Alok Tayi - Vibe Bio - Part 1

Intro - 00:00:00: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, experienced scientists, serial entrepreneurs, and biotech investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup. Gain actionable insight into navigating the life sciences industry in each episode as we explore the business of science from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee. 

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 Jon - 00:01:10: My third guest is Alok Tayi, founder of Vibe Bio, a life science company focused on funding and guiding high-potential drug programs through value inflection points. Vibe Bio's core is a community of scientists, patients, and partners that are dedicated to helping biotech’s find the promising treatments that patients deserve. Prior to Vibe Bio, Alok started and ran several life science-focused software companies, including PreScouter, TetraScience, and the Life Sciences Division at Egnyte. Before diving into the world of startups, Alok was an academic scientist working with George Whitesides at Harvard, Sam Stupp at Northwestern, and George Malliaras at Cornell. Alok, it's great to see you again. Thanks again for being willing to jump on the Podcast.

 Alok - 00:01:49: Yeah, really appreciate the opportunity and big fan of what you're building at Excedr and happy to be a guest today.

Jon - 00:01:54: Yeah, thanks so much. So to jump right into it, what was your childhood like? How did you get into science and entrepreneurship?

Alok - 00:02:00: Yeah, you know, I think my journey into science, which was sort of my first kind of professional experience started very young. I grew up in upstate New York near Albany. And the thing about Albany, which folks may not know, is that in Albany, there was the first nanotechnology university was actually started in town. And so when I was a kid, most, when they're young, their first job is doing a paper route, delivering papers door to door. I, however, at the age of 15, 16, my first job was actually doing lab automation for nanotechnology, where I started building software and hardware to test nanomaterials and how they interacted with dangerous chemicals. And so that was a really interesting experience in that I got a chance to learn a little bit about software, a little bit about hardware, work in a laboratory, learn what this new burgeoning field of nanotechnology was. I spent a couple of summers doing that. I worked for then an assistant professor, now probably a full professor, and beyond a guy named Michael Carpenter, who's just a really nice, warm individual, very supportive, and was very hands-on and helpful whenever I had issues. And I think it was that sort of early on experience that enabled me to feel confident being in science and also helped nurture my excitement around this unique combination of software and science as a whole. I think that thread kind of has tied together through the majority of my career in the future. I often joke with my colleagues that many of my friends who had a similar sort of background experience, the smart ones chose going the software route. I instead chose the material science and the nanotechnology route, which I think still worked out fine, but it was definitely a different path.

Jon - 00:03:32: Yeah, absolutely. And this is the first time I've ever heard of a program at the age of 15 or 16. When I think about my 15 and 16 year old summer, I was working in retail. So this sounds like a great opportunity. Was this kind of, this sounds really interesting to me, or was it something that was like family has always been, hey, science is the place, or what sparked that fire to even apply for that role in the first place?

Alok - 00:03:53: Yeah, you know, I think it was just luck, to be honest. My dad is an academic, you know, he teaches business. My mom's a lawyer by training. In both those cases, you know, they obviously made sure that education was important, but never specifically pushed me down like one explicit direction. I think it was really just an issue of luck where I had nothing to do for a given summer. My dad commuted to the similar part of town where the lab was, and they had just set it up and just gotten funding from the state. And so we're looking for people to help with projects over the summer and kind of get things going. So I just applied, got a chance to meet with Mike, and then went from there, and spent a couple summers doing that, both in high school and then a little bit in college as well. But, you know, I really credit that experience as sort of helping me see the opportunity that existed at this intersection of the tech and Biotech. And yeah, at the end of the day, it was just an element of pure happenstance.

Jon - 00:04:44: Yeah, wow. I would say I had a similar, a little bit later, it was more in late high school and college, someone who kind of like took me under their wing. And there was a handful of professors who did that. And it sounds like Mike did that for you and took you under his wing and kind of showed you the ropes. And I'm going to assume what the inflection point got you down the path of like material science and probably in your university experience just inspired you to pursue that going forward.

Alok - 00:05:06: Absolutely. You know, I think it's safe to say that when you're young, you're shaped most by your best experiences and your worst experiences, right? And I think in this case, early on, I was fortunate to be shaped by a bunch of positive experiences. In addition to Mike at the University of Albany, as well as guys like George Malliaras at Cornell, or my PhD advisor, Sam Stupp at Northwestern, George Whitesides at Harvard, right? I think definitely had a fortune of being surrounded by really smart, caring individuals who wanted to help support the next generation of scientists. And so I think in the case of my high school experience, just having a positive environment where it's okay to fail and make mistakes, you know, science is not easy. And there are also ways in which we can do it in a more efficient and rapid manner. And it's cool to explore that as well, in addition to kind of the basic science of what we're doing. I remember when I was in the lab, this was at a time when nanotechnology was first starting to become really big and starting to become like a thing. One of the first nanomaterials companies was also founded in the lab and run out of the lab like a couple of doors down. And so we also had this unique access to like materials and technologies that no one else in the world had. So I think it also was again, a unique opportunity where in addition to being able to have a really supportive mentor and advisor, also had, I think, some unique technologies that no one else had, really at the fingertips, literally, to be able to experiment with and see how they operated. So I think that also helped lay a firm foundation for what I want to do in the future.

Jon - 00:06:30: That's so cool, to be honest. I'm super jealous. And so you'd mentioned now, you know, after high school going to Cornell, what was your experience there like in the lab, on campus? Did you have a similar experience? You know, you mentioned some mentors there. What was it like at Cornell?

Alok - 00:06:44: Yeah, Cornell is an awesome environment if you're interested in Science and Engineering. I studied material science myself in part because of the experience I had from high school. Coming up in an academic family, I also had a lot of conviction that I wanted to become a faculty member one day and become an academic. I feel when I talk to younger folks these days, that's like half the battle is just knowing what it is that you want to do. It's okay to change, but at least having some conviction and direction certainly helps a lot. So going to Cornell was a great opportunity for me. I remember one of the first people I met even before I applied to Cornell was a guy named Steve Sass, who was a professor at Cornell, the material science department, and was one of the sort of storied figures in the area of x-ray crystallography and material structure. Obviously, a core fundamental underpinning of a lot of the field. And so I remember meeting him even before I applied over the summer, sort of sharing with him a little bit of the science that I had done in high school. I remember showing up and I was like a little nervous because I'm like, who the hell am I to meet with someone like him and like try to share a little bit of what we're doing? But he spoke to me just like he would like any of his peers and did the same. In addition to sharing a little bit about my science, he shared with me a little bit of the work that he was doing too, which I thought was really cool and exciting. So it was a very positive and enriching environment, especially I think the material science program when I was there became pretty popular, especially post the dot-com burst. And so Cornell was a great experience where I think a lot of the scientific underpinnings that I had at Cornell really helped for the future of my scientific career. I spent a lot of time in the lab of a guy named George Malliaras, who did a lot of organic electronics, which are like the early days of figuring out how plastics could actually be used in things like solar cells and LEDs, etc. And now I think a vast majority of phones are based on that technology. So he too is also a very supportive, very optimistic individual in science. I'd say that was one thing that as you move forward in life, especially in a scientific background, that level of optimism is something that you often miss, I think in many cases, especially in biotech. But I was very grateful to kind of have that experience there, made some of my closest friends even till this day from Cornell. And I think a big part of it is just syncing up and meeting with other people of similar mind attitude values and maintain that over time. So yeah, I think Cornell was a great experience and really seeing George's excitement and love for science really helped kind of, I think, solidify that for me and motivate me to do a PhD as well.

Jon - 00:09:09: That's awesome. And I completely agree. The optimism sometimes is hard because it feels like you're running through walls and there's only so many walls that you can run through in a given period of time. And it's incredibly refreshing and exciting. And I had the same experience at Berkeley with a couple of professors who kind of just were cheering you on and wanted to see you succeed. And I was on a similar path at one point in time. I was like, maybe I could be an academic. And then I was seeing my peers who ended up following that track. I was like, you guys have something that I don't have. You guys are built different. But I'm glad that academia will be in your hands in the future. And so sounds like Cornell kind of laid the foundation for your graduate studies. What drove you to choose Northwestern? Was there a particular lab that you wanted to be a part of? What was that decision making for you?

Alok - 00:09:56: Yeah, you know, I was really fortunate that there are a couple of good schools in the material science space, sort of late 2000s, as well as a lot of faculty, I think, that had produced a lot of great students and professors themselves. So for me, it was really an analysis around where do I think I can resonate the best in terms of the culture, the attitude, the people? Where do I think I'm going to have the greatest rigor and quality of science that I can be done? But also I did a quick back of the envelope analysis of where did all the professors who I admired went to school? Right. And it turned out Steve Sass did his PhD at Northwestern, very much go to me in that direction. And that's where I ended up going. It was also a fairly sizable program, at least comparatively. I think when I was there, there was maybe 40 to 50 students per class. So it was quite a sizable place. And I really think my love for science and a lot of my scientific experience and rigor was really established there. I joined in Materials Science for my PhD, ended up working for a guy named Samuel Stupp, who's pretty well known scientist in the super molecular chemistry space. When I joined, he was appointed in materials science, chemistry and medicine, was probably the best scientific experience any PhD student could have. I remember in some of our early meetings, when you meet with Professor Stupp for the first time, he tells you that to be successful in his lab requires that you be highly self-motivated and also that you push him as much as he pushes you. I was like, okay, challenge accepted. So Northwestern was an awesome experience. I loved Chicago. Loved working for Professor Stupp. And I think the piece of it that was interesting for me is that for better or worse, there had been several successful alums of the lab who all had gone to Cornell in materials science for their undergrad. There's like three or four of us that literally like generation after generation had come from the lab. And so Professor Stupp, he started like pattern match. So he's like, oh, you remind me of these three other people. So yeah, sure, I'll take you to the lab. But the other part of that that was a lot of fun was the fact that I had a little bit of scientific experience and research experience previously. You were given a lot of latitude. So I remember when I was joined the lab, I was trying to choose a lab that one, allowed me to work on really interesting science that was sort of about cutting edge and that I thought would be relevant longer term. Second, work for a lab that was sufficiently well financed and staffed such that you didn't have to worry about whether your project would get canned because, you know, grant money didn't come through, et cetera. And then when it came to a research area, I was particularly keen on focusing within a domain where I had very fast cycle times. And I remember that being a very critical piece of what I wanted to do because I had seen a lot of friends who worked, say, in the biology space, you know, as you had and I'm sure your peers have. Love biology, huge opportunity there and a lot of great science is done. But I think it's safe to say in some of the fields of biology take forever to get results. And so in the Stupp lab, we had this really unique mix where half the lab, maybe like 60, 70% of the lab was biology, biomaterials work. We had folks doing oncology-based therapeutics. We had folks doing neuronal regeneration, right? A lot of really core biology work. And the other sort of 30 to 40% were doing electronics and electronic materials. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to work a little bit on the bio side, but spend the majority of my time in the electronic materials space. And I remember I had a colleague who was in a similar year as me, but in the bioengineering side of things. I'd go run an experiment. It would take me 24 max 48 hours to get results back and I can iterate for him. He was working with neurons and it took him at least three months to differentiate and run his experiment. So I'm sitting there and look at them analyzing data. I'm like, what do you do in that case for those three months when you don't know what the results of the experiment are, right?

Jon - 00:13:30: Cross your fingers.

Alok - 00:13:32: Yes. I don't know if you've seen that across biology, but that would always weigh on me as like, oh, man, I have to wait this long to get results.

Jon  - 00:13:38: Yeah, that was absolutely it. And I think part of it, one, just like foundationally, it is a much longer kind of cycle, that type of research. And that problem was compounded for us because of the lack of equipment. So like, you're like, okay, it's time to go borrow Professor Portnoy's Microplant reader because they have luminescent capabilities. And you run down the hall and the core facility will have a list. You're on the waiting list and you're like, okay, so at 3:00 PM, I can go use the thing. So that just like further elongated the cycle. And that's like one of the walls that we had to run through was knowing that the assays are going to run for a really long time before we can actually get data with any sort of statistical significance. And it just gets elongated every time you have to share a resource. So that was kind of one of the inspirations for Excedr. But I completely empathize and relate to that experience.

Alok - 00:14:27: Yeah, absolutely. I remember sitting in a core facility at Northwestern watching a video interview that Elizabeth Iorns did about Science Exchange at the time. She was talking about that same problem where there's a lot of equipment out there in labs, in core facilities, not being utilized. And Elizabeth and I are now quite good friends. And so that point that you made around time and friction and access, I think further accentuates the challenge of keeping people in the scientific discipline.

Jon - 00:14:54: Oh, yeah. Plenty of colleagues who actually have left this completely because it's just so painful. It's like absolutely painful. And it's a shame because they were... I don't want to say that this is how it always is. I remember the program initially, they were so fired up and kind of got grinded down. It bums me out, frankly. I would love them to still be participating. But I think before everything was super, super difficult. And now things are just singular ones, super difficult. But yeah, kind of like that optimistic streak in me. I'm hoping that things continue to get better. And I think what we're seeing is that things will. After Northwestern, I know you ended up going to University of Tokyo and Harvard. Which one was first? Was it University of Tokyo and then Harvard or the other way around?

Alok - 00:15:34: So I ended up spending some time at Todai at the University of Tokyo before doing my post-sack at Harvard. A big part of why I took that road actually was rooted at Northwestern. While I was doing my PhD with Sam Stupp, again, by chance. I remember my initial work, my PhD was around electronic materials and specifically, how can we use this mix of organic semiconductors and carbon nanotubes to design solar cells and different types of electronic materials. And it was going okay. It was going fine. And then I got an email introducing me to a PhD student named Alex Schweder, who was a PhD student in Fraser Stoddart's lab. Fraser Stoddart, who was previously in the Chemistry Department at UCLA, had just moved to Northwestern to the Chemistry Department. Fraser ended up winning the Nobel Prize in 2016 and was one of the pioneers of the space of Molecular Machines. And one of his students, Alex, who was actually a physicist, became a Synthetic Organic Chemist to move to Chicago with Fraser, ended up discovering by chance this really unique crystal. He had mixed two chemicals together with the expectation of creating a catenane, where both of these compounds would fuse covalently to create one single molecule. I guess that he forgot to add like a catalyst and tried to crystallize the material and ended up creating this absolutely beautiful periodic charge transfer complex, which basically alternated positive, negative, kind of attractive molecules. And he started doing a chemical search and literature search of what is this good for? And he turned out to find a class of molecules and materials called ferroelectrics, which can basically use a sort of a form of computer memory. They can hold a state one or zero. What we ended up doing is collaborating and he's like, hey, look, I don't know anything about electron materials. Turns out you guys might know something about this, but I just created this entire class of crystals. And then that was like literal serendipity. We're really fortunate. Alex and I just became one really good friends. One of his other colleagues, Andy Su, who's now a professor. Andy also was electrical engineer who then became a synthetic chemist. So we had this really unique mix of materials science people who are spending time in chemistry, then physics and electrical engineering people who then are spending time in chemistry. And none of us really were experts in synthetic chemistry, but we were really excited about the potential of using it in unique ways. So in that circumstance, we ended up realizing that what Alex had kind of stumbled upon was actually an interesting structure that we could routinely and scalably create these extraordinarily large materials that had essentially ferroelectric capability and ferroelectric capability specifically at room temperature. All the historical examples and the natural materials that have been found were actually only observed at like below liquid nitrogen temperatures. So he was able to do it because he used some of this really unique capabilities of super molecular interactions. And so that became the foundation, the new pivot of foundation of both his thesis, my thesis and others. So that was again, another aspect of serendipity. And I just became really in love with this concept of, you know, how do we design and engineer molecules to be able to align and organize themselves, self-organize into interesting structures. So having spent time with Fraser and Professor Stupp, I want to continue on that path. And so one of the other really great minds in this space is a professor named Takuzo Aida, who's at the University of Tokyo. And so turns out that Professor Aida and Professor Stupp were really close friends. And so got a chance to be a JSPS fellow in Takuzo's Lab for a little bit of time. And so that was also a wonderful experience in part because it showed me a completely different culture for how science is done. And one where, you know, Professor Aida's Lab, he has an extraordinarily high bar for science, like extremely high bar. All the people I worked with did. But in Aida's lab, you only publish in science, nature, nature materials, JACKS, and that's it, right? Like you have to be above a certain level of science in order to be able to publish in that lab. And so I was really fortunate in that I was the first student from Professor Stupp's lab to go and work in Aida Sensei’s lab. And while there got a chance to do some really interesting research, publish a paper in Nature Materials, and then also got to teach a few classes. There weren't a lot of folks who were native English speakers, obviously, and they wanted to do more classes in English. So got a chance to do that as well. So that was a really great experience. I must say of all my colleagues that I've worked with at Harvard and Northwestern and Cornell or elsewhere, my colleagues at the University of Tokyo by and far worked the hardest. We were in the lab probably 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM, six days a week. And if you are a professor in the lab, you then were there also on the seventh day as well. So it was an intense experience.

Jon - 00:20:02: That's fantastic because I was very curious about that experience, like contrasting to an American lab experience and lab experience in Japan. Obviously, there's like tons of cultural differences in terms of the approach to work as well. And in addition to incredibly rigorous labs, were there any other differences in processes and methodologies that they employed in Japan that you kind of like, I would imagine, took home with you as you came back?

Alok - 00:20:25: You know, the culture there was very unique and different. I think it would have been hard to actually transplant a lot of those same concepts because the mentality and the focus is so different. Now, keep in mind, the way I kind of think about it is in the US we have this interplay between life, school, work, extracurriculars are valued pretty extensively. In Japan, it's you have, I think, a lot less time and space and disposable income to do like extra stuff. So people spend a lot more time like working and in the lab, and that's just part of both the work ethic, but it's also, I think, a key part of how they build their social network. Like the people that you work side by side with are the people that you spend time with and kind of get to know and advance your relationships with. So I think the key part that I sort of took away from that experience is really work ethic and the high bar and rigor around science and novelty. I think that definitely served me well when I went to Harvard, but I think many have an opportunity to learn a lot from how science is done in those sorts of spaces. I think that's also a culture where there is some element of hierarchy, but there's also a lot of collaboration, I think, especially amongst folks who are sort of at the bench. And I think that's something that I definitely try to bring forward is not only collaboration within the lab, but also in adjacent areas. Just in the same way, when I was working with folks from Fraser's lab, you know, we were from very different walks of life and very different departments and backgrounds, but I think there's a huge opportunity when those sort of sets of skills and perspectives come to the table.

Jon - 00:21:51: Absolutely. And your colleague, when just serendipitously just stumbling into such a profound discovery that then cascades, and it seems to have this like ripple effect across scientific disciplines, it's stuff like that. Not to say that there's not a benefit to just having the blinders on and just focusing, there's absolutely a time and place for that. But I found on my side too, that kind of cross collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas, thought and style is really, one, refreshing, and two, just takes you down paths that you never thought you would ever go down. And I think Berkeley, when I was there, leaned towards having the blinders on. Like you do this and you do it really well and you go really, really deep. But as I left, they actually created the building, which was a cross-disciplinary building, the Li Ka Shing Building, which had exactly what you described. There's folks like the MCB folks, the hard chemistry folks. So I've always found that on my side too, that collaboration is something I carry with me. At least I try to my best with an Excedr. And also what really resonated with me as well was how the bar, the rigor, just like setting the bar high. I would say when I was younger, my bar was high, but not crazy high until I met Professor Leitmann and Professor Volpe at Berkeley. And they were nice about it. They kind of elbowed me as like, hey, step it up. Same with my co-founder. He's like, hey, step it up. And the rest is history. It's like your new base level is just there. And at least at Excedr, I tried my best to be like, hey, we're setting it high. Let's try our best to get there. It's okay, understandable. You can't hit it every single time, but at least the attempt to get there, that's what really matters. But yeah, that experience sounds amazing. I'm also jealous because I love going to Japan, my wife and I go there for vacation and stuff. So I would imagine even like enjoying the good food and stuff was probably a nice aside. So you're now at Harvard. Tell me a little bit about that experience. Like, did you already know while in Japan, I'm going to be at Harvard next, like this is the next stop? Or was there a time where you're like, okay, I'm trying to do the selection process again?

Alok - 00:23:44: Yeah, I was also really fortunate that I think my PhD advisor, Sam Stupp and George Whitesides had risen up together sort of as academics early on. I think we were collaboratively on a joint DARPA project together. So they had known each other and George, for those who aren't familiar, is probably one of the top chemists by H-Index, inventor of microfluidics, self-summoning modulators, early innovator in NMR, right? Like OG, Synthetic Organic Chemistry, right? And on top of that was one of the few labs. And granted, this is like in the 2010s, so still wasn't cool yet to do startups. But dating back to like the 80's started some of the early Anchor Biotech Companies in Boston, Genzyme, Geltex, in the Bay Area, Theravance, amongst others, and about a dozen or so companies, about 30 billion in market cap value. And I think out of his lab, something like two or 100 plus professors had emerged, right? Having been former PhD students, postdocs, et cetera. And so for me, it became kind of clear that I wanted to go be an academic. I was still interested in being an academic. George's Lab, especially at this interface of materials science and physics and chemistry was sort of the place to be. And I just got really lucky that at that time, Professor Stupp kind of made an intro. I was at a conference in Italy on screw and chemistry, which is actually at that conference, I was able to secure my position at the University of Tokyo, and also my postdoc with George. I remember having a conversation with George over a glass of wine, and I remember asking him a question about like strategic thinking. I'm like, how do you make strategic choices around what direction the lab goes in? He sort of shares his thoughts at the time. And at the end of that conversation, he's like, all right, you have an offer. Let us know when you're done with your PhD and you can come out. So it was a really cool kind of experience. And I still had like a year or two left to finish my PhD and spend time in Tokyo and then went, but went to Harvard as my first time kind of living in Boston, moving from Chicago. There was a little bit of a change, really interesting experience there as well. It’s at a time when majority of the labs which is about 40-50 people are, so we’re all postdocs. It's there were one or so grad students. So this is like about a decade ago. So George was probably in his mid seventies. And so still the sharpest person in the lab, even at that age, and probably one of the smartest minds that still is alive today. Really amazing experience. And I think when I look at the three faculty that I've worked for, whether it's other George at Cornell, Professor Stupp at Northwestern, you know, Professor Stupp, I remember in every group meeting, no matter when it was, and we had group meetings on Saturday mornings, he would still have the excitement and the twinkle in his eye whenever he would see new science every day, every time you met with him, every time you start showing new data, every time there was a presentation. And in George's case, he also was excited by science, but George brought a completely different perspective and thinking to science. What I took away the most from that experience was, how does one think, just generally speaking? And what helped, I think, catalyzed that mindset for me was for every presentation you gave in the lab, you had to open with a quad chart. And a quad chart might not be familiar to most, but if anyone who does any work with the Department of Defense or DARPA, basically they have a set of questions that they sort of effectively care about when it comes to any sort of piece of technology, work, investment, et cetera. And George brought that rigor to the lab. And he brought that rigor to the lab because he didn't want to work on stuff just because it was interesting. He wanted to work on it because it would have an impact and it would solve a problem. And so he would always pepper people and teams with questions that seemed innocuous or simple or annoying, like, who cares? Right? Why does this matter? And so I think that mental model and that level of focus has been absolutely critical, along with the creativity that he also brought in being such a brilliant mind. And I think it was that sort of pairing of distilling down to the most critical facets of what's important in an experiment in science and the pursuit, combined with the creativity of doing it in completely different ways, that from a first principles understanding could work that I found to be incredibly valuable in the lab. And I know for many of my colleagues, some of which who aren't even in science anymore, but for many of them, I think they still take that same level of thought process and creativity, I think, to the work that they do as well across all these alumni.

Jon - 00:27:58: That's amazing. I always like asking why, why? Until you just get all the way down and, you know, the first time, they're like, Jon is so annoying. And I would imagine the same kind of feeling in the beginning. You're like, whoa, who cares? That's kind of off-putting. But then you get into it. You're like, oh, this is how you get to the true crux of it. That's amazing.

Outro - 00:28:17: That's all for today's episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our insightful conversation with Alok Tayi, covering his early introduction to the sciences, his academic adventures, and the insights he gleaned from working in various labs, both overseas and at home. To learn more about Alok’s journey, be sure to tune into our next episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave us a review and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening, and we look forward to having you join us again for part two of Alok's journey, for an in-depth discussion of his Entrepreneurial Journey, Founding PreScouter and TetraScience, as well as scaling Egnyte’s life science business unit. The Biotech Startups Podcast is brought to you by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Make sure to search for Biotech Startups Podcast in Apple podcasts, Spotify and Google podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. To learn more about our Leasing Program, visit our website www.excedr.com. We provide research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support a path to exceptional outcomes. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening.