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Welcome to the NFX podcast and for the regular listeners who Pete is talking mostly about software companies. And today, we're gonna talking about a synthetic biology company. In fact, Omri Drori, our new partner is going to be talking with the CEO, Saab Ziran, of C2I, about oncology diagnostics that it's done with software, done using signal processing.
And so you might be wondering why is NFX investing in synthetic biology and tech bio Beller, it's because we always have been, number 1, one of our second investment was actually in mammoth Biosciences, which is itself a synthetic and tech bio company, but we're doubling down on it because you might say that bio is gonna eat software, but it might be more accurate to say that bio is becoming software.
And increasingly, these companies are in this space are becoming more and more software and Pete is a poster child for this evolution that we're seeing from Pete bio to sort of software buy it. And Omri himself is a person who has started a software company focused on bio So he has in his mind both the understanding of how software works and how being a PhD in bio, how bio works. So so glad that we're here to talk today, Omry, and then you'll be talking with us off.
We launched NFX Bio about 5 months ago. You're leading it. What's the big idea? Why is competition bio what we call tech bio wise, that's so important. First of all, think about the problem that we are solving. You know, we're curing people with therapeutics and diagnostic. We are feeding people with, you know, ag and food. We have the future of mankind by working on renewable chemicals, renewable energy. First of all, it's important. Right? The problems are important such as Morgan problems.
It's the biggest markets. And such as the biggest markets, it's the confluence of fast moving technologies that are happening right now. We're talking about biology is getting digitized. We're talking about DNA synthesis. We're talking about DNA sequencing and sensors, turning biological data from analog to digital and back.
And then combining digital biology with the advancement in computation and machine learning that can really help us James sense of the data and Pete why it's exactly that's what they're doing. It's in machine learning on sequence data to figure out in this case about the cancer pattern But the third thing is we're moving from a world where people are pipetting it in the lab where it's a very low throughput, Beller prone human labor to high throughable automation at scale.
And all those things are just enabling new kinds of company to emerge tackling these huge markets and huge problems. With, you know, the new science of bioengineering, computational biology, static biology, or what we call tech buyer. Right.
And so people in many industry, are gonna realize over the next few years how this tech bio computation biology is gonna end up affecting their business, the materials, oil, the energy, ag, everything is going to be touched by bio and through computational biology. Yes. Because, you know, biology is the most advanced technology on Earth. Sometimes it feels like an alien spaceship that just crashed landed on earth and we're trying to, you know, back engineer all this crazy technology.
That's what biology seemed to me. It's this nanotechnology that works. You know, when I look at, you know, it's just, plants you know, walking around, you look at the living things around you. It's magical. I wish my computer could eat and reproduce and create small You know, it doesn't work this way, but biology can do it. You know, our kids can do it. Everything we care about is biology.
Again, the most advanced technology on earth trying to solve the biggest problem, the biggest And so 17 years ago, a little company called Facebook was a toy. And 17 years later, it's one of the more powerful companies in the world, same thing with Google, same thing with Amazon, how powerful will be the leading tech bio companies in 20 years? I think you can already see that.
You know, imagine our life in the pandemic if we didn't have Moderna we didn't have, you know, Pfizer and the new technologies of a digital biology. In that case, messenger RNA, which is just digital biology to develop vaccines so quickly. You know? So we see the impact right now. And I think the impact is just growing. We see companies like Ginkgo Biowork are going public for $15,000,000,000.
We see Beller therapy companies curing cancer with modified T cells that was engineered just like just like computer code. You wrote code and with companies like buses, developing new and smaller genome editing tool. You know, you can take this code, package it in viruses. It's like science fiction. Injected into cells, modify them, record them, and, you know, tell them to go after cancer. So we see science fiction happening today in this intersection of biology technology.
And, you know, many of these companies, I believe, would be huge, you know, just because they're solving such big problems. And they'll be touching so many different industries and so many different lives. So, I mean, that's why NFX takes this space so seriously is it's confluence of Biotech that is changing as well as software tech, which is changing and coming together, and then it touches everything.
So, Omri, what makes it so hard for tech bio founders you're supporting a a number of them at this point. What you need to realize most of our founders came from academia. They are the brilliant scientists develop the technology. And now they are the people who care the most and want to see the impact of the technology. Why do they care the most and understand everything they need to understand about the science.
Most of the time, they don't know how to manage because in academia, you don't really have to manage people. They don't think about the business. How to make a business out of it, how to make money, because we all care about the impact, but you cannot create an impact. If you know the huge company, the sales and, you know, that knows how to sell to customers. And the business strategy, are you the platform? Are you the product?
Do you want to develop all the way, get FDA approval, go all the way to the clinic, or do you want to support many, many different partners in a more platform playbook. Many, many different questions that we as scientists that started our own companies, Beller them all the way to huge companies. And in the case of Twist buy a size almost $10,000,000,000 companies and now being investors, we feel that we can help them with. So we've got their back. We definitely got their back.
Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that you need to learn as you move from being a scientist to a scientist's founder. And you've done that yourself successfully as, as everybody else team and helping them navigate all these different aspects of the business. They have to build around the technology. There's nobody better than you to do that. So good work on that. So before we dive into that conversation with Asav, Omri just wanted to chat with you a little bit.
I mean, when did you learn about Pete? And how did you meet Asaf and the team? Yeah. It's great to be here. So I learned about the company Pete are very warm introduction from founders of another tech biocompany out of Israel. So I met a staff. I flew him over here from New York to, Palo Alto back in the summer of 2019. And what are they doing? Explain what Pete is doing so that we can have that succinctly So what is doing is liquid biopsy for cancer monitoring.
So if you have cancer, you can send them your biopsy, and they can figure out the fingerprint of your cancer by simple whole genome sequencing of your cancer sample. And by doing that, they can find the cancer in your blood. And it's very helpful during your patient journey to see if the drugs you're taking are actually working on. So in the future, we believe every cancer patient will send blood test.
Every consultation will have his blood sequence every few weeks sent to the cloud and every consultation will get his C2 number back. Do you have cancer and how much cancer do you have? Is it going up or is it going down? And the way this is done is with a very small amount of blood, and with a whole lot of computational power. Is that right, Omry? Exactly. The biology is actually pretty simple.
They are sequencing cell free DNA, but they are doing whole genome very simple whole genome sequencing. They take the data to the cloud and they give you a Pete number back. Got it. And how's this gonna end up changing the world, Umir? Look, I had the family members that suffered through cancer, and I know how terrible the patient journey is. You get a horrible drugs that has a lot of side effects and sometimes they doesn't they don't work.
And it takes 3, 4 months to even figure out that they don't work. You have to go through radiation through city scans if you actually can see the tumor. And in early stage, in stage 102, if you had just one tumor and they cut it out. Sometimes you don't know that you have any residual disease left and 50% of the people who you cut the tumor, you get the recurrence. And wouldn't it be great if those patients will know very quickly? Does the drug work?
Am I going the right direction, or should I not travel through the side effects and take a different drug? You know, should I take chemo after the surgery after they cut away the tumor? Because I have a high chance of recurrence because C2I, the C2 score showed 2 weeks after the surgery that I have residual disease. This will affect patient life. This will help cure many people. Got it. So it'll help people get off the wrong drugs onto the right drugs.
It'll help people shorten the amount of time they have to be on these drugs. If they can prove that it's working, and it's gonna make people's lives during their cancer treatment much better. And even before that, it will help pharma companies develop better drugs because they can get signals way faster, which part of the population are affected by which drugs. Got it. And so describe how this fits into the NFX bio investment thesis. So in NFX bio, we like to invest in the bio platforms.
So technological platforms that combine biology and technology that enable you to create many different products, therapeutics, diagnostic, ag, material, energy, whatever it is, it's wrong, it's biology and technology. In this case, it's an obvious platform. The platform is canceled they can detect any cancer of any patient all over the world. It really is revolutionary. And when you say that he was in the defense forces working on similar problems, do you mean by similar problems?
It was a similar mathematical challenge of signal processing for his software to scan the sky and tracked down signatures of missiles. So the insight here is pretty interesting. The insight for this project came from trying to find very small signals of stealth aircrafts and missiles in a very noisy radar data, especially the insight of how to find the answer out of a lot of very small noisy features. And that's what they are doing Pete.
Instead of the competitors that are looking for 5, 6, 7, 10 different cancer driver James, they are looking for 50,000, a 100,000 different unique global features in the genome of the cancer cells to find it in a very specific and sensitive way in the blood. Okay. So let's jump in and hear the conversation Omri and Asav Ziran, the CEO and founder of C2I. Welcome everyone to the NFX podcast. It's really is my pleasure to welcome Asaf Morgan, the CEO of, situated Genomics.
The company I I've been working with for the last, wow, 2 years almost. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. Definitely exciting. And, you know, we start investing in you through the pre seed. We did the first check. Actually, I remember flying you over to mellow park sitting in the coffee shop and try to figure out, you know, what it is that you're doing. And it's been such an amazing ride. So we did the proceed and effects by our call at the Iran.
And just recently, you closed an amazing $100,000,000 DRAM. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. Again, it's been an amazing night. So again, as you know, it took us some time basically to spin off the company to get things going, but once the team was there and the company incorporated. It was a rocket ship. So, basically, we had the police. We had the seed round 10 months afterward.
We had the series a 10 months after we had the series b. And I think we had, like, 10 x multiplication in every of these these ones. So really, like, a nice slide until now. Yeah. An amazing. Right. And the most important part still the right, but the impact of what you are doing. Can you explain what is CTI and what's your product and your main goals?
Yeah. So, CTO genomics developed a system that can detect and actually monitor cancer response to treatment in real time using regular blood samples and allow an air of the clinician to make more personalized and optimize treatment decisions. One analogy that I would give to that, and actually, this analogy have a very nice intuition to reality to the background of the founder is we can look and see to our genomics as back at the island dome for cancer.
So I want to know in the context of the recent, Israeli events. So, basically, think about this intensive attack if someone needs to basically react to that manual, like, basically detect the the threats, monitor the threats, and do the right intervention to save So actually, cancer is very similar. So cancer is dynamic. It's evolving. It's basically reacting to what we are doing. And in order to basically do the right intervention and to combat with something like this.
We need real time information to track the evolution and basically to do the right intervention. This is a very personal story for you and your family. Right? You're a council survivor. You've been through it. My dad passed last year from cancer So we know the patient journey and how horrible it is. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And that's, again, that's what actually I like in the I own terminology.
Because that's actually really connect to my personal personal story and a lot to the way that our team is structured in the company's my background actually started very far from biology and cancer. So, basically, electrical engineering, physics, secondary, and applied mathematics, walking, for almost 10 years in a defense sector. So developing basically defense systems, anti missile defense systems, decision support for the Israeli Navy and then other startups.
And basically at some point after doing a lot of work on this kind of systems in defense sector, I was diagnosed in cancer with cancer. Actually, we had the crazy period of a few years that after hours, I was also my father and both of my wife's parents. So basically in a few years, I had a very intensive on cordy training from the patient side.
Basically, most of my time was talking with on cordy on multiple different concept types in parallel and trying to understand how the clinical decision are made and how they are monitored, how they are making sure that it's working. And I I know that basically the simplest question of the artist, like, basically my father basically suffered from very severe side effects, and he kept asking me, is it working is it James sense to continue? Should they move forward or should they quit or so on?
And, basically, you're coming back to the clinician or the physician, and they're saying, okay, that's what another 3 months, do another kids can, then it's maybe not conclusive. Let's wait another 3 months and so on. And you're understanding basically the main problem in the system is that you don't have any data. You are trying something. Maybe it will work.
Maybe it's not this create both a lot of burden on the system and a lot of waste cost, but also a lot of uncertainty and really, basically complicate the patient journey. So, basically, my vision and direction that I choose was how can we take these methodologies that we developed for the defense system and apply them to cancer? And actually interestingly in the name of the company, it's really connected to this vision.
So, basically, c to y, it's an acronym Morgan command control intelligence, which is basically the paradigm that advanced military are using to monitor the scenario, integrate information, and make data driven decisions. And this is actually what we wanted to bring to encoder. Amazing. And talked about liquid biopsy. And when people think about liquid biopsy, they think about scanning the population for early stages of cancer. But that's not what you are doing.
You're actually getting a sample of the biopsy of the cancer. Use it to detect a fingerprint of that cancer that you can find in in a very sensitive and specific manner in blood. Is that right?
Yep. And, actually, again, we give you a bit of about, like, more generalized perspective or basically, again, doing some analogy, think about recent cars are basically when you're taking them to the garage to do basically check to examine, like, if there is any problem, like, previously, they needed to check every instrument separately and to check if there is any malfunction in your car. Currently, now you have the car computer that basically integrate everything.
They just need plug in, look on the board and see, okay, I can see that you have some problem in your starter and so on. We need to change it. I think in some sense, in a few years, picky boss is going to be that cow computer.
So it's Beller tissue damage, any problem that you have in your body, basically get into your blood So any tissue that basically you have some kind of like acute inflammation damage or even for diabetes for autoimmunity, for cancer, Morgan really a diverse disease, the DNA that basically is showing this damage is going into the bloodstream, and you can monitor it and see what that So, basically, I think that this is something that is going to really explode in the next couple of years.
We are currently focusing on specific application for cancer. And again, basically, one of the features of cancer is, like, is the eye metabolisms, basically, cells continuously being born and die. With very high James, much higher than any healthy tissue. So, basically, all of the time cancer cells are dying. It's called apoptosis, and shedding DNA into the blood. So, basically, just look on the blood, you can see what happens.
You can see if the tissue is growing, you can Pete, basically, what are the biomarkers that are the mutation, you can monitor everything from the blood, the only challenge was sensitivity. So Ricky Barbacy for cancer is not a new concept. Basically, a foundation god and earth started this concepts, I think, more than 10 years ago or even back in the research side maybe 20 years ago. But basically, the first application Beller for metastatic patients.
Where the tumor DNA presence in the blood or so high that basically the signal to noise was enough to detect. Now with the recent, Vancement in if you proxy, the new phone tears are cancer screening and MOD, which both of them require very, very high sensitivities that previous legacy methodologies could not go into that kind of a performance. If you're thinking about the treatment monitoring, it called the residual disease monitoring or minimal residual disease Omri.
Basically, think about the problem of stage 2 cancer patient localized disease, is going for surgery. The surgeon is saying I removed everything. There's nothing there. You are doing imaging, but the audio is saying there is nothing And now you need to detect and we know that basically in different cancer types, something between 20 to even 50% of this patient Beller coins. So obviously, there is cancer there. We just can detect it.
And now can we actually detect something where there is no tumor? So, basically, it's even other than screening. Like, actually, you remove the locust There's nothing there. There is, like, some micro metastatic sites in location in spread around the body, and you need to detect it from the blood.
And basically, it's CTI came up with a really noble methodology, really inspired from this rather defense system at very advanced signal processing and machine learning AI that really can integrate tens of 1000 of features of the cancer and allow superior sensitivity that basically none of the legacy method could achieve before. Yeah. That's amazing. And I think in the future, every consultation around the world we'll send blood test to C2I and getting C2 numbers.
So you'll know, do I have cancer and does the treatment work? That's amazing. And we at NFS like to invest in what we call tech bio, this combination of biology and technology, and especially in platform companies like Pete, where you can create many different products, not just one where it, you know, it can be many different therapeutics, diagnostic, ad, and materials, and Beller chemicals, etcetera. So your funding team, Boris, and Ezra is really great.
And we Pete those kind of funding teams over and over again. You have the business guy you have the biology guy, you, that really understand and care a lot about the, this case, cancer. And Bo is the computer guy that Beller you with the the computer platform and the coding and everything Beller. But it's not just them. You now have almost 40 different employees, very diverse background. You need people in biology. You need people in software. We need people in business.
How do you identify talent? How do you manage such a diverse talent? So first of all, the background of the founders initial team was diverse. So also our network was diverse in ours and still even now that we are going very quickly recruiting very extensively, even now a lot of the recruitment is done organically. So, basically, people that we know We appreciate. We know the expertise and we know that they are the right Pete personally to the team.
So getting the right people inside, but also we Pete in, like, non organically and by we listened to the right quarters and job descriptions and so on. But again, also, we divided the company. So in Israel, specifically, we Beller a very strong team for the product and software engineering. I didn't say that, but basically, there are 2 very important foundations to the CTI product.
1 is the very efficient sensitive and accurate, basically, ridiculously, detection that we are doing, but the second is basically the inspiration to allow everyone in the world to use this technology.
And basically, we structure the company as a software and data company and build up a software platform cloud based platform that can basically integrate with any clear lab around the world and allowing them to basically provide to their patient environment and with all of the required glutton reimbursement, which is to provide the the cancer detection, monitor, and think of decision making, and so on.
So we invested a lot, like, a very early in the company on building up the right software platform, very robust cloud based platform software engineering compliance. We invest in AI. We had a platform that is GDPR and HIPAA compliant that was integrated in multiple sites in the US in Europe, in Singapore, and so on and really expanding crypto to allow that. Basically, we need a diverse team.
We build up a very strong team for the Cloud Computing, software engineering, machine learning, AI, in parallel to the team that is more oriented for the bioinformatic, biology, cancer, and business develop you just told us about your office in Israel. So you have, headquarters in New York. You have a clear lab in Boston. You have soft engineering in Israel. So you've been doing distributed management before it was cool, because of COVID. So how's that process?
How is it to hire in 3 different places? How it is to manage in three different places. Like, what makes each place, you know, perfect for what you're trying to achieve there? So first of all, there are 2 aspects. Let's say what was the strength before the pandemic and after the pandemic.
So before the pandemic, I think the strength in the team that allowed us to operate both in the US and Israel is that basically in the founding team, I was based in New York Boysos Beller in Israel, and we know each other for 20 years. So, basically, we can understand each other, coordinate and plan together without any friction.
So, basically and again, having someone that you can trust completely that you know that is going to get a job done, so basically that allow you to really work in disputed manner because I know that if we decided to do something, it's going to get done. I don't need to be there. Like, it's going to get done. So let's keep that thread in the founding team already, like, build up the right foundation to function very effectively.
And interestingly, so a comment that I received from boys after the COVID pandemic start So, basically, before the COVID pandemic, what happened is that the New York team talked between each other, the Israel team talked with each other. And once a couple of days, once a week, they talk to get Pete told me it was very hard for him to make sure that actually the guys in New York is doing the right job because they are keep, like, working with each other.
Once we moved virtually, basically, the discussions inside New York or inside Israel or between New York and Israel became the James. Basically the interaction between Israel and the US team became a more frequent, more fluid. So all of these barriers Morgan basically from that point, it didn't really matter where the member or the employees. So, actually, it was for us a good experience and a very educating experience.
I think it actually improved the performance and the productivity of the company. Actually, I can tell you that now that we are recruiting extensively, we don't care even where the employee leads. So, basically, now we are recruiting wherever you are in the in his way. We're actually thinking about it in Europe. However you are, if you have the right talent and the right personality, we want you in the company. Amazing.
It's good to see that, on some silver lining with all the horrible years we went to COVID. And you also had to experience fundraising during COVID that, that added stress to the journey. But I want to circle back to the business side. I think one thing people say about scientific founders is, well, you know, they care about the technology more than anybody else invented it really understand it, but they don't really get, you know, management. They don't really understand business side.
So how did you figure out, like, what's a big strategy of the company? Yep. Let's start with that the motivation that drove me into the field and to start the company wasn't just like basically the innovation, research, the excitement of how cool is what we are doing. Again, because I came from the patient side, in one sense, first of all, I really understood what the patient and the clinician needs. So it was very application oriented.
And since basically even from the card research and more doing the company initial use. Basically, it was all about how can we get the right clinical application quickly to the patient. So it's very cool that we are more sensitive. It's very cool that we are doing AI. It's very cool that we are monitoring cancer evolution over time, but can we get the right clinical application and get it into the clinic quickly to allow the patient to enjoy?
That was my mindset, and that's based do a lot of the focus of the company. And again, one of the challenges of, like, walking in something that is a platform, and this is a lot of the, basically, what NFX is trying to drive platform companies. They're charging a platform company that it's, like, very easy to get lost in all of the opportunity. For us, basically, Pete our technology can be used for any solid cancer at any point in the treatment. So how can you choose where is the right point?
And really, so basically we started with basically talking extensively with clinicians about what is the unmet need? What should we do? What is the right clinical design? And let's do it together and prove that working and how to move it to the clinic. And that's even, like, basically, today, a previous discussion to Ted in Denmark is, okay. So we finished the clinical proof of concept, you want to get it to the clinic. Let's build a strategy together.
Oh, we are basically translating that now to something that the molecular medicine lab of Denmark can actually use as a diagnostic test. And we are super focused about it and moving forward. And again, I'm coming from the position of basically, I don't know anything. Are the key opinion leader. Tell me what you need, then I will get it done because I want to make sure that basically it will go to the right patients.
The second thing is, again, that's, like, actually, part of, how we are building the team and the recruitment. Basically, I see my job as a CEO on basically 2 main things. Build up the right strategy and inspire the right people to do it. So not necessarily, basically, I have the experience of how to be efficient marketing how to be the efficient clinical design, how to be the efficient, even a health disorder.
But basically focusing on building up the right strategy and again, the right clinical usage and direction and to inspire people. So that's actually when I went into this field, I came from basically a personal family program I wanted to inspire people to something. So how can we inspire and and inspire, basically, I mean, employees, partners, investors, regardless, all of them need to be inspired to move the needle and start to do more. Yeah. And, you know, I remember those discussions.
Again, in NFX, we invest in platform technologies that, as you said, have many different products. So and you and you can drown in opportunity and finalization. What do you start? What do you do first? I vividly remember being in the meeting with all of you in New Morgan, and you brought 1 of the key opinion leader a medical doctor. And he said, like, yeah, we can use this technology on stage 4, but you know what? In stage 4, too late.
The medical need is where we can save life is stage 1 and stage 2 early stage because this is where the technology can really shine that's been an amazing process to see. So in general, you have 2 business models, if we can say that. An early business model, which is, hey, I can work with pharma. I can help them because we have this very quick, very sensitive signal, we can help them develop drugs or bring drugs to the earlier settings of cancer, and we don't need FDA approval for that.
We just need to show that our data is great. And then we can also get FDA approval. And then Beller around the world, cancer doctors can send some to a local Flint or leave it to the hospital. They just do a simple 20 ex whole genome sequencing, send it to the cloud, to your cloud, to your solution, and get the C2 number back and just pay as even a SaaS service, I guess. Basically, I think the right analogy to what we are doing is our imaging is being used for cancer.
Basically both in the clinic and in a pharmacological trials, imaging is like extensively being used in order to get insights about what happened. We can do it more sensitive early. So, basically, and you mentioned the early stage and really, so that's like a good and, basically, the company is controlled though that we can walk across the entire patient journey, we are focused on early stage because of 2 reasons.
1, clinical decision in early stage don't have any good biomarker So it's all pathology staging stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, which is not necessarily efficient, statistical question. And, basically, what happened is at the end, many patients, hundreds of thousands of patients sometimes do not receive the treatment that they need, and basically the cancer is evolving requirement answer, and basically, we come into a place that queue is not an option. Basically, it's just for long in line.
So on the other end, many hundreds of 1000 of patients get treatment that they don't need, which is another, like, huge problem. If you think about, like, patients that are going and caught you one of the interesting things that we're working on for rectal and bladder cancer are basically patients that are going for surgery. So the way that usually the T Twenty going is that they are going through neoadjuvant chemo ideation, chemotherapy retardation.
Some of them have perfect response, but we don't know which patient a perfect response or not. Then they're going for surgery, and then basically from reviewing the sample, we know that 30% of the patient actually went for surgery without any need. And, basically, their bladder and rectum is removed. They are going to have disability and we just gotta fly for the rest their lives.
So, basically, again, how can we improve these decisions and make them personal and data driven and really improve both the patient and need Morgan treatment and also patient that that we can remove. And again, both of these problem of, like, guiding treatment or problems that, associated with clinical trials and improving enrollment of clinical as monitor and early endpoints is something that we are extensively working with multiple, and obviously in the clinic.
And above all of that, how can we allow patients in Europe, India, Israel, Singapore, Australia, China, all of them to have the accessibility and the ability to use the technology. Again, it's so amazing, and it's just, it's just so great to think about the impact that this technology will have with so many consultations in the future. But I wanna take you back. So 3 years ago, you were a postdoc. You care about this subject. You went back to academia.
You started about you were in the lab, you had, like, signals at what you're working on could be a company, and you can start a company. What would be your, like, super practical suggestions. So people like you, you know, professors, post docs, Pete students, they have something in the lab. They're very passionate about it. It seemed to be working. When is the right time to start a company? What's the first step in their transition from academia to industry?
Yeah. I think one of the critical steps is working with someone that did it before because, again, there are many steps of beside minimal viable product, minimal viable team, how to Pete the technology out of the academy, how to start the company, what is the right team, how to get the right messaging, and networking. And basically, the the way that we are doing the messaging in the academy and in data is very different.
It's very different way of basically explaining the poll and explain the solution and the potential. For my perspective, working with someone that have done that before that can guide you, I think it's critical. It was critical for me. And again, also now, even though that I'm super busy, I'm trying to help when I can, and basically to help other new entrepreneurs, scientific founders that want to start the company because I think again, this is critical step. If we can help, we need to do Yeah.
That's amazing. That's really important. So you talked about your own position for academia, but what would you say, of the thing that translates really well moving from academia to a CEO or to an operational role in the starter. What translates well and where did you think you know, your training academia was lacking for the startup life. And, well, did you need to relearn more and get more help?
So I think first of all, my background is not the Beller conventional, like, for the academy, postdoc, or, and so on because I already had many years of, like, industry R And D team management project management and so on. And again, so I think the reading technology development, innovation, even a competitive landscape research are things that, really basically PhD is a post, okay, a very good background and setting out to do.
Because, again, what you are doing in research is all the time trying to understand what the others are doing within all of the articles, everything that is being done, where they are, how can I be the French and how can I show the next big thing? Because nature and Beller, we've never published something that was already shown by others.
So basically, the framework of how can we be innovative, be differentiated, and be an ever competitive advantage is a framework that's really educated in the academy. I'm not sure regarding, like, basically, management and, like, really managing product development, team management, and so on. If that's something that has, like, good training education in the economy, again, I had a bit more background, in previous industry positions.
And definitely, I found it basically for me, the networking and messaging were critical pieces. And again, actually, So both in my interest experience was defense and army. So, actually, we were trained not at all, not to say anything.
So, like, both defense sector and the academy was very different mindset from the messaging that I needed as basically a CEO and company phone I think that was one of the thing that took me some time out to get the right messaging to be very concise, to express the potential to spire, convince, and so on, and also get the right network in order to really scare it.
Yeah. What I like to say to postdoc and PG students that want to start a company, especially with you know, that did the research in biology. What I like to say that translates really well is, first of all, you learn how to learn. You always have to learn about how to use new experiments, new machine, etcetera. The second thing is you don't have to design a scientific experiment and how to learn from and, you know, start applying is a lot of Beller scientific experiments.
And third, and most importantly is you have grit because as you know, in academia, research life, you walk your work and you get nothing. And then you have to pick yourself up, go back to the lab and try again again again. It's extremely hard, but I know that if you finish your Pete in your post op, you have the great and optimism to be a startup CEO. So that translates really well.
So you mentioned the C2I is this rocket ship, you know, raising money very quickly at higher valuation, doing amazingly in the last 2 years. But how do you measure attraction? I think in software companies in SaaS company. It's very obvious. You know, you have ARRs. You have different KPIs that everybody knows about. How do you show traction in this space? Yep. So first of all, clinical development.
So the traction in our space is mainly clinical development and showing the scale of the clinical key opinion leaders that are working the network of clinical opinion leaders that are working with you, the scale of the experiment and clinical evidence again, I think one of the nice, like, positive signals that we have been shown is that every collaborator that started a pilot study with us continue it to the next and next and next and bigger pivotal studies.
So, basically, till now, we're very fortunate that basically all of our branded studies showed amazing results, amazing performance you're moving forward with the same POL to the bigger and bigger clinical study is moving to perspective to intervention and basically getting the right clinical evidence.
So again, basically Morgan diagnostic clinical product and also from the form of perspective, if the clinical opinion leaders are convinced that you are doing something that will give benefit and the performance is differentiated and they are investing their time and their resource on you, probably you have something in your end.
And again, one of the things, so in liquid, I think someone termed the notion liquid gold a few years ago because now, like, the demand for liquid biopsy blood samples is so high because of the competition between the companies because, again, blood samples are limited. Like, every tube of blood would be used for one experiment. Because, so low amount of material. So blood samples are very limited resources, the institution that we are working with. This is the most precious resource.
So these bio banks, so these prospective collection are the most precious resource. And if they choose to work with us and to spend this resource on Pete, that already show That probably we are in the right direction and we are doing it so far. You're listening to the NFX 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 insights. Follow us on social at nfx visit nfx.com for more content.
And now, back to the show. So you just raised massive $100,000,000 year on Flint What did you identify that requires so much capital so quickly? Because your last round was, you know, 10 x of that, less than a year ago. Yeah. I think there are 2 successful trends that we had after our series a that both motivates the series b and show that it's necessary to go to this, like, large series b. So the 2 trends are one, the critical evidence that we got from study.
And the second is the very quick scale up of our clinical net that is like really explode and even these days, especially after the series the regarding the clinical evidence. And again, we were, like, super focused on execution moving quickly in the 8, 10 months after the series a, basically, we finalized 4 different blinded clinical tasks in different locations around the world. So, basically, 2 in Denmark, quinancing to another one in the US in NYU. And actually now we wanna ask the 5th one.
That included multiple different cancer types, including colorectal and lung and bladder. In a longer now glioblastoma, all of these studies show a great course. All of these studies really establish that we have a differential performance better than anything else currently not only in the market, but better than anything else that is currently in development. As far as we know by public data and basically show that we have something here that we need to drive for very quick.
And, again, we need to Morgan that means to move to larger prospective clinical trials, intervention to us, hundreds of patients, a lot of money. So that's one thing. The second thing is that actually both because of, like, the strong clinical evidence and also the traction that we received all over the world. So, basically, multiple location in your other location that currently in the Middle East, in India, in Singapore, Morgan location.
All of them wants to get access to the technology, wants to be able to bring it to their own. They are not centers and Phoenix center and so on. And now we are moving. So, basically, we understood that the company is going to move very quickly to the commercial side. So, basically, besides these large clinical trials, we need to do a strong effort in the regulatory perspective, reimbursement, launch of the product in multiple location globally in power.
So, basically, US, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and so on, all of these product lines will require money. So let's talk about fundraising. Right? Obviously, you're good at it because you did it again again. What do you think are the non obvious lessons you learned about fundraising, especially as a scientist CEO, what's the insight that people never get a chance to hear? Yeah. So, yeah, I think there are 2 aspects at the end investors or Pete. Like everyone else. So you need to inspire them.
Like, basically, they need to understand that there is something huge with huge market, huge potential, huge differential advantage and so. But then also there is, like, the fear of missing out. And basically, you you know it and you were very helpful in that. So basically creating the scenario will basically the fundraising becoming a competitive. You're getting like multiple offers in parallel and everyone are feeling like, again, so we have this, like, huge thing. We want to be of it.
So we need to be more flexible in the valuation, more flexible in the amount of money and so on and just, like, get into this group. So I think both of that, like, getting the right messaging of basically the potential and then creating the scenario of, like, competitive fundraising, fear of missing out and so on, these are creating the right substance for effective Very cool. I heard that somebody is trying to start Morgan capital, fear of missing up capital as a joke.
So, you know, what do you think are the biggest bio startup killers or something to avoid. Yeah. So first of all, I think these days, the right approach is to try to bring a platform that has multiple applications. So there are startups that are basically focusing on specific indications. It's specifically intended use with basically multi year clinical trials or validating that specific indication, always you have problem, always you have charge always you have, like, bad news and so on.
If you are putting all of your eggs in one application, not necessarily you will survive these, like, periods of bad news. So having in a a more diverse, like an investment, more diverse portfolio that can allow multiple different application platform and so on, allow you to keep the momentum and keep the excitement even if there are challenges. So that's one thing. Yeah. 2nd of all, again, and we are very focused on that How can we break out from a very specific market?
So not only targeting one market in the US and worried about specific competition and do we have enough and marketing reps and so on in the US and so on? How can we allow a platform that is global and can really compete in a global And again, it's the same diversified perspective. So again, if you have a global scale, some place can run faster some guys can run with nowhere, but, again, you're, like, more diversified and more protect. That's great.
So let's talk more about, like, science fiction, optimistic future because there are a lot of hype right now about cellular therapies, immunotherapies. Do you think personally that cancer will be largely Currier 30 years from now? Like, what's your opinion? So I think the aim is to make cancer a chronic disease like diabetes like diabetes. So, basically, not necessarily q but basically keeping it under control for tens of year or basically the rest of your life.
And again, the way to do it is to really move a lot of, like, the sophistic in the machinery to the early stage.
So some combination between cancer screening, detecting early, but then, like, also having the right clinical decision framework with the data driven MOD moving, and this is a big effort that is being done in the form of moving some of the immunotherapies Pete target therapies into the early stage and so on and really attacking with a lot of force at the early stage and basically in some cases maybe queuing completely.
In other cases, basically being able to maintain the cancer in in a way that we control it. And again, if you are coming back to the iron dome out, So again, you can receive multiple attacks every day if you have the ability to monitor the intelligence, to monitor the ability to track and to intercept So basically to expect what is going to be the next challenge and next revolution and to intercept it and to remove it and remove it and remove it.
So at the end, you can make something to be more chronic but to maintain quality of life. And again, not necessarily we'll see when I present q, but 95% long term survival basically, just like living with cancer, like AIDS and diabetes, I think that's the goal. Yeah. That's amazing. You know, it's funny. Like, some people are afraid of growing old and they don't like their birth I'm excited about the future. Like, for me, birthday is the yay.
I survived another year in my goal of living in the future because in the future, for example, we won't have to worry so much about cancer. So as we finish, if you could share some parting words of advice to Beller startup founders? Like, what would be the top 3 things you would tell them? Yeah. First of all, you need personal, passion. To what you're doing. So because there are always problems, you will always have a lot of rejection, a lot of failures, a lot of August.
You need to be really, really, really patient about what you are doing in order to basically survive all of these, like, downturns and so on. 2nd of all, diversified and really good founding team that are on 1 and diversified in experience, but also like good people that support each other. Again, There are a lot of chances, a lot of problems. You need to surround yourself with good people in order to survive it.
And the first thing is getting the right investors or advisors that did similar processes similar journey before and can bring value not necessarily money. And again, actually, series a and series b became so competitive that we can actually choose the investors that we want and really try to win the people that can win the value, win the expertise, win the experience with similar journey, win the network, open those for us.
And again, most of all, to be good Pete that we support, like, in problematic times. That's great. So let's end up with, quick fire round. Some quick questions So let's start. So who will have been your biggest mentors or influencers? You have people like a jaw church that really, like, really changed the world with a lot of, like, innovation, scientific discoveries that were translated to beautiful companies. Yeah. Perfect.
Are there any books that stand out to you as life changing that have influenced your path? Yep. So, actually, when I was counsel patient and I was at hospital, I was more than 2 months before the Currier. I started I actually don't remember the name of the but I started reading a book about biology that was written by physicists and trying to explain biology, cellular, and so on from the physical perspective and control and molecular and what is constant and so on.
And again, this, like, beautiful perspective of, like, looking on it was with all of the context of sitting in the hospital with all of, like, the treatment and so on. Like, that really creates a motivation. Okay. This is something that I need to do. Right. What problem other than what situate focus on do you most wish someone else would tackle and solve? So I think 2 aspects are going to be very interesting. 1 is in general, a data driven clinical decision support.
What we are seeing today not only in cancer in many different disciplines in health care is that diagnosis is becoming more complex by the time the clinician have to see the patient is actually decreased. So it's similar to the problem that, Air Force pilots had in the late 20 century how to do the data integration and the decision, and we'll see more AI based decision making, like, in the medical setting.
The second James is using Nikkei Bobsy as the car computer at basically, like, really monitoring everything in your body. Any tissue damage and hronically information and so on by just like taking simple Beller and checking That's great. And asaf, thank you so much for joining us. And, really, it's been an inspiration to work with you and see you and the team in C2I. You know, doing a dent in cancer and helping patients around the world.
I expect ratings from this company and huge impact in the world. Thank you so much. Thank you. At NFX, we believe creating something of true significance starts with seeing what others do not. Send this episode to any friends that may need these insights and frameworks, and feel free to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform Thanks for listening to the NFX podcast.