Sales Skills & Resilience: Hidden Drivers of Biotech Success | Rabia Khan (Part 3/4)

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Intro - 00:00:55: 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. In our last episode, Rabia Khan reflected on her PhD experience, what she learned from juggling lab work and an MBA, and how a cold email led to her first job in tech. If you missed it, be sure to listen to part two. In part three, Rabia dives into her time at Benevolent AI and Sensyne Health, where she worked at the intersection of biology, machine learning, and clinical data, and began to see the limitations of traditional drug discovery firsthand. She shares how those experiences shaped her views on platform versus program development, and what it takes to align scientists and engineers around shared goals, and how curiosity and culture drive real innovation. 

Jon - 00:02:04: So many directions I want to go. I think the first point that really stood out to me is having a shared language amongst people who come from different walks of life in different disciplines. Because I think that is like, especially as organizations get bigger, sometimes that language never gets established and you're just talking past each other or you don't talk at all. And that just leads to dysfunction. Like the goal in any organization is to row in synchronized fashion in one direction. But what ends up happening, and to use the vector analogy again, you're like two vectors going in the different direction. And then you're just like barely moving. You're just kind of like treading water almost because you're just like the second that you line it up, it goes crazy. And I think that's where I've found just like effective communication is so important. Having that shared language and just like understanding because that's where magic happens because then the machine is just far more efficient. Like it's just like way more efficient.

Rabia - 00:03:02: Well, you're solving the same problem as opposed to two completely different problems, right? But it's actually very difficult to do. In the world today, we talk about platform versus programs, and there's all of this conversation about this space. And what I've learned there is that if you differentiate platform from programs teams, you create tension. And in fact, there should be no difference. Moving a program forward needs to feed the platform, and you need to run them in parallel, in unison, as opposed to I've built this platform, and now I have this program. And so one of the things we have at Serna is that moving a program forward has to use the platform, and it has to feed the platform, right? It has to be a concerted effort because otherwise you have a platform team that's off going in this direction. And sometimes you have a programs team that's going in this direction. I remember at BenevolentAI, we had the world's best NLP. It was really great. They could read articles. But I really wanted someone to do RNA-seq data analysis. My problem set was different. It was not NLP. And so I was like, this is really exciting NLP, but I need you to do the gene set enrichment analysis for me. 

Jon - 00:04:19: I love that you bring this up because it's like I was having a conversation with Kate Yen at Auron Therapeutics, and she said something very similar about the platform feeding the program and vice versa. It's kind of that you create the virtuous cycle.

Rabia - 00:04:33: You have to. 

Jon - 00:04:34: You have to. You have to. And that's where like magic really happens. And like not to point fingers necessarily at like. Insisted on it being so bifurcated. I think because I interface with a lot of the capital markets and investor folks a lot, I think it's just easier for them to conceptualize like, oh, this is a platform play. This is a program play. Guys, they don't have to be in opposition. They can be in sync. They can be in sync. It's kind of like a lot of companies that are publicly traded are conglomerates. Some conglomerates are a mess. It's kind of like that 30 Rock kind of thing where we have a television group, and then we also do washing machines. Okay. I get that is not necessarily a virtuous cycle, or at least one that clearly connects, but... You can imagine like when organizations do a bunch of different things, the investment community is like too complex. You get discounted because it's too complex. You guys are doing different things. But like in actuality, they're pretty similar and actually can feed off each other. And so I think sometimes, and this is me, maybe I am pointing a finger, like capital folks are like, I want to know exactly what I'm investing in, what the investment profile is, what the business model is, and have it be super specialized, super focused. And it's easy for me to understand, but I think you can have them be copacetic, like, and it can be, it can be both. 

Rabia - 00:06:02: In another life, I want to go work in PE. I think PE is the most exciting place on the planet because they are very clear about what they want to do in life. They want to make money, right? And there's no gray areas. And I love that, right? And as someone managing capital markets, beautiful, right? The economist in me. I love that someone wants you to be clear and say, how are you going to make money? Because that's going to force a level of clarity. But I think why the platform program dichotomy started to exist significantly in TechBio was because the humans that were building machine learning platforms were technologically different from the people that were doing drug discovery, right? So Boston has been doing platforms forever, right? Platforms are not new. Single asset companies, fine. But platform companies becoming biotech companies is the norm. Genentech, Regeneron. These were platforms that became organizations and commercialized drugs. But where machine learning is different is the humans, machine learning engineers, different educational training from biologists. And so now they build a thing and a different human has to use the thing. And this human might not like the thing that you've built. And I have been in places where the machine learning engineers think the biologists are stupid and the biologists think that the machine learning people don't understand their problems. Right. 

Jon - 00:07:28: Yep. 

Rabia - 00:07:29: And so then I think it is on senior management to produce a culture and an incentive structure that forces these two people to align to succeed. That's where I think this dichotomy comes in, because there was a generation of machine learning companies that said we're going to solve all of drug discovery with machine learning. And I don't think that's going to happen. But B, that's where, you know, we are a giant platform that solving all programs actually is not helpful because. Our industry monetizes on assets, our products, our drugs. And it doesn't matter how beautiful this platform is, but if it does not, within an investment life cycle of about, I'd say, seven years, produce an exitable product, it is useless, actually. The value of something is what someone's willing to pay for it. And so the thing someone's willing to pay for is a drug. You better find a way to produce a drug. Otherwise, you've got a really nice research project and it needs to sit in academia.  

Jon - 00:08:32: Yep, absolutely. And I think the way you describe it is I think there's like different phenotypes. They're just like, they're just straight up different phenotypes, but they need to work together. 

Rabia - 00:08:42: And it's hard. It's hard, right? Because you've got to learn a different language. You've got to learn agile. You've got to run tickets. You have to document decisions. The amount of time I spent in the company being like, when a biologist makes a decision, I have to understand how you're making it because I want to then see if we can automate it. That's a repetitive process. You have to keep at it. You have to keep working at it because that's not how biologists are trained. We run an experiment. We do the analysis in Prism. No one looks at our Prism files, right? It's not GitHub. You're not doing code review. You're not pushing shit to Git. And so to me, all of this is we have to change the culture. We have to change the culture of biology science to become more like engineering to then bring these two disciplines to work together better. 

Jon - 00:09:30: Absolutely. The one other thing that stood out to me is like your questioning of the status quo. And then it's the framing of the problem is like, I think, critically important. Because like, sometimes you can just accept the status quo is like, this is what is always going to be. But I think the opportunity lies in that frame shift. And sometimes you have to be like, an outsider, or at least the lack of experience tends to help a little bit.  

Rabia - 00:09:55: Yes, it does. 

Jon - 00:09:56: Because like, experience is great, like, for sure. But there are also benefits of not having experience. Because then you can ask these, you know, people would call them like silly questions. Like, the chemist is probably like, what do you mean? Like, like, look at all this. Like, of course, those are only 4000. Of course. But I think it's the that's where the opportunity lies when you can come in with fresh eyes and maybe not have that baggage. And look, it's kind of that thing where we were talking about like, like, When you see a problem and you just like pull it back and you pull it back and you pull it back, it could be wrong. 

Rabia - 00:10:28: Yes. 

Jon - 00:10:28: Right? Could be wrong. Your chemist could have been right. Like it is 4,000, but it's a worthwhile question and exploration to peel that thing back. Because should the answer come back, oh, no, there's a lot more druggable things than we anticipated. That's massive, massive value unlock and massive opportunity. Because I always think about like within the status quo, it is so crowded. Like. It is so crowded, like 4,000 shared amongst so many people. You play different games, I think. This is getting to the business side. It's like it behooves you to try and play a different game, like play the different game if you can. I'm a big believer in that. 

Rabia - 00:11:07: I just think it's always important to be curious, right? Why is my favorite word? Walk me through X, explain something. You'll always learn. But also more than that, it's incredible how much of that curiosity we lose with age. And, you know, I think just trying to hang on to the curiosity, the naivety. People ask me, what caused you to start the company? I always say like, there must be a certain amount of naivety, right? Like, this seems like a reasonable problem. Why can't I go solve it? Because if you start layering the problems in and you start removing that curiosity, I think most people wouldn't do it. You have to be curious. You have to enjoy the problems as opposed to view them as problems. You can view them as like puzzle pieces that you get to put together, which is a lot of fun. 

Jon - 00:11:55: Yep, absolutely. And I think on paper, starting a leasing company seems pretty straightforward. You like get some money, you extend credit. It's easy enough. And that's at least how I thought about it when I was first starting. And then I'm like, holy shit, like way more to it, like way more to it. But if I knew what I know now, I probably would have been at the law firm. 

Rabia - 00:12:18: 100% right when I was thinking of starting this company, I actually was at BenevolentAI. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go start this. Something's bothering me. I'm going to try and solve this problem. Three people took me for a walk around the block. Don't Rob you. It's a terrible idea. Quit your job. What are you doing? What I love about the U.S.. Is like I have friends in the U.S., Abe Adamoy, he was one of my oldest friends, very good friend of mine. He was like, do it tomorrow. Take the risk. Do it now. Move to San Francisco. You know, do it now. A couple of my other friends in the U.S., they were like, you must start this company. This is a great life decision. You'll learn a ton. But here in the U.K., everyone was like, no, no, don't do that. Stable job. What are you doing? Are you crazy? So I did it. I did leave Benevolent, being like, try and figure out why we can't drug all of these targets. This makes no sense to me. But it was, you know, people really get you to question it. And I always think that earlier in life, you take risk, the better. So in fact, I should have done this like right out of my PhD, as opposed to after a postdoc. And I always say like, the earlier in life, you take risk, the better. Learn earlier, make mistakes earlier, because the stakes are lower. 

Jon - 00:13:42: Hold on. It is so crazy that you bring that up. I was just talking about it last week because I have a friend. This is just like a personal experience. He has a mortgage and three kids.  

Rabia - 00:13:53: Yeah, not the time.  

Jon - 00:13:55: It's not the time. And I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just harder. 

Rabia - 00:14:00: Being a founder is your life. This is your baby, right? It is 24-7. There is no holiday. There is no downtime. It is going to consume your mind, even if you claim to be on holiday. I've done the thing where I'm like, I am taking a day off and I'm going to go for a walk. What do I think about on this walk? I think about work, right? And so it is going to consume every waking minute of your mind. And if you have a lot of other responsibilities, it's just harder. 

Jon - 00:14:31: Yeah, it's like way harder. And like, you know, people are relying on, you know, and again, I have seen those with families and responsibilities do it, but. It takes a toll, right? We're working backwards again from you got to sleep, that's a guaranteed. Maybe five hours if you're lucky. Okay, that leaves 19 hours left. You have three kids, a mortgage, and a significant other, presumably. 

Rabia - 00:14:57: I really admire those people, right? Because the other thing I remember, there was a postdoc when I was doing my PhD, he had just had a baby. And so he would come in and he was the most ruthless, productive human, because he had to be out at four, right? And everyone has one of those in the lab, they come in, they do like 10 times the amount of work, because they got to get out at four. Whereas you as your PhD student, you're like, well, go for a coffee, I don't have to be anywhere. And so then everything gets dragged out, right? But I do think if you start it in your 20s, you can have like two companies that you work on or three that you work on, right? And make mistakes earlier in life, have wins, have failures earlier in life. And so I just think that that was one of the main things of when I was starting this, well, I left to start this company, and then I got recruited into Sensyne Health. But when I left to start the company, the cultural difference really stood out to me. Whereas in the U.S., everyone was like, yes, aim big, dream. And here, everyone was like, think about your mortgage. 

Jon - 00:15:58: Yeah, yep. That sounds about right. When I do reflect on the U.S., kind of startup entrepreneurial ecosystem, I think that is, that I'm incredibly grateful for. And I don't take it for granted because exactly what you described, it's a rare thing. It's a rare thing to be like, yeah. Go for it. Go for it. Like when in every other place is like, oh, that is career suicide. 

Rabia - 00:16:22: Those are the words, yes, that are used, right? You'll never get a job again. People are going to think you're a failure. All of those words. And personally, I don't think they're helpful. I don't think they're ever helpful to say that to anyone. Even if they are true, it is not helpful. 

Jon - 00:16:37: I think people are resilient, right? Like people are resilient. You're going to figure it out. It doesn't have to be like that scarlet letters type situation. 

Rabia - 00:16:46: And like being supportive and positive, right? Whenever people come to me and say, I'm thinking of starting a company and I'm like, just do it. Like the fact that you are thinking about it and saying it to another human means you've been thinking about it even longer and you're probably going to do it. And so just do it now. 

Jon - 00:17:04: Yeah, absolutely. And so you are at Benevolent. You're thinking about starting this company. Well, first you went to Sensyne. 

Rabia - 00:17:11: So I left Benevolent and I went off and I was like, I'm going to try and figure out why we, why we can't, you know, target RNA or why we can't do this better. And I think it had been a week. And I got a call from Mike Burgoyne, who was the recruiter at BenevolentAI. And he said, because you left out of your own free will, I can do this. I recruit for another company in Oxford, and I think you should go there. And I was like, Oxford, I live in London. Like, no. And he's like, just go, just go talk to him. So I get on the train and then you get off the train and you have to take a taxi and it's quite far. And so I get there and I meet Steven Hamblin and the company was called Sensyne Health. And he's just this most, he's gone on to found his own company. He has a deck of cards, walked around with a deck of cards, shuffling cards. And he said, why'd you leave Benevolent? And I was like, well, I want to start my own company. And he looked at me and he said, you're going to go start a company. But in the meantime, I was wondering, I have this contract. And in this contract, we have to develop a genetic screening strategy for the patients in Oxford University Health. I have a blank sheet of paper, and I don't know how to do that. So why don't you come here and do that for a while while you think about your company? And I was like- 

Jon - 00:18:26: Yeah.  

Rabia - 00:18:27: And I then met the CEO of the company, whose name was Lord Paul Drayson. He's the ex-Defense Minister of the UK. And so at this one, maybe three-hour interview session, I met Steven Hamblin, who was like, basically write your own job description. 

Jon - 00:18:45: Yeah. 

Rabia - 00:18:46: And then Paul Drayson, who is, you know, it's incredible to be in the presence of these people that have done really great things in life. And so I stood there and I was like, start my own company, build genetic strategy, this one. And so I did go take the job at Sensyne Health. And within a month of joining, they needed someone to build out their machine learning team and real-world evidence arm. So they had access to NHS patient data that was anonymized. And they had the most incredible business model. So Sensyne Health was listed. It was publicly listed. And the NHS Trusts had equity in the entity. And any revenue that we generated using their data, we would give them royalties back. And so not only would their books improve in value from the value of the stocks, they would also get revenue if we use their information to do deals like virtual control arms and things like that using real-world evidence. And so going from a world where I had understood protein-based drug discovery, machine learning, now all of a sudden I was in the world of real-world evidence and running virtual control arms and using machine learning applied to clinical evidence, clinical real-world data imaging. And I was given the opportunity to just build the entire machine learning team. So we did a deal with Bayer, $5 million deal. Then a deal with Roche, a deal with BMS, a deal with Alexion. And I was single-handedly responsible for this. There was no one else. And so here I am, the biologist. I walked over to Steven. I was like, Steven, I'm building this team. He said, yeah, you'll be fine. And he just walked away. And I was like, okay. And he said something to me once, which was amazing. I said, why do you carry this deck of cards? He said, as a leader, your job is to hand over these cards as fast as you can to other people. And so I took the team zero to 50 in six months, all PhDs in machine learning or doctors. We ran a number of pharma deals, understood mapping real-world evidence, building databases around it, building a technical team, alliance management, all of that. But more than anything, understood what clinical trials and post-market surveillance is all about, which is very different from this target is undruggable. Right now, you're at the other end of the spectrum and just so much fun. Phase three clinical trials, right? It's a very different beast, the challenges, the problems. And then working with patient data, working with real-world evidence, very different problem set, right? Because you're dealing with classification systems, ICD-10 codes that make zero sense. And we classify diseases based on a billing system. I think most people don't realize this, that the reason you call something a certain thing is because you need to give it an attachment so it can be billed. But that's not how we do drug discovery. We don't do drug discovery on ICD-10 codes, but we definitely treat on ICD-10 codes. And I think the future exists in a world where we no longer classify disease as ICD-10 codes. I think if I could wave a magic wand, that's where I'd like to be, where we're classifying diseases the way we think about them biologically, not the way we need to bill for them. 

Jon - 00:22:16: Two different languages again. 

Rabia - 00:22:17: Very different languages. 

Jon - 00:22:19: This very differently, and so downstream, that like I think, it's interesting as I hear your journey, it's like, you know how to do animal studies. You did it for a long time. 

Rabia - 00:22:29: Injecting the minds, literally.  

Jon - 00:22:31: And then you're like, okay, I'm going to go acquire these in vitro skills. It's team in vitro now. And then now you're like, all right, team clinical, let's go. And also just going to build up a team of 50 and just become like an ML expert. I guess like when you're acquiring these skills, is it like, were you tapping shoulders of people who like are experts in the field? Is it simply a brute force mechanism where you're like, time to get read. I'm just going to like read up on this as much as I can. Or is it just like, I'm just going to figure this out and figure it out on the fly. Kind of like, how do you acquire these skills that do something like that? Where it's like, here you go. The card has been dealt to you. Just like, go do it. 

Rabia - 00:23:09: Well, it's a public company. You've made promises to the analysts. And my very first boss, Sam Molyneux, they called him for a reference. I think someone must have called him. And they told me, he told me this later, which is that the thing about Rabia is you have to just give her a problem and just go at it like, bull in a China shop. And Paul Drayson would do that. He would be like, I have this problem. And I'd be like, Rabia, can you just go solve it? And I think some people are built like that. And I think that is their superpower. And if you're one of those people, hats off to you. Like, go find a really awesome mentor and go work for them. Because everyone is always looking for one of those. And so none of these things is hard. Right. So you want to hire a machine learning person. You have to know they're technically good. You have to establish a technical exam. We'll find someone to write that, find someone to evaluate it. You have to make sure they can do the thing you want to and have a cultural fit. Done. That took me what? A minute. Okay, now you take your network, you solve the first two. That's done. Okay, moving on. And then you figure out the cultural stuff. So and then you you build two people in the team. Now they have the technical knowledge. So you've dealt those cards out. Now you need to build the alliance management. Well, that's a bit easier. Right. And so you just just take it that way. 

Jon - 00:24:26: It's almost like I always think about like chunking out the problem versus like, you know, sometimes you can get paralysis where like I'm going to try and solve all of this at once. And then you're like, oh, God, what have I done? 

Rabia - 00:24:39: So I think a PhD teaches you to do that. But I think a task oriented person operates in a, here's the list of things I need to do to get this done. Right. I'm very task oriented and I'm very much like, I want to check the block. I want it to be done. And when the analysts at Sensyne Health had a revenue target, all I could think about was where are we going to get this revenue from? And how do we pitch the company? How do we pitch the data sets? And so I was talking to the buyer teams and the BMS and Roche teams. And so when check with signs, we needed people.  

Jon - 00:25:16: Yeah. 

Rabia - 00:25:17: There was no one. 

Jon - 00:25:18: Yeah. 

Rabia - 00:25:19: And four, I had inherited four direct reports. First time in my life ever line managing people. And we had promised 50, right? And I needed to go hire 50 machine learning engineers and people that understood real-world evidence. And you just do it. Just, you know, keep at it. It's amazing. One foot in front of the other, slowly keeping at it. What one can accomplish. It's so powerful. 

Jon - 00:25:47: And I think sometimes too, people as observers from the outside, like sometimes get the impression that the plane is already built. But what you've kind of described is like the plane is being built in real time. And like, that's like a majority of companies. It's like, I was just listening to like HubSpot CEO on 20VC. And she's like, HubSpot's a large organization.  

Rabia - 00:26:12: Yes huge. 

Jon - 00:26:14: But they're also still building the plane. They are still building the plane. And especially with everything that's going on and, you know, SaaS and everything like that. They kind of have to. Like, it's kind of like the analysts are like holding their feet to the fire. They're like, there are these goals that you need to hit. And these are the expectations. 

Rabia - 00:26:33: And it's a different plane, right? That's what I think. I think you're always going to be building the plane. It's just. You know, you built a rickety one seater. You're like, I'm in the air, but I'd really like to make this a two seater. So I'm just going to like push that over a little. And then at some point you're like, oh, yes, I have oxygen. And like a third person jumps in. You're like, oh, there's no seat. 

Jon - 00:26:54: Yeah. Let me just build this right real quick. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly the feeling. And I think, you know, because sometimes people just talking about on this entrepreneurial journey, they're always like. Dang, it really looks like this well-oiled machine. She's like, no, man, it's decently well-oiled, but we have our friction and hiccups too. It's just like you kind of just have to go, like you said, one foot in front of the other and just keep going and you keep going. And that's when compounding kind of starts to pick up. But you have to be consistent about it.  

Rabia - 00:27:29: Consistently, one foot in front of the other. And it is always the little things, right? I think it's all about the little things. It's not about the big things. We had unique data sets and we had access to unique data sets. And that was true. We knew how to get it out. I had worked with this tiny little team of four people to develop case studies so we could sell. And because we had those case studies, people could see that we could do this. And therefore, they were willing to give us money. And everyone puts checks and balances into place, right? There's no free lunch. You had to bill for people. Their CVs had to exist. There had to be joint steering committees. We had to perform. Everyone was performing at a level that was non-negotiable. 

Jon - 00:28:19: Like clockwork, right?  

Rabia - 00:28:20: But I love that. I love that energy. I love that environment, the high pressure, all the stakes. I mean, I was managing 90% of the company's revenue. The majority of the company's revenue was coming from that deal or the deals that we had, right? And it's just so much fun. 

Jon - 00:28:37:

Holy crap. It sounds like a true baptism of fire, but one that's like an incredible, like, just like, it sounds like you're drinking out of the firehouse in terms of like learned experiences there. 

Rabia - 00:28:48: Yeah. 

Jon - 00:28:48: Yes. You're talking about clinical trials. You're talking about like working with some of the largest organizations in the world, which, you know, it's not the same as like working down market is like far different. That motion is different. And I can only imagine like how sharp this experience made you. Like it started with this blank slate and then you're just like, holy crap, you've accumulated just like so many tools in your tool belt now. 

Rabia - 00:29:15: And it's amazing, right? So Steven Hamlin, who had hired me, I joined in October and November. They're like, you're now running this division. I was like, what? And I think like six months later, he's like, I'm going to go start my own company. And I was like, you're leaving me? 

Jon - 00:29:28: Yeah, like, what? 

Rabia - 00:29:30: Leaving me here alone? He was the CTO of the company. And so I was Sen's CTO, right? And it was just a really interesting experience. But what it tells you is that people take bets on you in life. Like they allowed me and gave me the space to do this. Like, it sounds like I went and did A, B, C, and D. Absolutely not. Paul Drayson was the CEO of the company. He gave me the space to go and be and build that team and, you know, free reign to hire recruiters and interview and hire and fire and put so much faith in someone who had never done it before, right? So at this point, I'm running 50% of the company, managing four of the largest clients in the organization, having never done this before. And that's a testament to Paul, who is the CEO that saw someone and said, I'm going to let her do this because I'm watching, I'm keeping an eye on you, but it's okay. Like grow, grow with the company, right? And I think there's some really great humans that do that. Not everyone does that. I really think we hire young at Sensyne and we want to give people that room to grow. Like, I've got your back. Don't worry. Paul would always say like, Rab, if there's a problem, I'm here. Like, come talk to me, but like, go do your thing. Those are the organizations that allow you to grow so fast. Like that level of growth is just personally so high. 

Jon - 00:31:03: Absolutely. I mean, it honestly reminds me of your undergraduate lab experience where you're like, all right, here you go. Right. And it's like early on, just giving early opportunities, I think is like I think people will surprise you like with their ability to rise to the occasion. Experience is important for sure. But like on top of that, like there's something to be said about that hunger, the hunger to learn and the willingness to learn, because like people are resilient. People are adaptable. People can learn hard shit if you give them the opportunity to. That's the thing. Like you need to give them the opportunity. And on the flip of it, if someone doesn't have that, it is incredibly hard to make them rise to the occasion. I can't force someone to give a shit. 

Rabia - 00:31:45: I've tried. I've tried and failed so many times.  

Jon - 00:31:49: I've tried to, it's hard. 

Rabia - 00:31:51: There's so much opportunity. Why don't you take it? And people are just like, yeah. Checking out five o'clock. And I was like, okay, well, this is not for you. You can see it in some people. And when we find those people, I really hang on to them because I think they're going to go on and do great things no matter where they go. And so if you can be that first experience where you allow their career to go like this, they're going to remember that, right? And you're going to be that person that gave them that opportunity. So I think that's really powerful. 

Jon - 00:32:19: Absolutely. And something, this is an Excedr thing, or maybe just a me thing, but in addition to this kind of like exactly what you just described, something that we always look for is that have you worked in the service industry, like hospitality or service? I mean, it's not the sole thing we look for, but we love when we see it. Because talk about... Having to deal with hard shit. It's like, if you've worked at like Starbucks and have an upset person who didn't get their coffee on time yell at you at like seven in the morning, you can handle most things. Like you can handle most things in life when you're getting screamed at in public.  

Rabia - 00:32:56: Sale as well. 

Jon - 00:32:58: Yeah. 

Rabia - 00:32:58: Like I think some of the best people have worked in sales, but I'm talking like actual sales, like. Cold calling, that type of sales. I think it's a very powerful skill. 

Jon - 00:33:10: For sure. 

Rabia - 00:33:12: Because you have thick skin, right?  

Jon - 00:33:14: You're just unfazed because like, I feel the exact same way. And I think sometimes in science, you don't see it as much. There's less of that in the kind of like healthcare or life science industry. You're like usually like lab folks. 

Rabia - 00:33:27: I think the unfortunate thing is we give it a dirty like 

Jon - 00:33:31: There's a stigma around it. 

Rabia - 00:33:32: Like, oh, you're in sales. I think it's like one of the most powerful skill sets to have. My father did sales before starting the company that he runs now. And I think it teaches you so much, right? The customer is always right. How do you engage, right? And so, you know, having run those four pharma partnerships. One of the things that I always tell my team is like, if one of our clients says jump, you say how high. You do not show up and tell your client, well, I think you're running the experiment incorrectly. What you say is, thank you for this design. Here's our minor changes if you would like to consider them. But we're also happy to do exactly what you asked. Because I'm sure everyone's worked with one of those designers where like you give the designer some direction and they go off and they do their own thing and tell you why the design you want is wrong. You're like, but I, I want you to do the thing here. Like I asked you for a black background. You might not like black backgrounds, but I do. Can you just do the black background? 

Jon - 00:34:28: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I think sales is also just like super humbling. It just like keeps you honest, like frankly keeps you honest. Because, like, it's, you know, you don't win them all. Like you just don't win them all. And the ability to take an L and get up and do it again. That is like that resilience. 

Rabia - 00:34:50: Economics, right? Like something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And sales is about convincing someone, narrative, storytelling, like, let me make you want to part with something that is precious to you, whether that's money, time, whatever it might be. And I think it's such a powerful skill set. And it's underrated in our industry. I think in our industry, we don't put enough value on it. Because everyone's in BD or alliance management, no one's really in sales, unless you're a sales rep, right? 

Jon - 00:35:22: But it's actually sales. I know you call it something different. It's actually sales. 

Rabia - 00:35:27: Well, if your metric is revenue, you're in sales. 

Jon - 00:35:31: Yeah. And sales comes in a bunch of different flavors. And I think, you know, for anyone out there, there's also a lot of internal selling that needs to happen, too, in any organization, even if you're small. Like, again, as a founder, you have to convince people to stick around.  

Rabia - 00:35:45: You have to convince people to stick around. You have to convince people to give you money. You have to convince customers. Like, I think it's very difficult to succeed even as an individual contributor, as a technologist, without being able to sell whatever it is that you do. I just think people underestimate the power of sales and they overestimate the power of technological excellence. 

Jon - 00:36:09: Yep, I completely agree. The conversation I was having with one of our previous guests, you know, sales leader at Millipore said the exact same thing. You know, having a great product is necessary, but it's not sufficient.  

Rabia - 00:36:22: Table stakes, right? I was talking to someone about fundraising and I was like, you know, what do you need? And he said, look, Rabia, an excellent team, amazing data, a great pitch deck and a narrative. That's normal. We're not even gonna debate that. So you better have all of these things. Now we're talking about what you need. So like, this is just table stakes. So like an excellent product, which is normal. 

Jon - 00:36:48: You got it. It's like the buy-in. It's like, you want to play the game, you kind of have to have it.  

Rabia - 00:36:55: Yeah.  

Outro - 00:36:57: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Rabia Khan. In part four, Rabia shares how she founded Serna Bio, why she bet early on RNA-targeting small and how she navigated fundraising while building a platform that challenges, traditional drug discovery models. 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.