Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I mean, there's generic advice, go look for a problem, but when you have a limited IP and that's what you have to work with, you also have to be realistic about. I have to make progress in the timeline.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Stuart Papp, founder of DN8, and welcome to Stand up to Stand Out. The podcast communication has changed my life, and it will absolutely change yours, because breakthrough innovating deserves breakthrough communicating. Every episode we bring you industry insiders, subject matter experts can learn from my decades of experience to get the most practical and tactical advice that you can put to work. Now, let's dive into today's show.
All right, Laura, well, it's wonderful to be back in touch with you, and I would love to start at the start. So maybe you could just help me reorient around Aperture Bio, what the mission is, the purpose, and then where you are in the timeline with what you're doing with the company. So let's just start at the beginning because it's been a few years since we connected and love to just reorient myself around this venture that you're on.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Sure. Well, Stuart, it is great to be here and I'm excited to share more about Aperture Bio. Aperture is a seed stage spin out from Mass General. When we first connected, we had just started the company, and right now we are developing a platform for preclinical drug validation for solid tumor cancers.
And we've got a lab up and running at the Pagliocca Life Lab up here in Boston. A few members of the team, and the key inflection point we're building toward is to demonstrate that our platform could have predicted clinical successes versus failures.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Got it. So help me understand the origin of Aperture Bio, because it seems like part of what you're doing in the value stream is making it more efficient and efficient effective to run, you know, trials and develop medication. How did this come about in the first place? Like, help orient me on the mission and purpose of the company.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So Aperture Bio is a result of contributions by a number of individuals, both on the academic side and on the company side.
To tell my story, I attended Harvard Business school for my MBA. I graduated in 2019.
And HBS runs this phenomenal program called the Blavatnik Fellowship for Life Science on Entrepreneurship. It's kind of an EIR program that gives you some time to explore innovative science coming out of labs in Boston and further afield.
And the origin of the company came out of that experience.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: This is solving a particular pain point.
So was it the People first and the innovation that sort of led to the formation, was it a visionary? Like what, what sort of went from idea to inception to we need to make a company. Because I'm always interested in sort of looking at like, ideas are plentiful and there's good ideas are less plentiful, but to go from that to like forming a team, fundraising, pushing forward, like, how did you transition from this is really compelling to let's get a team together and let's start this company.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So to start at the beginning, the origin of Aperture Bias technology came from a pain point in the clinic that it's difficult to diagnose cancer and also determine how patients are responding to treatment. And so the invention that we're building the company around is comprised of a multidisciplinary body of work by clinicians, by scientists, inventors at mgh, specifically in the center for Systems Biology. I think the challenge in any life science venture is you have a pain point that technology was initially developed for and most likely published on them. But then when you go to the market, that doesn't always match the profile that the venture investors who have the capital that you need to build this kind of business want to see. And so that's where some of the great startup programs and incubators in Boston came in. So actually, just before forming Aperture Bio, my co founder and I participated in Nucleate, which has spread all over the world now and has had a bunch of startups spin out of it. And that really gave us the perspective of mentors and professionals in industry from pharma, other ventures, some mentors experienced in building platform technologies that gave us a sense of the commercial directions we could take.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: It got it. And so it seems as though, and you can tell me differently, that Aperture Bio is helping anyone who's in drug discovery or curative therapies see better into the future.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yes. And I really like that narrative because our platform is imaging based in fact, and the name of the company matches as well. It does track. And the broader narrative is that drug. Drug discovery is extraordinarily long and long and extensive process.
Oncology actually has one of the highest failure rates of any therapeutic area with about 95% of new drug candidates failing when they reach clinical development. So clinical trials and in the background, what's happening with the fda, both in north in the US as well as regulators in Europe as well, is that they're shifting the drug development process, which is based on reductive models, including animal models, to a human first process. And this has been Unfolding over the last few years, culminating in last month the release of FDA guidance on using new analytical methods, human first methods in submissions for new drugs.
And so that's sort of where we are situated, is that we can use organoids and human tissues to accelerate validation of drug candidates, to move, you know, to refine the pipeline from say you start with the very early stages of discovery, maybe you're looking at, let's talk about molecules, you're looking at compounds, but you have several orders of magnitude, then you're winnowing it down step by step. Well, eventually you may get to a dozen lead candidates. Which one do you nominate to bring forward for IOD into clinical development?
And that's really where Aperture Bio comes in.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Two big themes there, number one, a 95% failure rate, which means that, you know, only one in 20 is, is sort of getting to that, you know, first phase. And then two, that the FDA's guidance is changing from animal to human. Right. So those are two big themes here that are underpinning the need for what Aperture Bio is doing.
Right. And then the second part that you mentioned is which do you nominate? So now it's highlighting or prioritizing the best candidates, is that correct? And then how are you helping that process? You just explained a little bit. But help me understand how you're, you're prioritizing the best candidates.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I'm just gonna flip to one of my slides here in nominating a lead kit candidate, something that actually I was surprised to learn since I don't have a background in pharma, in doing our discovery is just how much this process can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. You're evaluating the biology of a given candidate. So how does it induce and reverse the disease state that you're targeting as well as the drug like properties, how does it behave in the body the way that you want it to, to be able to have that effect in a tissue specific way.
And when you're doing this, you move through a critical path. It starts with biochemical assays, so cells and cell lines, quite reductive, then moves to in vivo or animal studies. And so you're looking at potency, you're looking at ADME, absorption distribution, et cetera, and then eventually moving toward in vivo pharmacology and pharmacodynamics and selecting a candidate. And one thing that we've found is that efficacy data comes quite late in this critical path. And by using organoid models, so human tissue derived models that can be Used outside the lab, we can move the efficacy readout earlier in that critical path. There's some confidence building steps as well that sort of typically will help confirm the decision that you make or what you do with the candidate that you're nominating. But the cycle time for those is quite long, and so they're usually not, they're sort of adjacent to that critical path. We think we can move a couple of those onto the critical path as well.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Right. So the overall intention here, though, of, of what you're doing is to make it so that you are being far more efficient and effective in identifying strong candidates that will actually be curative in cancer treatments. Who needs this most now? Like, if you said, you know, center of the circle target, this is who needs us, and then maybe there's a secondary and tertiary, but if you look at who, who would need this right now? And of course, there's so many. What is the narrowest part of the market that absolutely has to have this now?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Preclinical development teams at Biopharma who are doing early and late optimization of leads. That's our working thesis. I think, in fact, one of the challenges I've had in, in, in pitching this as we go out to raise our seed round and that I'm excited to hear your, your perspective on is, you know, with how much confidence to present that. Because, of course, we're building out and validating the platform, and so we're determining the edge cases, the boundary conditions of what we can do. And so that's what we're targeting now. And then every data package that comes out directionally moves the needle on confirming that hypothesis.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: And how close are you to partnering? I mean, you're, you're fundraising now. So just orienting us, if we zoom out to the business, what is the goal in terms of fundraise? What are you trying to bring on? With what end in mind? What's the, what's the benchmark that you're looking to accomplish or the way station that you're looking to achieve as a team?
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes. So we're, we're raising a, a seed round, we're targeting a $4 million seed, and we're seeking to demonstrate in our top solid tumor indications that our platform can take some clinical assets that succeeded and some that failed. Molecules or compounds that are similar, that may target similar pathways and show that we could have predicted that in advance to validate the fact that using our platform to accelerate preclinical development results in moving the needle in the clinic in terms of patient Patient response and in oncology and overall survival.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Okay. And so if we look at that value and we look at what companies do before and after. So one of the keys of pitching anything we have to look at without you, how are we spending? Right? So an example is, you know, before it was a million dollars and a year to do it now after it was a hundred thousand dollars and one month. And so you can quickly see the multiples that it's, you know, 10 times cheaper, it's, you know, 12 times faster, whatever the math was there.
So, and I'm not asking you to do that math or even that rough math, but just in, in terms of scope, if you look at sort of an optimal case study that company X is spending this much time, money, effort, and then you can come in with a massive value prop. Because speed is a competitive advantage. And I think that deserves to be in your narrative that some, you know, when I, when I work with companies, all in biopharma, all in biotech, and when I look at the levers that they are juggling money, time, effort, personnel, it's always time. That is only goes in one way. I mean it's not, I'm not saying we can always raise more money, but you can't get back more time. And I think that aspect, Laura needs to be one of the front lines of your narrative that in seeing the future of your, you know, your candidates is a matter of time, it's a matter of speed, it's a matter of getting there first because you can, and I'm pulling a narrative directly from my clients. You either shape the market or the market shapes you. Right. And so that, that in your world you're helping your clients eventually shape the market because they're getting there first. Does that resonate?
[00:13:12] Speaker A: It does. And in fact, one data point that I'm thinking of, that we could put on a slide is thinking of the timeline to grow a tumor derived xenograft in a mouse versus to do temporal studies in organoids. And the difference is significant. So we could, I think that this would be a great, I don't know if it's the main deck or appendix, but that's, that's a great point.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And all of this reminds me, I'm an analogy freak, but my, my, but I feel like analogies are mental models that help us see what we're doing.
So my cousin owns a company in Canada that is Geosciences. Right. And what they, what they get paid to do is fly around the world and look at certain sites and determine with fair, fairly high accuracy what's below the surface in terms of minerals or, or things that they would want to mine.
And so of course they use all the sophisticated tools but essentially what they're doing is they're saying will pay you X to decide if 20x or 100x is worth investing in drilling, mining, extracting. And so it's really about targeting and prioritizing the highest value. But also it's about speed because those companies want to be the first to claim or stake their claim. And in some ways I feel like Aperture Bio, while you are that X ray vision on the future, helping us see into the future, you're also, it's not just efficiency but it's getting there fastest and getting there first and being able to make higher quality decisions in succession of pursuit of their goal. And, and so I feel as though part of that story is then who really needs that kind of per. That, that insight and that speed as a way to signal to your investors this is who we're going to be lining up for as our, as our clients, as our customers. This is the people who will, you know, pay for this to give them that, you know, that sense of where's the market, right? It's, it's sort of product market fit. Like who needs this now?
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Okay, I really, really like this. And one thing I'm, I'm noticing is you have not used and also I, I haven't most of the words that are usually in the pitch deck. I did two pitches yesterday and we are not using the, and one of them in particular, some friction points right at the front where just wasn't connecting. We're talking about preclinical development and the person on the other side is talking about okay, so in theory, could you be in pathology labs all over the world for clinical stage. So yeah, we haven't used the same words.
Well, it's so, so simple and so effective.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Everybody I know in the world, including me, we, we sort of, we have what's called the curse of knowledge, right. We forget what it's like to not know. And, and I'm, you know, you've been leading this company for a while and you, it's like so we just sort of get indoctrinated into our own world and again you're not, it's not just you, it happens to me and this is what I do for a living. So.
But I think part of the value of even just this conversation is zooming out and saying okay, you know the difference between something that's an academic pursuit and something that's a business pursuit is now you're leaving the sort of ecosystem of an academic pursuit and saying okay, who's going to pay for this? Right. And it's, it's, you know, they can be complimentary but ultimately they're different business models. And so I think what will be helpful as you're raising these funds because people are going to be investing for a lot of reasons. They're going to like the team, they're going to like the initiative, they're going to like that all of that matters. But in, in addition, they need to validate that there's a real business model that hasn't yet been fully realized and amateur needs to position themselves as having competitive advantage. And so let me ask a more confronting question.
I only know you through this conversation. I'm not familiar with the market.
How crowded is this market? Is there, are there multiple players that you know of? Do you not know of others, but you know of some activities? Like how much do you know about the macro conditions that exist around what Aperture is doing?
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah, so certainly this is an active space in the market.
I think what differentiates Aperture Bio is that and I'll just say there are a lot of companies who are using AI or heightened marketing their use of AI. Some of these are actually from public data sets. Yeah, there's a need for proprietary data that's high fidelity, that translates to the clinic and that's where Aperture Bio is differentiated and that we're able to generate a type of high resolution data on, on biomarkers, on cell types, on actual functional biology, functional response to the different conditions of drugs from organoids that no one else is able to and in delivering that we're building a predictive layer on top so that even though we're using an imaging based technology, that we're able to take a quantitative biosciences approach and one of our scientific leaders comes from this background with deep experience at a number of small biotechs so that our, the partner whom we're working with would be able to use our readout and compare it apples to apples with other assay modalities that they're using to evaluate, to evaluate their pipeline with.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Okay, so increased confidence, increased speed, increased efficiency. These to me are the legs of the stool that that Aperture Bio needs to, you know, consistently lean on as what is the value prop? Because value exists only in context of the environment in which it's in. I'm sure you've seen me share this, that the value of a glass of water to people who are well hydrated near a water source is almost nothing. But that same glass of water has infinite value. If you're stranded in the desert for three days and on the cusp of, of dying and the commodity has not changed. The environment has. And thus what we have to contend with is how do we not only explain the value value of what you're doing. Seeing into the future efficiently to prioritize high quality candidates so that you can be effective and first to market.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: But that no one else is really doing it at this fidelity, at this leverage point right now.
And that's why Aperture Bio deserves to get your attention and support.
Because it's a clear problem and no one is quite solving it the way that we are.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: Two thoughts. First, one way that I think of this is that you know the, the general field that our platform sits in, spatial biology. It's an area that's, that's been around for a while. Spatial proteomics has been developing most actively last 10, 15 years. It's a, it's kind of non obvious. Okay. If spatial biology is useful because it tells you how cells are organized, how they're communicating with one, with one another and how that changes over time, then why isn't it used in preclinical development? And that was not obvious to us. But it turns out that there's tremendous white space because although the early technology, the first gen platforms are are there the form factor in terms of proprietary hardware that's expensive. So that presents some barrier to adoption, a secondary barrier to adoption and that the workflows are very user dependent. And then there are some issues with signal to noise and fidelity of the data that varies platform to platform.
And so it's not a tool that can be widely adopted in a high throughput manner where you're doing preclinical development and you need to move, you know, from high throughput workflows and well, plates to a small animal model to a large animal model. Perhaps you'd like to adopt new analytical methods and run some screens on organoids or spheroids. You're not able to do that.
And so that's one thing that comes to mind.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: And so that, that was very compelling as, as you were saying that and I was just breaking down.
Well first of all, just in terms of delivery, Laura, that that is something I want to signal to you that I think is really effective which was you as the lead guide on this scientific journey.
Why is that? What was happening here? And the reason I like this and I'm not sure exactly where this will fit in terms of you crafting your narrative, but it has this shared journey that we're on that we wondered why it wasn't. And I actually shared this with a, a group last week about the power of questions. And you know, Edwin Land founded Polaroid and he founded Polaroid because in the 1940s he was out with his four year old daughter and he was taking pictures with an old school camera and he took a picture and she said, can I see the image? And he said no, you'll have to wait. And she said why?
And he said that question followed by what if we didn't have to literally lawn Polaroid? Right. And I love that story because it's so simple and yet elegant and it created a multi, you know, million dollar company. And so that was very compelling the way you shared it because it led us sort of in on the journey. So I'm not quite sure which audience will resonate most with that, but I want to unpack that again. So let's go back in time a few minutes ago when you were saying when we first looked at this and, and then we saw that there was not. And I want to actually look at the factors that were missing in that space that allowed you to innovate Aperture bio. So can you go back recap that story and I may pause and stop you along the way.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: My co founder and I are in Boston shopping around basically a couple papers and people are telling us to go look.
I mean there's generic advice, go look for a problem. But when you have a limited IP and that's what you have to work with, you also have to be realistic about. I have to make progress in the timeline. So mentors were telling us, well, yeah, this is a research tool, so go look in research tools and you can, I think very quickly get caught up in the details of the right way to do a startup. So, so, okay, make a competitive matrix with your red X's and green checks, which features where are you better than other research tools? And there you're looking at an incremental innovation in a crowded market.
That's my perspective.
And it's challenging because I remember one pitch at the pre seed I got a warm introduction to a fund very well known in our space. I was speaking to someone, not a partner but senior, with deep subject matter expertise and we got to that competitive matrix and he just looked into the camera on zoom and said, sorry, why should I believe you? I don't believe you.
And we're you know, a pre seed company and there were something like eight peer reviewed publications that the data was based on and we didn't have the lab going yet. So it, so that signaled to me that something about, you know, the fit is, is off here and then when we started looking somewhere else and it, but it took kind of deciding and sifting through which voices to listen to. I think this is one of the most difficult things to do as a first time founder and I've been grateful to have some advice from mentors and doing it. But you know, we'd be participating in a startup incubator, we'd go interview some people from pharma and we'd interview a preclinical development team that said, well I'm, I'm, I'm not using that, I'm not using spatial biology in the way that you're describing this highly multiplex technology. That's, you know, we're satisfied with what we do right now. That's not what we need. And so if you go back to someone who's tasked you with customer discovery interviews, they say, oh, you know, the customer doesn't want that, like what's their problem? Can you, did they say any other problems in the interview?
Oh yeah, this and that. Can you solve them? Well, no, not really. Our platform doesn't do that. Okay, well that's not your market. Go back to research tools or go look at clinical diagnostics or go look at biomarkers. But unfortunately there were some exit values in that space that weren't as high as investors wanted. And so that, that business planning wasn't received well by investors even though scientifically it was feasible.
Potentially so. But then if you step, if you take a step back and look more holistically, well, the person who's telling you I don't have a problem, what you're looking at, they are not talking to the person who's doing the clinical readouts from phase two and seeing the failures. And so you need to be able to integrate those different data points and then sort of get to the phase where okay, there's something here, there's some signal.
But then I've realized actually I don't have expertise to evaluate it. What kind of skillset do I need to do this? And then we had to bring on some people with drug development experience that was very, in very particular verticals to help us figure out. Could you build out what you have into something that would bridge this gap? I think so. And here's how we de risk it.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: So what it's very helpful to hear. And I think what, what I'm hoping anyone listening to this would, would see was just your process of like, you were doing the work and putting the time in, but you were also getting feedback that wasn't exactly helpful or confirming because maybe they don't have an incentive to see things differently. Right. And I think, I always think of the Charlie Munger quote, who is Warren Buffett's business partner. Like, if you want to understand the whole world, it's incentives.
And I think about that often as just a mental model. Like maybe they're not incentivized because there's, it doesn't butter their toast, it doesn't give them any other advantage. And so you have to sort of zoom out and say, who would benefit from this? And so by bringing on the right people and then changing the questions, where did that land you in terms of, yes, we're solving the right sort of problem and for the audience who needs us?
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think we, we finally got to the point where, where we identified that actually this adoption barrier for our general technology class in preclinical development, we shouldn't take that as a negative.
We should take that as the right technology with this capability hasn't been commercialized yet, and be more high throughput, working with a bunch of highly automated microscopy workflows, having a signal to noise profile where we can bring up potentially a higher reproducibility and quantifiability to our class of imaging technology, that this was what was needed to break in. So we shouldn't write off the opportunity because other companies haven't been able, you know, more successful in their own right, but not in this particular application space we're interested in. So we, so we got there. That was a big first step.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: So what you just said, those four levers, and we have the transcript so we can.
I feel like that's your entire value prop on one slide.
Right. And to me, the way I'm seeing, seeing it in my mind's eye, and again, this may or may not turn into a slide, it really doesn't matter. But when I'm looking at low throughput versus higher throughput and you know, random versus standardized or whatever, whatever we get to have that delta between the two that is so elegant because it starts to, what I call triangulate, it expands the aperture of how we perceive what your company is doing in a space where all of those elements of value, higher throughput, the reproducibility actually together make a, a matrix that is like Our solution. And I truly believe that, again, not to bring in a crappy analogy, but when the iPhone first came out like we were in Palm Pilot world and everyone just saw it as like a phone that could like maybe play a little video that would like live on the phone. And then they were like, well, what if it was the Internet and a phone and like a jukebox or like a music player? And obviously it's like so transcended that over the last 20 years. It's almost mind blowing. But at the time it was like occupying a unique triad that, that, that didn't exist in the market. And now we can't unsee the world throughout without that. And so I'm wondering if that same logic could apply for Aperture Bio.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: I think so. If you do drug discovery, the joke is, the story is it's like walking through a field, waiting to step on a rake. You're going off into this expanse of grass, fields, you know, expansive chemical space, whatever it may be, and at any point you could just get to a no, a no go. You know, you can't keep going. You've stepped on a rake, you've got a gash in your foot. And so, yes, that's, that's accurate that we're trying to bring those go no go decisions into a data driven process that's iteratively deployed across the drug development process.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, in my mind's eye, I was seeing almost the inverse that if you could look at a field where there were mines below the surface but hitting a mine was actually failing and you saw 90 for every square foot or every hundred square feet, there's 95 lines and in five squares that are safe and you could put on lenses that would help you see where to step so that getting across the field would be success.
In some ways, that's what Aperture is driving for. It's clarity. It's, you know, optimizing your speed, your trajectory and it's bringing you, you know, through those drivers of value, the higher throughput and the standardization, you can then scale. And I'll tell you just from my experience, you know, a lot of companies that are in heavy growth mode, you've heard this expression a million times, but what gets you here doesn't get you there. And I think your value prop is for the right part of the market.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: For the companies who are having pain points around, you know, everything that they need to, to, to be more effective and efficient with their discovery, they will invest with Aperture Bio because it needs to be framed as if we don't do that. We could be dead in the water. We could run out of capital, we could run out of goodwill from patients, we could run out of time. And I think that turning up the rhetoric of the urgency of companies who need you because you're part of that value chain, right, you're part of that. And so you're going to be a supercharger on their process. And that to me is inserting yourself in as this force multiplier for what they do because of those higher throughput leverage, the platform, the predictability. And your hypothesis that this would be. Yeah, that's how I'm seeing it in my mind. But you know, you tell me if that's resonating.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: It is, very much so. And what comes to mind is you asked about it a few minutes ago, is which companies need us most. I think that if, if we convey, okay, here are, you know, the four pillars.
Throughput, automation, quality of data, et cetera. IS4 partners act like this supercharger enforced multiplier.
Now here is our plan and then provide some specifics on the go to market. And in terms of that, what we're thinking in terms of being a force multiplier is that I think we could either look at modality, pipeline modality, but companies who have a lot of activity in bispecifics, multi specific T cell engagers, where you're going after combinations of targets and so you're looking at targets who are sort of spatially in one another's complement or are synergistic when engaged. We can do, we can do that well, or companies who have a product that's clinical stage that could be used in combination and we can be a force multiplier. To understand how they should design combination
[00:34:09] Speaker B: trials, I had to Google the word catalyst because even though I know what it means, I just kept thinking of it which is a substance or that speeds up a chemical reaction, but it's also a person that likely causes change or action. So there's something about you helping those companies catalyze the future of drug development or effectiveness or efficient. Right. It's it, it is the force multiplier. It is the, you know, it's, it's all of those things. And, and again, you know, before the invention of aviation, right we, we had trains and before that we had, you know, horse and buggy. And I know that seems so pedestrian looking backwards, but only now can we consider going from, you know, New York to San Francisco or Tokyo or wherever in, in this like staggeringly short amount of Time such that you can completely change how you do business, how you treat patients, how you, you know, deliver live organs. Right. Like, it's just we did not have that. And so I think there's something here that I'm leaning on with you, Laura, that is about speed. It's, it's, it's, it's the speed, it's the.
And here's what I think about too.
A company is just a collection of people working on a problem. Right. And that's from Richard Branson and he's owned 400 companies.
And thus what the effect that company's gonna have is gonna be predicated on the quality and the execution of their decisions.
And so they constantly need to keep making high quality decisions.
I feel like you are a catalyst for those higher quality decisions in that part of the chain. Validating where we go. What do we go after? What has priority and how does that help our company? And I'm speaking as your client scale.
We can now standardize or move more quickly and the more you can articulate it in the language of the audience and less on the science which is valid. You have a team around that, you know it.
But more on why this audience so badly needs this for their business model. And what is the first, second and third level of clients? Companies who need that for what they're doing. And how does that fit in the way the world is going in drug discovery?
[00:36:26] Speaker A: I think we can absolutely implement that.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Do you want your team to have a seat at the table?
Would you like your team to speak with clarity, confidence and influence? Reach out to us DNA.com for more information.
A couple of things that I'm hearing. So number one, I truly love how you brought us along the journey in a way of like this is the original thesis and this is the pushback. So there's something about that origin story that needs to be in something.
The second part is, I feel the most important part for me is that clear articulation that when you're trying to accomplish, you know, higher quality targets or what's candidates in a sea of 95 out of 100 failure, you need these three or four criteria. Right. The higher, like you need that super engine, you need that clarity, that for that, whatever that is to be able to find the candidates worth elevating. And now and then what makes it even more urgency, urgent is that fda, you know, perspective that's coming in away from animals and towards humanoids.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: Which then this is the part that I would love to land with you over the next. You Know, couple days or whatever which allows it to say this is the time for Aperture Bio. Because in the landscape, in the need, in the massive failure rates, the need to be lean, the need to move quickly where speed is that ultimate competitive advantage. Aputure Bio is your back office or your force multiplier or your high performance toolkit or whatever it is to get where you need to go faster. And that is why we think we have a better position than anyone in this market. And so to me, as I'm thinking it on the fly here, that that's, I think, a narrative that's worth refining for some of your audiences.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: I have several, several thoughts. So first on how we can, you know, in the market where you need to move quickly, be lean. I think we can quantify that. Actually I can work with our leadership team to figure out how we do that. So I think that that's absolutely something that we need to get up in the front of her deck. I like the way that you situated the narrative in terms of, you know, here's how the industry is moving and here's what our individual partners need to keep pace. But one thing that's really sticking out is as you're articulating this vision and particularly what you said, why we're better positioned than anyone else to exploit this opportunity. That's a light bulb for me because I think I have this idea.
Couldn't tell you where it comes from, but you're speaking to an investor, potentially going to take their capital. You want to be a responsible steward of that, of that capital.
And so I'm always thinking about what needs to be de risked. How could we use that capital efficiently by having the right state gates in our R and D plan. I think I'm putting that accidentally in the front of the pitch when I should be saying we can do this better than anyone. You know, we're were positioned better than anyone else. I could find language that's, maybe you could help me find language that's qualified. Just right.
But I need to say that at the front of the deck and then later we can say, okay, here's our plan over 24 months XYZ and here are the go no go points. If, if we feel that those are there in the R and D plan, but I need to sell at the beginning. And that I think is not obvious to a first time founder in Life Sciences. It's certainly to me.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And that is it. I'm glad you brought that up. And it is something that, you know, should be brought to Your team, I mean, I, I think one of the ways to do that is first get that internal confidence that you, you feel like you know it, but that everyone ratifies that internally. Right? So what that looks like you could do, you know, an all hands meeting with everyone. There's only one question I need everyone to articulate the answer to, which is, you know, why are we going to be able to do this more effectively than anyone else and everyone has to bring answers to. And so what, what I'm saying is once you start to get your head around and, and again, this is the hard work of building conviction is really testing and saying, is this true?
And if it is that you say, how do I know this is true? And then that, that to me those two questions are paramount. And I think that's something that I would challenge you to, to, you know, you can even do it on like a asynchronously like. But if you have a meeting with everyone who's on your internal team and really having them articulate that and then testing that, then that gives you that real leg to stand on with investors. Because now, and I'm just saying, not just for you, Laura, for me, for anyone else, when you're in front of them and they're pushing back, you have the confidence and conviction not just in your own belief and your, you know, but the everyone that is on your team that you, we have looked at this rigorously that, you know, if this is not true, then we have to contend with that painful truth. But if this is true and we believe it to be true, this is how we know this is true.
And I think those two questions for me should keep everyone up at night in any business, right? Like, it's just, it's, it's, you have to contend with that. But, but that's where confidence comes from. It's doesn't come from reviewing the numbers, it comes from considering are we looking at the problem the right way. And that's something that I've gotten from you even on your journey, saying that at first we may have been looking at it the right way, but we were in front of the wrong people.
Now we're looking at it, we believe the right way and now we're getting in front of the right people. And that is another domino that falls to give us this conviction.
[00:42:32] Speaker A: We've been talking about our beachhead market, preclinical development and what having more speed and precision accelerates in, in clinical development. Based on that, how, how would you recommend framing MM at the beginning of the pitch if you ultimately want to develop internal assets or you don't want an investor to start thinking at the beginning of the pitch, oh, well, if they start thinking, you know, pharma partners, sales, like, are they doing sales?
Are they doing deals with, you know, upfront payment and downstream royalties? But if they're doing sales, is it a repeatable sales process? What's the margin? You don't want the investor to get distracted by that. Maybe this is a topic for next time, but I could use some advice on how to frame that from the beginning because it's easy to fall into, well, we're doing this and our partner or our customers needs that.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: I always think of this statement like, you have a plan for the audience or they have a plan for you. Right. So let's imagine a scenario in which they don't go down the rabbit hole, you know, and pull you in a direction. So let me first ask, why do you think an investor would be pulling you in that direction in the first place in the middle of a pitch? Like, what is their insatiable curiosity that they, they can't, you know, TABLE While you're explaining, what do you think is going on for them?
[00:44:01] Speaker A: I think it's slide two, executive summary. The top line says spatial biology.
Well, in terms of publicly available information, that term is tied to a number of companies who have had a certain business model and for a number of them, also certain exit value or market cap at ipo.
So maybe using different words would keep them from going down that rabbit hole.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah, and. Or cutting off and explaining what that means. You know, I always, I tell all of my clients that when they're putting together any narrative, right, A pitch, an update, you have to wrestle with. Question 3 on my checklist is what's in it and what is not in it, and then communicating that with the audience. So imagine that we're going on a flight and I'm the captain and say, okay, here's what we're going to cover. And this is what's not up for debate. The route, my altitude, like, whatever. So people kind of know that's their lane. So when you put that up there, that's okay. But then it may behoove you to qualify that or consider the curious investor and say, should we show them this early?
And if not, then what are we replacing that with the other thing, too? And I'll just make this as a quick aside is I firmly believe that once you get your deck together, you should pressure test it and red team it against all, all of Those sort of. And AI is good for this too, because it can come up with endless questions and sort of like, okay, if I'm in a room of investors, I can't imagine that they're all on the same page, but it's my job to shape the narrative. But it's their job to be curious and pick it apart. How could I preempt their questions that could derail me in a way that serves what we're trying to do? And so I'll give you this example.
So I have a client who's, who's proposing a massive investment in this new technology.
And I had them sit with, give me all the reasons why the C suite would say no to this, competing priorities, no return on investment, whatever. And so once we got those on the table, then we said, okay, which one of these themes deserves to now be in the narrative and not wait for questions? So to me, whenever somebody is signaling a question, it means that it wasn't answered early enough for them to feel satisfied. So your choice is, do we answer this right up front and say, just to be clear, our business model is X or just to be clear, we are not. We haven't decided that, but this is where we have three strong hypotheses, like whatever you need to say to land that plane and not use it as a point of derailment, if that makes sense.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: Very much so. Okay, thanks.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: You know, I'm looking at your slides here, so you can't see this, but, you know, there's a lot on there, and I think it's designed to sort of build credibility and look at all this stuff. But you also have to realize It's a catch 22. It can actually distract people from the narrative. And that's, I, I, I want to make sure that whatever you choose to do, that you're shaping it in a way that serves you and what your company is trying to do.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: And again, these may be just team discussions saying, hey, guys, this is something that came up over and over again. How do we answer this? And how do I sort of feel good about this in a way that I'm cutting off these challenges? And I think sometimes it's helpful, although this gets a little bit annoying, but to define what you're not and what you're not trying to be.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, Super.
[00:47:40] Speaker B: All right. How are you feeling about where, where you stand with. I know there's a lot going on and, and we covered a fair bit of in the last hour, but what are some sort of themes or threads that you're, you're thinking to pull on and of course we can always, you know, we'll, we'll come back and get our heads together again. But what do you think are some things that warrant some immediate attention and then some bigger discussions that would eventually get you to where you're looking to go? And of course, how can I be of help?
[00:48:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So some themes that I'm picking up on, I'm actually noticing a nice theme you've been talking about, you know, vision lens, seeing the future. But I think whether I use these words in the front of the picture or not being a spatial biology platform, we can actually take that concept. We're looking at arrangement of a landscape of assets that pharmas are investing in and like you said, we're finding the path through. So we're using the technology to do that as a guide, creating the map, using speed data and using both those to build clarity.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: By the way, I loved all that. The way you just articulated that was, was beautiful because you nested the technology inside a strategic lens of, of building the map. That deserves. Absolutely. Because it's one thing to have a field where you're trying to optimize for, it's another thing to have an entire territory and that starts to speak to scale. So I'm all on that.
[00:49:10] Speaker A: The second thing is I think I'm self conscious about in pitches, maybe unnecessarily, so that we're early and I like this idea of being clear at the start, like our business model is X or we have three strong convictions about business model.
Happy to circle back to that later and see what questions come up, see what curiosity is there, see what validation that the other side is looking for that will be able to deliver on it. But if there's something that I'm nervous about, whether it's going to be on the table, get it on the table on our terms to give an opportunity to shape the narrative.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: So this is me being a little bit, if you'll allow me, like your coach on the sidelines here, because it is my belief that as much as you want them to fund and do what you're doing, you're also in the, in the driver's seat. Like you, you shouldn't take someone on who doesn't get it. And, and you leading with that transparency, I think shows more confidence. Right. I, I, I'm paraphrasing Daniel Coyle, who wrote two amazing books. One is the culture code, one's the talent code. But he found that high performing cultures, which aperture Bio is have three things in common. Number one, and it is the order.
Number one, they have to have safety. You have to feel safe being human and knowing that you're still supported for not knowing everything. Okay. And so you're the lead of the company, and yet you can't know and shouldn't know everything. I should. No one should. That's why you build the team, and it has to be okay with you. And that's. That's a deeper question that we have to go. It's okay to not know in. Especially in those rooms. They're not, you know, if they're grilling you, then they miss the narrative. Like they're. You're going to tell them where you are. And this is the partnership we're looking for. The second thing is vulnerability.
Saying what you don't know. That the four most powerful words that Daniel Coyle says that any leader can say is, I messed that up when they, when they do something wrong, because it shows the humanity. And so I'm not telling you to get in front of a room and go, gee, I don't know. Like, gee whiz, I should know. No, no, no. It's more, you know what you know and you don't know what you don't know. And, and confidence truly comes from being okay with. This is what I know. And if I don't know, that's. That's where I am right now. And I could wish it differently, but I don't have the information.
And then the, the third, and this is the last one, is a sense of purpose, that we're doing this because we believe in what we're doing. And I think that to me, speaks to your mission as a company and your. Your drive.
And so safety, vulnerability, and purpose.
I think when you're in these rooms, it's as much of them proving themselves to you as you proving yourself to them. And while I can't say that you go in and say, we have no clue on the business model, you can say, look, this is where we came at it. And that's why I think your origin story matters. We know the technology is pointing to something that is acute and problematic. We know it's at scope and scale, and we know that speed is a driver.
And in terms of how we turn that into our virtuous business model, that is where we're leaning on our community and our partners like you. Because while we know the science and the business, we're trying to find out what's the lane that will get us where we need to go as quickly as possible. And frankly, you know, just me editorializing. Laura. There's a lot of companies who thought they had business model A and then it went to B and it keeps happening. By the way, there's so many companies who thought they knew the business they were in or even like Starbucks has changed their business model a few times or McDonald's or whatever. And so I think that's you just getting okay with that and still driving forward on what that is awesome.
And I. One more thing. Just because I'm in soapbox mode, what they're investing in is you like, do I trust and believe Laura? Do I think she is the right person to lead this? And you know, I'm always going to be on team Laura and you need to believe that I'm the right person to lead it because I'm going to outwork and outshine and outdo everyone on in pursuit of this. And you know, if you care the most, you win. Right? You win because you care more than others. And so the rooms doesn't really matter. They love you or don't get it or they're on board or they're not. Who cares? You get it and you understand and you know what you know and you know what you don't know. And this is where we are in the journey. And with the right partners, they will add to your speed and then the wrong partners will not add. And if they're giving you that energy that you're probably in the wrong room or with the wrong person, you know, and it's like, okay, great, onto the next one. Yeah, you know, that's the best advice I can give anyone in pursuit of a hard goal is what did I learn? Onto the next. Onto the next.
[00:54:29] Speaker A: I think that's great advice and timely because we use that approach for a potential first customer where it ended up not being the right fit. So if I can just take that to the pitch conversations, that'll be great.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: No, I, I think that that's a, that's a metaphor for life. It's like whenever we can get more reps, you know, with anything, it just, it sort of immu. Immunizes us from like, it's a big world out there. I always want to remind my kids myself, like, it's a big world out there. Like, okay, no's there. Let's move on to, you know, who gets us. It really is about having that force of will and that sort of belief in self and, and you know, I'm sort of philosophizing Here, but this morning, having a conversation about what comes first, like belief or like method, and I don't know which is right, but I do feel like belief has to sort of be part of it. Like, you have to see the world a certain way, and then you can shape.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:32] Speaker B: These resources to get there, but you. You have to first see it. And if you're seeing the world, no pun intended, as. What would it be like if we could spend pennies on the dollar in cancer research and. And know where we're going? What would that mean for the whole value chain? What would that mean for patients who are waiting for. What would that mean for companies who are fundraising themselves? You're just a piece of it, but you can be a force multiplier for hundreds of companies who come on board or millions of patients.
So it's like I want to put myself into an equation where we're going to unlock tremendous value for everybody.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: I really like that. And, you know, I think one of the things. One of the many valuable things I'm leaving this conversation with is a sense of excitement to go back to the pitch and figure out how and where I start in those critical first moments when you have a first impression and a chance to establish that with someone. Because I think we've been starting the pitch with knowledge, and if I can find a way to start it with belief, I think everything about the way I engage will. Will change. So. Yeah. Thank you, Stuart.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I love that. And your sense of wonder, by the way, is infectious. We get that. And, you know, the way you feel about something, Laura, is the way we're gonna feel.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:59] Speaker B: And, you know, one of the worst pieces of advice I've gotten in my entire life is that I need to sort of fit the room. We all want to fit in. We're a tribal species. We don't want to. But it's. But there's something about.
Of all the things you said today, and you're very credible and likable and well educated, all those things, like you check all those boxes. But the part where I felt compelled an n of 1 was that sense of wonder on a journey that matters.
And I'm not saying we overindulge, but there's something worth exploring there, because now we're on the journey with you, which is exactly what an investor journey will be. They're not there to transact.
I want my return on investment in 30 days. They're there to be on the journey. So the more you bring them along that journey now, they start to see themselves as solving the problem with you. And it truly is. Two people on a boat going the same direction. You didn't stop to pick up dead weight and you have to now row them and they're there with their bag of money. No, they grab an oar. Let's go.
We can use that, those funds for deploying capital, but grab an ore. Yeah, I love that.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Great.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: Cool. All right, let's. Let's call session one in the books. I mean, I know this is like a mission you're on for the next little bit, so we can schedule a part two anytime. And if I can help in any way or sharpen the questions or meet with the team or whatever, I'm always going to say yes. So let me know how I can help.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: Okay, great. Thank you so much, Stuart.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Hey, it's Stuart again. Before you leave, if you love this podcast, subscribe. And also if you go to dn8.com you'll find a sign up for our newsletter where we give you actionable and practical advice. And be sure to find us on social media. And don't be shy. You can give us a six star review, but we will settle for five. See you in the next one.
[00:58:56] Speaker A: Sa.
