Padma Khadakulla is the chief business officer at

A-Alpha Bio, and she has a fascinating career journey. But

what I took away from the conversation was a lot about her passion for

mentorship and her passion for helping companies to really figure

out how to sell themselves, whether they are selling a product

Padma has a really interesting career history and she brought

so many cool insights to the table. If you are someone who loves

networking, Padma also loves networking and she really

She has the real extrovert energy going. I

Yes, absolutely. So anyone who's interested in being a

chief business officer or wonder about how business development gets

done in a biotech, this is really your episode. We

dive pretty deep into a lot of what she does on a daily basis in

that realm. All right, well Padma, thank you so much for joining us today.

We start all of our podcast episodes pretty

much in the same way, which is by asking what did you want to be when you were seven?

Yeah, when I was seven, I wanted to be a teacher. I

was enamored, I was inspired by some of my early

teachers. I loved school. And then as

I moved on for high school, I

loved education. So I wanted to learn more and

hence my journey to do a bachelor's and then a master's and

then a PhD. And so I wanted to study

as long as I could, go as high as I could. And

then I think five years of PhD ultimately got

the realization that, okay, I've studied everything that I could

and this was going to be a lifelong process. It doesn't have to be degrees, but

I will be studying and learning all my life. But I

don't think I want to do bench science as much. It's a

very lonely field. And I came

to the realization that I enjoy being in teams more.

than doing my own research by the bench for years to

come. And so I really moved right after my PhD into

a postdoc and really moved. And back in the day in the

1990s, that was a big deal. People did postdocs, people stayed in academia. You

didn't move to industry. But I decided that I was going

to move to industry and not do basic science or research

and really jumped into project program management and

have been teams. And then from there I moved to this step. So it's

been a long journey, but my love for science, my love

That's great. We hear a lot of awesome career journeys and none

of them are linear. So I think that that's a real takeaway is,

you know, there's a lot of things that we in our company is also like

this. We are science adjacent, right? We're still very close to it, but we're not at the bench

anymore. And there's so many career paths that can be like that. How

did you end up then in business development? That does seem like a little bit

of a shift from project management to business development. Can you walk us

So I started again from my PhD where

I was defending my own experiments and designing my own experiments

to really a technical services scientist where I

was defending other people's experiments and supporting them

with their experiments. But there for a year really gave

me an opportunity to see all technologies and all programs

within the company. And then I picked one of the programs to become a program manager

for that company. I was there for 10 years and that gave

me a phenomenal opportunity to really take multiple

ideas from early stage to launch. And,

you know, I am talking research reagents, which were very quick.

You could put them out there in six months to diagnostics, which

took two to three years to put out there. And therapeutic, right?

I was part of Sutent, which was just finishing

its phase three clinical trial at Pfizer and was

being submitted for a therapeutic product for renal cell

carcinoma. So I was part of that team. So I really saw that trajectory. So

I was very excited about all, I mean, you get to see the whole multitude

of departments and functions that have to come together from marketing, to

manufacturing, to R&D, to quantity, to everybody else

to take a product from idea to commercial. And

so that was all very exciting. Did that a lot, did it across multiple

industries and multiple companies. And then I was

fascinated with business development because you represent a

company with the technology and you go make deals, deals were

very fascinating for me. And I liked the

ability to take all the science and represent the company

for partnerships. And I was actually managing, I went from project

management to doing Alliance management and Alliance manager

does where I work closely with BD and once they signed the deal, they

would put it with me and I was responsible for executing that

deal. So that was my connection between project management to

BD and Alliance management, you know, yeah, I

started itching more and more to do the deals myself. Right.

Rather than execute on a deal that was done. And so the

And so now you are the chief business officer at A-Alpha Bio.

Can you walk us through what like maybe a day in

the life looks like in that job? I'm sure every day is different, but

on a standard-ish day, how would you describe what you do?

We wear multiple hats, I wear multiple hats at A

Alpha Bio, and it's all about value creation

for early stage companies. And you do that

with science. And so I am very involved with the

chief technology officer, with the R&D scientists to

really understand what science we are doing, to explore where

else we need to go. And so I'll sit in many R&D meetings

to soak in the science, to give them feedback on what the

market needs and where are we going down

rabbit holes and what is very relevant. I also do

a lot of outside like market intelligence, business intelligence

to know what are my competitors doing? What deals were signed today?

I certainly link it in quite a bit to understand all the science

and all deals that I made. So that's market intelligence, business intelligence.

And then I'm always connecting with my BD partners in

pharma companies, small biotech companies. Maybe at any point

in time, I'm looking at 40, 50 companies that

I want to connect with. And so part of my day

is also, you know, reaching out to some of these, responding to

them. We may have multiple early stage discussions, which

are always ongoing. So a lot of follow ups, right? I'm

connecting with R&D to get new staff, connecting with my external

BD folk. planning meetings, strategically planning

areas and planning meetings. So I would say my

day is usually meetings. I would say three, four

meetings, a lot of thinking and strategizing for

the future. Do that and lots of follow ups. Stuff that

you know maybe they need to be pinned one more time they were supposed to get me

something and right or planning for so I

like it because it's actually I would say equal parts strategy

and equal parts implementation that's awesome so.

Can you give us a high-level overview of A-Alpha Bio? I

am so enamored by the synthetic biospace. And so if you could tell

So we are a spin-out of University of Washington Institute

for Protein Design, and we have a wet lab platform and

a dry lab platform. The wet lab is a yeast platform,

a synthetic biology platform, where we can measure

quantitatively millions of protein-protein interactions

in a single experiment. And this is, again,

the synthetic biology that allows you two weeks or

less to look at such a large scale of protein interactions.

And then we can take all that data, put it into machine learning,

our dry lab platform to train machine learning

models, validate them and use them to predict

additional biologics or protein structures

or protein sequences. So yeah, and you can do

multiple iterations of the wet lab and the dry lab. And

we have our own internal, and so we work in two spaces, two

major areas. One is biologics, which includes antibodies,

which includes immunocytokines, and we have an internal pipeline

for immunocytokines. And we also work in

another area called targeted protein degradation or TPD.

And there we are doing a novel target discovery

and that can be used for small molecules. So we have signed

deals in both of these in molecular glues, as they

And when you're doing deals and thinking about partnerships, so

I'm assuming these are with mostly bigger companies. Are they with

academic institutions? Kind of what's the makeup of your deals and

Mostly bigger companies, bigger pharma companies, the

deals we have done. We've also worked with academic or

nonprofit institutions, like we have worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates

Foundation. We are currently working with Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory, but Big Pharma. We are also very

interested in working with biotechs and, you know, same-sized

companies. I mean, they have synergistic complementary technologies

and we can work together to co-develop something. So

we are pretty open with the type of partners that

So on a personal note, I'm really interested in your answer to

this. One of the things that we talk about sometimes is networking and

the importance of networking. And I feel as though a large portion of your job

has to be just putting yourself out there and networking with

a variety of stakeholders. Does this come naturally to

you or is this a skill that you've honed over time or have you always just

been like, I'm totally cool to meet everyone. It's fine. Because

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It comes naturally to me and

which was one of the reasons I felt I couldn't sit

at the bench and do my own research. I was more

a people's person i wanted to be part of teams and so right

after my phd it was a conscious decision because of my

personality to move and be in such an extrovert and

enjoy so much being in teams and companies so networking

comes very naturally i get a lot of energy going into a

room not knowing anyone and you know shaking hands introducing

myself and making 15, 20, 30 friends, new

contacts, and then following up with them. And my project management skills

over 10 years have really taught me how you want follow

up and get organized. So networking comes

Well, I think that's a great way to phrase it though. You come out with like 15 to

20 friends. That's like the best way to think about going into a networking event, but

you're just like making new friends. Everyone thinks of it as like, oh, it's a business thing,

And I really truly also believe in building relationships. You

don't go into a room because you want to make a deal. You go in there to

have fun and to make friends and to give and

to want to help them. Right. And then along the process,

there are so many contacts and we have been in touch for two, three

years and nothing has come out from there. No deal has

come out. And then now I also, you know, again,

with being coached and, you know, I now find I

really look to see how can I help these people, you know, maybe the 30 minute

call or, you know, something else I can do, make, help

them connect to somebody else. And who knows, you know, all good you

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point. We have a candidate education

platform where we help candidates with either transitioning into biotech

or getting that next job. And we did a little ask a recruiter event yesterday.

It was all about networking. And so I have two follow

on questions for that. I am not an extrovert. I'm actually

quite introverted. The definition of that for people who maybe don't

know is exactly what you said. You get energy from going into those rooms.

I come out really drained. It's not that I don't enjoy myself, but it's

a bit of an energy suck for me, but just like myself out to go into

those rooms. It is hard for me still. And so I remember when

I finished my PhD and I started this consulting firm, I knew I had to

network. So my secret weapon was I joined

Women in Bio and I volunteered to be a chair of one

of the committees because that gave me almost a platform where

I had to network, but I had a reason. I had an agenda, right? We were planning

events and we were doing all these things, so I had to reach out. So I see

that you're involved with Women in Bio too. It's a fantastic organization. Do

you find that your networking is easier because of that and having that bit of a platform?

Yeah, no, platforms are very, very helpful. And I love Women

in Bio. You know, I'm the SoCal chair for the Executive Women

in Bio. And I completely agree with you.

I'm also part of Boost by BioBreak. There again, we come in

with a common purpose, common theme, and

networking is easy, much, much easy there. And,

you know, similarly, when we go into, you know, receptions or whatever,

Genentech, let's say, is bringing together you know, all their

partners, everyone together, it becomes easier because you

have a common life sciences talk. So certainly

the platforms make it so much easier for networking. The

big thing is to put yourself out there to become members of

And there are just, they're fantastic. You do have to sort of live in

a hub where for some of these, there are some online ones, but Women

in Bio particularly, there's a lot of in-person events and they're sort of in those

science hubs, but Fantastic group. And so

my second follow on was about you're coming at

this from a place of service, not from a place of what can

this person do for me, but how can I be the facilitator? And

we talked about that a bit yesterday too. So can you outline, you

know, you said making connections for people, having calls with people,

what are the sort of ways that you offer up your service during

People know my trajectory and where I have gone. So I will

have a lot of young women who are like, wow, I like the career transitions

you have made. Can I talk to you for like 30 minutes, like

more mentoring type of a thing. So career mentoring, whatever,

I have done that. On the business side, people will usually say,

all right, can you make a connection? I'm trying to reach so and so person in this

company. And so, you know, that's a connection that I would do. On

the strictly BD side, people will also say, you know, I'm trying

to do this deal. And, you know, how do you navigate terms for

this deal? And without revealing anything confidential, I can

still have a good conversation with them. So multiple different

areas in which, you know, you really can. I'm

aligning with a lot of people now for women

who are looking for board roles. And say, okay, how do

you navigate that? And I have gotten from people who

are way more experienced and veterans and, you

know, and as I go through and understand this process, I

am happy to share the same on that topic for women who

are just joining their journey. So multiple

ways that you can totally give something. You

just have to talk for 10 minutes and you can figure out, all right, this is what's

in common. And then open up a little bit more and you will

know what they need. And then, you know, you focus on that. And

certainly I'll always put myself out there and say, okay, this is what I

am looking for. Or I'm not able to get access to so and so company

or how did you do that? So it's. A little research to

see, all right, where they have gone, how they have gone. LinkedIn is

a beautiful resource. And then take it from there. The

follow-ons are good, you know, take time for a coffee, happy

hour, whatever we need to do. We're all busy, but hopefully more in-person

If not, Zoom is always good. I love a good in-person meeting.

I think I'm somewhere in between the two of you. I find a good event is

like just rejuvenating enough. I can't do them all the time, but

I do love getting out there to network a little bit. So I see so many

people who have been or they are active on boards, and

if someone wants to join a board, how do they go about that? What is

It depends, public company boards versus private company boards. I

can speak more for private company boards, but a lot of

it really comes from your network, right? What skillsets you have,

what are they looking for? What's the synergy? That is always

important. And after that, they're looking for people within

their network to see what value they can bring. So

it's always your experience and what you have to offer.

and how it is applicable to what they need.

And, you know, as early stage companies move through their journey,

even in the first three, four years, you know, their needs change dramatically.

So at some point in time, maybe you're looking for connections for GetBC funding.

Then you're looking for connections to get some partnerships done. You

need connections or you need ability to go back and forth.

You need a founding board to talk about your technology and

what products you want to put, like, you know, your roadmap, your technology roadmap.

So it depends on what the company needs and then they

will put a skills matrix and say, okay, these are the skills

that I am looking for. And then they look for board

members and some use consultants and recruiters, but many a

time from what I have heard, it's usually through your

network. And again, your network can be, you know, your first level,

second level, you know, you know, everybody within like three levels or four levels anyway.

With that, how have the needs of boards changed today

versus just a few years ago? I know we've gone through a lot of changes

globally and also with funding. Now, what are you

Boards certainly have changed, you know, certainly

with the diversity. There is a lot of recognition for diversity and

this is gender, age, ethnic groups, race,

all of those. So definitely diversity wise i'm

in public company boards have even mandated that they need so many

women representatives and other diversity classes included

for private company boards so there's enough research and

enough studies out there to show that if you have a divorce board

it's a more productive and efficient board. I see a huge increase

also in independent board members. So you

obviously have your company executors, your founders, co-founders who

hold board seats, your investors who will hold board

seats, and both of them have vested interests for what they want

to do. And so there is a big role for independent board members

to really bring in a complete outside perspective. And

then the value of the board and

you know how they can really bring the whole board

governance from what I see and hear has

been formalized a lot more right. Boards used

to run for. meetings once every quarter

or whatever, now they are more diligent. The expectations from

board members is more. The way board meetings

are run are different and very methodical and very

efficient to get the maximum value out of it. So I believe because

of diversity, because of independent board members and

just the way board meetings are held, boards

Kind of switching back into talking about sort of the more day-to-day aspects

of your job. I'm curious about how you market a

bioscience company when you are pitching to investors. Do

you have any tips or tricks that you could share with everyone about

some key things people should know about when they are ready to get to the point of selling

Yes, it's all about the science, right? So it is, what's

the technology? You may not have a product, right? You're too early to have a product,

but what's the science? And it's all about the product and

the market fit. So what is your product? You're hammered.

And what are you going to solve? Right? And so the product market

fit and showing that is super, super important for the investors. At

the very earliest stages, at the seed round. This is

my technology. Here is the competition. Here is how I'm better

differentiated compared to the competition. And this is

what I'm going to do. This is a problem in the world that I'm going to solve.

Right. And I'm making a diagnostic that will, you

know, detect something earlier or detect something at

a different stage. Or I have a research technology that

will enable all these big pharma companies to discover this

or, you know, sooner or faster or something like that. So you

need to have your value prop, right? Very, very clear.

And the value prop will ride on your technology. It

will ride on your differentiation and what problem you're

going to solve. So I think those are the critical. And then

after that, of course, how much money you're going to raise, how you're going to use

that money, how long it's going to take you. Really a very good execution

plan. And what point will you reach before you need

more funding? What will we deliver? What milestones will

you hit from a science perspective, you know, from taking

product testing, whatever your milestones before you made the next

round of funding. Investors do not want, and they want to see

very crystal clear these things. They do not want

to see markets where you say, oh, this market size is

like a trillion people. They want grounded and

well thought of, backed up by research, backed up

by studies, backed up by data. So key

slides, but what your science can do, how you're going

to make it a product, what you're going to solve, how much money you

need, and what you're going to do with the money. So

deep, deep clarity. Deep clarity. Yeah. And

you want to go multiple, multiple iterations. Your first one

is never going to be the best one. I have known business plans

and investor decks, which have started with a one idea and

completely moved over upon discussing with a

few investors because they were trying to solve a

wrong problem. You know, your science hasn't changed, but what you

were trying to, you know, direct it towards was not

the best one. And upon feedback, consistent feedback, You know,

what we were thinking was not really right. We got to do this. And

then it immediately makes sense. And, you know, and so

I would suggest going to a few investors that you do not, your very

first slide decks to go to investors you don't expect to make deal.

I wouldn't want to go to the ones that you are expecting because that

Well, that's really good advice, though, to anyone listening to this. Like, don't be disheartened

that your first ones are kind of not great, but also maybe don't pitch them to like

I wouldn't say don't pitch it to your dream team and certainly don't

be disappointed because you'll be kissing a lot of frogs.

We've interviewed quite a few people who look at DEX from VC

folks to consultants that work on the strategy side. And

the universal complaint is that slide decks

are pretty much always terrible when they start out. And it's so important because

that's really the thing that has to tell your story. Yeah,

you might get the luxury of standing up and telling your story alongside your

deck, but a lot of the time it needs to stand alone. It needs to stand on

And I would also say, and I know that's what co-founders that

I work with at A Alpha Bio and also previous companies have,

is Surround yourself with mentors, surround yourself with

advisors, you know, scientific advisors, business advisors, legal

advisors, any type of advisors that you can surround yourself

because that will, it's such a steep learning curve

and it is so worth it, right? Because you will continue,

you'll learn a lot. And so I think advisors, I mean, I live and

die by mentors and always my entire career.

I have, I'm going to have two, three, up to six mentors at a

When you talk about, you're gonna have to kiss some frogs and expect

that the first ones aren't going to be great. I think the really important thing here

is that you've had a really successful career and you've done some absolutely

incredible things, but everyone does have some failures, right?

I mean, it happens to the absolute best of us. So do you have any

Yes, I think unless again there are epic failures

maybe but most of the failures will teach you right

you come out of it. I mean I have had places or

roles that I wasn't super excited about and

I hated it during the time but when I came out of it. I

felt I would go back and do that again to

learn what I learned and to better understand for myself what

I like and what I don't like. Right. So I think anything is

really failure, failure, but you make the best judgment at

the time that you are in. But every failure teaches

you so much more on how to navigate.

You just have to go through it. That's what I tell my kids.

You just have to go through it, come out on the other side, and

That's right. Full of hard knocks, always.

It's so true. So when you're thinking about collaborations

and business partnerships and mentors and things like that, where

are you thinking about getting those and what stage are you

thinking about getting those mentors and collaborators in

your startup journey? So if you have a really, really new startup, when's

So you are starting from day one that you incorporated a

company or even before. Right. So you are you have a technology coming

out of academia. You are already looking at collaborators

and partners. Now you haven't had a dedicated business development

person at that time, but you as the co-founder, and I can say

that for our co-founder and CEO who had the

beady hat, and he continues to have the beady hat together with me at

this time, but you are thinking collaborations and

mentors even before you are thinking of incorporating the

company. Then you need to decide how much

is collaborations and VD part of your company strategy.

Are you going 100% partnerships or

are you doing internal development and part partnerships or

are you not going to do partnerships and really focus on select therapeutics

or products you want to build internally. And I'm talking more about a platform

company. Then majority of the people will come in

prior to a series A or right after a seed round, sometime

between seed round and a series A. That's when

a dedicated BD person can come. But BD efforts are

starting way before you even started a company. Because BD collaborations

will do a couple of things. One, they will de-risk. your platform, right?

So they're doing one work. It's an outside party. They will validate your

platform, right? They will give you the awareness you need. You

can publish together, you can do press release. So they do so

much that you could be drinking your own Kool-Aid for

10 years, right? So that's what collaboration is. And of course, they

bring in revenue, which is always good. So Beedi starts

Yeah, that's really interesting. I don't think a lot of founders coming out of academia

really are thinking in that way. So it's really good to hear that

articulated in that way, because people think of business development

as like a really late stage thing a lot of the time, but it's

so true. You talked about alliance managers earlier on,

and that is a career path that a lot of scientists don't really

know about. But that sort of gets you exposure to that partnership aspect.

More academics actually really should think about what are the partnership aspects

That is so true because they really think if I do cool science,

they will come. But that's not true. You know, you

can do cool science, but you do have to talk about your science. You

have to build those networks and those relationships before

they will come. You have to wear the two hats. You have to keep doing

your science as you know, we say, you know, you have to build

your plane, you have to fly your plane, you have to sell your plane, got to do them

Well, let's pull that thread though for anyone who's listening, who might be like,

wow, that actually sounds really cool. Like I'm a scientist and I think business

development sounds neat, but like, how do I get there? What would be the

best steps for someone to maybe start exploring or to take if

I love scientists going into B.D. and more and more so

in life sciences, you would see most of the people in

B.D. come from a science background. So I have a Ph.D. I

have an MBA. I think I consider my Ph.D. more valuable than

the MBA. And because I interact with scientists on

both the sides, you know, in here, as I develop the value proposition on

the other side, as I understand the needs of my partners. So

for all scientists, it is to take your science and

socialize that with potential collaborators. And this

may be academic collaborators. These may be VCs. These may be pharma

companies. There may be other biotech companies. There are so many ways to

make a deal. But it all starts with you talking about your

science and your ideas with the partner. and

then understanding what they need. Many

a time, the science we do comes from ideas or

needs that the pharma partner want. You call it the voice of the

customer. So it is super, super important for the scientists

not only to do the science and communicate what

they're looking to do with the outside world, but

also to have those discussions to really understand what

is it that the companies need, the collaborators need, And

then see, oh, can I change something here to address

that need? Right. And if I do that, can

I make a partnership or a collaboration or a deal with this

particular company? You have to go both ways. Super important.

And as you're thinking about building your team internally, whether

it's in BD or your adjacent verticals, are you

looking for those scientists that are kind of up and coming? How

Yes, I do like scientists. It's easier. They

spend so many years. They know the science. It's easy for them, even

if it's not the same field that they did their work in, for them to quickly pick

up technology and science. But mostly I'm also looking

for, do they have the drive? Do they have the, you know, fire on the belly? Currently

I have alliance management that reports to me. I also have communications,

scientific and marketing communications reporting to me. And both these

teams are very driven in science and are

Is Engel Fabio, are you fully remote or hybrid or are

So we are based in Seattle and we

have a large team that comes to work five days

a week, you know, because they're involved in lab work and we

have a portion of our company that does hybrid work. So

many of them would come in at least three days a week. And

usually Wednesdays are our day where pretty much the whole company comes

together. We have lots of internal meetings, everything, happy

hours and all of that happen on Wednesdays because majority

of the team will be there on Wednesdays. And then we have few, a

very small fraction of employees who are remote and

they will come in at least twice a year, if not more. I

love that we have two onsite events, one

in January and one in July when we

get entire company together for a whole week. And

we celebrate, we strategize, we develop objectives.

Oh, I love our culture here. We like to talk about communication on

this show a little bit as well. And so you said your communication

team reports into you, so that's kind of perfect. But with the teams

that are hybrid, on-site, remote, all of those things, do you have

any communication strategies that have worked particularly well for internal communications?

Yeah. And again, we are very proud of the culture we are

building at A Alpha and how we want to continue to

maintain this culture. We have weekly all hands meeting. So,

you know, our CEO will drive it and we go over our values.

We give kudos to people when they want to give a shout

out to somebody for living up some of the values. We have

announcements for birthdays. We have any business updates that

we want to do. Once a month we have objectives, how

we are progressing across our company and department objectives.

We call those OKR meetings. So we have the weekly meetings, we

have the monthly business meetings. We also do

social events to get everybody together, you know,

and communicate happy hours once a month. Internal communication Slack

is a great tool. We use that and we have so many channels and

we, you know, as we grow so quickly, right. You know,

we were like, I was employee number 15 or something like that two

years ago and we have 50 people. So we have grown quickly.

So the communication is very key and it's very intentional, right? You

That's fantastic. So for investors, like I know we talked about being super

clear and everything, but I guess one of the things is like, could you take us through

kind of like what that sometimes looks like from start to finish? Like you

do your initial pitch and then, you know, what happens from there?

I think people, you know, we talk about a lot, but I don't think we provide a ton of

clarity into like what really goes on behind the scenes when you're structuring a

Yeah. So for a VC, for funding, you know,

different from like a partnership deal, which are, which are different agreements, but

you first need to know your plan, how much money you need. And

this is down to putting your entire budget together. Let's say you're

going to take 24 months to go from point A to point B, right.

And you want money in point A and you'll get to point B. You

really need to know, and this is called use of funds. And you really

need to put a very detailed plan to know how

much money you need and how you're going to spend it and

where you're going to get. And so that is like your background Excel that

drives the dollar value that you are looking to raise. And

so you need to have that, you know, and then you put it

down in deliverables and say, OK, I need so much money

to get to these three milestones. And

so you do your science, you talk about the market, you

talk about how great you are from a market differentiation

and all that piece. You talk where your competitors are and how you're

good. Then when it comes to money, you have done

your homework. to know, to keep your lights on,

to everything, you know, your research budget, to

how many people you're going to hire and what they're going to cost, what levels. It's

a very, very detailed way by which you have estimated

how much money you need. Obviously you're going to put some buffer

to that because things change and then you get your

number to say, I need so much money for me to get

from point A to point B. And what I'm going to deliver to

you, if you fund me with this, is I'm going to be at this stage. I'll

have an alpha version, or I'll have a beta version, or I will sign

two partnerships where they will have validated, you

know, my technology, or I will have finished this animal studies,

right, to take this candidates so much further. So

depending on whichever area, be it diagnostics, research technologies, or

therapeutics, there are very clear milestones

that you need to move to, to know what you're going

to do. And all investors know, because they are sitting in either one

of these portals, right? They're either in funding platform and

research technologies, or they're into diagnostics, or they're after therapeutics

or they are about, you know, services or whatever it may be,

they know exactly what this pipeline of

events looks like. And you have to be as good there

and speak their language. So if you say, I need five million dollars and

It's really interesting. I think a lot of people graduate from their

PhD and they have a great idea and they

want to found a company, but what does that roadmap look like? And without

experts to help you understand all

of those different costs, what we see often is that there are

some incubators that are attached to schools often, like MIT

has a pretty well-known one and they'll give a bolus of funding, but not

a lot of parameters around that. And so we've got first

time founders sometimes that are a bit adrift and they think I have

all this money and it's like, well, that's not very much money. We have to actually really

plan out what is your next step and you need to have that in place. So I

think experts, you know, like you and folks that can really understand

how we craft this message, how do you get that budget, all

of those things. That's so essential at the early stage. It is

I'm proud of several universities who have commercial

arms with amazing business advisors. I know UW does,

right? Who can help you with that? They have programs and

there's creative destruction labs who has multiple sites. I

mean, I sit there as a business advisor. There are

resources. You have to go out and, you know, seek

many of these business advisors and take your Excel

and then say, does it making sense? Is it making sense before you go to

Yeah, it's such a path. It is, it is really interesting. And the,

the number of hats you have to learn to wear as a biotech founder, it's

It is amazing. Yeah, it is staggering. It's an amazing, amazing

growth curve. I have a lot of respect. And a little bit

of envy that I was never that co-founder.

I sit right behind the co-founders always and I enjoy my

role. I love my role. But I have so much respect for co-founders coming

out of academia with their PhD thesis and

Well, I'm curious, you had to talk about a couple of contributions that

you're the most proud of and things that you think have just been the coolest things

Yeah. A lot of it was, you know, I'm

more excited about my work in early stage companies than

at the Pfizer or the big life technologies. One

of my very earlier companies was BD, huge company, but

there was part of portfolio management where we went into

a whole new area and wanted to launch like 250 research

reagents. And so I'm very excited. This was many, many years

ago. We scoured the literature, we made a deal

to get access to those antibodies. They were very

novel. We did the R&D we needed to do, put it

into manufacturing production. That was all my project management role. And

within six to nine months, we had 215 novel

antibodies we put on the market. for research. This was for research used

to enable pharma and all that. So that was one of my very earliest

projects I still speak very fondly about. At

Precision Nanosystems, where I was, I am very

proud of being able to get about $40 million

in funding from the government of Canada. And this was part of

the COVID pandemic. Canada was looking

for more you know, in-country establishment and to

nurture technology. So we did two separate deals with

the government of Canada. One to build a manufacturing facility. The

other one was to move a particular technology and product forward.

So I was very excited to be able to secure that funding. And at

Alfa Bario, I'm very excited to have been able to do three

big partnerships in this market environment with big pharma,

Yeah, this is a tough market. I would definitely be proud of that too. Well,

we have a few closing questions. So we always like

to kind of bring the career question full circle. You've done

some awesome things. And so what's left for you to accomplish?

I love business development. I really do. I like working with co-founders,

enabling technology, roadmap, strategy, and

building company value. Love this. I don't think I'll ever go

back to Big Pharma ever. To work. And going forward,

I think I'm looking forward more to give. And as

an advisor, right, as a mentor, I'm

certainly interested in board service. right, for, again, early stage

companies. So I think next journey, while I continue my

work, I'm really looking for some board roles. And I can see

myself there where I can really enable and impact so

Well, everyone who listened to the show knows that this question is coming because

we ask it to every person. It's my favorite question. What

is your favorite book or a book that you think everyone should read? My

I'm going to sell two books, one that I would like everybody to read, and

the other one is my personal favorite, which is also a good book to

read. The book I read this last year, and it is Let My

People Go Surfing. And this is the book by Von

Schwingart. I think he's the founder of Patagonia.

I love the book. Loved the book and just his career

trajectory and just the way a reluctant

business person as they call him. And he just went

on to make the biggest sustainable

company from something he needed for himself as

he wanted to go mountain climbing. And so phenomenal book,

really, really loved how he passionate about adventure

and what he wanted to do. And then he needed the tools, which nobody had. So

he started a company to do it. Then he expanded for all

the adventurous stuff that he liked to do and then go beyond and

then made a massively profitable company and then donated

it all to foundation and said, this is all for the good of earth.

I am so impressed. I love that book and I've been following him

since. So that's one book. The book that I really do

recommend for everyone, which is also one of my personal favorites, it's

called The Present. It's an old book. It's an easy

read. I cannot even remember the name of the author, but you can look it up. It's just

called The Present. It's a phenomenal book of

how you want to think yourself about, you know, the past, the present,

the future. So it's an easy read, like a 30 minute read, but

it's a book I keep going back to every time I'm feeling no

or anytime I want a little motivation. I

know the whole book, but I still enjoy going

through the book and just how beautifully it's written. So beautiful book.

Oh, those are awesome suggestions. I haven't heard of either one of those and

Where can people reach out to you if they want to learn more or

I'm always on LinkedIn. It's my newspaper in the morning. Um,

I live in San Diego. Uh, you know, my, the company is

in Seattle, so I'm in all the networking thing,

but easiest way is just hit me up on LinkedIn and I

Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This was so much fun. I learned