Jacob Glanville - Centivax - Part 1

Intro - 00:00:01: 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 preseed to IPO, with your host Jon Chee.

Jon - 00:00:31: Jake, so good to see you again! Really appreciate you being willing to be the first guest on the podcast. Super stoked for a conversation today. Thanks for the time.

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Jake - 00:00:40: Hey man, thanks for having me on. This is going to be a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to it.

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Jon - 00:00:44: Perfect. So, yeah, I was like talking to the team and thinking about where is a good place to start. And I was thinking about the founder's journey as kind of like an overarching exploration adventure, and I thought it would be good to start from the beginning so listeners can really learn vicariously through your experiences. So, can you tell me a little bit about growing up in Guatemala? Was there an aspect of your upbringing that sparked your interest in science, entrepreneurship, and what got you to where you are now?

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Jake - 00:01:16: Yeah, sure. So, my parents were the owners of a hotel and a restaurant, basically innkeepers on Lake Otis Lawn. It was kind of a weird place to grow up. It was the middle of a civil war, and we were in a Zutua Mayan village, but I felt very lucky that I grew up there. I do feel that kind of influenced a lot of my interests in a number of ways. So with respect to science, what I really had was my grandfather. He's actually that piece of art over there on the wall. He worked at Rocketdyne and was developing the rocket on his right shoulder there. He led the development of the J2 and worked on the F1 engines that took humans to the moon. He was the only scientist in my family, but he was a good one and set the bar pretty high. But also, I feel like he lowered the sense of what is impossible because these guys, they did it in their generation, they accomplished the impossible. So I think that sort of a can-do attitude makes it a little easier to imagine things that haven't been done yet because science can get there. So, I think I always had that with me. The things that happened in Guatemala that I didn't know at the time, but they ended up influencing my journey. One was that the village didn't have access to good medicine, often not electricity, purified water, and so we had lots of infectious disease around all the time. I'm an asthmatic, and we have other autoimmune diseases in my family, so I would also get sick quite often. There'd be no power, and I'd be carted into these, like, little - there's no hospital in the village I grew up in, so there's a clinic, which is really like the front room of someone's house who has some medical equipment, and you get like, basically an adrenaline shot to try to resuscitate you. That's what you have out in the field. And I think I spent a lot of time growing up thinking, why am I like this? And looking around and also seeing, like, simple medicine, and if it was available, could be really transformative for people's lives. And as an asthmatic, you have this very Pavlovian sense that if the medicine is there, you will be better because they have these little inhalers, right? And if you have the inhaler and you can huff it, it will immediately relieve your symptoms within seconds. And if you don't, you're in trouble. So I think there's this built-in belief that if I could just get the medicine there, it would fix it. And maybe it's not in my pocket, maybe it's not in the village, maybe it hasn't been invented yet, but medicine could be made, and it could solve the problem. I think that as I've grown and gone back repeatedly, I'm on the advisory board for the hospital that was ultimately built in Santiago, and I have seen the improvement in healthcare there, and it's been remarkable. It's not just like people are dying less or getting less sick. It's that they're growing taller. So they're deworming. Medicine means people are getting a foot taller than they used to be. And that has led to a pretty profound impact, I think, on my decision on what to work on. Because I was like, well, hell, imagine how much time and energy spent fixing our broken selves. And what if we could get rid of that and have people spending more of their time and their resources creating new things, which is what people are really good at, instead of just like that huge lost budget, the lost opportunity of illness. So I think that had a big effect. There are a couple of other things that I would not have thought at the time or any relationship to the work I do now, but they actually, in retrospect, really do. And one of them was watching my parents run the restaurant. Particularly, my father is sort of a genius at managing complicated, large groups of people to accomplish things, even in difficult and fluctuating environments like a civil war. So he built up a thriving business that was very popular. And I realized as I built my first company that I was like, "Why does this feel so comfortable to me?" And I realized part of it is that it was the same as the restaurant business. Like, you have to maintain your inventory. You have to have the right groups of people. You have to be a good judge of character to figure out where to place them in the organization so you're not grinding them on something they're inherently bad at or missing an opportunity to place them somewhere excellent. You have to make sure you have defined protocols like the recipes. You have a good product, people know about it, and you manage that circuit and you're focusing, but it doesn't mean what most people think it means. If you just pay attention to one thing, your business will fail. And there are a lot of micro-businesses in Guatemala, so you kind of grew up seeing lots of examples of successful and failed efforts to build businesses. Focus means understanding what's essential and being able to shift gears between those things where you are juggling, but you say, "Okay, out of the eight balls, those are the three that are the eggs, the other ones are going to bounce." And so I can let those drop. And I think all of those lessons turned out to be super useful for me when I built my first company because it was actually the same class of business. I wasn't selling steaks anymore, I was selling anybody therapeutics. But the engineer, the whole process was very similar. And then the other side is my mother. She's an artist, and I think I was probably lucky that she was. And I grew up around Mayans and Hippies, and my artist mom constantly making me do artwork because I think I would have otherwise been early on sort of forced into the math, computer science. Like, "This kid's good at this early, therefore let's just make him become that." And I think the cross-training turned out to be immensely helpful for me and the kinds of work that I do. We live in this golden age of all these new biotechnology tools emerging, and so it's the creative ability to anticipate something that doesn't exist yet. I think three-dimensional visualization for crystallography and structural manipulation and kind of like out-of-the-box weird thinking that art inherently drives you towards, I think, has really helped me in my career to kind of... I don't know if maybe you would have been the same. You don't know who you would have been if you've grown up somewhere else. But I feel like that helped me. So I think those are the things that really influenced me. The last part is just cheap and scrappy in Guatemala. You just cannot depend on a single plan in Guatemala because there are supply chain issues, and there are all sorts of goofy things happening. The roads close, and so you always have like three plans, and you have a fallback plan, and you have a creative solution if those don't work. And I think that has turned out to be like gold in biotechnology development, startup development. And I've watched great people, but they come out of a big pharmaceutical company or they come out of academia, and they really struggle in this environment because their very rigid thinking is unable to adapt or be flexible as needed to accomplish the goal and to constantly remain goal-oriented. So I think those are the things that help me. The last one is that they were basically one of the last kingdoms to fall during the conquest, and it took another tribe to turn on them and side with the Spaniards in order for them to fall. And this village I grew up in was right across the 20 minutes canoe ride from the old castle, essentially the center of the kingdom, Chutzanne. And they were also a superintendent's population that's remained largely speaking the language for 500 years, and it was 98% Suzua's in the town. So I was a peripheral phenomenon to that universe that remained robust throughout that entire period. It wasn't like the culture didn't dilute out in a diaspora. And part of that mine are hard asses. They're real polite and honorable, but they're hard asses. And I think that personality I've always related to. And then they're also extremely good negotiators. There's a whole like these little fairy tales they tell are often about negotiation and strategy, and then it's a market community. So you go in and you're haggling with people. It's rude almost, not to haggle or you look foolish, but the haggling structure is like it's the opposite of that stupid book "Never Split the Difference." The principle in my negotiation is you want to cut a good deal, but not so good of a deal for you that you're going to inhibit your ability to continue to create that relationship. You're trying to build a lasting relationship of exchange. And if you try to push so hard for yourself that you break the relationship, then you might think that that works once as a little banditry thing like that book. But it is not a working phenomenon in a society that's going to keep going back to that market over and over again. And so what you want to aim for is where both groups win, where you can change differential value to be able to maintain a lasting relationship so you can keep coming back to the table over and over again. And I think that's always been my impression that you want to strike a fair deal that everybody feels is workable and good, and I think that helps. Life is long. This is not a short industry. You're going to keep working with people. You're going to work with institutions. And I think establishing a reputation of credible fairness makes negotiation easier. And I think also you get very good at it because there are some little girls, like five years old, on the boat trying to sell you lemons. She cares more about those lemons than most people do about their car. So she's an exceptional negotiator, and they have language kind of like how the Eskimo have lots of words for snow. Mines have lots of words for different types of negotiation tactics. And so you end up getting this sort of informal MBA from just being able to survive the market without looking like a jerk. And I think that has helped me in my career path in terms of promotions and then negotiating for the business and fundraising, other activities. So I think those are all the weird ways that you wouldn't have thought at the time. But looking back, I realized they kind of armed me pretty well for the work that I do now.

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Jon - 00:09:54: Absolutely. And there are so many things. I know our time is finite here, but I feel like I can go in so many directions, and I really empathize with that a lot. First, on your father running his business, I was going to say, being in hospitality is business on hard mode.

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Jake - 00:10:11: Yeah, absolutely.

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Jon - 00:10:12: It's truly hard mode, and a lot of my family and friends, and people I've grown up with, grew up working in kitchens. That has always been something that really resonates with me. And just seeing small businesses, restaurants, hospitality services, I'm just like, wow, I count ourselves lucky to be in the life sciences where you can get a large check to just do your thing. But in food service, it's like razor-thin margins, volatile customers coming in and out, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, probably not the best days. And you're like, how do I do this? How do I keep the lights on? So it really resonates with me. And I think for me, growing up in Berkeley, being close to UC Berkeley, there's a very cerebral aspect to being in Berkeley. But also, Berkeley has kind of like very robust art, music, and food scene that also hit home for me because I was thinking about growing up in Berkeley. Yes, my parents definitely wanted me to do STEM, but they're like, hey, it's just like, go to a punk show and go see live music, do all these things, and kind of explore everything else that's out there. And I think STEM can very much zero in on just like, just do this and do nothing else, which I think, I agree, there's so much advantage and benefits that come from just experiencing life, really. So that really, really resonated with me.

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Jake - 00:11:39: Actually, you made me think of another thing. So the other thing with hospitality is, first off, you end up meeting people from all over the world. We did. We were a travel destination. You started to realize that people are at their worst when they're hungry or tired, which is usually how they show up. And so it creates, like, a little bit of patience for humans because you realize if someone's a jerk, you're like, well, it might not be actually who they are. You don't say that's who they are. You're like, this might be what they're at right now. And it makes you pretty good at being gracious up to a limit because you have to be gracious, but you also have to be polite and friendly, warm and responding. And then there's a point where you're like, right, we're going to just have to pick you over my shoulder and throw you out the goddamn building. And there needs to be that balance. You can communicate that with a smile. So I think that stuff helps. And just like when you meet people like the experiences you had in Berkeley, you meet people with lots of different lives that they're living. It's kind of the same thing that travel does, and it sheds your presumptions about how people are. And so it lets you kind of give a little more flexibility and a little realization that you kind of don't know everything about a person right away. And you get a sense of the universal things, which is useful. I'm saying this because it's relevant in negotiation, it's relevant in business that when I'm sitting down with someone, I do everything I can. I don't like sitting down in front of someone I don't know yet, so I do my research, but ultimately it's new and being able to read body language and to be able to remember, you don't forget. But I don't sweat little perceived weird things that they're doing. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'll remember, but I'm going to try to figure this person out without too many assumptions so that I can give there to be enough space to establish a connection, which I think is important because a lot of business ultimately comes down to how much somebody likes you. Being able to be likable, but not a pushover, I think is another property of startups because you have to be pushy enough to make these things win. But if you annoy the hell out of everyone around you, I've seen startup people going around and badgering me on calls, and I don't know, I was like, look, I know you think pushy is the answer, but that's not the only answer. It has to be pushy smooth in a way that you're benefiting the community and not getting on everybody's nerves.

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Jon - 00:13:37: That was a perfect pushy smooth. That was like spot on. Maybe a younger me before I had enough tries to negotiate, I was like, "No, it's like a winner-loser type situation." Then there's like a younger Jon, but over time, it's like, you're exactly right. It's just like if you just keep burning people and extracting, extracting, there's nothing left and no one likes you. Life is too short. I think I was reflecting on that style. But time is the one asset that we're really trying to manage. You can't get it back. And when you're working with someone, you're spending a lot of time with them. And if that time is really unpleasant, you're like, "Why am I doing this? I'm not getting that time back. You've been kicking me in the teeth every time. I'm like, maybe I go spend my time elsewhere where I feel like I'm actually respected." And obviously, a healthy balance. But that completely makes sense to me. Everything you kind of described is kind of like there are a bunch of stakeholders. You have your vendors, your clients, your shareholders, your employees, and you've got to make exactly balance those things and not just have someone or a party just atrophy and just get no love because it takes a village, really, over time I've realized.

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Jake - 00:14:59: And the squeaky wheel will get the grease. So you have to be a little careful of that when you're balancing your time, because if you're not very protective of that and willing to say no, what's going to happen is the people who are squawking the most around you, you're going to end up doing that, which means you're kind of like working for them instead of actually working for your needs. If you're in leadership in a business, you're going to get a lot of pressure towards you because there are a lot of incentives for people to try to change your mind. And so you have to build up a certain level of like, you always still want to listen, but you have to realize you're taking their data and you're filtering it, and you're willing to ignore it because your ship needs to be managed by your terms. And I think you have to be cautious of that because there are lots of very sophisticated methods that people can try to distract you from your core purpose.

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Jon - 00:15:36: Yeah, and I think one of the hardest things was getting comfortable saying no. You want people to be happy, unless you're a rare contrary, you don't want people miserable. But I think that muscle is something that is so worthwhile learning early. It saves you so much heartache, but it's hard. Not really a digression here, but I know you went to Berkeley, you were studying MCB, and obviously inspired by your hometown in Guatemala. How did you make the decision to go to Berkeley and study there? Were there other routes that you were considering? What landed you at Berkeley?

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Jake - 00:16:16: Yeah, so Berkeley was kind of fell in my lap. So what happened was the other thing, my dad almost died when I was like 15 from an autoimmune disease. And it was one of these lucky ones where it turns out they diagnosed it in time and you can get chemotherapy, and it can kill off enough of the immune cells that it stops the disorder. So that happened towards the end of my high school down in Guatemala, and I was going to have one year left. I dropped out of high school to run the restaurant and try to manage it while they were trying to figure out what was wrong with him. So it was just another area where I was like, immunology, like, what the hell is going on here? And I was interested in it. And then for my last year of high school, when he was getting better, he sent me back up to the States, and what I did is I spent my last year of high school so I could graduate from a California high school, so I could go to one of the UCs. And this was a strategy to try to reduce costs so I could be a resident and get in-state residency tuition. Chose California because my grandfather, the same one on the wall, he lived in Chatsworth in Los Angeles, and during that year they did okay. And I'm super appreciative for everything my parents did, but the finances didn't really translate from Guatemala and quetzales to dollars, so I wasn't going to go to private school. So I looked at the UCs and I basically just decided, I don't know, I decided early I wanted to go to Berkeley. I think when I was twelve someone asked me and I'm like, "like, I think I'm going to go to Berkeley." And then I go, "That's a pretty hard school." That looked like I said I was going to be an astronaut. So I think I was like, "Well, fuck you." And so then I kind of focused on it. So I applied to Berkeley, and I applied to UCSC Santa Cruz because it was on the same form. But those are the only schools I applied to for undergrad, and I got into both, and so I went to Berkeley, and so that was basically the path. I was interested, like I said, in Immunogenetics, the closest thing was MCB molecular cell biology. And there was this emphasis in genetics, genomics, and development. So that's what I got in on. And at the time, I was always fascinated with computer science. Like in Guatemala, there's this thing called the C Bible, which is like the key instructional document on how to program in this critical programming language called C that a lot of the internet is built on. And I found the book, and I learned the language without ever actually being able to execute it, to write code and execute it because in Guatemala, I didn't have access to a compiler. When I got to the States, I finally did, and so I was doing kind of the computer stuff as a hobby. And this is like the internet was blowing up during this period. This was like 1998, and I was extremely interested as a hobbyist and like making websites and computer security and making web servers and stuff like that. And I didn't really fully appreciate it was going to have a relationship to the Immunogenetics that I was interested in. I started working in a laboratory, the HLA Population Genetics laboratory at Linus Thomson, and while I was there, I started being exposed to something called population genetics, which is a way to use math and statistics to try to extract super useful, meaningful information about the nature of genetic change in populations over time. And it requires computers. It uses algorithms and lots of data. So I suddenly realized that I was writing games, computer security things, and I realized that my skill set was vastly translatable over to computational immunology, and the laboratory realized that as well. So I started writing these drift simulators, and some, at the time, simple and increasingly over time, more sophisticated tools to analyze immune diversity. And I think that's when the thing clicked, and I was like, "Oh, my God, this is amazing. I love this." So I was doing that at Berkeley. I also worked at the laboratory second with the Berkeley Biogenomics group. And this was like a super awesome group that was in the early days of big data and biology. People were starting to put the data up on the Internet, right? And so she was using methods to take lots of proteins that had evolved across organisms, and we could gather them using hidden Markov models, which is the same kind of math your phone uses to take your voice and turn it into text and to understand what you're saying. And it turns out that same math, this group that she had worked with previously in Santa Cruz, that math is really good at analyzing mutant versions of the same type of gene that has evolved even a lot over time, even in bacteria and viruses. So it's barely recognizable at the sequence level, but you can pick it up and realize, "Oh, this is actually like the same word of a very different accent. It's mutated a lot, but it's the same thing," and you can get a lot of meaning out of these mutated sequences. And so I loved it. It was fascinating. She was incredibly brilliant, and her and Glennis were just sharp as hell, so I was lucky to work with them. And I loved it. It was like exactly what I was interested in. It was a lot of probability theory, and there were crystal structures you could map the data onto. There was this database of like 7 million sequences that had just popped up in R, which at the time seemed huge. And so we were working to cluster the universe of known proteins into these unique folding structures and people able to improve our ability to characterize what all of the genes do. You can learn a lot by looking at lots of examples of what a gene does because you can see where it mutates and where it doesn't. And so the sites that never mutate, you know, are important, and so you can kind of gain some insights there, and there are some other methods to gain insights based on related genes and what, you know, they do. So I was doing that out there, and I think that really gave me a lot of very formative training that translated to my future work. Like I said, I'm going to say this over and over again. You don't always know at the time how it's going to be useful in the future, and I think a little bit it was very lucky that it happened to be the things I was fascinated with kind of kept resynthesizing and coming together. But I will say that's also a really good strategy in your life is like be attracted to general principles with many applicabilities. And then when you cross train, cross train far enough, it's something new but cross train close enough that you can fold in your previous knowledge, because then you can be like the Johnny Appleseed to bringing one field into another field. And I benefited from that. So that's kind of my experience at Berkeley.

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