Why Non-Traditional Leadership Gives Biotechs an Edge | Aaron Edwards (Part 3/4)

Intro- 00:00:06: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup, from pre-seed to IPO, with your host, Jon Chee. In our last episode, Aaron Edwards talked about the different paths into biotech leadership, the value of real-world exposure to big companies, and how staying curious and humble can open unexpected doors. If you missed it, check out Part Two. In part three, Aaron dives into the leadership lessons he learned as a founder, including how therapy helped him become a more reflective and adaptable CEO, and why creating a safe space for debate is essential in any growing company. He shares how KiraGen is institutionalizing knowledge through tools like Notion and ELNs, why documenting decisions is a competitive advantage, and how building lean and thinking differently can help biotech startups scale smarter.

Aaron - 00:01:19: So Ryan and I started from the bottom of the associate ladder. We then diverted and went back to school. I started a company. I mean, I had some exposure to large companies, which is really great. But you can be a founder and lead a company. There are many ways to do it. Again, knowing what you know and don't know and surrounding yourself with people that know the rest or can do the rest. I think it's just a really important thing about these models being creative, being different. Exposure is so critically important. And to know one way is not the only way. I think that's probably the theme of this podcast is that there is not one way to do things. 

Jon - 00:01:54: So you talked about the inverse, right? You talked about going to large organizations to get this purview of the landscape. So we also talk about going the other way, with founding a company and just starting. And so that was my journey. And I actually think it was advantageous that I didn't get the kind of more traditional track exposure because I didn't have any baggage. Like for me, in my industry of leasing, it's pretty much banking. If I went to a bank and got trained at a bank, I probably would have thought like a bank.  

Aaron - 00:02:31: And you wouldn't have started a company because you're a small company. It's what you're doing.  

Jon - 00:02:35: Yeah, like what? You know, I'm just Scrooge McDuck-ing at a giant bank, right? But what I ended up doing was, it's kind of like what Jensen Huang of like NVIDIA says, like just not knowing. And it's kind of like a superpower sometimes not knowing, right? Because like sometimes you can get overexposed where you're like, you know, the infinite amount of ways things can go wrong.  

Aaron - 00:02:58: Yeah.  

Jon - 00:02:59: And then that frames how you tackle the problem. Sometimes a bit of naivete goes a long way because for me, I was a bench scientist. So I was just like, all right, what do me and my colleagues ultimately want? And then solve from there versus like, if I went the traditional route of like banking, it would have been a thing where it's just like, well, this is how it's always been done for like a millennia. Like, you know, banking is one of, and banking and insurance are like the oldest industries known to humans. Like it's this thing where sometimes it's just like, you can, you can go, you can attack it from first principles, I guess what I'm trying to get at by not having too much baggage. Cause like, you know, and that's the thing of like, you can also overdo it in the other way. Right.  

Aaron - 00:03:48: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it's going back to this being creative, right? If you think, you know, all of these structures and you've learned from the best and all these other companies in the past, you're not open to doing things differently. I think I've tried to always look outside the box because I wasn't always making the decisions at the other companies. So I could sort of say, what would I do now? I was always, what would I do if I could make decisions? You have to think differently, not only about where you get funding from, obviously in these environments, but how you grow companies when, you know, I mean, Excedr has been an important part of KiraGen getting data generation, but now we're in these shared lab spaces and, you know, we don't have a hundred million dollars to go rent out our own floor of a building and grow to a certain stage. So I, all of us actually, when people joined, not just Ryan, but when people have come from places we've both worked at in the past, we've had to be upfront. There's all, there are always challenges to startup companies having maybe less access to resources. But even if we do well, it's not going to look like companies of the past five years. It just isn't because the market's different. And that's not a bad thing, but just really trying to instill communication broadly. Like, right. We're not trying to keep all this information and learning to ourselves and saying. If we got $100 million today, which we wouldn't, we still would do things differently because it's just not the way that we should be scaling because things, it's not five years ago. So having to make sure you're, even as a startup being nimble, that you're trying to think about things differently, but continue to ask those questions because we will get to a stage where we are larger. And maybe we think that we're doing the right thing, but we need everyone to challenge those assumptions in the path we're on to make sure we are, again, doing our retrospective analysis and being self-aware to see if we need to change as we grow. As, again, in five years from now, maybe company formation or growth needs to still look different.  

Jon - 00:05:53: Yeah, it's kind of, it's like the exercise of just like asking why.  

Aaron - 00:05:56: Yes.  

Jon - 00:05:56: You have to ask why maybe like three times till you get to like the fundamental, like first principle. It's like, why, like, why are we doing it that way? Why that? Why that? And then you get to the very bottom, right? Ah, I now understand why. And then you're like, okay, you, you then make a decision as a leader. It's like, do we stay the course or do we do it differently? But I think what ends up happening is if you just stop doing that.  

Aaron - 00:06:21: Yeah. Oh yeah.  

Jon - 00:06:22: Your direction, just, you just go on a path that you might not want to be going down. And it's like, I think as a leader, it's important that you're always pulling back the layers of the onion and just asking why, why, why? And then see what happens. You make a judgment call there. You're like, uh, this works. Like we should, we should continue doing this or maybe, uh, like crap. Like maybe we should do it differently.  

Aaron - 00:06:41: You know, it can, it can be hard. I can see from people I worked with in the past and this is, I am not speaking to their experience. Now being in their shoes, what's been so important for me and thinking back to your comment on how work and personal life just can't be perfectly separated. It's not going to be, uh, something that played an important role for me is therapy before school still to this day, because that has now allowed me to feel very comfortable asking why, not about just my personal life, but shifting those same concepts to the company. And if someone comes up to me and hopefully I've created the safe space for someone to say, hey, Aaron, I really don't think this is the right decision. I can learn from that and continue to learn and not think that I'm hot shit and dig my heels in. It's really easy and it's not a fault of anyone's, but the first thing that I tell everybody when they ask, how did you start this company? I said, go to therapy. It doesn't have to be professional like mine. You know, hopefully someone that's trained to help you work through things. But the consequential decisions that you have to make all the time daily and be prepared will one for all the... VCs to tell you 99 out of 100 to say no, but to also take that feedback. Even if things are going really well, it becomes really easy, not just in biotech. You see celebrities, like once they surround themselves with a team of yes people, it's really bad.  

Jon - 00:08:09: Really bad.  

Aaron - 00:08:10: Yeah. It's really bad. And it's bad for companies. It's bad for celebrities and musicians, I think. But, to have some way to have addressed your ability to be humble and change. And I think it's the best leadership quality for not just startups, for large companies. It's seeing leaders that are like, hey, we made some really good calls and we made a mistake here. It's overcoming that mistake that people respect. And I think about that a lot and how we can scale. But again, if you are not certain in your personal life and yourself, it's really hard to be sure about your decisions in the professional world.  

Jon - 00:08:49: Absolutely. And I think it's always a red flag if someone can't own up to a mistake. It's just like, it's human nature to make mistakes. Like, no one's perfect. And if you can't grapple with that, it's just like, ooh. And I think, but it's also liberating, right? It's just like, it's all good. Let's course correct. Like, it's all freaking good. And I think, too, the, keep bringing it back to sports, but just like, we all want to win, but I don't care if it's my way or your way. We're all on the same team. We'd want to win. And it's not being too precious about it. And I think it gets back to like, you know, over time, I used to want it to be my way. But then I'm really, it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't have to be my way. Like, if there is someone else on the team who has a better way of doing it, let it rock. That's totally cool. And as long as we are all going in the direction that we want to be going, is it moving the needle? Is it actually like whatever your mission, your company's mission, is it moving the needle? I think Bezos said it too, is it's like, I disagree with the approach, but I'm committing. And that's, you can do that. You can disagree and commit to a course. And there's plenty of times you're like, well, looks like I was wrong. Like, I should have agreed with you. But it's, and there's an element, and you talk about therapy, there's an element of just like, kind of like, ego can drive you in good ways. But it can also drive you in bad ways.  

Aaron - 00:10:21: These are what I used to think were foundational principles of good science. Like, you go to a lab meeting, someone puts up a graph, and you're like, oh, I don't know if I believe that. It's because of safe space. Like, you know the people intimately, and you've talked about that. That debate should be happening at a grander scale in a healthy way. And it's like, when you're presenting that Western blot, and someone's like, I don't believe that band. They're trying to help you, right? And it's the best thing as a leader or whatever it might be to say, one, be proud that you've set up a space where people can have healthy debate. Make a decision, know that they were trying to help you, and then you move on. And I think as we scale, thinking about as companies change, this concept of self-awareness, reflecting self-awareness and just taking time to pause and change possibly. I've seen a couple of phases throughout my career of these big inflection points. I'd say it's for Tech. So I'm going to take this in a Tech direction of thinking about how you can pause, reflect, and maybe change how you're doing things. And as a leader or a manager, maybe what you've done and worked really well isn't what needs to be done in the future. And a great example of this are lab notebooks. I've seen a couple examples of it can be hard, but change that has to happen. So at Bluebird, I was in an early research group that was small enough and didn't have some of the regulatory implications where we were the first to have electronic notebooks. And that was like dogma shifting. We could take things in the lab and then go do things in the ELN, and we weren't gluing graphs into an ELN or into a lab notebook. And that took a long time to shift. There were reasons for that, right? But that was one moment of, like, we need to think about tools. And this is a great example. When we start a company or do things in the future, we got to start Tech first. Maybe it wasn't AI at the time, but now it's Tech first when possible. Tools. What tools can we use so we don't have to have lab notebook parties that have to be encouraged so people can glue in their graphs? It was wild to me how long it was taken.  

Jon - 00:12:37: Like, it's like my parents, just like, they don't understand how analog and Byzantine some of the things that we do in the lab. Like, exactly what you're saying. It's like, are we really still just using sheets of paper and then just like put them away in a desk and then it lives there? It's like, it's massive.  

Aaron - 00:12:54: Now, let me put this note in. There's a reason. This goes back to the conversation we had around pharma and biotech. It's like, I don't know. It takes a long time for things to change as an organization. And if you are in a regulatory quality control group. New stuff is not always exciting and not always helpful because that does not help you submit something when there's regulatory precedent. I have to appeal to all these audiences out here.  

Jon - 00:13:18: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 Aaron - 00:13:18: But why startups can be nimble. I had these thoughts around tools, how you can integrate something early stage as much as possible, that now the AI time is here. We can say, oh, we're starting processes from scratch now. How do we think about, okay, of course, we're going to electronic lab notebook. But I didn't know, is it Benchling? Is it another group? My team evaluated all the options and we landed on one. That was a no-brainer. But I was like, I know it has to be ELN, but I don't know what it is. There are plenty of tools. And now something I wanted to bring up, I sent out your post on institutionalizing knowledge to my team. Because we're big Notion fans.  

Jon - 00:14:05: Yeah.  

Aaron - 00:14:05: I will call out Notion. I don't want to call it too many.  

Jon - 00:14:09: 

Yeah, it shuts up.  

Aaron - 00:14:09: Notion for sure. We do so much science. And it's going back to ELNs. But so much science happens. And whether or not you know it, there's information that can feel like it's gatekept. Or it's lost.  

Jon - 00:14:21: Yeah. Or it's just lost in the ether.  

Aaron - 00:14:25: So either, people can be politically using that access to that knowledge for good, whether or not they know they're using it for that or not. Or, yeah, someone goes on vacation and like, who do you call? Who do you talk to? And there's so much that was so cool. One of our team is just a great example of this. One of our team members did some screen optimizing a certain assay we've done. And Ryan and I have done that before. But it was really important, one, for them to do it at least this one time. But to say, team, this is a great example. Document this. They were trying to discount the value of presenting this to the team. And I said, no. This is an example right here where I know that flow panel optimization you just did took so much work. We have to find ways, and that's why I sent your post out, to institutionalize this knowledge. And it's not always just post your PowerPoint. That's not always helpful. It's finding so many ways of being creative of how do we make sure everybody across the board, as we scale departments maybe horizontally, how do people know and take advantage of the knowledge that some other team maybe have already optimized and know? And I'm not saying this is the only tool. Notion has been such a great use for this. And they continue, and other companies have been doing it. They just released even more tools this week on how businesses can do it even better. Like, I started a Teams call yesterday with somebody, and my Notion was like, do you want to transcribe this? And it's not a bot that shows up. It is so cool.  

Jon - 00:16:04: So rad.  

Aaron - 00:16:05: Again, I'm going back to the theme, the purpose of my ramble. If you are not able to think that things can be done differently, you're not open to that, right? But the team has been open. I've been open to change. I'm not always right. And I say, this would be cool to figure out. Try to show me the tools that are out there now, because there are so many ways to be lean without it being this negative connotation that not only come with efficiency, but institutionalizing knowledge, being able to use AI search. Has this antibody been tested before?  

Jon - 00:16:38: Yes.  

Aaron - 00:16:39: 

It's going to change the access to information that people have.  

Jon - 00:16:44: Massively, dude. First off, appreciate the Notion shout out because my buddy is the controller over there. Chris, this one's for you, dude. Like if you're tuning in, Chris, this one's for you. Cause I was, I was just getting dinner with them and you know-  

Aaron - 00:17:01: We'll get a coupon code soon.  

Jon - 00:17:03: Yeah, exactly. You'll send some seats his way, send some seats his way, send some seats. But this is such an important topic that I think every entrepreneur should think long and hard about because, you know, the, the kind of contraction that we've talked about and described made everyone think that, oh, we can't operate anymore. No, you just need to get more efficient and creative. Right. And the reason why I'm so passionate about document, is it like documenting knowledge is because like we got to stop recreating the wheel Like this problem has been solved by someone in this company. Why are we doing it again as if we haven't solved it? And you're just doing repetitive work. And like, so for me, it's a combination of Notion pre-LOOM. I used to do a lot of like documentation on just like Google Docs and just in written form and then screenshots and whatnot. But the massive unlock now is like, is Loom for me because it does the write-up at post-video. So like, and it's also when you're, it's easier sometimes to see if there's like multi-step things where you can have the screen being on record and showing like versus like, well, look at this button here, click here. And then, you know, this will give you this next panel. It was just like, record it. And then Loom will give you like basically the transcript. So I didn't even have to write it. It just follows along. And so for anything that like any problems that have been solved at the company, we just use Notion as like this exceeder kind of like mind hive kind of just like, it's like we call it the Library of Alexandria.  

Aaron - 00:18:52: Yeah, it's a knowledge repository for sure.  

Jon - 00:18:55: Knowledge repository. And the reason why this is so important is because now your time is money. Any new hire can get airdropped into the knowledge repository and get up to speed. And everyone that is like new doesn't have to recreate the wheel and figure out how to do these like basic building blocks of one's company.  

Aaron - 00:19:17: We saw that so much. Yeah. 

Jon - 00:19:19: It's massive. And then what that means is that as you're from a cost structure perspective for your business is that you're wasting less time. You have more money. You're working on the important problems, not the mundane and repetitive. And same with all these other like tools. It's like, you know, in software, my wife's in software industry. They're always talking about like 10x engineers, 10x engineers. And now that they have Cursor AI and like, you know, all that stuff. Now there's engineers who are like 100xing. Right? It's like, how do you get your 100x scientist? Right. Part of it is the tooling. Like software tooling is like one, like, you know, one aspect. But it's like, I know it can sound like boring and mundane to do like knowledge documentation. But it's like, it's not only a cost structure advantage. It is actually an advantage against your competition. Like for me, when you think of exactly what you said, your Tech first, right? And your Tech enabled for companies that didn't embrace it. You're already got a leg up. And it's massive.  

Aaron - 00:20:27: We see that from day one. We haven't done full integration of everything, right? But a great example. So we haven't done the Loom thing. I saw that and it's definitely on the list. But now that not just Notion, but Zoom and Teams have at least started to do transcriptions. But what do you do with that? There's strong integrations now and probably what Notion is building in. But now that you have transcriptions of at least the meeting, you can have decision points. And part of if you're open in the meeting, right? It starts with communication. If you've created a work environment, again, going back to that where people are speaking, I have problems. This is how we solve them. That can now get documented just by bringing it up in a meeting. And so if you document it, now you say, oh, well, if someone goes to search, and now that search is much more efficient than it used to be, you can actually interrogate and say, has someone come across this before? And it can come up. Like, that's the institutionalization already happening. How can this actually be done? Maybe a use case for people listening. We knew how to do things in our past. We didn't apply them directly to what we're doing now, but at least knew we didn't have to start from scratch with a lot of things, a lot of processes, a lot of knowledge. And to date, the company building full-time is about a year old now. And we've gotten from an idea. When we were just funded, it was an idea. 2048 funded us as an idea. We did not spin out of any academic institution. And with a year and a little over a million dollars, we've built a team of six. We've taken a lead program to in vivo studies, and we have eyes on the clinic, and we have foundations for a platform. But all of that is building upon the knowledge of people in the past, but not starting from scratch. Right? Like, you can at least say, trust me on this, maybe collect some data pieces. But with the Tech that is so complicated today, you know, gene-edited CAR T-cells are a layer upon layer upon layer of separate technologies that have come together to make this happen. You cannot start from scratch optimizing the gene-editing components in the cells. Like, you really have to start from somewhere. I think that's been really important for us to say, this is an example of it. We've been capitally efficient because we did not reinvent the wheel. We're not trying to... When people ask us, have we moved on to in vivo, what it might be in the field, it's great. Not for us. The stuff we're doing now was ready. And part of our message was that we were not reinventing the wheel, and it was a matter of execution. And so being able to build these tools in, we can execute, learn, and then build in things in the future when we're, like, ready to make those big pivots.  

Jon - 00:23:15: Absolutely. And you're talking about like building on, it's basically standing on the shoulders of giants. Right. And my wife used to work at PLOS One for a long time. And this was like pre open access, like open access was just becoming a thing. And PLOS was like at the tip of the spear on this. And it's kind of that thing, right? It's like. You kind of have to like democratize this information. By democratizing the information, you then enable the ability to stand on the shoulders of giants. But if you just keep it siloed and you kind of hoard the information, you then lose that ability. It's kind of like, why are we taking a couple steps back to go like one step forward?  

Aaron - 00:23:56: I can, you know, maybe to take in another non-strategic direction. Some of the motivations for me doing what I do today has a lot to do with wanting to democratize access. So not just information to a lot of things. As a non-PhD scientist, I felt excluded. Some of it was internalized, don't get me wrong. But I felt excluded from some meetings I wanted to be in to make decisions. I couldn't go to this conference. Or if I went to the conference, I was an associate that had no purpose. Like I didn't get to talk to the stars, you know. And so there was, in science, it's the degree hierarchy. You used to have to go to that conference to see the data. Like to be ahead, you had to have these competitive intelligence teams that went to see all the data. And this is a great story for today in Podcasts. I found that bio was moving to Twitter. Now X. I'll call it Twitter forever. But I was starting to see people talk about science or post slides from the conferences where I knew people at the conference that didn't see the slide. And I would say, I would say, did you just see? Like that was an obsession for me where I realized my vision was beyond the lab for what I was really excited by. And so a hobby of mine, I was obsessed with what are people talking about on Twitter about bio? And you can start seeing dialogue. It was this not institutionalization of knowledge, but those meetings that I wanted to be in and learn from were now on Twitter a little bit. And then on Podcasts, why I'm here today, why you saw and still see biotech leaders going on Podcasts and you get in their head. So now you don't have to be at that conference. It might be great, right? But for people trying to learn, where do you learn what you know today? I tell them Podcasts, go on Twitter, like see what other people are talking about. And because there are people trying to democratize it, this is institutionalized learnings and knowledge. And now there are groups on the startup community side, like Nucleate, that are democratizing access to how you start a company and how to translate academic work into something that can be commercialized. And so, you know, there's no excuse for it now that we have the internet and all these different modes. But the days of being even able to gatekeep information is no longer and is an advantage to go and explore and see what other people are doing and see what you can learn on, learn from and then build upon.  

Jon - 00:26:27: Spot on. And it's interesting because living in San Francisco, I just have seen how life science and health care is kind of like going through what like software went like a decade ago, pretty much. Like the Y Combinator was how it democratized like startup creation, particularly around software companies. And then now we are starting like Nucleate in a similar vein is like democratizing that information. And that's why I always like say I'm like, God damn, I wish Nucleate was around when I was around because like I probably would have not had to recreate the wheel. Like I just brute forced it pretty much. But exactly what you said about like the ability to access learnings outside of these like. Ivory towers or perhaps these exclusive conferences, where like, people are like velvet roping you in or not. Right. Like who are you, who do you know? It's now this access to information, enables people to connect the dots, and attack problems in different ways. And like it's hard to put two things back into the bottle, it's like, there's already momentum to share this information widely. And I don't think it's going to stop, and for anyone out there it's like, you'd be surprised how much information is out on the Internet, like.  

Aaron - 00:27:41: A great example for people listening to the, people ask, what lawyer did you use? Or what what X resource did you use? There are, not only a great repository pillar VC, has a great sort of startup guide for a lot of different things from IP, it's not just pillar, there's from RA Capital has a great knowledge website repository. There are guidebooks now, at least giving you some perspective. Again, once again, it's not the only way to do things, but that was important Nucleate started, right before it really took off. Ryan and I both were involved here in Boston, before we actually participated in Nucleate actually as a company, and it was because it was scratching this itch, you know, I went back to school because, this program was, addressing a strong need, by scientists that wanted to do something outside the bench. That's just like a, long-standing theme of, not everyone has to continue doing science, and it doesn't have to be doing like leading the science. That was one way to get people over to the business side, bridge that gap. The other way Nucleate, was a great way to say, should my PhD program be turned into a company? And if so, how can you do it? How can you practice that? And from the days of my Master's, where, the conversations around that that interface between, academia and industry were not there. So you had no idea, you know, like they were structurally preventing you from having that conversation about what you do, when you say grow up slash graduate. Now, there are ways to, either test the waters with this company, and acts like just trying it out. And now, as a company leader, we think a lot about, and have these conversations of, everyone has imposter syndrome, like it's just like, by and large everyone has their own version of it. But asking yourself again, what you bring to the table? And it's it's important here of, in the past when things have been gatekept, and not democratized. You hire a CEO or leadership or install leaders, that have a not only a specific skill set, but have access to networks. Like that is part of why, people typically see some startups coming in with installed leaders. Today, we have many examples where now because of this democratization to not only access, but knowledge and people, we can succeed and very much excel. By these networks. So reaching out, I've had scientific meetings happen because I direct message people on Twitter. It just said, Hey, like we, I saw you post, let's chat about science. And that fills in the gaps again. Well, I didn't know how I would sort of compensate in my own way that access to information is important and it can be to your advantage now to think, how do you take advantage of these platforms and, and knowledge repositories again, to take yourself into the future? Cause you have to, that is like not only an expectation, but how you excel and stay ahead. 

Jon - 00:30:47: Absolutely. And I think like, it's kind of like that cold email to get into that lot, but it's now like, you know, fast forward many years. It's like, again, most people's DMs are open. Like again, be tasteful, be tasteful, be helpful, but you know, right. Don't be a pest, but you'd be surprised. We'll get back to you. Um, and I think too, is like, I'm now getting out of science for a moment, but it's like social media has its ills, but also has a bunch of awesome things to it too. Is that like artistry, like creators can create a platform and a presence that was never, like it used to be where you had to come from these like traditional outlets, uh, the traditional, like guard of like, like institutional knowledge and know-how. But now you can see musicians just basically bootstrap themselves into relevancy and also continue to like build that network, get their music out and create kind of a, an ecosystem that's thriving. When before it was kind of like a major record label that was like either like King making you or not. Right?   

Aaron - 00:31:59: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think there's a, again, staying away from that, maybe the science, but a little bit of a political nature here, there's a large shift away from X to go, I don't know, saying all these companies out loud on here, but going to Bluesky. And so all the scientists were like, I don't really like what the platform's going. And so let's find a space where we can share freely and more openly or, or feel like it's in our feed more and more power to that. And there's some advantages there. I do think there's a theme, especially today where, these platforms that have more general audiences, it's important. Actually, it's a responsibility for people like me to keep engaging. So I never want to judge people that aren't prepared and want to stay on these types of platforms that can be a bit challenging at times, but what we don't want to do is create silos again. And so by going into your own bubble, you're talking to people that want to hear what you say, and that's great. But I really enjoy taking some time because I think it's really valuable to sometimes engage with people, maybe they don't have a traditional background that really want to have a nice conversation. As long as it's original and respectful, I will generally engage with anybody on Twitter. And I think that's really important because you need to counterbalance where people are getting their information. You know, I know misinformation is a sort of really hot politicized word, but people will get their information from somewhere. It's moving away from Google. It's now on TikTok and Twitter and algorithms are already spitting out a lot at you. So as leaders in whatever field it might be, you should be speaking. And I'm fortunate that as a small company, we don't have some sort of publicly facing role and some considerations there. And I think it is more important to be bold, to follow in footsteps. Actually, I'm not the first one to do this. You know, Jake Becraft from Strand was one of them that I saw on Twitter that was, he's same in person. And I try to be similar of be yourself, be authentic and be honest. You can do it truthfully, and if you aren't comfortable with that dialogue, use ChatGPT. Like I kid you not, just practice with that. And there can be a lot of benefit from that. But I also, to tie it away from the politics again, I'm getting connected with people I never thought possible. Yup. As a company that works on CAR T-cells now for solid tumors, but really doing something a little bit different than others. I've had people reach out that were CAR T patients on the blood cancer side that said, Hey, like you're working on this. This is really cool. And it's bringing me one satisfaction that I can get seen for doing something and what we're building, but actually provide me an opportunity to connect that with our team and say, Hey, people are seeing what we're doing. And this is why we're doing it. This, these people are starting to hear about our work and they aren't going to benefit from it, but like they've been beneficiaries of the first generation that's helped blood cancers now. Like that's so cool.  

Jon - 00:35:14: It is actually incredible. And I think even this podcast, I was like reluctant to start it, to be quite honest, because I frankly thought the broader scientific community and just the Internet writ large was going to reject me, like, like as a person, like I'm not the most buttoned up individual. Like, and so I was like, and you know, science can be very buttoned up, like very buttoned up. So I was just like, oh, man, like I'm, you know, maybe it's a fear of rejection. I do have that imposter syndrome that you mentioned. Like, I think everyone has it, but I certainly still do. And something that I realized after doing this for a while is that. Like, just being your authentic self is actually what opens up a ton of doors. Like you're not going to make everyone happy. Don't get me wrong. That's impossible. Like pre-internet, post-internet, it doesn't matter. You're not going to make everyone happy. But I think what the Internet does is you can be in a niche, but that niche is not really a niche anymore because, the Internet connects everyone globally. So your niche is now comprised of like many niches all over the place. And the community is probably pretty large. Like, and via being authentic on the Internet and communities, like digital communities, I've met people that I never, exactly what you're experiencing is like, I've met and connected with people I never thought I would ever connect with ever. And they don't have to agree with me. Like, you know, that's, you know, something I'll say about like, to bring it to like entrepreneurship is exactly, you don't want too many yes men in the studio, like telling you your music's fire when it really isn't. But it is also really important to when you think about team composition of having different viewpoints, so freaking important. My co-founder is like the polar opposite of me. Like, but I was his best man and he was my best man. And we work well together. But we are opposite, like proper opposite. And that's cool.  

Aaron - 00:37:24: Yeah.  

Jon - 00:37:25: That's, that's super cool. Like, I, you know, like, and I think you engaging with disparate opposing viewpoints is healthy and great. And it's how you move it along, right? Because it's like, to get back to like the unpacking of why. Someone else is going to be willing to ask you the why. Why do you think that way? Why, why, why, why, why? And perhaps that you both come to a point, you're like, oh, maybe I will change my viewpoint. I'll check my priors, right? That's important. And that's how you move the needle in organizations versus just being like, everyone's a yes. Everything is a yes. We're just going this direction to go this direction due to incident, like inertia or whatever it may be.  

Outro - 00:38:07: Thanks for listening to part three of our conversation with Aaron Edwards. In the final episode of this series, Aaron shares KiraGen's origin story, from a pitch deck at HBS to launching a company tackling one of biotech's toughest challenges, solid tumors in the brain. He talks about how KiraGen found a product market fit with its lead program in glioblastoma, how focus and discipline create real strategic optionality, and why creative partnerships are critical for capital efficient company building. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow the show, leave us a review and share it with a friend. See you next time. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your Podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.