Learning With Lowell

In Canada, their product is now one of the Best Sellers in its category on Amazon. They were also featured in Dragons' Den (Canada's Shark Tank) a few months ago. In this episode, we get into Altair's backstory, how he developed his company to help people like himself, and the interesting things he is working on now in order to turn his company from just him to a large enterprise. This is a fun discussion.

 

Here is his website.

Here is the Dragon's Den episode. 

 

This is an experimental episode along with episode 016. Basically, I'm trying to figure out how people respond to um's and ah's. This one had about 30% of them removed, while 016 with Leo had about 90-100% of them removed. IF everyone likes them removed, I will set Leo's episode as the new standard.

Bertrand Janin is the CTO at Truveris, where he has helped build their team from just himself to over 80 people.  He was originally inspired to get into programming from his love of games, and slowly built up his skills in coding and managing to the point where he is now a successful CTO. He hopes to one day hike the Appalachian Mountains and believes he is immortal, and since I cannot disprove the latter without going to jail, we will have to take him at his word on that! We have a fun conversation that I'm sure you all are going to love! Let me know your thoughts.

Truveris is a company that helps people save money and time with their Prescription drugs. People have talked to them about how they have saved enough to pay rent. For anyone lucky enough to not have to deal with prescriptions, that's a big deal. They can get expensive fast!

Check them out here: Truveris 

See the many current job openings with Truveris by clicking here.

Bonus points: He has a really enjoyable French accent, which is really fun to listen to.

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Brandon got his Bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Portland State University, where he conducted research on mitochondria with Keith Garlid. Additionally, he got an internship sponsored by the SENS Foundation, working in Henrich Jasper's lab at the Buck Institute for Research.  While there, he worked on aging by modeling the effects of aging individual tissue on the rest of the body by using fruit flies. He received his PhD at the University of Washington in the Biochemistry department. His adviser was Frank DiMaio of the DiMaio lab. This was where he developed a novel sampling strategy for de novo, modeling of protein structures using sparse cryo electron microscopy data. Basically, he is smart and has studied a lot of different topics.

He has since started working at Cyrus Biotechnology in 2015, shortly after the company spun out of the Institute for Protein Design at UW (of which the DiMaio lab is part of).  The goal of the company is to bring the powerful tools for protein structure prediction and design found in Rosetta to industry users in an easy to use fashion with back end cloud compute.

In this podcast, he answers a lot of questions on the potential of protein engineering, how to be an evil scientist as seen in the movie Spy Kids (or the H.G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau) to create interesting organisms, where the field is going, and how each of us can help push the research forward.

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Bertrand Janin is the CTO at Truveris, where he has helped build their team from just himself to over 80 people.  He was originally inspired to get into programming from […]

Ali and Ignacio founded Cytera CellWorks in London to save scientists time and mental energy. They found a great way to do that by developing a cell culture automation machine. Scientists can now cut their time in the lab down significantly. Tune in to hear their story, the story of their company, and how they developed their product.  (Excuse some of the noise in the background. A few things fall suddenly.)

Here is their Cytera CellWorks . They are hiring and looking for partners.

Paul grew up underprivileged and with a disabled mom. They lived on food stamps and struggled a lot. Paul says that he wasn't the type of person you would think would grow into success, but that's exactly what he did. Tune in to this episode to hear his story and advice on how he worked to become Employee of the Year at Integrated DNA Technologies (Iowa) and how he has now become the #1 sales rep at Formulatrix (Boston). There are a lot of nuggets of advice and suggestions in here. If you're looking to work your way into biotech, then I'd suggest you start here.

*There was a small edit to the content denoting the cities and the different companies Paul has been successful at. Thank you, Paul, for catching that.*

Timestamped Show Notes (My Top 10 Favorite Sections Have ** Next to the Timestamps):

[ 00:30 ] Some things he is interested in.

[ 01:00 ] Where he is from and what his background is.

[ 01:30 ] The winding road he took to end up being the #1 salesperson at Formulatrix.

[ 05:00 ] **What biotech companies look like on the inside vs the perception on the outside.

[ 08:45 ] **How he progressed and the specific ways he pushed himself to learn more, so he could excel after he started.

[ 12:00 ] **How he was able to jump into Excel (pivot tables, basic functions, etc) Powerpoint, and JMP statistical software because he understood the math, which was something that he was uniquely positioned to do.

[ 13:40 ] He would grab manuals to teach himself.

[ 14:30 ] ** How he would retain the information and ensure it wouldn’t go in one ear and out the other.

[ 15:30 ] How this all worked to benefit him by being named Employee of the Year, and how he went from Craigslist to #1 sales person within 3 years.

[ 17:00 ] **Don’t be afraid to fail and a great quote on how masters fail a lot.

[ 18:00 ] **How success for Paul was not assured, and he wasn’t the type of guy you would think would end up being successful.

[ 20:00 ] What he went to college for and what he originally wanted to do with that degree.

[ 21:30 ] What he did after he graduated from college, and how hard work paid off in the right industry.

[ 23:00 ] When he joined IDT and where he started.

[ 26:40 ] **What did he do to get to sales rep #1 and the small steps he took to get there.

[ 28:45 ] **Book/Audiobook recommendations.

[ 30:30 ] **Suggestions he makes on the specific things you can do to improve yourself: time management, goal setting, and asking great questions.

[ 33:00 ] How he challenges and pushes himself.

[ 34:30 ] **How he would train someone to be great at sales, how to think about it as a transfer of emotion, how to set target goals, and how to tailor your message.

[ 38:45 ] **How he schedules, time manages, and focuses. Also, he finishes right on the minute that we had to talk, which demonstrates his abilities.

You can find Paul on Linkedin, where he is open to meeting new people. 

And remember to leave a quick review. 

I also experimented with a different intro. Let me know your thoughts.

 

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Chris and Nick are two extremely fascinating people to talk with. In this podcast, you'll learn about how they got into entrepreneurship, how they developed their antibacterial product, and how they are pushing the envelope in the drug development community.

Check out their website.

Show notes to come

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Elizabeth is the Science Policy Manager for the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. She has worked in Congress, with the USDA, and worked in the White House to name a few. In this episode, we drill down into food safety, thoughts into choosing good food, federal research spending, and a small teaser from the Farm Bill that she wrote! There are two parts to this, and you're going to want to listen to both!

www.agronomy.org | www.crops.org | www.soils.org

 

Show notes to come.

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Elizabeth is the Science Policy Manager for the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. She has worked in Congress, with the USDA, and worked in the White House to name a few. In this episode, we drill down into food safety, thoughts into choosing good food, federal research spending, and a small teaser from the Farm Bill that she wrote.

www.agronomy.org | www.crops.org | www.soils.org

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Jesse Morin, PhD, teaches at a Technical High School where she and her students conduct experiments, learn, and have a good time doing it. Her attitude is extremely infectious. Tune in as we discuss her life, what she has learned, and get a lot of suggestions and things to think about along the way.

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