https://www.science.org/content/article/vaunted-program-boosting-diversity-us-academic-scientists-starting-spread https://www.proquest.com/openview/41df52ce92df0c921ff0dcd10e73da7f/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5008895/

Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. We cover the lessons learnt from Martin's journey as an academic entrepreneur founding Nicira and factors that aspiring entrepreneurs planning to translate their research to products should consider. - Story of an accidental Ph.D., turned into an accidental but very successful entrepreneur - Shares how working with others during grad school helped his entrepreneurial efforts later - Titles don't mean anything- Forget titles and make sure decision makers are responsible for their decisions long term. - Enterprise version of Product market fit means you have to be piped into the product, the market and the tech trends - Discount the advice given by technology advisors who don't understand product market fit. - Academics need to understand how people (customers) do their day to day processes and their current technology before proposing their new technology. - Thoughts about timing and persistence. - Advice on how to hire executives at startups. - Picking board members. - Thoughts on exits and how founders should think about exits - Ph.D.'s can make great CEOs but remember that business problems are harder than technology problems

Anjali Ramaswami, Tobias Schmid and Miroslov Gasparek, are leaders at Nucleate Bio, a nonprofit educational organization that empowers the next generation of bio-entrepreneurs to launch successful life sciences ventures. Their program connects early-career scientists with business students and provides a structured educational framework with one-on-one mentorship that leverages their world-class network & resources. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the pain points this group is addressing; understand how they match co-founders, their application process; guidelines and challenges for others considering launching a chapter of this organization at their universities; and subjects like diversity, cross pollination between campuses and many others. Shownotes - https://nucleate.xyz - Problems that Nucleate is addressing and back story to build this organization - Matching co-founders - Lessons learnt from team formations - Genesis: Developing a venture thesis based on an idea - Application process - Clinical track program - Speech language program to teach scientists how to talk about their research without revealing any key technology - Challenges initiating local chapters - Pairing MBAs with PhDs- what works? Cross pollination between campus - Addressing diversity - Mentorship: From faculty, VCs, operators - Nucleate 2023 Activator application: https://nucleate.typeform.com/activator2023?typeform-source=nucleate.xyz - General Inquiry: [email protected]

Matt Price is the co-founder and President of Activate, a program teaching scientists how to bring their research to market. He was previously the Managing Director of Cyclotron Road, and comes with experiences in the Renewable Energy space , Materials Science, and Venture Capital industry. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the Activate fellowship program, its origins, especially how they navigated carving out a niche but much needed space for supporting scientists to build startups. We will discuss details about the application process, challenges that the fellows generally face in this space, the support they provide, and what they actually look for in an idea or a founder trying to commercialize research. We will then find out more about the recently announced NSF fellowships for scientists and engineers in collaboration with the Activate fellowship program. Shownotes https://www.activate.org - What is Activate? - Origin story and Cyclotron Road - Business model of Activate vs incubators/accelerators - How VC funding model might not be appropriate for scientific entrepreneurs exploring technology translation - Activate fellows receive money, time and space t find out what kind of capital will help them build a company - Solving the brain drain problem - Types of industries covered - Activate fellowship: application process and selection criteria, timelines, fellowship amounts, and other benefits the program offers. - What success looks like: Economic value created; understanding market dynamics-capture value; identify the right source of capital - What they look for in an idea/founder - Scratching the intellectual itch - Activator readiness level - NSF Fellowships: https://beta.nsf.gov/tip/updates/nsf-launches-entrepreneurial-fellowship-engineers - Hit milestones and receive funding from partner VCs - Delivering intimacy at scale - Apply to the program: https://www.activate.org/apply

Salvador Badillo-Rios, an Associate at the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC). We talk about the origins of the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC); funding priorities; criteria for funding; application process; and insights into best practices for applicants. Show Notes: - Website: National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) - Building hardware is hard - A new DoD initiative that enables dual-use hardware startups - Help product development by addressing the shortfall of private investment from trusted sources. - Some of the founders were looking to China for funding innovations - Areas of interest: Autonomy, Space, Sensors, Power, Communications - Selection criteria - Rolling applications - Application and Review process - Support post funding - Intellectual Property - Tips to Apply- Focus on the why; include risk and mitigation plan - Commercial Acceleration Opportunity (CAO) - Email: [email protected] - Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-badillo-rios/

Sub-contracting: Companies are allowed to subcontract some work since this is often needed for hardware startups (specialized manufacturing, etc). NSIC had several portfolio companies do this. However, subcontracting should not be the majority of the product development we are funding (the majority should be performed by in-house talent). NSIC looks at companies on a case-by-case basis.

Arkady Hagopian is an experienced professional in the market intelligence reports space both in industry and academic startup sectors. In this episode of lab to startup, we will talk about what market intelligence reports are; the building blocks of these reports; how startups could build one; mistakes to avoid; how to decide on hiring a firm if you are looking to do so. This is going to be a master class for startups on this subject Shownotes: - What are market intelligence reports? - Breakdown of a typical market report - Good reports and not so good reports - TAM, SOM, SAM - How to size markets? - Rubric for market analysis- Bottom up approach, top down approach, competitor approach - Which method to choose? - Deep dive into competitive analysis - How investors view market reports by entrepreneurs- what to do and not to do? - How founders can avoid developing tunnel vision - KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) - Who should indulge in market research and build market reports at startups - Market research is not exactly science! - How do truly innovative startups present future markets? - How do you pick boutique market research firms to build a report for you? - Qualifying questions for market research firms - Arkady's LNKD: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkadyh/

Xiaoxi Wei, Ph.D (CEO) and Mark Kline, Ph.D. (CTO) are the cofounders of X-Therma, a biotechnology startup developing a breakthrough technology for regenerative medicine and organ preservation. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the challenges around organ preservation and transplantation; and how a technology they developed at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory is being used to increase the life of organs to up to a week.We will talk about the inspiration to launch the startup, unique success around raising non-dilutive funding; creating a culture, and the importance of freedom to take decisions not driven by investors; Last but not the least, we will also get into their personal life briefly, as Xaoxi and Mark are unique co-founders on that front. Show notes - https://x-therma.com - Peptoid research originally developed for a DARPA project formed the basis for the underlying technology - Biomimicking chemistry in nature (fishes) to overcome freezing problems - Solid organ transplant still very inefficient due to limited amount of time to transport and transplant an organ - Product evolution - Determining the first product to develop, timing and timelines - SBIR grants and VC funding - Building the startup as an outsider (non-cryobiology experts) & role of KOLs - Turning down term sheets - The power of freedom while building startups by taking in the right money - Challenges in the organ preservation space - X-Therma assisting cell and gene therapy. - FDA Breakthrough device status - Culture and lessons learnt from hiring - Being partners at work and at home - Careers: https://x-therma.com/join-us/

Regis Kelly and Doug Crawford have been instrumental in building the Bay Area life sciences startup ecosystem over the past two decades. They continue to grow this ecosystem, making it easier for aspiring founders to translate their research to products at startups. In this episode of Lab to Startup, we talk about the story behind building QB3 that started over two decades ago; the challenges they had to overcome; the evolution of academia and biotech startups from 1970's to the current day; macroeconomic conditions that are shaping the funding and growth of this sector; government policies; lessons learnt from the Massachusetts biotech ecosystem; evolution of new research centers like the Arc Institute, Altos and others; and finally discuss ways to move more technologies out of academia to benefit the society. Shownotes: - Story of how Reg and Doug started working together - Story of how QB3 was built - Story of not believing in productizing university research to becoming champions of building startups - Concerns about curiosity driven research vs translational research - Herb Boyer and Bob Swanson founding Genentech - Changing markets and influence on biotech - Conversations around alternative research institutions like Altos Labs and Arcadia - Progress of academic entrepreneurship - You need public support to build startup ecosystems, especially in the biotech space - Credit card is a sufficient source of capital to start a biotech startup - Better interface between academia and business - Ideas to getting technologies out of academic labs - Ways big pharma and biotech are working with startups - Need for looking beyond cancer - Workforce development to support biotech startup ecosystems - Lack of role models - Lessons learnt from Massachusetts biotech ecosystem - Addressing the lack of diversity in the botech space - Flexible space has been hugely beneficial in building biotech startups - Academic vs non-academic leaders leading startups ecosystems