Salvador Badillo-Rios, an Associate at the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC). We talk about the origins of the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC); funding priorities; criteria for funding; application process; and insights into best practices for applicants. Show Notes: - Website: National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) - Building hardware is hard - A new DoD initiative that enables dual-use hardware startups - Help product development by addressing the shortfall of privat...
Oct 04, 2022•37 min•Ep. 30
Arkady Hagopian is an experienced professional in the market intelligence reports space both in industry and academic startup sectors. In this episode of lab to startup, we will talk about what market intelligence reports are; the building blocks of these reports; how startups could build one; mistakes to avoid; how to decide on hiring a firm if you are looking to do so. This is going to be a master class for startups on this subject Shownotes: - What are market intelligence reports? - Breakdown...
Sep 20, 2022•49 min•Ep. 29
Xiaoxi Wei, Ph.D (CEO) and Mark Kline, Ph.D. (CTO) are the cofounders of X-Therma, a biotechnology startup developing a breakthrough technology for regenerative medicine and organ preservation. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the challenges around organ preservation and transplantation; and how a technology they developed at Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory is being used to increase the life of organs to up to a week.We will talk about the inspiration to launch the startup,...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 28
Regis Kelly and Doug Crawford have been instrumental in building the Bay Area life sciences startup ecosystem over the past two decades. They continue to grow this ecosystem, making it easier for aspiring founders to translate their research to products at startups. In this episode of Lab to Startup, we talk about the story behind building QB3 that started over two decades ago; the challenges they had to overcome; the evolution of academia and biotech startups from 1970’s to the current day; mac...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 27
Alice Zheng is a Principal at RH Capital, a venture fund investing in early-stage high-impact companies across the reproductive and maternal health landscape. Alice holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and MD and MPH from the University of Michigan. Alice was previously a women’s health practice leader at McKinsey & company. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about femtech and women’s health which is gathering some momentum of late; investment thesis of RH Capital and ways they ...
Aug 09, 2022•53 min•Ep. 26
My guest today is Rachel Haurwitz, co-founder, President and CEO of Caribou Biosciences. Caribou is a CRISPR genome editing company spun out of Jennifer Doudna’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley. In this episode of lab to startup, we will talk to Rachel about how she built Caribou right after finishing her PhD in Jennifer Doudna’s lab, and went all the way to taking the company public last year in the midst of a pandemic. We will talk about how she took a very nascent idea of CRISPR...
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 25
Karthik Balakrishnan (CEO) and Anand Kesavaraju (Chief Strategy Officer) are the co-founders of Nodexus, a Biotechnology startup that is developing scientific tools to accelerate biological workflows and make them universally accessible. Their first product is a single cell sorting and dispensing machine. In this episode of lab to startup, we talk about the problems around single cell sorting and the solution they have come up with; the evolution of technology, challenges and advantages of growi...
Jul 12, 2022•56 min•Ep. 24
Dr. Neil Ray is the Founder and CEO of Raydiant Oximetry, a medical device company that has developed a safe and non-invasive technology that directly monitors babies’ oxygenation during childbirth. This prevents unnecessary C-sections for women during childbirth, while keeping the newborn safe. Neil is a clinical anaesthesiologist by training, who gave up his medical practice to build this startup. We talk about the underlying technology, the challenges Nail had to face while transitioning to t...
Jun 28, 2022•53 min•Ep. 23
Dr. David Kirn MD , is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of 4DMT , a clinical gene therapy company, and was founder and CEO of Ignite Immunotherapeutics, recently acquired by Pfizer. David is a Physician-scientist and serial biotech entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the industry with a focus on viral vector-based therapeutics including gene therapy and oncolytic virus cancer immunotherapy, and is also a Professor at UC Berkeley actively teaching and mentoring students in ...
Jun 14, 2022•49 min•Ep. 22
My guest today is Hunter McDaniel, the founder and CEO of UbiQD, a startup exploiting quantum dots to improve agricultural yield in greenhouses and generating electricity by embedding them into windows. In this episode of Lab to startup, we talk about how non-toxic quantum dots were developed at Los Alamos; the evolution of the use cases; fundraising trials and tribulations; the complications of convincing multiple stakeholders in the solar space; and how Hunter’s grit and persistence helped in ...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 21
In this episode of lab to startup, we talk to Marcus Lehmann, the Co-founder and CEO of Calwave Energy. Calwave is unlocking the power of the ocean by harvesting the dense energy packed in waves, which is about 30-60 times more dense than solar or wind! We will talk about the underlying technology development, engineering challenges, partnerships that helped them learn faster and how they are currently testing their product under water near San Diego, California. One of the biggest surprises for...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 20
Sandy Kory is a Managing Director and co-founder of Horizon Partners; and most recently announced a new Seed Stage Venture Capital Fund HorizonVC, where he is a General Partner. Sandy has been advising bootstrapped technology companies for over 15 years and co-leads every client engagement. HIs approach is informed by actively investing in technology startups such as Palantir, Canva, and Zoox that went on to become unicorns. This episode is going to be an M&A 101 class for startups. Show not...
Mar 29, 2022•49 min•Ep. 19
Keis Ide is a partner at UTEC, a Japanese Venture capital firm investing in deep tech across the world. Keis focuses on innovative technologies as well as IT-enabled solutions. He spent 15 years in the US, half of which in Silicon Valley. He was awarded Forbes Japan Midas List (2017, 2020), Japan Venture Award (2021). UTEC has been working with academia in Japan and abroad including the University of Tokyo. They have supported technology ventures that are pioneering frontiers to solve global iss...
Mar 08, 2022•47 min•Ep. 18
Alexandra Wright Gladstein is the founding CEO of Ayar Labs. Alex met her co-founders, Chen Sun, and Mark Wade at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was pursuing her MBA. We talk about the research that resulted in launching Ayar labs, the learning curve that she had trying to master the technology while being a non-technologist and successfully driving the company; licensing, fundraising trials and tribulations; being a woman in tech; Me too movement; how to differentiate betw...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 17
Prof. Amy Herr is the Executive Director of the Bakar Bioenginuity Hub (BBH) and Prof. Regis Kelly is the Director of Bakar Labs at the University of California, Berkeley. BBH is a new campus initiative that aims to launch the startups at Bakar Labs , a world-class incubator. The facility is open to teams from around the world — a space where anyone can leverage all that Berkeley has to offer. Bakar labs will rent labs and offices to as many as 80 startup companies. The incubator will also provi...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 16
Liam Berryman (CEO) and Lance Brockway, Ph.D. (CTO) are the co-founders of Nelumbo, a startup developing an advanced materials platform focused on improving the energy performance and minimizing corrosion challenges with heat exchangers in Air Conditioners and also mitigating icing on outdoor units and refrigeration. They are also developing water repellent material to replace PFAS in millions of products. We talk about the need for anti-icing technologies, the solution they have developed; and ...
Jan 25, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 15
Jalel Sager, Ph.D. (CEO), Austin Cappon (Networks & hardware), and Jonathan Lee (Senior R&D Engineer) are the co-founders of a California based startup, New Sun Road (NSR). They develop cloud-based technology systems designed to distribute energy (clean technologies), and internet connectivity issues for off-grid communities around the world. We talk about how New Sun Road originated from a class at UC Berkeley that led to the evolution of various products that now is able to provide ren...
Jan 11, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 14
Irene Griswold-Prenner, Ph.D., is the founder and CSO of Nitrase Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company deploying its unique NITROME platform to unlock the therapeutic potential of nitrases, a new class of enzymes discovered in-house that offer the promise of a pipeline of therapies against a broad variety of diseases. Their breakthrough discovery of the enzymatic nature of protein nitration by nitrases, as well as our understanding of their exquisitely selective and specific mechanism of act...
Dec 21, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 13
Summary: Marija Vrljic, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Scalmibio, an early-stage biotechnology startup that developed a transformational technology focused on oncology applications. We talk about the inspiration for launching the startup, how she was able to bootstrap the company, raised non-dilutive funds which ultimately led to being acquired in October, 2020. Show notes: - ScalmiBio is a startup that was born when Marija was diagnosed with thyroid cancer - Technology: Antibody prodrugs t...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 12
Douglas Crawford, Ph.D., is the General Manager of MBC Biolabs, Managing Partner of Mission BioCapital, a VC fund investing in life sciences startups at the seed and Series A stages. We talk about the facilities that help scientists at MBC Biolabs, how to get accepted to the labs, partners, golden tickets and stories of startups; funding hypothesis, the impact, and investment criteria to get funded. Show Notes MBC Biolabs Mission Bay Capital - Started with a realization that nothing that is disc...
Nov 23, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 11
Rocket Fund : https://rocketfund.caltech.edu/ Email: Stephanie.yanchinski@caltech.edu Application process and background information: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19ubtkD1ziVeXqDChnL00gP6wDFWTsQGb/view?usp=sharing Application: https://platform.younoodle.com/competition/caltech_rocket_fund_2022 - A program that has a way to introduce startups to decision makers at utility companies, who can help discuss their needs and adopt new technologies. - They grant $25,000- 75,000 to startups that provi...
Nov 16, 2021•59 min•Ep. 10
Mark Brinkerhoff is the President of Fusion Design, a consultancy that has helped design over 1500 hardware products from concept to creation stages. We cover the concept of design, building the requirement documents (MRD, PRD), prototyping, iterations, costs and timelines for prototype development, stories of successful products developed and end with future of outsourcing and local sourcing. Show Notes: Fusion Design: https://www.fusiondesigninc.com - Products that don't succeed are generally ...
Nov 09, 2021•40 min•Ep. 9
Mission Bio is a startup that pioneered high throughput single cell sequencing. We talk about how they are helping researchers and clinicians unlock single-cell biology to enable the discovery, development, and delivery of precision medicine; the underlying technology; how they decided between single cell RNA sequencing vs single cell DNA sequencing; founding story till the recent change in leadership, and future goals. Show Notes - Adam questions his students- "take a step back and tell me why ...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 8
Voler Systems - Most challenging projects are the ones where the customer/client doesn't listen. - Current and future states of wearable industry and future - Remote monitoring of patients is here to stay (thanks to COVID) and wearables are going to play a big role. - Advances in low power communication direct to the internet - Phases of product development - Risk management in prototype development - How to respond to an investor when she/he asks an entrepreneur about the price of a product - N...
Oct 26, 2021•49 min•Ep. 7
4D Molecular Therapeutics: https://www.4dmoleculartherapeutics.com - Gene therapy was risky, but Dave took the leap of faith counting on a few things- gene therapy becoming big one day; AAV is going to play a big role; and that the natural forms of AAV were not going to cut it. - 14 years of research in academia before launching the startup - AAV has passed through several boom and bust cycles, and the current timing is great. - Three products in the clinic and more n the way - Disease first app...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 6
Manan Mehta is the founding partner of Unshackled ventures. We cover the thesis behind funding immigrant entrepreneurs- more specifically about their process for funding startups and how they help them with their visa issues. - A high conviction "friends and family" investor that removes immigration hurdles & gives you a network to succeed faster. -- Connecting the unconnected and supporting the startups with capital and customers - Quick decision process and communication with founders even...
Oct 12, 2021•46 min•Ep. 5
Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a pioneer of software-defined networking, and a co-founder of Nicira Networks. We cover the lessons learnt from Martin's journey as an academic entrepreneur founding Nicira and factors that aspiring entrepreneurs planning to translate their research to products should consider. - Story of an accidental Ph.D., turned into an accidental but very successful entrepreneur - Shares how working with others during grad school helped his e...
Oct 05, 2021•50 min•Ep. 4
My guest today is Amanda Cashin, the Co-Founder and Global Head of Illumina Accelerator, which focuses on building genomics-driven startups. We talk about: Accelerator program, sequencing support, seed funding, training and the selection process. Partnering with leading angel and venture capital investors to help the startups Latest partnership with Sequoia Capital to support an incubator in China. Role of storytelling Future vision and how next generation sequencing is going to advance healthca...
Sep 28, 2021•37 min•Ep. 3
In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Shannon Ciston and Branden Brough. Branden is the Deputy director of Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs and Shannon is the Director of the User Program. We explore various resources that Molecular Foundry offers like: World-class scientists with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and state-of-the-art instrumentation. How to get accepted to the program Cost to users (mostly free) Intellectual property rights from usi...
Sep 14, 2021•37 min•Ep. 2
In this episode of Lab to Startup, I speak with Brian Feth and James Lim, co-founders of XCellBio. We explore the startup story and learn about: The founding story- the initial hypothesis behind the product they wanted to build and how the technology evolved since then based on customer feedback Fundraising trials and tribulations How there was a lesson hidden in every “No” they received from potential customers and investors Role that partnerships played Traits like flexibility, open communicat...
Sep 14, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 1
