Lab to Startup

4D Molecular Therapeutics: https://www.4dmoleculartherapeutics.com - Gene therapy was risky, but Dave took the leap of faith counting on a few things- gene therapy becoming big one day; AAV is going to play a big role; and that the natural forms of AAV were not going to cut it. - 14 years of research in academia before launching the startup - AAV has passed through several boom and bust cycles, and the current timing is great. - Three products in the clinic and more n the way - Disease first approach - Over a billion variants of AAV in the library - One of the most important roles of a CEO is to set the vision and hire great people - Be very careful who you take money from- some do that to sell you off quickly. There is indeed good money and bad money - VCs diversify by investing in multiple startups, while 4DMT diversified internally to succeed - Business development is a nice alternative to straight equity financing - Financing is like painting the Golden Gate bridge. You never stop - Several opportunities to exit, but decided to focus on seeing a therapy to the market rather than make a quick buck - Partnerships bring cash, capabilities and validation. - Developed innovative partnership models, so they didn't lose ownership rights to vectors. Transformative partnership with Pfizer - Reason behind going to IPO instead of raising more VC money - Going to an IPO by itself is not a success. It is just another form of funding to get to your goals.

Manan Mehta is the founding partner of Unshackled ventures. We cover the thesis behind funding immigrant entrepreneurs- more specifically about their process for funding startups and how they help them with their visa issues. - A high conviction "friends and family" investor that removes immigration hurdles & gives you a network to succeed faster. -- Connecting the unconnected and supporting the startups with capital and customers - Quick decision process and communication with founders even if they decide not to invest. - Focus on customer (entrepreneur) service - Questions they try to look for answers- Why you? Why now? Why this? - Looking for an adversity muscle that gives them confidence that an entrepreneur can persist and win - Incumbent industry insiders are mostly biased about new technologies. Founders & investors need to steer through such experts and persist. - 170 immigration filings across 13 immigration categories (OPT to Green card filings) - Things they consider: Fastest pathway for an entrepreneur to work and as long as they want. - Unshackled takes care of the immigration filings at no cost to the founders- it is an investment they make in them. - For every dollar they invested, their portfolio companies raised 27x on average - Pre-seed is founder-problem fit; seed is problem-market fit; Series A is Product-market fit and beyond that is go-to-market fit - We underwrite people and not businesses - Learn about the Unshackled university fellowship program; EIR/Round table program - Application for University Venture Fellows Program- https://airtable.com/shrlrPthK3IwY1NDC

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

My guest today is Amanda Cashin, the Co-Founder and Global Head of Illumina Accelerator, which focuses on building genomics-driven startups. We talk about:

• Accelerator program, sequencing support, seed funding, training and the selection process.
• Partnering with leading angel and venture capital investors to help the startups
• Latest partnership with Sequoia Capital to support an incubator in China.
• Role of storytelling
• Future vision and how next generation sequencing is going to advance healthcare.
• Upcoming application deadline to the accelerator due October 1, 2021
• Application form: https://miseqmyfocus.wufoo.com/forms/qgby2411drpybc/

In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Shannon Ciston and Branden Brough. Branden is the Deputy director of Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and Shannon is the Director of the User Program. We explore various resources that Molecular Foundry offers like:

• World-class scientists with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and state-of-the-art instrumentation.
• How to get accepted to the program
• Cost to users (mostly free)
• Intellectual property rights from using their support
• Examples of startups that benefited from the program

Learn more about Molecular Foundry: foundry.lbl.gov

In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Brian Feth and James Lim, co-founders of XCellBio. We explore the startup story and learn about:

• The founding story- the initial hypothesis behind the product they wanted to build and how the technology evolved since then based on customer feedback
• Fundraising trials and tribulations
• How there was a lesson hidden in every "No" they received from potential customers and investors
• Role that partnerships played
• Traits like flexibility, open communication and co-founder chemistry Learn more about XCell Biosciences: https://www.xcellbio.com

This podcast is focused on stories from founders in deep tech space building startups from their research at universities and national labs. Also want to cover resources (investors, tech transfer offices, advisors, industry alliance offices, etc.) that helped those startups. The goal is to provide these stories to others considering this route. We almost never hear those stories of transition from lab to market.