Author: Kayla Young

Startup Stories: Navigating the Ins and Outs of Incubators and Accelerators

Posted on March 17, 2021 by - Hi-C, Webinar

Insights from the Trenches with Genomics Startup Founders

 

In the first Genome Startup Day event of 2021, we highlighted one of the most critical decisions facing early-stage founders: whether or not to enter an accelerator or incubator. Three genomics startup founders from across the US shared how their unique experiences helped shape their company’s foundation and path to success. From mentorship to hiring to building community in a virtual world, these founders’ candid and frank stories deliver tangible and educational takeaways for new and future founders alike.

 

Watch the video here or read the full transcript below.

 

 

Transcription results:

S4: 30:15 [Ed Winnick] Okay, great. Hello, everyone. As Ivan noted, I’m Ed Winnick. I’m editor-in-chief at GenomeWeb. I’m really happy to be participating in this event today. We have a great panel of startup founders today from three companies. We’ve got Natalie Ma of Felix Biotechnology. We’ve got Joe Miller from [Cqua?], and we’ve got Alex Rosenberg from Split Biosciences, which as of a day ago, is now called Parse Biosciences. And I’m sure Alex will tell us more about that in a moment. So what I like to do is start off by giving each of you a little bit time here to tell us about yourself, your company, and why you chose the path of being involved with an incubator, an accelerator, both or neither. So let’s start with Natalie, and then we’ll go to Joe, and then, Alex.
S5: 31:06 [Natalie Ma] Great. Thanks, Ed, and thank you again, Kayla and Ivan for setting this up and inviting us. This is a fantastic event, hopefully, very informative for all of you. I am co-founder and head of business at Felix Biotechnology, where we develop phage technologies to essentially overcome the key limitations of phage therapy and produce commercially viable phage products. And so a lot of what we were interested in is solving two problems. One of them is evolution of resistance to [inaudible] microbes. And then, the second one is how strange a phage, because that’s a key challenge. They tend to be exquisite, essentially microbiome, skiable. If you want to edit a strain, a species, or even a strain with species of a genome or change the microbiome in some way, they’re perfect [inaudible] anything else if you get to host phage naturally, right? So what we do is we develop generalized therapies. So we’re essentially creating phages that are engineered from [tuned?] host range and then, we leverage the way the phages work against the host to actually try evolution to our advantage by targeting phages to specific mechanisms of the virulence, antibiotic resistance, whatever treatment you want to edit out of the genome, and allows you to take advantage of evolution instead of trying to fight it. So the resulting microbe usually because the phage ends up then being [inaudible] with antibiotics or less virulent [inaudible] the patient or lacking some trait you just want to get rid of.
S5: 32:36 So quick background on myself and who I am and how I got involved with this super awesome work is I’ve PhD in Synthetic Biology or Molecular Biology, depending on who you’re talking to and how much trouble I’m trying to cause. And after that, went into management consulting in the healthcare space helping companies commercialize therapies and then jumped to essentially helping launch startups out of my, the same program I went to for PhD at Yale, where I helped roughly eight faculty, three ventures got off the ground by the end of my year there to the tune of about three million combined. And Felix by far was the coolest venture that I worked with. And our strategy was to go through an accelerator program. We were part of Illumina Accelerator. For us, sort of at a high level because I’m sure we’ll get into more questions around this, Ed, is the value to us was having a really well outfitted space, and then the sequencing that Illumina provided, because, again, we’re heavily data-driven startup, really we need to understand phage and host interactions and use that as the seed data for our machine-learning platform to understand what are the key genetic determinants of host range. So the services and support that Illumina’s provided were invaluable for us to get our first data set and understanding how these phages work.
S4: 33:58 Great, Joe, why don’t you go next?
S6: 34:00 [Joe Mellor] Thanks, Ed. Yeah, so I’m Joe Miller, I’m the founder and CEO at seqWell. So our company focuses on creating sophisticated library prep tools to sort of help power sequencers and collect more information. Our technologies are really focused on how to improve the scalability of multiplexed genomic assays focused on a variety of areas, single cell sequencing, high-throughput sequencing of other things, recently doing some really cool work to help accelerate some of the incredibly important COVID sequencing effort that’s now scaling up around the US and the world. When I started the company, myself and my co-founder, Jack Leonard, I would say the availability of incubator space was crucial. The sort of thinking of a company, especially at its early stages, a sort of a young person having a place to live is very, very basic on the hierarchy of needs. And the benefits from it were not just being in a space where we had the ability to really kind of test early product concepts and really do some of the work that was required. But also it put you in a space where there were other companies at that same stage of life. And that turns out to have all sorts of, I think, healthy psychological benefits. As a founder I think we don’t spend enough time probably as founders ruminating on the stress that it causes, but it is very stressful. And having other people around you who are going through the same thing is incredibly helpful. And really, it acts as a way of calibrating your own experiences with other companies. And you realize, hey, what we’re going through is very similar to what any company in nearly any space at our stage of growth would be going through.
S6: 36:20 And I think back on the comments that Mostafa made a few minutes ago about the importance of team. Again, I firmly believe a company is really its team, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have brought in some incredible team members over the past few years as we’ve grown. And to me, that is what building the company is all about. The talent and getting everybody kind of rowing in the same direction is really what building the company entails. And the products are in some ways a consequence of doing things the right way and really, I think that has for us been, I think, the learning experience. You have to be willing to take those risks and make a few mistakes along the way, and I think, but certainly, I would definitely recommend any company getting started to take advantage of any incubator opportunity that they can. And again, I think seeing your company as part of an ecosystem with other companies, and incubators are a special place where multiple boats can rise at the same time.
S4: 37:49 Okay, thanks, Joe. And Alex, how about you?
S7: 37:52 [Alex Rosenberg] Sure, thanks, Ed. So I’m Alex Rosenberg, the co-founder and CEO of Parse Biosciences, and as Ed was just mentioning before, we actually recently yesterday just announced our Series A and rebrand from Split Biosciences to Parse Biosciences. And so the company what we’re doing is we’re offering a scalable single-cell sequencing solution where the key thing is you don’t need an instrument to use this technology. So it’s an all-inclusive kit that allows anyone to get started with single-cell sequencing and really scale up their experiments. And just in terms of my background, how I got into this, this was something I co-developed with my co-founder while I was a postdoc at the University of Washington. And so at the time, I think we were very focused on just technology, on developing. And as we’re kind of going along, single-cell sequencing was getting a lot bigger. We actually had a lot of people reaching out to us, “How do we get this working in our lab?” And for us, it’s really important to actually get this out to people. And I think a lot of times what you see is academic methods, they kind of die in academia. And to actually get it out to a lot of people and allow them to use it takes a lot of effort, and that’s not something that academia is well suited for. And so for us, we started the company. This is early 2018. It was about the same time we ended up publishing the work, and since then, we’ve really been pushing the company, growing. We’re 16 people at the company now, when I guess with respect to incubators, we were actually really lucky. So we spun out of the University of Washington, and they actually have a lot of support for companies and sort of a very entrepreneurial spirit in general at the university. And so one of the nice things is they actually have lab space for spin-out companies. And so it’s kind of like a pseudo incubator that has a lot of the resources you would expect at other incubators. But as Natalie and Joe have mentioned, getting lab space when you’re small is critical and just being able to operate in the beginning there is super important. We also, through the incubator, as Joe was mentioning, we were able to interact with other companies. A lot of people, I think, emphasized, it’s really important to talk to a lot of people when you’re getting started, especially when you’re coming out of academia, that there’s just a lot you don’t know that you’re going to have to learn. And some of that’s going to be from customers that you’re going to have to keep talking to customers. I think in some ways, given that I worked in kind of the same fields that my customers are, I had a pretty good sense of the customers, but you still want to talk to them. But a lot of the sort of business aspects that you’re trying to pick up, those are the things that you want to have good people around you, good advisors, also talking to other companies, learning about what other company’s doing. Maybe there’s better ways that you could be modeling things based on those other companies.
S4: 41:06 [EW] Great, thanks a lot, Alex. Natalie, I’m going to give it back to you here. Can you talk a little bit about the process of joining the accelerator and explain the attendees who might be a little less familiar with how they work, what a typical arrangement looks like? And tell us in the world that we’re in now, pandemic, people not being able to go into offices and lab spaces, would it be worth it to do without the access to the physical space?
S5: 41:36 [NM] Yeah, that’s a great question, Ed. So in terms of the accelerator program process, it’s typically an application that you fill out, and there are generally pre-set terms, and that’s typically a percentage of equity stake in the company in exchange for the lab space and additionally, in our case, services through Illumina Accelerator. So you go to the application process and this sort of speaks, I think, one of the things that’s really nice about the accelerator programs is they’re often not just a lab space, but also, I think a mark of validations that way, right, because someone has vetted you, and so that can open doors. And so that, for us was helpful as well. So that’s how we got into Illumina Accelerator. In terms of the second part of the question, speaking to that value proposition, I think it’s incredibly valuable. One, because of that mark up, again, validation, it’s like, hey, we’re an Illumina Accelerator company. Mostafa and [inaudible] had looked at our program and thought, “Hey, they’re doing something super cool. We should support them, and we think that there is a path forward.” So I think there is still a lot of value there. And I know in the case of lab space, at least here in South SF, the lab folks are considered essential employees. Access to that lab space still exists, at least again in our area, are going to continue to exist unless something really existential happens. The office space, I think, there is value to it, but at least what we found is many of the connections that were valuable were came through digitally anyway. And so the other thing that was great was that the staff and Amanda could help us understand like who should we talk to to leverage our platforms and build out additional partnerships in addition to getting data on our lead asset? So both of those things, I think, are still really valuable for the sort of accelerator route, despite sort of the the changes that the pandemic has brought.
S4: 43:31 [EW] Okay, thanks, and Joe, your experience was slightly different. You did an incubator. So how did that differ from the experience Natalie just explained?
S6: 43:41 [JM] Yeah. So there was certainly a phase of trying to apply to get the space in that incubator, and certainly, there’s a process that requires a certain level of having things really well articulated and lined up in order to be able to do that, and I think that was certainly helpful. For me, I think joining the incubator again was– we were there for less than a year. And I think part of the reason why is because one of the benefits of being there we quickly sort of outgrew, which was the amount of space that we needed. And I think we certainly had a great experience there and the support structure that was there to kind of even in the case of the lab space that we moved into after we left the incubator was owned by a firm that was closely tied to the same organization. The network effects that kind of are created by tapping into a resource like this or you don’t really see them ahead of time. But so again, it’s really– but it’s an investment really in kind of the future of the company to put yourself in a situation where those effects are allowed to really work in your favor. So, again, I think I almost can’t imagine starting a company without that sort of resource in place. I think that especially a company that’s not starting with a huge sort of check up front, so I think it was clear in our experience.
S4: 45:47 [EW] Okay, thank you. And Alex, you actually didn’t go through an accelerator or incubator, but you did get help from UW. Just wondering what was different about your experience compared to that explained by Joe and Natalie?
S7: 46:03 [AR] Sure, I mean, I think ultimately you got to get to the same place that you have to build your network. You have to understand how have other people before you done this, and especially coming at it from the academic side where technically you might be good, but there’s still so much you got to learn. And as Mostafa was talking about earlier, the technical side, the idea is just one aspect of it. There’s all sorts of execution and different aspects that you’re going to have to learn from other people and bring people on to the company. And so I think for us, we were really lucky that University of Washington, they helped us start to build that network, and they have different people who have started companies, angel investors, who’ve started companies in the past and been successful and sort of want to give back and help younger entrepreneurs. And so that was, I would say, a good way to start building our network. Obviously, from there, I think what you have to do is really branch out, and every person you get introduced to, you have to make sure you’re asking them if there’s other people they can introduce you to, and it’s kind of just this spiraling effect that if you really put effort into it, you’re going to meet a ton of people and that aspect is critical. So I think there’s different ways to go at it, and it sounds like a lot of these accelerator programs are actually a great way to do it in a very condensed time-frame. I think, in a lot of ways, we were lucky we had the support at the University of Washington.
S4: 47:43 [EW] Yeah, great. And that’s a great lead into the next question, which is about mentors. Usually, if you belong to one of these programs, you have access to mentors. And I’m curious about your experiences with that. And can you talk about where you found mentorship or coaching or community to support you as you’ve gone through the startup process? Natalie, why don’t you go first?
S5: 48:07 [NM] Yeah, yeah, and I just wanted to follow up on the last thing, I think the pathways in general will very much depend on your venture or your startup, right? So there’s not a right answer here. It’s very much what is the key next step you need to figure out and what tools will help you get there. So on the venture side, we again had great access to mentors, the folks that were connected to Illumina Accelerator, people who were interested both in DC as well as on the regulatory side, which was incredibly helpful for us. Again, because we’re a therapeutics oriented company, our lead asset is now in a phase one, two clinical trial. So all of that was incredibly helpful to help us know, okay, again, what’s the next step we need to do, and what is needed to get things off the ground?
S5: 48:55 In general, there are sort of three buckets of folks I’d say you encounter in the venture or not the venture, the sort of startup space. There are folks looking who are for consulting services and want to see you transition as a client. They’ll provide some initial upfront help. There are folks who are looking for their next gig. So they would want to join you generally in a C-suite position, and they’re looking across multiple things. They might provide some help to you, but their idea is to get that next role. And then, there are folks who have been through the process, and really, I would say they sort of help out of our memory of having been there and someone helped them. So they’re paying it forward and helping you solve problems that they would want to have had help with if they were starting out. And so those three groups of people sort of can serve different roles and have different specialty, but understanding where the person’s coming from helps you frame the right questions.
S6: 49:50 [JM] Yeah, I definitely agree with the value of that last category that Natalie just outlined. We had the benefit of, again, a network of in some cases, serial entrepreneurs who had worked in companies, perhaps some in life-science, but some not. I think when you’re a– especially when you’re a first time founder, the number of sort of unknown unknowns is extremely high, and you have to really collect as much of that type of advice as possible from people who have been there and done it. They’ve been through that. They were at some point the first-time founder or CEO themselves. But quickly realize, the goal was not necessarily to know everything, but certainly to know what I didn’t know and know where I might be able to go find it. And I think having people who have literally been there and done it who can help you think through and be a sounding board or just provide the pointers that are kind of critical in those early days, I think, is extremely important.
S4: 51:10 [EW] Alex, you have anything to add on that?
S7: 51:14 [AR] Yeah, I mean, I think Joe and Natalie hit it right on the head here. You really do need, I think, different types of mentors too. You’re going to have peer mentors who are maybe at similar stage with their company’s view. You’re going to have people who maybe they’ve done this multiple times, had several successful exits or high up at a big company. And you’re going to get different advice, I think, from different people here. And so I think it’s always good to kind of average out over the advice you get over different people because it’s always going to be very specific to that person. And a lot of times, people are sort of actually just rationalizing the decisions they made in the past, and it’s kind of important to see which of their pieces of advice actually apply to you. And we’re a bit different. For us, getting advice from someone who has started a therapeutics company, some of that advice, I think is still going to be very applicable. Some of it’s going to be different for us. And that’s kind of where you have to take that advice, but also as you’re moving forward in practice, you’ve got to think about how you should be applying it.
S4: 52:28 [EW] Yeah, that’s great, thanks, Alex. So we talked a lot about the benefits of joining these programs, but were there any unexpected drawbacks or challenges that you found with being involved with an incubator or an accelerator, Natalie?
S5: 52:44 [NM] Okay, I’ll start off, but I think mine’s going to be pretty short. For IA, it is the nicest lab space you’re going to have for a while because it’s part of Illumina, and so the lab space is phenomenal. I mean, we’re now housed in J Labs at [Easter?] point. So it’s also incredibly nice lab space. But as we were looking around landscape transitioning out of Illumina Accelerator, we’re going from a place that had everything set up for us to more sending up on our own, which we knew was going to happen, but it always is in the moment like, oh, okay. We’re going to have to account for all of these things that we once relied on Illumina for.
S4: 53:25 Joe?
S6: 53:26 [JM] Yeah, no, I mean, if I was to kind of to simply summarize what Natalie just said, you can get spoiled. And I think, again, the role of the incubator is to get you kind of on your feet and on a path, but I think it’s incredibly important to realize that the goal when you’re there is to leave. And again, some incubators have kind of more rigid timelines as to when that needs to occur, sort of dates on the calendar that you– we need to be have some cash flow by this point in time. I think if I was to sort of generalize from what I have seen as a pitfall, is if there isn’t a kind of push to help companies leave the nest, I think they can linger sometimes. And again, it’s comfortable. It’s usually, well, very affordable, if not subsidized lab space. And so I think it’s important to keep that in mind as a founder that your goal in going to an incubator is [supposed?] to join, but then to also leave.
S4: 54:36 [EW] Okay, thanks. Alex, I don’t know, given your situation was differently, if the challenges were similar or different for you.
S7: 54:48 [AR] I mean, I would echo. I think in general, we were extremely lucky with our incubator space and just the support we had from everyone. I mean it. So really nothing negative to say there, Ed.
S4: 54:59 [EW] Okay, great. So you all mentioned the importance of teams for [inaudible] startup. Do you think there’s a different combination of skills or personality that’s necessary for your team to be successful? Joe, why don’t you go first on this one?
S6: 55:16 [JM] Yeah, I mean that’s a good question. I feel probably to really answer that question well, I would need to have more than one and number of companies. I can tell you from what my experience was, those early employees have to really– those co-founders and early employees have to be able to do nearly anything. Again, it’s wearing sometimes any hat any day. And I think so there’s a mindset that comes with that that is not going to– it’s not easily boiled down, but you hope that you learn to recognize that because those kinds of people are extremely helpful. So I think there’s certainly a mix that there’s probably– some mixes that are better than others, but ultimately that kind of flexible mindset to me really supersedes and dominates that, I think.
S4: 56:25 [EW] Yeah, Natalie, do you have any further thoughts on that?
S5: 56:27 [NM] Yeah, I definitely agree with what Joe said. Spot on. And I would only add being very, very acutely aware of what your skills and strengths and your weaknesses are, and then getting along with the team because that was one of the major reasons, when I had options to join various ventures, I chose Felix was by far the best team to work with in terms of compatibility, because you, as a co-founder, is going to be spending a lot of time together, and you want it to be enjoyable as well as fulfilling and world-changing, right?
S4: 57:03 [EW] Yeah, great. Thanks, Natalie. Alex, how about you?
S7: 57:07 [AR] Yeah, I mean, it’s just that [inaudible] some of those things. I think in general you have to have a mix of diverse people on your team with different skill sets. I think one of the things it’s extremely cliche, but I think when you’re running the company, you realize it is that teamwork is just incredibly important, and there’s very few things that are being done in isolation. It’s very different coming from academia where you have one project maybe you’re working on with one or two other people where that’s really there’s nothing like that. Very few things are like that in the company. Everything you have to communicate with other people. And so I think bringing– we’ve been extremely lucky to have people who are really excited to work together and all motivated towards the same goal. And that’s something I’m sure everyone has heard as advice. But I think when you live it, it’s really important.
S4: 58:04 Okay, thanks a lot, Alex.

 

 

Founders: Why You Should Consider a Chief Janitorial Officer

Posted on March 3, 2021 by - Hi-C, Webinar

 

Insights for biotech founders from a leading voice in genomics commercialization

 

What’s in a fancy startup C-suite title? The answer from luminaries is: “nothing if the startup fails.” In the first Genome Startup Day of 2021, Phase Genomics’ Founder and CEO Ivan Liachko, PhD, sat down with Mostafa Ronaghi, PhD, Senior VP for Entrepreneurial Development for illumina (retired), founder of multiple companies, and longtime champion of genomics commercialization. In the fireside chat, Dr. Ronaghi spoke of how startup founders should not focus as heavily on their and others professional titles and instead focus more on taking care of their growing team and getting the important work done.

 

“In order to get the right team, you really need to be generous and have the right people driving the right function. The startup is not about the title… everybody is doing whatever they can,” Dr. Ronaghi said. “So, I announce myself as CJO, I’m the Chief Janitorial Officer, and if you want to, you can give me a title. But the title doesn’t have any value. I mean, you are basically a CEO of a one-man company or a two-man, three-man company, so that doesn’t mean anything. You are there to do something.” (view video clip at 11:39)

 

Dr. Ronaghi also addressed his thoughts on what newly founded startups (view video clip at 15:04) should aim to optimize first (hint: it’s not revenue). Watch the full fireside chat or read the entire transcript below the video.

 

 

Transcription:

 

S2: 02:19 [Ivan Liachko] Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming to another installment of Genome Startup Day. As you can see from my outfit, we’re about to do a fireside chat. We’re very fortunate today we have with us Dr. Mostafa Ronaghi from, well, I was going to say from Illumina, which is largely true. And Mostafa, starting at 2008, he was the Chief Technology Officer and also Senior VP at Illumina. Before that, he was at the Stanford Genome Technology Center. He also founded a number of companies. He was one of the early pioneers of Pyrosequencing technology, and he’s founded a number of startups, including Pyrosequencing AB, ParAllele Bioscience, Nextbio, and Avantome. Just a couple of days ago, he announced his retirement from Illumina, but we’re lucky to have him here to talk to us about– to talk about startups and sort of his history in the space. Mostafa, thank you so much for coming.
S3: 03:36               [Mostafa Ronaghi] Thank you.
S2: 03:39 [IL]So you’ve been a sort of a champion of entrepreneurship for a while. You’ve been with Illumina for a long time. That’s kind of the sort of the top line item on the biographies. But you’ve actually done so much in the entrepreneurship sphere. What sort of drives your interest in supporting biotech commercialization and startups in general?
S3: 04:02 [MR] Thanks, Ivan, for having me and thanks, Kayla, for organizing the event. So, yes, I think it has been, of course, a passion, but the passion comes from the impact that you’re making on human life. So when I was in high school, I decided to be in the field of medicine. I wanted to become a doctor, a physician, and after going to different practices and clinics with my uncle, so I decided doctor is not my thing, but I love medicine, and I want to be an entrepreneur in this field. So when I moved from Iran to Sweden for my education, I knew exactly genetic is the area that I want to focus on. And I did my PhD in Genetic Engineering, and I ended up developing Pyrosequencing technology, which was the first next-generation sequencing technology. And the word of sequencing by synthesis actually was going in my first publication basically which was describing the Pyrosequencing technology, and there are a lot of technologies that we have in offshoot of that. But when I look back, that’s the technology, of course, but that technology was fundamental in enabling a lot of applications. And we knew that some of those applications are going to be developed by other people, which was absolutely fantastic. And we really wanted to see how we can enable people to make that impact. If people think are enabled to make an impact, so I feel that I have impacted people’s life. And that was the biggest satisfaction and the drive during the course of my life.
S2: 05:58 [IL] That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean, one of the kind of themes behind this event, one of the reasons why we started it was really to kind of introduce kind of academics to the biotech life and sort of the switching from the kind of the research community over to the– maybe not switching, but people who are sort of on the cusp of transitioning maybe from academia to biotech, and a lot of folks are thinking about it these days, and so we’re sort of at that interface. And so I kind of want– I like to hear perspectives of folks who sort of have made the switch. So what would you say is your favorite thing about working with startups, especially early-stage startups because you’re involved in the Biotech Incubator or the Illumina Accelerator. So what do you like most about these?
S3: 06:52 [MR] The agility and the fact that you can make fast decisions and honestly startups, they are a source of inspiration for me. And when I look at entrepreneurs that they are in the mission of changing people’s life, and that’s a huge source of energy. And you see that they’re actually doing that. Any technology or any applications that they have been leveraging sequencing or genomic technologies, most of them, they have come into the clinical space, of course, and they are changing [your?] lives in the form of discovery or diagnostics. So I feel that the whole revolution has started. You’re not even in day one of that revolution. And so it’s amazing to see on the side and sometimes be in the action and to watch that revolution that’s happening.
S2: 08:01 [IL] Yeah, well, we’ve certainly seen that, I mean, this year, I think, or at least 2020 and 2021 have shown sort of highlighted how important biotech is for humanity. I get to sit in a lot of these events, and we spend so much money on things that are like the military, etc., and all these other things. But when a big pandemic or something comes through, the biotech groups are the ones who start kind of showing their value. What do you think sort of on the counter side of this, what do you think is maybe the biggest challenge that early-stage founders, especially sort of academic founders have in the genomics space? What have you seen that’s the most difficult to transition?
S3: 08:57 [MR] So when I look at academia, so I have been in academia and Stanford, so Stanford probably is a bit different than other academia. So it’s not taboo to start a company. You get actually a lot of credit to start a company, but the biggest hurdle I see that people, they think that it’s all about the idea. And I would say that probably idea is important, but when I look at how I weight start-up and having been involved in research in academia and going to start a company in scaling and then commercializing at the global level, so there are multiple touch points that are critical. One, of course, critical step is how to transition from academia to the company.
S3: 10:03 [IL] So at that time, you really need to think that who are the right people that I really need to have in the bus? You’re going from point A to point B, and the people are absolutely critical component of how you can make things happen. And they should have enough of incentive to basically take on that mission or to join you in the bus from going from point A to point B. So when you look at a company, at the time you start, so it’s all about team. Of course, the idea that you have is on PowerPoint or on paper. So it’s all about the team. So you should do the evaluation based on the team. And as you make progress, you get to the series A level. So, of course, at that time, people, they look at the team, but they look at what you have achieved, which, in a way, defines how good team you have had. And so you really need have a concept for a biotech or genomic company. And at the time you reach Series B, so you really need to have some sort of revenue validation. So your product should be in the market and you should have some sort of validation, which, in a way, shows how good a team you have had. So it’s all about team, team, team, team.
S3: 11:39 [MR] And in order to get the right team, you really need to be generous and have the right people driving the right function. So the startup is not about the title. So basically everybody is doing whatever they can. So I announce myself usually at startup, I’m the CJO, I’m the chief janitorial officer, and if you want to give me a title. But the title doesn’t have any value. I mean, you are basically a CEO of a one-man company or a two-man, three-man company, so that doesn’t mean anything. So you are there to do something.
S3: 12:20 [MR] And I usually advise startup not to give any title honestly. You have one person like CEO, but other than that, so you have Head of Technology, Head of Product, or Head of Revenue and so on. As you grow and you have significant ownership in the company, you really need to bring value to your shareholders, which means that you bring value to your share, which means that you are making progress on your product or the road-map of the company. So if that’s the case and if you see that by hiring a person to increase that value, you should do it. Even, they would take your job. And that’s the struggle that I see people they have at the company. And you have to realize, okay, this is your capacity, and I could bring experience at this point, or I could bring someone with a different expertise to take the torch and run as fast as you can to go to point B.
S2: 13:36 [IL] Yeah, I can definitely– I mean, definitely emphasize with the fact that as the company grows, having to relinquish and delegate a lot of responsibilities and things like that along the way is definitely one of the challenges, because you start out, like you said, doing everything yourself. And little by little, you have to specialize and try to get the right people for the right jobs and things like that. What do you think– in your experience, what do you think is the most common sort of mistake in the space that startups make? Is it that they just give everybody [Steve?] titles at first and then a weird theme thing?
S3: 14:15 [MR] That’s a red flag. That’s a red flag when I see that a lot of– see their title in a lot of big companies. Easy to give titles, but it’s very difficult to take it back, and people, they’re emotional and you don’t want to be in that position. That’s a red flag usually for me.
S2: 14:32 [IL] Is there something that you see that young sort of early-stage startup neglect that they really should focus more on? I mean, for me, for example– just an example, for me, clearly, sort of marketing and sales in the early days was not something that I was paying enough attention to as much as should have been because coming out of academia is not something you’re familiar with. But are there other things like that that you see that are common patterns that young startups tend to sort of not do right?
S3: 15:04 [MR] Yeah. So usually, the scientific founder, they think that they have done everything and this is it, and they should have the majority of the ownership. And when you look at the cap table, so it’s heavily on the scientific founder. And then, other people, they are not going to have enough incentive, and those companies usually don’t go anywhere. So the way you want to think in a startup is that, okay, there’s a pie, but the size of the pie you define. And if the pie is this small and you have the entire ownership of that pie is not that much. But if the pie is huge and even if you have a slice of that, so that’s a lot. So I really think that you should usually think about how you can make a difference, how you can bring a product to make that difference to the market. You have to look at what’s going to happen. So number one factor for me when I start a company is I can make this company successful, not on how much I’m going to make at this company. So especially for first [a month?] entrepreneurs, they should be super sensitive about this because they should not optimize for their financials, they should optimize for how fast and how good a product they can get into the market because if you get it once, then you can always repeat that. That’s a good thing with entrepreneurship. Everybody wants to work with you, oh, you have some unique experience. You took actually one idea, and you turn that to a product, that’s a unique experience. Everybody wants to work with you, and you are going to have access to amazing, amazing people and work on even larger ideas. So I really think that at the end goes back on your position yourself in starting the company and bringing the right people to the team and give them enough of incentive. Number one goal should be how fast I can go from point A to point B.
S2: 17:17 [IL] Do you think that that sort of roots itself in the idea that most, I guess, at least academic technical founders think that the idea is good, technology is good, this thing is definitely going to work? And so, you try to kind of maximize your outcome, and you don’t realize that the greatest danger is not that your pie slice is going to be too small. The greatest danger is that your entire pie is going to be worth zero.
S3: 17:43 [MR] Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And when I look at a lot of ideas, revolutionary ideas, I usually call them the ideas that they have a miracle to overcome, and usually you see that, okay, there are some miracles that they have overcome in academia, but to make that a product that would require– of course, it doesn’t require a miracle. So, the type of brainpower that you need to have to overcome the miracles are different for type of people that they focus on how to make a product, a concept to feasible product and how to make it a robust product. And those are all different brains. And all of them, they are valuable in a company. And you shouldn’t think that, oh, okay, since I’m the guy who has overcome the miracle and have addressed the challenging issues, which is true, but they shouldn’t think that they should have everything at the company of course. Other people, they are needed.
S2: 18:56 [IL] So, yeah. So, if I may summarize, focus very heavily on the team because that’s what’s going to keep your company, determine if the company is successful or not, spend less time fighting over early-stage equity, and focus on getting the best people and motivating them as much as you can, and not everybody needs to be the same technical mindset. You need to have a diverse set of brains trying to make your company successful.
S3: 19:23 [MR] That’s right. I usually even at this stage when I start a company, people are different that they would have different value. I go equal ownership actually in those companies. That’s basically the way I have done, and I’m interested more having in ownership
I put the money in, so, and get some preferred share. But I think you should see yourself on how you can bring value to the company and work hard for the share that you have got. I mean, of course, some people, they feel that they have got less, or they have got more, but the goal of a company is not to financially address some needs of people. The goal of the company is to get their product out, and you really need to have the right people.
S2: 20:15 [IL] Yes. I’m thinking about the company that the company, if you’re the founder, the company is not you. You work for the company, and the company is really an effort of all of these people. That was another kind of thing I had to learn. What do you think in the greater scheme of things? So right now, obviously, there’s all sorts of tumult going on, but innovation is going so fast these days driven by what seems like millions of startups just all over the place. What do you think– what are you seeing today sort of in the larger scale of things that gets you the most excited? What do you think is the most exciting change that biotech is bringing to the world these days?
S3: 20:57 [MR] I think the sheer amount of data that we have. We have entered into a data-driven biology. It was based on your gut feel a couple of decades ago, but probably even a decade ago, but now we are getting into a data-driven biology, so. And AI is playing a huge factor in it. So I think that’s one of the most exciting area of AI. So if you would bring an AI person to biology, so they are not going to be that actually, right, but if you would bring a genomics guy with AI background so they understand the complexity, and of course, they could have other AI people, but you really need to have a good understanding about the complexity of the biology. Still, your gut feel matters a lot, but we are actually using a lot of data to validate what our gut feel is telling us.
S2: 22:00 [IL] Cool. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So we’re up in Seattle, which is full of tech AI folks. So we definitely understand the power of that technology has been as well, sort of demonstrated. So we have some questions from the audience. And I think, Kayla, are you going to do them? I do them. Okay. I haven’t been reading the questions along the way. So Mostafa, you mentioned AI, but beyond just AI itself, could you list maybe some of the most important kind of must-know skills that a bio [informatician?] should sort of know in order to effectively transition to biotech? A lot of the– a lot of the point to this event is really to kind of address people who are in academia, like, what’s the best way to get into biotech? What are the most important skills? What should they work on?
S3: 23:07 [MR] So you’re asking specifically about the buying from my people, so is that correct?
S2: 23:13 [IL] More or less, yeah.
S3: 23:14 [MR] Yes, the AI is amazing. But of course, love analytical tools and coding, those are great to know, but one thing that I’ve been super impressed with is from the people that they understand the [inaudible] models. So you’re basically, you look at– to begin with, you have to produce a good set of data. If you don have a lot of junk, of course, you’re going to produce junk. So if you have a noisy model, so it will be quite difficult to analyze the noisy biology. But I’ve seen some people that they have very unique thinking on how they set up their noise model and how they treat noise and they classify that. And those are the people that I saw, well, they are making a huge, huge impact. And that was exactly how when we started GRAIL. GRAIL is a super noisy data and you are going to cancer screening, which would require detection of radio frequency of 1 in 10 to 100,000. And you have basically a tiny tumor, like a chickpea size, and that one is basically you are going to put that in the context of all the tissues in the body. So the DNA that’s secreted from that little, small tumor, you don’t know from there in the body it is, and, of course, it’s circulating among all the other free DNA in the blood. So how would you go about identifying that needle in the haystack? And that, I saw that people that they had a good understanding about the noise model, they were the one that made a huge impact. Otherwise, we were dealing with a lot of noisy data. It was very difficult to interpret. I think people that they have got good signal processing background and they have good understanding about biology and with the noise could potentially have come from, those are the ones that they have an upper hand in the industry.
S2: 25:46 [IL] Cool. Here’s another good one. How do you see– how do you see data security, data sharing, data ownership issues getting out because, again, now that there’s a huge influx of data coming in, what happens in terms of security? What happens in terms of privatizing?
S3: 26:06 [MR] That’s a very, very, of course, good question and a very important question, because health data, if you go to the dark web, I haven’t been there, but my whole day tell about the health data in the dark web actually, full disclosure. In the dark web actually one of the highest money you can get is for the health data, and definitely, there’s security and privacy of the data are of critical issues. But from what I’m seeing and hearing from the experts is that they tell that [X-rayed?] are good, advanced technology that are coming into space that could address the issue. The vulnerability’s mostly at the junction point where we have API. Of course, you could have a secure system, but as soon as you want to go from point A to point B at the junction, so those are the places that you have vulnerability.
S3: 27:16 [MR] And what I’m hearing is that the type of encryption like [morphy?] encryption and those kind of things actually are becoming a reality, so and it’s becoming– I mean, it was not a reality a year or two years ago, but now I see that actually people they have started using those things, and they could address some of the security issues. But absolutely, it’s critical to think about it. If you are a data company, you really need to make sure that you have full privacy and full security of the data.
S2: 27:54 [IL] Great. Well, thank you so much. That’s all the time we have for this segment. Thank you for participating. It’s been really great to hear your insight.
S3: 28:04 [MR] You’re welcome.
S2: 28:07 [IL] And I hope you have a lot of cool startup stories to tell in the future as well. Maybe we’ll hear about them. Maybe in the future you’ll come back.
S3: 28:15 [MR] Hopefully.

 

 

 

 

 

Phase Genomics Developing Cost-Effective Genomic Tools to Track and Understand Crop Disease with New Funding

Posted on February 25, 2021 by - Genomics, Hi-C

 

The impact of fungal rust pathogens is measured in tens of thousands of acres of lost crops annually and an increasingly vulnerable supply chain. An outbreak of oat crown rust devastated yields in South Dakota and Minnesota, wiping out as much as 50% of the crop in 2014 alone.  

 

Current surveillance rust collections are not enough to develop effective countermeasures against fungal rust pathogens such as oat crown rust, wheat stem rust, and many others. Now Phase Genomics has received a National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant to develop a cutting-edge genomic diagnostic test to affordably identify existing and novel strains of fungal pathogens in the wild. 

 

Phase Genomics’ proprietary technology allows it to generate full chromosome-scale rust genomes and separate their constituent sub-genomes, creating a unique genomic resource that will provide the sequence information needed to identify, track, and study virulent fungal strains. Since the platform will employ machine learning tools combined with genomics, as the dataset grows it will potentially enable scientists to proactively predict the virulence of new wild strains before they have a chance to decimate crops.  Costs from traditional diagnostic techniques are expected to be reduced by up to 90%. 

 

The same proven and proprietary technology was demonstrated by researchers producing a first-of-its-kind reference genome for the wheat stem rust pathogenic strain Ug99. The economically destructive pathogen with a dikaryotic genome structure (two independent nuclei) is a crop killer on several continents. 

 

The new ability to leverage high-quality genomic information from sets of rust strains will transform researchers’ ability to diagnose, track crop disease spread and understand the evolution of fungal virulence.

 

Learn more about leveraging this technology in your agricultural research here.

Year in Review: New Products, Projects, & Partnerships Amidst a Pandemic

Posted on January 4, 2021 by - Hi-C

 

Greetings from, mercifully, the beginning days of 2021.

As the world reels from Covid-19, all of our personal and professional lives have all been turned upside down. Despite this challenging environment, Phase Genomics has celebrated some big wins in 2020, amidst a tumultuous year. This year’s successes include releasing a dedicated Proximo Hi-C Kit for fungal samples, receiving $5.4M in grants, and announcing our licensing agreement with QIAGEN, among others. We want to thank our clients for their support, our incredible employees for their hard work, and the adaptability of leadership to maintain business operations throughout this unpredictable year. 

 

Here’s a quick look at our highlights from 2020:

 

New Products

Grants

Awards

Publications

In the News

Genome Startup Day 

Baby Boom!

    • Welcomed three new Phasebabies to the Phase Genomics team! 

 

See You (Fingers Crossed) in 2021!

In 2021, we are hopeful that we will be able to return to conferences and see our friends and clients in person. We plan to release exciting new features on our ProxiMeta microbiome platform, grow our team, and continue to serve all of our clients with cutting-edge tools, including some upcoming surprises. Follow Phase Genomics and the latest developments in our ecosystem in real-time on Twitter and LinkedIn or by subscribing to our quarterly newsletter – PhaseBook. 

We hope you had a safe, healthy, and relaxing Holiday Season and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Phase Genomics and QIAGEN Partner to Bring Hi-C Epigenetics Solutions to U.S. Market

Posted on October 29, 2020 by - Hi-C

In the last few years, Hi-C technology has grown in popularity within the epigenetics community. The chief application this proprietary method is to measure the three-dimensional architecture of genomes to better understand complex nuclear dynamics. Being a leader in this space, we at Phase Genomics seek to maximize the commercial footprint of our technology. As interest in this method has increased significantly, we have partnered with QIAGEN to increase its commercial availability. Read about the new EpiTect Hi-C kits available now through our collaborative effort.

 

QIAGEN expands its existing Epigenomic offering in the United States with Sample to Insight solution for Hi-C NGS analysis

• EpiTect Hi-C Kit helps researchers to better understand key aspects of long-range genome architecture
• License agreement enables QIAGEN to sell Phase Genomics’ proprietary proximity-ligation technology in the United States research market
• Adds to QIAGEN’s epigenomic capabilities in identification of individual methylation marks and histone modification at the nucleotide level

 

Hilden, Germany, and Germantown, Maryland, October 29, 2020 – QIAGEN today announced a non-exclusive agreement with Phase Genomics, Inc. to license specific patents to sell its EpiTect Hi-C kits in the United States. Through this agreement, QIAGEN now has access to support chromatin research in the largest research market in the world.

Chromatin conformation research, including chromatin conformational analysis (Hi-C), is an emerging and growing market area of genomic research that is refining our knowledge of the interconnectivity and organization of the genome. Hi-C has become a vital tool for understanding the structures and organization associated with cell biology. The EpiTect Hi-C Kit provides a simplified, single-box solution, requiring less than 250,000 mammalian cells to generate sequence-ready libraries.

“QIAGEN’s EpiTect portfolio has until now focused on identifying individual methylation marks and histone modification in the genome at the nucleotide level,” said Kerstin Steinert, Vice President of Product Development & Research Services at QIAGEN. “With the QIAGEN EpiTect Hi-C Kit, we are providing an end-to-end solution to study the 3-D genome and identify larger structural aspects of chromatin conformation and genomic architecture.”

“This partnership demonstrates a strong confidence in the value of Phase Genomics’ technology. Now, scientists studying epigenetics can more fully understand changes in genome architecture that may trigger disease in ways that are more cost-effective than ever before,” said Ivan Liachko, PhD, Founder and CEO of Phase Genomics. “Our Hi-C proximity-ligation technology, now available through QIAGEN, will help accelerate treatments to market and discover new paths toward the prevention of disease.”

In keeping with the QIAGEN commitment to provide Sample to Insight solutions, customers will have two options to analyze data from experiments. The EpiTect Hi-C Portal, located on GeneGlobe Data Analysis Center, provides multiple analysis types, including contact matrices and maps. In addition, Phase Genomics will provide a comprehensive suite of computational analytic services for Hi-C data analysis to QIAGEN EpiTect Hi-C Kit customers through a cloud-based bioinformatic platform that employs novel computational approaches and algorithms to analyze and interrogate proximity ligation (Hi-C) data.