Advertise on podcast: The Biotech Startups Podcast

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.

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.

Leslie Loveless joined Slone Partners after a major personal transition, leaving a large healthcare company to become employee number five at a small recruiting firm. She hadn't worked in recruiting before, and at the time, she didn't fully appreciate how big the leap would be.

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.

Leslie Loveless starts at the beginning: growing up in a close-knit Indiana family, watching her father build a career as a pharmacist, and learning early that education mattered even if the eventual career path was left up to her.

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.

The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.

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.

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.

Philip breaks down the hidden costs of traditional lab leases, from equipment maintenance and utilities to medical waste, freezer alarms, and unused square footage. He explains how flexible space can help emerging companies stay focused on milestones while preserving critical capital.

Philip Borden describes leaving Frazier Healthcare Partners for Harvard Business School, where the case method broadened his perspective beyond healthcare and investing. He explains why he returned to healthcare investing after graduation.

Philip Borden explains how realizing he did not want to pursue a PhD or spend his career at the lab bench led him toward venture capital. With a molecular biology degree, limited finance experience, and a list of biotech VC firms, he picked up the phone and cold-called his way into Frazier Healthcare in Seattle.

Philip Borden grew up in Plymouth, Indiana, in a family shaped by agriculture. He talks about his grandparents' farms, his father's work as an agricultural lender, and the early lessons he absorbed about local businesses and long-term relationships.

In this part of the podcast, Nathan Clark explains how Ganymede approaches data integration and automation in life sciences. He discusses why lab instruments and workflows require customized connectors, how a developer platform can help teams adapt integrations quickly, and why moving data online is only part of the challenge.

Nathan Clark walks through his work at Benchling, where he managed the Insights business intelligence product and helped develop an early machine learning effort. He explains why operational wet-lab data is fundamentally different from omics data, and why the relationships between samples, programs, instruments, locations, and people matter as much as the experimental results.