Episode 7: Learning Biotech, Surviving Near-Death, and Seeing What Others Don’t

Sophia: [00:00:00] You can make the world you want to live in. Yeah.

You can remake the world. Every construct we live in is manmade. FDA, somebody came up with that Yeah. And then kept coming up with more ways to structure it. 

Yeah. 

And it can be remade. 

Yeah. 

Everything can be remade. Public perception can be remade. This administration's perception can be remade.

The FDA can be remade. I really believe in personal agency. 

I think if you meet people that we lionize as top in their field, or you meet billionaires or you meet world leaders and they're like they're like me. Yeah. ​ 

Armon: Well thanks for joining Boan Biotech, what did you get? I 

Sophia: got everything. I got avocado. You like 

Armon: someone else is paying for it. I want all of 

Sophia: it. Exactly. I added as much as I possible. I think I maxed out. I added, uh, coconut milk, cheese, mini tarro ball, boba.

Armon: I mean, it [00:01:00] looks very multi-layered. 

Sophia: Yes. I've already had half of it. I'm expecting a second. Of this recording. 

Armon: I mean, we've been wondering about getting this stuff sponsored, so we'll find out. That would be, 

Sophia: I think it would fit little portal cells in there and chew on them. 

Armon: I meant more just it for free.

Sophia: Oh. 

Armon: But we could come up with 

Sophia: branded boba. 

Armon: Yeah, we can get portal branded Boba. 

Can you give like a quick overview of your background? Like what got you here? 

Sophia: Yeah. Uh, so my background, I actually think in retrospect, my background seems like it points, it points to where I am today, but that's definitely not how it went.

Okay. Um, but my background, you know, I, I, uh, grew up on the US Mexico border. Parents are farmers. I think that's what got me into biology. You're surrounded by plants and insects and animals. Mm-hmm. And that's the first thing I like to do. [00:02:00] Like, I like to collect bugs and plants. Um, did you eat 

Armon: them or just collect them?

Sophia: Sometimes you eat them. Sometimes you put them in the fridge and take them out and your siblings are bothering you. Sometimes they have multiple uses. But classification, I like to classify them, I like to understand them. So some understanding the natural world. Um, so that got me interested in biology. 

I ended up studying biology at Harvard.

Um, I really thought I was gonna be pre-med, but it was the first time I had been to a US doctor. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And then I thought this industry seems very effed up. Yeah. And, uh, I could not imagine as someone who doesn't like when things are effed up and likes to change them, that I could tolerate being in that industry.

Um, yeah. And, uh, you know, being, doing medicine in a way that I thought in many cases isn't optimal for the patient. That's not the doctor's fault. I think it's a system. Systematic fault or problem. Um, so not being pre-med, I thought, what else do I like to do? I realized I really just liked my science classes.

Um, but I had a, my PI in my undergrad lab [00:03:00] did tell me Dr. Ed Kravitz was his name, and he did tell me that, uh, Sophia, I think you don't, I'm not sure you have the patience to be a scientist. Okay. You try to take too many shortcuts in your experiments. You get really upset when things aren't working. Um, 

Armon: see, one of my friends once said the difference between a great scientist and an okay scientist is like, they're both smart, but the great ones know what steps they can skip.

Sophia: Hmm. I'm not sure I knew. 

I also felt it was so, I mean, we were in a very fundamental biology lab. We were, I was studying, um, larval cannibalism. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And trying to figure out if we can figure out neuronal pathways for aggression in larvae and, and one, if they were even related to cannibalism at all. We don't know if it's an 

Armon: aggressive 

Sophia: or opportunistic here.

Okay. It's hated 

Armon: because they were mad or they were hungry. 

Sophia: We actually don't know. Um, and you have to induce them to be cannibalistic, like you starve them acutely and then put them in a little agar plate. With other larva. So they, they might just accidentally be eating the other larvae. 

Armon: Okay. 

Sophia: We don't [00:04:00] know.

Or they might be hunting them. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: We hope they're hunting them, but it's not a natural behavior. So, um, so anyway, so it was, to me it was like too far removed from the vision of impact. Yeah. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Of course. My PI would always talk about why we did these things and why, um, he was a, he discovered the functionality of GABA as a neurotransmitter.

Mm-hmm. And so I think, you know, he had seen drugs be made off that discovery. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: But I think I felt a bit too far. Yeah. And from that, um, impact and felt like, you know, we were making too many social assumptions on this experiment as to whether the larvae were hunting each other or not. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um.

Yeah. 

Armon: All. And then so how did, and then, so from after your undergrad days, what was the path from there to like meeting Eric and getting 

Sophia: where 

Armon: going? 

Sophia: Oh yeah. Sorry I skipped a lot of my background. No, that's 

Armon: fine. 

Sophia: Yeah, I ended up doing my master's in China. Yeah. Which was an interesting, and basically I got [00:05:00] to the end of senior year and I was like, you know, or the beginning of senior year and I was like, I don't wanna be pre-med, so what do I wanna do?

I've never been somebody to plan my life out. So many steps in advance. Yeah. I just kind of take the next best stone on the path. Um, and the career services office is like, well, there's this fellowship open in China and there's consulting. So I applied to both. Yeah. And that's how I ended up going to China doing a master's called the Schwartz and Scholars Program.

Actually hugely instrumental for my career now. 

Mm-hmm. 

Ended up working at a biotech company in China, so that was my first job. Yeah. In a biotech company called BGI Genomics now considered a foreign adversary in the us. So 

Armon: yeah, I, 

Sophia: no Americans have worked there since. Um, I don't You ruined it for everyone.

I ruined it for everyone. Yeah. I think I was also the first American in their health division, so it was a great, um, yeah. Ended up being a great way to build connections in a country that's now hugely relevant to Yeah. Industry. 

Um, and uh, from there [00:06:00] I went to a much more boring job, sorry, B, CG, but super boring job where you built a lot of skills on the business side.

And then for BCG, you went to the Gates Foundation, which was my first, the first time I, you know, learned about, I mean I had, I knew about mRNA, but really learned about the impact that this molecule mRNA was making. Um, I, you know, was originally hired for who knows what, but quickly got staffed on this pandemic emerging, it's called COVID.

Armon: Yeah. I 

Sophia: was on mRNA, supply chain distribution, manufacturing, and white space opportunity mapping. 

Um, so when I then went and did my MBA. At Stanford. Stanford and I, um, basically I created a role for myself in the licensing office that essentially was looking at what are technologies that are very exciting coming outta Stanford that have a lot of commercial potential, but are not moving.

Yeah. Uh, I think, like, I actually think MIT and Harvard do a much better job of getting their commercial, like commercially viable opportunities [00:07:00] licensed out. Okay. Are out of the university and transferred to VCs or to companies, or to pharma or to whatever. So I wanted to do that at Stanford. Stanford is teaming with technologies that I think are ready.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Uh, for many reasons they just don't get out. Uh, and so the licensing office, that's what I was doing, working with many different PhDs, professors in a way, like dating many PhDs and professors who had, uh, great technologies, but just didn't know what the pathway was to make it into a company and assessing if there was an immediate pathway or a pathway in the next three to five years and what experiments they needed to do to get there.

Mm-hmm. 

So that was an amazing position to have had. I was also like president of the entrepreneurship club at the time, so I was directly the bottleneck between VCs accessing campus 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And all the startups. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, so VCs had, everybody had to talk to me. Okay. They wanted talk to anybody on campus. Um, kind of made it that way.

They had to kiss the ring before they came. They had to kiss the ring before they came in. Yeah. Had to talk to me. And in that way I got, that was like a way of really stepping onto the VC scene, the like [00:08:00] biotech. 

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: Scene. 

Um, and then I met Eric when someone that I had been helping, um. Yeah. Someone that I had been helping in a class, an Ailia star who now has her own startup, um, she was like, you know, you should really meet this guy Eric.

He seems to have a brilliant idea. He's in this class called Lean Launchpad at Stanford. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: Um, he wants to make it into a business, and I think he's looking for a business partner. He's at least looking for help. Can you talk to him? So that's when I met and talked to Eric. 

Armon: Yeah. All right. And then what did it take to go from there to like starting radar?

What were the early days like? 

Sophia: I mean, early days I was actually working with, I was working a very concentrated way with another group of PhDs at the time. Um, I remember I was pitching, you know, we share p pair VC as an investor. I remember pitching Eddie over and over again on this idea, and he kept telling me it was a bad idea, and now he says, you're welcome.

Um, but I had been, you know, really concentrated way. I was, I was very excited about this other startup. So when I was [00:09:00] beating Eric, I really thought, okay, like maybe there's just some way that I can help him. 

Yeah. 

And I'll learn about his technology. Um, and then honestly, I, because I had looked at this white space opportunity mapping for mRNA, I thought, okay, actually what he's working on is very, very directly relevant to the, one of the biggest challenges for 

yeah.

Genetic medicine broadly, but for mRNA is targeting it to the right cells. Yeah. Um, and, uh, so I thought actually this, this could be a really great idea. Then I met with Eric and we generally just, we had a lunch where we generally just talked about the way that we saw the world and our values, and he really did seem different to me, like more of a grandiose vision kind of guy.

Very values oriented and brilliant. 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, and yeah, after my first meeting with him, I think a lot of the poll was, I think I need to work with this guy. Sarah himself, I think is an inspiring person. He's brilliant. He's, um, ambitious. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And he has enough ego to know that [00:10:00] he can change science. 

Armon: Okay.

Sophia: And I actually think that's important. Yeah. 

Armon: They need to be delusional enough. 

Sophia: They need to be delusional enough. Like they need to, if they're like, well, I don't know if I can do this. I'm like, yeah, probably not. Yeah, actually it's gonna be very hard 

Armon: that, 

Sophia: that you say that. Yeah, definitely not. I'm definitely not.

Um, yeah. And so I, I really liked that meeting with Eric and that's what got me to, I was also a fellow at a VC at the time. Mm-hmm. Traditional biotech, vc. And, uh, I took them the paper, Eric's paper. I was like, what do you, what do you think about this idea? It seems like a good idea. Right? And they're like, not only is it a good idea, but you have a big blue chip VC trying to start a company that's doing exactly this right now.

So 

yeah, 

you should think about this idea rather quickly. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

And so I think we actually, from, from the time that I had that meeting with the VC and understood the sense of urgency, if someone else is spinning out a company with the same idea, with, you know, not, you know, we think we had the IP position and the data, but they don't, that blue chip VC doesn't care.

They put enough funding around it and they, they, I think they feel they can get around those [00:11:00] issues. So that's what gave a sense of urgency. We gotta look into this now. 

Armon: Yeah. 

coming from the MBA background, was it hard to decide on like, I'm gonna do this startup because I, because I say that because like, let's say the PhD background, they're married to their stuff and if they're delusional enough to think they can make a difference, naturally that's what they're gonna jump at.

But you're looking at other people's inventions. Was it hard to get yourself to point? Like No, this is the one, 

Sophia: I'll say I do have a bit of shiny object syndrome. Yeah. But it does have to go beyond that because for me, I didn't invent this technology. I have a lot of opportunity cost. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Coming out of an MBAI, this particular VC had already, you know, offered a position to just be part of that VC where you'll make a lot more money.

Yeah, 

yeah. 

Um, so the opportunity cost is there for me. But I think at this point I had had the experience of looking at a lot of technologies at Stanford, having, you know, an idea for my Gates [00:12:00] Foundation experience of like, what are the big ideas? That need to happen. Yeah. And then to me, this was a big idea.

Yeah. 

I I I'm someone who, for me, the opportunity cost is not working on the biggest, most consequential idea you can possibly be working on. Yeah. And to me, radar represented that opportunity, not just was like, Eric seemed like someone who could solve it on the technical side. Um, and for me it seemed like I wanna be working on consequential things.

If we make this work, it isn't, it is consequential. 

Yeah. 

Hands down. So to me it wasn't that hard of a decision. I was really excited to work on it. Yeah. There were times when we, you know, I think there was, there were some very difficult times at the beginning when I had an opportunity to, to exit and put down the difficult, but, um, yeah.

Armon: Yeah. 

And, and what do you think was like different about you guys that has gotten you as far as you've gotten so far? 'cause I'm sure this. There's plenty of PhDs trying to spend stuff out on [00:13:00] their own. There's plenty of MBA PhD pairings that are trying to do stuff. Most of them die off very quickly.

Mm-hmm. What do you think was different about you guys that made it, made it work? 

Sophia: What do you think? In general, a lot of companies die off. Yeah. I think that there are a combination of skills that are required to take a company out. And it doesn't matter how many people they're distributed amongst, it could be one person.

Yeah. It could be multiple people. But I think that a biotech company, it's a company, so it is meant to eventually commercialize a product. Yeah. And that has to be entirely well understood. At some point, someone is calculating the MPV of the products that originate from that technology. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: So, I mean, that just has to be so deeply ingrained.

I felt others that I had worked with, it really felt like they just wanted funding to work on their idea. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um. Like more funding to work on their idea than they would have in a lab and would, you know, could skip through the stages of getting tenure or you know, going through academic [00:14:00] track. And that's not compelling for me because they really have to believe that products are gonna come out of this.

Yeah, 

of course. Stage one, when I met Eric, we didn't have an idea of what the products were. So stage one is figuring out are there compelling products that can come out on some sort of timescale that is amenable to VC dollars? Yeah. There are many different ways I, and I do think like we actually would've explored different sources of funding more at the beginning had it not been for this blue chip vc.

Yeah. 

Starting a competitor. Um. But I think somebody has to have a very clear understanding of that. Somebody also has to be able to finance the idea. Mm-hmm. And financing is a two part question. It's a, raising the amount of dollars that are sufficient to move it forward, and b um, distributing those, do allocating those dollars.

Well, so knowing where to spend, and I think in biotech you have to be extreme leash rude. It's not like tech. There's no free, typically, there's no free boba, 

Armon: you 

Sophia: know, typically that's 

Armon: why you load it up when you can. 

Sophia: Exactly. No, I, I used to tell the company at the beginning, this is not a [00:15:00] free kombucha company.

Yeah. We have to watch our spend really well and we were going to be looking at spend per productivity. We just have to. 

Yeah. 

Um, so somebody has to be really good at the financing part. Somebody has to be really good at recruiting amazing people. Yeah. Probably the best people in the field because biotech is very, it's really hard.

Yeah. You need best people from different fields. I think Erica's really good at doing it on the science side, and I can really do it on the business side. Um, and, uh, I think you have, yeah. And obviously you have to recruit good people into the company. 

Yeah. 

And then you have to be able to do very rigorous science.

I cannot do very rigorous science. Yeah. Um, I can assess if that science is headed in the right direction. Mm-hmm. And Eric can do really rigorous science and I think gave people the confidence that he could do it. Yeah. He's both good at, at, um, you know, revealing where we, the data is good. Yeah. Or we have reason to believe and revealing where the data gives us hesitation is very good at striking that 

Armon: some people like will, I dunno, I I think I've heard both sides of the argument of having a [00:16:00] PhD to be the CEO for a early stage biotech is a good thing. Others will say like, it's a bad thing because you're too prone to being mm-hmm. Overly nerdy or whatever. Uh, what's been your feeling on that?

Because you're not from that background. Yeah. So what have you viewed as the pros? Pros, pros and cons there. 

Sophia: Yeah. Um. It'd be interesting to hear your view, because I feel like you at this point have both sides in one person. You have the business and the, 

Armon: and 

Sophia: the science 

Armon: Side. Side. Yeah. The hard way. Yeah.

Sophia: I think, um, I do think that it is hard for an early stage, an early stage biotech company. It is very much about the data. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: There are a few deals. I mean, you're doing a licensing deal at the beginning, but you're fundraising and you're deciding a valuation and, you know, testing the air to see what the air tells you that valuation should be.

But, um, you, uh, it, it is, it is really essentially about doing very good science and you probably want. In my view, you actually do want, which I think is different than the bluechip VC view. Yeah. You want someone who is the inventor or the best person in the world, the most knowledgeable in [00:17:00] this technology to be running the scientific strategy.

Yeah. And it is all scientific strategy. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: When we started the company, I was COO, I was not CEO. Yeah. And I think that was, that was a decision we took that we were both in agreement on and was the right decision. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I was gonna set up, set it up as a business, raise the money, make sure it's operational accounting is in place.

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: You know, financial models are in place, HR is done properly. Eric is running the scientific strategy. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Because he understands it well. It's kind of like portal and squeeze, right? Yeah. You were the inventor, so you know. Exactly. You know, more than anyone else. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, so I think that's appropriate, but this is a, I think what gets missed sometimes, I talk to some PhDs that are starting companies and I really think what's missed is that.

You know, a biotech company is not a way to si fund a science project. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: It is all about funding eventually a product. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: It may actually move away from your original idea. You may, yeah. You, you, you might move away from your original [00:18:00] idea. You might move away from, um, you might not be able to do experiments that tell you more about your idea.

Yeah. I think you have to be really willing to let those go and really willing to focus on what's gonna make a good product. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And I think that someone who maybe especially the inventor is like, struggles with that. I also think that sometimes times I think good business people are creative. 

Yeah.

They're market makers. Yeah. They create value in markets out of nowhere. They create deals of mutual value that others may not see. 

Yeah. 

I think that's a good business person. A lot of PhDs I encounter. Of expect raising funds or making deals to be like a structured application process. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I apply and my data is good, and therefore I will receive money.

Armon: I reserve a, I get a reward. 

Sophia: Yeah, 

Armon: yeah. 

Sophia: No, no. Like that's not the way things work. 

Armon: Yeah, and no, I agree. I mean, I think it's kind of like, like you're saying, I think the [00:19:00] advantage of the PhD in mentor backgrounds is that you know this better than anyone. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: And so you're most likely to be able to keep making it move as fast as possible and sniff out what are the right technical directions.

But then a lot of the features that made you a good PhD type can become paralytic. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: For like the business side or operational side, because you'll overanalyze the shit out of it. Or you'll have too myopic view of like, yes, my stuff is great, therefore others must see the greatness and give the money.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: As opposed to No, there's all kinds of like stupid politics in the background mm-hmm. Of what's gonna get funded and what's not. Like what's trendy and and what's not trendy may drive you nuts. And you might actually be right that this is a dumb flash in the pan, but it doesn't change. The fact doesn't change.

Yeah. Hundreds of millions are going that way and nothing is going your way. 

Sophia: Exactly. 

Armon: So you better do something about it. Yeah. Um, and I think that's the bridge that's very hard for a lot of technical types to get okay with, like, deal with the imperfections of the world and know that analyzing the hell out of a problem is not gonna be the [00:20:00] answer.

It's like you just kind of gotta wing it or hope, I don't know, you find the right friend that helps you get through that next stage and stuff like that. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Uh, 'cause I think also a lot of them don't wanna deal with. Other functions that they view as beneath them? 

Sophia: Yes. 

Armon: But can definitely sync them if they neglect it.

Like, let's say HR things. 

Sophia: HR or honestly finances. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. Or the finances. Like all those, all those kinds of things. Mm-hmm. Um, or like they'll have trouble ever signing FA 

Sophia: dollar or, or Yeah. Trouble firing anyone. Yes. I think that part of the business muscle is a sales muscle. Yeah. That is in every industry.

We pretend sometimes it's not in biotech, because basically we're all pre-commercial. We're above that. Yeah. We're above that. No, I think sales, having a sales muscle is essential at radar. We are trying to change the way that people think about delivery. That's a sales motion. 

Yeah. 

You have to sell it. Um, or no one's gonna buy it.

Yeah. And, and we, we do need people to buy into the [00:21:00] idea. They buy in by financing us in different ways. They're financing and supporting. We're selling stock 

Armon: essentially. 

Sophia: But you're selling and I think that, um. Selling to industry is a different, is different than selling to nature or a big scientific journal.

Yeah. Um, it does, you have to understand that you're getting, you're getting blow back from whatever's going on in the public markets. So blow back to private and you really, I think the sales muscle is really about having curiosity and empathy. Yeah. Digging into what an, what is an investor's worldview and where can I find the wedge to get into that worldview Yeah.

And expand it and get them excited. And it's often not just pitching the science as is. 

Yeah. You 

can do that for publication that's not for an investors. So yeah. I think that sales muscle is part of it that is often missed. Fundraising is a key skill. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I think if you're not good at it, you have to move over.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: You just have to, 'cause it's so essential. It's like number one essential for the company. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have [00:22:00] money, it's just not, you're not moving anywhere. So you need to either move over, you need to find a way to bring someone in who can. Yeah. 

Armon: And 

Sophia: I think that's, that's like a. Sometimes it, it's hard for the PhDs get so some PhDs to get past that.

That is number one. 

Armon: Yeah. No, I think for most of them, phenotypically, it's just not their thing. 

Sophia: Not their 

Armon: thing. Uh, they'll be generally happier being a CSO. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Uh, as opposed to Well, 'cause also I think a lot of it is, even if they could stand that seat, they won't like it. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Because most of your day has nothing to do with science.

Sophia: Yep. 

Armon: And so you're not getting to do the part you, like, 

Sophia: you're talking to investors all day 

Armon: Yeah. And you're repeating 

Sophia: yourself and No, you, you fundraising money and then you have to talk to them all day still. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you're constantly repeating yourself. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, here's what we do for the over and over fifth time today.

Sophia: Exactly. 

Armon: I'll say it five more times tomorrow. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. And so on. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. Uh, and you just need to be okay with that. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Yeah. 

And, and just to remind folks, like, where's radar at today? Like, how many people are you guys? How, how much have you raised so far? 

Sophia: Yeah. Um, we are, we, we are typically between 10 to [00:23:00] 13 people.

Yep. So right now we're about 11 people. We've raised like 14 million so far. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I think publicly we've raised about 13.4 and have drawn in more investment since then. Nothing makes people wanna invest than others investing, so it's great. 

Armon: Oh yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, you just sit around. I know that you, I didn't answer your calls earlier, but it just got lost.

Yeah. Can I please give you money now? 

Sophia: I think you were the one to tell me that as soon as I close my round, you're like, this is the perfect time to fundraise. Yeah. As soon as people just invested, that's when they're gonna wanna put in money. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, so we raised about 14 million. We are doing novel biology.

We have some technical challenges that have never been overcome before. Um, and so our next major milestone is to show, hopefully show the profile we've shown in vitro, in vivo. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: That's our next major milestone. 

Armon: And what, what do you think are the things that, or what, what are the things that stood out to you so far that are most different than what you expected it to be like?

Uh, as far as in general, getting involved with biotech being a CEO for it, all that, [00:24:00] 

Sophia: yeah. There are, I mean, so many things. I'm trying to think 

Armon: the things that annoy you the most. 

Sophia: Oh man. There's so many things annoy me. I mean, one is, uh, actually I think I find that other founders do this more than VCs, but you know, we have heard statements of like, you know, oh, you're just in vitro and you've raised so much money that's a, you know, atypical or like, you know, people are, again, they feel like they're upset 'cause they're basically near the clinic and we've raised less money.

But, you know, it's like, well price and how much you'll raise is all dictated by supply and demand. We're doing something no one has done before. Yeah. And so there's no, you can't expect, so this is kind of annoyance on VCN founder side. You cannot expect all technologies to move at the same pace. Yeah. If you're doing something no one has done before.

It might take you a little longer. Yeah. If you're doing something that others have done [00:25:00] before. Well, I think China will set the bar on how fast you can go. Yeah. And then you'll be somewhere in between. 

Yeah. 

Um, and so I think expecting every company to be at the same, eventually clinical data does drive.

Yeah. 

You know, clinical data will drive, uh, financing muscles on the public side especially. But actually, you know, of course in the good years 20 20, 20 21, it was mostly preclinical novel platforms that were getting funded with really large amounts. So I think historically that recent history, that hasn't been true.

Yeah. People were really, really liked these, you know, platforms that were novel. Now that's kind of changed to more de-risked assets. De-risked assets can take little chunks of the world. We hope to remake the world or take a big, bigger chunk. Yeah. I think portal's in that category too. Um, so it's just a different expectation.

Um, other things, I think that this industry, I have been in this industry is interesting because, uh. VCs, I think more than any other [00:26:00] industry, they just love to hold the reins and Backstreet Drive. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And pat themselves on the back. I mean, the number of LinkedIn announcements where it's like a VC is like congratulating themselves for having founded or been the founder of X, Y, Z company.

Like, uh, I think you were sitting at the VC the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I think that to people outside of biotech, they would not have context for what you're saying. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: The founder is typically the operator. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I have heard of the phrase in this industry, operating VCs. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: You should take on operating VCs.

Yeah. And like, I should take on a backseat driver vc who will not take, they want to keep their VC salary. Um, they wanna keep And job 

Armon: security. 

Sophia: And job security. They want to, you know, have the flexibility to, like, they don't like the data, they just refocus their attention. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, but they should, they should operate the company, but they don't wanna be in every day.

Armon: Oh, yeah. 

Sophia: But they should operate the company. It just doesn't make sense. It's like an oxymoron. 

Armon: Why? Why do you think that [00:27:00] mindset exists in our zone versus not in other zones? 

Sophia: I think that unlike other industries, our industry, other industries in maybe deep tech or AI or software that came out of Silicon Valley 

Armon: mm-hmm.

Sophia: Biotech came out of Boston. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: And I think followed a more maybe PE style model or more. I mean, I think in Boston the idea was you can actually go directly to a university 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: License a technology from a university who is the owner. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And I think there's this underlying idea that the scientists themselves are replaceable.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: They're just a pair of hands and uh, scientists themselves are replaceable because they're replaceable. They can be assigned low value. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: They're not critical to the endeavor. The inventor himself is not critical to the endeavor. The tech transfer can be easily done [00:28:00] as part of the licensing agreement, and therefore the VC should own 90 plus percent of the company on day one.

Yeah. 

Just so foreign to the Silicon Valley model that places a lot of agency on the founders themselves. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: You know, Google was a licensed patent. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: But you know, Larry and Sergei were entirely consequential 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: To it. But I think in Boston oftentimes, yeah. If I were a VC too, and I'm like on face value, do I want 90 plus percent of a company on day one, or do I wanna pay for founder equity?

Yeah. Founder equity is extremely expensive. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: As a vc. So you'd really have to believe someone else can take it better than you can. 

Armon: Yeah. Well, and I also wonder if some of it is in almost every other zone. There's a near term feedback loop mm-hmm. Of is it generating revenue or not. Mm-hmm. Like in software and all these other things, they tend to get revenue very early on.

Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: Whereas 

Armon: most biotechs successful ones, whatever that means, will come and go without ever having had a single cent of commercial revenue. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Uh, and it'll be like a 10 year play. They would've [00:29:00] probably raised hundreds of millions and maybe they got bought out for a few billion before they ever sold a single dollar worth of stuff.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: And so because there is no feedback loop there, it's very hard to probably judge anything. Mm-hmm. That's coming out in a relatively objective way. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: So it all becomes a pure perception and sales game. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: And if the VCs are essentially just selling it to each other mm-hmm. And they've all like, agreed this will be a thing.

Sophia: Yep. 

Armon: Then it's easy for it to continue. And if they disagree, it'll be a thing, then it just won't be, which do 

Sophia: Exactly. 

Armon: Uh, because there's no external proof points 

Sophia: Yes. 

Armon: For a generalist to bet on. 

Sophia: And I, I do think with the flight of generalist capital from biotech, this is just, it's getting worse. Um, yeah.

But I think that's exactly right. Um. I think that's exactly right. You're also very beholden. There's no escape velocity from investors in this industry. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: You're beholden to them forever more. Exactly. And when you enter the series A, B, C, you have no, you basically have no option but to take money from these bigger investors that create their own markets and valuations.

See, they have this little mafia. 

Armon: [00:30:00] Yeah. 

Sophia: And you can't escape them. They're, they're the syndicate. You need to go public. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: In fact, your IPO price is gonna be related to your syndicate. 

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: And you know that ahead of time. And so there's kind of no way to escape this small-ish mafia 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Of larger firms.

And you're Yeah. You're beholden to them. 

Armon: Right. 'cause I think it's a lot of, it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. 'cause if you work with those big crossover groups and it's a successful IPO mm-hmm. Then it's like, oh, okay, so the next IPO needs to be from that group. Mm-hmm. And if your investor group is outside of that, like, then the public side is like, Hmm, is this IPO gonna pop?

Sophia: Mm-hmm. Because 

Armon: I don't wanna take the. Three year bet on whether or not their clinical POC works because mm-hmm. Stats say it probably won't work. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: But I will happily play the two month game of I'm in the crossover stock popped afterwards and I get it. And then especially if they're good at getting acquired before they have clinical POC mm-hmm.

Sophia: Which some of them 

Armon: do. Mm-hmm. Then you never ever have the feedback loop of [00:31:00] this thing actually worked or didn't work. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Um, so a financial outcome can be very decoupled from actual company or drug success. 

Sophia: Yeah. I also think that the, the eventual customer base, I think m and a is a lifeline for everyone.

Private or public. Yeah. You wanna go public. You're also probably looking at m and a. Oh for sure. Becoming a very 

Armon: few ever. 

Sophia: Very few. I mean, I think Alnylam is barely becoming profitable now. So, I mean, you're looking at these companies that, right. Yeah. Billions in revenue and are barely becoming profitable.

It's just unlikely. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: Um, or it's a very, very select few that don't see m and a as the eventual 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: End game. And then you're looking at maybe 10 if you're lucky, possible parties who could take you. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And then it also becomes a relationship game. And I think these big VCs, the benefit is they do often have or hire in people with deep relationships with these pharma 

Armon: Yeah.

Sophia: That can sell and drive a story. You might be able to do that yourself. Again, for those species that are ENT to do that, it is a relationships and sales is extremely important. Yeah. Like [00:32:00] relationship built in with pharma is sales, the BD stuff. 

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: And so I think, uh, yeah, it's a weird industry where essentially biotech acts as the outsourced r and d arm for pharma.

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: And it's just, it's cheaper for them on an IR basis to do it that way. And, um. But then you have like 10, basically 10 customers you can go to that have enough buying power to, to take you. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and that is very strange for most industries. Yeah. 

Armon: Oh yeah. I agree. Yeah. 'cause it's hard to stand on their own and then that's part of why I think it reinforces the trendiness aspect of things where, because if the pharmas are interested in a zone 

Sophia: mm-hmm.

Armon: There's huge incentive for the VCs to fund things mm-hmm. In that zone and not outside of it. Mm-hmm. Because if their ultimate buyers are saying, this is the thing I would be interested in. Yeah. 

Sophia: And it 

Armon: makes they play that. 

Sophia: Yeah. And if you see, I mean it is often you can probably put in a former head of r and d at a big [00:33:00] pharma in a CEO and that will cost you less in equity than having a founder on board.

Armon: Oh yeah, for sure. 

Sophia: I mean, know the beginning, so yeah. Even you pay more cash. 

Armon: Yeah, for sure. 

And, and so now like going through all the CEO stuff for you, um, you know, for the day to day things that you do, what's been most different from what you expected going into it? 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Like the 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Sophia that met Eric 

Sophia: Yes.

Armon: To the Sophia today. Oh yeah. Oh, which one of her expectations were just like dead wrong. 

Sophia: Okay. Okay. Okay. There are so many, um, 

Armon: you're so disappointed in your former simulation of what your new life would be.

Sophia: Okay. I, I don't know how else to say this, but I think this is area biotech is unlike startups and I have been quite surprised, you know, I don't wanna cause any offense, but it, when I met Eric, Eric and I [00:34:00] are both people. Who value hard work. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: In and of itself, every environment I have ever worked in, they're quite corporate.

Um, I think actually the Chinese biotech, it, it was China, China's largest biotech, but didn't feel that corporate. Yeah. It kind of felt like it felt like a giant startup. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: But in that giant startup, we went in between eight and 9:00 AM every day and people were out between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM every day.

Yeah. The company had to institute a policy where you would lose some of your bonus if you didn't sleep enough hours. We went in on weekends, every weekend. Um, when I was at BCG, I was expected to work 80 to a hundred hours a week, and everyone around me is doing that. And it's honestly, it's not like our work.

Is that interesting? 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: You're not changing the world. Yeah. You're helping a company who told you they wanna reduce, they wanna cut cost by 70 million. Yeah. You're helping them create a hundred page deck. 

Armon: Saying that 

Sophia: that makes sense. Like it's not, you know, and it's an industry that had, you have no idea [00:35:00] about going in or you're doing the fifth reorg Yeah.

In the past six years for this company. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And pretending that it's based on, again, a hundred page deck, you're making a lot of slides. Like, you know, it's not that you are working 80 to a hundred hours a week. Uh, when I worked at Gates Foundation, it's a public health. This is more of like an empathy kind of kumbaya Yeah.

Kinda a attitude here than BCG was a bit more cutthroat. And biotech in China was actually a lot of camaraderie and grandiose ambition I think too. But Gates Foundation was, it was also we, we did have a big sense of urgency, but we worked 80 to a hundred hour weeks. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Yeah. Consistently. And I would say like, I actually found that work very inspiring.

And you always think, like in startup world. People work hard. If you talk to any tech bro out here in Silicon Valley, they're like, yeah, like my people. We actually all live together and we sleep in the office and like we, we purchased a house here. And like all of our engineers live there. And by the way, they're all like between the ages of 15 and 21.

Yeah. [00:36:00] Um, and biotech is not that. It's uh, I think if you go to any incubator, people strolling in between nine and 10. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: And strolling out between four and five. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And I don't think that that's necessarily natural to biotech. I've been in biotech in China and they can do longer. And I think here, I, I do think biotech, I mean, it's not like people don't make that much money in biotech.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: The equity incentive is not like it is in tech for anybody. 

Armon: That's 

Sophia: true. So there are some things that it's like, okay, well why Yeah. 

Work that hard. But I think it's an industry where if you do more than the nine to five, you're already a. Head above the rest. 

Yeah. 

So I think we need to look at ourselves sincerely and say like, okay, we do not work that general.

Yeah. People generally don't work that hard in biotech. Yeah. And so I think at the beginning of the journey I was so confused at why everyone was telling me like, we're, we're burning out. We're burning out. And I was so confused because I'm like, all of you're going home extremely decent hours. Like 

Armon: I'm burning out watching you go home.

Sophia: Exactly. And it was really [00:37:00] hard to live with, with like, with that. Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to live with that. I mean, like, we could be making more progress. 

Armon: Uh, no, definitely agree with that. 

And I feel like they can get very slow, but, but, but I think it's a consequence of, uh, in a weird way, like, because everyone has less equity in the biotech side.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Uh, and even if they start off with a decent amount, they get diluted to hell 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Before there's any kind of exit, uh, because you need so much money to come in before anything will happen. But yeah, maybe that's part of it. And I agree. I think it's like a little bit of a culture thing in our zone.

It's 

Sophia: a culture thing. It's hard to, if you're in an incubator and everyone's doing that, it's hard to go against grain. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, 

Armon: oh, don't worry. I've, I've gone against the grain. I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna email you at any hour. Uh, 

Sophia: I mean, I still email at any hour. It's like Yeah, 

Armon: yeah. 

Like response time to customers under 24 hours.

I don't care what [00:38:00] else is going on. 

Sophia: Exactly. Exactly. 

Armon: You've gotta answer under 

Sophia: 24 hours. You gotta answer. Oh, that's the other thing. I think, um, people with PhDs are trained on email differently than I am. I'm a you have to answer 24 hours person and Yeah. My inbox is always getting bombarded, so I feel like if I can answer, everyone can answer within 24 hours.

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Is there something about you that you think has changed the most throughout all of this? 

Sophia: About me? 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, I think that I.

Like I said at the beginning of this, I'm like, I want to work on really hard problems, the hardest problems and the most consequential. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and then I just realized how hard molecular biology is. Yeah. So it's like actually just one hard problem at a time. One hard 

Armon: problem's, something to work, 

Sophia: one hard problem, and then really try to dose lighter problems around that.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I don't wanna work on just [00:39:00] straight light problem. Yeah. I don't wanna sleepwalk through building a company essentially. Yeah. Or, and again, I think we're in a really reregulate re regulated space. I think a lot of VCs actually like to bring in operators who can almost sleepwalk through the regulatory process.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: No, I wanna do like challenging things. I want, if anything, to use this company as a way to change the regulatory process. Mm-hmm. Change, change, change, 

Armon: change. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, oh, that's another thing. This, sorry. Going back to your previous question. 

I think this industry is one that, unlike other industries, really is okay with letting things happen to them.

We're highly regulated. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: But CEOs don't like to come out and talk about their feelings about this FDA, for example. 

Armon: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: CEOs do not like to come out and change, make a movement to change the way things are. 

Armon: Do you think that's because the average age is high and that's just their nature?

'cause they're more mature in their careers code for older or 

Sophia: mm-hmm. 

Armon: Or do you think it's a nature of the industry? 

Sophia: I had [00:40:00] seen before, I forgot what year this was in that, uh, there were, in most industries, the CCEO was quite a recognizable, like I think in terms of branding, typically for a company, you know, the brand first and then you know the product and the CEOs of consequential companies are quite known.

Like Gens and Huang. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Whatever. In pharma, I had seen that like. You first know the product, they actually rather you not know or not know the brand name as much. So Pfizer drug versus, I can't change with COVID, but like where we talk about Moderna vaccine or first vaccine, but typically it's like, oh, drug product first.

Yeah. Re but you don't say Pfizer, say Lior, whatever. 

Yeah. 

And then pharma name underneath that, they did not put a lot of effort in you recognizing the brand. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And that CEOs are relatively unknown. Yeah. People couldn't name the CEOs of major pharma companies. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, even people who work in industry tend to not know the [00:41:00] names of CEOs of major pharma companies, which is not the case for other industries, particularly tech, where CEOs are more glorified.

Yeah. And pharma, they're not. And so I think part of it is like, we're an industry that maybe because we're so technical in nature, we think that maybe putting out a white paper here or there and that everyone, you know, people will always tend towards a scientific decision. And it could be an age thing.

Armon: Well, 'cause I, I, I guess I'm just trying to think of like. 

A lot of other major established, regulated industries like whatever, mining and commodity extraction power, all these other things. Like you don't, it's similar. You don't really know who runs it or like, they don't tend to try to be loud 'cause they don't wanna piss off the regulator.

Sophia: Maybe because I worked in Houston before. Yeah. Nothing of oil and gas. Highly regulated. They are, they are such heavy lobbyists and influential in political circles. They have senators on speed dial. They have, uh, [00:42:00] their understanding the decisions that other countries are making. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: In order to raise or drop the price of oil.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: A raise or drop the demand for oil from a particular country. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: Um, and so I, the, you know, oil and gas executives, highly regulated industry are highly involved in, uh, 

Armon: fair enough 

Sophia: trying to remake the markets as suits them. And I think that, you know, for example, like the automobile industry does this as well.

The German car lobbies are extremely strong and intertwined with, with German politics. 

Armon: Is it because they employ a lot of labor though? Because our space doesn't 

Sophia: Yeah. Our, I guess, I guess that's true. 

Armon: We don't have any swing voters. 

Sophia: I heard, I heard an argument before that, um, biotech, essentially biotech employees are all in blue states.

Yeah. And blue states that are not expected to switch over to being red. Right. Massachusetts and California, they're not never gonna be swing states. Yeah. Um, and also that [00:43:00] the, you know, states don't, nobody wants to be the state state that reduces their health budget or reduces any, you know, if they're making the budget on a previous budget, they don't wanna be the first state to reduce healthcare spending if they're gonna be getting more funding for their state.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, so there are some arguments as to why there's little incentives to listen to biotech. 

Armon: Yeah. Well, I think we're so far away from the commercial end because related to the regulatory stuff, making phase one and phase two trials a little bit more. Or sorry, if you make a phase one or phase two trial, take a year less versus you allow commercial exclusivity for a year longer.

The latter is by far more valuable. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Because it's not diluted by all the failures. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: And so they're gonna spend all their mind share on how do I, something that's working in already printing money. Yeah. How do I ensure I keep the money printer on for as long as possible? 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: As opposed to, you know, how do I get through this high attrition rate process?

Yeah. Any faster. 

Sophia: Yeah. [00:44:00] 

Armon: Especially if their model is to just buy the biotechs that already showed it worked. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Because we're past that point. 

Um, and then like, are there any near death experiences you guys have had so far that you think are fun stories to share? 

Sophia: It's not fun. We had a near-death experience at the very beginning, uhhuh of radar.

It's not so fun to share. But we had had a, so I think, you know, the big, the drama of the time is that we were as the underdogs, particularly in this industry 

Armon: mm-hmm. 

Sophia: Both two first time, first time founders, me and Eric trying to raise for company on what we believed was a stronger IP position and stronger data.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Against a blue chip. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And you are really raising against the blue chip because the blue chip just had funding. 

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: And it is amazing. You know, you talk to VCs and they're like, oh, this looks great, but we can't say no to the blue chip. Yeah. 

Armon: [00:45:00] Yeah. 

Sophia: So they diligence the blue, the blue chips idea by going to us.

And so there's always this, you know, it's like, okay, well we're, we couldn't, it's hard to know if this diligence process is actually to always gonna be just diligencing the technology from the inventor for a competitor. 

Yeah. 

That was not including us. So. We had had a, a co-founder at the time on the academic side who also couldn't decide if he was gonna come with us or that blue chip.

And I think he was getting some advice that he was getting some advice from the blue chips themselves that Eric and I were nobodies and an experienced. And, uh, you know, I think he ended up, it was, he was, for me, I, I thought like this guy, his licensing office was making us do such incredible amounts of homework.

Yeah. That was not related to actually building the company. Mm-hmm. He was also had really high demands for his equity stake and other aspects of the company and my [00:46:00] involvement in Eric's involvement, um, that like didn't align with the vision. Yeah. And you know, basically for me, I told Eric like, technology must might be really exciting, but it's not worth it for me.

Yeah. If we can't get along, but all of us can't get along, it's just not worth it for me. Well 

Armon: else if you're not getting along at that point, it's, yeah. 

Sophia: It's only the beginning and it was already pretty difficult and so. There was a big moment where we decided to split. You know, basically it was like, I'm out, or I'm out, or they have to be out.

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: And um, in the end they were out. Yeah. And, um, they went with a blue chip, which is fine. 

Armon: Well, I think a dynamic that I don't think it's obvious to a lot of people, and don't get me wrong, I love some of the like, academic PIs, but to them, any of these biotech things is essentially a free option.

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: They're taking no real reputation risk. Mm-hmm. 'cause academia doesn't care what your startups did. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: They just care about your papers and your academic progeny that are the next professors. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: And so you get equity, but you're not shifting your job. They normally don't get a salary of any [00:47:00] sort anyway.

So it's not like a 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Any kind of financial tie in. It's just like, oh yeah, I spun out a startup and if it works, I'll get rich and if it doesn't work, who cares? 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Um, and so they're not necessarily that engaged, and I think some of them get very cynical and or greedy. And the ones that have done it multiple times.

Just like kind of get greedy and it's just their thing. They're like, oh yeah, I'll do it all the time. Yeah. And then the ones that don't do it all the time get all jealous. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Because they see their peers getting stupid rich off of some startup that made it. Yeah. And then they're like, well, I want that.

So if I have one idea, I'm gonna, you know, try to get 40% of it. 

Sophia: Yeah. I also think that there's a, this is in this case, the fir their first time PIs doing companies. Yeah. And I think what was not understood is equity is a, something that incentivizes future behavior, not past behavior. Mm-hmm. Um, and so the payment, licensing payments to the university, both, you know, equity, royalties, milestones, everything [00:48:00] that is accounting for past work.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, equity is future behavior. And so if you're not, again, if you're not actually gonna work at the company or put up the dollars 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Then you. Equity is not the right, it's not the right tool in assignment. I'll say that what was particularly difficult about the situation is we already had term sheets.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And the name, the, the title co-founder is significant. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: Yeah. So now we have term sheets that we're trying to sign at good terms, and we have to go back and tell them we have a co-founder breakup situation. Yeah. Not, I mean, to me it's not, it's not the operating co-founders, but it, it didn't matter.

We lost all the term sheets, so. 

Armon: Oh, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Any, 

Sophia: anything, 

Armon: anything that moves. Exactly. 

Sophia: They're 

Armon: like, 

Sophia: exactly. 

Armon: Thank you. Bye. 

Sophia: And they're just looking for a reason to say no. Um, and, and we, we gave it to them at that time, so we basically had to, we had to take a pause, essentially restart and try to make it look like a different company.

Yeah. Yeah. A few months later, 

Armon: Have there been BC interactions you've had that like, [00:49:00] you're like, oh, that was a. Great. Like what are cases where I know on average were, uh, saying they can be painful? Uh, what were cases where they were more useful than you thought?

Sophia: Yeah. Actually, the mo my, the most useful ones I can think of are two VCs that, that didn't invest in us in the future. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, I mean, both of them started with like, you know, happy to give you advice, happy to talk. This is outside of our thesis area because of X, Y, Z. Yeah. Sometimes it was 'cause of us.

They just did not do, it's not in their thesis area to do founders. They incubate the companies or, 

Armon: yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Right. And I think eventually you become eligible for their dollars. But in both of these cases, these VCs actually gave us a lot of time. Um, and their feedback was the most honest. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: They already told me they're not gonna invest.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And so in both of them, they, you know, I think one of them, the advice was generally on, they had been through bad times in biotech before. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: They've been around 2008. And, you know, in their opinion, [00:50:00] this opinion that strategic dollars were actually more important in these times because they not only brought validation, but historically the outcomes are better.

And they taught us how to engage with the strategics because it's different than engaging with an investor. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and he was able to gimme the rundown based on experience on what, what were the strategics, what were specifically different strategics looking for that we might talk to how they might structure their terms, um, and how we might want to explain our technology to them.

Yeah. Versus a vc, um, and timelines for which, from which to engage them, and blah, blah, blah. So actually that was, that was a very important redirect. After that, we started engaging very proactively with strategics, which I think was essential to raising our seed round. Yeah. And another one, another VC that just gave us to me, um, an important part of fundraising is how much am I gonna raise for what?

And the breakdown of that. And they really went deep into like, okay, you're missing, you're gonna pay for this insurance, you're gonna pay for this insulting, it's gonna be more expensive than you think. Yeah. You're gonna have to blah, blah, blah. Build in this buffer, [00:51:00] um, for, you know, whatever it was, like rent or equipment.

Yeah. Um, so I think, yeah, like they were willing to get down to the nitty gritty and gimme really good advice after telling me that they weren't gonna invest. 

Armon: Yeah. Okay. 

Sophia: Yeah, 

Armon: that's good of them. 

And then, um, as you think back compared to some of your peers that were getting into these zones, what do you think was different about you that helped you get as far as you have compared to them?

Sophia: Which peers? 

Armon: Oh, like other MBAs or other PhDs trying to start things like of the, like little froth of people looking for money straight out of school. 

Sophia: Oh, I see, I see. Um, I think in my incubator when I was seeing others from a scientific background. I think they didn't see fundraising as their number one job when they were fundraising.

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: And you'll know what your number one job is by just looking at the distribution of your time. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: And so they were still, they were [00:52:00] spending 5% of their time on maybe reaching out to a VC or two. And it's just not enough. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: It doesn't matter who you are, it's just not enough. You know, reach out to as many as you can and if anything, they'll all say yes, and then your price will go up.

Armon: Right, right. 

Sophia: Um, so like, there, there is capital out there, but it's about, you know, and in my view, I think some of them had views on like, oh, like I don't wanna talk to this person because they don't know what they're talking about. Or they had some view about like, oh, this person's not a PhD. So I talk to them and I'm like, you have money?

Yeah. '

cause like actually the innovation we're creating is supposed to be for a broad population. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

You can talk to generalists better on you if you can convince a generalist. To understand your idea and buy into it. 

Yeah. 

And understand the risk profile as well. 

Yeah. 

At the end of the day, if you oversubscribe around, you can choose, and if you don't, then you need more money.

Right. 

So to me, it's like being picky ahead of time, or not actually allocating time to the fundraising process [00:53:00] is more on the technical founder side. If that is your number one job, or number two, if you really think you're gonna be bad at it, then maybe your number one job is recruiting a good fundraiser.

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: It just like be true to yourself. 

Armon: Right. 

Sophia: Um, on the MBA side, I don't know, I actually don't know a lot of MBA founders in early stage. Some of my classmates, I, I do think that on the MBA side, I know for my MBA, there were like three of us in my MBA class that remembered the central dogma, molecular biology.

Armon: Okay. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: So not too many we're gonna make it, 

Sophia: not gonna make it, or like some of them. Like thought to approach I've heard from PhD is that it's like I talked to this person, but like they do not understand the basic tenet of my idea. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And I'd be like, well, did you read the paper? And they'd be is like, no, read the paper.

I'm, well, you gotta read the paper. Because 

Armon: that's, you 

Sophia: have to be able to look at data and read. You have to be able to do it 

Armon: because you're gonna have to sell that later. 

Sophia: You're gonna have to sell [00:54:00] that. Yeah. You're gonna have to answer questions on the data. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: So you have to ramp up. You have to learn it.

And it's not like MBAs refuse to learn deep tech everywhere. I think AI is deep tech. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And they're willing to get into it, but for some reason people see biotech and they're like foreign land. I cannot come close. I cannot endeavor to ever understand this. 

Armon: Well. I also think our field definitely has a public perception problem.

So like why do you think tech type stuff is generally considered cooler? Definitely more money goes into it. 

Sophia: More money comes in and comes out. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: You have a lot more people who've made life changing amounts of money in tech than in biotech. 

Armon: For sure 

Sophia: lots more, especially here in the valley and MBAs often do chase dollars.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: The phenotype of the MBA is chasing dollars. I had an MBA former MBA who's been now an executive on the public side of biotech many times, and I had lunch with him. He was like, early stage biotech, you don't like to make money. Yeah. So I think like [00:55:00] MBA, the phenotype is chasing dollars and I think this is a much riskier industry to do it in.

Armon: one of the other questions on like more operational side, what do you think is the biggest delta between how you see the world and how the rest of your team sees the world? 

Sophia: Mm-hmm.

Um, 

Armon: and, and I mean, just like by world I mean the adventure radar is on. 

Sophia: Yes, yes, yes. I think that difference for me and, and maybe everyone else on my team is I really. I really, I truly believe that the world is, I don't know how, say like fungible. 

Mm-hmm. 

You can make the world you want to live in. Yeah.

You can remake the world. Every construct we live in is manmade. FDA, somebody came up with that Yeah. And then kept coming up with more ways to structure it. 

Yeah. 

And it can be remade. 

Yeah. 

Um, you know, everything can be remade. Public [00:56:00] perception can be remade. This administration's perception can be remade.

The FDA can be remade. I really believe in personal agency. 

Mm-hmm. 

You know, I think if you meet people that we lionize as top in their field, or you meet billionaires or you meet world leaders and they're like, well, you know, they're, they're, they're kind of like me. Yeah. Like, they're not necessarily smarter than me.

Yeah. They're not, I wouldn't say Yeah. Smarter, more knowledgeable. I, you know, when I have met them before, and I think that's one of the big opportunities of having. Honestly of having been at Stanford, Harvard, or here at, you know, in Silicon Valley. Yeah. Oris. You get to meet these people and you're like, you know, I couldn't be, you're more normal than I thought.

Like, you're super normal. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: You just have a high tendency towards agency and so on. My team, like, I always tell my team, I believe I can talk to anybody in the world. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: So if you need advice from the top person in the field or you need something, some laying [00:57:00] clear, I can make it happen. Like we can all make it happen.

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and uh, so yeah, to me it's like, uh, there is nothing that is out of reach for us. I really, I mean, I remember when we were a small pre-seed company, and this is a small case, but you know, we didn't have a lot of funding, so I told people, we can go to conferences, but you gotta get the ticket for free.

And they're like, it's impossible. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: I'm like, no. Certainly possible. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: But you have to convince the person to give the ticket for free and then you can definitely go. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Or I'll go if I convince them. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And there was this conference, you know, we were still pre-seed, but um. You know, one of the team members, I was like, well, a way to get for free is do a service for them.

So I emailed the conference and offered to be on their CEO panel, more like a pre-seed company. If they'll, you know, they'll let me go for free, I'll offer my time. And she was like, that's ridiculous. They're looking for CEOs of like big companies. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: Capstan and Moderna, whatever. And, uh, you know, at first I get a response to have a conversation.

I have a conversation with 'em. Eventually I get, I get on that panel. Yeah, yeah. Yes. It's the head of RD and BioNTech [00:58:00] and me and the CEOs of other big companies. Yeah, 

Armon: yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: And I was just taken aback, but it's like, did you try? 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: This is just another person making this decision. It's your job to convince them to do things.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: It's also like a Yeah. To me, I, I actually think we're living in a moment of great disruption right now in biotech. Re companies are finally exploring beyond the US for phase one two. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Yeah. They're finally exploring beyond the US for commercialization as well, because MFN is making people think about where else we can commercialize.

Armon: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, you know, we're looking at China as a, a lot of Americans have never been to China. Yeah. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And now a lot of them are like, fuck, maybe I need to go to China for the first time. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and China is actually a place where agency really matters. You can actually, you have a lot more creativity, ability to be creative and move 

Armon: Yeah.

Sophia: There. Um, and so if you can play your cards right. So I think versus my team, I'm, I'm incredibly agentic. I really think I can get anything done. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, as long as I know where I'm headed, we can get it done. Yeah. You can convince [00:59:00] anybody. I just need to know who it is. 

Armon: Yeah. And, and I think some of the mindset there that you were touching on, that at least I noticed the biggest difference on is their sense of the cost of time.

So different from yours. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Uh, and this, and like the sense of, they're like, oh, I'll just do that experiment tomorrow or next week. I'm like, no. How about today? Today, exactly. We cost like X amount of dollars to exist. 

Sophia: Oh yes. 

Armon: Every single day. 

Sophia: That is another one where it's like, yes, the time is a big one where they're like, oh, Sophia said to do budget, so we're gonna do this experiment that takes us four weeks instead of the one that takes two.

And I'm like, no. 

Armon: Like no Rob de 

Sophia: colu time every day cost like 10 K, 20 

Armon: k. 

Sophia: And we should be, it gets way worse 

Armon: over time. 

Sophia: Exactly. Like you talked about the beginning. Good scientists know which steps to skip. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Good business people too. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah, 

Sophia: yeah. You know, get rid of all the, get rid of all the obstacles in your way.

Like sometimes in business, the best way to skip a step is to go straight to the top. Yeah. [01:00:00] 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Why am I talking to you BD associate? If I can talk to the head of RD Yeah. And have him tell you kind of same vc, talk to partner first. Get outta my way associate. 

Yeah. 

Some pe some scientific founders. I've met her like.

Oh, they're gonna associate as, yeah, this is gonna feel, you know, I didn't give them respect or shove them outta the way. I'm like, no, they're wasting your time. Yeah. Straight to the partner partner's gonna tell him to give a favorable opinion. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. You're like, I've been a consulting, I know how this works, 

Sophia: this how this works.

So you do exactly what the partner tells you, 

Armon: like, make this look good. 

Sophia: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I see. Like business also, like know which obstacles to clear know how, who to contact to clear them for you. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and get it all out of the way. Yeah. You can go the long route, which is typically the standard route.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Like, oh, let me learn how to do this while you're learning how to do it. I, you know, someone else has already leaped past you. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Sophia: Sometimes leaped past you is find the best person in the world 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: To tell you exactly how to do it. Yeah. And then you do it. 

Armon: [01:01:00] All right. 

Last question. If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about our zone, what would you change?

Sophia: Definitely. FDA. 

Armon: What about it? 

Sophia: It's, uh, risk benefit calculation. Okay. I think it's different than other places in the world. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I think actually China places a lot more, um, is less paternalistic. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: There's, um, 

Armon: excuse me, 

Sophia: China's a good model. Bless you. Yeah. For how they can think about it entirely differently.

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I think China understood. If you want regulation to be faster, okay, let's, if you keep the regulation itself constant, then you need to increase regulatory capacity. 

Mm-hmm. 

So you can change process. If you wanna keep the same regulation, either change process, change regulatory capacity. 

Yeah. 

Has to be increased that the FDA recently we saw a decrease, but the amount of regulation did not decrease.

In fact, 

Armon: yeah. 

Sophia: It was getting harder even for orphan designations to get through. [01:02:00] 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: To get a clinical approval. 

Armon: What, so one like twist or challenge on that from like our experiences, I think the. DA like, because would squeeze with our trials and us, I found the FDA to be much more practical and flexible than I thought.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: But the people giving us advice or our own regulatory folks, or like the pharma regulatory folks, everyone in between who's in charge of fricking tart card reading about the FDA A mm-hmm. Is insanely conservative. 

Sophia: I see. 

Armon: And so it was kind of this, like, I had got into this habit of like, I get you think they're gonna say no, but why don't we just fricking ask them.

Yeah. And see what they say. 

Sophia: Yeah. You know, maybe 

Armon: because also one of my friends works there and she's like ultra smart and practical. Mm-hmm. And she's like, yeah, I don't know why companies are all such weirdos 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: About things. 

Sophia: Okay. Well maybe since we are, we're obviously preclinical. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And whenever I talk to anybody to gimme advice on a regulatory process is we wanna [01:03:00] know what our trial design will look like, where we choose to go.

I'm like, well. With the number of confirmatory studies they're gonna want on our mechanism and whatever. It just seems impossible. 

Yeah. 

I think part of it is like in countries like China or Singapore, China and I, it process is more decentralized. Right? Right. So you can, I can have a direct dialogue today.

I'm already having it. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: With the, you know, with the PI on the trial. I'm like, what do you want to see? And then I know, 

Armon: yeah. 

Sophia: Singapore, you can walk into the regulatory office and talk to them today. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: In FDA, it's, we're holding off for that interact meeting until we know enough. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And before that, I think you're right.

You're talking to a lot of people who are like, it is an insurmountable challenge. 

Armon: Yeah. No. 'cause our, because our, like, the thing that emboldened me the most in the end was, um, one of our programs, like the most advanced one we eventually did, was doing five different modifications at once. Four different immune cells all at the same time.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: And Roche's team, again, they [01:04:00] were good to work with, but like Roche's regulatory team, our own people, everyone was like, there's no way in hell actually was ever gonna green light this ID it's a complete waste of time and money, blah, blah, blah. Obviously I didn't tell our board that. Uh Yeah. But they were saying, it's gonna be fine.

Uh, and I'm like, well, we won't know unless we ask. Let's ask. And if they like poop all over it, we'll like make the tweaks they want. But this is the product we would rather take in. Let's just freaking find out. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Uh, and then we do it. And like, I was like, well, yeah, fine. I was like, they seem rational from our past interactions.

I think if we just lay out why we think it's okay to do what sounds crazy when you think about it for five seconds. Mm-hmm. 

Sophia: But 

Armon: after five minute explanation, like, okay, it's not that bad. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Um, and they like totally said fine. No weird questions. Like, we hadn't done anything in vivo for that one. It was all like, I, I would say well rationalized mechanistic arguments as to why it was gonna be okay.

To change five things, about four different cell types all at the same time. And at the was like, yeah, that's fine. Uh, [01:05:00] and then like when we told Roche later the r and d people within Roche, like when we were catching up over drinks, they're like, by the way, how did you do that? Like, our regulatory people were like, there's no way in fucking hell, it's never happening.

What did you guys do to the fda? A I'm like, nothing. I swear we just asked. Yeah. 

Sophia: And that's part of the agency thing. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Just ask or talk to the people directly. Like 

Armon: they seem reasonable from our past interactions. Yeah. And to your point on cost benefit, like they seem to be hyper aware of what are true unmet needs 

Sophia: mm-hmm.

Armon: Versus what are just Me too drugs. Yeah. And they're by far more difficult about the me too drugs. Yeah. Understandably. 'cause like is anyone really benefiting? 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Other than financially with the Me too drugs. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but if it's like an unmet need, they're like, yeah, this poor person's gonna die.

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: If you have a reasonable shot at letting them not die. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Let's do it. Um, so anyway, that I found the. People in between. 

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Were the biggest problem. 

Sophia: Yeah. Uh, yeah, I see that. I mean, yeah. 

I mean it goes back maybe to round out the theme, I do [01:06:00] hope, I do wish for this industry that we allow more, what's it called?

Creativity and, I don't know, logic. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I think that, uh, 

Armon: well, well I think for that, oh, sorry. Go ahead. 

Sophia: No, go for it. 

Armon: No, no. Yeah, because I mean, you had brought it up before we clicked the red button. Uh, but I definitely agree with the creativity and logic stuff. 'cause I think our industry tends towards conservative.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Hires, I mean, we're biased 'cause we're both, yeah. Well I'm old now, but we were both straight outta school types. But I think it's partially for those reasons that they don't have the tech outcomes that they all create. Exactly. Yeah. 'cause the tech side will take chances on. Science and on people.

Sophia: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: Whereas this side only takes chances on science. They rarely take chance on people. And I think part of that means you don't have insane flameouts. 

Sophia: Yes. 

Armon: Uh, like crazy, terrible, embarrassing outcomes are far less frequent in biotech, but also for the same reason you never get past like a hundred billion or something.

Sophia: Yeah. I mean, you have them in the [01:07:00] sense of like a, you know, we saw companies like Tom raise 200 plus million, but they didn't actually get those 200 plus million. So on the PR side it looks really bad. I'm sure they did not get the, 

Armon: it's nowhere near the level of like crazy fraud as like a 

Sophia: Oh, you don't get crazy fraud.

Yes. But it is, I do think these, these really experienced, especially if you're in pharma, the, the fa the best, fastest decision you can make is to kill a program. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And in pharma, you're typically, now, especially nowadays in pharma, you are much closer to actually doing a risk adjusted MVP MPV on a project than you are in typical like a.

Early stage platforms where I do think resilience 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And creativity is required. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Creativity about the, the type, the innovativeness of different experiments you choose to take on. 

Armon: Yep. 

Sophia: I think some, some experience operators would just choose to not do any of the innovative experiments whatsoever.

Yeah. Yeah. A new platform, you do have to do them. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, and I do think resilience, like I'm sure that there are many pieces of data that we've gotten at radar where most operators would shut down the company. [01:08:00] Our competitor did shut down the company. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: I'm like, oh, that's so sad. 'cause you were, you were, you could have done these things differently and you were, you were there, but, but you didn't.

Uh, so I think resilience, those operators don't have the equity incentive or maybe the background to, to do, to make choices in a different way. 

Armon: Well, I also think part of it is the experienced operators, when shit hits the fan. They're more prone to think about, how do I sell, save myself. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Versus my baby.

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Because they don't really feel like it's their baby. 

Sophia: Yeah. 

Armon: Whereas I think the founder type are like, I've put everything on this. Yes. 

Sophia: So it's gonna 

Armon: better work. 

Sophia: You're gonna work, I'm gonna make you work. And I'll do, maybe even on the business side, I'm incentivized to do more creative things on the business side.

Yeah. I'm scouring the planet for creative deals I can, I can make to move this along. Right. You know, radar doesn't, we still have to be packaged in some way. We still have to, our broader vision is make the world's most targeted genetic medicines. There's many ways to pull that in and I'm gonna scour the [01:09:00] planet until I find the right people and Right technologies on the business side.

And Eric is gonna scour scientific literature in his brain. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

To make 

it work. 

To make it work. And I do hope and sometimes our invest, I do even think our own investors sometimes lose sight of that. Yeah. When I bring in a deal that I think makes perfect sense. 

Yeah. 

I also, maybe I like to make deals so.

You know, I bring something that I think makes perfect sense. You know, you kind of know what I'm talking about. 

Yeah, yeah. 

Um, I think it makes perfect sense of laying out the argument. I'm like, to business person, this all makes perfect sense. Yeah. And I just need to convince people to do it. And at that point, I had convinced so many people 

Yeah.

To finance my creative endeavor. 

Yeah. 

And yes, non-traditional backers. 

Yeah. 

Doesn't matter. 

Yeah. 

It's a nontraditional deal. 

Yeah. 

Um, and my investors totally forgot that we're not, this is not a science project to figure out if this nature paper exactly what was in there is translatable into this context.

It's a, it is a, we are trying to make the world's most targeted genetic medicines. We need them to get two patients. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And it's a business. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: And it's like I had to remind them, [01:10:00] 

Armon: yeah. 

Sophia: This is what it is. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: It's not, I'm not interested in running a science project or a lab. I was interested in a company.

Armon: Right. 

Sophia: So jolt them. Hey, wake up. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Sophia: Um, or remember the bigger picture, not the like, well, is it 'cause that experiment isn't working? That you're doing this? No. That experiment is working. Yeah. And yeah. This is value accretive. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophia: And uh, so I think investors too. Yeah. They can be open to more creativity.

Yeah. I think other businesses are in tech. You see lots of m and a even for smaller companies. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. They figured it out. Cool. Well, thanks for coming on. 

Sophia: Yeah. Thank 

Armon: you. Appreciate it. 

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