Letting Go to Level Up: Oxford, Identity, & Tenacity in Biotech | Bogdan Knezevic (Part 2/4)

Jon - 00:00:00: This episode is brought to you by Excedr. Excedr provides life-science startups with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to accelerate R&D and commercialization. Lease the equipment you need with Excedr. Extend your runway, hit your milestones, raise your next round at a favorable valuation and achieve a blockbuster exit while minimizing dilution. Know anyone who needs lab equipment? If so, join our referral program. Give your friends $1,000 and in return earn $1,000 for each qualified referral. Start earning cash today by going to excedr.com and click the yellow button in the bottom right to get your unique referral link. Additionally, as a podcast listener, you can redeem exclusive discounts with a growing list of biotech vendors and get $500 off your first equipment lease by using promo code TBSP on exceder.com/partners.  

Intro- 00:00:55: 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, Bogdan Knezevic shared stories about his childhood in Serbia and Canada, how his parents' immigrant journey shaped his work ethic, and how competitive swimming taught him the discipline to balance sport and school. If you missed it, be sure to check out part one. In part two, Bogdan reflects on his undergrad years at the University of Calgary, his early interest in neuroscience, and the decision to pursue a PhD at Oxford after winning a Rhodes Scholarship. He also talks about walking away from elite athletics, adapting to Oxford's academic culture, and how that experience pushed him to rethink his path. 

Bogdan - 00:02:00: Yeah, I think it was exactly that. And I think for me, I also was interested in medical school because it was like a lot of applied science knowledge. And my uncle, he's a doctor now, but had been going through that. And so I always try and make sure that there's no revisionism happening when I'm truly putting myself in the position. Like, what was my thinking then? And not like, what's the story? I've not told myself. I think basically my thinking was... There's a lot of cool science going on. Medical school sounds really interesting. It sounds like a profession that I can picture myself doing. I might want to do like other kind of science on the side. And I saw my uncle doing an MD-PhD. And so I thought, okay, those seem like viable routes. I wasn't at the time at all like picky in like what order I do it. I think I thought like I'll do medical school first. But what happened was in my second last year of undergrad, I saw a poster somewhere of someone from the University of Calgary who had won a Rhodes Scholarship. And so I was like, oh, like, what is that? And so then I started Googling what that is and found out that it's like, you know, the world's oldest scholarship, like the most, you know, in the classical sense, prestigious scholarship. And that it was geared towards people who from whatever sector they're from want to like somehow lead or innovate or pioneer or like advocate for their field and like push it. So it was a combination of it was like not the place you'd go if you want to go really deep on like one niche field. It was like whatever field plus leadership and engagement and all that. And that to me was super resonant. And funnily enough, this is where if I'm being fully honest with myself, like a huge portion of the reason that I was even interested in, in that or that like set me off on that rabbit hole was me having this like obsession with wanting to like at some point do something at Oxford because like a lot of the authors I liked had gone there. 

Jon - 00:04:10: Yeah, yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:04:12: And I was like, oh, it'd be really cool to just like study at Oxford for the sole reason of like there were other really cool people that had studied there. Like how many universities in the world are like several hundred years old?  

Jon - 00:04:25: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:04:26: So in my head, I was like, okay, cool. Like that concept I would love to do. And there's a scholarship that had these like values that I aligned with. And that could be a really great vehicle to do that because, otherwise it'd be very hard to picture how are you, you know, without going into a lot of like student debt and loans. How do you like pay for schooling for that long as like a foreign national? But in my head, it was like, okay, Rhodes seems to be a good route that's like aligned with the kind of stuff I care about personally. But there I had started looking at like other funding mechanisms by which to do that. And so when I ended up getting the Rhodes Scholarship, what it gives you is like up to three years fully funded of any degree that the university offers, which is like a really cool concept. And so to me, I'm like, okay, that's kind of the decision of like doing that. You couldn't do it towards med, put it towards med school. That was like a stipulation because med school in the UK, like in a lot of other countries in the world, it's something you start from undergrad. It's like a six year program and it starts at undergrad. And so basically the Rhodes Trust said, like, you can't do that because even if we fund three years, you'd still have like three more years. And that's like a different medical system. So take anything but medical school. So that was the deciding factor of like, okay, I'm going to do my grad school portion first because it would be silly to forego this opportunity. 

Jon - 00:05:52: Interesting. Like, I love how sometimes, you know, exactly like the kind of revisionist kind of thing. You're like, yeah, you kind of have this story that you can kind of like plot out. But you're like, no, the decision was actually just like quite simple. I wanted to be at a cool place to have cool people. And that sometimes is it. 

Bogdan - 00:06:09: And the seed for that was like my uncle when I was nine years old taking me to like this janky theater near us in the strip mall to see the first Lord of the Rings that he wanted to see because he had read the books. And we're only like 12 years apart. So we're like halfway. He's halfway in age between me and my mom. So it's more like an older brother. So him like bringing me to show me the first Lord of the Rings and me being like awestruck. 

Jon - 00:06:32: Yeah, this is sick. 

Bogdan - 00:06:33: That was the actual reason why. I think I ended up where I am.

Jon - 00:06:38: I mean, like that's the craziest part. It's like it sometimes is as simple as that. Like sometimes it really is as simple as that. And also Oxford is not a half bad place to be. I think it's pretty decent. And so now, okay, you're heading to Oxford. What was that experience like, you know, moving from Canada to the UK? How was that for you? Just like personally, professionally. What was it like? 

Bogdan - 00:07:01: Yeah, the move to the UK, there's things I can comment on and I will. I think it's like a tapestry of different things. There was like, what was the experience of Oxford? There's what was the experience of the communities I was a part of? And there was what was the experience of like being a grad student in general, not just tied to the location. And then also what was the UK experience? I think each of those is like worth touching on because they're all slightly different. I think Oxford itself, it's like probably the easiest place to start because I've thought a lot about how to describe it. And to me, it's very much like a pretty magical feeling place that's like frozen in time. It's like being frozen in time. 

Jon - 00:07:45: Interesting. 

Bogdan - 00:07:46: Which means that it can also be very isolating and it can also feel very disconnected from reality. So everything, I don't think anything comes with just pros. It's always pros and cons. But, it was this place where, you know, the buildings are hundreds and hundreds of years old. So you're literally like cycling through the same streets that all of these people that I had like worshipped growing up. 

Jon - 00:08:09: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:08:10: Cycled through. You're walking through the same halls. Like you're eating at the same tables. The quality of food probably has not improved in all those years. But there's something like really special about that. And yeah, like I said, magical. And even just the kind of conversations you pick up around you and like you'd go to a pub. And one of the kind of early things I realized is like pub cultures in the UK or at least in Oxford is like very different than bar culture in North America. Where bar culture in North America, I always associated with like you go to get like drunk and like dance, like flirt with people. Like that's the aim, whereas like pub culture at Oxford was very much like a social like third space where you go to like have conversation. And like, you're not getting, yeah, of course there's people who get drunk, but the goal isn't like go and get like plastered or whatever. It's like have like meaningful social interaction. And so like I had all these memories of just going, even if it's like I'm just going to grab like a drink after a long day just like by myself and just hearing what people around me are talking about and like debating like the most interesting things and like physics and like world politics and like a lot of like social rights movements that started around then. And like I think Trump first getting elected around then, which obviously had a lot of people thinking like there's a lot of change happening in the world. Like why is it happening? And like a lot of very interesting AI blowing up as a space around. 

Jon - 00:09:42: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Bogdan - 00:09:42: Super fascinating place to be. At the same time, I had this strong feeling that you could blink and like 10 years would go by and you wouldn't realize it because you'd be in this like fantasy world. And it could be so like, the ivory tower and it could be so decoupled from the outside world. And it's a very transient place. A lot of people coming in for school and then leaving, which meant that it's not easy to form roots and long lasting bonds in the same way. 

Jon - 00:10:16: I guess a quick question on that. So in Berkeley, it's kind of the opposite. Like people go to Berkeley. The reason why I was even in Berkeley was my dad ended up doing grad school at Berkeley and then setting up roots in Berkeley, just never leaving. And so I've never been to Oxford and the kind of surrounding area. Do people just not like people go in out, don't really like just like the MO? 

Bogdan - 00:10:42: Yeah, that's generally the MO. Yeah. So Cambridge is much more distillation of just the school and then like not much else in that central area. Hopefully I'm not. I'm sure I'm pissing some people off. Oxford-  

Jon - 00:10:58: Generalizing here. 

Bogdan - 00:10:59: Oxford is much more like you have the concept of like, town and gown, where gown is like the scholars and town is town. So you do have like this. It's like a bigger hub because it was also at the intersection of like two big north, south and east, west train lines historically. And so you do have that. But still the pattern, I think because the emphasis, a lot of it's like academia and academia, often for like academia's sake. It means that like only really the people who definitely want to be academics are the ones like staying there. And if you wanted to do anything, even it's like, you tangential to that, well, then you're probably going to London or leaving and going abroad. And I think also with the grad community, I don't know, I'm curious what it's like if you looked at undergrad. I still think it's pretty transient. But the grad community is really interesting there because it is very multicultural and you get people from, I think there's impressions people have at Oxford and there's a lot of the negative impressions probably are driven by what is actually like the undergrad thing, which ends up again being a lot of like historically like privileged and wealthy families that can get there. But the grad component, like all my friends were like South Africans, Zimbabwe and New Zealand or Canadian, like a bunch of different places all over the place, which then means that like a lot of people want to go back when they finish. And so I think that makes it a hard place to be in for a really long time, unless you're someone who really could be like in the clouds thinking about problems and like theoretically or like academically. So that's Oxford as Oxford. I think the UK, I mean, I touched on some of this with my like pub comment, but the UK, not great food. Not great food. 

Jon - 00:12:58: Well, I guess for comparison, you're in New York right now. So you're like in the mecca of good food. You're like, dude, you're spoiled, man.  

Bogdan - 00:13:05: I'm spoiled. And Toronto was like pretty good for multicultural food as well, where I obviously came from. But yeah, I think the UK is interesting because like British people have a certain like, I don't like the way that they, I don't know if it's like play with language. It just gives a very interesting different sense of humor and stands towards like, don't feel bad about myself. It's interesting. I think the biggest thing I have to unlearn actually from there is how to write more precise emails. 

Jon - 00:13:37: Really? 

Bogdan - 00:13:38: Yeah, because like when I was emailing and communicating there, you use a lot of words. And you have to like, as a reader, kind of like look for the real meaning there. Interesting. And so people won't say, again, generalizing here, but people won't say like, that's a bad idea. They'll say like, that is an interesting idea. We might want to consider doing blah, blah, blah, which actually, that's like a random example. But that might actually translate to like, that's stupid. Do this other thing. 

Jon - 00:14:08: You have to read between the lines. 

Bogdan - 00:14:10: Yeah. And so I didn't realize that I had like picked that up until I had moved back. And then I think someone directly told me like, can you just like tell me what you like or don't like? Like, just be more direct. And I realized, oh, I lost some of that directness in how I communicate. And I'm still working on it to this day, like how to get more precise.  

Jon - 00:14:31: That's super interesting. And I have family and buddies of mine who run businesses in Tokyo or in Japan. They have a Osaka office and a Tokyo office and headquarters is in Tokyo. And Tokyo, Japanese, like communication style is very can be very similar to that kind of like indirect read between the lines. And Osaka is a little bit better because they can be more direct and it's not like a faux pas. So even just even regionally in Japan, I saw it and it's kind of experienced it. And in order to kind of standardize it across the company, they made English the operating language. And part of it is like structurally Japanese in that the same word can be interpreted in multiple ways. It happens in English, too, but less it's less frequent. And you can be more direct in English than you can be in Japanese, just structurally. And basically, and it kind of like eliminated that kind of like also the Tokyo versus Osaka, like what the hell are you saying to me? Like, I don't really know. And so there's like, okay, we're speaking English and we're just doing it. And it basically turned like operationally turned the company into like kind of a slower feedback cycle. The feedback cycles got way quicker once they not just I'm not saying that English is like a superior language. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying from a business perspective, they're like, okay, got it. I understand what you need. Like. We're going to go do this now. Versus before, they're like, what the heck? Like, I need to like, I need to read into this. Like, what the hell are you actually saying and want? Anyways, that's really fascinating. Okay, so I super interrupted you. So like the UK, you know, it seems like they're, you know, it's an interesting cause. I mean, you're talking about like the communication style and something you have to unlearn broadly about kind of not just Oxford, but the UK in general. Tell me more about the things of the personal, the professional being in the UK. 

Bogdan - 00:16:24: Yeah, I think I went through a reinvention or rediscovery of myself to, like you mentioned, after stopping sports, because I had made the decision at that point to stop swimming. I was actually thinking about whether to train for another year. So I had actually looked like the Olympic qualifying time in 2012 for the events I was doing, but didn't get to compete. You know, a variety of reasons there. I like to think of it as like, had I just been faster, I would have gone. 

Jon - 00:16:51: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:16:52: There were other changes that had happened that meant like in any other Olympics I would have gone. But yeah, like at the end of the day, like I do want to take ownership of like, had I been faster, I would have gone, even if I qualified, technically I qualified. So the thinking going into grad school, because I started grad school in the fall of 2015. So it was like, okay, do I want to train for the 2016 Olympics? And at that point, I looked into it and Oxford as a university wouldn't have had like a strong enough team. But I contacted a couple of people I knew at more senior levels from my time. Just I embraced both for Canada and for Serbia at like the World Championships and multiple times. And so I thankfully knew coaches that had worked in a lot of different contexts, including some that have been in the UK. And so I asked them like if there were good coaches like in that area. And they did point me to someone who I ended up contacting. But it was something like 15 or 20 miles outside of Oxford. And so for me to do two workouts a day would have been about, you know, 60 to 80 miles of commuting. And so I basically realized, okay, the decision is do I do this and basically do nothing other than swim in grad school? There wasn't really, I could have in theory not deferred, but just declined the Rhodes Scholarship, which to me would have been a mistake. And I stand by that. But then it was a decision of, okay, can I make both work? And I thought there's a chance it would mean not doing anything else. So not getting anything else out of this experience. And a large portion of the experience of being there is like the community of other people. And so I would have had to basically forego that. And there's always a chance that like just because of certain politics and things that are always unfortunately happen in sport that are not actually tied to the athletes. There was a chance that like I could have done great and qualified and then still not been selected. And so in my head, I just thought, you know what, I've gotten everything I can out of this sport. I knew myself. I knew how competitive I was with myself. And so I know I had built this up as like, oh, if I just achieve the Olympics, I'll be like happy. But then I started questioning like, is that true? Because like I've been to World Championships like two or three times and I still like my bar as the Olympics. And so I feel like I would have. Also, then after that felt like, okay, well, oh, I could probably if I just put in more work, I could probably final at the Olympics. So like now it's let's go for another four years and it just never would have stopped.  

Jon - 00:19:24: Never stops. Never stops.  

Bogdan - 00:19:25: And so I told myself, look, I am going to be no better off if I like achieve more. I will be leaving a lot on the table by not engaging more deeply with this experience that is like a once in a lifetime experience. And so I should just do that.  

Jon - 00:19:43: I felt the exact same way at Berkeley. I was like, you're in this like area for a finite amount of time. Don't squander this opportunity. And so I empathize. I like it's painful. It's painful, though.  

Bogdan - 00:19:58: It's painful. So that kind of like rediscovery of like who I am, like, how do I value myself? How do I value others? I found it simultaneously easy and difficult in the context I was in. I found it easy because I had decided to stop before I got to Oxford. And so there wasn't this like social circle people that thought of like me as Bogdan the swimmer. Yeah. So I was like, okay, there's there's not that much indirect pressure. I did find it hard because when this is an Oxford thing, but also I think a Rhodes thing, which is like you're around so many people that are not only impressive as individuals. But part of the reason why they are there is because they can polish and present in pretty incredible ways. So now you have, like, people who are objectively impressive and people who can make themselves seem very impressive. 

Jon - 00:20:48: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:20:48: And so it's this constant, like, oh, crap, like, I'm hearing about this amazing person, like, all this stuff. And people who I was, like, just mind blown of, like, the amount of work that they had done, like, the activism that they had done and, like, risk going to jail in their countries for stuff. That they had believed in. While, like, finishing med school, I'm like, that is wild. Meanwhile, I'm, like, questioning, first of all, like, lost this huge piece of my life. And also in my first year was when I realized, like, oh, I don't want to be a researcher anymore. So I'm questioning, like, what am I doing here? Like, do I just leave or do I not? Like, all this energy that I have, like, what do I direct it towards? And so that portion, I think, was very difficult. And it was a very stark contrast to undergrad and swimming where for both of those things. So for undergrad, you obviously have, like, very specified exams that you're doing and curriculum. And so you have, like, a very easy metric of, like, am I doing well? For swimming, you are gunning for longer-term goals because the, like, Olympic cycle is every four years. There is this notion of, like, I need to break these down into, like, constituent pieces and, like, track progress. But still, you have, like, an objective thing, which is a time that you're, like, lowering. And to flip that and basically go into a research-based grad program at a university, it was notorious for like sink or swim. That was just like, do whatever you want to do yourself. That was like completely night and day and very hard to be able to know, like, was I doing well, my very first kind of brush with, I think what a lot of people do end up experiencing just when they go to the workforce, which is like all of these things of like knowing exactly if you're doing good or not are like gone when you're an adult. And like, you have to figure it out now. 

Jon - 00:22:38: Yeah. By the way, that was my exact same experience. There was like clear kind of like metrics that you can measure yourself by. But now, like, kind of similarly in like kind of a grad experience, like a lab experience, you're kind of like you feel like you're just like meandering and like uncertainty and like this jungle. I always think about it as you have like a machete in a jungle and you're just like, when is there going to be an end here? 

Bogdan - 00:23:07: Yeah. And you could be so close to it and not know or so far from it and like not know. I think that's a really good analogy. 

Jon - 00:23:14: It's like a meme almost. You know that, you know, that me, the person's like digging.  

Bogdan - 00:23:17: Yeah, like the digging one.  

Jon - 00:23:19: Yeah, yeah. The digging one, it's right there, but you just stop. 

Bogdan - 00:23:23: Yeah. Yeah. And I think like a couple other things that, again, if I went back, I don't think I would change anything, which to me is usually a good barometer of like, am I happy or not about the experiences? But I also at the time when I was picking what to do there, what program to do and decided to do a PhD and then decided like, hey, I kind of want to do it in a field that's like emerging and pick up some technical skills that I felt like I didn't have. And to me, where that led me to was the intersection of computation and biology, which, again, was manifesting through like genomics and like multiomics and ML. And so I did like a pretty hard, I get all the research I did in undergrad was like behavioral neural. So it was a pretty big 180 to basically go from that to like looking at my first line of code and like trying to apply like ML. And I remember like, and I get the norm in the UK often, or at least in Oxford is like this idea of like you go from undergrad to PhD is like people don't do it. So you do a master's and it's usually in the same, like you don't switch fields. And so like most people there had like master's in that field. And I'm here like, literally going into like Andrew Ng's courses to like learn ML or like... Learn how to how to like use MATLAB or like art and like understand the like packages and. So that I can like do the thing that I'm supposed to actively be doing. And and I, I mean through conversation with people you realize like, there was nothing unique or special about my case. Everyone is kind of feeling the same like, oh my god, what am I doing? And like trying to like, plug their, gaps how they can. So, the things I was, I felt lucky for is, because I realized early on, that I didn't want to be an academic, and that caused a lot of like existential angst. But thankfully again, in the UK the culture is like, like if you're doing research, so you're just doing research. There's not an expectation that you're like TA-ing, you only publish how much you want if that's like what you want to do, but if you're, if you're there to do a PhD and, like, you want to be in and out in three to four years, like you could be in and out in three to four years, which is like very different from North America where PhDs are like five, six, seven, eight years. So I am thankful for that because it helped me basically not have to like think about TA or publishing stuff that was not directly aligned with my research. And then when I realized like, I don't want to be an academic and therefore that freed me from like the pressure of like, I need a bunch of like first author publications. It also made me more okay with like when there was political things that came up and there was a paper I should have been first author on, but there was like a bunch of competing interests and stuff. And I was like, you know what? Fine. Like, that's fine. Put me a second. Like don't care because- 

Jon - 00:26:16: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:26:16: This is not what my life's gonna be. But yeah, that whole experience sometimes feels like, so acute and visceral, and sometimes it feels like an entire whirlwind where, I'm like what actually even happened those four years  

Jon - 00:26:27: Yeah. Yeah. I know that exact feeling, and I think a lot of a big part what, you know, life in general, is like, figuring out what you don't want to do, so you can get to what you want to do, eventually. It's kind of, I just think it was, like it's just one big trial and error. Like that's really what it is, it's just like you're in this jungle macheting away, like where I'm going here just doesn't feel good. And then you just start like hacking away somewhere else. And I know during your time in the UK and at Oxford, it sounds like you had some kind of like industry experience. Is that when you're like, okay, academia is not where I want to be. Maybe I should dip my tears into industry. 

Bogdan - 00:27:11: Yeah, yeah. So yes, exactly. That's right. So I realized that academia probably wasn't it. And I started also questioning, like, okay, well, med school, that plan to go do med school after probably doesn't make sense. Because like, do I want to be in school for four more years before starting to specialize? And I did at the time, like, start to like, mini panic a bit, like, what should I do? And so, again, lucky that my supervisor was pretty supportive of me, like taking basically sabbatical, taking a step back and saying, like, I want to go like work for a few months, and, and then also potentially change projects to something less wet lab and more computational. And he was supportive. So I did actually take a leave. And through just emailing people in the network, ended up working at like a seed stage biotech that was based out of, it was a Harvard, MIT spin out. It was like a Bob Langer Laboratory spin out, and got to put in touch with them and was like, hey, I would like love to work with y'all on anything except bench science. I'm willing to do whatever, but just not bench science. And it worked out because I ended up because they were gearing up for like, what's the thing that they can tell to raise a Series A and like actually scale. And so I worked directly with the CTO and CEO to do literally whatever it was. And like a lot of it, it wasn't glamorous, which was great to jump to the conclusion, I left that being like, okay, I really want to work in early stage companies. Like, I love this. And it's nice, because that was my conclusion, even though the work itself, a lot of it wasn't super glamorous. Like some of it was how media might portray it, or was like, oh, like PR positioning meetings, like marketing workshops. But a lot of it was like, pull data into a spreadsheet and like figure out like how to format it. So that when like you go and present to this pharma company, like they get it or be in that meeting and like clarify something or like find what conferences we should go do that makes sense. 

Jon - 00:29:09: Dude, thank you for saying that. Because like, I think media does great things. Media is like, you know, this is again, this is not to make people mad or just brush two broads of strokes. But like company building is not all glamorous. A lot of it is just like taking out the trash, doing the dishes, doing your laundry. But it's like the willingness to do it, right? It kind of reminds me of like what you're talking about with your upbringing and like the immigrant experience. It's like, we're not above it. Like, we're not above it, regardless of where you come from. We're gritty and we're going to get it done. You know, that willingness to do it at an early stage company can sometimes be the make or break. It's like not glamorous stuff. I think when you think you're above it, that's when you're cooked. Like, that's when a company is cooked. It's like if you think you're above whatever, like taking out the proverbial trash or doing the proverbial dishes or the laundry, whatever. 

Bogdan - 00:30:05: Sometimes literal. I remember the early days of my co-founders, it was like, there were definitely moments where just like my technical co-founders like needed to grind out stuff. And we were kind of co-living. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to just like make the meal or like do the dishes. Like literally, because it's like the better use of our collective time than like us being fair and like sharing this in some way. 

Jon - 00:30:25: I'm just going to go do it. I'm just going to go do it. Anyways, I appreciate that. Because like I think about it too, is it's like the littlest things matter. And no matter how like kind of inconsequential you might think it is, they add up and you kind of have to, you've got to get it done. 

Bogdan - 00:30:40: And I think this is like something that I'm still I'm still like figuring out how to navigate well 10 times out of 10 and not just 99. 

Jon - 00:30:48: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:30:48: 9.9 times out of 10. 

Jon - 00:30:49: Yeah. 

Bogdan - 00:30:50: Which is like how do you flex between the two? Because I think it's very easy. The like typical kind of like VC approach also is like obviously your time is the most valuable thing. So I think there is a lot of push of like, okay, like hire someone like don't do that. Do like do something else. And like, yes, in a world where capital is like pretty infinite or like cheap or whatever, like, sure, do that. But the reality is like that's usually not a healthy way to approach it. And like if your default behavior becomes like, okay, this is now kind of like annoying and like hire someone or delegate it. I don't know if I believe that you should always do that. I think there's like value in and just like doing the thing yourself, even if it takes like longer. Anyway, it's a whole other tangent. 

Jon - 00:31:33: No, I struggle with that, too. Like sweating the details and getting your hands dirty, no matter how like nominal and consequential you might think the thing is, I think makes leaders better. One, it's like leaning from the front. Two, you become intimately aware of like where things can be improved. Right? Becomes a constant occurrence where you're like, hey, technical co-founder, I am always doing this. Maybe I should have a full-time cook to cook, and then I'll go do something else. But I think from time to time, if it's something that doesn't become a big scaling issue, just get it done. We can just turn this around and get this going. 

Outro - 00:32:19: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Bogdan Knezevic. Join us for part three, where Bogdan shares how his experience at Frequency reinforced his desire to work in startups and how that realization changed the way he approached the rest of grad school. He talks about building the Rhodes Incubator, the startup-like challenges of running student-led organizations, and the power of putting yourself in high serendipity situations. We'll also hear how his time at Creative Destruction Lab and Entrepreneur First helped him sharpen his perspective on what kind of company he wanted to build and who he wanted to build it with. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave 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 Jons. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.