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“We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)

Steve Visco · Part 2

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Start here · 2-part series

Episode 81Part 1Oct 26, 2026

He Chose Santa Barbara Over Icebergs | Steve Visco Rerelease (1/3)

Steve Visco

“He says, no, I'm serious. Icebergs. I'm going to Santa Barbara.” Steve Visco was an introverted kid with a microscope, pond water, and books on Louis Pasteur and Jonas Salk. School science lagged years behind what he was already doing at home. Literature almost pulled him into writing instead of the lab. He still treats writing as a leadership skill, because too many scientists cannot explain why their work matters. A high-school rock band got him used to being watched. That comfort later showed up in grant pitches.

Fundraising & FinanceCompany BuildingLeadership & Teams

Part 2 of 2

Episode 81Part 2Oct 29, 2026

“We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)

Steve Visco

“We're going to burn your company to the ground.” Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.

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Company BuildingLeadership & TeamsLab Operations

Start here · 4-part series

Episode 80Part 1Oct 12, 2026

The Hard Part Starts After the Demo | Scott Chetham (1/4)

Scott Chetham

“Two-thirds of our work is QA. It's not the development anymore. It's how do you ensure it's doing what you think it's doing and that it will keep doing it, it won't drift.” Scott Chetham traces the influences that shaped his path into life sciences, from growing up on Australia's Gold Coast and watching his parents build careers through work and education to studying the intersection of engineering and medicine. He shares how a combined degree, early exposure to hospitals, and an unusual appetite for difficult problems pushed him toward biomedical research.

AI & Drug DiscoveryClinical DevelopmentResearch & Translation

Part 2 of 4

Episode 80Part 2Oct 15, 2026

Knowledge Is Now a Commodity | Scott Chetham (2/4)

Scott Chetham

“Knowledge is now a commodity, and it's your ability to ask the right question and the right next question that is really where the value is.” Scott Chetham explains why he left academia, how applied physics and industry-sponsored research prepared him for commercial healthcare, and what he learned leading technology and commercialization at ImpediMed. He discusses lymphedema detection, body composition monitoring, early GLP-1 research, and the long path from clinical measurement to drug development.

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Leadership & TeamsClinical DevelopmentResearch & Translation

Part 3 of 4

Episode 80Part 3Oct 19, 2026

The Clinical Trial Bottleneck Is Not Discovery | Scott Chetham (3/4)

Scott Chetham

“Our problem is the clinical funnel to shove things through this 12 year development cycle and the amount of capital it takes.” Clinical development is not a simple scale game. Scott explains why large pharmaceutical companies can behave like highly optimized development machines, while smaller biotechs absorb the full cost of delays, amendments, interim analyses, and underused teams.

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AI & Drug DiscoveryFundraising & FinanceLab Operations

Part 4 of 4

Episode 80Part 4Oct 22, 2026

If It's Getting More Complex, You're Going the Wrong Way | Scott Chetham (4/4)

Scott Chetham

“If things are getting more complex, you're going in the wrong direction.” Scott Chetham explains why he left Google and Verily to tackle the unglamorous planning work that slows clinical development. He recounts sketching the company in Costa Rica, raising a pre-napkin-stage round with Polaris, finding an early customer, and adapting when COVID-19 disrupted pharma economics.

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AI & Drug DiscoveryCompany BuildingLab Operations

Part 2 of 4

Episode 79Part 2Oct 1, 2026

Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)

Leslie Loveless

“No one looks at a teacher's resume and thinks they can go sell.” Leslie Loveless leaves the classroom for pharmaceutical sales in 1999, a coveted industry at the time. She describes the culture shock of moving from a school building into a territory-based role, where her days meant driving between providers, managing her own schedule, and learning to sell one to one. The transition wasn't easy on paper. Recruiters and hiring managers saw that Leslie lacked sales experience, but they missed the skills she had built teaching: public speaking, preparation, performance, and the ability to hold an audience's attention. At Takeda, those skills helped her win President's Club in both of her first two years. Leslie then explains how a call from Adam Sloan led her to Quest Diagnostics, where she moved quickly from individual sales into national sales training. The selling motion was completely different: hospital and laboratory deals required service, economic value, and buy-in from medical, operational, procurement, and financial stakeholders.

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Fundraising & FinanceLeadership & TeamsLab Operations

Part 3 of 4

Episode 79Part 3Oct 5, 2026

The Employee Number Five Leap That Built a Relationship Business | Leslie Loveless (3/4)

Leslie Loveless

“People are our clients. People are our product, and connecting them is what we do.” Leslie Loveless joined Slone Partners after a major personal transition, leaving a large healthcare company to become employee number five at a small recruiting firm. She hadn't worked in recruiting before, and at the time, she didn't fully appreciate how big the leap would be. Leslie revisits the firm's early startup days, when meetings ran through improvised conference calls and the team relied on paper, notebooks, and spreadsheets. She also explains how Slone expanded beyond laboratory and diagnostics recruiting into biotech, research tools, pharma services, healthtech, digital health, and academic medicine. At the center of that growth is a relationship-driven approach to search. Leslie discusses investor and portfolio-company relationships, the importance of long-tenured teams, the difference between an experienced candidate and the right fit, and why attitude matters when the work is inherently unpredictable.

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Fundraising & FinanceCompany BuildingLeadership & Teams

Part 4 of 4

Episode 79Part 4Oct 8, 2026

Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)

Leslie Loveless

“If you can overthink all the bad stuff, why can't you overthink all the good stuff?” As Slone Partners grew beyond its original five-person team, Leslie Loveless had to confront one of the hardest parts of leadership: letting go. She talks about delegation, resisting the urge to rewrite everyone else's work, and learning that a different approach can still be the right approach. Leslie also explains how Slone protects culture by listening for what different people need. The firm's culture ambassador helps turn that feedback into action, while Leslie reflects on when leaders should solve a problem, when they should simply listen, and why some issues need time to breathe. Looking ahead, Leslie sees growing demand across medtech, healthtech, AI, and machine learning. She discusses the limits of recruiting from the same blue-chip companies, the realities of relocation and family decisions, the tension between remote and on-site work, and the people who helped her build the firm.

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AI & Drug DiscoveryLeadership & TeamsCareers & Personal Growth

Start here · 4-part series

Episode 78Part 1Sep 14, 2026

How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)

Örn Almarsson

“Perfect is the enemy of good. How do we get there?” Örn Almarsson traces the early experiences that shaped his approach to science, from growing up in Iceland and Denmark to playing electric guitar and discovering a deeper curiosity about chemistry. He describes his first research opportunity at the University of Iceland, an early industry project in Copenhagen, and the mentors who pushed him toward bioorganic chemistry. The conversation follows his move to UC Santa Barbara, his work with Tom Bruice and Alex Klibanov, and the networking connection that led to Merck.

Research & TranslationCareers & Personal Growth

Part 2 of 4

Episode 78Part 2Sep 17, 2026

Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)

Örn Almarsson

“You gotta build that over time thoughtfully.” Örn Almarsson explains why thoughtful networking matters, especially when you don't need anything right away. He also reflects on evolving professional networks, learning from failure, and the entrepreneurial culture that drew him to the United States. At Merck, a three-month visa detour exposed Örn to another laboratory and reinforced the value of adaptability. He then describes leaving a secure role for Transform Pharmaceuticals, building a small team and collaborative culture, developing new formulation technologies, and helping create the patents and assets that led to a Johnson & Johnson acquisition.

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Company BuildingLeadership & TeamsLab Operations

Part 3 of 4

Episode 78Part 3Sep 21, 2026

The Delivery Problem Behind Moderna's Breakthrough | Örn Almarsson (3/4)

Örn Almarsson

“You've gotta get in the house without the alarms going off.” Örn Almarsson compares therapeutic mRNA delivery to a covert package drop: the payload has to reach the right room, release its contents, and leave without triggering the immune system. He looks back at Johnson & Johnson, Alkermes, and the relationships that shaped his next move. A referral from Bob Langer led him to Moderna, where he joined a small team working through one of biotech's hardest engineering problems. The conversation covers layoffs, company transformation, patent cliffs, biotech's feast-and-famine cycles, modified mRNA, and the effort required to scale production from tiny academic batches to grams and kilograms.

Start with Part 1

Leadership & TeamsClinical DevelopmentResearch & Translation

Explore every biotech conversation

“We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)

Search the archive

He Chose Santa Barbara Over Icebergs | Steve Visco Rerelease (1/3)

“We're Going to Burn Your Company to the Ground” | Steve Visco Rerelease (2/3)

The Hard Part Starts After the Demo | Scott Chetham (1/4)

Knowledge Is Now a Commodity | Scott Chetham (2/4)

The Clinical Trial Bottleneck Is Not Discovery | Scott Chetham (3/4)

If It's Getting More Complex, You're Going the Wrong Way | Scott Chetham (4/4)

Winning President's Club with Zero Sales Experience | Leslie Loveless (2/4)

The Employee Number Five Leap That Built a Relationship Business | Leslie Loveless (3/4)

Letting Go Is a Leadership Skill | Leslie Loveless (4/4)

How a Guitarist Became a Drug Delivery Pioneer | Örn Almarsson (1/4)

Leaving Merck to Build a Biotech From Scratch | Örn Almarsson (2/4)

The Delivery Problem Behind Moderna's Breakthrough | Örn Almarsson (3/4)

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