Oguzhan Atay - Part 1: From Small-Town Turkey to Biotech Innovator

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 Oguzhan Atay, co-founder and CEO of BillionToOne. BillionToOne is a precision diagnostics company that quantifies biology to create powerful molecular diagnostics. They work to improve disease detection by counting molecules with their proprietary molecular counting platform. They place patients at the forefront of everything they do and are currently applying their proprietary technology to non-invasive prenatal screening and liquid biopsy. Oguzhan holds a PhD from Stanford in systems biology, where he implemented machine learning algorithms and mathematical models to solve specific problems in cellular biology and developed a data-driven mathematical framework to simplify the analysis of complex biological networks. He also has a degree in molecular biology from Princeton, as well as minors in computer science, physics, and applied mathematics. Oguzhan not only combines deep technical expertise with visionary leadership, but he also has an incredibly inspirational immigrant journey, which makes this series a must-listen for first-time founders, scientists, and industry leaders alike. Over the next two episodes, we'll dive into Oguzhan's inspiring journey, covering his path from a small Turkish town to becoming a biotech entrepreneur, how his scientific passion nurtured by his parents at Hohend Princeton flourished during his PhD research at Stanford, and why Oguzhan's multidisciplinary approach, combined with his rigorous Turkish academic system that prepared him for global challenges, ultimately led him to found BillionToOne, which aims to revolutionize access to molecular diagnostics worldwide. Today, we'll discuss Oguzhan's small-town upbringing in Turkey, where his parents' resilience and commitment to education sparked his passion for science. We'll also dive into his academic journey from Turkey to Princeton, where he embraced an interdisciplinary approach and discovered how blending diverse fields could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. Finally, we'll explore how Turkey's highly competitive academic system shaped his mindset and prepared him for the challenges he would face on the global stage. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. Oguzhan, so good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Oguzhan - 00:02:14: Good to see you too. Thanks for having me.

Jon - 00:02:17: Of course. So as we were, you know, finding a kind of an interesting place to start, we, you know, with our podcast, our traditional kind of like intro is to go all the way back to the early days and really learn about your upbringing and how it influenced your leadership style, your business philosophy, and how you ultimately got interested in science. So if you take us all the way back, tell us a little bit about your upbringing.

Oguzhan - 00:02:41: Well, I grew up in a small town in Turkey. So in the Black Sea region, around 50,000 to 100,000 population. So it's kind of a conservative little town. Two middle-income parents, but both very educated. My father is a medical doctor. My mother is a teacher. My mother actually is retired now, but in my family, it is impossible to not graduate from college. It's kind of a given that every person who would be born to that family will go to college. But, you know, I think it was also important, you know, in terms of what my parents have gone through to go to college themselves. So, you know, I think this is also the expectation because, you know, they had to go through so much hardship to be able to even, you know, get educated in elementary school, let alone, you know, going to college that having had, you know, more resources, which actually is like not that many resources compared to, I think, what people would see in the U.S. It was a foregone conclusion that, you know, I would go to higher education, you know, I would do college. And it was always so important in my family that, you know, that we cared about education so much. But again, you know, I also knew like what my father had to go through. To be able to get educated. He grew up in a little village, you know, close to my hometown. But, you know, his father was, you know, deployed in terms of, you know, military service to other places. So he was in this very large family, you know, there wasn't even enough food for them to eat. And his uncle, you know, would even, you know, sometimes beat him for using the gas oil too much for studying. And, you know, he would have to walk, you know, five miles to go to school, like in snow, you know, it's like really-

Jon - 00:04:52: Real

Oguzhan - 00:04:52: Like real hardship. Right? 

Jon - 00:04:54: Yeah. Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:04:55: Even to this day, he is just the fastest person that I have ever seen in terms of eating food. Because like for him, it was like a matter of survival that like, if you could eat faster, it was, it wasn't that there were, you know, plates for everyone. It was like, you know, just one giant pot from, which like everyone was eating and faster that you could eat, you would be able to get a little bit more calories. So, you know, really, you know, a lot of hardship that, that they had to go through to, you know, get educated. And, you know, being middle income, like we had a lot more resources in terms of a lot more support in being able to go through education. And education was always important in my family. But even then, I think like I've always been, you know, so curious that, you know, I would even read everything that I could find, you know, from encyclopedias to newspapers, anything really that I could find, you know, sometimes multiple times. I remember this thing that we didn't have enough money to buy a lot of books, you know, again, you know, we are in Turkey, it is a developing country. So I would read the books that we would get from this one little bookstore that we had in the entire, you know, city that I was living in. And he was a friend of my father. So he would actually give me the books. I would read them very carefully, and we would return them and I would get more books, we would pay for the books once, right? 

Jon - 00:06:27: Yeah, yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:06:28: Like for the first set.

Jon - 00:06:29: Yeah, yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:06:31: No, I, you know, we wouldn't have to pay for, you know, replacing and changing them. And, but at least like I was able to, you know, read a lot of books. And, you know, from very early on, I was very into science. And I think I was only 10 years old, you know, going to third grade that like, I decided that I would become a scientist and I will study more biology.

Jon - 00:06:54: Wow, third grade. That's like the opposite of my experience. I was like, what do I do? I'm like, I don't know, I'm gonna just figure this out, like feeling my way. And when you were in, you know, in third grade, were you still in Turkey at that time?

Oguzhan - 00:07:11: Yes. I came to United States for my undergrad education. So I've been in Turkey, you know, up until undergrad. I went to a very good high school in Istanbul. It was a boarding school. So up to high school, I was in this little hometown kind of trying to read everything that I can find. Turkish education system is also very highly test-driven. It's a little bit like, I think some of the, I think, Chinese, Indian systems are a little bit like that too. But, you know, starting with, you know, really third grade, you start getting ranked multiple times in a year, like in the region, sometimes nationally. So there is a lot of like competition and you know that where you are ranked. So I think some of the competitive drive is coming from essentially like, you know, that time, you know, starting from third grade all the way to, you know, getting into college, you are going through these like multiple choice exams where, you know, you are trying to, beat everyone else. You are trying to essentially get ranked as high as you can. It determines like what college that you can get into as well as like what major that you can choose. So it is kind of your life trajectory to do well in these exams. So I've always been kind of like very competitive in those exams. And at the end of the day, like it didn't matter for me because I got into a college in the United States. But that I think really shaped how I look at the world a little bit. That, you know, I think that it probably contributed to how competitive I am as well.

Jon - 00:08:56: I'm going to imagine like, I mean, that's an early, like that's a pretty early tracking. Like yours, like okay, like this is going to determine many years of my life. Like I need to, I need to stick the landing here. And when you were picking...you mentioned that. This is almost like what you can major in. Obviously it sounds like you found science has to be the North Star for you. Did your parents ever like try to nudge you into a different direction for different types of kind of majors or professions? Or it was a kind of a thing where they're like, as long as you are doing your best here, you can choose your own adventure. 

Oguzhan - 00:09:33: Yeah, I think it's really the latter. They have been extremely supportive in general, you know, again, as long as you are doing your absolute best. And this is was a little bit different between myself and my sister as well, right? Like our bests were a little bit different. So in her case, like they never pushed her to be number one because like that, that wasn't what she would be striving towards. But in my case, like I would get ranked number one, number one, number one, like three times, you know, in the same year. And I would get ranked number two, you know, in the entire region. And, you know, my father would be like, did you really try your best? And like, it would be the most devastating thing.

Jon - 00:10:12: Yeah. Like, what about my sister? Like, she's not getting it, she has it way easier than I do. Like, I'm going to go hang out.

Oguzhan - 00:10:21: I think it was like, you know, it wasn't even like, you know, why are you number two? It was like, did you try your best? And like, I knew that, like I didn't, like it was actually that you get complacent. And I think like I learned not to get complacent when I was a 10 year old.

Jon - 00:10:38: Yeah. Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:10:39: You can't be like, oh, like, you know, I know everything. Like if you approach things that way, like you are going to make mistakes and, you know, you are going to go down in the rankings. But, you know, again, I think as a 10 year old, that is a lot of pressure to be out there.

Jon - 00:10:55: For sure. And so now you're, you know, it sounds like you're acing these exams and it's time for you to choose the university that you're going to. Put us back into that moment in time. What were you thinking? Did you always know that you were going to go to the United States? Did you always know that Princeton was the ultimate goal? Walk us through that.

Oguzhan - 00:11:15: Yeah. So when I went to that boarding school in Istanbul, you know, I was thinking that I would go to a university in Turkey. It wasn't that I was planning immediately go to the United States. I knew that I wanted to do at least do my PhD in the United States because, you know, molecular biology is an experimental science. And, you know, in a developing country, you are not going to get best resources to be able to really do the cutting edge research in many areas. So, you know, I knew about, you know, Stanford, Princeton, you know, some of these universities and how they are really deriving, you know, some of the cutting edge research. So I knew that, like, I would come to the United States for my PhD, but not necessarily undergrad. I didn't even know that that was an option. So going into this. Boarding high school, which, again, I actually entered with a national exam by getting ranked very highly. And I got a full scholarship to this school as well. And that actually process was one of the most challenging things that have ever happened to me in my career that I didn't know English. And all these teachers in this boarding, you know, elite high school, the education was in English. So it's the first time that I actually found myself challenged. Because, you know, the problems themselves are not difficult. It's just I didn't understand them. So that was a very, very difficult time. But, you know, I stuck with it. It was, you know, challenging to go to a place where, like, you don't speak the language and you find yourself no longer number one because you don't understand the question. But, you know, I learned English in that first year. And then, you know, I graduated as valedictorian of that school. And that school is, I think, you know, so rigorous and so highly taught of that. You know, we had the head of admissions from Yale actually came and sat in my class and like took my name like after that class. And, you know, I joke throughout the year that like Yale is my safety school now. But like it is a really, really strong high school. It's like, you know, one of the best high schools in Turkey. The rigor is actually just amazing. And, you know, being in that school and kind of seeing that people can easily get into Ivy League from Turkey directly for undergrad. I think that is when, you know, my thought process changed that, you know, I want to go to United States, you know, for my undergrad. You know, once I saw that that was a possibility there. I still actually, you know, took the national exam because, you know, I was like, okay, I prepared my entire life for that moment, even though it is not going to, you know, impact my college choice. I still took the exam, but I came to the United States for my for my undergrad because I thought that, you know, especially in an experimental science like molecular biology, I would have a lot more resources and I would be able to really start working with the professors that I dreamed working with.  

Jon - 00:14:29: That's amazing. And it reminds me of like, I'm a fan of basketball, but like when NBA recruiters will go to like the disparate corners of like all over the world looking for talent, like the Yale recruiters, like we're going there. They've got like this pool of talent that we need to tap into. That's super awesome. And so when you got to Princeton, and it sounds like you already had a feeling that molecular biology was going to be, you know, what you're majoring in. Did you have an undergraduate lab experience like out the gate?

Oguzhan - 00:14:58: Yes. So because, you know, that was the reason that, you know, I am coming all the way to the United States. I wanted to take full advantage of it and take full advantage of, you know, undergrad education in general. I like pushing myself, but, you know, undergrad experience at Princeton really gave me the best opportunities to be able to do that. You know, I actually took the most difficult courses, not just in molecular biology, but, you know, in even fields that are completely different from mine. Like I took the most difficult courses in operations research, you know, in engineering, in mathematics, you know, in physics, in even Russian literature.

Jon - 00:15:43: That's awesome.

Oguzhan - 00:15:44: And that was a really great experience. And actually, the first quarter, the first semester that I was at Princeton, I started with, you know, usual curriculum that, you know, they recommend. And after about, you know, one and a half weeks, I dropped every single class that I was taking. I was like, I didn't come to Princeton like for this because, you know, again, having come from such a rigorous high school, and it was an international baccalaureate program. My, you know, expectation was that, you know, I need to be challenging myself if I am going to be away from my country, away from, you know, my parents. You know, it was just that, you know, if I am going to go through this, you know, difficult experience in general, and, you know, college is, I think, difficult for, you know, everyone. But it is particularly difficult, you know, if it is a completely different culture that you are putting yourselves into. I was like, you know, it needs to be worth it. So that is why I started actually my undergraduate research, I think, like my first year. In the second semester, I started already doing research in a lab, and I worked in that lab, you know, throughout my undergraduate education. And, you know, we have done some really cool experiments there, and I learned a lot. 

Jon - 00:17:08: That's awesome. Can you talk a little bit more about that experience? Whose lab were you in? And like, what were you doing?

Oguzhan - 00:17:12: Yeah, so I was in the lab of late Jacque Fresco. He passed away a couple of years ago, but he essentially was looking at essentially DNA structure. You know, there are a lot of different things that we still don't know about DNA structure. You know, there is like third strand binding that you can use. You can have actually, if you have a lot of telomeres, actually have like these, you know, fourth strand structure. So there is a lot of like, you know, interesting chemistry and molecular biology that happens in that intersection. And it was, you know, really fascinating to work with him as well, because, you know, part of it is, you know, predictable, the chemistry part, but, you know, part of it requires experimental approaches. And he has seen everything. He has been, you know, one of the, really the originators of molecular biology field. Like he knew Max Delbruck, like a lot of, like the people who really started this entire revolution. Like he communicated with Linus Pauling. Like he had all these amazing stories about like, you know, teaching biology to Oppenheimer.

Jon - 00:18:22: Yeah, it's so crazy.

Oguzhan - 00:18:25: So it was really amazing to be, you know, in his lab because the sciences, it was interesting, but you could also get kind of a history lesson about history of science and history of biology. And he was telling me about, like how he made fun of, you know, Pauling about, you know, getting the DNA structure wrong.

 Jon - 00:18:47: That's so crazy. I was like thinking back on my experience at Berkeley and someone had like a Linus Pauling story. I think in his like later years, he was really into vitamin C, like, and would just take scoops, like big scoops of vitamin C and just eat it. Yeah-

Oguzhan - 00:19:05: I think that is one of those things where, you know, people can be brilliant in one particular area, but it doesn't always translate to an expertise in another area. This sometimes happens with, you know, relatives or, you know, my mother and, you know. They would see a news and they would be like, look, this, you know, very accomplished person is saying this thing. And I'm like, well, like, are they accomplished in that particular area? Because they may be brilliant, but like being brilliant in one area does not always necessarily translate to being brilliant in another area.

Jon - 00:19:42: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I left out one part of that story, but basically they said that when you would eat the vitamin C, you would take a swig of vodka and just like wink to wash it down. I was just like, yeah, that's a choice. That's a choice. But that's awesome that you're in a lab that had a storied history. And I can imagine you're kind of, it's almost like celebrity, like starstruck. And also, I love that you're maximizing your time at Princeton. I look back, I'm like. Man, there was so many things, so much more I could have done. I could have jam-packed this. And I love to hear that you actually took that, you really took that opportunity and seized it. And I know you also minored in computer science, physics, applied mathematics. Can you talk a little bit about those experiences? And I guess, how did each change your perspective or the way you approach problems? 

Oguzhan - 00:20:39: Yeah, that's actually really the crux of what we do at Billion to One as well, and really how we are approaching molecular diagnostics differently. And it's not just my idea. In fact, Princeton has this integrated science program that is just truly remarkable in bridging different areas of science. So much so that I was actually disappointed after Princeton. Because, I thought that was how science was done. I thought by, thinking about like, okay, this is like what science is, and it's not. It's actually this little bubble where there's remarkable research that is happening, really interesting research that really bridges those different areas. And you can see how an idea from a particular field can completely change another field and how you can use physics principles, mathematical principles to inform how you are approaching biology problems. It was the, amazing experience. It's a very rigorous program. Half of the people who started drop out. So it's a tough program, but it is taught by really the most amazing figures in molecular biology. And you can really understand how these disciplines interact with each other. So going through that integrated science program and approaching biological problems from, you know, physics and mathematical and computational principles. Because I was trying to push myself, I would not just take the integrated science program cources, but then I would go, and like, push myself to learn more about those other disciplines and essentially they ended up being like miners. Doesn't, you know, allow you to double major or triple major. So, you know, each of those things ended up being, you know, miners for me. But really, it was about trying to learn as much about those different disciplines as possible so that I can bring those principles, tools, approaches back to molecular biology. And again, like it really is, you know, what integrated science is about, systems biology is about, but it is not how in general molecular biology is done, unfortunately. So one of the cool things about integrated science, and I hope it is still the same way, that you could actually, you know, bring any books to the exams as you want. Like, can you imagine in a biology course that like that is allowed? Because they wouldn't ask you to like, you know, they wouldn't ask you some memorization, you know, question. All the, you know, courses, exams, problem sets were things that you couldn't find in books. It would be something like, you know, here is the rate of blood flow in veins and, you know, essentially using, you know, Navier-Stokes theorem to, you know, calculate that flow if, you know, someone had a blockage where, you know, the radius is decreased by, you know, 40%. So kind of like trying to approach those problems, you know, you could either computationally model it, you could try to use a physics problem to solve it. And you would always like learn something fundamental about biology by solving that problem. But it was never about, you know, memorize this fact and kind of be able to regurgitate, back to a question. So it was, it was kind of a really, I think, different biology experience than, you know, most people who major in biology go through. And that kind of really set the stage for my PhD, how I approached my PhD. But, you know, even more importantly, how, you know, we approach to creating BillionToOne and how we approach problems here, which are, which we have really a much more of a, desig- based approach where we actually know a lot of the times, like 90 plus percent of the time before we do the experiment, before we actually design the assay, how well that design is going to work.

Jon - 00:24:51: That's amazing. And I, I feel the same way about stretching yourself to go experience and get exposure to different disciplines and then taking it back. It could be biology, it could be business, but like, there's so much value in, it's just like critical thinking and different like approaches. And I studied a lot of philosophy when I was at Berkeley and philosophy has like, there's like, you know, it has like ties to like rhetoric and also the computer science, like logic and type of stuff. And I still find myself like thinking back to like that kind of like philosophical, like basically rigor and thinking through problems that I encountered like in business today. I got to give Berkeley their flowers because. They know that you can easily just like do like your major and not branch out. So in the very beginning, they're like, you have to go into these departments and like take these, these courses that are not your core. And I ended up finding like, Oh, like philosophy is like a one it's really fun and like really, like really interesting. And like, it's super helpful in like problem solving today. So that's, I love hearing like you being able to kind of like piece that together and bring it back to molecular biology. And I know kind of around this time, you ended up at the University of Oxford as well. Was this in that same kind of time period?  

Oguzhan - 00:26:08: The Princeton in junior year has this really cool program where one person from Oxford takes your place at Princeton, their place. It's like a true exchange.

Jon - 00:26:22: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:26:24: And you know, because of the way that my program was working out, I could really go there and only do research. And I was like, this is great. You know, I can spend the next five months only doing research in a different environment, you know, learning about a different school of thought. And it was, it was a great experience because Oxford is very different, right? They get specialized very early. It is a very different type of approach. And there are certain things that, you know, I liked there as well. You know, I, I did take like one physics course there. And the nice thing there, was that you spent a lot more time. I think with the faculty, I mean, usually these are the fellows, but you know, it is kind of a much smaller environment. It was really like two, three students with, you know, one fellow, you know, discussing some of the problems and you could, you know, get into a lot of deeper tangential points. So, you know, that, there were nice things about the experience, but it, it did, I think give me a little bit of an, understanding of why U.S. research is, you know, farther ahead than other places. But one thing that I appreciated, you know, at, at Oxford was how well that they use their resources. Like in the U.S., when you design an experiment, it's kind of like, okay, like this is the question we design it, you know, go, go, go. And you know that like your first one or second, or sometimes the third try is not going to be usable. Whereas there, you know, they designed it so meticulously, they think about it, you know, they make sure that like every control is in the right place and, and then like they run it. So in terms of the sheer amount of work, like in the U.S., we are working a lot more. They don't work, I think as hard, work-life balance is so much better, even at Oxford. In terms of actual output, I think like, you know, U.S. is still higher because like there is no, you know, shortcut to, you know, really, really hard work. And, you know, U.S. has more resources as well, but, you know, I think UK and Oxford gets, you know, does a very good job because in terms of like, if you look at the productivity of experiments, they are at least like 2x better. It's just that in the U.S., like we do 4x more experiments 

Jon - 00:28:48: Got it. Yup.

Oguzhan - 00:28:48: Ends up being kind of like winning in terms of just brute force.

Jon - 00:28:52: Yeah. Brute force is a sheer volume. And I've heard like for grad programs at Oxford or like in the UK in general, too, they have a very strict time. 

Jon - 00:29:01: Like it's like you have X amount of years and you got to finish it. There's no, there's no extension to this. So they're probably like, all right, we need to make sure this is being done efficiently and on time.

Oguzhan - 00:29:14: Yeah. And there is no like, even in PhD programs, like the first year at Stanford for my PhD, it's all exploration. They don't even let you join a lab. Like they are like, okay, like you need to go, you know, spend a few months in, you know, three, four different labs, you know, find the thing that you are very passionate about and, you know, work on that. Whereas, you know, day one at Oxford, you know, you need to become productive so that you can graduate, you know, in three years. Three is a very short time to do a PhD, you know, in most PhD programs in the U.S., by your third year, like you still haven't accomplished much. So it's a very different environment. You know, each has, I think it's, you know, pros and cons. You know, if you want to stay in academia, I think like U.S. is probably the better choice because it really forces you to produce enough before you can graduate. And, you know, I know some very rigorous PIs. One of them, for instance, very nice person. Like one of the nicest people that I've ever met, very strong scientist, actually is a Nobel laureate. And he would not graduate people. I think the shortest that anyone could graduate was like seven years. There are people who stayed like in the lab, for nine years because they're rigorous. So you need to complete this very much like every avenue and make sure that your conclusions are correct. And then you publish that in a high impact journal. And then you are ready for the world as a scientist. So I think it's very important to choose the right PI because even though I love him, I don't think I would be happy spending seven, nine years doing my PhD.

Jon - 00:31:07: That's a long time. And so now you spent time in the UK. You've gotten a good lab experience. So you know kind of what the U.S. kind of lab culture is like. And it sounds like you're in an awesome lab. It sounds like academia and further graduate studies was on the horizon. How did you come to select Stanford and how did you select the lab you're going to be in?

Oguzhan - 00:31:31: So Stanford was, I think, a combination of factors. You know, I think Stanford does really great research and there is very interesting research happening at Stanford. But, you know, I only applied to a few schools for my PhD because I had such a strong undergrad research experience. That I knew that I would be able to get into essentially everywhere, especially with the support of my very well-known PI. So, you know, I knew that, okay, like, you know, I will have options. And because I've been spending so much time in research, like I knew what types of research that I liked. So I didn't even really apply to schools as much as apply to various PIs. I actually reached out to them in advance of the application process to ask, like, are you even accepting students? Because, like, if you are not, I'm not even going to apply. So I think from that perspective, you know, I got into, you know, Harvard, MIT, Stanford. But it was really, you know, specific, you know, PIs that I was, you know, focusing on. I think it was like very close between Harvard and Stanford for me. And, you know, those two PIs actually had worked with each other. But it was just that, you know, when I visited Boston, you know, it was, you know, under two feet of snow.

Jon - 00:32:56: Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:32:57: Like, you know, my, like, flight got canceled. 

Jon - 00:33:00: Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:33:00: You know, got delayed. It was like difficult to even go to that weekend, admit weekend. And, you know, I went to Stanford with this, like, giant coat.

Jon - 00:33:11: Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:33:12: And I'm like, oh, like, this is what I like.

Jon - 00:33:14: Yeah, this is nice.

Oguzhan - 00:33:16: Because I'm from Mediterranean, you know, weather. So, you know, coming to Stanford, I was like, okay, I'm, like, so much happier. Yeah.

Jon - 00:33:24: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, also contrasting that to being in the UK, which I'm going to guess it was, like, the opposite of that Stanford kind of experience. 

Oguzhan - 00:33:34: Well, I mean, I think like I slightly preferred UK even to Princeton because one thing that like I found very difficult to get used to on the East Coast was that, you know, it would be sunny. And I would think that, okay, like, you know, it's great weather and it would be freezing. And like I could never get used to that because coming from Turkey, when it is sunny, it's warm. Like you don't expect it to be so cold when it is sunny. So I didn't mind UK as much because it doesn't get that cold.

Jon - 00:34:07: Yeah, it's kind of like moderate. 

Oguzhan - 00:34:09: Princeton, New York, like gets very, very cold and I'm not used to like that level of cold. So, you know, essentially I was like, okay, do I want to spend another, you know, five plus years in Boston, you know, versus, you know, Bay Area? And again, the research and, you know, institutions were both, I think, very attractive. You know, it wasn't even like just one PI. I liked a few PIs in both of the places that I could see myself working with. So, you know, seeing that, you know, the science side was, you know, essentially equal. You know, I thought that I would rather be happy.

Jon - 00:34:45: Yeah. Sometimes you have to do it for you. Like you have to like go to think about your wellness. And it sounds like you felt more like home. 

Oguzhan - 00:34:55: Well, one of my professors at Princeton actually advised me the reverse of this because he was like, you know, look, when you are doing science, you don't want to like be in such a nice environment. You're not going to focus on your science. You are going to like all these distractions.

Jon - 00:35:14: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll lose your edge. You'll lose the focus.

Oguzhan - 00:35:17: But, you know, I was like, okay, I really, really like the Stanford area. I like the professors. Professors, Stanford also gave me a nice fellowship to start with. So all of those things, you know, make that decision easier. Again, at that time, I'm not thinking about entrepreneurship. I'm not thinking about, you know, starting a company. So it ended up being a huge component of, you know, even starting BillionToOne. Because I don't think I would have started the company if I were in Boston. Because I don't think you have. Even though, you know, Boston. Boston has a good entrepreneurial scene. It's not at the same level of Stanford where you are surrounded by so many people thinking about, you know, company formation. There are courses. There are influential thinkers. And it kind of enables you to start thinking about how you can make actually a potentially larger impact through building a company as opposed to through just science. And the PIs are very supportive in general as well. So, you know, when, you combine all of those things, I think it is. I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that, you know, that decision ended up being that way. If I were to go back, I would come to Stanford because of, you know, that particular translational research aspect. But, you know, at that time, I think the honest answer is that I made the decision based on the weather.

Jon - 00:36:47: Yeah, I love that. You know, only in like when you look backwards, you can like kind of like connect the dots and you're like, oh, it was just because it was warm. 

Oguzhan - 00:36:56: Oh yeah, I mean, look, I knew that I was making the decision because it was warm and I would be happier. And that is, you know, kind of the honest answer there.

Jon - 00:37:05: Yeah, yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:37:06: The kind of better sounding answer is like, you know. 

Jon - 00:37:09: Oh yeah, yeah. When you're looking backwards, yeah. It was for entrepreneurship the whole time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. This was just like the roadmap.

Oguzhan - 00:37:16: I knew that like this is like-

Jon - 00:37:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, the opposite of it. That's amazing. And so you touched down, you're at Stanford. Talk a little bit about the lab that you're in, the PI that you ended up choosing to work with. I'd love to learn a little bit more about that.

Oguzhan - 00:37:32: Yeah, so I started working with actually a couple of PIs, but ended up working most closely with Jan Skotheim. And Skotheim lab works on cell cycle control. And it's not really the problem itself. I think problem itself is very interesting, but it is actually the approach that they take that I think made me a very good fit there. Jan comes from a more of a mathematical background as well, kind of having learned biology actually later on in his career. And I was co-advised by Daniel Fisher. And Daniel comes from a physics background, having learned biology later on as well. So both of those PIs are very interdisciplinary. They approach problems from a much more integrated science perspective. In those labs, you solve problems by computational modeling, mathematical modeling. You think about the first principles. Both Jan and Daniel Fisher, they are truly great thinkers, and they would spend a lot of time with you as well. So I remember actually, learning information theory along with Jan. We literally went through, I think, 30 one-hour videos together. Oh! You know, various applications of like, you know, information theory and, you know, how it intersects with biology. And actually at the end of the day, like we decided that we don't think this is actually a very useful paper for, you know, a lot of the things like it sounds very good, but it is not like a lot of the applications or kind of using information theory in biology just essentially allows you to get into a potentially high impact journal without really changing the biological insight. So I think that that rigor was there as well, that even though we spent so much time on this, we realized that maybe that is not the thing that we want to focus on, because even though I think it is very cool to think about, you know, biological systems in terms of information theory and, you know, signal transduction and all of that, it doesn't really help you get to a better insight than you would otherwise be able to get to. So again, I think, you know, it was a really great experience. To spend so much time, you know, thinking about those, you know, very novel problems, even though at the end we said that, okay, you know, let's, you know, set it aside and actually, you know, work on more of a biologically meaningful problem and, you know, try to solve something about, you know, how the cell is making the decision to divide, especially in the context of the mitogen MAPK pathway where, you know, you are getting conflicting signals, you know, as a cell, and how do you make the decision, you know, one way or another. So it was, you know, a lot of single cell microfluidics experiments, fluorescence microscopy, you know, a lot of writing code, a lot of single cell analyses. And we had really cool papers that we were able to publish. You know, one of my thesis publication essentially was on the cover of cell systems. You know, it was, it was a kind of really great experience, but, you know, towards the end, I also saw that even if you are, you know, doing really, really cool research, you know, the number of people who is going to read that research is going to be quite small. And, you know, I was able to also see at the same time, this cell-free DNA revolution that is happening. And if we bring, you know, these types of approaches to cell-free DNA testing that we could really expand what is possible with that, you know, expand it to other conditions, expand it to conditions that are important globally. And that was kind of how the thinking has, you know, started around, essentially, it wasn't about building a company. It was really about, you know, how can we solve some of these problems in molecular diagnostics? You know, I knew that I had to build a company, but I didn't think that, like, I would have to hire 500 employees to do so at that time. It was really about, okay, like, if we are going to build a company and, you know, solve these clinical problems, we need to build a company. Like, it's just, it's a byproduct of, you know, what you are trying to do. But, you know, I realized that this is where I could make a larger impact than the, you know, research setting that I enjoyed a lot, you know, doing that. But I also realized that the impact is not today. Impact is, you know, 50, 100 years from now. And, you know, I wanted to see the impact of my work, I think, a little bit closer to my lifetime.

Jon - 00:42:35: Absolutely. Absolutely. And something that stands out to me about when you, when you were doing the exploration and the information theory and how it's like, it might have out, may or may not have applications or usefulness and the willingness to just like do the work and then not get that sunk cost fallacy where like, we need to see this through and just like be willing to let it go. I think that's like, even outside of academia in business too, that's like a lesson that anyone can really take home is that, even though it looks shiny, cool, and would be really rad to like that it would work together. If it doesn't get you to the insight, the ultimate like biological insight, then perhaps it's just put it to the side for a moment and reallocate your focus. Because I think a lot of the time I struggle with this is with, I just get so invested. I'm just so invested in whatever project or initiative. And I'm like, I cannot see this. Like I need to see it through when in reality, probably the most optimal decision is to just like put it aside because you only have so much time and so much resource to like focus on anything. 

 Oguzhan - 00:43:41: Yeah. And I think it's kind of in terms of business, like it is a very difficult balance, right? You don't want to kind of pivot all the time. I think it is important to have a path and kind of really execute in that path. But you also need to know when something is not working and it's not going to work, you know. And I think a lot of the resilience that founders need, I think is, really something that, you know, I think I gained during my PhD. There was a period of my PhD where for about six to nine months, every single night, you know, sometimes weekends, I would go to the lab because that is when the microscope would be available. You know, I would set up the time-lapse experiment. Like, you know, I would be there from 11 a.m. to usually like 11 p.m. to like, around 1:30 a.m., 1 a.m., you know, setting up the experiment. And then, you know, half the time I would come back in the morning and, you know, it would have crashed, you know. 

Jon - 00:44:44: Yeah. 

Oguzhan - 00:44:44: Wasted work, you know, you go the next day and, you know, you would repeat that experiment. And the, really the killer was that after about six to nine months, I found in the data that everything that I was looking at analyzing for the past nine months, like going into the lab during the day, analyzing the data at night, analyzing the data during the day, I found that all of that work was just looking at autofluorescence. And that the thing is, the signal was such that it was exactly as you would expect. Because what was happening is that I was changing the external conditions to look at the intensity of a particular protein that we tagged with the green fluorescent protein. So that, you know, what we expected, was what we were seeing. So, and I, you know, kept doing different experiments around this, changing the conditions, you know, increasing the, decreasing it. And it was always like, what you would expect from the theory that this is what you need to see. It turns out that for whatever, you know, reason, and, you know, one of my professors at Princeton used to say that proteins are magic. GFP was not fluorescing when it was tagged to that particular protein. And I was just seeing the change in autofluorescence that was happening due to the environmental change. So, I mean, it was a crashing feeling, right? Like, you know, you spent nine months, like, you know, working. 70 hours a week, and you find out that this is actually not real. But it is also a relief, because.

Jon - 00:46:26: Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:46:26: You don't want to publish that. Like, you know, that we published the, you know, wrong data, wrong conclusion. And you know, I started from scratch, like I was like, okay, you know, this nine months, you know, complete trash, like you know, let's move on. Like, I we will, you know, reclone the GFB to this protein with different linkers, and you know, we'll make sure that this doesn't happen again, with you know, and I did that, and you know experiments worked. And you know, we repeated nine months of work, we- And that that ended up being my thesis work. But I think like, it shows that kind of resilience, right? You know, I think those bad things happen, when you are building a company as well ups and downs, you know, it's every day, and being able to just say, okay, you know, this didn't work, you know, what is next is very important.

Jon - 00:47:22: Absolutely. I think, it is not talked about enough, this is kind of like, how important what you just highlighted. Like this mentality, to be able to just like, get like punched in the teeth, like, and then being willing to start from scratch, and start anew. Because I think it's It's that element when you're at that kind of like crossroads. Sometimes that's like, I just observe as an observer, like a lot of companies just shut down because they say, I'm... It's a wrap. Like, I don't have another one in me. Like, I don't have another one. Like you said, but if you choose to get back and just do it again and not give up, and I know that sounds like, you know, contrived and like not, it kind of made me fluffy, but it's like, it's super important. Yeah.

Oguzhan - 00:48:05: It is, it is every day. Like, I mean, I even talk about this with our sales team. When we have new hire sales training, you know, I tell them about, you know, early days of the company, just as we kind of solved the problem and we were like, okay, this is great. Now, like we are getting sales in, that is when COVID happened. Every clinic, you know, like essentially it was impossible to get into any physician clinics to be able to sell them on the tests that, you know, we were selling. And, you know, if you are not growing, you are dead as a startup. And we had to get very creative. You know, we could have said, well, who can predict, and, you know, prepare for a global pandemic. You know, I don't have any options. Like we never, we never took kind of that victim mentality. You know, we said that, you know, we are not victims, you know, we are going to figure out a problem. And at that time, just as an example, I have like 10 stories like this, where we saved the company, you know, okay. You know, what can we do? And we realized that, okay, you know, there is not much that we can do, but we had, you know, two problems. One, we had a product problem because we were asking people to split their labs and send one portion of the prenatal labs to us and another to a competitor. And we said that, okay, like this already is a struggle in the current market with COVID. This is going to completely kill us unless we fix this. So we essentially told the R&D team, we have to launch this in the next three to four months, you know, do whatever it takes. Like, even if it means that we are going to have a high no call rate. Because we never want to give the wrong result, but you can give a no call when, you know, you don't have enough evidence. Even if you have to have a high no call rate, even if the cost of, you know, running this is a little bit high, you know, whatever you need, we need to get this to launch. Right. And, you know, they said, okay, like, let's get to work. Another small team, we said, okay, we need to keep our current lab open. And the only way that it is going to be possible is if we test people with COVID-19 tests, but there are no COVID-19 tests available. So we told them, we need to build our own COVID-19 test diagnostic lab. So we actually built a test that we used on our employees, like twice a week, like all of our employees throughout the pandemic, like throughout the first, like two and a half years or so, two years. And, you know, that is how we stayed open because we like, if we had one person who gets infected, like we would have to shut down. So we're like, okay, you know, we have to like test everyone like twice a week. And then the third was, we need get into these clinics. You know, how are we going to be able to get in, in front of these physicians? And, you know, we realized, okay, you know, we can't get into the clinic, but how can we get them out of the clinic? So at a time that even the U.S. Government didn't have N95 masks and hand sanitizers, we were able to get those from China. It was like a smuggling operation. We were awake, like at midnight, like trying to get things through customs, you know, things weren't even like labeled because, you know, it would be held in customs if they were like labeled, like we had to put the labels ourselves to hand sanitizers. They came in like unlabeled, you know, boxes. And we created these care packages for, you know, physicians and staff. And we told them, look, you know, we have hand sanitizers, we have masks. Can you meet us in the parking lot? You know, we are just going to take five minutes of your time. And we actually converted to our advantage, you know, at a time that they didn't even really want to see their OB patients. They were trying to get the father's in for testing, you know, and our test advantage is that, you know, we, you know, we can directly see the fetal DNA. So you wouldn't need the father's sample. And we told them, look, you know, you don't even want the pregnant mother there. Like you really want to deal with the fathers. And we converted it into our advantage. We grew above all of our, even like pre-pandemic projections through that period. We have grown, you know, from 10 tests per day to 130 tests per day within a year. And that kind of created really the company. Like that was the culture. And it wasn't easy. You know, it was so difficult, like every single day to go through that, but it made us like much stronger. And the sales reps who went through that experience, nothing phases them anymore. They are so resilient. They are so strong. Like if there is a little problem, like something happens, they're like, you know, I can solve any problem. Like such a strong mentality now because they went through so much hardship during that time to be able to push through all of those barriers and grow us by 10X. But it was needed. Like if we didn't do those things, you know, we wouldn't be able to survive. And again, I have like, you know, at least 10 stories like this value, you know, we could have said, okay, that's it. Like we couldn't, you know, predict this.

Jon - 00:53:23: Just give up. Yeah. 

Oguzhan - 00:53:24: We could give up or you could essentially go solve the problem. And, you know, that is the message that, you know, I give to other entrepreneurs, but as well as to, you know, our individuals in the company. You know, in each territory, they are going to face a problem. They are going to face a challenge where they might say, okay, that's it. Like, I can't solve this. This is, you know, too big of a problem. Or you can actually go to work, solve the problem, be creative. And then if they can solve the problem, it becomes a competitive advantage. Right? It becomes the thing that no one else is able to do. Those providers that we converted at that time, you know, some of them cried. Like some of them were like, you know, this is the first time that I am feeling safe. That, you know, like it was a scary time, right? You know, being patients with no masks, like it wasn't an easy time. You know, everyone was afraid that, you know, that they will die. There was so much misinformation or, you know, we didn't know, you know, how deadly COVID was, you know, early on. And they really appreciated us being there for them. They really appreciated the test as well. And even though, again, you know, it was not easy to go through that growth, those providers, vast majority of them are still with us, like today, they still use our test.

Jon - 00:54:47: That's awesome. 

Oguzhan - 00:54:47: So, and the thing is, in some ways, I think we probably grew more than what we would have grown without COVID. This is crazy. 

Jon - 00:54:57: So crazy.

Oguzhan - 00:54:58: I think we did because there was no competition to deal with. Like there was no one left, you know, all those large companies with, you know, huge sales forces, you know, sure, we have a better product, but we would still have to fight them, you know, clinic by clinic, test by test, you know, otherwise they were nowhere to be found. You know, they were at home. We were out there working. You know, it wasn't easy, but it really allowed us to, you know, grow at an unprecedented rate. And it really created that core team that is so strong that, you know, many of those reps are still the highest volume reps in the country.

Jon - 00:55:39: That's amazing. And I think too, it's like a testament to not only just like resilience, but it reminds me of your kind of undergraduate experience of approaching the problem from a different angle, like the different angle. And I think, especially like larger organizations, where there's like, kind of inertia in how they've always done things. And like, especially when the org you talked to gets scaled, like if your commercial team is very scaled, there's like playbooks, playbooks that have been used for ages. It's like kind of like moving an aircraft carrier. Like it's very hard to get a large organization to be kind of nimble and like kind of think more kind of from like orthogonal angles. So I love hearing that because like even at Excedr, we feel the same way. And when I was first starting Excedr, I was like equipment leasing. How hard could it be? It's like, this must be a simple problem. And lo and behold, hard problem, like hard problem. And, you know, for us, leasing companies kind of like boil down into two major categories. You're either a part of a bank, you have very bank-like qualities and you're regulated like a bank, or you're managing assets, you know, on behalf of like LPs and whatnot. I came from the bench, so I didn't know about any of those worlds. Like I had no idea. I just had like problem getting equipment into the lab very hard. And the first problem is this is really expensive. Like, how am I going to like get this capital to do this? And obviously the very beginning was very, very hard because it was like, no one wants to bet on you. So ultimately I had to use my life savings to get that first piece of equipment. And from there, just like one by one, like chopping wood. Like that one deal led to the next deal. And we just kept doing everything internally. By the way, still did not know that leasing companies are, you know, you can be like a bank and use like deposits or like LP capital. So we kept doing that over time. And just because I was like a scientist and did not know better, I was like, most leasing companies are not built this way. But now that's exactly what we talked about. We had this really, really hard problem, but now it's our competitive advantage. A little bit of naivete, just not knowing in the beginning, that there are easier paths. We just kind of like brute forced it. We're just like, we're just going to keep doing this. So now we have this like weird ability to not really be beholden to like the regulatory confines of a bank or the, you know, the kind of there's obligations to your LPs. And so it started off as a really hard problem and a tough nut to crack. And it probably took a lot longer than it should have to get to scale. But exactly what you said, when you like push through those problems and you live to see what it's like on the other side. You're just like, I'm undefeatable. Like there's no problem that can phase me. And I'm sure you're, you know, your sales team and I'm sure your other team too, probably in the R&D, like when, when you told your R and D team, we need to launch this in three months and they launch it. They're like, yeah, what's next? Like, like let's, we got something, bring it on, bring it on. 

Outro - 00:58:52: Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Oguzhan Atay. Be sure to tune in for part two, where we chat about his time at Stanford, his groundbreaking PhD research, and how his work shaped the innovative approaches at BillionToOne. Oguzhan also discusses his transition from academia to entrepreneurship, the many challenges of building a biotech startup, and the vision behind his mission to transform molecular diagnostics on a global scale. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your friends. See you next time. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for 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, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. 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.