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The Biotech Startups Podcast

Excedr

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

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  • 49 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 30 min
  • English

Episodes 49

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  • #293
    Thursday · 17 min

    🧬 The $500 Lab That Started a Company | James Evans Rerelease (3/3)

    You need a lab. James Evans found hoods for $500, looked at JLABS in San Diego, and walked away because the price and the fit were wrong. A decade later the company still hasn't taken the predetermined fundraising staircase. He went for a walk before the taping, told his wife those other podcast guests were rock stars, and landed on the only label that fit: scrappy.

  • #292
    Monday · 21 min

    🧬 Science Is Twenty Percent of the Problem | James Evans Rerelease (2/3)

    Paul Matsudaira took a job in Singapore, and James Evans did not wake up one morning craving entrepreneurship. He left MIT's Whitehead Institute, bounced through venture-backed biotechs, and got a baptism of fire defending data in rooms that wanted a fight. One San Diego client won a contract, and that was enough to plant PhenoVista in California with a year of runway and no paying customers yet.

  • #291
    November 5 · 27 min

    🧬 Kickflips and Bacterial Pellets Built a Founder | James Evans Rerelease (1/3)

    James Evans calls himself a late starter. Childhood in the UK was skateboarding and video games, not science kits. His dad was an engineer and his mom was a nurse, which only looks like a straight line if you draw it afterwards. Science wasn't in the house. Soccer was mainstream. Skateboarding was not, and that counterculture stubbornness is the part he still recognizes in company building.

  • #290
    November 2 · 36 min

    🧬 Almost $100 Million. No Venture. | Steve Visco Rerelease (3/3)

    Steve Visco grew PolyPlus Battery Company on government contracts instead of a stack of tiny SBIRs. Lawrence Berkeley had already taught him how to write large proposals. The danger, he says, is chasing money that pulls the company off its North Star. Once you sign, you cannot renegotiate the work. You get reports, audits, and no BMWs in the parking lot. ARPA-E will kill a grant that stalls. His grant-writing rule is the same as a venture pitch: why should anyone care, who is on the team, and do

  • #289
    October 29 · 34 min

    🧬 “We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)

    Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.

  • #288
    October 26 · 35 min

    🧬 He Chose Santa Barbara Over Icebergs | Steve Visco Rerelease (1/3)

    Steve Visco was an introverted kid with a microscope, pond water, and books on Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk. School science lagged years behind what he was already doing at home. Literature almost pulled him into writing instead of the lab. He still treats writing as a leadership skill, because too many scientists cannot explain why their work matters. A high-school rock band got him used to being watched. That comfort later showed up in grant pitches.

  • #287
    October 22 · 40 min

    If It's Getting More Complex, You're Going the Wrong Way | Scott Chetham (4/4)

    Scott Chetham explains why he left Google and Verily to tackle the unglamorous planning work that slows clinical development. He recounts sketching the company in Costa Rica, raising a pre-napkin-stage round with Polaris, finding an early customer, and adapting when COVID-19 disrupted pharma economics.

  • #286
    October 19 · 30 min

    The Clinical Trial Bottleneck Is Not Discovery | Scott Chetham (3/4)

    The conversation then moves to the decisions that determine whether a trial succeeds: what to measure, whom to enroll, and when to measure it. Scott uses Amgen's osteoporosis strategy to show how a focused endpoint and staged market entry can outperform an attempt to capture everything at once.

  • #285
    October 15 · 34 min

    Knowledge Is Now a Commodity | Scott Chetham (2/4)

    The conversation then turns to scaling teams through uncertainty. Scott shares how company growth creates organizational whiplash, why founders often underestimate the need for change management, and how leaders can stay close to what employees and customers are actually experiencing.

  • #284
    October 12 · 35 min

    The Hard Part Starts After the Demo | Scott Chetham (1/4)

    Scott Chetham traces the influences that shaped his path into life sciences, from growing up on Australia's Gold Coast and watching his parents build careers through work and education to studying the intersection of engineering and medicine. He shares how a combined degree, early exposure to hospitals, and an unusual appetite for difficult problems pushed him toward biomedical research.

  • #283
    October 8 · 37 min

    Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)

    As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach.

  • #281
    October 1 · 27 min

    Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)

    Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one to one.

  • #279
    September 24 · 25 min

    The Catalyst Mindset Behind a Lean Biotech | Örn Almarsson (4/4)

    He then turns to company building at Axelyf: in vivo cell reprogramming for solid tumors, modular lipid nanoparticles, AI-informed discovery, external partners, and a deliberately lean operating model. The conversation closes with the mentors, expectations, and leadership philosophy shaping his next chapter.

  • #277
    September 17 · 30 min

    Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)

    At Merck, a three-month visa detour exposed Örn to another laboratory and reinforced the value of adaptability. He then describes leaving a secure role for Transform Pharmaceuticals, building a small team and collaborative culture, developing new formulation technologies, and helping create the patents and assets that led to a Johnson & Johnson acquisition.

  • #276
    September 14 · 25 min

    How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)

    He describes his first research opportunity at the University of Iceland, an early industry project in Copenhagen, and the mentors who pushed him toward bioorganic chemistry. The conversation follows his move to UC Santa Barbara, his work with Tom Bruice and Alex Klibanov, and the networking connection that led to Merck.

Showing 1–20 of 49 episodes