ScienceLife SciencesBusiness

The Biotech Startups Podcast

Excedr

The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr features weekly conversations with founders, scientists, and investors driving biotech innovation. Host Jon Chee dives into the challenges of building biotech startups, from pre-seed to IPO. New episodes every Monday and Thursday.

Play

Open in

36 episodes
a few times a week
Avg 30 min
English

Episodes 36

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

#280
Yesterday · 34 min
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 mattered even if the eventual career path was left up to her.
#279
Thursday · 25 min
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 deliberately lean operating model. The conversation closes with the mentors, expectations, and leadership philosophy shaping his next chapter.
#278
September 21 · 29 min
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 tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.
#277
September 17 · 30 min
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 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.
#276
September 14 · 25 min
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 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.
#275
September 10 · 43 min
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 explains how flexible space can help emerging companies stay focused on milestones while preserving critical capital.
#274
September 7 · 30 min
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. He explains why he returned to healthcare investing after graduation.
#273
September 3 · 21 min
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, 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.
#272
August 31 · 17 min
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 the early lessons he absorbed about local businesses and long-term relationships.
#271
August 27 · 34 min
🧬 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 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.
#270
August 24 · 29 min
🧬 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 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.
#269
August 20 · 27 min
🧬 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 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.
#268
August 17 · 36 min
🧬 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, 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.
#267
August 13 · 27 min
🧬 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 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.
#266
August 10 · 20 min
🧬 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 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.
#265
August 6 · 25 min
🧬 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 what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
#264
August 3 · 30 min
🧬 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 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 si
#263
July 30 · 59 min
🧬 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 docking to ADMET—collapsing months into days.
#262
July 27 · 22 min
🧬 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 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 Sch
#261
July 23 · 28 min
🧬 16 Years at Google Taught Me How to Scale From 1 to 150 People | Javier Tordable (2/4)
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.

Showing 1–20 of 36 episodes