Claim OwnershipThe Biotech Startups Podcast
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The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr features weekly conversations with founders, scientists, and investors driving biotech innovation. Host Jon Chee dives into the challenges of building biotech startups, from pre-seed to IPO. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.
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"If you can synthesize, then there's no such thing as too much expertise."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next re-release is this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, where Jacob Glanville pulls back the curtain on the “black box” of venture capital for biotech founders, sharing what he learned moving from pitching antibody platforms to pitching VCs. He explains how aligning with each firm’s investment thesis, simplifying your story, and using sharp visuals—while treating fundraising like dating, not a numbers game—can dramatically improve your odds without ever resorting to exaggeration or dishonesty.
Jacob then dives into choosing the right venture partners, negotiating fair terms, and focusing on what real success looks like for both founders and investors. He shows how the best VCs act as strategic allies and “polishing engines,” and explains why he partnered with NFX and GHIC to help drive Centivax’s universal vaccine programs forward, from RNA-LNP–enabled flu vaccines to broad-spectrum efforts in HIV and coronaviruses, all powered by a village of mentors, collaborators, and family.
"If you are capable of acquiring knowledge, of applying the knowledge, and you like it, you can succeed. It doesn't matter what it is."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next re-release is this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, in which Jacob Glanville breaks down how he built Distributed Bio from a napkin-stage idea into a full-service antibody discovery platform—without traditional venture capital. He shares how creative partnerships with USF’s biotech master’s program and a scrappy animal facility in Guatemala helped him access labs, talent, and proof-of-concept data, even as early setbacks with SuperHuman 1.0 cost him clients and sleep.
The conversation then dives into the realities of scaling: squeezing into half a bench at JLABS before expanding into a 7,500-square-foot facility powered by smart equipment leasing and a growing team. Jacob also introduces his “Respiration Model” of leadership—open debate followed by uncompromising execution—and explains why rising competition and strong universal vaccine data led him to sell Distributed Bio to Charles River Laboratories and spin out Centivax just as the pandemic hit.
"Find the thing that gets you excited, that fascinates you, and then have the thing you love be something else."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next re-release is this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, in which Jacob Glanville discusses his transformative years at Pfizer's Rinat site and his transition to Stanford. He describes how an open, collaborative culture allowed him to roam across teams, trading his coding skills for scientific mentorship while building critical bioinformatics infrastructure for antibody discovery.
Jacob shares how he converted a corporate laptop into antibody.pfizer.com, creating an internal web server that centralized analysis tools and enabled scientists to rapidly interrogate antibody libraries. Early access to deep sequencing let him dissect repertoires before and after selection, iteratively design better synthetic libraries, and publish influential papers—ultimately being promoted four times to Principal Scientist with only a BA. Despite this success, his burning idea for a universal vaccine drove him to leave Pfizer, pursue a PhD at Stanford, and simultaneously launch Distributed Bio.
At Stanford, Jacob explains how he "separated church and state," keeping therapeutic antibody work in his company while focusing academic research on T-cell receptors and cytokine analysis. He reflects on navigating Stanford's tech transfer process and contrasts the priorities of academia versus industry, emphasizing the value of finding work that fascinates you.
"You don't always know at the time how something will be useful in the future, but if you keep following what fascinates you, those threads can re-synthesize into something powerful down the line."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next re-release is this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, where computational immuno-engineer and serial entrepreneur Jake Glanville shares how growing up in a Mayan Tzʼutujil village in Guatemala during a civil war shaped his path into biotech. He reflects on living amid limited access to medicine, navigating personal health challenges like asthma, and witnessing how simple interventions such as deworming transformed entire communities, inspiring his commitment to developing therapeutics and vaccines.
Jake discusses the profound influence of his grandfather, a Rocketdyne engineer who worked on the engines that sent humans to the moon, and how that legacy lowered his sense of what is "impossible" in science. Watching his parents run a hotel and restaurant gave him an education in operations, resilience, and people management—skills that translated directly into building biotech companies. He also unpacks the negotiation lessons he absorbed from Mayan market culture, where the goal is sustainable, mutual value rather than one-time wins.
The episode follows Jake's transition to the United States after his father's autoimmune disease diagnosis, his strategic decision to attend UC Berkeley, and how his self-taught programming background fused with population genetics to create a passion for computational immunology.
"The biggest problem that we're seeing right now is that the efficiency gains have not translated to enterprise value. The customer is not seeing that result transcend into unit economics yet."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Krish Ramadurai's insights on AI-native venture investing and the evolving biotech landscape. Krish unpacks the current state of AI ventures, explaining why the foundation layer is being rapidly commoditized and how defensibility now lives in full-stack applications rather than point solutions. He offers a candid perspective on what founders often misunderstand about market fit, revealing that efficiency gains haven't translated to enterprise value and that most AI companies are building vitamins when customers need painkillers.
Krish breaks down the dramatic shift in funding benchmarks, where seed-stage companies now achieve revenue milestones that previously defined Series A rounds. He shares hard-won lessons from the tech bio space, explaining why platforms that forgot biotech is fundamentally a drug business struggled during the biotech winter, and why growth investors can only underwrite assets, not services models. The conversation also explores AIX's firm-building philosophy, emphasizing how combining technical expertise with authentic human connection—being "the same dweeb in and out of the office"—creates a competitive advantage in winning deals against tier-one funds with significantly larger checks.
"I'm only doing this because I'm already doing this or because I couldn't afford to hypothesis test."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Krish Ramadurai, Partner at AIX Ventures, reveals his unconventional approach to building a venture capital career through simultaneous immersion in both academia and industry. The conversation explores how Krish pursued his master's in nanomedicine and PhD at Oxford University while working full-time at Harmonics Capital—an arrangement he negotiated by demonstrating that his research on machine learning algorithms for mRNA optimization directly aligned with his daily venture work.
Krish challenges conventional wisdom about hustle culture, arguing that productivity drops after 55 hours per week and emphasizing strategic time protection over brute-force effort. He shares candid reflections on what he calls "controlled chaos"—how his achievements weren't the result of meticulous planning but rather making the best of challenging circumstances. The discussion then transitions to his strategic move to AIX Ventures, where he joined as the first institutional partner at a firm helmed by AI pioneers like Richard Socher (inventor of prompt engineering). Krish describes building AIX's TechBio practice from less than 10% to 25% of the portfolio in just over a year, leading nine deals while helping scale a fund that's become the #2 VC globally for performance with eight unicorns from their first fund.
"I was not like, 'Well, this partner helped me on it, and then we shared the deal.' I was like, 'I think I'm good at this because I basically did the output of an entire firm by myself, like, the first two years.'"
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Krish Ramadurai, exploring his unconventional journey from Harvard academia to becoming a venture capital partner in record time. Krish shares how he applied his research training to venture capital, identifying a new category of compute-driven biotech companies before "TechBio" even existed, and executing twelve investments during his first year as an analyst—all while the COVID-19 pandemic sent markets into free fall.
Krish reveals the critical importance of "shot-calling" in venture capital, explaining why many talented associates and principals get stuck in their careers by not claiming ownership of their wins. He describes compressing his MBA into sixteen months at Washington University while working two full-time positions, his rapid ascent from analyst to partner by consistently performing above his role, and the uncomfortable but necessary transition from technical expert to fundraiser when dealing with limited partners. Throughout the conversation, Krish emphasizes breaking traditional rules when conviction demands it, treating every investment like an evidence-based academic experiment, and understanding that in venture capital, you're only as good as your last deal.
"You’ve just got to embrace the suck. When everything sucks, you just execute against it. It's nice because then when that situation happens again, which adult life works like that all the time, you can be more systematically prepared."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Krish Ramadurai's unconventional journey from Chicago's South Side to becoming a Partner at AIX Ventures. Krish shares how a career-ending femur fracture during his track and field career redirected his path from Johns Hopkins to the University of Illinois, where he discovered the intersection of hard science and business that would define his future.
Krish takes us through his audacious approach to getting into Harvard—auditing classes before formal admission, working three jobs simultaneously to afford tuition, and sending over 500 cold emails to find research opportunities. He reflects on how working alongside figures like US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, CIA Director David Petraeus, and Nobel Prize winner Mike Kremer at the Belfer Center shaped his understanding of applied science and policy intervention. Most importantly, Krish emphasizes how rejection built conviction, turning financial desperation and constant setbacks into the foundation for his success in venture capital.
"Entrepreneurship is great, but, for me, family always came first. [My] wife and kids always came first. I didn't miss a single game or show or anything of the kids, whether it was at 3 PM or 5 PM or 7 PM, I did that. And then I figured out the work otherwise."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next rerelease is part 2 of this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Parag Shah, where we discuss his journey from leading the life sciences practice at Hercules Capital to founding K2 Health Ventures. Parag shares candid insights about the pivotal moment he transitioned from banking to private credit, his decision to join Hercules as one of the first employees, and the challenges of scaling a fund from $25 million to over a billion dollars as a public BDC.
Parag offers rare transparency about the difficulties of navigating toxic corporate culture while building a successful business, and how those experiences shaped his vision for K2 HealthVentures. He emphasizes the critical importance of work-life balance in entrepreneurship, revealing how he never missed a single one of his children's games or shows despite the demands of building investment firms. The conversation explores the strategic advantages of evergreen fund structures versus traditional LP/GP models, and how K2's unique approach of combining debt and equity across the capital stack, along with dedicating a percentage of profits to underserved healthcare, represents a new model for impact investing in life sciences.
"I was fortunate that my parents pretty much allowed for a more experimental, open approach to education being important, but do what you want to do, right? Try different things, take healthy risks."
We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our first rerelease is part 1 of this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Parag Shah, where we explore his remarkable journey from molecular biologist to CEO and Founding Managing Director of K2 Health Ventures. Parag shares how his upbringing in New York City with immigrant parents who encouraged experimentation shaped his entrepreneurial mindset, and describes the pivotal moment when he realized bench science wasn't his calling while researching at MIT's Whitehead Institute.
The conversation reveals how Parag boldly proposed building Imperial Bank's life sciences lending practice from scratch, despite being young and relatively inexperienced. He discusses lessons learned from MIT about persistence through failure, translating traditional credit frameworks to venture-backed biotech companies, and the complementary role of debt capital alongside equity financing in life sciences.
"The only advice I can give to my 21-year-old self is that advice doesn't work... But whenever you actually need advice on something that you do not know how to start or how to solve or how to figure out, you should really remember that someone in this world has already figured it out."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee concludes his conversation with Sergey Jakimov, Managing Partner at LongeVC, exploring the realities of fundraising from limited partners and building a successful longevity-focused biotech fund. Sergey shares his unconventional approach to LP fundraising—telling his story rather than selling a product—and how personal experiences with age-related diseases drive his science-first investment philosophy.
Sergey explains why Fund One, which launched with 30% GP capital commitment, has achieved over 3x returns in just three years despite challenging market conditions. He reveals why big pharma's massive liquidity reserves, combined with looming patent cliffs like Merck's Keytruda expiration, create unprecedented opportunities for venture-backed biotech innovation. The conversation explores the vital role venture capitalists play in bringing breakthrough therapies to patients—therapies that big pharma would never risk developing on their own.
Looking ahead, Sergey discusses his vision for establishing longevity as an evidence-based, data-driven field while combating the "snake oil" supplements and questionable therapies that damage the industry's credibility. He emphasizes the need to translate scientific success stories into accessible language that attracts generalist capital, ultimately accelerating growth across the entire longevity sector.
"If you die, all your crypto doesn't make sense. All your sustainability doesn't make sense. You have not solved the major existential issue or the major existential threat that you have."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Sergey Jakimov, Managing Partner at LongeVC, as he reveals launching a $25 million longevity fund. Leveraging relationships with top universities and a scientific advisory board featuring Nobel Prize winners, Sergey built a fund with an unconventional thesis: tackle age-related diseases one at a time, investing solely based on patient outcomes. The results—20 companies, zero write-offs in 3.5 years, with portfolio companies approaching unicorn status.
The conversation turns personal when Sergey shares his experience as a rare disease patient. At 28, a rare autoimmune neurodegenerative condition left him partially paralyzed, forcing him through a healthcare system offering only outdated treatments. This experience fundamentally reshaped his investment philosophy and cemented his belief that biotech is the most important industry. Sergey also discusses expanding his platform with Ani.vc and the Longevity Science Foundation, while reflecting on why health span and "joy span" matter more than simply extending lifespan.
"Building a deep tech company or building anything, pretty much, like being a founder in anything, it's like planning a bank robbery. It's like putting together a crew where, you know, you need a driver, you need someone to pick locks, you need someone to not sell, and you need someone who has the intellectual capacity to come up with a plan."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Sergey Jakimov, Managing Partner at LongeVC, shares his journey from uncertain graduate student in Budapest to serial deep tech founder. He discusses launching his first startup at age 22 in the conservative oil and gas industry with zero experience, pioneering drug-eluting coatings for orthopedic implants, and building Lungesys—a clinical data platform that revolutionized trial patient recruitment and helped establish the world's largest biobank.
Sergey challenges the "dropout culture" narrative while defending both formal education and learning by doing. He reveals why the least specialized person often makes the best founder and shares surprising truths about big pharma, including that only 14% of first-in-class cancer drugs are developed internally.
"Retrospectively, this was honestly the best childhood one can get, and it was absolutely without gadgets."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore the formative years of Sergey Jakimov, founding partner at LongeVC, as he takes us from his childhood in post-Soviet Latvia to his graduate studies in Budapest. Sergey shares what it was like growing up in a small rural town near the Russian border, where limited resources, no technology, and long winters shaped his resilience, diplomacy, and drive to succeed.
Sergey recounts his unlikely journey into competitive tennis under a retired national coach, training on concrete courts and turning the sport into both a discipline and a livelihood. He describes the grueling path to university admission—waking at 2 AM every Saturday for four-hour bus rides to attend prep courses in Riga—and the intense workload that followed, surviving on just three to four hours of sleep while juggling translation work and coaching gigs. A pivotal parliament internship shattered his idealistic views of government, leading him to embrace technocracy and meritocracy as guiding principles. Finally, Sergey reflects on earning his master's at Central European University in Budapest, where diverse perspectives and world-class academics further expanded his worldview and prepared him for entrepreneurship.
"Risk management is really just planning for when things go wrong."
In this final episode with Jimmy Sastra, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Monomer Bio, host Jon Chee explores how Jimmy redefines biotech leadership by treating fundraising as a strategic tool rather than a necessity. The conversation dives into building a company that combines scalable software with hands-on lab services, the importance of creativity and risk management in uncertain times, and Monomer’s bold vision for "autonomous science"—where AI and robotics revolutionize experimentation.
Alongside deep biotech insights, Jimmy shares personal reflections on balancing entrepreneurship, family, and his immigrant journey while pushing the boundaries of automation in life sciences.
"People are looking at cells, making decisions, and then acting on them—that’s a robotics loop. I felt it could be done autonomously."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee sits down with Jimmy Sastra, co-founder and CEO of Monomer, to discuss how his team transformed hands-on lab automation consulting into a breakthrough biotech robotics company. Jimmy shares how Monomer’s vertically integrated platform unites robotics, software, and biology to automate cell culture, cut reliance on animal models, and boost reproducibility.
He also explains the company’s adaptive go-to-market strategy—ranging from software-only pilots to full robotic deployments—and reflects on the power of cross-disciplinary teamwork, global collaboration, and flexibility in navigating today’s challenging biotech landscape.
"Life is amazing, but it’s also very fragile. I could not think of a more important mission than trying to understand how life works."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Jimmy Sastra, CEO and co-founder of Monomer Bio, tracing his evolution from a self-taught PhD student to a Silicon Valley engineer at the forefront of robotics and biotech innovation. Jimmy recounts his time at Willow Garage during the rise of ROS, his groundbreaking work at Transcriptic—where he helped build the world’s first robotic cloud lab—and how those experiences shaped his vision for Monomer Bio.
He also explores the power of hiring for personal mission alignment and shares how a life-changing moment involving his brother inspired a career dedicated to understanding life through technology.
"Maybe because of that experience, we still keep in touch. I feel fortunate that my friends and I built something together back then—even if it started with murals and late nights, it taught me about creativity, risk, and teamwork."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jimmy Sastra, CEO and co-founder of Monomer Bio, unpacks his global journey from The Netherlands and Japan to transforming lab automation in biotech. Shaped by his father’s engineering legacy at Philips and ASML, Jimmy recalls lessons in creativity, rebellion, and resilience that guided his path from the University of Pennsylvania to a PhD in robotics.
His story reveals how curiosity and systems thinking became the foundation for Monomer Bio’s mission to empower scientists through smarter, automated lab solutions.
"If anyone comes to me and says, 'Hey, I’ve got this idea. I think we could do something with it,' I’m like, 'You gotta take the I-Corps class first... it really changes your mindset.'"
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Darren Cooke, Interim Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer and Executive Director of the Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals how 100 discovery interviews turned a $3 million campus experiment into a powerhouse for biotech innovation.
He shares the creation of Berkeley’s flagship fellows program, the launch of speed teaming and venture grants, and how simple ideas like fostering connection and collaboration transformed campus culture. Darren also reflects on the leadership of Chancellor Rich Lyons and offers candid lessons on perseverance, mentorship, and the art of “showing up.”
"If you’re not challenging what you’ve always done, you’re not going to move forward or innovate."
In this episode, Darren Cooke, Interim Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer and Executive Director of the Life Sciences Entrepreneurship Center at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals how he’s navigated the fast-changing world of financial advice by embracing regulatory shifts, championing innovation, and building trust through integrity and open communication, sharing hard-won lessons on personal growth, resilience, and finding new opportunities amid uncertainty and change.
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