The Biotech Startups Podcast

Afleveringen

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  The Delivery Problem Behind Moderna's Breakthrough | Örn Almarsson (3/4) 21.09.2026 29min

  The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.
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  Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4) 17.09.2026 30min

  At Merck, a three-month visa detour exposed Örn to another laboratory and reinforced the value of adaptability. He then describes leaving a secure role for Transform Pharmaceuticals, building a small team and collaborative culture, developing new formulation technologies, and helping create the patents and assets that led to a Johnson & Johnson acquisition.
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  How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4) 14.09.2026 25min

  He describes his first research opportunity at the University of Iceland, an early industry project in Copenhagen, and the mentors who pushed him toward bioorganic chemistry. The conversation follows his move to UC Santa Barbara, his work with Tom Bruice and Alex Klibanov, and the networking connection that led to Merck.
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  Don't Build Your Own Cathedral: The Hidden Cost of Lab Space | Philip Borden (4/4) 10.09.2026 43min

  Philip breaks down the hidden costs of traditional lab leases, from equipment maintenance and utilities to medical waste, freezer alarms, and unused square footage. He explains how flexible space can help emerging companies stay focused on milestones while preserving critical capital.
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  The Biotech Deal That Became a Leadership Crisis | Philip Borden (3/4) 07.09.2026 30min

  Philip Borden describes leaving Frazier Healthcare Partners for Harvard Business School, where the case method broadened his perspective beyond healthcare and investing. He explains why he returned to healthcare investing after graduation.
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  Cold Calling Your Way Into Venture Capital | Philip Borden (2/4) 03.09.2026 21min

  Philip Borden explains how realizing he did not want to pursue a PhD or spend his career at the lab bench led him toward venture capital. With a molecular biology degree, limited finance experience, and a list of biotech VC firms, he picked up the phone and cold-called his way into Frazier Healthcare in Seattle.
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  What Rural Indiana Can Teach Biotech Founders About Trust | Philip Borden (1/4) 31.08.2026 17min

  Philip Borden grew up in Plymouth, Indiana, in a family shaped by agriculture. He talks about his grandparents' farms, his father's work as an agricultural lender, and the early lessons he absorbed about local businesses and long-term relationships.
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  🧬 Making Lab Data Actionable Through Automation | Nathan Clark Rerelease (4/4) 27.08.2026 34min

  In this part of the podcast, Nathan Clark explains how Ganymede approaches data integration and automation in life sciences. He discusses why lab instruments and workflows require customized connectors, how a developer platform can help teams adapt integrations quickly, and why moving data online is only part of the challenge.
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  🧬 Why Wet-Lab Data Needs More Than ETL | Nathan Clark Rerelease (3/4) 24.08.2026 29min

  Nathan Clark walks through his work at Benchling, where he managed the Insights business intelligence product and helped develop an early machine learning effort. He explains why operational wet-lab data is fundamentally different from omics data, and why the relationships between samples, programs, instruments, locations, and people matter as much as the experimental results.
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  🧬 Product Thinking, Scientific Progress, & the Work of Building | Nathan Clark Rerelease (2/4) 20.08.2026 27min

  The conversation then turns to product management. Nathan describes the discipline as understanding why a product should exist, grounding decisions in user needs, and translating research into what a team builds. His advice for early-stage founders is direct: stop coding until they've done enough customer research to understand the problem.
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  🧬 Execution, Liquidity, & Founder Lessons | Nathan Clark Rerelease (1/4) 17.08.2026 36min

  Nathan Clark reflects on the formative influence of his entrepreneurial father, who showed him that business and even home building are learned through research, effort, and execution rather than secret insight. Nathan also discusses his unconventional high school experience, his decision to study business and finance at the University of North Carolina, and the early interest in biology and futurism that stayed with him.
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  🧬 AI, Mechanisms, & the Next Wave of Drug Discovery | David Li Rerelease (4/4) 13.08.2026 27min

  David Li explains how a research question about mischaracterized drug targets became the starting point for Meliora Therapeutics. He describes how CRISPR experiments and follow-up biology challenged the accepted mechanism for cancer drugs, and how the company uses AI and machine learning to connect chemistry, biology, biomarkers, and patient populations.
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  🧬 De-Risking Biotech's Biggest Bets | David Li Rerelease (3/4) 10.08.2026 20min

  In this part of the podcast, David Li, CEO and co-founder of Meliora Therapeutics, reflects on his experience helping build Everest Detection around the challenge of finding lung cancer earlier. He discusses the potential of a noninvasive, blood-based test, why lung cancer can be difficult to detect in blood, and how access to early-stage clinical samples helped the team investigate the problem.
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  🧬 Choosing Conviction Over Convention in Biotech | David Li Rerelease (2/4) 06.08.2026 25min

  In this part of the podcast, David Li reflects on leaving finance after realizing that an investing career would not give him the tangible impact he wanted. He explains what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
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  🧬 The Outsider Mindset Behind Successful Biotech Founders | David Li Rerelease (1/4) 03.08.2026 30min

  In this part of the podcast, David shares how the Roy Vagelos Life Sciences and Management dual degree program at the University of Pennsylvania opened his eyes to the possibilities of combining scientific discovery with business acumen. A pivotal summer internship with Arie Belldegrun at UCLA—during which Kite Pharma was born—planted the seed for his future in life sciences entrepreneurship. He also discusses his transition into finance, landing at Goldman Sachs, and the lessons learned from sitting in boardrooms alongside C-level executives at critical moments in companies' life cycles.
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  🧬 This Ex-Googler Replaced a Whole Drug R&D Team | Javier Tordable (4/4) 30.07.2026 59min

  In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable unpacks why he left Google to solo found Pauling AI and how its agentic platform automates computational chemistry—from docking to ADMET—collapsing months into days.
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  🧬 From Games to Cancer Research: Why Drug Discovery Is an Economics Problem | Javier Tordable (3/4) 27.07.2026 22min

  In this part of the podcast, Jon and Javier explore Javier's years as technical director in Google's Office of the CTO, where he worked with the world's biggest gaming companies—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Unity—helping them leverage Google Cloud technology. Javier then shares the deeply personal story of how his father's passing from cancer became the turning point that pulled him into life sciences, and how he taught himself biochemistry and pharmacology through Harvard Medical School's HMX program.
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  🧬 16 Years at Google Taught Me How to Scale From 1 to 150 People | Javier Tordable (2/4) 23.07.2026 28min

  In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable shares his early career journey—from starting at Microsoft to spending 16 years at Google as a Staff Engineer and Technical Director. He reflects on the engineering-driven culture at Microsoft and the welcoming environment that shaped his foundation in tech.
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  🧬 Video Games & a Whim Led Me to Microsoft | Javier Tordable (1/4) 20.07.2026 26min

  In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Javier Tordable, founder and CEO of Pauling AI, a company building the first fully autonomous drug discovery platform that enables scientists to go from a research idea to validated drug molecules in days, not years. Named after Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, the company reflects Javier's conviction that first principles engineering can be applied to one of science's most consequential problems.
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  🧬 Crossover Investing, Gene Therapy & LP Trust | Stephanie Sirota Rerelease (3/3) 16.07.2026 30min

  In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she traces RTW’s evolution from a lean public-equity fund into a major life sciences platform spanning crossover investing, company creation, and global commercialization. Stephanie explains how RTW built the modern crossover ecosystem, why they chose to found Rocket Pharma instead of a fleet of gene therapy startups, and how a disciplined, science-first research process underpins the firm’s long-term, concentrated investing strategy and deep alignment with LPs and portfolio founders.