Paul Grand is the founder and CEO; Ayelet Marom is the Program Director for BioTools Innovator, which focuses specifically on biotools; and Jim West is the Associate Director, BioTools Innovator, who was previously the Co-Founder and CEO of, Clara Biotech, which was founded in 2018 and was acquired by Innovaprep in the summer of 2023. Jim was the first founder to go through the biotools program. In this episode of lab to startup, we first discuss some of the challenges that affect medtech and biotool technology startups, and then go into ways that medtech innovator, an accelerator program is helping founders in this space, especially around lessons learned and how the program has evolved into one of the best accelerators in this space. https://medtechinnovator.org/about-us/ Founding story of Medtech Innovator Things medtech startups struggle with: Articulating value proposition; understanding reimbursement; having the wrong CEO; staying in stealth mode; choosing the wrong indication Medtech innovator “Value program” Value coaches from established companies like J&J How startups get accepted to the program No equity, no fees and no strings attached for being a part of the program Bringing the right investors to the table to support founders Biotools innovator program: https://biotoolsinnovator.org/ Challenges in the biotools space How investors are different in this space Pay for Service as a model Story of Jim West, Founder and CEO of Clara biotech, that went through the program Advice on slide decks Info session videos: https://www.youtube.com/@Medtechinnovatorchannel

Kenichi Nogami is the co-founder and CEO of Metcela, a clinical-stage biotechnology startup pioneering the research and development of fibroblast and stem cell-based therapy for chronic heart diseases that currently have limited therapeutic options. We talk about the current treatments for heart failure and how the fibroblast technology could help this space. We explore the founding story; setting smaller milestones and fundraising to meet those goals; the role of recruiting firms in hiring in japan; building a flat structure at the startup, as opposed to a hierarchical system that Japan is generally known for; and how Ken’s investment banking experience helped with acquisition of another biotech startup; and many other stories. Shownotes https://www.metcela.com/en/ Fibroblast technology for treating Heart failure Current treatments and potential of regenerative capabilities Founding story: Investment banker meets a PhD student and launch a startup Nedo, Japan: Technology-Based Startup Support Program https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/activities/activities_ZZJP_100091.html IP: University waives its right to file a patent and the startup files the patent Co-founder chemistry Business model evolution Immune response challenges developing cell therapy for heart diseases Fundraising stories: Raising money from Japanese investors vs those outside Japan Raising from university derived VCs Cell manufacturing challenges Acquiring a startup while being a startup Evolution as a CEO Team and hiring process: Supply drove the hiring more than demand in many cases Building culture Hierarchy vs flat structure: decision making process Challenges building a biotech startup in Japan- talent, infrastructure; and need to expand globally

Caleb Bell III, Ph.D., is a venture partner at Corundum Systems Biology and also the President of Corundum convergence institute. We talk about the founding story of Bell biosystems; how they were able to work at various labs around the country with very little money; building teams, culture; raising money, interacting with investors, leadership transitions; and also how the company filed for bankruptcy, although after he left the startup;. Kalub agreed to dip into his experiences both as a founder and investor, and share some of the lessons learned around all these topics, which I believe will be very helpful for aspiring or current founders out there. Shownotes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb3/ Early life as an entrepreneur and grad school training Thoughts on working with law firms: corporate vs IP attorneys Inspiration for launching Bell Biosystems (hint: Listening to NPR science Friday) Labs around the country helped perform the initial proof of concept experiments Market hypothesis Convincing the right kind of people to work with you: challenges and lessons learned Advice on recruiting and growing teams Culture: Two types of sins Becoming a manager from a founder Communicating with investors: Being a good steward of money Magnetic cells Thoughts on charging early customers;price discovery Sophisticated vs unsophisticated investors: Do your research! Leadership transitions Transitioning to investing: PE, VC Lessons learned from time at the PE firm Corundum systems biology https://www.csb.co.jp/

Chaeyoung Shin was the Co-founder and CEO of NAMUH, a startup focused on developing yeast fermentation technologies to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). HMOs are crucial, fiber-equivalent macronutrients that are currently lacking in most formulas. Integrating them in sufficient amounts could significantly close the nutritional disparity between human milk and formula. We talk about the story behind the origin of NAMUH; transformation of Chaeyoung from a freshly minted Ph.D. to a CEO; lessons learned in that process; fundraising efforts; lessons learned from building the team; experimenting with business models; partnerships developed; realities of the markets and the forces driving the adoption (or not); and the unfortunate shutting down of the startup Shownotes: -  https://wearenamuh.squarespace.com -  NAMUH is HUMAN read in reverse -  Developing yeast fermentation technologies to produce human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) -  HMOs help build the gut microbiome of babies and basically set them up for life -  Babies are born with pristine gut, without a microbiome -  Applied for a job and ended up becoming a co-founder -  Stigma behind scientists becoming CEOs -  Team building was hard -  Hiring decisions based on fear and lessons learned -  Support system -  Bringing on a business leader on to the team -  Startup incubator journey -  Being an immigrant+scientist+female founder -  Lessons learned from working with investors -  Getting advice: signal vs noise -  Experimentation with business models -  Working with infant formula companies -  Regulations: Maybe the bar is too low -  Role of pricing -  Mistakes that other founders could learn from

Jenn Gustetic is the Director of Early Stage Innovations and Partnerships at NASA. In this episode of Lab to startup, we will learn about various funding mechanisms that NASA provides to support innovation, primarily to support NASA space missions. We talk about the funding process through contracts; differences between grants and contracts; NASA’s involvement once they fund to support researchers and startups; funding dual use technologies; surprising speed of their funding process; partnership opportunities they offer; procurement of technologies by NASA and end with learning about how one can license technologies from NASA.  Jenn shared so many stories like that of the landing of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, and other technologies they funded. Shownotes: - Jenn Gustetic - NASA SBIR/STTR - Who we fund - Process of funding - Awards given as contracts, because NASA is one of the customers - Grants vs contracts - Heavily involved with the grantee - Strong touch points with NASA - Process of granting monies and funding levels - NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program - NASA Curiosity Rover landing -  Mars helicopter - NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Successfully Completes First Flight - Dual use technologies: 80 problem statements for small businesses; 3 months to decision: https://sbir.nasa.gov/ignite - Success stories - Reviewers- their composition and assessing business proposals - Partnerships: Resources beyond money - Facility use agreement; Flight opportunities program - Procurement of technologies by NASA post funding - Licensing NASA technologies - NASA I-Corps - Resource from NASA: Early-Stage Innovation and Partnerships (ESIP): ESIP 101 and Program Cadence

Ryan Caldbeck, is the COO of Dune, a powerful analytics platform for blockchain research. It can be used to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data on the Ethereum blockchain. Ryan was previously the founder, and CEO of CircleUp, a technology platform focused on finding and evaluating private companies. He is also an angel investor in several high-growth technology companies. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the role of independent directors at startups; how to find them and work with them; how they can mediate between the other board directors like investors and the CEO; when and how long to bring them on for. We do a deep dive into the topic of building trust, not only with the IDs, but also other members of the startup like employees, co-founders, board of directors and others. Shownotes: - https://ryancaldbeck.co - Tweet storm about independent directors:  https://twitter.com/ryan_caldbeck/status/1651441866213318656 - Who is an independent director (ID) - How to pick them - What and where do you look for them? - Trust = (Reliability x Credibility x Authenticity) / Self-Interest. - Building trust - Writing the job description for an ID - How IDs can mediate between investors and the CEO - Receiving and offering feedback - What point of the startup journey should we bring on an ID? How many? - Etiquette to building a relation with independent directors - IDs and board members interacting with upper management

Vickie Kloeris is a food scientist with an out of this world career. She worked at NASA in space food systems for 34 years. She served as the NASA manager of the Shuttle first and then the International Space Station food systems. She and her teams worked through the complex challenges of creating tasty, nutritious, long-lasting, easy-to-prepare meals that support the dietary and psychological needs of astronauts living on the space station. Vickie has worked with 100s of astronauts to plan their favorite meals and holiday specialty meals for space travel. We talk about the history of feeding our astronauts; working with the US military; evolution of food systems at NASA to feed our astronauts; depending on the Russian space agency in the initial days and also working with other space agencies. Vickie shared the challenges for the future manned mission to Mars; and how food science and technology has been at the core of so many food preparation and packaging technologies we take for granted. We also talk about how we might be able to use these technologies to address hunger and reduce food wastage. Shownotes: - https://vickiekloeris.com - Only 16 of the 105 space flights had flown by the time Vickie camke to work for NASA - Food sessions for shuttle crew members: 100% personal menus - Commercial off the shelf items (COTS) - MRE: Meals ready to eat made by army contractors (high salt and fat content) bad for astronauts in microgravity - Changes for the space station Freedom - Challenges with refrigeration: Freezers for food or science - Moving away from canned food - Academia, industry and US military came up with a retort pouch - "It's not gourmet food but pretty good" - Commercially sterile food - Testing the food for the bad bacteria like E.Coli, Salmonella, etc. - Downside of freeze dried food - Challenges for the mission to Mars - Standardized food menu - Challenges packing beverages - Taking tortillas to space: challenges with bread -  NATICK -  Reflections on collaboration with Mir space station - No insights into Chinese systems - Using this technology to feed the poor and prevent food wastage - A lot of people don't even know what food scientists do - Vickie Kloeris's book: Space Bites: Reflections of a NASA food scientist https://ballastbooks.com/purchase/space-bites/

Jay Keasling, the CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). He is also a Professor in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and also the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.. He’s also a Senior Faculty Scientist @ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and also holds other prestigious positions around the world. We talk about Jay’s initial foray into startups; working with grad students and postdocs; challenges translating lab research to startups; funding; partnerships; equity splits; lessons learned from failures and other topics. Shownotes: - Jay Keasling CV: https://www.jbei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019.10.19-Keasling-CV.pdf - Joint Bioenergy Institute (JBEI) - Initial foray into startups: Amyris - Deciding which research projects become startups - Working with graduate students and postdocs - Building partnerships - Working with investors: Philanthropy, angel investors, VCs and corporate VCs - Faculty co-founders and equity split challenges - Pivots & networking - Lessons from failures

Donna Rainone and Mike Rainone are the founders of PCDworks. PCDworks is a technology development company that helped develop hardware for over 50 big companies in the oil and gas, transportation, healthcare and several other industries; and now helping startups with a new incubator model. We first talk about lessons learned from building innovative hardware products for big companies; how they use principles of epistemology while developing new products; how they borrow lessons from their training in psychology, architecture and engineering in this process; challenges with innovation at big companies; and then talk about their transition to helping startups with all this experience, where we talk about their ideation sessions; how they work with founders; their observations on common mistakes that founders make in the hardware space; infrastructure they provide and related topics. Shownotes: - https://www.pcdworks.com - Work with big companies - Tracking down the best around the world - Using psychology while working with people you don't know - Epistemology: Everything in product development process is a hypothesis - Ideation sessions - Oil companies learning from human biology: Pumps and pipes conference - Decomposing problems - Working with startups - Common mistakes and dipping into experiences to build better products - How could startups work with PCDworks -  "Letter of intent" is worth the toilet paper that it is written on - Infrastructure at PCDworks - Intellectual property agreements - What would it cost to work with PCD? - Mistakes to avoid - Contact: https://www.pcdworks.com/contact

Jo Varshney, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of VeriSIM Life, a startup developing disease-specific simulation software designed to replace animal drug testing by using artificial intelligence. We talk about translational gap in drug discovery, the technology VeriSIM is developing, especially their virtual mouse models; some of the mathematical models being used in the process of drug discovery, challenges building partnerships with big pharma; How FDA is evolving their thought process about accepting data from AI; acquiring another startup while being a startup; and finally about spinning out a pharma company as a subsidiary. Shownotes: - https://www.verisimlife.com - Translational gap & current technologies - Verisim's technology: -Building virtual mouse - Avoiding the royalty trap early on - What made investors trust a solo founder? - Mathematical models for biology - Building a startup not spun out of a university or without a PI a part of it - Filtering investors: Understanding the No's - Building partnerships - Lessons learned about commercialization - Things that didn't work while working with partners - Comparing apples to oranges - Product evolution: Translational index - Data sources - FDA efforts: How FDA is evolving their thought process about accepting data from AI - Team - Acquiring another startup - Spinning out a therapeutic company - https://www.verisimlife.com/careers