The Biotech Startups Podcast

Need new or refurbished lab equipment? Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/ and explore our partner network: https://www.excedr.com/partners

“The science does need to be good, but it's probably 10 or 20% of the problem.”
Paul Matsudaira took a job in Singapore, and James Evans did not wake up one morning craving entrepreneurship. He left MIT's Whitehead Institute, bounced through venture-backed biotechs, and got a baptism of fire defending data in rooms that wanted a fight. One San Diego client won a contract, and that was enough to plant PhenoVista in California with a year of runway and no paying customers yet.
The culture shock was the point. Academia does not restructure a lab because a fund's priorities changed. Private-sector science does, and it felt unfair. His wife is the reason the company exists. She believed first, then kept bringing home the HR and ops problems nobody warns you about. If people had told him, he says he wouldn't have listened.
iPS-derived cells were still new, the market had a hole, and they never wrote a business plan. They mapped rent, salaries, and grants on the back of the old-fashioned way, because James had no fundraising network from those earlier VC-backed seats. Bootstrap was necessity, not branding. Getting Erica on payroll was the moment the tissue-culture-in-a-hot-room era had to get slightly more professional.
Key Topics Covered:

• Leaving MIT when Paul Matsudaira moved to Singapore
• The baptism of fire inside venture-backed biotech
• Moving the company to San Diego on a client contract
• A year of runway and zero paying clients
• Why academic culture and VC-backed science collide
• Starting PhenoVista because his wife believed first
• Science as 10 to 20 percent of the actual problem
• iPS cells, no business plan, and bootstrap by necessity

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────Links:Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep292
Find our guest, James Evans, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgevansWebsite: https://phenovista.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:How to Choose the Right Contract Research Organization: https://www.excedr.com/blog/contract-research-organizationsA Guide to Writing a Small Business Grant Proposal: https://www.excedr.com/blog/how-to-write-a-small-business-grant-proposalHow Do Core Labs Support Life Science Research?: https://www.excedr.com/blog/core-labs
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Whitehead Institute: https://wi.mit.edu/Massachusetts Institute of Technology: https://www.mit.edu/National University of Singapore: https://www.nus.edu.sg/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:19 Paul Moves to Singapore04:06 Baptism of Fire04:16 A Client in San Diego05:27 No Paying Clients and a Year of Runway07:26 Getting Erica09:06 Academia Meets Venture Backing09:31 Restructuring That Felt Unfair12:42 I Wouldn't Have Started Without My Wife14:05 You Wouldn't Listen If They Told You14:15 Science Is Twenty Percent of the Problem15:45 iPS Cells and a Gap in the Market17:17 We Never Wrote a Business Plan18:32 Bootstrap by Necessity19:53 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Need new or refurbished lab equipment? Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/ and explore our partner network: https://www.excedr.com/partners

“Yeah, tastes like corn, doesn't it?”
James Evans calls himself a late starter. Childhood in the UK was skateboarding and video games, not science kits. His dad was an engineer, and his mom was a nurse, which only looks like a straight line if you draw it afterwards. Science wasn't in the house. Soccer was mainstream. Skateboarding was not, and that counterculture stubbornness is the part he still recognizes in company building.
The fuse lit in Belgium. Coventry University's Erasmus year put him in a Liege lab resuspending bacterial pellets with a mouth pipette, the kind of training that includes a French-speaking grad student shrugging off a mouthful of culture with "tastes like corn." He came home, actually applied himself, and later landed in an endocrinology lab as the imaging outlier. One accidental meeting stretched into a decade at MIT's Whitehead Institute.
At the Whitehead-MIT Bioimaging Center, he learned the habit he still sells: don't do time-resolved FRET in 3D because it sounds fancy. Ask what data you need and take the fastest reliable path. Paul Matsudaira had gone to grad school with Lance Taylor, who originated high-content screening, and that mix of academic freedom and automated platforms is the through-line into PhenoVista.
Key Topics Covered:

• Why skateboarding and video games are underrated founder training
• A UK childhood with no science in the house
• The Erasmus year in Belgium that finally switched the light on
• Mouth pipetting, bacterial pellets, and "tastes like corn"
• Coventry versus the Cambridge-Oxford hierarchy
• Ten years at MIT's Whitehead Institute Bioimaging Center
• High-content screening versus Swiss-watchmaker imaging
• The fastest path to the data, not the fanciest assay

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep291
Find our guest, James Evans, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgevansWebsite: https://phenovista.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:High-Content Imaging Guide: https://www.excedr.com/blog/an-introduction-to-high-content-imagingHow Do Core Labs Support Life Science Research?: https://www.excedr.com/blog/core-labsChoosing the Right Microscope for Your Workflow: https://www.excedr.com/blog/choosing-the-right-microscope-for-your-workflowConfocal Microscopy and Imaging Systems: https://www.excedr.com/blog/confocal-microscopy-and-imaging-systems
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Whitehead Institute: https://wi.mit.edu/Massachusetts Institute of Technology: https://www.mit.edu/Harvard University: https://www.harvard.edu/Coventry University: https://www.coventry.ac.uk/University of Liège: https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_8699436/en/uliege
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:40 A Late Starter03:16 Science Kits, Not Science Class04:14 Kickflips and Perseverance05:00 Counterculture on a UK Skateboard05:34 Mrs. Akhtar and Tractable Biology07:05 The Erasmus Year in Belgium08:31 Tastes Like Corn09:17 Coventry Versus Cambridge13:22 Nobody Sticks the Landing First Try14:02 An Outlier in an Endocrinology Lab21:52 Ten Years at Whitehead22:26 The Bioimaging Center23:16 The Quickest Way to the Data25:47 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“We've never actually taken venture capital.”
Steve Visco grew PolyPlus Battery Company on government contracts instead of a stack of tiny SBIRs. Lawrence Berkeley had already taught him how to write large proposals. The danger, he says, is chasing money that pulls the company off its North Star. Once you sign, you cannot renegotiate the work. You get reports, audits, and no BMWs in the parking lot. ARPA-E will kill a grant that stalls. His grant-writing rule is the same as a venture pitch: why should anyone care, who is on the team, and don't ask for too little.
They started on angels, then a chemical company paid the R&D bills. Strategic investors followed. They have never taken venture. First CEO Rudolph Hurwich did not want it. Venture fails fast. Grants and angels do not take the company. Manufacturing money later showed up in specialized government programs, including a seawater-battery line. Steve's play for corporates is not a cold email. Give a talk that scouts cannot ignore, or earn a press hit, and let them come to you.
Japanese partners move by consensus and assume Americans exaggerate. Some Korean partners decide fast and stay on you. Recruiting in California is a fight. Manufacturing is going to Indiana: dry rooms, ISO, a general manager, and a pro-business state. Asked what he would tell his 21-year-old self, Steve lands on follow the work that still excites you. He thanks Donna, then Rudy, who was on Nixon's enemies list, made the cover of Time with Dymo, and taught a 1960s skeptic that builders can be decent people.
Key Topics Covered:

• Non-dilutive grants instead of living on SBIRs
• Close to $100 million in government money
• Write the proposal so the North Star is already in the statement of work
• Audits, reporting, and ARPA-E's high bar
• Don't ask for too little
• Acting classes, storytelling, and a delayed Nobel
• Angels and strategics, never venture
• Why Rudy Hurwich kept VCs out
• Seawater batteries and manufacturing grants
• Conference talks that make corporates walk up after
• Japanese diligence versus Korean speed
• Hiring in California, building in Indiana
• Advice to a 21-year-old, and a shout-out to Rudy

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep290
Find our guest, Steve Visco, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-j-visco-2910b57Website: https://polyplus.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Non-dilutive capital: https://www.excedr.com/blog/the-benefits-of-non-dilutive-capitalGrant funding: https://www.excedr.com/resources/grants-public-funding-biotech-startupsGrant proposals: https://www.excedr.com/blog/how-to-write-a-grant-proposal-for-researchSBIR grants: https://www.excedr.com/blog/sbir-grants-guideSurvive without VC: https://www.excedr.com/resources/can-biotech-startups-survive-without-vc-fundingCorporate VC: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-corporate-venture-capitalCorporate investors: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-corporate-investors-look-for-in-life-sciences-startupsARPA-E: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:ARPA-E: https://arpa-e.energy.gov/Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/Rudolph Hurwich: https://hurwich.com/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: https://www.lbl.gov/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:29 Non-Dilutive Money, Not SBIRs02:33 Close to $100 Million02:51 Stay on the North Star03:08 Audits, BMWs, and ARPA-E07:52 Don't Ask for Too Little09:15 Acting Classes and a Delayed Nobel11:12 We've Never Taken Venture11:35 Rudy Preferred Strategics13:37 Seawater Batteries and Manufacturing Grants15:22 Let the Corporates Come to You20:09 Japanese Skepticism, Korean Speed22:24 Recruiting in California, Building in Indiana30:36 Advice to a 21-Year-Old35:24 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“We're going to burn your company to the ground.”
Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.
They opened the doors in 1991. Sony introduced lithium-ion the same year. The bar moved overnight. US names like Duracell never caught up. Korea did. Then China. Battery production started to look like the new oil. For about a decade the company lived on fundamental patents and joint development with chemical firms such as DuPont, not on shipping cells.
Two years in, a Silicon Valley lead-acid supplier wanted to merge and IPO on the back of three Berkeley Lab patents. Diligence found the lab had skipped the maintenance fees. The patents were abandoned, then reinstated after a fight with the patent office. A competitor's packs exploded at Motorola two days before the offering. The bankers said no more battery IPOs. Later, a lithium-sulfur follower copied claims, sued, and sent a CEO to Berkeley with a threat to burn the company down. They hired the lawyer who wrote the book on interference law and won. Steve's advice from the scar tissue: license by geography or application, never the whole stack, and build a picket fence, not one patent.
Key Topics Covered:

• Finding a CEO at a Berkeley-Stanford pitch
• Four faculty founders across three countries
• Sony ships lithium-ion in 1991
• Japan, Korea, China, and the new oil
• A decade as a licensing company
• Lead-acid for Apple and a red herring
• Berkeley Lab missed the maintenance fees
• Exploding packs and a killed IPO
• Lithium-sulfur patent trolls
• An interference suit backed by a hedge fund
• Winning at the USPTO appellate court
• License by geography, not the whole company
• Picket fences, PCT filings, and in-house IP

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep289
Find our guest, Steve Visco, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-j-visco-2910b57Website: https://polyplus.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:IP strategy for biotechs: https://www.excedr.com/resources/intellectual-property-strategy-for-biotechsHow to protect your IP: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-protect-your-intellectual-propertyHow investors evaluate life sciences IP: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-investors-evaluate-life-sciences-ipHow patent licensing works: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-patent-licensing-worksPCT (WIPO): https://www.wipo.int/pct/en/Federal Circuit: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:DuPont: https://www.dupont.com/University of Montreal: https://www.umontreal.ca/en/Georgia Institute of Technology: https://www.gatech.edu/UC Berkeley Materials Science & Engineering: https://www.mse.berkeley.edu/Lutgard De Jonghe: https://mse.berkeley.edu/people_new/de-jonghe/Meilin Liu: https://www.mse.gatech.edu/people/meilin-liuRudolph Hurwich: https://hurwich.com/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: https://www.lbl.gov/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:57 Finding a CEO in the Audience03:39 Four Faculty Founders04:38 Sony Introduces Lithium-Ion05:28 Ten Years as a Licensing Shop06:16 The Center of Gravity Leaves the US09:46 A Merger With Nothing to Sell11:05 The Lab Let the Patents Lapse12:38 Exploding Batteries Kill the IPO13:53 Patent Trolls on Lithium-Sulfur15:39 Burn Your Company to the Ground16:15 The Lawyer Who Wrote the Book19:08 How to License Without Giving Away the Company22:26 A Picket Fence Around the Invention32:20 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

🧬 The Biotech Startups Podcast is powered by Excedr: helping life science startups accelerate R&D and commercialization with founder-friendly equipment leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“He says, no, I'm serious. Icebergs. I'm going to Santa Barbara.”
Steve Visco was an introverted kid with a microscope, pond water, and books on Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk. School science lagged years behind what he was already doing at home. Literature almost pulled him into writing instead of the lab. He still treats writing as a leadership skill, because too many scientists cannot explain why their work matters. A high-school rock band got him used to being watched. That comfort later showed up in grant pitches.
His father started as an auto mechanic, then taught at a vocational high school while earning degrees on nights and weekends. The deal at home was two comic books for every classic novel. At UMass, Steve stayed pre-med until a professor pulled him into real chemistry on a valley about to be flooded for a reservoir. He published as an undergrad, then walked away from medicine. Brown taught him electrochemistry on metal carbonyls, not batteries. A postdoc in Newfoundland came with a ferry and a warning about icebergs. He took Santa Barbara instead.
John Kennedy's lab was already poking at solid-state batteries in the early 1980s. Work from 1982 still sits under what PolyPlus Battery Company does now. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab felt like Bell Labs when Steve arrived, until the political question hit: why do taxpayers need these labs? Training scientists was not enough. Labs stood up tech transfer offices. Steve's group became the second company launched out of Berkeley Lab after a Wall Street Journal reporter, who wanted three lines, gave him a quarter page instead.
Key Topics Covered:

• Childhood science, vaccines, and a home microscope
• Literature versus the lab, and why scientists need to write
• Lead guitar and learning an audience
• A father who earned degrees on weekends
• UMass research on a flooded valley
• Walking away from pre-med
• Brown, metal carbonyls, and electrochemistry
• Newfoundland icebergs versus Santa Barbara
• John Kennedy and solid-state batteries before the boom
• Why national labs built tech transfer offices
• The second company out of Berkeley Lab
• A Wall Street Journal call that started a company

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Subscribe to the Podcast:Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep288
Find our guest, Steve Visco, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-j-visco-2910b57Website: https://polyplus.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com/
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Tech transfer and spinning outWhat is technology transfer: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-tech-transferHow to spin out of academia into a startup: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-spin-out-of-academia-and-into-a-startup
Patent licensingHow patent licensing works: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-patent-licensing-works
Angel fundingHow to raise money from angel investors: https://www.excedr.com/resources/angel-funding-and-angel-investors
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:University of Massachusetts Amherst: https://www.umass.edu/Brown University: https://www.brown.edu/UC Santa Barbara: https://www.ucsb.edu/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: https://www.lbl.gov/The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:32 Vaccine Pioneers at Age Eight03:06 Pond Water, Amoebas, and Being Ahead of School03:55 Literature, Vocabulary, and Scientists Who Can't Write05:05 Lead Guitar and Getting Used to an Audience06:14 A Father Who Earned His Degree on Weekends07:02 Two Comic Books for Every Classic Novel08:33 UMass Research on a Flooded Valley09:04 Walking Away from Pre-Med10:01 Brown, Metal Carbonyls, and Electrochemistry11:59 Icebergs Versus Santa Barbara15:20 John Kennedy and Solid-State Batteries20:59 Why National Labs Built Tech Transfer Offices27:24 A Wall Street Journal Call That Started a Company33:36 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.

“If things are getting more complex, you're going in the wrong direction.”
Scott Chetham explains why he left Google and Verily to tackle the unglamorous planning work that slows clinical development. He recounts sketching the company in Costa Rica, raising a pre-napkin-stage round with Polaris, finding an early customer, and adapting when COVID-19 disrupted pharma economics.He also traces Faro's evolution from a scenario-planning calculator into a broader platform for protocol review, data transformation, automation, and research support. The conversation covers regulated AI, the limits of historical data and trial simulation, customer trust, founder stamina, enterprise transformation, and the shift from pushing a market to being pulled by it. Scott closes with the advice that has stayed with him: fight complexity everywhere.
Key Topics Covered:

• Leaving Google and Verily to solve clinical development's planning bottleneck
• Building a company from a Costa Rica planning retreat
• Raising a pre-napkin-stage venture round with Polaris
• Finding early customers during COVID-19 disruption
• The realities of second-time founding and balancing family life
• Referral-driven enterprise sales in a trust-sensitive industry
• Faro's evolution from a clinical trial cost calculator to an automation platform
• Knowledge graphs, data transformation, and constrained LLM workflows
• Automating protocol review and electronic data capture programming
• Why pre-2019 clinical data may mislead modern trial design
• The limits of replacing clinical trials with simulations
• Transforming large pharma organizations under pressure
• Moving from pushing automation to responding to customer demand
• Founder leverage, sustainable pace, and organizational scale
• Why increasing complexity is a warning sign

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep287
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/Polaris: https://www.polaris.vc/Verily: https://verily.com/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Google: https://www.google.com/Verily: https://verily.com/Polaris: https://www.polaris.vc/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/Meta: https://about.meta.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:44 Leaving Google and Verily02:50 A Company Sketched in Costa Rica03:28 COVID Disrupts the Early Market04:39 The Older Founder Advantage05:44 Trust, Referrals, and Scaling10:21 From Fancy Calculator to Platform12:52 Regulated AI Needs Guardrails14:45 Why the Ecosystem Must Work Together17:29 When More Data Makes Things Worse18:44 The Limits of Trial Simulation24:40 Transforming Pharma Before Costs Break It27:30 From Pushing to Being Pulled37:20 Fight Complexity Everywhere39:16 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.

“Our problem is the clinical funnel to shove things through this 12 year development cycle and the amount of capital it takes.”
Clinical development is not a simple scale game. Scott explains why large pharmaceutical companies can behave like highly optimized development machines, while smaller biotechs absorb the full cost of delays, amendments, interim analyses, and underused teams.

The conversation then moves to the decisions that determine whether a trial succeeds: what to measure, whom to enroll, and when to measure it. Scott uses Amgen's osteoporosis strategy to show how a focused endpoint and staged market entry can outperform an attempt to capture everything at once.

Scott also breaks down adaptive trials, global trial planning, patient consent, and the role of AI in compressing months of research into rapid scenario analysis. Automation can map the landscape, but judgment remains essential when the biology is new and the stakes are high.
Key Topics Covered:

• Nonlinear clinical development economics
• Why large pharmaceutical companies gain efficiency from fixed development infrastructure
• The cost burden of amendments, interim analyses, and idle clinical teams
• The division of labor between biotech discovery and pharmaceutical development
• mRNA manufacturing and Moderna's personalized vaccine production model
• Clinical endpoints as a strategic and competitive differentiator
• Amgen's staged osteoporosis strategy
• Adaptive trials and preplanned endpoint changes
• Clinical trial failure rates and increasing biological complexity
• Why clinical development, rather than molecule discovery, constrains the drug pipeline
• The human realities of patient consent and family trust
• Using AI and machine learning for protocol research and scenario modeling
• Global trial sequencing, country selection, cost, and enrollment optimization

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep286
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/Amgen: https://www.amgen.com/Merck: https://www.merck.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Merck: https://www.merck.com/Amgen: https://www.amgen.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Verily: https://verily.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:47 Why Clinical Economics Are Nonlinear01:51 The Pharmaceutical Development Machine04:29 What Makes Moderna Scalable07:13 The Endpoint Is the Differentiator08:07 How Amgen Beat the Broader Strategy09:10 Where Human Judgment Still Wins10:41 Why Clinical Trials Fail11:53 The Bottleneck Is the Clinical Funnel12:35 The Parts of Trials AI Cannot Automate14:43 Adaptive Trials and Planned Pivots16:19 Automating the Research Behind Trial Design21:56 Why Domain Expertise Still Matters26:03 Optimizing Global Trial Scenarios29:09 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.

“Knowledge is now a commodity, and it's your ability to ask the right question and the right next question that is really where the value is.”
Scott Chetham explains why he left academia, how applied physics and industry-sponsored research prepared him for commercial healthcare, and what he learned leading technology and commercialization at ImpediMed. He discusses lymphedema detection, body composition monitoring, early GLP-1 research, and the long path from clinical measurement to drug development.

The conversation then turns to scaling teams through uncertainty. Scott shares how company growth creates organizational whiplash, why founders often underestimate the need for change management, and how leaders can stay close to what employees and customers are actually experiencing.

Scott also describes the shift from software and AI as coding problems to problems of product judgment, prioritization, alignment, and quality assurance. He outlines how better automation could cut roughly half the internal work involved in clinical development, while explaining why rigorous verification and human decision-making remain essential.
Key Topics Covered:

• Leaving academia for direct impact in healthcare
• Applied physics, biomedical engineering, and industry-sponsored research
• How asking the right scientific question shapes clinical development
• ImpedMed's lymphedema detection technology
• Body composition monitoring in obesity and drug research
• Early GLP-1 clinical research and pharmaceutical partnerships
• The progression from diagnostic devices to clinical development software
• Change management inside fast-growing healthcare companies
• Founder comfort with uncertainty, pivots, and execution
• Keeping leadership connected to employees as teams scale
• AI-driven shifts in product development and engineering bottlenecks
• Front-loading quality assurance for regulated workflows
• Reducing clinical development time, labor, and cost

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep285
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:ImpediMed: https://impedimed.com/Novo Nordisk: https://www.novonordisk.com/ClinicalTrials.gov: https://clinicaltrials.gov/Google X: https://x.company/Verily: https://verily.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:ImpediMed: https://impedimed.com/Novo Nordisk: https://www.novonordisk.com/Novartis: https://www.novartis.com/Versant Ventures: https://www.versantventures.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Google X: https://x.company/Verily: https://verily.com/DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/Meta: https://about.meta.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:36 Why Scott Left Academia03:42 Applied Physics in Clinical Research04:52 The Value of Asking Better Questions04:56 From Research to Industry07:17 Scaling Through Change Management09:30 The Whiplash of Company Growth13:20 Staying Close to the Front Line15:46 ImpedMed's Clinical Applications19:14 Following the Clinical Research Thread20:25 How Google Changed the Thesis24:00 The New Prioritization Problem27:24 Why QA Must Come First30:46 The Economics of Faster Development32:46 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. Learn more at https://www.excedr.com/partners.

“Two-thirds of our work is QA. It's not the development anymore. It's how do you ensure it's doing what you think it's doing and that it will keep doing it, it won't drift.”
Scott Chetham traces the influences that shaped his path into life sciences, from growing up on Australia's Gold Coast and watching his parents build careers through work and education to studying the intersection of engineering and medicine. He shares how a combined degree, early exposure to hospitals, and an unusual appetite for difficult problems pushed him toward biomedical research.The conversation then moves into the rapid evolution of cardiac electrophysiology, including early catheter mapping, implantable devices, and clinical trial work at St. Andrews War Memorial Hospital. Scott and Jon also examine a problem that has become central to deploying AI in regulated fields: polished outputs can still be wrong, models can drift, and rigorous QA, source grounding, and human judgment are not optional.
Key Topics Covered:

• Growing up on Australia's Gold Coast
• Lessons from early work at SeaWorld
• The influence of Scott's parents and their path into higher education
• Biology, functional anatomy, computers, and the decision to pursue healthcare
• The value and limits of a highly regimented boarding-school education
• AI-generated misinformation in venture research and company diligence
• Why human interviews still matter in an AI-saturated research process
• Guardrails, source-of-truth data, and degradation across repeated AI generations
• Scott's combined engineering and medical training
• Early neural-network research for cardiac signal interpretation
• Cardiac electrophysiology, pacemakers, ICDs, and catheter ablation
• The transition from open-chest procedures to closed-chest 3D cardiac mapping
• Why AI deployment requires extensive QA, model monitoring, and human judgment

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4TBSP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastTBSP website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep284
Find our guest, Scott Chetham, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-chetham-2949001Website: https://farohealth.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin:https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Stanford Medicine: https://med.stanford.edu/Google Model Cards: https://modelcards.withgoogle.com/aboutMedtronic: https://www.medtronic.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:SeaWorld: https://seaworld.com/KPMG: https://kpmg.com/Google: https://www.google.com/Stanford University: https://www.stanford.edu/Medtronic: https://www.medtronic.com/Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:38 Growing Up on the Gold Coast03:05 The SeaWorld Production Line04:02 A Family Built Around Education07:18 Biology, Computers, and Healthcare08:24 Learning to Lead Outside the Classroom10:51 When AI Gets the Story Wrong14:49 Guardrails Against Model Drift16:27 Bridging Engineering and Medicine18:24 Neural Networks Before the Boom19:11 Inside the Cardiac Cath Lab19:48 From Clinical Work to Research24:58 The Revolution in Cardiac Mapping29:43 Why QA Is the Real AI Work33:47 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.

Excedr helps life science companies get the lab equipment they need through flexible leasing. Skip the upfront costs, stay lean, and focus on breakthrough science.
As a TBSP listener, you can get exclusive perks through Excedr's partner network: special savings, promotions, and more. Explore these offers today: https://www.excedr.com/partners
“If you can overthink all the bad stuff, why can't you overthink all the good stuff?”
As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.

Leslie also explains how Slone protects culture by listening for what different people need. The firm's culture ambassador helps turn that feedback into action, while Leslie reflects on when leaders should solve a problem, when they should simply listen, and why some issues need time to breathe.

Looking ahead, Leslie sees growing demand across medtech, healthtech, AI, and machine learning. She discusses the limits of recruiting from the same blue-chip companies, the realities of relocation and family decisions, the tension between remote and on-site work, and the people who helped her build the firm.
Key Topics Covered:

• Delegation and the difficulty of letting go as a company grows
• Accepting different communication and work styles
• Listening before jumping into problem-solving mode
• Using a culture ambassador to gather and act on employee feedback
• Building executive team leadership inside a growing search firm
• AI and machine learning hiring demand in medtech and healthtech
• Why technology can improve executive search without replacing human intuition
• Expanding candidate searches beyond blue-chip companies and primary biotech markets
• Relocation, family considerations, and executive hiring decisions
• Balancing remote, hybrid, and on-site work models
• The value of documenting institutional knowledge in distributed organizations
• Gratitude toward family, employees, and long-term clients

If you enjoy The Biotech Startups Podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with your friends. Thanks for listening.
Listen and subscribe to The Biotech Startups Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biotech-startups-podcast/id1679591994Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcastWebsite: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-notes&utm_campaign=the-biotech-startups-podcast-ep283
Find our guest, Leslie Loveless, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslieloveless1Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin 
OkKyojin: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:Slone Partners: https://slonepartners.com/Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com/Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/Faro Health: https://farohealth.com/
Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:53 The Hard Part of Growing Beyond Five People02:43 Learning When to Speak Up03:25 Different Ways of Doing the Work04:09 A Type A Leader Learns to Slow Down04:36 People Need Different Things05:07 The Culture Ambassador Role07:39 When Listening Beats Problem Solving09:43 Giving Problems Time to Breathe12:32 Slone's Next Growth Areas12:55 Creating an Executive Team Mindset13:58 Technology, Efficiency, and Human Intuition17:33 The NBA Draft Mentality in AI Recruiting19:16 Looking Beyond the Usual Biotech Markets24:19 Remote Work, Relocation, and Role Fit33:53 Overthinking the Good Stuff35:38 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.