Sandy Kory is a Managing Director and co-founder of  Horizon Partners; and most recently announced a new Seed Stage Venture Capital Fund HorizonVC, where he is a General Partner.  Sandy has been advising bootstrapped technology companies for over 15 years and co-leads every client engagement. HIs approach is informed by actively investing in technology startups such as Palantir, Canva, and Zoox that went on to become unicorns. This episode is going to be an M&A 101 class for startups.

Show notes: - Horizon Partners: https://horizonpartners.com; Horizon VC: https://horizon.vc - High-touch, “Artisanal M&A” model - Working with bootstrapped companies - How should startups think about M&A in their early stages- Understand negotiations? - Interests, options, criteria (Book referral: Getting to yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton) - Psychology of buyers and sellers- how they think and act - Signaling - Obvious, but never look desperate to sell - Game theory dynamics - Common mistakes that sellers make - What should a startup do when a buyer knocks at their door? - Tough and relatively easier negotiations- what was involved - How not to learn from past deals? - Role of relationships- past and present - How to pick an M&A firm? - Investment thesis at Horizon VC

Keis Ide is a partner at UTEC, a Japanese Venture capital firm investing in deep tech across the world. Keis focuses on innovative technologies as well as IT-enabled solutions. He spent 15 years in the US, half of which in Silicon Valley. He was awarded Forbes Japan Midas List (2017, 2020), Japan Venture Award (2021). UTEC has been working with academia in Japan and abroad including the University of Tokyo. They have supported technology ventures that are pioneering frontiers to solve global issues of humankind, by bringing together capital, talent, and knowledge; around science and technology. Their latest fund, UTEC 5, raised over JPY 30 billion in 2021. They provide hands-on support from the seed/early stages in cooperation with their partners in academia in Japan and abroad. Show notes: University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners - Founded as a VC firm because of a regulation change around universities in Japan - Startup marketing and whole product thinking - Characters they are looking for in founders - Investing in technologies that are applicable worldwide - Assessing technology risk vs market risk in deep tech startups - Segmenting customers- Finding the right maret vertical when you have multiple markets - Assessing market costs at early stages - How UTEC helps founders - Creating business plans in collaboration with founders - Difference between founders in Japan vs the US - A nice support system for early stage founders in Japan compared to the US - Areas that UTEC likes to invest - Discussion around the concept of speed for deep tech startups - Creating appropriate milestones and focus on solving specific problems rather than spreading thin solving many problems - Hiring external CEOs for deep tech startups - Contact: https://www.ut-ec.co.jp/english/contact

Alexandra Wright Gladstein is the founding CEO of Ayar Labs. Alex met her co-founders, Chen Sun, and Mark Wade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was pursuing her MBA. We talk about the research that resulted in launching Ayar labs, the learning curve that she had trying to master the technology while being a non-technologist and successfully driving the company; licensing, fundraising trials and tribulations; being a woman in tech; Me too movement; how to differentiate between good and bad advice; leadership transition; leadership lessons; and future goals. Show Notes: - Ayar Labs - Moore's law is going to come to an end and moving to optical technologies is inevitable - How we move data between chips hasn't evolved (over copper). So, Ayar labs came up a way to move data with light - Technology developed at MIT, UC Berkeley, Colorado University Boulder - Winning a startup competition at MIT helped spin off the startup. The underlying technology was originally funded by a $20M DARPA grant - Alex realized that this technology has the power to transform an entire semiconductor industry - Readiness of a technology is hard to evaluate - Interacting with engineers and speaking their language is important to understand how ready a technology is to hit the market - Product-market fit exercise - How to take advice and pick advisors? - Most VCs invest in software. So, focus on ones experienced in the semiconductor industry, who are more patient with capital - Patents and licensing agreements - Hard to know the reasoning for discrimination in the moment, especially as a female founder - Me too movement relly helped and it actually changed the way investors act now - Questions that investors ask differ if the founder is male vs female - Don't talk too much time about the downside risk, instead focus on the upside potential - Leadership transitions - Didn't want the VCs dictating a leadership change - Partnerships take a lot more time in the semiconductor industry - Patience is a virtue - If you are talking to a competitor, talk about results/outcomes rather than the process - No one built your startup previously. So, trust your tea, technology and gut than advice you receive

Prof. Amy Herr is the Executive Director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub (BBH) and Prof. Regis Kelly is the Director of Bakar Labs at the University of California, Berkeley. BBH is a new campus initiative that aims to launch the startups at  Bakar Labs, a world-class incubator. The facility is open to teams from around the world — a space where anyone can leverage all that Berkeley has to offer. Bakar labs will rent labs and offices to as many as 80 startup companies. The incubator will also provide extensive equipment with additional access to core facilities at UC Berkeley, so startups can bring life changing technologies to fruition. We talk about the origin story, the effort needed to transform a former Berkeley Art Museum to a biotech incubator; patient capital and resources being deployed to support the startups; partnerships being developed internally and externally; programming to benefit students and faculty on campus; intellectual property; changing biotech landscape and the vision for this magnum opus experiment. Shownotes Bakar Bioenginuity Hub and Bakar Labs Speaker Bios: Prof. Amy Herr, Prof. Regis Kelly - Trainees complained about not providing training or pathways for non-academic career pathways - Faculty couldn't fill much about public service in their promotion packages - Reg comes out of his retirement to head QB3 - Entrepreneurship was more vibrant on the engineering side of the campus but not much on the life sciences side - Born out of a vision for maintaining and expanding UC Berkeley's research eminence by growing on the innovation and entrepreneurship front - Easiest way for university research to work with big pharma and biotech was through startups - Convergence of ideas from different points of view made BBH happen - There is a need for building academic innovation centers to benefit the people funding academic research - A historic art museum (artistic heritage) was converted to a life sciences incubator - There was no money to renovate the museum! Some innovative thinking and generous donors helped transform it to a life sciences incubator. - Lessons for other universities could potentially learn to build such innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems - How does one get accepted to BBH? - BBH is open to problem solvers all over the world- not just to UC Berkeley affiliates - Women have been excelling at building companies. A lot more needs to be done to support Latino and other underrepresented minorities to build startups - Big philanthropies are investing in deeptech to deploy patient capital - A new Ph.D. fellowship program to support entrepreneurship efforts of PhD students for the last two years of their program - Phenomenal partnerships with every possible player in the ecosystem being built- biotech, pharma, VCs, law firms and more - Intellectual property will be owned by the startups - Get in Touch

Liam Berryman (CEO) and Lance Brockway, Ph.D. (CTO) are the co-founders of Nelumbo, a startup developing an advanced materials platform focused on improving the energy performance and minimizing corrosion challenges with heat exchangers in Air Conditioners and also mitigating icing on outdoor units and refrigeration. They are also developing water repellent material to replace PFAS in millions of products. We talk about the need for anti-icing technologies, the solution they have developed; and the impact the adoption of this technology could have on the environment. Since this is a problem that the whole world is trying to solve, we will explore the challenges in adoption of such technologies; funding that helped them get off the ground and the team that is driving their mission. We will take a deep dive into partnerships they developed to bring the product to market. Show Notes: Nelumbo - Impact: reduce CO2 emissions and usage of PFAS. - One of the first anti-ice technologies for heat transfer technologies and fluoro chemicals. - The Icing problem has generally been ignored, but it is time to address this problem hurting our environment. - Nelumbo's technology  could prevent 1-1.2 gigaton (2.2 trillion pounds) of Carbon Dioxide emission in the next 20-30 years! - Also, usage of upto 100 metric tons of fluoro chemicals/year could be avoided (from the current usage of PFAS) - Technology developed at UC Berkeley. - Nelumbo has developed a multi-layered, tunable, and scalable suite of surface modifications that provide superior fluid and corrosion control. - They partnered with manufacturers to bring their technology to the market. - Business school case studies on partnerships were not helpful in building partnerships with the right folks in the supply chain. - Important aspects of partnership: Understand motivations, cultural barriers, manage communications well, identify decision makers, have a point of contact. - It takes seven meetings to close a deal. - European industrial companies have been faster in adopting technologies in this space- Most first world countries are adopting faster than the US. - Entrepreneurs generally think that people really care about efficiency, but usually it comes down to cost and other motivating factors. - First funds into the startup were from a startup competition. - Team: An undergrad (drops out of college) and teams with two PhD's, and ends up becoming the CEO. - You need a certain level of naivety when you are launching a startup. - Evolution of VCs in the cleantech space. - Good investors don't try to come in and change the course of the startup. - Example of a startup with extreme transparency with team members.

Jalel Sager, Ph.D. (CEO), Austin Cappon (Networks & hardware), and Jonathan Lee (Senior R&D Engineer) are the co-founders of a California based startup, New Sun Road (NSR). They develop cloud-based technology systems designed to distribute energy (clean technologies), and internet connectivity issues for off-grid communities around the world. We talk about how New Sun Road originated from a class at UC Berkeley that led to the evolution of various products that now is able to provide renewable electricity and internet to several communities around the world for the first time in their lives. The founders share their experiences building NSR with grants, under extremely resource-limited geographical locations in Vietnam and Uganda; prioritizing technology development rather than taking on new projects; how grit, resourcefulness, and patience helped them persevere; about how important it is to be on the ground when you build this kind of a startup, even though it is hard; and the lessons learned from building NSR. Show notes: -New Sun Road -Job Openings: https://newsunroad.com/careers/ - Problems being solved: Building distributed energy systems for clean technologies; provide internet and energy access to remote and developing communities - Founders first met in a class at UC Berkeley - Grants from the governments and UN catalyzed the initial research - Started the company by building a microgrid in Vietnam - A visit to the United Nation to receive an award led them to another project on a remote island in a fishing village in Uganda- lit up their main street with 20 connections! - Guests talk about the ground reality of working in a resource limited village - While off the shelf components helped them build the initial product (in one of the founder’s mon’s garage), the team had to pivot to building more robust hardware - Working on the ground is super important while building a startup in this space. No alternative! Cannot build a startup working remotely - Where do you start if you are trying to build a startup in an under-resourced country? - You will get your butt kicked! - Need grit and extreme planning, especially when you don’t have funding - How do you get help on the ground in places like Uganda or Vietnam? - Building something in a tough geographical location has to happen before a big partner like Microsoft can trust early stage founders - CITRIS Foundry, a startup incubator at UC Berkeley was very helpful in terms of infrastructure to build and learning about startups - Microsoft was an incredible partner that helped build the first systems and also with the pivot -Microsoft  initially provided a grant; develop software for control of remote power systems and microgrids; ultimately became an investor in New Sun Road - Unconventional funding path- focused on generating revenue than trying to raise a lot of venture capital - How they treat competition - What scares them and keeps them on their toes? - “Helping a community get electricity for the first time in their lives is extremely satisfying.”

Irene Griswold-Prenner, Ph.D., is the founder and CSO of Nitrase Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company deploying its unique NITROME platform to unlock the therapeutic potential of nitrases, a new class of enzymes discovered in-house that offer the promise of a pipeline of therapies against a broad variety of diseases. Their breakthrough discovery of the enzymatic nature of protein nitration by nitrases, as well as our understanding of their exquisitely selective and specific mechanism of action, enables the identification of novel and differentiated small molecule drugs that target the core biologic processes of many diseases, starting with Parkinson’s Disease. We talk about the origin of Nitrase Therapeutics, unique insights that led to founding the startup, breakthrough discovery, past experiences, funding, teams that helped build successful ventures, latest Series A funds raised and lessons learnt in her journey as a scientist and entrepreneur. Show Notes: Unique insight: Nitration, the addition of a nitro group to proteins was considered as just another chemical reaction. Irene from her own research long ago believed that the nitration is actually an enzyme mediated reaction and the startup idea was to identify the enzyme. responsible for nitration and drug it for therapeutic benefit.  It was just an idea, a hypothesis that originated 18 years ago (2002), which gave her sleepless nights over the years that ultimately led to launching Nitrase Therapeutics in 2017. Nitrase Therapeutics - Trained as an oncologist but brought in Athena and then to Elan pharmaceuticals to study signals transductions that were going haywire in Parkinson's disease. - Came across nitration and worked on a side project at Elan pharmaceuticals - There will be naysayers and so did Irene, who talks about her coping mechanism and how the idea survived and got funded. - Program Lead for iPierian's R&D Tau Program acquired by BMS for up to $725 million. - Elan was sold to Perigo, from whom Irene and her partners were able to license and start Imago pharmaceuticals - How does one approach a company to ask if you can license their preclinical programs that were about to be discontinued? - Lessons learnt from working at pharma and biotech companies, and starting your own company - Had a blast working with two other female co-founders - San Francisco Bay Area still has the best people to work with-scientists or otherwise. - Used to do everything from payroll to ordering at Imago. Moved to Trinet at Nitrase - Seed money came from Caspar, Wyoming, in spite of having VC connections in her previous life (contacted about 40-50 VCs, who expressed interest but gave no money). - Money came from non-biotech investors in the middle of Wyoming, because they believed in Irene and the idea - Fund raising had very clear milestones - It took 8 months of grueling work to identify the first nitrase- an idea translated to reality! - Every gene in the human genome has been discovered but we are yet to grasp their functions completely- far from it. Experts behave as if they do know it all! - Recruited the first team two members: One had the best hands in experimental techniques and the other that helped with protein purifications - Raised Series A of $45M - Brought in investors that could help Irene - Clear from the beginning that she was going to bring in an external CEO when the time was right. It was important that the company does well. - Naysayers probably thought- "How did you come up with the idea if I couldn't". Just show the data and don't bother too much

Summary: Marija Vrljic, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Scalmibio, an early-stage biotechnology startup that developed a transformational technology focused on oncology applications. We talk about the inspiration for launching the startup, how she was able to bootstrap the company, raised non-dilutive funds which ultimately led to being acquired in October, 2020. Show notes: - ScalmiBio is a startup that was born when Marija was diagnosed with thyroid cancer - Technology: Antibody prodrugs that could target only cancer tissues and remain inactive around healthy tissues. - Startup was based on unique insights (around protein folding and publicly available protein databases) that came from deep understanding of work during graduate and postdoctoral research. - Founding story - Bar for founding a startup for scientists with data packages from their research is much lower. In terms of fundability- In vivo model as a proof of concept seems to be more fundable for life sciences startups. - SBIR/STTR funding Small Business Transition Grant For Early Career Scientist: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-CA-21-001.html NCI SBIR Concept Award https://sbir.cancer.gov/funding/concept

NCI SBIR writing assistance program: https://sbir.cancer.gov/programseducation/aap?cid=eb_govdel

- Writing out a grant gives clarity and helps builds a business case - The whole scientific field would say that the technology might not work because there was not enough data - Talking to folks (once you filed provisional patent) in the industry usually helps entrepreneurs understand potential issues on both the technology and business fronts. - You need to have a lead product before talking about platform plays - Raising VC funds to take a product to the market might not always be the fastest way. Working as a part of a bigger company with the right resources - Recruited by Pat Brown as one of the first scientists to work at Impossible Foods - Understanding the concept of scaling and costs/pricing is super important as you embark on the startup journey - It is hard to stay competitive- You have to move fast and get better results than the competition - Network with engineers, law students, MBA students and others while in grad school/postdoc- a valuable skill!

Startup Pitch ubiqd.com Email: Hunter McDaniel- [email protected]

Douglas Crawford, Ph.D., is the General Manager of MBC Biolabs, Managing Partner of Mission BioCapital, a VC fund investing in life sciences startups at the seed and Series A stages. We talk about the facilities that help scientists at MBC Biolabs, how to get accepted to the labs, partners, golden tickets and stories of startups; funding hypothesis, the impact, and investment criteria to get funded. Show Notes MBC Biolabs  Mission Bay Capital - Started with a realization that nothing that is discovered in a lab at a university by itself cannot benefit a patient without a company in between. - Startups are the most efficient engines to turn an idea into something very practical and useful for society. - Experiment: If we provide a Minimum Viable Space to a scientist, could they do something catalytic to their idea or project? - In the mid 2000's, 100% of VCs in the Silicon Valley said that it is a terrible idea to start a life sciences incubator. They said a biotech incubator will be like an ICU for startups. - Biotech companies don't have market risk- They mostly have technical risk. - The startups that incubated at MBC Biolabs (since 2013) raised over $10 Billion, brought 54 programs to the clinic, 13 approved diagnostics, and 71 products to market. - Selection criteria to get accepted to MBC Biolabs. - If a scientist was lucky to be funded by a VC in the mid 2000's, she/he would have spent about 6-12 months getting their lab up and running, which was fixed by incubators like MBC Biolabs. - Incubators give an opportunity for scientists to prove themselves. - Strategic advice isn't very popular with life sciences entrepreneurs. They are mostly looking for technical validation. - Different definition of pivot. - Golden Tickets - Origin story of Mission Bay Capital- How Jack Wadsworth, Honorary Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and Advisory Director of Morgan Stanley globally. encouraged them to raise a fund to invest in startups Doug and his team were incubating. The fund evolved into Mission Bio Capital. - Invest in therapeutics (70%), diagnostics, medical devices, and food. - How they look at risks and insights, and how they invest. - Checkout stories of Caribou Biosciences- Jennifer Doudna & Rachel Haurwitz; Alector- Arnon Rosenthal, Ph.D. - Nitrase Therapeutics- Irene Griswold-Prenner. Story of how a whole new class of enzymes were identified - Areas of interest for investment. - Thoughts on ways the investment funds need to change. - Book recommendations: Noise, Super forecasting

Rocket Fund: https://rocketfund.caltech.edu/ Email: [email protected] Application process and background information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ubtkD1ziVeXqDChnL00gP6wDFWTsQGb/view?usp=sharing Application: https://platform.younoodle.com/competition/caltech_rocket_fund_2022 - A program that has a way to introduce startups to decision makers at utility companies, who can help discuss their needs and adopt new technologies. - They grant $25,000- 75,000 to startups that provide much needed support for designing prototypes, buying equipment, and getting certifications, which other grants don't cover. Prefer startups with TRL 5-7 based on Department of Energy guidelines. - Program partners like IN2 Wells Fargo and Shell Game Changer offer $250,000 of in kind support that gives you access to technology advice from The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Access to their facilities; customer validation, etc. - The other partnership is with the Electric Power Research Institute - A new Technology Early Deployment (TED) program in collaboration with Southern California Edison (SCE)- Brings Rocket Fund companies access to program managers at SCE. - Lessons learnt from successful and not so successful startups - How scientists/engineers should move away from loving their technology and working towards market adoption (Inventions turning to innovations). - Seed funding landscape for climate tech. Prime Movers lab, Department of Energy, Loan Programs Office - Requirements to apply and focus areas for this granting period - 20% of grants will be made to teams with diverse leadership