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You can also discover more content, like other episodes, transcripts, essays, and videos atnfx.com. And now on to the show. So, hello. This is Emily. General partners and FX, investing in, companies Flint intersectional biology and technology. And today, it's my pleasure to be with 2 of my favorite people So Jen Dion, founder and CEO of Pumpkins seed, and a Morgan Stanford professor. Hi, Jen. Hi, I'm Ray. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Great. And then Yaneve Beller, co founder and CEO of Elevent Therapeutics in the Morgan Columbia professor. Hey. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. And the reason I'm saying that there are Morgan professors is we'd like to talk about scientists and entrepreneurs. So we're going to talk about scientists, leaving academia to start a company. Now usually, it's all the professors. Right?
Usually, the professors are the scientific advisors and the PhD or post of the clips, but in this case, it's 2 amazing professors that published a lot and are very success solving top universities around the world that decided to leave and stop companies. So the first question is, you know, maybe if you can take us through your journey from PhD to professor, to founder. We'd love to hear about it and your companies. Let's start with James. Cool. Yeah. Thanks, Umree. Really great question.
Maybe I'll start off saying that I grew up in Rhode Island on the East Coast of the United States, and my mom was a nurse. My dad was a construction Currier, and my inspiration for science actually came from the X Files where I would watch special agents, Fox Mulder, and Dana Scully, basically solve mysteries on a daily basis or whenever the latest X Files episode came out.
So when I was very young, I thought I wanted to be a paranormal researcher just like them, and I would go to Brick and mortar stores and start reading about metaphysics, and it turns out the metaphysics section right next to kind of astrophysics and quantum physics. So gradually, I kinda made my way into, like, heavier and heavier physics topics and decided that would be a really fun career to pursue.
So I did my undergrad at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in both physics and, system science and mathematics. Then went to Caltech in Pasadena to get my PhD and applied physics. And at Caltech, I was exposed to the pretty wondrous world of nanoscience and that to create some really cool new materials and devices, including negative refractive index materials and kind of nano scale opt co modulators and, received a faculty offer from Stanford right after graduation.
But to be honest, at that point, wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my career or what sort of science I wanted to pursue. And most of my closest friends at Caltech were actually in chemistry and biochemistry. Throughout the course of my Pete had exposed me to the amazing advances that were happening both in synthetic chemistry and in synthetic biology.
So I wound up deferring my faculty position for a year to do a postdoc in chemistry that was up at Berkeley and thought was that I could learn a bit more about some those incredible advances happening both in organic and inorganic synthetic chemistry and biology. I had a great time as a postdoc and wound up starting as a faculty member at Stanford about a year after that postdoc.
So I've been there since 2010 in the material science department and also in the radiology department in the school of medicine. And I've largely focused on, like, new ways to kinda wield light at the nano and molecular scale. In other words, we use light to detect and also to direct molecules, you know, with an emphasis on improved health and sustainability.
And in the past, you know, decade, but probably, especially, like, you know, punctuated by the pandemic, you know, I've realized that being an academic scientist allows for forefront research to happen, kind of, regardless of how fundamental that research is. And I think that's one of the incredible things about, you know, academia. Like, as long as you're pursuing state of the art rigorous creative science. Like, there is a space for good work to be done in academia.
But to do impactful work, I think it's really critical to drive that innovation, that happening in the lab out into the world. And that's ultimately what led me to being a founder. I think my research group at Stanford has always tried to focus on, you know, innovative and impactful technologies. And if you really wanna get that out into the hands of, you know, the broader public, it's, you know, critical to drive that innovation out yourself.
So I think being a founder is the path that allows for the most accelerated translation of impactfully fruitful technologies out into the world. So, yeah, in about 5 minutes, that's my journey from PHD to founder, and now I'm super excited to be working with NFX and Omri on my first company pumpkin seed, which essentially imagines life without labels.
So how can we do life speed reads of biological bits you know, be it, proteins, gene fragments, metabolites, whole cells without having to do labels. Amazing. Thank you so much. And Yaniv actually didn't go from studying his own from academia to starting his own company. In the middle, he went to a big company became CTO bad company, but Yaniv, go ahead. Tell us about your story. Yeah. It's fascinating. Jen, we have, I think, like, some power like lines and some things that are quite different.
So, yeah, it's it was exciting to hear what what you said. So I started my career. I was always a nerd and always, like, was interested in how things work kind of, I think about things, but I think I got my best entrepreneur training while I was at the army. I joined. In Israel, we have a mandatory army service.
I joined at age of eighteen just directly from high school to the Israeli NSA, and it's very interpenur place to be there, right, because it's like, it's a big place on one hand, but it's very, like, bottom up approach, not like a ordinary army where you get, like, orders and things like that, you can come up with, like, totally crazy projects.
And if you convince enough Pete, they will actually allow you to do this type, and you can very, like, quite rapidly be in front of the head of this unit and personally is usually like twenty five years older than you and and speak with this person if you have a very good idea that you can defend So it was a lot of fun for me.
I stayed there for 9 years looking at many things related to, like, you know, scientific inquiry, but kind of like less, like, academic type of inquiry, but more kind of like type of like street fighting science that you need to get things done quite quickly and and get to the bottom of thing very rapidly and to deploy and to convince people and what you do is actually worth pursuing.
And after 9 years over there, did my undergraduate while I was my army service in computation neuroscience at elviv University. And during that time, I also went to cold Spring Harbor to do a summer program, and I fell in love in the place, and I decided to apply for a PhD in the US. And this was quite quite amazing. I moved to Coltsman Harbor. It was a very rapid PhD of a three and a half years.
I was lucky and I lived with Jim Watson in his house for this, like, 3 years out of this three and a half years was very generous to us. That's why I lived with my wife there. And after that, I now decide to focus on high throughput sequencing. Which was at that time was, you know, kind of like an emerging technology. I knew how to program. I loved, like, thinking about engineering, so I started working on multiple algorithms for high throughput sequencing.
And after I graduated, I immediately got a position as an independent PI at the WhiteHat Institute of Morgan moved there and decided to focus on human genetics and looking at how the intersection between the internet and you mentioned genetics. For instance, how we can recover the surnames of males by looking at the y chromosome and using some internet searches, we can actually identify them. This manuscript created quite a steer.
So after a few years at MIT, I was recruited by Columbia University, to be an associate professor of computer science and computational biology, move my group over there. And maybe I think kind of like one of my frustration was that in 2016, my lab decided to put a website called DNAland.land that allowed individuals to contribute their direct to consumer genomics results to scientific studies to this website.
And in exchange, we analyzed their genome and decompose their ethnicity, find relatives, did some fun analysis of their genome, and we consented them to volunteer their genome. This website, so can't Flint if you did it 23 and me, you could actually download your text file and upload it to this website. And it was a very success full project within the 1st week, we collected more than 3000 genomes using this strategy.
And if you think about how much time it takes for, like, a single lab to collect 3000 genomes. You you know, we solved that in a week. This was quite amazing. And the website took off, and we collected over 200,000 genomes using this strategy.
But the frustration part was that it was very hard to scale up this website using academic Pete Luckily, at a very good programmer that we worked for years, but you need more than the programmer and the 2 PhD students to scale up a web that you need customer support because people complain. So I need to hire someone that is just, like, handling emails 3 times a week. And you need a product manager, but there is no type of role as a product manager in academia.
And you need all these type of things that basically in academic setting, it was nearly impossible. To accomplish. And it was just, kind of, like, for me, it was a lost opportunity because we could scale a website, I think, like, ten times bigger had we had, you know, the right infrastructure looked like technical infrastructure, not the computing infrastructure was easy, but the HR infrastructure to hire the right people to retain talent and not to like, compensate with academic salaries.
You know, it was a successful project. We collected many months. We published it in a nature genetics, but I felt that we could do much Beller. So then about 2 years later, I got contacted by my heritage with a consumer genomics company as well and asked me whether I would like to join the company for a full James. I thought, you know, that's like my opportunity. They just launched their DNA product.
And I thought, now I can do it at scale and then quite a lot how companies actually ran and and how they execute. I joined the company, and actually we had a very successful launch of the DNA product. We created a DNA database of over five million people within about 4 years this is the largest data database outside of North America. And this is kind of like the scientist that loves data.
I it was a lot of fun, and we actually published too many scripts in science using the data for my heritage, just showing, like, the immense opportunity that you can of scientific inquiries outside of the academic setting.
And after being with my heritage, the company exited and they all felt that, you know, kind of like I learned and accomplished whatever, like, I wanted when I joined the company, I felt ready to embark upon my own journey, which is starting 11 therapeutics And I decide to switch, like, in my heritage focus on human genetics. At 11th therapeutics, we are developing the next generation of RNAi therapies using combinatorial chemistry and AI.
So it was an opportunity for me to learn a new topic and to educate myself on many disciplines like monoclonal biology chemistry from ecology that I was not an expert, but it gave me the opportunity to switch fields. So this is basically my journey.
Great. And even what Yaniv is not mentioning is during his tenure at my heritage during the COVID pandemic, he held the company open COVID testing facility that became the biggest one in Israel by far and really Beller the company, held the country in his effort with the COVID pandemic. So that was the kind of amazing work done really quickly in a very startup kind of way.
Yeah. In 3 weeks, we Pete able to build, like, from take a 30,000 square feet space that industrial Pete that was empty, converted into a BSM 2 plus lab, higher 100 individuals, and start like testing. This was quite an accomplishment. Great. So we have 2 amazing people to talk about this transition from academia to startups, and I want to just set up the discussion. Again, I have nothing against academia. I think all of us did our PhD postdoc. You know, so we've been there. We love science.
Right? We have a lot of respect for the basic science done in academia. But on the other hand, we feel there is magic in stock. Right? The ability to focus and move fast and get a lot of resources and tackle Beller people organizing one group, all working on the same mission and impact together. And I think the best labs, and again, we're in effects investing in mom with biocciences, Jennifer Odonte, co discover of crisper and the Nobel Laureate is one of the founders.
And, you know, you see a lab that is the best in class in basic science, but also we're able to start a bunch of high impact companies, and the high impact companies bring more resources to the academic club. And you have a lot of student of PhDs and out of postdoc, and some of them want to go to the industry and some of them want to Flint academia. You can serve all of them. So I think there's a lot of benefit in doing both academia.
If you could tell me what's your Currier relationship between academia and startups and your feeling about this kind of different worlds? Yeah, Omri. Maybe I'll take that question first. So I think, you know, regardless of whether you are in an academic setting or in a startup or an industry, you know, it's important to be in an environment and in a culture that fosters like rigorous frontier research that can address critical needs for the world and for customers.
And I feel lucky to have started at Stanford, like, in an academic setting where kind of the interconnection between academia and industry was pretty strong, actually. I think being in the Bay area, there's kind of a natural bridge between what's happening on campus and what's happening off campus. But I know that's not true of every academic Institute.
And I think if academia were to kind of chart out a path for the future, hopefully, it's one where Stronger bridges are facilitated between what's happening at a university where you can have frontier, fundamental research, and industry, both established industries and new companies.
Now when I think a little bit about being a founder, like you mentioned, and, like, any mentioning, I think one of the great things about translating, you know, work out of the laboratory and starting a company is just that there's an exponential, you know, pace with which things pick up. So I feel like the speed of work and discovery is very rapidly accelerated compared to academia.
And that's not only because of the kind of resources and the talent that are out there in the startup space, but I think it's also because when you're in a startup, you know, ultimately your customers are different. Right?
Like, you need to think about your customers in each case and in a start up, ultimately, you're doing market driven work and you want to be able to get your product out there into the hands of customers who have critical needs, you know, these problems aren't going Whereas in academia, the pace is a little bit slower, and I think that's often because, yeah, research can be a little bit longer term. I'd also mentioned just kinda talking about customers.
It's interesting to think about kind of the history of knowledge and, you know, a few, you know, 100 years ago, basically scientific papers and journals were the fastest method of getting knowledge out into the world.
And I think a lot has changed in the last century and certainly even in the past decade, like, now I think one of the fastest methods of getting knowledge out into the world and analyzing it is actually with advances in machine learning and taking a lot of the you know, new tools that are allowing us to collect more data and then to be able to get more interpretability from that data from machine learning methods.
And I think just the ability to process such enormous amounts of data and have access to cutting edge tools is something that's pretty unique about industry and especially about startups. Like, I think sometimes it's a little bit harder in an academic institute to be able to, you know, have access to all of the resources you need to be able to kinda work with, like, very well rounded, like, rigorous ML models that help to inform what the product should be.
But overall, I feel super lucky to work with NFX, but I think really fosters that connection between academia and industry and really values the scientist's founder who not only is aware of, you know, Frontier research, but then can hop on that financial curve of innovation to be able to get technologies into the hands of customers soon. Yeah. If I can add to the discussion. So first let's discuss about maybe some similarities between academia and the industry.
And I think in both cases, something that people tend to forget sometimes. We talk about scientists. Right? In both cases, you have scientists and sometimes Pete in academia tend to think that only in academia, we can have scientists, but it's not true. Like, where there is very good science in industries, just a different one. Also, another similarity when you build your lab it's an entrepreneurship act to build the lab in academia and to be the company.
In both cases, you kind of try to create something out of nothing, but also it's a bit different types of entrepreneur And let's talk about some, you know, the differences now. So the first difference is that in academia, you have what's called academic freedom. Right? People like to say why academic freedom. I Beller ever to get an industry, this academic freedom. Now I'm old enough to understand when someone describes something with 2 words, It's quite different than one word of describing it.
What do I mean by that? Academic freedom doesn't mean for you. It means that you can maybe select maybe the areas of inquiry think there are many actually hidden constraints on academia, what areas of inquiry you can select and how your department feels about this areas of inquiries and so but let's assume that, you know, you have kind of like this open field. When you build the company, I think you have much more freedom than the freedom you have in academia.
Because in academia, you already have your HR department, and there are the university policies, and there is a set ladder of salaries that you can pay. And there is only that number of certain grants that you're eligible Morgan, and you have your legal department of your university. So in many ways, you are quite train. You don't have so many levers that you can pull as an entrepreneur.
And when you build your own company, it's actually a really like a blank conference that you can do whatever you want. You set up your own HR policies. You set up your own salaries. You set up the location of the company. And if you want to open in another location, you can do that. It's quite easy. You cannot do these things in academia. So it means that you need to master many more fields when you build a company.
And I think for me, this is quite, like, into that I need to understand in legal and need to understand in HR. I need to know just to know the science, but other things as well, which makes me feel much more well rounded person. That's, I think, one difference that is quite important. The second difference which Jen talked about is time. In academia, nothing would happen if it's something a project takes another year. I took so you graduate in 1 more year. People usually tell you.
It's very easy. It's like to tell postdocs. Just wait another year before you apply. As if not take one year of a person. You know, we send people to jail for 1 year. It's quite a lot when they send it 1 year. In academia, these units are very cheap. In a way, units of time. It's not like that in a startup. A year is a lot. It's the difference between make it or break it. And so the pace is very different in companies.
It also means that you cannot take projects that are overly risky that will take a long time without a proper runway or without a proper identification, but also it means that you cannot waste. You cannot waste time. In fact, in academia, money is much more important. Like wasting money is much more like strained, right? Money is more constrained than time. In companies, you show it the opposite. Like, if you tend to exchange money versus on time.
So I think this kind of, like, the way that I see this landscape. Yaniv wanted to, add to that. First of all, fully agree that I think one of the fun parts about being in a company is you not only get to be a scientist, but you also get to play the role of being HR and being the legal counsel. So you're learning so many other different aspects about the entrepreneurial and company enterprise.
I just wanted to add in another, I think, difference between, academia and industry is who your customers are. And I think a similarity is that in both cases, you always need to be serving your customers and serving the best interests of your customers, but and academia. Ultimately, your customers are your students.
You want to make sure that you're mentoring students well, that you're training them to do frontier research, and that positioning them for a successful career in whatever they've chosen to pursue next. And that could be a startup. It could be a postdoc. It could be a faculty position could be established industry could be policy. So in academia, I think really your product, you know, are the people that you are giving to the world.
Whereas in a startup, you know, your product is the service or the widget or the technology that you're, you know, giving to your customers who, you know, could be Pete. They could be companies, but I think it's just really important to always keep in mind who you're customers are and have the interest of the customer in mind when you're building your career regardless of whether that's in academia or as a founder at a startup.
I found it very interesting, you know, the way that you describe the product in academia because in my mind, kind of like, as you said, who's your customer? I thought you're going to say, like, you know, the editors or reviewer 3 or the videos of the manuscript.
And the actual product is the manuscript, but, yeah, I never thought about it as, you know, the career of my students and all thought that if we just publish well, their career would take off by this virtue, but it's a very nice way that you Pete about. You described it. Yeah. And I love what they, and you've said about the freedom. It reminds me this caricature for young aspiring scientists saying, I will research what I want.
And then he goes to grad school and, and Pete changed to Omri research, what my PI, my professor will tell me to research. And then it becomes, like, his own PI, and he says, like, I'll research whatever will get me tenure. And then he gets tenure, and then I'll research whatever would get me grants. And then his professor are notoriously just, you know, finished with all of that. He said, oh, yes. Now I'll research what I and then he dies. So, anyhow, let's talk about something else.
I want to ask you what advice would you give? Because you talked about your students. What advice would you give aspiring PhDs or post or about, you know, feeling about starting a company. And I want to start with your need because just recently, you know, you published on Twitter and advised for PhDs not to do a postdoc and you start this long thread between people in the academia and industry about the merits of doing or not doing a postdoc. So maybe we'll start with Thank you.
And and I think on the podcast, I can develop this into a more nuanced, like, approach to, like, whether to do a postdoc. I think, you know, if you love science, go to a Pete I think PhD is quite important. The good thing about the PhD is that there is an end and there is a committee that helps you like, you know, the process needs to be finished at some Flint. And there are multiple individuals that are responsible that it will be finished. You cannot stay there forever.
And then you get with something tangible, which is a PhD, hopefully you get some knowledge, you get some publications, but you get something that, you know, there is a unit that we can call it a PhD. I think a postdoc is a very tricky position. And my tweet was in Hebrew. It was more relevant to Israelis because Israelis need to go abroad where they do their postdoc. It's like almost impossible to do a good postdoc in Israel. It's discouraged by the Israeli academia to do a postdoc here.
So they need to travel usually the travel to the US. And this Flint, since we usually getting married earlier than the US population. They are married. They have kids, maybe one child already, and then they take their family abroad they don't understand, like, that the salary that they will get will probably know they would be very close to the poverty line if not below the poverty I had a friend at MIT that did a postop.
And while he was there, his family was below the poverty line in Massachusetts, which is ridiculous, right, you get Pete, like a doctor in MIT is below the poverty line. So they don't understand that, and they don't appreciate that also usually their family will grow as they move to their postdoc. So money will become even more of an issue. And the process is no end. Right? Like, they are not so like they do that. And it can take, like, 4 years, 5 years, 6 years. Nobody knows.
It might need to switch PIs and sometimes people will demo. Just wait another year before you apply. So they waste a very good amount of the most productive years on this, like, lingering, like, you know, like, doing, like, post talking basically. So I think it's a very big decision that most people are there just because it finished the PhD and everything they were taught in the PhDs, go to a postdoc.
They don't really consider they're not considering the ramifications for their families of doing a postal. And this is the reason why I think they need to, like, think very deeply where they want to do a postdoc and also look with sober mind about their chances to land the PI position, which is quite scarce, especially in good places, right, that, yeah, you can live in some, you know, flyover state in the US, like, not, like, be close to any Israeli.
Quite far away from your community, and, yeah, you'll be a PI, but then, you know, do you really want that? So this is, I think, the reason why people need to think very, very carefully before they do a postdoc. And the default of switching from a PhD to a postdoc should be kind of like not be default. It should be the exception. So that's my position.
Yaniv, I actually think that's a really convincing argument, and I hadn't read your tweet before coming on to the podcast but I think I agree with basically everything you said. I think we've entered an age in academia where more and more people consider a postdoc as the natural next step, but what I've tried to tell my students is that it's not for everyone, and it's not needed for everyone.
When I have had students who have wanted to go into a postdoc, you know, I've encouraged them to think about what they want to learn and what their learning goals are before they start their independent career.
And if they feel like they have the technological foundations from their PhD to either go off into industry or start their own company, and they already have, you know, a pretty solid foundational toolkit to be successful in what they want for their Currier, then I don't think it's worth going to do a stuff.
But if there are still new skills that they want to learn and that will be really helpful in their future career, be that in academia, in a startup where I think a postdoc can be very beneficial. And like you said, you need, I think it's really important to think about what you want the scope of that postdoc to be and how long it will be.
I come more from a science and engineering or physics and engineering backgrounds where post docs typically are a little shorter, like, maybe to you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, committee are at your peak, but, you know, it's valuable years and you wanna make sure that you're getting the most value out of that time regardless of
whether it's a host stock starting the company or going into industry. I think a postdoc can be advantageous for those who also maybe are a bit undecided about what they want to do next and, you know, maybe haven't found that killer application for a technology that they've worked on or want to explore a little bit more.
You know, I think if you have kind of the financial wherewithal to commit to a postdoc and know that you're not going to making an industry level salary and certainly not, you know, writing home with each paycheck.
If you're not sure what you want, I think there are many advantages to doing a post not provided, you can handle the lower pay for a few years as you decide on what that next step is because it is a great time to take the tools you have from your Pete and start to apply them while simultaneously learning new skills.
I know for me, I got a ton out of doing a postdoc and worked with a, you know, great community of scholars, some of the smart people I know, and they taught me a ton of new skills without which I, I certainly would not be where I am today. You're listening to the podcast. If you're enjoying this episode, feel free to rate and review our channel and share this conversation with someone you think would benefit from these founder insights. And now, back to the show.
It's such an interesting discussion because, you know, I did a postdoc, and for me, at least, was a great experience. But again, we didn't have kids. Both me and my wife need our post talk together in the Bay Area in Berkeley and Stanford, but I have to say, looking back, I think I gained more from commuting between Berkeley to Stanford and back listening to podcasts on the a new ship and and studying a company than 4 years of pipating aimlessly in the lab.
So, yeah, go Pete, Yeah. I think, you know, one thing that, you know, Jen said that she spoke with her students about career options and not to go to a postdoc. This is not the exception, not the common discussion most Pete since there had just been academia and never thought about anything Beller. They just encourage their students to to apply Morgan postdoc. In fact, some of them would even view it as a failure if their student does not pursue an academic career.
So I think it's quite special what Jen described. Also, I think something similar to both of us. You know, you had Jen you already secured your PI position before doing a post So you knew that it's going to be a very defined area that you're going to do a postdoc.
I basically skipped the postdoc luckily, and I was able to start my own lab was a bit, like, you know, difficult at the beginning to do that, but I think it was much better than just to be, like, you know, in this, like, endless postdoc in a way. But think for people, you know, like, something that's maybe I think a bit different than Jen is that if you're unsure what to do after PhD, I wouldn't go for a post I would do 2 things. Either ask your PI to stay a bit longer.
So you don't start something new. Just kind of like, you know, maybe linger for another, like, half a year or just take, like, a long vacation go somewhere, you know, go to like South America. If you can afford that for like 6 months, you know, think about life before because once you commit to a postdoc, since we all like, you know, we inertia is a very strong force in life. Once you are in, it's very hard to stop. Right? There are some costs. There is societal pressure.
There is pressure on yourself. Right? Am I am I a quitter? Not a quitter. Right? I will do. And and so by taking this decision, It's almost like a diet, right, when you, like, a good diet starts when you go to the supermarket and you buy stuff. It's not when you're in front of your freezer, then it's like it's already lost bottle if you don't have the right thing. That I think the same thing with the postdoc. Like, if you're unsure about it, don't start.
Do something else and consider all different options. Go interview with companies. At least learn about companies, see the options, and then decide when you have more data. Assign this, we like data. We convince also that data is good. Why don't we apply the same approach to our life? That's a great discussion, by the way. And I think it's a great secret for the next question because the next question is, you know, you're a Pete. You don't know what you wanna do. You wanna start a company.
You wanna stay in academia. You're not sure if you're up to starting a company. How do you know it's right for you? How do both of you knew it's right for you. And then if you decide to do it, you know, what was your first highest value moves? Like, what are the most important things if you decide to go Yeah. Great question. One thing that I encourage all my students to think about is, you know, imagine, you know, future grandchildren children or, you know, future generations of little kids.
And, you know, if they're looking up to you and you're in your eighties and they say, what did you do with your life? You probably wanna have a good answer to that. And I think the answer that, you know, students and individuals come up with often kind of points to what their, you know, internal compass is telling them to do.
So, you know, if PhDs are wondering kind of what to do next and and how to know if it's right for them, I'd say, yeah, think about, like, where their internal compass is pointing and, you know, what they hope to accomplish. And, of course, like, you know, plans never unfold exactly as you want them to, but it's good to keep in mind kind of, you know, big picture how you might want to tribute in your life. And then oftentimes I'll have students think through, like, what really energizes them?
Like, what, you know, it gets super enthusiastic. And then also, like, what drains them? Because I think if they go through that sort of exercise, you know, it helps kinda figure out what is a good career Right? Would that be in academia and industry and policy and communications? There are a whole host of careers available to scientists and thinking about, you know, what energizes you? Is it, you know, lecturing and giving talks?
Is it, you know, thinking quietly, writing papers, being creative? Is it you know, networking? Is it thinking through, like, you know, engineering and tinkering and building and kind of if you map out those energizers and those trainers, I think that can help you know, point you to, like, where the best fit is. And then I'd say if you think you're passionate about starting a company and I can say it's been, like, the most fun I've had in my Currier, so I can highly recommend it.
Think carefully about where you are in your technology development. Because, you know, companies move at these extremely rapid Pete, and you wanna make sure that the technology is at a right stage to be able to capitalize on that. You know, maybe it's a bit like, you know, surfing. If a big wave is coming your way, you wanna make sure you've up enough speed so that way you can catch it and enjoy the thrill of surfing rather than just having it wash over and you get, you know, crushed to shore.
And then, you know, I'd say 2 other pieces of advice before I hand it over to Nick. He was mentioning that a postdoc, you know, comes with, yeah, certain financial risks. And so does starting a company. And I think starting the company is the huge privilege. Like, I feel super fortunate to have been given, you know, this opportunity. So just think about where you are in your life journey.
And if you're able to handle, you know, the sorts of, like, you know, financial and time and personal risk that a company might come with. But I'd say, assuming you can handle that, like, just go for it. Like, don't be afraid of failure. And one of my favorite colleagues, Michael Jordan said, I have failed and failed again, and that's why I succeed. So I think if you go into things with a growth mindset and are excited to learn and excited to make a difference.
You know, ultimately, you'll be successful. I think these are all, like, great advice. Pursuant, I would like also to highlight something that is important in a discussion. We should not kind of like skip that, which is what price do you pay when you move from academia to industry?
And it's something that people just tend to skip that, but I think it's important to talk about because I think one of the main difficulties of switching from academia to industry is that first, it's like, it's very hard to come back. Right? Maybe Jen and I, we have more opportunities, but it's, you know, not like we are, like, again, after our PhD or postdoc, you know, trying to look for a position.
So it's like you are, and I want to highlight that there is a part of you that losing part of your identity. And I think that's part of the main difficulty. When you're in academia, you are part of this nation called Academia, which is, you know, it's, like, it's a global nation. Right? Like, spend, like, multiple countries. I can speak with someone from Japan that is in cademia, and we can speak it very quickly. Understand each other, right, because we know that's the same thesis.
It means that you have an institute that your name is attached to it, right, like saying, like, I'm from Stanford, from Columbia University. These are good places. And it's Pete like, you know, it gives you gravitas. It means that you're in a certain truck to do some it gives you a sense of, like, community, postdocs everywhere. There are, you know, societies, scientific societies.
So I also want to highlight, you know, part of the difficulty of people switch from academia to industry is the sense of suddenly they are outside of their community. They're losing something about their identity. And we need to acknowledge that.
So that's when I think, you know, when you think about, like, switching from academia to industry, the advice about students Beller, you know, to start a company or not is to kind of like ask people whether they really want that, right, to to start a company. It's a difficult thing. It's also okay to go and take a position in another startup or in a big company just to learn the ropes to understand how it's like to do research in industry, which is quite different.
So I think that's the advice just to kind of, like, let them up the possibilities. But also acknowledge, I think this difficult process of living your community, which is not easy. I think today is easier, but in Israel, for instance, when you leave academia, people look at your, what are you doing? Like, are you a quitter? What's going on? So we need to acknowledge that as well. Yeah. Very, very Currier. And I see it personally with my family Flint.
So I have to say what's my advice a venture capital now to students if they think if they don't know if they wanna start a company. First of all, you don't wanna start a company because you wanna start a Right? It's hard and difficult. And it's good if you understand how VC thing. Right? When we look at you, when we look at the company, we ask ourselves, is it bigger. Right? If everything you told us is right, how big can it be? And you should ask us at the same thing.
Is something I'm doing is really that impact of the second thing we ask people like, what's your defensible magic? Like, what's your magical technology and why nobody else can compete with it? Because that's such a magical, amazing thing. And if you don't have magic, well, I would tell people, go find magic. Right? You're in the best university in the world. You can talk to your peers. You see what our Pete are doing.
Maybe some other lab have this magical technology that, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, crisper back in the day. I'm sure there was other postdoc PhD students that understood how, you know, meaningful Chris will be before the first Piranil started the first newspaper company, and they could have been the CEO of founders. Just by taking them and saying like, hey, let's do it ourselves.
And thirdly, I need to ask myself, are we the right people and build, like, the right funding team to go on the journey with you? So, you know, if you have magic, if you have friends and colleagues that you think that can join you, and if you think that what you're doing is that impactful and could change the world, then definitely go to Yep. I'm ready. I think that's amazing advice.
One other piece of advice that I would give to students thinking about founding a company is to think about your value proposition. And I was reading this incredible book called Innovation that kind of is by the SRI team and talked about a lot of the innovations that happened there in the eighties nineties. And what's nice is they lay out a value proposition, you know, almost like a science. So they say, you need about n a, b, c, where n is the Pete? Like, what does your customer need?
A is the approach? B is the benefits per cost? And then c is the competition.
So if I had to give concrete advice to someone who's thinking about starting a company, I'd say, you know, just make a slide and write down your value proposition and even for those who are thinking about academia, I think, like, if you're writing research proposals, it's still important to think about your value proposition, but your Flint then if you're founding a company, kind of network to test your value proposition, and Omri was giving the
great example of CRISPR, you know, maybe you've identified a really great need. You know, you know who competition is in the space, but your approach needs some improvement. And, you know, probably grad students walking around or reading through papers, you know, if they wanted to do with Pete editing. If they came across Christopher, they'd be like, oh, I can change my approach and use this. So kind of network to test your value proposition and really refine it.
As you're thinking about starting a company. And I'd say, like, as you're doing that networking, you know, you'll get to what is, you know, really key like, critical value proposition that has all the elements that I'm re mentioned, like the defensible magic, you know, it has the great team and it has the big enough Morgan.
Yeah. So we see a lot of scientist founders, a lot of, you know, PhDs think about silent companies, and sometimes they tell me, like, they don't know if they have what it James. Like, they think they need the business experience, the right background. So I'm asking you as both very successful people in academia that start their own company. What do you think translated well in this move from academia to starting a company. And what was Beller for you?
Like, where do you think you actually need the help and surround yourself with the right people support you with? I mean, I'll start. So I think first, I think business in general, it's easy. Right? There is nothing complicated really about business. By the way, all the math in the business I learned is linear equations. It's aligned. You never stay, or maybe exponential both. Maybe that's actually more complicated stuff. Right?
But it's super, like, relatively easy, but there is some jargon that you need to master. There are certain things like conventions that you need to know. But I don't think, you know, if you can understand how crystal works and how to do, like, you know, high throughput, like, DNA synthesis or things like that, you can really understand you know, like, it's not rocket science. It just takes some time to learn and understand the conventions.
That's for people who think that, you know, they need to get some business training. If you know how to sell a car, basically do any new company, you know, how to negotiate things like that. I think that one good thing that I did when I started 11 was I found a partner for my journey a person coming from very different background than me. He's not a scientist. So multiple startups before.
So, like, you know, very good, like, human skills much better than me, someone that I can trust, someone I can speak with. So and that's, I think, one big difference, you know, when you start the lab, there is only one PI. In the lab. When you start a company, you can have a co founder with you, few co founders together. It's really about team building, and I think that's the beauty of building companies that you build with teams. Talk together.
So I think that's, like, my advice to find some partner for this journey, maybe more than one partner, join to a group, see that you guys, like, like each other. You can work together because it's going to be, like, more complicated in marriage, right, in marriage, you know, you can divorce in the company. It can kill the company effect. Like, many, many more people than you're just your immediate family. So, yeah, that's my advice. Unique, I think that's great advice.
And I know earlier on in the podcast, you were mentioning that when you're starting a company, you have to think about not only the science and engineering, but the HR and the legal and being in the early stages of my company, I've had some calls where people who don't know me are like, oh, are you the HR representative or you know, in a different call, oh, are you the legal counsel?
So I think it's kind of, almost an opportunity and an advantage to learn some of these new skills when you're taking on the founder role. And like you mentioned, Omri, I think I was concerned initially starting a company that I didn't have the business experience, but it turns out a lot of what I learned in academia actually is business and, like, you need to mention that the math is relatively straightforward.
Like, when you're thinking about, you know, the market and the business, you to think about, you know, how many units are you going to make? How many customers are there? And what's the price per unit? So in a sense, it's some of the simplest math to think about. And, really, the key goes back to that value proposition, right, like the NABC.
And, like, thinking about what really is the need that your customers have and how big is that market opportunity And I think a lot of times as a researcher in a university, I've seen students and postdocs who, you know, present, and they think They are presenting a need that is important for customers, but, you know, really they're emphasizing the approach you know, and their approach becomes the need.
So I think, you know, academia almost needs to be recast a little bit to really focus on, like, what are the core needs And then when you're starting a company, think about how those needs, you know, translate with your approach to, you know, something that has a pretty big competitive advantage. I also wanna echo He needs advice on, finding a great partner. I have 2 co founders, one of whom I was my PhD student.
And as a professor, I often view my students as, you know, team members, like, we're working together to solve really challenging problems. So a lot of times Pete ask like, oh, how is it, you know, with a student and professor co founding a company, but we've always kind of viewed ourselves as teammates anyway.
So I think it's pretty amazing that he had, you know, in a way, almost the world's incubator to develop the technology as a Pete student working in my lab, and now we get to bring it forward into a product. So he brings a lot of the technical expertise And then my other cofounder is my partner in business, but also my partner in life. And he just has amazing expertise in the kind of machine learning data analysis.
So he's able to provide kind of the, you know, software and analysis side of things that is completely orthogonal to the expertise that I would bring to the team. So I think as you're founding company, think through, like, who your team is going to be and what sort of you want to have and kinda who best, you know, can help usher, like, your product out into the world. Yeah. I would like to add to that.
You know, the reason why we at NFS like founders is, you know, also my experience being a scientist founder is, you know, the simple thing we know about you, if you finish your PhD, especially in biology, right, or in any other science. Like, we know that you can learn, that you're smart and you can learn. We know that you can learn new things all the time. That's what you have to do. We know that you could design a scientific experiment, have a hypothesis tested, and learn from that.
That translates very well into studying a startup. But mainly, we know that you have Pete in the determination because all of us know that, you know, you do a scientific experiment, you work very hard, and then nothing happens. It doesn't work. You don't even know why, and you have to pick yourself up Try again. Try again. Try again. Right?
Don't give up and have this optimism that, you know, in 4 or 5 years, you'll get your Pete, you'll have enough result published and get Pete, but you have to have Pete and I think greed and mainly caring. Like, you know, you can hire a business founder. You can hire a CEO, but you cannot hire caring about your specific science, like, knowing about it more than anybody else in the world and caring more than anybody else in the world.
I found the James in legal document that my lawyer did, my very expensive $1000 an hour lawyers because I care more than they care. So, you know, I actually took the time and read everything. And from, you know, first principle, I understand what's right and what's wrong, and I could do more. So I think this is why we love dispondals and then effects because you care. You're smart. You have the Pete, and you can learn.
I think in general, my call for action for Santis founders is, you know, we like to say biology is the most advanced technology on earth. Sometimes it feels to me like an alien spaceship just crashed landed on earth and we tried to figure out what all these gizmos are doing. You know, biology is quite amazing. It's non technologies. It actually works can send for produce, take CO 2 and James and, you know, create everything that we care about.
You know, it can solve problems and, you know, world problems things like health and food and the environment. You can solve all this problem with biology. But, you know, I believe there is one technology that is very human that it's even stronger than biology. It's in Tata News because entrepreneurs can imagine the world as they think it should exist.
And then I'll just so pissed off that the world today is not the world I can imagine that just by using the sheer force of determination and just being pissed off, they can reap a hole in the universe like a magical wormhole and just drag all of us, you know, sometime kicking and screaming to this new world that they imagine. So I encourage the smartest people in the world to solve some of humanity biggest challenges using the most advanced technologies, you know, biology and pollution.
Umree, I think that's an amazing point. One of my favorite quotes is from Barack Obama who mentioned Imagine the world as it should be not as it is. And I think you poinantly put how, you know, entrepreneurs basically see the world as it should be and then, you know, use their expertise, whether it's in science or policy or, you know, technology, we'll have it to create that world for all of us to enjoy. Totally agree.
On the one hand, I don't think I would do anything differently because I think you know, the path I chose set me up well for where I want to be right now. I will say that I think kinda looking back with 2020 vision, I can see that most of my mentors and the people who inspired me in my academic career actually were the renewal types.
And, yeah, just to name a few examples like Jody Simone, who founded Morgan, now is a faculty member at Sanford, and before Carbon was at NC State, Steve Choo has also founded several companies and became energy secretary for the United States from Stephanie Jeffrey. She's a cancer oncologist who both is a researcher and the clinician and that served on several major boards.
I guess I had wished I would have recognized sooner that many of my mentors were entrepreneurs and I think sometimes I almost felt like square peg in a round hole.
Like, I felt like I didn't fully fit into the academic environment, but I wish I'd maybe recognize a little sooner that the people I really admired were those entrepreneurs and then had taken the steps that they ultimately advised me to take, like, oh, think about how you can form, you know, stronger connections with, like, the Bay Area, like, entrepreneurial community to start a company.
Maybe I would invest less in some meaningless academic stuff just to, you know, advance my, like, food academic a lot. Like, it's, like, almost like mini some stuff that is a waste of time and you do it just because to impress other academics. I don't know. Stuff that was not so much of an interest to me right now or, like, even when I did it, but I had to do it just to, I don't know, like, some committees and things like that.
I always try to, like, you know, run away from these things, but I had to do a few of these because I thought it will improve my odds. And maybe it was just a waste of Great. That was a fun discussion. So thank all of you for joining us today and go out there and reap a hole in the universe. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Omri. At NFX, we believe creating something of true significant starts with what others do not.
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