“Try not to be a sociopath” – Robert Hayes, PhD
A morsel of advice unanimously agreed upon by the panel of experts at the Spring Genome Startup Day event, good communication and empathy go a long way in startup environments. However, it takes more than a good attitude to flourish in this diverse and expanding industry. During our Spring Meetup, we assembled a panel of speakers to discuss how to succeed in a startup, to explore the range of startup career paths, and to provide advice on making the jump from academia to industry.
The Bridge to Success
Initiating the fireside chat, CEO of Phase Genomics, Ivan Liachko, PhD, along with founder and CTO of Pacific Biosciences, Stephen Turner, PhD, also emphasized the importance of passion in the startup workforce.
“Startups succeed because of the passion of the employees.” – Stephen Turner, PhD
However, Turner noted that startups must have more than ambition, and work tactically to “build the bridge” between their product and their consumer base. This notion was echoed in our panelist discussion. Lena Shaw, director of marketing at Navigating Cancer, cautioned against being caught in the “overanalysis paralysis” of technological development, and instead, focusing on improving client outcomes, which drive startups towards success.
Foundation & Integration
Many entering startup companies look for positions outside of being a founder or CEO. During the event, fireside speakers and panelists had a lot to say about the wide range of roles in startup communities and how to prepare for them. While each role may vary depending on the company and its needs, there are universal traits that will facilitate better integration into startup working environments.
A common theme discussed was the importance of versatility. Gabriella Kiss, PhD shared her experience with the transition from working in a very specialized position as a doctoral student to the multiple roles she undertook when moving to a startup company. Moreover, just as important as versatility, is communicability. Being responsive and working well in close-knit environments is essential to performing well in these companies. Panelists described their work life as akin to family life, needing to collaborate to overcome differences and disagreements.
Starting during a Pandemic
Despite the complications the COVID-19 pandemic imposed on the world, our speakers remarked that biotech startups are actually growing! Dr. Kiss noted that working with teams around the world became more economic and ecological as many adapted to online conferences instead of flying for meetings that could otherwise be done virtually. Furthermore, several panelists mentioned the growth they have experienced in their companies over the past year. Concluding the meetup, they were adamant about encouraging viewers to seek startup employment opportunities, assuring that startups are always looking for the right candidate to hire.
View the event recording below for the full conversation and more insights into the world of biotech startups.
Stay up to date with Genome Startup Day on Twitter and LinkedIn or watch previous events on the Genome Startup Day website.
Transcription
| S1: 00:00 | We are going live. Okay. Welcome, everybody. We’re going to get started here. So thank you all for joining us today. My name is Kayla Young. I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Phase Genomics, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you for our next edition of Genome Startup Day. So as a quick background for those of you that are new to our events, Genome Startup Day was designed to be a community-building catalyst for genome startup founders, investors, service providers, media, and job seekers. So please stay connected with us via Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ve pinned that to the chat at the top of the chat on the right side of your panel. Yeah. And that’s where we post our upcoming events and other kind of newsworthy items. So some additional housekeeping. We’ll be doing Q&A at the end of both sessions. Please put those questions in the chat box to your right. And for those of you that are not new to our events, thank you for coming back. |
| S1: 01:08 | And also, we will be doing giveaways, as we’ve done in the past, but we’re kind of changing up how we’re doing them. So in order to be entered in to win part of our raffle, only those that ask questions in the chat box will be selected from. So we’ll announce those winners as we go through. Please, at any point, drop your questions in the chat box for either panel and we will do our best to work our way through them, so. Additionally, we’ll also be doing breakout rooms at the end of this hour. So if you’re interested in staying and joining those, I will provide more details at that time. So finally, last but not least, I want to just extend a big thank you to our sponsors. Agilent, Illumina, PacBio, Alexandria LaunchLabs, and Comotion. Without their help, this would not be possible [without support?]. So with all the housekeeping items done, it’s my pleasure to introduce Ivan Liachko, the CEO and Co-founder of Phase Genomics who will be kicking us off for our next segment. So Ivan, over to you. |
| S2: 02:15 | Thanks, Kayla. Thanks, everybody for coming. If you have joined us before, you kind of know a little bit about the background of the event. The goal was to bring founders of startups in the genomic space together to kind of encourage people, teach them, an opportunity to network. But one of the things that we’ve done is we’ve been asking people for feedback after these events, and one of the most sort of robust signals we’ve gotten is people wanted to hear not just from founders, but also people are saying, “Hey, I’m not a founder but I might go work for a startup. What’s that like?” And so this particular event we’re doing a little bit differently. A, the panel later will be folks who are involved in startups but are not founders themselves. And also, we’re going to be doing a lot more Q&A. And after the event, we’re going to actually answer your questions because we found a lot of people put questions in the chat then those questions do not get answered ever as everybody goes back to their corners. This time, we’re going to try to address your questions after the fact. We’ll post a little blog. And that’s why we’re making you put in questions in order to win these amazing DNA socks. So if you want the socks, you’ve got to ask a question. So yeah, so that’s the logic behind this whole thing. |
| S2: 03:47 | And with that, let me introduce our speaker today. As you can see, we’re ready for a fireside chat. I have my outfit on. Today, I am joined by my pretty long-time friend now Steve Turner. So Dr. Steve Turner is one of the founders of PacBio. So he did his undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He did his PhD at Cornell – fun fact. Around the same time, I was also at Cornell – where he studied the behavior of biomolecules in nanofabricated structures. He was a member of a project team at Cornell, which developed the technology which is now employed by PacBio. And he is an author of many, many papers. Of course, PacBio technology has been, I think, something like 3 or 4 thousand papers. He has many papers and patents. He was a recipient of an MIT Technology Review Award in 2003 and the Wisconsin Madison Distinguished Young Alumnus Award back in ’08. And probably, that’s where he stopped updating his bio because his accomplishments have gone way beyond that. And so Steve, thank you so much for joining me, and I’ll ask you some questions. |
| S3: 05:21 | It’s a pleasure to be here, Ivan. Thank you for the opportunity. I’m honored by the invitation, and I’m looking forward to our discussion. |
| S2: 05:31 | Yeah. Steve, you’ve been involved with a very much not startup company for a long time. But presumably, at some point, it was a startup? |
| S3: 05:40 | It was. It kind of snuck up on us that we weren’t a startup anymore. We were talking about ourselves as a startup for a long, long time. And then one day we looked around and said, “Oh my gosh. We’re not a startup anymore, are we?’ I don’t know when that first happened. It must have been around 2011 or 2012. But I strive to keep that energy because I think that startups have something very special that they can bring to technology development that I think is hard to hold on to. |
| S2: 06:17 | So these days, we just went through COVID. Everyone’s kind of scared about everything coming to a grinding halt. But biotech and genomics has actually accelerated at a pace as rapid as we could imagine. What are you seeing today in genomics and kind of like the larger biotech industry that gets you the most excited? |
| S3: 06:43 | It’s only peripherally related to genomics, but I think that the most momentous change in biotech that’s going to come around from COVID is the acceleration of mRNA therapeutics. mRNA therapeutics were on their way one way or another, but it was slow going. I think people were conservative and rightly so. There was a huge amount of potential and some concerns, partly in fact because of the fact that there wasn’t a widespread example of the use of mRNA therapeutics. And I know that the two vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer, aren’t exactly in the same model of how we see this working in cancer– well, some of them will be actually exactly like that in cancer. But when modulating systems biology, it’s going to be a little bit different. So there’s going to be more work to be done to establish safety. But I think that these two vaccines have been accelerated – by an amount, I don’t know, but I think a lot – the acceptance of mRNA therapeutics. And I think in 10 years’ time, we’re going to see almost no area of medicine that’s untouched by it. And I also think that there are entrenched or established leaders, but I think it’s going too big a space for any one company to capture it all. I’m sure that Moderna is going to be a giant in the future, but I think there are going to be many other very, very successful companies. There’s just too big a space for one company to take it all. |
| S2: 08:19 | Yeah. Moderna kind of snuck up on us too with COVID. They kind of went [inaudible], and now they’re super important on a global scale, right? |
| S3: 08:30 | Totally agree. |
| S2: 08:30 | That’s kind of a cool place to be as a scientist, is suddenly, you’re saving many, many people’s lives. |
| S3: 08:37 | And I think genomics has a role to play in all of that, of course, because the elucidation of the pathways that people will be modulating are going to be– there’s a lot known, obviously, but I think that there’s still more that we don’t know than we do. And genomics and transcript domixive, some people view that as separate or some people view as a subset, but transcript domixive and genomics, and especially single-cell genomics and transcript domixive, are going to be super powerful in accelerating that. So I think that there’s going to be a very important use case for genomics and transcript domixive in being a partner technology for the exploration and discovery of these important therapies. |
| S2: 09:25 | So kind of going back to when you guys first spun off PacBio, what motivated you to do that? Nowadays, I think everybody’s spinning out everything, but this was almost two decades ago, right? And so what was the thought process? The catalyst? What was Cornell like at the time? |
| S3: 09:52 | Yeah. We were not the first startup company out of Cornell, but we were the first startup company that tried to do it the right way. And so we went to the various departments and the Office of Technology Transfer and the Office of Sponsored Programs and said, “We want to do this. We want to start a startup company. What do we do?” And the stunned silence that we got showed us that we were the first startup company to come from Cornell that didn’t just say, “Screw it. We’re going to ask for forgiveness later.” So that was a little bit of a surprise. As far as what motivated us, I remember early on in my academic career and my studies noticing a pretty big difference between what is the minimum publishable unit for an academic, versus the minimum viable product for– I didn’t think in those terms yet, but I’m sort of translating it into the way I think of things now. And of course, as an academic, you set out. You have high hopes. You think you’re going to– you have a particular goal in mind. Many times, maybe even most times, you don’t get exactly where you were hoping to get, but you find interesting stuff along the way and you can publish. You can do well for yourself. But it was pretty dissatisfying trying to get industrial partners to take note of what we were doing. Pretty early on, starting in about 1997, we had technologies based on nanotechnology and fluidics that were applicable in biology, and it seemed like we had factors of a thousand improvement over what could be done in a particular state-of-the-art. |
| S3: 11:43 | Now, at that time, I was extremely naïve – well, probably still am, but I was more naïve than I am now – and didn’t understand the dynamics of what are the checkboxes you have to check in order for it to be an interesting investment target. But I thought, “If there are companies selling technologies right now, today doing things that we can do a thousand times better–” and it wasn’t just one. There were many of them. And we thought, “Surely this should be something that should be interesting.” But we were having a hard time getting the attention of the commercial players that were involved. For example, crossed-field gel electrophoresis for doing separations of molecules in excess of 100,000 bases long. Time-consuming. It took a long, long time. Limited resolution. We came up with little nanostructures that could do that job in just a few minutes with better performance. And we thought, “Well, surely somebody’s going to want this.” |
| S3: 12:48 | And I remember the day– we were already working on the DNA sequencing technology, but it was really just a pile of intellectual property. And my advisor, Harold Craighead, I went into his office one day, and he said, “Hey Steve. Do you want to start a company?” And we talked about it a little while, and he said, “I mean, look at this pile of IP. Surely there’s a company in there somewhere?” And I said, “Yeah. I totally agree with you. That has to be true. Let’s do it.” So, of course, now, I think everybody knows this – even people who aren’t entrepreneurs – this is a terrible way to start a company, right? You want to have a specific value proposition. You want to know who your target market is, what’s their problem, how much they’re spending on it, how painful it is for them, and exactly how much better in each of the categories it needs to be in order to get them to convert, and all that stuff. But we didn’t know any of that stuff. We’re sitting in Ithaca, New York. We are apparently the first company to ever try to go through, quote-unquote, “Normal channels,” through the university to get out of there. Which was painful, by the way. They didn’t make it easy for us. And we started the company. |
| S3: 13:57 | Now, at the same time, we were working on the sequencing technology, which was obviously super exciting. And I think not coincidentally, that was the one technology that had gotten commercial interest. We had optioned that technology to a company. So that was noteworthy. And while trying to navigate, what was the company going to do and at the same time working on the sequencing technology, that company that had optioned it, they dropped the ball. And this was, in part, because of what had happened with the events of September 11th, 2001. That company was actually going to invest in us to pursue the sequencing application. So something like 6 days before September 11th of 2001, we had a handshake deal with the business development and executive team. And they said, “It’s not a question of if we’re going to invest, it’s a question of how much. We’re probably looking at something like a $20 million strategic investment. We’re going to do this thing.” We had a handshake deal over dinner in Ithica, New York. And then 6 days later, the Twin Towers came down, and all the other events of September 11th. It was horrible. But the company that we were engaged with at that time kind of fell to pieces. They re-orged three times in that year. And then within 12 months, they didn’t exist anymore. And so that brought that down. |
| S3: 15:28 | So I mean, this is the beginning of a longer story, but when they dropped the ball, I had already started to understand that a lot of these other technologies that we had made that had thousandfold improvements were addressing a $6 million market, right? And that this is not interesting to people. So I and my co-founded Harold Craighead and the others in the group definitely took note of the fact that this company had dropped the option, and so we snatched that thing up within, I think it was hours. I think we were watching as the option date approached. And within hours, we had signed up our own option to it, and then the rest is history. The DNA sequencing application, of course, is very different from this pile of technologies that we had, in that it had a clear use case. Clear consumer group. Although I will tell you and maybe this is for later, between 2001 and 2003, was not a great time to be trying to sell people a new sequencing technology. Most of the answers that we got from investors were like, “The human genomes done. You’re late to the party, dude.” And of course, we had trouble getting people to recognize that more than one person would need to be sequenced. |
| S2: 16:56 | Yep. There was a lot of places I wanted to jump in and kind of like [crosstalk]– |
| S3: 17:01 | I’m sorry. I know. |
| S2: 17:02 | What you said at the beginning about sort of starting, I mean, I would say I’m guilty of the same thing. Being what drove us out was that we had this super powerful method surely somebody’s going to want– this is valuable, man. We can’t just let it sort of die in sort of academic limbo, right? We need to scale it, make it cheap, make it a product. But ironically, that is the wrong way to start a company, but I think that’s probably how most academics get driven out of academia. Not by value propositions and market research and all that stuff, but by this burning desire to do something more with something they’ve invented. |
| S3: 17:44 | Yeah. No, I think that’s true. I think that the realization that you can publish a paper and it can sit in a journal and you get career credit for it, you get citations, and all these metrics, but what does it really amount to? Who are we really helping? And that desire to see our work actually benefitting people is, I think what drove me to want to start a company. And it is a shame, I’ve thought at length about how to fix that problem of academics’ tendency to try to build the bridge entirely from the technology side of the river, right? Instead of meeting in the middle. that academics tend to try to build all the way over into the market from the technology side, which isn’t efficient. And I think there’s a lot that society could do to improve that process of creating awareness of what are the pressing needs inside various kinds of user groups. |
| S2: 18:47 | So what advice would you give somebody – maybe a professor, maybe a grad student, post-doc – coming out and thinking about spinning out a company? Because we just mentioned sort of these two major hurdles. On the one hand, you want to spin out the company for sort of academic reasons and getting more out of your technology, and simultaneously we’re saying, “Those are the bad reasons to start a company.” Yet, we want academics to spin this out. So what’s sort of the advice? What’s the best formula for doing that? |
| S3: 19:24 | Well, one thing which is, I think the answer to both problems is before you begin your academic research to imbed yourself into user groups and try to get feet on the ground experience with people having bad things happen. People spending money and not getting what they thought they were going to get. That’s where the greatest opportunities are. I’m kind of an eternal optimist that people who know me will say maybe even too much so. But my viewpoint is that whenever you see waste, that is opportunity. Whenever you see exploitation, that’s opportunity. When you see all of the various kinds of bad things that happen in the world, those are all opportunities. And so, for example, if you embed yourself in an application area, and you see a tremendous amount of money being wasted, then the question is, “Well, how could we fix that? What could an academic do to move the needle to make it so that they could either spend less or get more or [crosstalk]? You can have 10 times more for 10 times less.” Those are the kinds of use cases where people just light up and will immediately fall in line to buy. And that makes everything easier downstream. If who your customer is is already clear when you start the company, it guides your research, it makes it easier to publish, it makes it easier to get funding for your startup company, and it makes the progress of the company clearer. When it comes time to start marketing it, all of that will go more easily if that information is there at the beginning. And that’s not the only advice. I mean, you could fill a 500-page book with all of the various pitfalls that exist for a startup company– |
| S2: 21:30 | I think many have. |
| S3: 21:32 | Yeah. Yes. I’m sure. I’m sure. But there are so many more things from the experience at Cornell. You said what were the motivations? And one of the things was naivety, I have to say. I’ve read in other startup commentators’ books about the important role of ignorance in a startup company foundation. I think that it’s really important. I say that with the benefit of hindsight, but we really didn’t know what we were signing up for. And the people who have written about this, say that many founders report that if they had known at the time what was the magnitude of the challenge that they faced, would they have done it? And a lot of them say no. And I have to say that if I had been allowed to see only the problems that we would face without the knowledge that we would eventually solve them, that looking at that list, I probably would have shrunk away from the task. It was not knowing what problems we would face that permitted me to take that first step. |
| S2: 22:44 | So some of this naivety is actually helpful? |
| S3: 22:48 | Yeah. I think so. |
| S2: 22:50 | Yep. How do you think– if you were starting that company today, how do you think you would have– what would have been different? You mentioned Cornell made it hard. Would it have been easier today? What are the pros and cons? What are the pitfalls that are specific to today? |
| S3: 23:14 | I’m not sure. I’m not sure it would be easier today. To be honest, when I look at, for example, even Stanford, even Silicon Valley, a lot of people have tried to replicate Silicon Valley’s success in startup entrepreneurship by copying what Stanford technology licensing does, but they don’t think to copy what Stanford technology licensing did at the foundation of Silicon Valley. They copy Silicon Valley now, but if you look back, there are these famous fields that there are still people who are pretty bent out of shape saying that it was quasi misbehavior to make such sweetheart deals with these companies and quote-unquote, “Give away these technologies.” And my reaction to that is, do we know for a fact that Silicon Valley would exist if they had not done that? If they had taken modern-day Stanford terms and applied them retrospectively, would there have been a Silicon Valley? And the answer is, in my opinion, maybe not. The universities are, a lot of them, ratcheting up the impositions they make. And it is really quite foolish, in my mind, that they’re asking for cash to come out of a startup company. If I were a university that really wanted to make a name in startup entrepreneurship, I would be doing the opposite. I’d be putting money into startup companies instead of asking for six-figure and sometimes seven-figure licensing deals with upfront cash provisions. Which startup companies, that’s the worst thing that you can ask. |
| S2: 25:07 | Upfront cash provision, like– |
| S3: 25:10 | I know. I know. |
| S2: 25:10 | –[crosstalk]. Yeah. What advice would you give – sort of circling back to the theme of this event, which is people who are not founders, right? So there are so many roles to fill, and it’s cool and it’s fun, but what advice would you give to people considering joining a startup, either an academic spin-out or a non-academic startup, etc.? |
| S3: 25:37 | I guess the most important thing that I would say is to be passionate about the mission of the company. I think that startups succeed because of the passion of the employees. So why do startups exist at all? Why can a startup company exist? Because if you look at the theory, most kinds of development have this kind of concave upwards development that you need a critical mass in order for there to be motion. You can’t spend $1 in nuclear fusion research and get $1’s worth of work product. You have to get to a certain critical mass point. So why can startup companies exist at all? And part of it is because of this countervailing effect that large companies, they become mired in conventional thinking. They become risk-averse. They become bogged down with all kinds of regulatory burdens and culture that make it hard for them to make even small changes. |
| S3: 26:51 | And there is this critical mass effect. There’s no doubt about that. You have to have critical mass. But as soon as you get to the point where you have enough components to be able to move, a startup company can move sometimes orders of magnitude faster than a large, entrenched company in breaking conventional wisdom, in testing changes to accepted paradigms that entrenched companies would consider heretical to go after. And that means that the risk is much higher in a startup company, but it also means that there’s this opportunity to get to places that large companies, in theory, could go to, but because of cultural and other factors, they just don’t. So you’re going into an environment where your power comes from your agility, your willingness to face risk. But all of that requires passion. Who’s going to say, “I’m going to work super hard and work long hours and pretty much all the time face the fact that I don’t know if I’m going to have a job in three months,” and do all of that if it’s not something– and then you have to use your brilliance, right? Why can startup companies spread out? it’s not like salmon eggs where you make 100,000 of them and if 1 of them survives or 2 of them, you’re doing okay. I mean, startup companies have famously low success parameters, but you need your success parameter to be at least as plausible that you have a chance of getting there. The only way you’re going to get there is by applying the best brilliance of every team member. And the only way you’re going to get that best brilliance is if it’s something you’re passionate about because passion is what draws out brilliance. So I feel strongly that if you’re going to join a startup company, let it be something that you really believe in. And also, let the people that are involved in that company be people that you really want to have be your new surrogate family for a period of time. And sometimes it’s going to be a long time. |
| S2: 29:03 | Yeah. I think that’s really important to remind the people in the audience too. From the media, you would think it’s all flowers and money all the time. But you really want to make sure you love what you’re doing. You don’t mind getting in arguments with the people you’re going to be working with because you will. And it’s a small group and people fight and there’s disagreements and so don’t be fooled by the rose-colored glasses that the media puts on these things sometimes. Yeah. So let me ask you one more question since time is running out. What do you think is the next thing in genomics that we haven’t seen yet? Not like single cell or whatever, but what’s the thing we haven’t heard about that’s going to be super transformative? |
| S3: 29:50 | I will talk about this at length with anybody who wants to. Maybe this is a whole other session. But I really believe that the SNPs, while it was important, it’s not really where– I don’t think that the operating system of evolution and mammalian biology is SNP-driven. I know there are some theories that explain how you can have smooth transition of heritability through the mixture proportion of different traits that come from SNPs and all that, but I see mounting evidence that evolution has an operating system for safely changing phenotype without mucking with the coding regions. And it’s like the XML file of the genome. And I think the XML file of the genome is in the structure. So it’s going to be in short tandem repeats, trinucleotide repeats, microsatellites. I think it’s ironic, we started out with microsatellite typing as a way of tracking all kinds of other stuff, but I think that we may have been standing on one of the major drivers of phenotype and that maybe it’s because we were standing on it that we missed it. |
| S3: 31:05 | I don’t know. But I think it’s notable that if you look back to before sequencing had its first chance to bias the types of genomic features that are causing common disease that classical mapping, which just relies on trio segregation of disease, that something like half of the diseases that were on that list of pre-sequencing, having found a location on the karyotype, something like half of those are structural, not single nucleotide polymorphism based or single nucleotide mutation-based. So that really says something. And I think that that number, I think that probably is going to bear out. That we’re going to see that half of heritability, phenotype, common disease, rare disease is going to be in structure. And certainly, a lot more– and I’m talking to you as you sit in probably the world’s capital of understanding and structure and its importance in genomics, but I think it’s only going to get bigger. |
| S2: 32:16 | Yep. And harder, right? I mean, a lot of this is driven by what we can and can’t do, right? Microsatellites were the first to be studied because that’s all you could do at the time. And then people learn how to sequence and now you can do SNPs. And then now we have these other technologies, like PacBio and [crosstalk] that lets you actually look at structure. And of course, the computational complexity is going to explode because you’re now looking at, well, complex combinations of variables. |
| S3: 32:50 | I agree with that. I think that the compute is one thing, but I also think that there’s a fundamental limitation too. I mean, one of the problems with structure, and this is something that if anybody has a solution to, there is a possibility for a really important contribution. In the coding regions, the codon table gives us almost a pre-made way to cluster together different mutations so that we can have our numbers higher for the purposes of doing statistical significance in order to identify the role of the locus. And even though it’s far from true that every non-synonymous mutation in the gene doesn’t do the same thing. There are some genes where there are three different– you can have a loss of function over here, a gain of function here, and some other thing there. But just the analysis, being able to say, “I’m going to compare non-synonymous mutations with synonymous. I’m going to compare–” that’s a beautiful thing to look at our control group of synonymous mutations versus my test group of non-synonymous mutations and just look for different case rates of particular phenotype. And you go, “Boom! Okay. I’ve got something here. Now, let’s dive in and separate out the gain of function from loss of function,” and all of that. |
| S3: 34:10 | Whereas, there isn’t a paradigm right now for structure. There’s no codon table for structure. So figuring out, ‘How close does an inversion have to be before I can lump it with another person’s inversion or a breakpoint? How many base pairs away should a breakpoint be before I can lump it and say, we’ll compare these together”? So I think there’s a lot of advances to be made. And then we could just say, “Well, let’s just fix it with numbers.” And that will help. If we could sequence everybody, it would certainly extend the horizon. But you also have a situation where, if you’re looking at polygenic effects, and I’m sure there’s somebody in the audience who knows this way better than me, but I think heard a statistic somewhere that if you’re looking at 5 genes with 10% penetrance and 5% prevalence in a polygenic risk, there aren’t enough people in the world to make a cohort that could give you statistical significance. So we need to have something that is able to parse the grammar of systems biology so that we can arrive at those combinations through understanding, rather than through brute force statistics. |
| S2: 35:27 | Cool. Well, yeah, I mean, lots of room to grow. Exciting opportunities. We’re certainly not done. All of you out there, start your startups and help figure this out. Steve, thank you so much. I want to give a hand to Steve. And I hear all of your clappings. Excellent. Oh, the wave of sound. At this point, I’ll hand the mic back to Kayla to usher us into the next session. Steve, thanks so much. And there’s some good questions, but we’re not going to get to them because we’ve talked a lot. |
| S3: 36:03 | Sure. Should I hang out or am I going to stay for the panel? |
| S2: 36:07 | Go to the backstage and then we can talk there safely. |
| S1: 36:11 | I am going to turn your video off though, so. Cool. |
| S3: 36:14 | Thank you. |
| S1: 36:14 | All right. Thanks, Steve. Okay. On to the next. So our next panel, I would like to introduce Melissa MacEwan, who will be moderating that, and then she will introduce the panel from there. So Melissa is a doctoral student at the University of Washington in the Department of Pharmacology. And she is interested in entrepreneurship, sustainability, and life science business development. She is also currently the vice president of networking in the Science and Engineering Business Association, also known as SEBA, at the University of Washington. So, Melissa, I pass it over to you as I add everyone to the panel. |
| [silence] | |
| S4: 37:12 | And I can’t see myself. [laughter] It is so nice to be here today. I was able to attend the comparable event to this in 2019, and it was truly a pleasure to moderate that and so it’s great to be back. I think that Phase Genomics really embodies what SEBA is interested because it’s this perfect melding of business and science and I just love your outreach events for students like me and other people in the community. So I’m going to give a very, very quick introduction to the people on this panel today with the expectation that you will also introduce yourselves. So with us here today we have Lena Shaw, the Director of Marketing at Navigating Cancer. We have Dr. Gabriella Kiss, the Director of Sales at Refeyn. I hope I’m saying that right. And then finally, we also have Dr. Robert Hayes, the Chief Scientific Officer at Immusoft Corporation. So thank you so much everyone for being here. I think if we could quickly go around and everybody could say what your name is again, what your role is, and what you do in your role, I think that would be very helpful for everyone, especially when we go into the breakout rooms later. |
| S5: 38:28 | Great. I can hop in. Hi everyone. My name is Lena. And as you know, I currently run marketing for Navigating Cancer. And I would say for just about 10 years I’ve been focused on driving alignment in growth within admission-driven software in healthcare organizations. At Navigating Cancer, we provide digital solutions specifically designed to help patients through their cancer journey. And prior to NC, I had the opportunity to work with top researchers at UCSF. And most recently, bringing benefits of stem cell therapy to the consumer market at Silene Biotech. And we happened to be – fun fact – a part of CoMotion Labs and that’s where I had the pleasure of meeting the Phase Genomics team. |
| S6: 39:15 | I can be next just to go based on your order, Melissa. My name is Gabriella and I work for Refeyn. Sorry, but it’s Refeyne. Nobody knows that. It’s a little play with words because our academic founders are biophysicists and they love Richard Feynman, that’s why they created the weird spelling on our name. [laughter] We have a product called a mass photometer. It’s a completely new technology to measure molecular mass with light. It’s a interference reflection light scattering technology. Basically, in one sentence it is a nanodrop and mass spec mixture. You could add any sort of [inaudible] in our system and measure the molecular mass in solution with really small amounts of sample. I’m the Director of Sales for North America for the company. Refeyne is a pretty young startup company, just started in 2018, and I joined where there was only six people in the whole company. It’s based in the UK. And I was there from the beginning to adopt the U.S. network sales, operations, marketing, obligations, and everything else. So right now, my title says Director of Sales, but I’m still involved in pretty much everything building up the whole company here in the US. |
| S7: 40:44 | Good afternoon. My name’s Robert Hayes. I’m the CSO of Immusoft. That’s the chief scientific officer. Immusoft is a small company. I think there are about 15 of us. And we’re involved in gene therapy using B cells. My job is I am responsible for all the preclinical science all the way up until manufacturer. And I’m also responsible for the selection and development of the molecules and for the day-to-day technology development. And occasionally, I am also the therapist and peacemaker in the company. |
| S4: 41:24 | Thank you so much. So I’m going to dive into some panel questions that we sourced prior to this event. The last few minutes of it will actually be taken up with a Q&A in live time more. So panel questions for now. I’m going to start off with a question that’s really targeted toward Robert and Gabriella. And I realize I’m biased as a PhD student, but I think that this will appeal to other people too. So there are clearly some big differences between working in academia and industry. Where did you feel the most unprepared or green when you first got started and what resources did you turn to help fill the knowledge gaps? |
| S6: 42:04 | I can start if that’s okay with you, Robert. I think for me the biggest change was that when you are in a PhD environment, then you have your own project and then you are the most expert on that one tiny project that sometimes, like in my case, that there’s one viral protein, membrane protein, and I know everything about that one viral membrane protein down to the sequence level. But that was kind of– that was my all knowledge. And then I did not have a bit more zoomed-out comparison between different techniques, what you could do on it. Like, what is it in different viruses or in different systems? So I think one of the biggest gaps what I had to fill up is the knowledge on the different technologies what you could similar things with and different companies in the area, like who does what. So that’s kind of like the comparison when you go to industry to know how to position your technology, yourself, and just know who the players are. |
| S7: 43:10 | Agree with all of that. What did I find? When I actually moved into industry, I actually found it really easy because all my friends were doing exactly the same. This is way back in the late 1990s. 1998, I think it was. When there was this new [inaudible] and there were biotech companies spinning up all over the place and technology companies starting. And there was this real enthusiasm around starting and being part of a company. And so I didn’t find it at all difficult. I actually was very fortunate that I was in the right place at the right time. |
| S4: 43:48 | I have kind of the flip side of that question for Lena. So you work with a lot of scientists. What gaps do you see when people first leave academia to work in biotech? |
| S5: 44:00 | Okay. Am I on mute? Okay. You know what, and Robert mentioned this as well as Stephen, but startups thrive on output. And I’d say the number one gap I’ve seen is over-analysis paralysis and focused more on the process more than the outcome. So this inability to finalize projects and ship and execute. So I think it’s just part of the natural behavior. And I feel when you’re working in a startup, you need to start with the outcome. When you’re communicating your work, start with the outcome. If your experiment is successful if you’ve proven your hypothesis, how does this improve X? How does this improve patient outcomes? And then focus on shipping more products to learn more. That’s really what we need to focus on in a startup setting. |
| S4: 44:50 | That’s fantastic. I know I’ve definitely observed a lot of that with graduate students too. I think we can all afford to be better at that. So a lot of these questions also have to do with the pandemic. So people can kind of chime in here as they see fit. People were curious, how did the pandemic impact how you perform in your position? Is there anything that you’ve learned or modifications you made that will impact your approach even when life returns to relative normalcy? |
| S7: 45:22 | As far as we’re concerned, very little has changed. I mean, [inaudible] when they come into work because they want to leave earlier. And we, obviously, all have to wear masks. But things haven’t changed. People have to come in. They’re working at the bench. There’s not much they can change, really. |
| S6: 45:45 | Same for us. For us, I mean, within a company at least business-wise not much changed. We’re still really busy in the biotech sector. I think biology is one of those industries where things did not slow down personally. But what changed for me is doing sales and demonstrations applications we were traveling quite a lot before pandemics. And then with the pandemic, that’s completely stopped and we’re just doing remote demos and remote trainings for people. And one thing which I– personally, I like it because I was traveling way too much. And also, in the mindset of sustainability, carbon footprints, it was really not bothering me that we’re flying there so many times left to right. And the pandemic I feel like gave us a good proof that, no, you don’t have to have the face-to-face every time. Kind of forced people who were a bit hesitant to adopt the full online interactions on their end, and then made all of these Zoom calls and zoom conferences a bit more like valuable and the agreeable by them. So I like that because I think when we go back to normal, I hope that we could keep some of that still online and then we don’t have to do all of this, all the travel what we do all the time, in person. |
| S5: 47:10 | And I would say from a just work perspective, and Gabriella and Robert just mentioned this as well, work is still definitely increasing in health tech, in biotech. I would say the number one area that I’ve seen maybe a shift just because we’re in this remote setting is working with the technical roles communicating with the non-technical roles. I have to be part of the product organization and a technical marketer, but really you still need to have that interaction. And in a remote setting, you really need to inject yourself mid-conversation and try to engage more than you would in a normal setting because generally maybe people would come up to you, versus the other way around. So I just think it’s just being mindful of that with different parties that you’re trying to work with. |
| S4: 48:04 | Thank you so much. All right. So another one and I realize that this skill could be taken or sorry this question could be taken in a very precise sense or a more general sense, so interpret it however you want. What are some of the most important skills you’ve learned through real-world experience that you wish you’d learned before getting started? |
| S7: 48:29 | So first of all is try not to be a sociopath. It’s the sort of behavior you’d get away with when you’re in academia, up to a point, of course. But once you go into an industry, you’ll realize that there’s no tolerance for that sort of behavior whatsoever. They’re very quick at moving people out who try and disturb the groupthink. Secondly, the other thing I hadn’t realized is the two groups of people who tend to succeed in small biotechs, but even more in larger biotechs, are those who are quite social are quite able to get on with different people and they’ll move into what’s called the management track and those who are actually really deep in the science. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all about the science. But having those skill sets, in either one or the other, will make you successful. The other thing I learned is that most of the people around me were a lot smarter than me. When I was at UC Berkeley teaching, we all thought we were the smartest people on the block. And then we went to [Stockton?] and worked with Genentech and we realized that they were the smartest people on the block. One of the great things to know is that when you go into a biotech company, you’ll meet and work with people who are just as clever as you and probably a lot cleverer. So those are the sort of things I learnt. |
| ?: 49:55 | Robert, thank you so much. |
| S6: 49:58 | I agree with a lot of things that Robert said, and only a few things which I could add is I think one of the most important skills that I learned was how to communicate science simply. You start talking in industry with people who are not science background people, how to translate all that complex science into something, what you could communicate about with any level of people and background. And not just the simplicity, but also as Robert mentioned, the different types of people. We have lots of science-minded people, lots of people-minded people. So I think in industry, which I really like, and then our company is doing a lot of these personality type and behavioral type analysis between people and try to consciously find ways to communicate between different types of people. And I think the third one which I’m still learning, I guess, but I think we all can improve on is, me personally coming from academia, didn’t really have much self-confidence and self-worth. And then just, yeah, have your self-value and a confidence to approaching things because those are needed and then it should come from you. And if you are confident and know what value you bring on a table, it helps also the others to adjust to you around you and then get things much better on the dynamics within a team going. |
| S5: 51:36 | I agree with Gabriella. First, it’s having confidence and empathy. I’d say still struggling with this, but it’s gotten better over time because of imposter syndrome, depending on where you’re heading in the company. If you’re working in commercial biotech, you’re working with incredibly intelligent individuals. You might be selling products to incredibly talented individuals. And intelligence can be measured in many ways, and that is something that I am constantly telling myself. And yeah, just being confident that you’re taking a risk. You’re working in commercial biotech. You’re doing hard work. And then being empathetic. And I think this gets into being able to communicate cross-functionally and collaborate with other areas of the organization is first understanding what’s happening in that organization and then being able to effectively communicate and engage. I feel like being empathetic and confident is helpful for me. |
| S4: 52:32 | I think that really ties back to Robert’s point about don’t work with sociopaths because they’re notoriously bad at those things. So now that it is 2:23, I think I want to move into the Q&A questions that have been coming in in the chat. We have some great ones. And this also kind of comes out of this last conversation that we just had. So Ashley Alison, who I will note is a SEBA officer, she was curious if in a startup did you find yourself taking on more responsibility than you initially thought? [inaudible]? |
| S5: 53:10 | Yeah. |
| S7: 53:12 | No. Go ahead, Lena, please. |
| S5: 53:14 | Oh, I would say in a startup, again, it’s very output-driven. Processes are being developed. Wearing many hats. I tend to look for T-shaped individuals that can really focus and drive excellence within one area but then can actually support other areas of the marketing organization and the company. So if you’re joining a startup and you’re expecting not to work more than your colleague that joined a Fortune 500, then you’re off-base a little bit. So yeah, you’re definitely– because you’re seeing your work make an actual impact, that’s the incentive. |
| S7: 53:53 | Yeah. Exactly. You take on risks and new roles really quickly when you start up a small biotech company. I mean, I’m not quite sure when we say startup what size company we mean, but the first company I joined, I was the fourth employee, and it was just everything had to be done. I had to learn how to buy stuff, the legal side of stuff, the whole nine yards had to be done. And behind that, was the thrill of starting new work. The thrill of actually working really hard with a couple of other very smart people. And on the dark side, there was the risk. We got to one stage when we only had one month’s salary in the bank. But if you’re a person that can tolerate the risk, then that’s fine. I invaded that elucidation of sort of compartments in my life, so I’m actually quite comfortable with risk. But if you’re not, then don’t join a startup company. Go for a larger company. Go and join Amgen or Johnson & Johnson or one of those companies like Genentech and you’ll have many opportunities. It’s going to be obviously a lot less risky and you’ll still have great time. So don’t think it’s got to be a really small company. Small companies are for a certain set of people. Go to a large company. |
| S6: 55:17 | I completely agree with Robert. And after my academic career, I actually joined a medium-sized company. And one thing which I like telling to people is, yeah, there are all different sizes of companies. They all have their benefits and drawbacks. Find the one which fits your lifestyle.” Yeah. If you have money in the bank and then you could comfortable taking some risk, startups are great. You can also start with a medium-sized company with more financial stability and then later move to a startup. You don’t have to start in a startup. And two companies are not the same, even if they’re the same size. You have to find the one which has the culture which fits you. So just because some company is big doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily going to be bad for you. So there is always different sized companies with different cultures. Find one what you like and what fits your needs and where you could learn and where you can be excited about the science. |
| S7: 56:22 | It’s very true. The different companies have very different atmospheres. I mean, I worked for Johnson & Johnson and for Amgen. Completely different companies. Completely. And you will fit in one more than you’ll fit in another. |
| S4: 56:40 | Another question that was asked in the chat – actually, [inaudible], out of what we were just discussing. And so we have a question from [Christopher Clarity, and I hope that’s your real name?], and they would like to know, for someone considering joining a startup, what qualities or characteristics should they be looking out for to help determine [inaudible] means to have a good chance at success? |
| S7: 57:06 | Yeah. Melissa, you dropped off there. You’re kind of jumbled. |
| S4: 57:14 | I’m sorry. I’ll repeat it then. So for someone considering joining a startup, what qualities or characteristics should they be looking out for to help determine if [inaudible] to have a good chance at success? |
| S6: 57:30 | I’m not sure. I just clicked Event on the right-hand side, and that brings up the chat. Melissa, your audio is really dropping out. It kept cutting off. Yeah. I could not understand you there. But I think you mentioned– you mean Crystal’s comments, which is that what sort of qualities or characteristics we would look for someone for a startup company to join and be successful there? Robert, do you want to take that? |
| S7: 58:02 | Yeah. I was thinking, when I joined Xencor, what was I looking at? I think it was mostly, I looked deeply at the science and really understood it. Even though when I actually first went to interview, I have to be honest, I didn’t really understand what they did because I hadn’t read the papers to the degree I should have done. And things all worked out with, obviously, luck and skill, but I think if you can really understand the science, that’s something that you need to do. And I think once you can do that, you can begin to understand whether this is too risky or whether it’s going to work. And the other thing is, do you actually like the people you’re working with? I mean, you don’t have to love them, obviously, but you’ve at least got to be able to tolerate them because these arguments and disagreements, as Stephen said earlier, get magnified in that sort of situation. So I’d look for the characteristics of the people there and also look at the science there and does it make sense to you. |
| S5: 59:14 | Yeah. I agree. Looking at the science, Looking at the market. Looking at the leadership in the company, the previous role that they’ve been in. Looking at individual [inaudible] for them as well. I feel definitely in a startup, depending on the size, early-stage less than 10 people. To Robert’s point, you have to like working with people. It’s going to be emotional. But even companies that are 100 people like Navigating Cancer, we’ve been around for eight years, but we’re definitely in that stage where we’re going to the next level. And being able to work with your leadership team through those emotional moments has been helpful. But I would say definitely is there something in the market are you solving? Is there a need? And is this the right team that can execute to hit that need, meet that need? |
| S6: 01:00:08 | When I’m interviewing for people for our company, I’m looking for people who have good people skills. As Robert mentioned, there will be lots of conflicts. We work a lot of hours. Many times, a lots just dumped on you and short deadlines. We need somebody who can handle the stress and communicate it so it doesn’t create friction in a team. So it can be part of a really cohesive team. I think also for startups I’m always looking for people who are proactive. Within a small startup in a small team, you need to have independently working people who you can trust. That you know, “Hey, this is the task,” and then they go with it and they make it the best possible way, and then they ask questions when they need it. But if anybody is not doing what is expected from them and that needs constant attention and micromanagement in a startup it’s just not working in a startup environment. Yeah. I think that’s the only thing that I could add to Lena and Robert. |
| S4: 01:01:11 | Great. Thank you, everyone. I’m going to jump in here for Melissa because I think we have some technical difficulties on her end. So we’re going to do one more rapid-fire question before we go into the breakout rooms. Which is, is anybody hiring? |
| S5: 01:01:30 | We’re hiring across the board in every single department. We have clinical informatics roles, data analytics, product engineering, product marketing, implementation interops. So I don’t know if there’s any roles that are relevant to anybody, but we’re hiring if you know anyone. |
| S7: 01:01:50 | We don’t have headcount open, but we would hire the right person if they turned up. So if somebody came along with a deep understanding of B cell biology or in cell therapy, we would make a position for them. We’d find them money. |
| S5: 01:02:10 | We’re also in a phase of hiring. We’re growing really rapidly. I have right now, two open positions for North America. But we’re constantly also opening positions even in Europe. And then as Robert said we also that even if we don’t have the right job description right now for you, if you’re a good fit, we could make it work and we’re usually open for people with the right skill set joining us. |
| S1: 01:02:37 | Thank you. So what I’m going to take from that is their open jobs, but also don’t be afraid to send your resumes when they’re not open jobs. And I can second that from Phase Genomics perspective as well. We’re always looking to hire the right people. So with that, I want to thank our panel. That was fantastic. And at this time, we’re going to be going into our breakout rooms. So panelists, if you can leave, there’s a button in your right-hand corner that says Leave. And then if you click on the Sessions on the left-hand side, and go join your appropriate rooms. Similarly, if my moderators – you know who you are – can do the same thing. And to those of you on the event, I know Ivan was looking forward to announcing the giveaway winners, but I’m just going to go ahead and do it for sake of streamlining. [laughter] |
| S1: 01:03:27 | So thank you to those that asked questions. The three winners are going to be Carey Dudeck, and I apologize if I mispronounce your name, Ashley Alison, and Haratee Dee. I will be emailing you to coordinate your giveaway prizes. So, speakers, I’m going to remove you. Go ahead and join your sessions. And then for participants, please go to the sessions that you would like. You’ll see on your left-hand side it says Sessions and just click on the one you want. As the name of the platform would imply, you’re allowed to pop into whichever breakout room you would want to go to. So please go do those. There’s no need to come back here. This will close the event on this stage, and the sessions will be open. So Thank you to the panelists. Thank you to Stephen and Ivan. And be on the lookout for hopefully what will be an in-person fall event in Seattle. So thank you and see you in the breakout rooms. |
| [silence] |