Published by 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.
Listen on Apple PodcastsIn this part of the podcast, David shares how the Roy Vagelos Life Sciences and Management dual degree program at the University of Pennsylvania opened his eyes to the possibilities of combining scientific discovery with business acumen. A pivotal summer internship with Arie Belldegrun at UCLA—during which Kite Pharma was born—planted the seed for his future in life sciences entrepreneurship. He also discusses his transition into finance, landing at Goldman Sachs, and the lessons learned from sitting in boardrooms alongside C-level executives at critical moments in companies' life cycles.
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable unpacks why he left Google to solo found Pauling AI and how its agentic platform automates computational chemistry—from docking to ADMET—collapsing months into days.
In this part of the podcast, Jon and Javier explore Javier's years as technical director in Google's Office of the CTO, where he worked with the world's biggest gaming companies—Nintendo, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Unity—helping them leverage Google Cloud technology. Javier then shares the deeply personal story of how his father's passing from cancer became the turning point that pulled him into life sciences, and how he taught himself biochemistry and pharmacology through Harvard Medical School's HMX program.
In this part of the podcast, Javier Tordable shares his early career journey—from starting at Microsoft to spending 16 years at Google as a Staff Engineer and Technical Director. He reflects on the engineering-driven culture at Microsoft and the welcoming environment that shaped his foundation in tech.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Javier Tordable, founder and CEO of Pauling AI, a company building the first fully autonomous drug discovery platform that enables scientists to go from a research idea to validated drug molecules in days, not years. Named after Linus Pauling, the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel Prizes, the company reflects Javier's conviction that first principles engineering can be applied to one of science's most consequential problems.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she traces RTW’s evolution from a lean public-equity fund into a major life sciences platform spanning crossover investing, company creation, and global commercialization. Stephanie explains how RTW built the modern crossover ecosystem, why they chose to found Rocket Pharma instead of a fleet of gene therapy startups, and how a disciplined, science-first research process underpins the firm’s long-term, concentrated investing strategy and deep alignment with LPs and portfolio founders.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Stephanie Sirota, Partner and Head of Strategic Partnerships at RTW Investments, as she reflects on her path from Lehman Brothers investment banking to macro hedge funds and ultimately biotech-focused investing and firm building. Steph shares how journalism training shaped her strategic thinking, what she learned from navigating multiple market crises, and how those lessons inform RTW’s approach to cycles, institutional architecture, and innovative funding models like royalty vehicles in today’s prolonged biotech bear market.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Stephanie Sirota, partner and head of strategic partnerships at RTW Investments, to explore how a coddled yet cosmopolitan upbringing, years of elite tennis competition, and a humanities-rich education at Columbia shaped her mental toughness, leadership style, and approach to partnering with life sciences innovators. From sports psychology and coaching to the value of breadth before specialization, Stephanie reflects on the experiences that built her resilience and curiosity long before she helped transform RTW into a leading life sciences investment firm.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Fengru Lin, CEO & co-founder of TurtleTree, who is leveraging precision fermentation and a people-first culture to bring the high-value milk protein lactoferrin to market while reshaping how the food system serves both consumers and farmers. They discuss TurtleTree's strategic refocus from cell-based milk to commercially viable ingredients, the importance of business-centric leadership in biotech, and how thoughtful team-building enables faster execution, better fundraising narratives, and earlier commercialization.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, host Jon Chee continues his conversation with Fengru Lin, CEO and co-founder of TurtleTree. Fengru shares how rigorous sales training at Salesforce and entrepreneurial autonomy at Google Cloud shaped her approach to customers, investors, and organizational change—then traces how a cheese-making hobby, poor dairy supply chains, and exposure to cell-based meat and seafood startups led to TurtleTree’s founding, early patents, and strategic pivot toward precision fermentation of high-value milk proteins.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Fengru Lin, CEO and co-founder of TurtleTree, a biotech company using precision fermentation to produce LF+, the world’s first sustainably made lactoferrin, and ultimately reimagine how food is produced. Drawing on a nontraditional path into biotech—from Girl Guides in Singapore to sales roles in transactional security and global regulatory environments—Fengru shares how an early love of planning, operations, and people has shaped her approach to leadership and company building.
In this final episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast series, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs, to unpack where AI value is actually being created in biopharma—and what comes next. Mati lays out three pillars driving a post-hype phase of sustainable growth, explains why the industry is structurally conservative for good reasons, and shares how AION Labs is already preparing for the quantum computing wave before it arrives.
Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs — an Israeli venture studio backed by AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, AWS, and the Israel Biotech Fund. Mati breaks down how AION Labs builds AI-native pharma companies from the ground up: industry-grade problem statements, multidisciplinary teams, and pharma partner POC commitments locked in before a startup is formed.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs. Mati traces his path from juggling a minister's bureau with Israeli law school to joining Teva as an intern with no private-sector experience, then learning a 45,000-person org from the chart up — until Teva's financial crisis handed him the mandate to build the innovation program that became AION Labs.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs—a first-of-its-kind AI venture studio backed by Teva, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Amazon Web Services. Before AION Labs, Mati spent six years in the IDF, ran a minister's bureau, and rose from legal intern to global legal COO at Teva over more than a decade. Part one covers the formative years: moving from Columbus, Ohio to Jerusalem at 12, extending military service by three years, and the two teachers who handed him D's and changed how he works.
In part four, Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, covers the platform architecture and roadmap. He walks through Convoke's modular system—building validated structured datasets from trial registries, regulatory filings, and patents, then stitching them with workflow tools for competitive intelligence and document generation. He breaks down how pharma and biotech customers engage differently, why an "everything app" is a trap, and how Convoke is moving from reactive data storage toward proactive, predictive intelligence.
In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, to examine why large pharma resists AI transformation. Drawing on seven years at Charles River Associates, Alex maps the coordination tax of siloed orgs, the tacit knowledge lost when experts retire, and why software efficiency is the wrong axis to compete on. His frame: factory electrification — the gains don't arrive until you redesign the whole org around the technology.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, who spent nearly seven years in biopharma strategy consulting before what he calls "AI psychosis" set him on a different path. Alex traces the arc from biochemistry at Bristol and synthetic biology at UCL to discovering consulting existed only after graduating, joining a boutique Swiss firm two weeks before it was acquired, and learning one core lesson: clients want a recommendation to push back on, not a data dump.
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, who raised $8.6 million to build the AI-native operating system for biopharma. Part one traces his path from an expat childhood across Switzerland, Germany, and Spain — shaped by international schools, disappearing friendships, and a New Scientist subscription — through biochemistry at Bristol and into a synthetic biology master's at UCL that promised biological engineering and delivered toggle switches.
In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of DARÉ Bioscience, to unpack the founding arc of a company built on a singular conviction: women's health is not a niche. Sabrina explains the choice to go public via reverse merger in 2017 to access capital in a space where only 1% of private healthcare investment funds women-specific conditions, and breaks down the groomed trail philosophy behind XACIATO, DARE to PLAY Sildenafil Cream, a pivotal Phase 3 contraceptive, and an ARPA-H-funded HPV treatment—all with 25 people and $75M+ in non-dilutive funding.
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