The Biotech Startups Podcast

Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)

Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building in

How Teaching High School Prepares You to Run a Company | Leslie Loveless (1/4)

Leslie Loveless starts at the beginning: growing up in a close-knit Indiana family, watching her father build a career as a pharmacist, and learning early that education

The Catalyst Mindset Behind a Lean Biotech | Örn Almarsson (4/4)

He then turns to company building at Axelyf: in vivo cell reprogramming for solid tumors, modular lipid nanoparticles, AI-informed discovery, external partners, and a del

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

The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from

Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)

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 Phar

How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)

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 chemis

Don't Build Your Own Cathedral: The Hidden Cost of Lab Space | Philip Borden (4/4)

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 ex

The Biotech Deal That Became a Leadership Crisis | Philip Borden (3/4)

Philip Borden describes leaving Frazier Healthcare Partners for Harvard Business School, where the case method broadened his perspective beyond healthcare and investing.

Cold Calling Your Way Into Venture Capital | Philip Borden (2/4)

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,

What Rural Indiana Can Teach Biotech Founders About Trust | Philip Borden (1/4)

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 th

🧬 Making Lab Data Actionable Through Automation | Nathan Clark Rerelease (4/4)

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 workflow

🧬 Why Wet-Lab Data Needs More Than ETL | Nathan Clark Rerelease (3/4)

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 expl

🧬 Product Thinking, Scientific Progress, & the Work of Building | Nathan Clark Rerelease (2/4)

The conversation then turns to product management. Nathan describes the discipline as understanding why a product should exist, grounding decisions in user needs, and tra

🧬 Execution, Liquidity, & Founder Lessons | Nathan Clark Rerelease (1/4)

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,

🧬 AI, Mechanisms, & the Next Wave of Drug Discovery | David Li Rerelease (4/4)

David Li explains how a research question about mischaracterized drug targets became the starting point for Meliora Therapeutics. He describes how CRISPR experiments and

🧬 De-Risking Biotech's Biggest Bets | David Li Rerelease (3/4)

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 find

🧬 Choosing Conviction Over Convention in Biotech | David Li Rerelease (2/4)

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 w

🧬 The Outsider Mindset Behind Successful Biotech Founders | David Li Rerelease (1/4)

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 po

🧬 This Ex-Googler Replaced a Whole Drug R&D Team | Javier Tordable (4/4)

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 docki

🧬 From Games to Cancer Research: Why Drug Discovery Is an Economics Problem | Javier Tordable (3/4)

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 co