Stavros Papadopoulos: Does Data Management Need Transforming? (Part 4/4)

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. In our last episode, we explored the rapid growth of TileDB, how Stavros navigated the early challenges of building a company, secured key enterprise customers, and pushed the boundaries of data infrastructure in the life sciences. If you missed it, be sure to listen to part three. In part four, we look ahead to the future of TileDB and its broader impact on scientific discovery. Stavros shares his vision for transforming data management across industries. The mindset required to drive lasting innovation and the ongoing challenges of reshaping an entire market. We'll also hear about the lessons he's learned as a founder, the importance of adaptability in a changing industry, and what's next for TileDB. 

Jon - 00:01:10: And that's a really interesting observation because, again, our businesses are very different, but it's the same kind of awareness, like just not knowing. You don't know what you don't know, right? And just like as an observer of this and what I'm hearing, it's kind of an interesting, now that you have the ability to kind of like work with the smaller companies, I'm going to imagine once they do realize that this is something that they can build on, that's like an awesome opportunity because you don't have to rip out, like you don't have to rip out a hundred, you know, like 10,000 vendors, right? It's like, you can be like, you know, it's like, hey, like you can build with us. And this is a very scalable product where it sounds like you're doing almost like open heart surgery on large pharma. Like. 

Stavros- 00:01:52: It's the same example, Jon, it's exactly the same thing as the equipment example. It's exactly the same. Here's why you mentioned the equipment and that resonates very much with me. I understand exactly what problem you're solving there. For us, it's the same. We are talking to startups, some startups. We are talking to them. And in their mind, they already have budget for solution architects.

Jon  - 00:02:15: Yep. Yeah.

Stavros - 00:02:16: But you're doing drug, you're doing therapeutics. And they're saying, no, no, no. We were going to spend $500,000 a year for two or three solution architects. Why? 

Jon - 00:02:25: Why? Why? 

Stavros - 00:02:28: Why? We know exactly what kind of data you have. We can store all of them. Actually, you don't need any solution architect, like zero. And if those solution architects are interesting, they can come and work for us. Like if they like data. If you're into data, come to a data company. There are so many other great companies out there that do data. But if you're therapeutics, focus on the science. Hire the best doctors, biologists, bioinformaticians. These are the kind of people you need right now. You don't need data infrastructure people. Data infrastructure exists. It exists out there.

Jon - 00:03:00: That's exactly it. And the same we have on the equipment side is like, you get the value of equipment by using it, not owning it.

Stavros - 00:03:07: It's the same example. It's the same example. 

Jon - 00:03:10: And we know when Bezos was at Y Combinator talking about, and this is when he was just starting his AWS, kind of spinning up AWS. He was like, why are you guys building server racks? Like, you guys should be focusing on your product. And I think his example is like, he gave the example of a brewer. And the brewers used to basically get all this equipment and then basically became mechanical engineers. And he was like, why are you guys doing that when you shouldn't be focusing on the infrastructure? You should focus on what makes your beer taste better and not being necessarily like, oh, you know, building these vats. And he was talking about that in the context of AWS. He's like, focus on what makes your product better, not building out these server racks and trying to build AWS bespokely. 

Stavros - 00:03:57: It's the same as AWS, no? Why is AWS so successful? AWS prevented so many organizations, including mine, from spending pretty much millions of dollars a year on buying and maintaining equipment and people to maintain it. Of course, dollars to buy, but also maintain. In-house, it's the exact same thing. And that's what surprises me a lot with those organizations that, you know what, it's coming. And it has to. And by the way, you have an obligation to do it because you need to accelerate those therapeutics. You have to. We're rooting for you. We're rooting for you. We are counting on you to accelerate those therapeutics, right? We can help you. We can help you with that. And by we, I don't only mean to LDP, right? I want to be clear. I do believe that we have an advantage over everybody else because we do know the domain. We have very sophisticated technology. Even if others do even a fraction of what we do, adopt them. Don't build yours. Adopt these technologies. Help them grow. They're going to go faster with your help than you building the technology in-house to support your therapeutics drug discovery. 

Jon - 00:05:07: Spot on. And I think it kind of just like it frees up resource, like time and money. And that money can just be reinvested in like high ROI initiatives. Like we were saying, like hire the doctors, hire the MD, PhDs, like the translational folks, the clinical folks, like have that money go there versus to build a bespoke database or to buy equipment. You can't hire a full-time anymore because you just bought a half a million dollar sales order. Like, why are you doing that? And I think exactly what you said, it's kind of, it's like, especially with the past couple of years, it's become, it's now at the forefront. The headlines are painful to see where it's just like, oh my God, like, they're just like, you know, it's been turbulent to say the least. And you have to build for this efficiency, right? You have to, it's like, it's not just like, I'll figure it out later. Like we can just keep doing this bespoke thing. It's like, figure out what makes your beer taste better and focus on that and outsource the rest of it to the people, who were there, that's their life's passion. You're like, TileDB, database folks, let them do the database things. And then so on and so forth. And I, you know, I can see it coming, but I think exactly what it is hard because it's like a, it's a mind shift change and it's a behavioral change. 

Stavros - 00:06:22: That's the most difficult, exactly. And again, I'm transparent even with our investors and everybody else. This is a difficult business to build. Faster businesses, if I find economically, are the ones that the pain is there. There's nothing else I'm doing. And here's a solution I adopt because there's nothing. I may learn it, but it's not that I'm changing from something else. ChatGPT is one of that, if you really think about it. It's an easy example, unfortunately. I can bring up other examples, but that's the easiest. It's not like you had another GPT in-house and we're telling you to use it in a different way, like with goggles and stuff. We're not telling you to use it with goggles. Actually, that's a good example. You're still using the browser. You're not asking Google search. You're asking another search, which is more conversational. And it provides more information. So zero effort, zero, like different app. 

Jon - 00:07:12: Yeah, yeah, different tab, different tab, yeah. 

Stavros - 00:07:14: Zero effort, maximum value. Very easy to adopt. If I told you, you need to use goggles, it wouldn't be successful. It wouldn't be as successful. It would take a long time for people to start wearing goggles and being comfortable with the goggles. Oh my goodness, I'm going to get dizzy. I have used the Oculus and all of that stuff. Like, it's a shift. I'm a gamer, by the way. Sorry, I'm a gamer, as I mentioned, right? Much easier for me to put something on PlayStation rather than use Oculus. Because it's a mind shift. And it's a hassle. Like, now I need to find space. I need to put on the goggles to have the full experience. It's a behavioral change. Without it being unfortunate, it's the same. It's a behavioral change for very good reasons. But it is. Like, before you were using command line tools and now we're telling you no. Before you were downloading files from S3 to your computer with a big security risk, especially for private information. Now we're telling you to do everything programmatically in the cloud so that nothing leaves. Before you were doing, crazy AWS builds and you were not held accountable. Now we're telling people we can monitor that. Like the organization can say, oh, that person spent 10,000 bucks last month. Now we can monitor that. Before you go, it depends on the organization. Some organizations have very strict constraints. Don't get me wrong. But some others don't. And you may run the bill. You may run the bill. So you see, it's a behavioral change. And we know that. We're not illusionary. We understand that. Everybody's trying to craft strategies around that to be able to, to be successful. But, you know, the biggest enemy for everyone, no matter how stereotypical it sounds, is time. Everybody's up against time. And in life sciences, in my opinion. Time is more important for all stakeholders. Because if you're working in life sciences, you have an obligation. You have a moral obligation to be very efficient, if not optimal. Optimal. You have an obligation to be optimal. Every minute that you waste and somebody else in your place would be more optimal, that minute counts. It may cost lives. One minute. It costs lives. So, everybody in life sciences needs to feel this higher purpose and obligation towards being extremely efficient. Extremely. Not even a minute wasted. I wouldn't say the same thing in finance. I wouldn't say the same thing in something else that, yes, it's important for making money. It's important for running an efficient organization. It is very important. But in life science, it's different, man. We're talking about people's lives. It's different. So this is one of the biggest things that I want to put in people's minds with TileDB being life science, is that we all have a common enemy. The enemy is time. And our job is. To help you optimize your work so that you know that you are fulfilling this moral obligation towards the domain. 

Jon - 00:10:16: Spot on. Honestly, I couldn't have summed it up better because I think, and I'm borrowing this from my friend Jake Glanville, but the way he described it, and when I first got my start, I was in academic laboratories, and you're incredibly frugal in academic laboratories, generally speaking. And because of that, and a lot of life science comes from academic research, you come out and you're incredibly frugal. And then at that point in time, you come out of grad school and perhaps you're just not valuing your time enough yet. And then one of the things that kind of occurs in the wet lab is like with academic researchers, you're like, I'm going to make my own media buffer, like risk contamination, just to save a couple hundred bucks instead of going and buying it from MilliporeSigma, where they have a manufacturing facility. That just makes buffer media, everything. And yes, you got to pay a couple hundred bucks, but it saves you hours from having to make it yourself and risk contamination. And you're like, what are you doing? Right. And I think there's this kind of, I just noticed that there's kind of like, it is a hard transition. You talked about like a chasm, but it's like when you come from an, what, because life science is derives a lot from like academic research, you have this academic research mentality and it's hard to turn it off, but you have to flip the switch and start really valuing your time. A lot more because time is of the essence, exactly what you're describing. It's just like. Don't waste your time with that. Focus on the things that are really, really important here. And one of the things too, there's a lot of folks who are kind of in this kind of obviously startups kind of academic journey for all those listeners out there. It's like your time is super, super valuable. It is super, super valuable. And coming out of grad school is kind of hard. You haven't internalized that yet, but just realize that it is. And it is a worthwhile investment. In this case, I was using the buffer example. Save yourself a couple hours, spend a couple hundred bucks, buy the buffer so you can get back and actually run your assay in the same way of TileDB. Don't build the database. Your time is valuable. Have TileDB do it. Have them do it. And then you can focus and you can actually start making like you can accelerate the discoveries and really move the needle far quicker because you're exactly right. The time is of the essence. And like, you know, one, I feel like I found a kindred spirit, Stavros, like really, truly. And this is incredible. And I've been watching TileDB from the stands and like rooting for you because it's like it makes a lot of sense. Before moving on to the kind of like next year, two years, I know you've released a new product, right? 

Stavros  - 00:12:57: Correct. 

Jon - 00:12:57: Can you tell us about that? 

Stavros - 00:12:59: Yeah, absolutely. So this is one of the big things that we do for sure. After all these years of work and shaping what capabilities we want to bring in the market. So this is the epitome of this, the so-called Carrara. We call it Carrara. Carrara, by the way, is a type of tile. So that's why we call it Carrara. We may continue doing that, like macOS. It has the mountains of national parks, right? We want to do something similar so that people can remember. Instead of 3.1, 4.5. They don't care about those. So Carrara, because we have a lot of changes there, it's not just a little minor release, it's a big release. So we named it after something because this is a big thing for us. It pretty much completes the picture. I wouldn't say it completes the features. We have a lot of features that we need to build in order for everyone to be super happy and they bombard us with features. But it tells a complete story for the first time in the lifetime of the company because, as I mentioned before, everything started with arrays, how to structure the data. But this is just one piece of the puzzle, right? Like for that solve scalability, it's not only scalability and performance that we want to solve. We want to solve also productivity. And productivity is influenced by a couple of things. First, the way you organize the data, like where you put it, how to find the data. Like we have spectacular performance, but you need to locate the dataset to query it. You need to locate it, right? How? In the beginning, it was easy. It was like the 1,000 genome project or the UK Biobank dataset. Okay, it's one dataset. I know where the URI is to query it. Now our customers have thousands. And they're making conventions in an Excel sheet. To find them. It's not a great solution, but yes, it solves the problem and they have nothing else. Don't have these fancy catalogs. Carrara has a catalog, a very powerful one. It has a way to structure, to organize your data into folders, hierarchy, team spaces, like very similar to what you see, I don't know, the closest example would be Notion, which we use and we like, but for serious data, like not just reports and markdowns and like really big data, but the same usability, like a very, very easy way to use these data and put them into folders that effectively are data products. A folder now entirely because your code, your documentation, descriptions, your metadata, a big data set, a small data set, code, notebook, for example, a machine learning model, that's a data product. It's exactly what people call data products. And then you have stakeholders, an owner, who can access, monitoring. This is difficult, to do, trust me, you don't do this in-house. Don't do it. Because then you need compliance. You need to be HIPAA compliant, GDPR compliant, you need to have the SOC 2 Type II. But we have all of that. You see, like it's a big product. It's a big product. So this is a new feature, Carrara. We have a much better way to analyze your data, better notebooks, better dashboards, right? You can build your own dashboards. So much easier to build user experience inside the secure environment because that, this is something that people need to understand. Like, there is a big Notion around trusted research environment. A database is a trusted research environment. You see what I mean? Like, the database has all these qualities of a trusted research environment. It's just that the trusted research environment needs more, more tools, more controls. There are more that go into this, but TileDB becomes that. It becomes that, especially with Carrara, it becomes that. It is a trusted research environment, easily. And also one thing that we did, which is quite a big shift for us, but it's necessary, in my opinion, is that for the past several years, we have been very opinionated about structuring the data with our format. We do believe our format is, if not the best, it's extremely competitive out there. It's in the best of your interests to convert your data into our format because you're going to get performance, which means the costs of operation go, they plummet. So it's in the best of your interest. But again, learning in a hard way, that behavioral change is hard. This is how we tell the market we understand. Now you can bring in the files as they are and you can use your own tools that you built over the years. It's fine. But you're going to get the catalog, the governance, the security, the compliance, the trust solution. But you get all of that because we built it anyway for the structure stuff. And now we're bringing this to, again, I don't want to call it a structure, to the file-based solutions that we have that are very bespoke formats, crazy formats, crazy tools. We welcome all of that in the platform now. And that's quite big for us and quite big for you because now you can bring all your data, not just the difficult data, but also the common, the PDFs, right? You can search on the PDFs. You can do LLM searches on the PDFs. You can do a lot of cool stuff securely in the same platform that you would use with power for genomics, transcriptomics, imaging, the difficult, the more difficult stuff. So we're quite excited about this. We have it developed for private previews right now. The customers are going to get it first. And in the next couple of months, it's going to be generally available. 

Jon - 00:18:16: That's so cool. The example, you observed the problem of the, it's very hard to make a big behavioral change, but now you've kind of, you've made it the ChatGPT versus search. It's more akin to just another tab where you're just like, we'll meet you where you are. 

Stavros - 00:18:34: That was a big lesson, Jon. I keep on telling my team, I said, damn. And we didn't know, of course, because of inexperience also, because we had the drive for innovation and we still do. But the big lesson is that innovation doesn't mean market fit. This is exactly the example I'm telling. I'm telling even our team when I was pitching the Carrara design and everything. I was saying folks were 20 years ahead and we are 20 years ahead of the market and we are expecting people to teleport. 

Jon - 00:19:04: Yeah. 

Stavros - 00:19:04: The teleport, it's very hard. Like this was the realization last year, and this is what prompted Carrara and a lot of work internally, frustration, oh my goodness, like we're doing all of that. Like it's a shift. And that's what I'm telling also our engineers, folks, it's the right thing to do. I know it's hard, but it's the right thing to do because we're telling them to teleport. What we need to do now with Carrara is come back, get them from their hand. 

Jon - 00:19:32: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Stavros - 00:19:33: And walk them there. Walk them there. And again, you can still teleport. You're a pioneer. 

Jon - 00:19:40: Yeah. 

Stavros - 00:19:40: And if you're daring enough, right? And you have a big problem, most importantly, you do have the problem that requires teleporting. You can do it, but don't worry. We're solving also the problems of today. And we're going to take you through the whole journey in the next, hopefully, 20 years. Let's see. 

Jon - 00:19:57: That's amazing. Stavros, this is so, I'm so pumped for you. Like when you look forward like a year or two, what's in store for you and TileDB? 

Stavros - 00:20:06: I want TileDB to be more adopted. We have had amazing successes so far. I still believe that we haven't reached the whole market. We have scratched just the surface. We're very proud that a very small team like ours got into Fortune 500 companies and top five pharma. We're proud of that. But TileDB will be successful when the entire community realizes it. And even if they don't adopt TileDB by TileDB, they adopt something that comes close because that's the right thing to do. I want to see big organizations consolidating their infrastructure and doing proper digital transformation. We're helping a couple of Big Pharma already on this, but proper digital transformation, which means consolidation vendors. That's what it means. It means simpler infrastructure, more sophisticated components. Sophisticated components, but fewer components. In the infrastructure, now there are a lot of unsophisticated components, but as a whole, if you pull it off, you do your job. If you pull it off, job is done. Or you do it very expensively. You're wasting money. Put this money in research. Like I know that some pharma has a lot of money in budget. Put whatever you're saving entirely into research. Still a big win for you. I'm not saying that make your books look better, but put it into research. Hire, get another brilliant biologist or a doctor. Like they might help you get faster to where you want to go. Don't spend it on infrastructure. But I want to see the smaller companies adopting us. That's what I want to see, because then we will realize the proper technological shift and behavioral shift that, yeah, you know what? It starts with TileDB. It's not that we're going to get there when we're ready. No, no, you're ready now. You're building infrastructure now. The decisions you're going to make now are going to haunt you down the road. They're going to haunt you. So make the right choice now and build upon it. So for me, this adoption and pull from the market is more important than any revenue, any fundraise, anything else. Because I strongly believe that if this happens, then within two years, three years, we're going to see discovery insights being attributed to our technology. We do that already, especially with Rady Children’s. Very important thing that drives us. We're seeing that with Chance of a Good Work Initiative as well. Like with the models they're building on data on TileDB, huge data on single cell. So big discoveries being done there. And we are helping them. We're not doing the discovery. They do. They are doing the discoveries. We're helping them. But I want to see that at a grander scale. And I want also our team to see that, you know, all these extra hours and craziness and stress, especially in a startup environment, they were worth it. You know, like we did something really, really good for the community, for the society, for the humanity, for all of that stuff. Right. And in the meantime, or in parallel, if the company succeeds, it's a big plus. But it's more than that. It's more than that. There are factors in the market that we cannot predict. A lot of things are not in our hands. But this is because we are doing it. We know that this is within our grasp. This innovation, this acceleration of science is within our control. That's not controlled by funding. It's not controlled by closing another deal. It's controlled by us. We are doing it. So I want this to proliferate. 

Jon  - 00:23:30: That's amazing. Like I said earlier, but I am actually super pumped for you guys. And I feel like with Excedr, I feel kind of like a tandem journey where I'm beating that same drum that you're beating internally. And because at the end of the day, we're all in it for the same reason, is to improve health outcomes for everybody, to live healthier lives. So, you know, I'm rooting for you guys from the stands. I'm super pumped for you guys. And you've been so generous through your time. First off, thank you. But in traditional closing fashion for the podcast, we have two closing questions. First, would you like to give any shout outs to anyone who supported you along the way? 

Stavros - 00:24:07: I've definitely done this already with a couple of individuals because of the conversation and everything. But, and I want to be very careful. There are a lot, like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to upset some people, but I want to say a few words about some obvious. So, first of all, I want to give a shout out to my team, Seth, Julie, Isaiah, the single cell team, the Core Team, the Carrera team, the marketing team, the broader marketing team. Operationally, Tom, Paul, look at my leadership. Without my leadership team, this would never happen. But without the product team, nothing will happen. Without the genomics teams, single-cell teams, nothing will happen. And then without the UI teams. So all my please go to TileDB about and look at every single individual there. This would not have happened without these individuals. I'm representing them here as well as I can, but they should take any glory. I should take any blame. If something goes wrong, you know where to find me. It's me. But even if that happens, they get the glory. Groundbreaking stuff they're doing and the innovation is at the maximum in our company. So big kudos to them. Huge shout out. I want to give a shout out to our investors. Nexus Venture Partners, Two Bear Capital. You know, I'm very lucky, but at the same time, very strategic. I selected the investors that have been throughout a lot since day one and then the others very close to me. But my investors are very unique. We're having board meetings every month. They're very well attended. We have observers. They're participating like crazy. Zero invasiveness. It's all feedback, like actionable feedback. And not only that, beyond that, bi-weekly calls, mentorship, introductions, personal development. My investors are amazing. I mean, they're a lot. And even the strategic, we have strategic investors. Amazing. So big shout out to them. The customers that trusted us also, you can go to the website, see the ones that give us consent. 

Jon - 00:26:15: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the drill. I know the drill. I know the drill. It's like, I got to remember, like, oh, did we get the permission? 

Stavros - 00:26:23: Exactly. So go check them out. And they're amazing because they are truly pioneers trusting a small company like ours, you know, like shaping the product. What can I say? Again, without them, I wouldn't be able to raise money. I wouldn't be able to put together a team. I wouldn't be able to build this stuff that we're bringing to the market. So truly amazing. We're very close to them. Me personally as well. I'm very close to them. We hear them out. We strategize on the product and all of that stuff. Definitely my family has put up with me throughout the years, my wife especially. I mean, I have to.  

Jon - 00:26:56: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Stavros - 00:26:58: Big shout out and it's true, because it's very very hard. I may be, leaving out a lot of people, but you need to understand, the founder usually has to represent the company, I need to speak in these events, like familiarize people, uh, with our technology, with ourselves, put, put their face to the names, and all of that stuff. But it's not me, it's a lot of, again, only for the blame, if something goes wrong it's me. But for anything else, it's not me. It's a lot of people that are contributing to this. A lot. 

Jon - 00:27:29: I love that. And I couldn't have said it better. I think exactly what you said, like it takes a village, even if you're running a wet lab too, it's just like, you can't know everything. So it's like, it is a joint effort of everyone grinding it out, you know, burning the midnight oil. So I love that. I love your shout outs. And then the last closing question, if you can give any advice to your 21 year old self, what would it be?  

Stavros- 00:27:52: Make sure you go to Hong Kong.  

Jon - 00:27:53: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Stavros - 00:27:55: Just kidding. I was just saying, because it's, you know, it continued a good trajectory. And again, even my PhD professional would tell me that again, if you're capable, doesn't matter. If I went to BU, I do believe I would do a good job. If I went to the middle of nowhere, I would do a good job and I would find a way to have fun. You see what I mean? It's just that for me, it worked out. For others, it haven't. But for me, it worked out. But joking aside, everything that I did since then with many mistakes and nothing tragic, but many mistakes, even with the company. And with the company, I'm very strategic. I'm telling, even when we change the strategy and everything, I explain to the team and the board, like, that strategy did not work out. But we need to take action. We need to do this strategy and continue and continue. But do I regret the previous strategy? No, because it was calculated. We had certain inputs. We had certain knowledge. There was zero malice, right? Like, we had the best interest of the company, of the team, of the investors, of everybody at heart. And we judged that this should be the strategy. And then we monitored it and then we calibrated. So I wouldn't say, yeah, I would change this and that. Sure, if you want to do a retrospective to tell you how I would have done it, it would have been different. It would have been different. I would have kept some things and I would not have kept some other things. So, yeah, I would just say, you know, brace yourself. Like, it's going to be bumpy. It's going to be bumpy. Exciting, but bumpy.  

Jon - 00:29:32: I love that. I love that. And really, sometimes that's really it. It's just like, be ready, brace yourself. It's going to be a bumpy ride. 

Stavros - 00:29:39: But don't worry. I would say, don't worry, don't worry, but it's going to be bumpy.  

Jon - 00:29:42: Yeah, and the one thing that really stuck out to me at the top of our conversation is also have fun. That's at least my... 

Stavros - 00:29:48: Yeah, absolutely.  

Jon - 00:29:49: Don't forget to have fun. 

Stavros - 00:29:50: My 21-year-old knew that. 

Jon - 00:29:53: Yeah, I had plenty of fun.  

Stavros - 00:29:54: My 21-year-old self knew that. So that advice would be redundant. 

Jon - 00:30:00: Not needed, not needed. We'll Stavros. Thank you so much. I had a blast. I learned a lot.  

Stavros - 00:30:07: Likewise, I appreciate the opportunity. 

Jon - 00:30:09: And I am truly rooting for you. And, you know, maybe next time when I'm in your neck of the woods, we can grab some coffee, grab a beer. I'd love to meet up. 

Stavros - 00:30:17: Absolutely. Anytime. An opportunity for you to get out of the valley, man.  

Jon - 00:30:20: I know. I know. I need to get out of the bubble. That's for sure. Well, Stavros, thanks again. I'll see you again soon. 

Stavros  - 00:30:27: Thank you. I appreciate you.  

Outro - 00:30:30: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. We hope you enjoyed our four-part series with Stavros Papadopoulos. If you did, consider subscribing, leaving us a review and sharing it with your friends. Make sure to join us for our next series featuring Michael Paliotti, Regional Sales Director at MilliporeSigma. Part of Germany's Merck Group, MilliporeSigma is a global leader in life science tools, providing cutting-edge products, services and expertise that support breakthroughs in drug development and manufacturing. Diagnostics and scientific research. Michael Paliotti is a seasoned sales professional and empathetic leader who has led collaborative and high-performing sales teams for over 16 years at MilliporeSigma. As Regional Sales Director, he has effectively coached team members in digital sales strategies, consultative selling, territory strategy development and sales data analysis, leveraging his scientific expertise and business acumen. He has built strong relationships with key opinion leaders, core facilities and decision makers across pharma, biotech and academia. Prior to MilliporeSigma, Michael held senior research positions at Cellomics, Genoptix, and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. Drawing on this decade of experience in lab management, operations and administration, Michael intimately understands the challenges facing biotech startups and research institutions and offers insights that listeners won't want to miss. 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.