Cyriac Roeding - Part 1: From Flea Market Hustler to Global Tech Pioneer

Intro - 00:00:01: Welcome to The Biotech Startups podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup from pre-seed to IPO with your host, Jon Chee.

Jon - 00:00:23: My guest today is Cyriac Roeding, founder, investor, and CEO of Earli, a company on a mission to transform cancer into a manageable condition. Using innovative gene therapy approaches, Earli's technology forces cancer cells to produce a synthetic non-human biomarker, overcoming the limitations of relying on naturally occurring biomarkers that cancer may or may not provide. Cyriac is a serial entrepreneur who loves challenging missions that move the world forward. As a founder and investor, he has created and supported ventures at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds, including investing in leading startups like OpenAI and serving as CEO of Shopkick, which was acquired for $250 million by SK Group, a Fortune 100 from South Korea. His current focus Earli has raised nearly $60 million from top investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Kazin Capital, Sands Capital, Marc Benioff, Menlo Ventures, and Zenfund. Cyriak's journey from launching his first startup at 15 to being named a World Economic Forum tech pioneer is nothing short of remarkable, and his insights into founding and building successful startups makes for an invaluable conversation that founders won't want to miss. Over the next four episodes, we follow Cyriak's journey from a small German village to pioneering breakthroughs in technology and life science. Starting with his Earli entrepreneurial ventures, we explore the inspiration behind his vision to blend the physical and digital worlds, discuss his founding of Shopkick during the 2008 financial crisis, and delve into Earli mission to revolutionize cancer detection and treatment. Cyriak's story offers powerful lessons in reinvention, ambition, and the pursuit of meaningful impact. Today, we'll chat with Cyriac about growing up in Germany and how his Earli entrepreneurial ventures set the stage for his career. Join us as we uncover how his transformative experiences from selling software at 15 to embracing resilience during a pivotal exchange year in Texas shaped the leader he is today. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of The Biotech Startups podcast.

Jon - 00:02:12: Cyriac, it's good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Cyriac - 00:02:16: Great to be here. I'm excited.

Jon - 00:02:17: And, you know, in customary The Biotech Startups podcast fashion, we always like to turn back the hands of time and start a conversation with your Earli upbringing and really dig into what got you into business and what got you into science. So can you tell US a little bit about your upbringing and your adolescence?

Cyriac - 00:02:35: It's hard to hide where I'm from when I start talking. I'm originally born in Germany. I was born in the very south of Germany in Constance at the lake there. But I really grew up from when I was three years old in a tiny 5,000 people village. In the middle of the country, north of Frankfurt. With milk from the local farmer. And picking it up by bike, that kind of thing. So that was my environment. The world was in order. It was very nice. Yeah. For some strange reason, though, I was very drawn to entrepreneurship. I remember there was a little flea market in our little town. You can't even call it a town. It's a village. And it was only once a year. And I had a little stand there. And I was selling a couple of items from my own sparse belongings. Yeah. And I was so excited about this. I still remember this to this day. I was recording every sale I made, even if it was 12 cents. And I think I walked out with like, I don't know, 15 Deutschmarks or something, which is like $8 after four hours of work. 

Jon - 00:03:48: Yeah, yeah.

Cyriac - 00:03:49: And I was very, very happy. And I thought it was an amazing experience. So that was probably when I was about eight. And then when I was 13, I think I started carrying the newspaper. And initially it was in the afternoons by bike. But later on, a year later, they decided, oh, we're going to switch to morning delivery. So then I had to suddenly be on the bike at 6:00AM in the morning before school.

Jon - 00:04:14: I'm sure you love that.

Cyriac - 00:04:15: And in Germany, the weather is not always great. So meaning rain, storm, snow, whatever it took. I was on my bike before breakfast. So then I got to know this newspaper house, whose newspapers I was carrying. And I got a summer job there for three weeks. And my job was to look at newspaper, at the newspaper published that day, and then have a stack, literally, like, I'm not kidding, a physical stack of paper with one ad on each paper. And my job was to check whether that ad had been published in the paper. And if so, scratch it out and then go to the next one. And when I was done with one stack, they just gave me the next stack. After eight hours on the first day, I was ready to jump off a cliff. And I kind of wanted to quit. And I made a decision that night, I'm not going to quit. It's three weeks. I'm going to make it somehow. But I got an enormous level of respect for what it means to go work. And I thought, wow, if that's how my life is going to be, it's going to be pretty tough. If that's work, then okay, buckle up. So then at the end of the three weeks, I say goodbye to my boss. I haven't talked much with him during the three weeks because I wasn't very important. And I said to him, so just out of curiosity, why don't you automate this? And he looked at me like I was from a different planet. So this is several decades ago. So he was not sure what I wanted. So then I went back home. And a few months later. Our host phone rang, literally our host phone. And my former boss was on the phone. And he said, you said something about automating what we do here. What did you mean by that? He said, well, I think you need a software. Somebody needs to create some software for you and get this thing streamlined. And then he said, well, what if you did that? Why don't you come over and do that for US? I packed up my computer, which I had bought from carrying the newspaper, and brought it there, literally my own computer, because nobody had anything at the time there. And I started writing code. And I sold my first computer program. And by that time, I was 15. And I thought it was a really cool experience that I could get paid for doing my hobby versus having to scratch out ads in a newspaper, which was much harder work and paid a lot less. So I was very surprised about that. So then one of my friends in the neighborhood had an older brother. And her brother went to the United States. As an exchange student, and he was like four years older than we were. And when he came back, I was so smitten with that and fascinated with this idea that I went to my parents and said, I want to go to the US as well. I want to become an exchange student. My parents thought I was crazy that I wanted to leave the house at age 16 and be gone on another continent. But to their credit, which I really appreciate to this day, they did that and they said yes. And so I applied. And I asked for being placed where the sun shines. And of course I have California in mind. So I ended up not in the United States. I ended up in Texas. There we go. Actually, in the southeast of Texas, at the Gulf of Mexico, in the swamp area, in a town called Orange, Texas, with 50,000 people. And. Slightly different from my upbringing. And I had a lot of experiences there that shaped me for life. And I loved every minute of it.

Jon - 00:08:10: Was this high school?

Cyriac - 00:08:12: It was in high school. I left after 10th grade in Germany. I joined 12th grade in the US in Texas. And at the high school, I had the most amazing time. It was a 4A school, which means second largest type of school in the state. My school had won the state championships in high school football for two years in a row before I got there. The town had about 50,000 people. Every Friday, about 20,000 people showed up to the football game. Oh my God. And wait for this. I became a male cheerleader. There were... 15 girls and seven guys. Best job I've ever had. And I ran the school flag on Friday nights across the stadium. This massive flag. Off, I don't know, 10 by 10 feet or something, across the stadium. And I also joined pop group and I joined choir and student government. It was amazing. Wow. So now I need to maybe preface this a little bit. I was an outsider at my German school in Germany. I was being bullied almost daily, I would say. And there were several reasons for that. One is in Germany at the time, you couldn't really be popular if you had good grades. So that was one factor. You were kind of the know-it-all that nobody likes. And to be honest, I think I've totally fell into that role and acted like that too. So not likable from that point of view, not good at sports. And then I had a skin problem called dermatitis, which gave you red spots, non-contagious, but didn't look great. All of this together, you got the perfect package. So I actually escaped to Texas. And when I look back, my life began in Texas.

Jon - 00:10:00: That's so fascinating. That's like incredibly fascinating.

Cyriac - 00:10:03: And I became very attached to this country. It was a very important moment in my life, because I decided to push the reset button when I got here, to change everything about how I acted with other people. I build the first real friendships. I had an amazing time at the school. Now, at home, it was a little different. My host family, He was 72. She was 43. They had just been married for three years and they already have marriage problems. And I was the kid they didn't have to help them solve their marriage problems. Not ideal. So they also had much more money than what I was used to. And maybe that's not even true. But in Texas, you know, the dollar buys you more than in Germany, I guess. But the house was big. It was this big house and I will never forget. Jon, the thick carpet, they had this thick carpet. Everything felt very luxurious to me. And there was this big room that I had with a king-size bed, and they bought me my own stereo. And I had a bathroom with two sinks for myself. Here's the problem. There was no love in the house. It was cold. And what I found after about three months was that they were alcoholics. And I was 16, I didn't know what an alcoholic was. So it took me a while to figure this out. But when the bottles of Canadian Club Whiskey, the gallon version of the bottles, went by pretty quickly within like a week on a continuous basis. And they were starting, you know, the first windows got smashed at one in the morning. Because they were fighting and they were telling me all their marriage problems, I knew that I had to change my family. And so I was basically 16 years old in a different country. And at the time, calling your parents meant paying $1 a minute for the phone connection. So that was not an option. And my organization that I was traveling with there officially was responsible for me. But the local representative couldn't find any family, nor did she. I don't know how much she tried. I don't want to impose on that, but she didn't come up with anybody. I certainly don't want to live with her. And so I moved in with a friend for about six weeks. Very kind people. And then I had to find myself a permanent family and my teacher. A U.S. History teacher. Took me in to her family. They had seven children. It was two marriages coming together. Three of them were already out of the house because they were already adults. They were four other children. They had no place, no space in the house. They had no money. And they still found a little room right next to the kitchen for me. And the family was, let's say, lovingly dysfunctional. And to this day, they're still my second family. And just a month ago, I was back in Texas to visit with all of them right before the election. And you can imagine what an interesting conversation we had in Texas, me coming from California. So very interesting, different world for me. I learned a lot. I think I defined a lot of who I am there. And then I had to go back, Jon, and interesting, you know, or sort of very frustrating for me at the time. Germany had 13 years of school. And I had just finished high school in the US. I graduated with a tassel and a gown, the whole thing. And then I had to go back to school for two more years.

Jon - 00:13:40: Yeah, you're like, no, not.

Cyriac - 00:13:43: So I went back to high school. But in order to not be put in the same box where I just came from. I called my parents again and I said, I'm really sorry, but I need one more thing.

Jon - 00:13:58: Cyriac, why? Why?

Cyriac - 00:13:59: Why is it this time?

Jon - 00:14:01: Yeah.

Cyriac - 00:14:01: I said, can you please register me at this other school in a different city in Bad Homburg, which is on the other side of my little village, because I want to change completely from scratch and start over to redefine myself. And they thought I was crazy. My mom said, you are crazy. It makes no sense. But again, to their credit, they actually did that. It was very, very important. Because once again, I could press the reset button in Germany too, and start over. And I had learned so much from Texas. I built friendships. I had the most fantastic two years. And I have friends to this day from the German high school of two years. So while I was at high school, In Germany, I became a programmer for Hewlett-Packard and I wrote code on Wednesday afternoons. 

Jon - 00:14:50: I'm going to pause right there. That was very casual. That was a casual, like, yeah, I became a coder for Hewlett Packard. I feel like that is like a very difficult role, especially for a high schooler. How did that, like, you know, come to be? Like, how did you land that? 

Cyriac - 00:15:06: My brother-in-law, who was not my brother-in-law at the time, was my sister's boyfriend. He was at Hewlett Packard, and he was very kind to sort of give me at least an intro. And then, quite frankly, I just had to convince them by coding. So it was just, I don't think I was ever the world's best coder by any means or imagination. But it seemed to be good enough to get the jobs done, literally the jobs of that program. So it worked. And it was awesome. Again, you know, this was another example, Jon, of me saying like, holy moly, I could actually get paid for this.

Jon - 00:15:41: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Cyriac - 00:15:42: That was great. And so, and then I thought, okay, now this is very interesting. I also did a job in a computer store where I was a salesperson selling computers. At the time, I was in love with a certain type of computer and there were some people who wanted to learn more about it. So I offered them outside of the business to teach them. And before I knew it, I had incorporated a company. My parents had to sign the papers. I wasn't of age yet. I was 17. But I was able to just charge these crazy rates because my clients became commercial clients, especially architect firms. And so I would drive with my... By the way, I was the only guy at age 17 in Germany allowed to drive because I had a US driver's license. At the time, not today, but back then you had to be 18, right? So I had this tiny car, this Fiat Uno, like the smallest car you could possibly buy. And I had paid it off. My dad had given me a personal loan and I had paid it off one by one by doing the work. So I was driving to these, I came in the smallest car, parked my car in front of the architecture firms and taught them about Macintosh and whatever else they were using. That's amazing. And the funniest part was that then I was starting to write invoices rather than be an employee, right? And I suddenly was writing invoices for like $100 an hour. And I was in high school. And it was kind of cool. So it taught me a lot about what's possible when you know something that other people don't know or need, you know.

Jon - 00:17:20: That's a stark contrast to the full day of work at the flea market and doing the newspaper work. You're like, $8? Been working here all day.

Cyriac - 00:17:30: But I was super happy about the $8. I got to tell you, I will never forget. I thought it was awesome. But the newspaper job, that was really, that was actually extremely valuable lesson because I never wanted to do that job again. And so it kind of taught me about how useful it is to know something that other people want.

Jon - 00:17:49: Absolutely.

Cyriac - 00:17:50: And then you suddenly do what you love and somebody gives you money for it. That's pretty amazing.

Jon - 00:17:54: That's exactly the same feeling I had because when I was growing up, I was doing jobs working through high school. And I one of my jobs was to basically pick up not garbage but basically just like picking up like wood scraps and take it to the dump.

Cyriac - 00:18:10: Yeah

Jon - 00:18:11: Yeah. And also just like that just like doing that hard work like all day in the sun. It just makes you realize how lucky you are to be able to be in like,

Cyriac - 00:18:20: Oh my god

Jon - 00:18:20: A room at a computer. And then you're like, I used to be out in baking in the sun lugging around very heavy things and this is such a luxury 

Cyriac - 00:18:32: Yeah, it is such a luxury. And I think it's so important to realize that. I am often thinking about, I have so much respect for people doing the hard labor work because it's so much harder. And I find it somehow incredibly unfair in some way on a higher level that they get paid so much less because it's actually much harder work. Way harder. It's kind of weird. But anyway, I, of course, tried to learn from my own life and took lessons away from that. And it showed me just what was possible. So that was the high school world. And one of the fun thing during that time was that when we did our Abitur, which is the German graduation thing, it's a big, big thing because the tests are very difficult. Think of it as a final major exam that takes a whole week. And it makes up about, I would think, like a third of the entire GPA.

Jon - 00:19:25: Oh, my God.

Cyriac - 00:19:26: It's a pretty intense thing. And when it's done, there is a tradition that the graduates are taking over the school for one day. And the better they are in terms of sort of reorganizing the school, the more likely is it that school will not happen on that day for everyone else.

Jon - 00:19:47: So the

Cyriac - 00:19:48: incentive structure is strong. So what we did. Was essentially not only change the teacher's lunchroom into a store, but we also turned the entire school into a beach. And got Coca-Cola to sponsor it. Oh, no. And it had never been, I don't think it had ever been done, at least in that state where I was, that anybody had their school event sponsored by Coca-Cola. Yeah. We had the largest private television network there to film the whole thing.

Jon - 00:20:22: Oh, my.

Cyriac - 00:20:24: And because it was so unusual, school never happened that day. Yeah, success, success.

Jon - 00:20:28: Everyone's like, yes, I'm glad to be done with this. We can catch a break here. That's amazing. And now that you've graduated, you know, talk a little bit about your considerations for university. Were you looking to go abroad? Were you looking to stay in Germany? Kind of what was going through your mind there?

Cyriac - 00:20:48: Well, initially, I was planning to become a journalist because I'd been writing for local newspapers and I really enjoyed it. And so I applied to study journalism in Berlin. I was fascinated with Berlin as the capital of the reunited Germany that had just reunited. I don't know if you take that into consideration, what a massive change. But then I was thinking, hmm, you know, journalism, kind of a hard life. And it's not clear how this would actually pan out and how many opportunities I would have besides that job. And I didn't know whether I was always going to want to be a journalist. And so I thought, hmm, if I study journalism, I'm going to have a great four years of fun. But then I might have 40 years of not fun. What if I rather do engineering and business and combine them called industrial engineering? And I might suffer for four years. And then I have a great life for 40 years afterwards. So I decided for the latter option. And I went to Karlsruhe, which is the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, southwest of Germany. It's like the MIT of Germany. And I studied engineering and business in an integrated thing, which means I know neither business nor engineering today. So then the next thing that happened was I got very tired of sitting in these lectures all day long, very quickly. I found it highly depressing. There were no windows in these rooms, 300 students in there. You would go in in the morning in Germany, dark in the morning. And in the afternoon when you come out, it was dark again. I was like, what kind of life is this? In Germany, there is no, at college I should say, there's no requirement for attendance. You just have to pass your grades and do your tests. So that was very seductive for me. Yeah, I'm sure. Because before I knew it, I was a radio reporter at night for the local radio station. Wow. Remember, I was interested in journalism. So I became a radio reporter who was out and about at like 10 p.m., 2 a.m. In the morning. And then I got my first own radio show. Cool. At a local radio station. And it was supposed to be a pure music show. And, you know, they basically gave the least important time slot of the day to, which is like the night from 10 p.m. Till 6 a.m.

Jon - 00:23:18: To some

Cyriac - 00:23:19: freelancers, right? Yeah. And so they assumed no one was listening anyway. So they gave it to somebody who was freshly taught how to do this. So I came there and I thought, well, I'm already here. Why not do a little bit of a talk show here?

Jon - 00:23:36: Yeah. That's so cool, though.

Cyriac - 00:23:40: And so it became like a music slash talk show. Think of it as a podcast with music interspersed. And then I started having an external reporter out on the streets for me. 

Jon - 00:23:54: You had staff. You had staff. Who was calling

Cyriac - 00:23:56: in while I was in the studio. And it was a really, really interesting time, I have to say. The only problem was... I didn't show up at university very much. Meanwhile. I had friends in this program who were very... Ambitious And they decided they wanted to finish the entire first four semesters, which is the first half. The base, the foundational, it's the hardest part, right? They wanted to finish that in three semesters instead of four. And I was so dumb to join them and say, yes, I'll do that too. So that means I had even more tests to pass. Meanwhile, I was sleeping. So I then figured out that in the third semester, it all caught up with me, of course, because all of a sudden I found out I had seven weeks to go and I had seven tests to pass. Each one, six months of work that had been taught. And, you know, I had seven weeks. So I buckled up. I told the radio station, I'm so sorry, I can't come right now. They were not happy with me. And there was another thing in parallel that was going on. My then girlfriend, she was going to become a landscape gardener. And she was fascinated with Japanese gardens. Japanese gardens are beautiful and very different from European ones. And she wanted to go to Japan. And I had planned if I could actually finish that three instead of four semesters, I could use one semester to go to Russia. I was fascinated with Russia because quite contrary to today, it had just opened up. So it was all brand new, right? And I was sort of interested in that. But then she wanted to go to Japan. And I thought, hmm, you know, Japan is really interesting too, because it's the second biggest economy in the world. Germany is the third biggest. The United States is the first biggest. That means I would have this triangle of the three biggest economies, and I would have experienced all of them. And I thought that was very interesting. Japanese management, very interesting. So here was the problem. It's unaffordable to live in Tokyo as a student.

Jon - 00:26:05: Absolutely. Yeah.

Cyriac - 00:26:06: Yeah. And I was self-financed, not fully. My parents gave me a little bit. They paid my rent. But other than that, I was basically trying to make money to... To pay for everything. And so there was no way I could have lived in Tokyo. And so I've looked for scholarships. And. I found this one scholarship where you didn't have to speak fluent Japanese. But the problem was you needed to get a professor from Japan sending a letter of invitation saying they really, really, really want you and not just anyone but you. And the complicating factor was that I had one week to apply. So I got on the phone and I called, I don't know, many professors in Japan. Yeah. And I got very lucky that I found one professor who actually decided he wanted me for some reason in the university in Tokyo called Joji Daigaku, which is Sophia University, a very good university with an English speaking program where they also teach you Japanese. And he sent that letter. And I handed in my application on the final possible day because I had just received it that morning, that letter. And then, lo and behold, a few months passed and I got a thick envelope in the mail and it was the acceptance letter. But you needed to have finished your first four semesters. So I passed the last test. On Sunday and on Thursday, I was on the plane to Japan. So on the plane, I studied my first sentence of Japanese, which was, I'm so sorry, I don't speak Japanese. Can we speak English? And it's so nice to meet you. So then I arrived in Japan. This was after basically having been in this whirlwind of activity. And I arrived in Tokyo with one big suitcase and a bag. At a subway station. And that's where I met my host family that I was going to move in with. Wow. Like most important things, they happen at subway stations in Tokyo. Yeah. So I met them at a highly frequented full subway station and we sort of figured each other out. And then I went on the subway and drove home with them and moved into their apartment. It was a young couple. They were super nice. They had a small apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo in Nishikasai, on the east side, southeast side of Tokyo. And my room was so small that I, in doing the day, I had to roll up my futon, my tathami mat, so that I could stand in my room. I mean, it's Tokyo, right? Everything is much smaller. But it was a wonderful experience. It was incredible because, as you can imagine, Almost everything in Japan is the opposite of what we've been taught in terms of cultural values. And like Texas, it was another mind-blowingly different experience that really sort of gives you whiplash at first, because it's almost the opposite of what we've been taught. An example would be individualism versus group experiences. The group matters much more than individuals in Japan. While you and I, are you raised, have you been raised in the US?

Jon - 00:29:29: Yes, but my parents are immigrants.

Cyriac - 00:29:32: Yeah. Okay. So you probably have both value systems. From Asia as well as from here. Yes. But I didn't get any of those Asian values. So for me, it was like we were all taught to be individuals, stand up for ourselves, be strong, right? Yep. Now you're in Tokyo. If you like, I can tell you a little story here.

Jon - 00:29:55: Absolutely. 

Cyriac - 00:29:55: So I'm sitting in my Japanese language class. Very difficult class, lots of tests almost every day, but the grading was very hard. The scale was such that you needed 97% to get an A. So anything below 97 was already not an A anymore. And it mattered to me only because I needed to transfer all the grades back to my German university program. So the grades mattered, but they had a very different grading scale. So that means getting a slightly less than 100% would have already meant an average grade here or back in Germany. So I really needed to make an effort to get these A's, right? So one day I got a test back and it was Earli misgraded. There were errors in it. And I looked at it and I went to my host mother and I said, I asked her, Do you think I should tell my teacher that this was misgraded to have it corrected? And I kind of already knew the answer. I had just asked her to confirm. The answer was a clear no. And why? Because two reasons. One is, if I had pointed out her error to her as a person senior to me, I would have embarrassed her. And losing face is not the best thing in Japan. And I would have caused that embarrassment for her. That's not good. She made an error. And secondly, equally important. In Japan, in that school, you could not just talk to the teachers outside of the class because that was not deemed appropriate. So by bringing up my own personal case, I would have taken time away for the rest of the group to learn Japanese for my own selfish reasons. So I decided not to bring it up begrudgingly. And then a few weeks pass. And then one day. The door opens, she walks in one day and says, today is a special day. I'm offering one additional test today for everybody who wants to make up a grade. And so I took the test, worked fine. But here's the interesting thing. From a Japanese point of view, I had won twice. Once I had won because I had now given a chance to improve my grade and I had not taken away time from others. And second. I even had another chance at learning even more by taking another test. Yeah. So here's the thing. From their perspective. This entire way of thinking makes perfect sense. It's logical in itself. It makes sense and it has a clear framework why this is all exactly how it should be. Although it's diametrically opposed to the way we would look at it. And that... Different perspective on the same problem. Based on the framework you are using as a reference point. Delivers you very different results. And that is really interesting for me and was fascinating for me to understand and internalize. It really helps you understand to, or it helps you look at the world from different angles. When people have diametrically opposed views, it also might help you look at problems in different ways to solve them.

Jon - 00:33:18: That is like an incredible experience. One that I kind of envy, honestly, because I think sometimes, especially in the sciences, you can kind of have this tunnel vision and you're looking at the problem the same way all the time. And you're just like, oh, like I'm making no progress. But like that, I've noticed this kind of like throughout your upbringing, this change of context, like putting yourself outside of the what you're accustomed to, this gives you that like that reset and like that clear eyes and really gives you the opportunity to one, redefine yourself, but also redefine the problem. If it's a problem even to begin with, and then just take another stab

Cyriac - 00:33:58: at it and 

Jon - 00:33:59: see if you can solve it in a different way. And I think also to something that stands out to me is the varied experiences that you've had kind of business wise and learning on the fly, the foundational elements of building a business. So you're talking about. Writing your invoices for the first time. I remember learning, like, I still remember when I had to make my first invoice and I was like, and also they're like, like, what's a purchase order and all of these things and just learning that I'm just like. What the heck,

Jon - 00:34:29: but you just continue to stack up and accumulate this knowledge. And I think all of that is a creative to ultimately running a business. And so that's really, really fascinating to me. And it's also for you when you are doing all these jobs, it's like the stakes are real. You're like, I need to make rent. I need to pay for food, especially in Tokyo. I can't not make this money. And I need to figure this out. And I think too, something that also stood out to me was your experience as a radio host and also the journalism stint and you creating your own talk show. I think that in itself is almost like a lesson in marketing. It's like, how do I get people to want to tune into this thing and create something that's interesting for a broader audience? And I'm thinking about this, you're talking about your major, being business and engineering, but not really learning much of either. And so you kind of learned. Business. From just doing it. You're just like, how do I do this? And then just like figuring it out on the fly. So it was really interesting to me to hear about all those experiences.

Outro - 00:35:41: That's all for this episode of the The Biotech Startups podcast. We hope you enjoyed our discussion with Cyriac Roeding. Don't miss part two, where Cyriac takes US across continents and industries, sharing the pivotal moments that shaped his entrepreneurial vision. 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 our conversation with Cyriac. The The Biotech Startups podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for the The Biotech Startups podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, https://www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The The Biotech Startups podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.