Episode 13 | From Shakespeare to a Biotech Exit (Chris Przybyszewski)

Christian: You started studying English and psychology. Can you tell me more about that?

Chris: Sure. My earliest research was in psychology and neuroscience, looking at some of the reasons that people will have schizophrenia. Some of the reasons their brains and their genetics were a little bit different. And I was very passionate about that project. Later on, however, I realized I really enjoyed thinking about it and writing about the science more than getting too deeply into running the numbers and doing the processes in science. Some of those processes have stayed with me my entire career, and I'm very grateful for that.

I switched over to really more about writing than specifically English. It was more about how to figure out how to creatively express myself. And that's what I started doing. I started working with some of these ideas that I had rolling around in my head and being able to talk about it in different formats, either essay or fiction or poetry. And that writing piece is what drove a lot of my early career, because I moved from there into the media, being able to work for one of the local papers here from Memphis, Tennessee, where I'm stationed and where I'm from.

Then I was able to get into public health and work in research there and inform people about different aspects of that. And then moving further, when I went into entrepreneurship, there's a whole array of communicating what it is your business is doing, but then also all of the different contracts, all of the different deals, all of the different ways to actually explicitly, quote unquote, paper up all the different things and the decisions that a company is making. So I'm still writing constantly and I'm still using research techniques constantly, on a daily basis, on everything that I'm doing.

Christian: I love that. You look at Steve Jobs, his early choice of study, he started calligraphy and it helped him later on. I'm trying to understand what you wanted to do as an early student. Was this foreseen for you? Did you have a plan? Did you just enjoy writing and say, okay, I'm going to write and see what's happening?

Chris: No, never. I've never known what I wanted to do when I grew up. I instead focused on the places that I felt I wanted to go and had a strong interest in at that time. I felt at the time that things might change, my interest might change, but I should just deep dive into wherever it is I'd chosen to go. Very early on, I was in martial arts for about 10 years and I was a terrible martial artist. I was really bad at it, but what I was really good at was breaking boards. I was really good at just punching the crap out of stuff. I learned, look, you just go through it. You don't try to finesse a board or a brick. You just go right through it. It takes technique and it takes commitment and it takes power, but at the same time it really just takes a commitment and a viewpoint on that.

And then it rolled over into just a college choice, for example, very early on, just saying, look, I want to go to this specific school, and I had to change myself emotionally, mentally, physically in order to achieve that. And then when I got to the school, the goal was to do the research, be impactful, go on to grad school. By the way, I applied to 12 grad schools, didn't get into any of them. As I switched over into my understanding that I wanted to go into writing, it became the same deep dive, and the same deep dive, and the same deep dive. It wasn't something where I was following success. It wasn't something where I was following some sort of innate drive. It was simply, I set a goal and went after it.

As I got older, I began to realize there were bigger goals. And they weren't mutually exclusive. I began to have a strong interest in impact. How is it that the work you're doing is going to impact the greater world? What are going to be those effects? And I also realized another thing that wasn't mutually exclusive was trying to find good, sustainable business plans that worked financially as well as that public impact, and combining the two. My life now is really just a conglomeration of those experiences. Pick a goal, go after the goal. If it changes, it changes, but there's no excuse other than you decided to go in that direction, and always hold them to those criteria. It has to have a big impact, but it also has to have a good business plan, and be very sober about that.

Christian: How did you pick the goals or the direction?

Chris: I would love to tell you there was some direction behind it. I will admit sometimes opportunity is an amazing thing. I did not necessarily anticipate going into the media. However, I found a wonderful opportunity to go into a newspaper and I thought it would be stupid to turn down that opportunity. I became the paper's first beat writer for the NBA Grizzlies coming to Memphis. That was the first year they were here. No one in the city had ever really worked the NBA beat per se. Other papers pulled them in from other cities. Some of the folks, just like me, learned how to do it on the job. But here I was, a 24, 25 year old, sitting in the middle of a Grizzlies game going, how do I do this? How am I here? But at the same time, you just follow that opportunity. You just followed it and you learned and you grew from it.

And I was ultimately let go from that position. They didn't have enough money for it. I tried teaching for a little bit. Ultimately, that didn't work out. I moved over into public health because the job was available. And again, I was put into a position where they were saying I have to save a two, two and a half million dollar contract by completing this report, where I had no background whatsoever in the material. But again, it was the opportunity. And I said, why would I turn that down? Why would I say no just because I didn't know how to do it? It's just a brick. Just go through it. Why are we even having this conversation? You have a goal. You have to find a way or you have to make one. So let's focus on that and move forward.

Christian: I remember also trying to do a lot of different things. And I think having all these versions of oneself in your own mind and trying to become the best at something. Were there moments when something told you, this is not right, move on?

Chris: Oh, certainly. The teaching position was one of them. It was partly a couple of different things. It was a brand new school. I helped open up the English department. I had never taught this age, middle schoolers to early high schoolers. I taught some college before that, which is a very different world. But it was one of those situations where the environment, the age of the students, the things that I was teaching, none of it fit. And I love the kids. I love being up there with them. I loved those moments. But when you're in that kind of ecosphere, as it were, it's a very different mindset.

And I worked and I worked and I worked, and it was an enormous amount of frustration and pain, because again, it's a board, you go through it. And I kept hammering on this one. But ultimately, I realized that it was costing too much for whatever the outcome was. And that's why ultimately I had to make a change. It was a hard one financially and all those other pieces, it was almost disastrous. And I was so lucky to find the next opportunity in the public health area. But at the same time, it was something that just had to be done. And that's what it comes down to. It's fine enough to say you'll achieve whatever it is you're going to achieve, but in the real world, you have to make some really hard decisions, and sometimes it takes as much discipline and willpower to walk away as it does to get through a thing.

I think that's a very important aspect for anybody who's been very successful. When you really look at their career, they've done a couple of different things. It might have been in the same field, it might have been with the same sort of core tool sets, but they've changed companies, they've started companies. I don't know many successful entrepreneurs who don't have a lot of failed companies, a lot of failed programs, a lot of failed fundings. That's just, it happens. We don't think about it. We don't focus on those things, but that's true for almost anyone I've ever heard of or known. I don't know many people who did it just one time and that was their success and they moved on. So it happens.

Christian: It happens, but when you have the chance to decide between pushing through and embracing the discipline of staying, or switching or jumping off, going to something else, I believe many people have that false belief of discipline.

Chris: That's right. I think it comes down to the core understanding of what is the most important to you. What are you fighting for at the end of the day? One of my areas of great focus became my family, and what it is that they needed. I helped start a theater. I was one of the co-founders and it was a successful theater and I had great joy in being part of that, being part of the creative process, watching the impact, being able to put on these productions that I thought were emotionally, aesthetically and intellectually relevant. But I had a young family and I realized that it was more important to me that my partner and I were able to achieve these educational goals, for example, but also just different pieces of life.

And that's when I started to focus much more on areas that I felt were impactful, but at the same time had more of a financial upside to it. I don't really care about money myself, but I did care about reaching those goals. And so even though I was now pushed far outside of my comfort zone, it was incredibly uncomfortable for me to do some of these things, even though I was walking away from something that, again, I found great joy in. It meant more to me to achieve these other goals than the business goals, and I had to make that calculus. And so I think that's something where you really do have to take those very difficult decisions about yourself. You have to say, look, I can continue on to this, I probably could be successful at this, I could probably make it work, that's not really the issue. The question is, what is your ultimate goal? If it's not that company specifically, then what are you doing? What are you fighting for?

I ask entrepreneurs this all the time. What are you getting out of this, man? Don't tell me you want to work for yourself. Okay, good, go be an accountant, go be a doctor, go start a practice. You can work for yourself. I want to make money. Okay, good, go be an accountant, go be a doctor. You can make fine. Why do you need to start a company? Why do you need to make something? And that's where it really starts challenging people, because you get down to some of those core issues of what they want to do.

And I ask the same thing about executives. I have enormous respect for folks who can work in great industries, big companies. I couldn't do it. That would be very hard for me. I ask them the same thing. It's like, why are you here? What are you doing? And it could be financial, which I respect. It could be a love for the company, which I respect. It could be, I love this team and I love building teams and I love building products inside of this ecosystem. I respect that. I just think it's the most important thing. You've got to pick it. And if you're able to do that, I think that a lot of pieces of your pathway become much more obvious. Once you pick that goal, again, that's where you find a way or you make one. That's where you just get through it.

Christian: Okay. I can totally relate to that. So you didn't have a traditional founder journey.

Chris: Not at all. No.

Christian: Can you tell me what was important for you at which stage?

Chris: Sure. Well, the first company that I helped found was an orthopedic research center. The goal was translational research and it was an opportunity. I was the third employee. I was 28 years old, something like that. And it fell into my lap. It just did. What had happened is I started to do a ton of networking. I met leaders in town, reached out to them, said, what do you do? There was an economic development organization around the bio economy here in Memphis. A lot of that is orthopedic devices, where we have great strengths in that industry. And I made that contact. And when a job became available that met my skillset, specifically grant proposal writing and fundraising in those areas, I jumped at it. I jumped at it.

And I was lucky because the four candidates the executive director wanted before me, he told me this, he had four candidates before me, but he couldn't afford any of them. And so he said, that's why I pulled you in. He said, you're qualified, you can do the job, I didn't have a problem with that. It's just, there were four folks I wanted before you, because of whatever reasons they had. And I was able to get into that and I was able to see two things. One was about selling a vision of what things could be. Talking about the impact of this kind of center, and what are the things that would have the impact in the city along with the rest of the world potentially. I also found out how companies fail.

I raised about $10,000 a month. I made about $10 million for that company. I became the director of communications on top of my grant proposal work. We achieved, over a five-year period, something like 300 articles. At one point we were averaging one media hit a week, different types. And I was the first employee to be let go. The reason was that the company had not built a proper business plan at the end of the day. How do you earn revenues past grant proposal writing, which is not a way to build a sustainable revenue stream? I didn't realize that at the time. I was very young. They said, we're going a different direction and you're probably going to leave now.

And so I learned a lot about that aspect of creation. There's a lot of creation, there's a lot of creative destruction, and there's also a lot of mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes have real impacts. Unfortunately, I then watched 10 of my good friends lose their jobs after me, because the company just could not be sustainable. It was very hard emotionally, financially it was very difficult, but it was also something where you had to set things up and keep moving forward.

Christian: So you also went through financial stress in that case?

Chris: Oh, sure. My family does not have any specific wealth. The school I went to, I wasn't supposed to go to, and no one in my family had ever achieved anything like that. I had college educated parents, but I went on an enormous amount of financial aid and the kindness of other people. And then when I moved into it, there was no real fallback plan in that sense. When you go from job to job, especially when you have young children, and I was working for nonprofits, I didn't have equity in these companies per se. So yes, it caused great distress, both leaving the teaching job and leaving the orthopedic job.

And that's where I really moved into my first equity-based company, where I founded an iPhone and Android app company with my co-founder, my chief technical officer. That's where we built 50 apps. That's where we built an online system where you could automatically create your own apps, a bit ahead of its time. We ultimately had a small acquisition on that company. That was one acquisition of the five companies that I've helped found, and then I kept going from there.

Christian: Okay. Of course, I have a ton of questions when it comes to app development and AI these days, but I think this makes another episode. So let's move on. What was important to you in the media company? What was important to you in the app development company, based on your own personal needs?

Chris: From the media company, specifically as a writer, you learn so many aspects about the culture. You learn about the curiosity of the writers. You learn about the skepticism of the writers. You learn about how much research they do on every aspect of what they do. You learn about how deeply they care about their different beats, the different areas that they're in. And then also you learn a lot about the business. I was part of the small team that worked with the publisher and one of the senior writers to create the paper's first online content, the first daily online content. A lot of it was my NBA reporting, because those games happen so often.

So that was the first time I was able to look at a company that was public facing and how it made that product, and deep dive into that product and have a razor focus on that product. We had a platform, we could do all sorts of stuff with it. It was a website. You had incredible flexibility. But we learned specifically how you could go so deep into that, that you could make that work. And then moving on from that into the next piece of it, I learned the biggest mistake I made in the app company was the one I did not make in the media company. We had our first product, our first app that went out. It had a quarter of a million downloads within weeks, and it was on a top 10 list. It was on all these things.

And I immediately made a really stupid decision, which was to go on to our next product. My thinking was that we were going to de-risk and build the platform. Instead, I should have said, okay, we made version one, now we make version two, now we make version three. We go deeper and deeper and deeper into this one product and we get it right. Instead of just, quote unquote, really just abandoning it. So I ignored what I had learned, which was, you have a goal, just keep going through that goal, find the edge of that goal, as far as you can possibly do that. I don't regret it, because I learned a lot and it's helped me a lot as I move forward in my career. But it was a mistake. It worked in one and I ignored it, and it became a mistake in the next one.

Christian: I had a conversation with another guest on this podcast. His name is Pierre and he said, when you are a little bit too fat, meaning you have too much money in your company, you don't spend it wisely, or you get distracted, or you get a bit lazy. Do you think it was the case in your app development company, being able to do too many things?

Chris: Yeah, I think so. I think that was something that became a distraction, because we also went into contract work. We started to build apps for customers. We suddenly bifurcated what we were doing, which was product development, but then also contract development. And there were some necessities to that. We weren't able to find a ton of investment per se at that time, and we had costs, we had to do things, and that's just a piece of any business. So that was one thing that happened. You're right, we got a little bit distracted on that.

I think that on the InMotion, the orthopedic research center specifically, we had raised this $10 million. And we had really nice furniture, we had really nice, we didn't need that. We could have done everything we needed on stools and on folding tables. And we didn't make that decision. So I think we burned a lot of money on things that we shouldn't have. And it ultimately had a pretty bad outcome on that. We kept doing what we were going to do. We should have used the capital in different ways.

So I think that's what I'm seeing a lot of nowadays with investment. Investors want to know how have you hit your milestones with this funding? They don't want to know how you spent it. They don't really care how you spent it. They care how have you met your milestones. Have you moved forward? I'm in the life science business and biotech business still. So how have you moved your product forward from preclinical to clinical? How have you gotten more data to get you where you're supposed to go? How have you made these early industry deals that are going to propel you later on with these strategic partners? They want to see those milestones hit and they want to see very much a cost efficiency to that. They want to make sure you're using your dollars in that way.

Mark Cuban once said he doesn't trust any company where they show up in t-shirts with the company brand on it. He said, all I know then is that they waste money. It's a pretty severe take on it, but he's not wrong. That's the thing you're spending money on. At what point are you spending the money on what your actual business is? At what point are you not in love with the concept of being an entrepreneur and all the cool stuff? Rather, are you in love with the business and pushing the business forward and doing those things? It's an important lesson.

Christian: Absolutely. And one question that I got a couple of years ago, I'll give it to you now. What's the difference between looking successful and being successful?

Chris: Gosh, that's enormous. When you get into the entrepreneurial world, you talk to these folks and they're so animated and they're so excited and they're so positive about so many things going forward. They do look from the surface extremely successful, and also they are successful. Okay, I've raised over 150 million dollars in my career. I've launched products. I've had tons of publications, licenses. I have built programs that have gone out and helped a lot of people. I had an acquisition of one of my companies. It's possible that my current company will be acquired soon, we're working through that right now. Lots of success, frankly, by anybody's standard.

But then you start asking questions. You start actually looking at the balance sheet, as it were. I've been fired four or five times. I've had three companies fail. I've been turned down by dozens and dozens and dozens of funders, either venture capital or non-dilutive funding from grants or contracts. I've had a lot of programs that just didn't work out. I would suggest far more than the shots that I took on goal. So I think you just have to keep scratching at the surface if it's something you really care about. And that's what comes out in due diligence in companies. I think a lot of young companies don't realize that. One day, someone's going to just say, stop. How much money have you made? And you've got to have that answer. You've got to say, well, I've made this much and we've grown this much. There's not a lot of sugarcoating on it. That's just the number. And it's a balance between showing confidence, a balance of being transparent and honest, and a balance of just not showing delusional behavior where you're not paying attention to some of the realities of what your company is.

Christian: Do investors value honesty?

Chris: That's a great question. That is a really, really important question. I think there are two types, three types of investors, maybe. There are those who actually really fall for the confidence. They're emotional folks. They follow the confidence of who it is. And some of the really good entrepreneurs out there are the ones who are able to instill that. You can see folks on one side where there's enormous success, Elon Musk, because he also does a lot of execution on it. But you see some bad stories like Theranos, where no one really asked if they had any actual output. The little output they showed was completely masking some of the massive deficits underneath it. So you do have investors who do that.

On this other side you have investors who only look at one thing, the balance sheet. They only will consider those hard, black and white numbers, and they're missing the potential of what it could be. They are missing the opportunity, because they won't get away from just what they are very safe with, which are those hardcore four pieces. And I think there are some who have the ability to balance the good with the bad, because I think it takes as much discipline to see the good stuff as to see the bad stuff. I really do. I feel this very strongly. You have to, with a very cold, objective eye, go, that's pretty good. That's actually a pretty cool opportunity. And it's not enough just to say, well, they're profitable. That's easy. That's too easy. And it doesn't happen that often. And that's where you just get a lot of mediocre investors. And that's why venture capital fails a lot, because they'll just look at that one thing.

On the other hand, you have to have people who go, yeah, stuff's not working, guys. Your CapEx is just not working. Your people are not capable of what they want, or they're not motivated, or they don't have a good enough plan. Sometimes you're not good enough. Despite your best efforts, your best efforts are not enough for success. That's a very hard thing for people to look at and to really do, and I think they have to have that discipline. They have to actively look to that, and I've tried to do that. It's not easy. You can sometimes believe your own hype, and I think a lot of people do. It's part of our job, because things can look so hopeless sometimes otherwise. You have to find a way to continue to find that pathway forward if this is what you really want to do. But you also have to just say sometimes, guys, it's just not working, and we have to switch course or we have to drop something off completely. And that's not easy.

Christian: Yes. And very often at this point when everybody understands that, but not the person in place, let's say a CEO who shouldn't be CEO anymore, as that worked in the phase before but not in the phase after.

Chris: That's a great example. I'm a successful CEO, I've built a company, this is an incredible platform, I will be CEO forever, I'm the only person who can do it. Sometimes, sure, okay, it happens. I think most of the time they have to understand that it's going to be a different leadership to move the company forward into that next step. They have to have the discipline of understanding how much good they've done and realize that's pretty valid and very important, but they also have to understand what they can't do later on.

I will not work for a publicly traded company. Let me rephrase that. I would be surprised if I could be useful at a publicly traded company or moving that company to IPO. I'm not saying I can't. I probably would be able to do it pretty well, actually, just given that. But it would still be kind of surprising to me, and I have enough self-awareness and understanding of that. I want to get a company to a certain point where it's ready to go, where it's revenue generating, where it's growth oriented, where it's even sustainable. But then I want to bring in that next group that are able to wash, rinse, repeat and also scale, in creative and very business viable ways. That's not necessarily me. That's not necessarily what I do. And I think anyone who can see that, that brings value to the organization.

Christian: Oh, very good. I just looked it up recently, there are only 25 companies in the Fortune 500 where the founders are still CEOs.

Chris: Yeah. I believe that's the Fortune 500. A small percentage.

Christian: Let us talk about US Biologic. 2012, I think this was the year when it all came to life. A little time travel, bring it back to that time.

Chris: It wasn't that long ago, Christian. I'm not that old. Thank you. So I mentioned the failure of the orthopedic research center. I transitioned over briefly into the economic development group that I had mentioned, the bioeconomy group, and I was in charge of helping to build programming to teach other life science and biotech entrepreneurs how to raise non-dilutive capital and how to grow their business. I helped create venture capital group training programs for these companies, but also training programs on a specific funding mechanism, which is called the SBIR program, the Small Business Innovation Research program, which is an enormously important program in the U.S. About four billion dollars a year going into small companies to build commercialization along the way.

I didn't know everything about it. I had some success in the area, but I wanted to find the people who were really good at it, who were world class at it, and I wanted them to come in and be mentors. I was very lucky that across the street from my building was such a person, a professor, associate professor Maria Gomes-Solecki. Maria was a veterinarian, and she was a wildlife biologist and a microbiologist, and she had spent the last five years on a very successful field trial with an oral vaccination against Lyme disease.

And her concept was very novel. Ticks give us Lyme disease, and in America it's about half a million people a year. Twenty percent of those have lifelong issues. It's a multi-billion dollar problem. It's one of the worst healthcare problems we have. And she said, human vaccines are just too difficult. There was a big human vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline that had failed at that time. A billion dollars went into it and just failed. There's actually one they're trying to get through right now, Pfizer and Valneva, which is facing again some of the very same problems.

And she said, let's actually look at the way Lyme disease starts. Ticks give us Lyme disease. We know that. The black-legged tick, Ixodes scapularis, the deer tick, is the only tick that really gets it. But the tick is generally infected by feeding on already infected mice, about 87% of the time, in those areas where Lyme disease is most endemic. There are other disease reservoirs, as they're called, but really it's the white-footed mouse that is the number one reservoir. She goes, I can vaccinate a mouse. I know that. We've done it thousands and thousands of times with work.

Christian: In the wild?

Chris: Well, no, in mice in general, because we have products on the market for dogs and for humans, even though the humans fail. She goes, however, getting out in the wild, I can't just go inject them. You can't just inject one, inject one. She said, I can feed it to them, though. And so she said, how is it that I can make an orally delivered vaccine by which the mouse will eat it and get vaccinated? A mouse that doesn't have it can't spread it. So a tick that doesn't have it can't spread it further than that. That's just the simple idea.

So I brought her in as a, oh, by the way, side point, she's made millions and millions of dollars off the SBIR program. All of her programs were really funded by that SBIR. So I brought her in, not really knowing what her work was, not really knowing what she had accomplished. And I said, hey, Maria, will you come in?

Christian: You knew that there is something about her story that you want to jump on.

Chris: I saw execution and success. I saw history of the papers. I saw the field trials. I saw the funding. I said, she is the right mentor to bring in to these scientists.

We built a relationship. We kept talking about the work. And ultimately she said, you know, Chris, you've started a couple of companies at that point. She said, I'm done with this technology. I want to move on from diagnostics, most of my scientific questions. And by the way, she's continued to query on that. She's about to publish a major paper on it. But she said, really, this development work is done. I think it's time to become a product. Because she herself, by the way, is a serial entrepreneur and started some of her own companies, and so she understood this. And so we co-founded US Biologic together.

I brought in two excellent scientists from the local St. Jude Medical Research Center, St. Jude Hospital. And then at the same time, we were very lucky to bring in a serial entrepreneur and successful person in his own right, Mason Kauffman, who was a FedEx pioneer. So this group of five, one left, and then Maria was working her piece on the academic side mostly. And it became the three-person core of Steve Zetachka, Mason Kauffman, and myself.

And from there, we were able to find the funding. We were able to build a team, with some amazing people, Yalika Van Oosterwijk, our chief scientific officer, John Brooke, our VP of regulatory. We were able to bring this product to market in 19 states and D.C., to secure state appropriations for statewide programs, and build it into the product profile of our distributors and our sales force, which are pest management professionals going into millions of backyards. We also created a timed application station to offer a very small, limited amount of the pellets, these little vaccine-covered pellets, at a couple-week period throughout the year that also fits into the pest management's business schedule and application schedule. That is what we were able to accomplish together.

A lot of it came from this circumstance where I was teaching these entrepreneurs and I brought in this mentor, and this mentor and I were able to make this connection. I'm not going to call it luck, by the way. I don't call any of this stuff luck. I'm always constantly searching for those things, and opportunities present themselves. That I believe in. I believe if you continue to search, opportunities will arise, and you have the choice to take advantage of it or not. Sometimes it's a good idea, sometimes it's a bad idea, okay, that's just how it is. But in this case, this opportunity arose from the hard work I was doing and the hard work she had been doing for decades as well. And that's where it became that company.

We are on the market. That's where the acquisition is working right now. Hopefully it'll work out, because I think the partners will be outstanding to do the scaling piece that I just mentioned earlier. They've taken the product that's there, and they'll move it up to that next level. That's what the partners would do, and I think they're going to do a great job with it once we get all this worked out.

By the way, that economic development company, I was fired from that company. It just wasn't working out. I'm good friends with the executive director and he's a great mentor, an early funder of mine. But he just looked at me and said, Chris, it's not working out, we're not moving forward, so let's see if we can get you to your next thing. And so that's how it is. Those failures lead to those opportunities, the opportunities are going to be there, and they lead to more.

Christian: Very good. You mentioned something that is interesting. You said you were searching for opportunities, it's not luck. You were searching and it came to you. So it's like opening up a door and waiting, opening your mind for the right things to come in, for the signals. Yes. How do you do it? Do you ask better questions, do you ask yourself better questions? Do you have time off to think? How do you search?

Chris: It's the former. I think you ask a lot of questions. I've had a lot of opportunities present themselves to me. I'm beginning to transition more into the mentor space, into the entrepreneur in residence space. I'm doing a lot of work working with a variety of companies and I'm constantly seeking them out. I constantly want to talk to them. I want to find out what they're doing. And then when I receive that information, the companies I want to deep dive into, I hold them to certain criteria that I've set up based on my own experience, that I have seen be successful. I throw it up there, and I throw it up there, and I throw it up there. And again, the hit rate isn't big. It's not something where you're finding over and over again those right opportunities. And by the way, sometimes you deep dive pretty hard into opportunities and they just aren't there.

You get to that point and you have to look at it very soberly and just say, this is not something that I want to move forward with, because of the viability of what it is, or I'm just not as excited about it. And so it never gets past the business planning stage, as it were. But I think the causality is still there. I am searching for things. Other people are searching for things. Two entities searching for each other are going to have more opportunity than two entities that are not searching for anything. I think that's just how it is, and so I think that's why these continue to happen and that's why I believe it will continue to happen. I don't wait for things just to happen. I don't wait for all of a sudden something to hit me in the face and say, hey, I'm going to pick you up and save you and take you to the next thing. Instead I want to go out and find it and grab it and do it that way, in a very purposeful and decisive way, when I decide that's what I want to do.

Christian: Yes. US Biologic started out with a Lyme disease vaccination. How did it develop over time, where is it now, and how do you want it to be in the next couple of years?

Chris: Yeah, man, that's a great question. And that's a real balance of one of my earlier statements, how do you deep dive into a product versus get distracted? When you have curious folks like me, and you have scientists who are by nature very curious and just love to see things work and cool new things, we have moved into different areas. All companies have a product pipeline in most cases. Now, we made a decision very, very strongly to focus with a razor focus on getting this product to market. However, what we have also built in the background are two really incredible opportunities in themselves.

One is in the poultry space, to get rid of a very terrible disease called coccidiosis, while also avoiding the use of antibiotics. Which is an enormous problem in the poultry industry right now, these antimicrobial resistances that are arising out of these flocks because we're just overusing these drugs. So we have a novel way of doing that that we built with the USDA. We've shared publications and patents and business licenses and all those other pieces of it.

And then the third thing is a chewable flu vaccine for humans. This was really the focus of our chief scientific officer, Yalika Van Oosterwijk, and she has done a masterful job of developing this chewable gummy for the flu vaccine with humans. We're already delivering vaccines to your home. It's just going in your backyard. Now what's the next step? How is it that we can access those underserved markets who are not able to get out of their homes, who are not able to get to their doctors or the Walgreens? How is it that we can get to them these lifesaving preventative measures like a vaccine, not just a flu vaccine? There are a couple of different vaccines out there that are very important.

And then also, of course, people don't like needles. Like 20% of the market won't take a flu vaccine because of a needle. And so then you also go, well, gosh, that's a great business opportunity. It's a $6 billion industry of vaccines. Just the flu vaccine, 20% on top of that. Let's create 20% more of a market right there just because of the delivery mechanism. And so yes, those are opportunities.

One of the things the company could do is split into three companies. This is just to give an example of what we've built, the capability of doing it. One is a public health company focused on Lyme disease first. One is an animal health company focused on the poultry program. One is the human flu vaccine. The alternate is it could be one company, but it out-licenses these products or manufactures the products and sells them directly to a distributor force. We have all those options. We've built ourselves a platform and then gone into these products. And it's still a very concise portfolio. We can go everywhere, all sorts of animals, all sorts of diseases. We can do a whole bunch of stuff, but what we have done is built those three opportunities. One that is on market, one is a middle stage, one's a little bit more early in its product development.

And again, it's just about what is that opportunity? What is it that we're doing here? Where is it that it makes sense to grow? And that organization to meet those new opportunities and just those business calls, what is it that makes the most sense for each of those pieces? And I think we've done a good job with that. And that's really the core of the conversation right now with these opportunities, what kind of company do the funders, do the acquisition partners, do the external partners want to make. You have a lot of those conversations going on right now.

Christian: Yes. What do you love about entrepreneurship? Because you are an entrepreneur.

Chris: That's a difficult question for me in a lot of ways, because I don't really consider myself to be a born entrepreneur. Dude, I'm a writer. I was in a cubicle writing, at the end of the day. But I will say there are parts of it. One is there is the aspect of being able to move quickly. The aspect of being able to say, let's make a decision and let's move on it. We're not always going to be right, but let's not just waste time needlessly. Sometimes in a corporate position, you do things that are very thoughtful and a deliberate approach to do great goals. And I think that's the same sort of discipline you have to have in a small company to be successful. But on the other hand, in a lot of corporate situations, big company situations, you're just slowed down for no reason.

I also think that I really value the people that I work with, folks who are really brilliant in their own way and have been challenged to create new ways to find how you get to that goal. Find a way or make one. And they've been challenged with that, which raises them to a new level, I think. Ultimately then I do think financially, yeah, there's probably a greater ROI upside in most cases. And it's an uncertain pathway, but right now it is what it is. It's just a new opportunity for that.

I think the fourth thing is, here's something I found out by being unemployed a lot. When you're left without a job, I think it's extremely difficult for so many people, because you feel all this anxiety. You feel, what's going to happen? How am I going to make this work? There's a lot of fear involved. There's a lot of doubt involved and there's a lot of uncertainty of what's going to happen. But here's what I realized. I realized that I was feeling all those anxieties when I was working at these companies also. I was in these companies with this enormous amount of pressure where we just weren't sure if it was going to continue. And these were great companies, all of them, they all had their possibilities and we were all having our success in different ways, but I was feeling that anxiety.

So if you're feeling the same in a job and out of a job, out of the job at least you have more control. At the very least, you have more of the decision-making process. You have more of the ability to hit the ground and go the pathway you think you need, other than being dictated necessarily by an upper level management or even a board of directors in those positions. And I do think that's very empowering. I do think that's important for people to realize, they do have that agency. And I do think that's a unique aspect of starting a company. That's not something you necessarily get often inside of being an employee in those environments.

And I will reiterate, I have great respect for people who have success in those kinds of realms. I would be surprised if I could be successful in the same place as they are at a big company. But for me specifically, that's the realization, the pathway that I've gone on. If you're going to feel the same way, you might as well be in control of it. And if it's going to be a wash on the one side, you might as well take the advantage of the other side.

Christian: I sometimes talk to early founders who went out of big pharma corporations, and what would be your recommendation to them? Is it more, you have to become resilient, or do you have to embrace failure? What's the difference?

Chris: I think a lot of folks in industry do face resiliency. I do think they face failure. I do think it's a very tough environment. And by the way, just go look at the biotech industry and how many layoffs we have right now. Go look at the tech industry and look at how many layoffs we have right now. There's a lot of failure going on there. I think instead, the number one thing I would tell people is look at the whole field of what you're playing in. You're no longer focused on one area like most people in industry are.

There are six stages for product development in biotech, in my opinion. There's a problem, which means there's a diagnostic, which means that it's a charted problem. Then you have a technology that can help, a tool, a drug, a vaccine, whatever it is. And then you have a manufacturing pathway. You have a regulatory pathway, which are usually very closely combined. You have a sales model. Who's going to buy it? How often? Where's the money coming from? When are they going to buy it? What's the sales cycle? Those kinds of pieces. And then you have a distribution pathway. How are we going to get it on shelves? How are we going to get it to people? That last mile piece of it.

If you are in a company, you have to very often see that whole field and you have to think about that whole field and you have to research every one of those steps and make sure they all come together. One of the biggest mistakes I do see for entrepreneurs who are scientists moving into the space, they come from big pharma and they're coming into the space, they really are focused on one thing and they think that's enough. And it's just not. If you're an executive and you are one of the co-founders, you have to look at all those phases. You can't think someone's going to figure that out for you or it's going to be okay.

You can make the most brilliant product in the world, but you just can't make the darn thing profitably. Cost of goods won't work because the manufacturing won't work. Sometimes the regulatory pathways simply will not be there for you. And you're going to have to make it. It's going to take a ton more time and a ton more money on all those other things. So I think, again, it is a matter of discipline. You have to see the good side and you have to see where your challenges are going to be at the same time, and you have to look at the whole process. And I keep saying, from life science, it's different for every field, but at the same time, in life sciences, there are those six pillars, and you just have to see it.

Christian: And that's hard.

Chris: That's very hard for people to do. They feel like they don't have the transferable skills and the knowledge, and they do, they really do. They can do it. They have to force themselves to do it and have the experience of doing it, and that's important.

Christian: You once said everything is hard. What did you mean by that?

Chris: I think if you're doing anything in depth, if you're doing anything seriously, it's hard. I don't care what it is. If it's not hard, you're not really doing it that deeply, and there's nothing wrong with that. You should have some things that are just easy to do and fun, okay, and that's nothing. But if you're choosing to do something that is in depth, something where you're going to do a deep dive, it really better be hard for you. Otherwise you're not going deep enough. I would be really concerned if I met a heart surgeon who said med school was easy, my residency, not a problem, who cares. I'm pretty sure that's a bad surgeon. I want to know someone who has really understood the difficulties and the challenges of what it is they're doing and found a way through it.

There's a confidence versus ignorance curve. The less you know, the more confident you are. And then it's the more you know, the less confident you are. And then if you keep working, there becomes a balance between the two. People who are confident but understand all the challenges in front of them. And I just think that any of those things, we live in such a complex world where things join together in so many areas. I've had funding fail because it wasn't a match with the funder. I've had funding fail because of international politics, things where I couldn't really change either side of those things. I could try and work around it, but they're just things that were out of my control. I've had things fail simply because it was physically not possible yet. The technology was not there yet. All these factors play in together all the time.

So I would suggest if you don't think it's hard, either A, you're ignorant, or B, maybe you're just not looking big enough. And again, I don't judge, people go in different directions and they find their own pathways, but I've always chosen to do hard things. I've always chosen to do these things that are very difficult, because I feel that's where the most impact is. I feel those are the better business plans that have the bigger ROI that can ultimately lead to those kinds of goals. And that's been, if anything, one of the things that's guided me when choosing stuff.

Christian: Not a bad guide, I guess.

Chris: Yeah, I don't want it to be hard, by the way. I don't welcome it. I would love a day where everything just did what it was supposed to do. It was exactly what I predicted to happen today. It was easy. I don't think that's a bad thing. It just doesn't happen often in the spaces that you play.

Christian: Choose your heart. It's going to be hard anyway.

Chris: Yeah, it will be.

Christian: So many questions left. Anyway, my last question, you as an English student, or as a graduate in English, what's your favorite book right now?

Chris: Oh, man, I browse. It's interesting, the way I read books. I have three books that I'm reading right now. One is The Elements of Style. I've always had this one in front of me. It's a great book about how to deal with some of the technicalities of writing, but also arguments. I'm also reading a book called The Poppy War, which is a fantastic piece of literature that talks about an entirely new society and the equity and class changes that happen over time in the context of a place that has been ravaged by pretty difficult drugs, those kinds of international pieces.

And I'm reading a book that was given to me by one of my great friends and mentors called Leadership Jazz. This is about how you work, from a perspective of how you can lead people who are so creative that there are no hard lines, they are continually improvising, they're continuing to make the whole thing work. But how do you keep them all together on the same page? How do you keep them going toward the same goal, which is great music? But at the same time, don't crush their individual styles or make them resent the control that you're trying to put on them. Those are the three that are on my desk right now. But those move back and forth. I read a lot of creative nonfiction. I read a lot of history.

So favorite book is what you asked, though, specifically. Recommendation, those are my three recommendations. They're all three great books. I don't have a favorite. I feel like my life would be poorer if I hadn't read any of the books that I've read, so it's not easy for me to just throw a dart and say, yes, that one is the best one. It's more, from my perspective, looking at the whole field of those different types of things.

Christian: Also in your life, a certain life situation where some wisdoms are more important right now than others, and so you pick. It changes. I'll have a look at all three. Thank you very much. Wonderful conversation. Looking forward to speaking to you soon again.

Chris: Thank you very much. Anytime. I love the opportunity. I love the product that you're creating. And I love your impact and your mission of what you're doing. So thank you.

Christian: Thank you very much, Chris.