Excedr

“If you license all of your technology out, you're going to have a hard time doing an IPO or getting acquired.” In Part 2 of The Biotech Startups Podcast conversation with Steven J. Visco, Co-Founder, CEO & CTO of PolyPlus Battery Company, he shares how hard tech founders can license intellectual property strategically without forfeiting the long-term value of their company. Here's a look at what they cover in this episode: – PolyPlus Battery Company spent its first decade as a licensing business, collaborating on joint development agreements with chemical firms like DuPont. – Licensing by specific geography or application prevents a startup from inadvertently giving away its entire market upside. – Building a defensive picket fence of multiple patents around an invention provides far more security than relying on a single patent filing. – Managing international filings through PCT procedures allows founders to stage costly overseas translations and country-specific prosecution. – Involving laboratory scientists in patent drafting helps capture technical nuances that external attorneys might overlook. Retaining core commercial rights ensures a company remains valuable enough to stand on its own or attract an acquirer. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify for this episode and more stories only a biotech exec can tell! #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

“And I remember walking into like this ice cream shop and telling my wife Donna that, you know, if I leave California, that guy who's scooping ice cream is going to have a better life than me.” In 1 of my conversation with Steven J. Visco, Co-Founder, CEO & CTO of PolyPlus Battery Company, we dig into how childhood science experiments and classic literature set the stage for a chemistry career, why a warning about Canadian icebergs sent him to California, and how an unexpected newspaper feature sparked the launch of PolyPlus Battery Company. Here are some moments that stood out: 🔬 At eight years old, he was culturing pond water to track amoebas under a microscope, inspired by books about Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk. 📚 His father, an auto mechanic who took weekend classes for eight years to become a teacher, made a rule allowing him two comic books for every classic novel he finished. 🧪 While an undergrad at UMass, he published field research on a valley slated to be flooded for a reservoir, which convinced him to abandon pre-med for chemistry. 🧊 He turned down a postdoc in Newfoundland after learning that ferry routes could be blocked by icebergs, opting instead for sunny Santa Barbara. 🔋 Working under John Kennedy at UC Santa Barbara in 1982, he explored early solid-state battery chemistry that still informs his company's work decades later. Steve's gut check in that ice cream shop reminds me how personal choices about quality of life often steer our biggest career bets. Apple Podcasts & Spotify links in the comments below! 👇 #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

“And quite often they're very weak at communicating what it is they're trying to do or why it's important or why anybody else should care.” In 1 of The Biotech Startups Podcast conversation with Steven J. Visco, Co-Founder, CEO & CTO of PolyPlus Battery Company, he shares why strong communication is a foundational skill for scientific leaders, how political scrutiny spurred national labs to establish tech transfer offices, and what it took to spin PolyPlus Battery Company out of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Here's a look at what they cover in this episode: – Steve recognized early in his career that technical leadership depends on writing, because scientists who cannot articulate the relevance of their work struggle to secure grants and investor backing. – Securing industrial research funding at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory required demonstrating world-class domain expertise, as corporations only outsourced R&D when internal teams lacked specialized knowledge. – National laboratories established dedicated tech transfer offices in response to congressional scrutiny, creating formal mechanisms to commercialize public research through patents and spinoffs. – A planned three-line brief in The Wall Street Journal expanded into a quarter-page article after Steve took two hours to walk a reporter through battery chemistry, sparking immediate inbound investor interest. – Launching PolyPlus Battery Company required negotiating an exclusive license for his own inventions while building an entirely new fuel cell program at the national lab to avoid conflict-of-interest disputes. Clear communication remains the bridge between deep technical breakthroughs and commercial reality. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify for this episode and more stories only a biotech exec can tell! #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

“So you kind of go from lifting to steering.” In 4 of my conversation with Scott Chetham, Co-Founder & CEO of Faro, we dig into the transition from pushing automation onto enterprise buyers to managing incoming demand, scaling Faro post-Series B, and maintaining founder stamina while balancing family life. Here are some moments that stood out: 🏄♂️ Scott spent nearly a year surfing and mapping out problem architectures in Costa Rica before launching the company. ⚡ COVID-19 initially paused enterprise automation adoption when influxes of capital pushed pharma to prioritize speed over efficiency. 🦆 He compares scaling post-Series B to a duck on water, looking calm from the outside while moving at maximum speed beneath the surface to deliver for pharma customers. 🔄 After years of pushing automation onto hesitant buyers, enterprise market pressure flipped and customer demand began pulling Faro forward. ⏳ As an experienced second-time founder with family obligations, he emphasizes that working around the clock leads to burnout and that organizations must ultimately find a sustainable operating cadence. I have found that steering rapid organizational momentum requires a completely different mindset than pushing against early market inertia. Apple Podcasts & Spotify links in the comments below! 👇 #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

“If things are getting more complex, you're going in the wrong direction.” In 4 of The Biotech Startups Podcast conversation with Scott Chetham, Co-Founder & CEO of Faro, he shares how Faro transitioned from a trial cost calculator to an automation platform, why clinical trial data prior to 2019 can mislead modern study design, and how to maintain operational simplicity under enterprise pressure. Here's a look at what they cover in this episode: – After leaving Google and Verily, Scott spent months in Costa Rica planning Faro before raising a pre-napkin venture round with Polaris. – Faro began as a SaaS scenario-planning calculator for patient burden and trial costs before expanding into automated protocol review and electronic data capture setup. – Because clinical workflows are strictly regulated, Faro pairs constrained large language models with proprietary knowledge graphs rather than chaining unconstrained models that drift. – Scott cautions that clinical trial data prior to 2019 is often unhelpful for modern study designs due to shifting global standards of care. – While trial simulation can help optimize participant numbers, comprehensive in silico trials remain decades away because human biological variance is not yet sufficiently understood. Resisting complexity in technical architecture and organizational process is essential to building scalable systems that endure. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify for this episode and more stories only a biotech exec can tell! #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

“You have to have trust with the patient.” In 3 of my conversation with Scott Chetham, Co-Founder & CEO of Faro, we dig into the human realities of clinical trial recruitment, why patient trust cannot be automated with software, and how adaptive trial design helps teams manage biological complexity. Here are some moments that stood out: 🏥 Scott recalls enrolling a patient into a clinical trial only to be confronted in the hospital hallway by the patient's wife because she was not included in the conversation. 📝 Pushing remote e-consent forms to an iPad is easy, but having clinicians spend time earning the trust of patients and extended families cannot be automated. 📊 Only five percent of patients currently qualify for clinical research, turning patient enrollment into one of the most fragile human hurdles in life sciences. 🔄 Adaptive trial designs give sponsors a compliant pathway to adjust sample sizes or flip endpoints while data remains blinded, preventing costly all-or-nothing trial failures. 🧠 While machine learning can synthesize mountains of trial precedent, experienced domain experts are still required to make judgment calls when exploring net-new biology. I was reminded that no matter how sophisticated software and automation become, clinical trials still depend on honest human conversations at the bedside. Apple Podcasts & Spotify links in the comments below! 👇 #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

The clinical trial bottleneck is not discovery. Getting molecules through a development cycle that can run 12 years, and funding that cycle, is what constrains the pipeline. Our CEO, Scott Chetham, made that case in Part 3 of his conversation on The Biotech Startups Podcast from Excedr. Large pharmaceutical companies can run development like a well tuned machine, while smaller biotechs carry the full cost of amendments, interim analyses, and teams waiting on delays. Scott used Amgen’s osteoporosis strategy to show how much a trial’s success depends on early design decisions about what to measure, whom to enroll, and when to measure it. Scott also explained where AI fits. Agents can compress months of protocol research and scenario modeling, from endpoint options to country selection and enrollment planning, into rapid analysis. When the biology is new and the stakes are high, though, domain expertise and human judgment still make the call. Faro’s ontology and data models keep that analysis connected to the intent behind each design decision, so every output stays traceable and people stay accountable. The result is sponsors of any size reaching better designed protocols sooner, with fewer amendments that cost sites and patients time. Spotify: https://shorturl.at/tLl0w #ClinicalDevelopment #AgenticAI #LifeSciences #ClinicalTrials

“The problem has never been having stuff on the shelf to study.” In 3 of The Biotech Startups Podcast conversation with Scott Chetham, Co-Founder & CEO of Faro, he shares why clinical development bottlenecks constrain therapeutic pipelines far more than discovery, how large pharmaceutical companies leverage development infrastructure, and where strategic endpoint selection dictates commercial success. Here's a look at what they cover in this episode: – Clinical development cycles average twelve years and consume immense capital, making clinical execution rather than molecular discovery the true constraining funnel in drug development. – Large pharmaceutical firms operate like fixed development machines where higher asset volume lowers per-trial costs, whereas smaller biotechs bear substantial cash burn during interim analyses and protocol amendments. – Moderna established long-term scalability by engineering an industrial inkjet-style printer capable of mass-producing personalized mRNA sequences at cost-effective volumes. – Amgen captured the osteoporosis market by selecting a focused fracture risk endpoint in a smaller population first, securing regulatory approval before expanding trials to broader demographics. – Manual protocol evaluation and country sequencing currently require teams of specialists three to six months per scenario, creating significant demand for automated research and optimization tools. Sustainable biotech value comes from building disciplined clinical pathways that can actually move promising assets off the shelf and through the regulatory finish line. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify for this episode and more stories only a biotech exec can tell! #biotechnology #lifesciences #podcast

Better automation could remove roughly half the internal work involved in clinical development. Our CEO, Scott Chetham, shared that view in Part 2 of his conversation on The Biotech Startups Podcast from Excedr. As AI takes on more of the coding, the constraint on building software for clinical development has shifted to product judgment, prioritization, and alignment on what to build. In regulated work, that makes quality assurance something to front load, because speed only counts when every output can be verified. Scott also explained why human decision making stays central as automation grows. Faro’s ontology and data models give AI agents a structured understanding of the study and the intent behind each design decision, so their work stays traceable and people remain accountable for the judgments that matter. The result is less manual effort for clinical teams and a faster path from design to study start, without giving up the rigor that sites and patients depend on. Spotify: https://shorturl.at/gKnCX #ClinicalDevelopment #AgenticAI #LifeSciences #ClinicalTrials