Working 3 Jobs at Harvard: How Desperation Built Conviction | Krish Ramadurai (1/4)

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. Our guest today is Krish Ramadurai, partner at AIX Ventures, an AI-focused seed-stage venture capital firm backing top startups and practitioners in artificial intelligence, healthcare, and life sciences. At AIX, Krish leads technical diligence, deal sourcing, and portfolio operations, having sourced and managed more than 45 early and growth-stage investments, driving over $20 billion in cumulative portfolio value. His track record includes successful exits and unicorns, such as Volumetric Biotechnologies, Pathology Watch, Trials.ai, and more. A Harvard and Oxford-trained biomolecular engineer, Krish has supported more than 25 pioneering scientific breakthroughs, from the world's first AI-designed drug to enter human trials to the first commercial rideshare satellite launched into space. He has served as chairman and board member for leading AI and life sciences companies, lectured at Harvard, and published research spanning applied engineering, AI, and medicine. From startups and venture creation to global efforts in AI and healthcare innovation, Krish's path reflects the level of vision and commitment needed to advance how we think about science, technology, and the future of human health—making this a conversation you won't want to miss. Over the next four episodes, Krish shares how his father, chartered curiosity about science, and a career-shifting injury carried him from Chicago through the University of Illinois and Harvard to building a career at the intersection of biotech and venture capital. He reflects on lessons from cold emailing his way into research, transitioning from academia to investing during COVID, market mapping compute-driven biotech before it had a name, and balancing graduate studies at Oxford with full-time venture work. He also unpacks why AI defensibility now lives in full-stack applications, how evidence-based investing drives impact, and what it takes to build firm culture, raise capital as an emerging manager, and back the next generation of AI-native biotech companies at AIX Ventures. Today, we'll hear about Krish's early days growing up in Chicago and the impact his cardiologist father, stacks of anatomy books, and a fascination with the scientists behind superheroes had on him and his trajectory as a student. We'll hear how a femur fracture ended his track ambitions and led him to attend the University of Illinois, where he paired chemistry and biology with economics and worked on biological water filtration projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, we'll hear about his time at Harvard—auditing classes before admission, juggling multiple jobs, and sending hundreds of cold emails to Principal Investigators and research leads in search of an opportunity. It was a process that ultimately opened doors, built conviction, and set the stage for his path into venture. Without further ado, let's dive into part one of our conversation with Krish Ramadurai.

Jon Chee - 00:04:07: Krish, so good to see you. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:04:10: Absolutely. Likewise, Jon. Super appreciate it.

Jon Chee - 00:04:12: This has been a long time coming. I feel like we talked months and months ago, but we're really excited about taking the opportunity to really dive into your background, learn from you via your experiences, and hear how you got to where you are. So, take us all the way back. Let's go all the way back to your upbringing. What was your childhood like? Were there any formative moments that got you into STEM, or is that something that coalesced later?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:04:33: Yeah, it's a great question, the reflection exercise. My childhood was pretty normal growing up on the South Side of Chicago. My dad immigrated to the United States; he's an interventional cardiologist, and my mom stays at home. So, a pretty normal Midwestern lifestyle.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:04:52: My foray into STEM was heavily influenced by my father working as a physician. He had all of his books and everything in his office, and I was always intrigued. Obviously, they were slightly cardiology-biased. But that was my first foray into life sciences, trying to read Gray's Anatomy as a foray. I was like, "This is not gonna be groovy."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:05:15: But it's funny, I love all the superhero films. One premise that always intrigued me was that I never wanted to be the Marvel superhero; I wanted to be the scientist that created them. It was an odd paradigm. I was like, "How will I scratch that itch?" That ended up being my foray into STEM. Essentially seeing mutant dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and all the other 90s movies that shaped my childhood, like Twister, and being like, "Wow, there's something here."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:05:43: It sounds insane, but to be the scientist working on those radical experiments, but in real life—and actually transcending the technologies to improve humanity—that would be a pretty sweet gig. And that's ultimately what brought me to venture now.

Jon Chee - 00:05:57: Very cool. I was gonna ask, having a physician father, was there pressure to become a doctor?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:03: Yeah, it's the usual upbringing, right? I think somebody with Asian parents can feel that bit of... I call it the tiger claw. Instead of the paw, I got the claw. Everybody, obviously all the Southeast Asians, always want you to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer—pick one.

Jon Chee - 00:06:22: Yep.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:23: Well, yeah, they pick the engineer one. But originally, I did want to be a physician. I had done several tours with Doctors Without Borders and originally was doing my grad work just as a filler for med school. But the world works in mysterious ways, and I find that even if I went to medical school, I'd still be doing the same thing now. It's always interesting to see how it goes. But, yeah, I definitely felt that "Hey, you gotta study for the SATs when you're seven" kind of thing. And I was like, "Amazing. Everybody else is doing sweet BMX moves on the Wendy's parking lot."

Jon Chee - 00:06:52: Yeah, yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:53: Trying to decode the universe on this SAT book.

Jon Chee - 00:06:56: You're just grinding, just cramping the SAT book. So when you're in high school approaching college, had you already found your engineering path, or was that something you figured out a little bit later?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:07:10: Honestly, the engineering path... it was hilarious. It didn't even happen until halfway through grad school.

Jon Chee - 00:07:15: Okay, okay.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:07:16: When I was in high school, I was laser-focused. It was sports and academics. I wanted to run track in college, and then I also wanted to crush it in school. So, I was more geared towards the natural sciences. I was a terrible test taker. And, of course, STEM has to be a binary outcome to everything. It was always the in-between—the zero and one—where you extrapolate, not just brute force memorizing and regurgitating knowledge. But yeah, definitely in high school, I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna do the traditional pre-med route, do biochem, and go straight shot to med school." So it was more traditional on that end.

Jon Chee - 00:07:52: Yep, absolutely. I see a parallel path on my side too. I was like, "Yeah, I think I can cut it as a doctor." And quickly figured out, "Oh, I'm not gonna cut it. This is not jiving well with me." And I was a terrible test taker too. It was just debilitating. You're just like, "Oh my god, I'm not gonna make it anywhere." And then you start to realize, especially when you get into a lab, that there are no rules. You can explore, and you're not strictly confined to the standardized test, which was nice. Okay, so now you're looking at college. You're contemplating pre-med. Did you know where you were gonna go for university? Was it something where everything was super premeditated, or was it something where you're just like, "I'll go with this one"?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:34: Yeah, this is where the fun part came. I was full-tilt geared on wanting to run track in college. I was on the US Junior Olympic team and everything, and then I broke my femur.

Jon Chee - 00:08:48: Oh, shit.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:50: Yeah. So then I was like, "Well, there goes the whole college sports thing."

Jon Chee - 00:08:52: Was that while running? While in a competition?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:55: Well, it was a stress fracture that really didn't come into full manifestation until the 600-meter mark of an 800-meter run. At that point, they're like, "Well, you're either gonna get a steel rod in your femur"—which basically would condemn me to a life of arthritis and crippling pain—"or I could do the other route," which was a bone stimulation apparatus. That is what I did for sixteen months, basically, to get back to normal.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:09:25: But, yeah, I was super gung-ho on going to Johns Hopkins and running track there and doing the regular thing. And that was the first time I was like, "Well, it doesn't look like it's going to plan now." So I ended up at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, basically because all the tier-one schools I was gonna go run track at, I couldn't do anymore. And at that time, it had happened late in the season. So I was like, "Oh, boy. Okay. I gotta shotgun somewhere else."

Jon Chee - 00:09:48: Sometimes life comes at you quick.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:09:51: That's what happens. Exactly. And I had not even been to the campus or anything.

Jon Chee - 00:09:55: Yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:09:56: I know everybody else was tactical and had their packets. I was like, "Oh, boy. This is just gonna be whiplash happening."

Jon Chee - 00:10:06: I mean, one, that sounds incredibly physically painful, so holy crap. But you got through it, which is the more important part. And so now you're not at your number one, but you've decided to pursue IB, economics, and chemistry. Talk a little bit about your undergraduate experience. Did you have an undergrad lab experience?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:10:26: Yeah. So this is the funny part: I have never actually done any formal lab work. In everything that I've done, I've always focused more on the qualitative elements of it. So undergrad was that usual trying to figure out, "What are you excited about?" And I think for me, it was a little bit tougher because sports had been a huge part of my life. And then I was like, "Well, that whole block just dissolved overnight. How do I stopgap that and kinda figure out what my identity is?"

Krish Ramadurai - 00:10:55: So, yeah, I'd always liked this parlance between business and science. I always realized, "Well, the science people suck at speaking business, and business people are horrible at science. Why not be the in-between there?" Hence, kind of the diversification on that. So I love the hard science of biology and chemistry, but I was also like, "Well, applied economics is interesting as well." So I got that taste. That really didn't come into manifestation until my junior/senior year of college when I added the economics degree on top of it. Because at that time, I was just doing STEM. And then I was like, "Well, good to have a backup just in case things don't work out."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:11:32: But I was finding that my research experience in undergrad... I was working on biological filtration systems in Sub-Saharan Africa with a few orphanages over there. And so that was kind of an interesting foray of cross-denominationally bisecting the applied science stuff, but also working on economic outcomes and how that actually influences the cyclical nature of poverty. That actually set me up for a nice impetus of going to grad school and carrying that thesis, because that was exactly what I did on that applied basis. Did I know at the time that that was all part of the plan? Absolutely not. It's important to think, none of this stuff was like, "Oh my god, it's going to plan." If anything, I looked at it and was like, "Oh, man. This is a mess. What does any of this mean?"

Jon Chee - 00:12:13: Yeah. But I love that. I think sometimes on paper, it could seem like everything's premeditated, but—

Krish Ramadurai - 00:12:22: It's not.

Jon Chee - 00:12:22: I love how it's not. I take solace in it because you just realize everyone's just figuring it out. And still, even now, people are just figuring it out. And when I speak to younger folks who are thinking about grad school or entering the workforce, they feel like they have to have it figured out, which is rough. That's a rough thing to hold yourself to because, frankly, it just doesn't really unfold like that, or it is very rare that it does.

Jon Chee - 00:12:51: Also, you mentioned the loss of identity from not being able to run anymore. I similarly—but it wasn't due to an injury, it was more just at Berkeley—I was like, "I am going to fail. If I continue to play sports at this level, something's gotta give." I played lacrosse, so I was like, "I don't think I can do this anymore." And then I had to refocus. I guess the discipline of sports lends itself well to hitting the books really hard too, but I empathize with that loss of identity. You're just like, "Crap. Who am I, and what am I? I have all this time now."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:13:24: Going from that regimented, structured environment to, "Uh-oh, now it's kind of a noodle." Yeah. Right? I always say that everything on LinkedIn is going great. But life doesn't work on a single binary outcome. It's all over the place. And I think that was frustrating to me when people would be like, "You gotta find your passion." I was like, "What does that actually mean?" It's just ambiguous. Same thing with getting a job and everything. You're like, "Go network." I was like, "What does that even mean, man?" Everybody's networking all the time, but I'm like, "What are the actual outputs associated with this input?"

Jon Chee - 00:14:03: Yeah. I still don't know how to properly network either. I don't think I ever figured it out.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:14:08: Yeah, right.

Jon Chee - 00:14:09: But I feel like it's kinda like this thing where you define it for yourself and you choose your own adventure. Like, there's no one way to do it. But when I followed someone else's playbook, it just never worked. Ever. I'm just like, "I'm just gonna do me, and I'm just gonna see how this ends up working." And what I find is that when you just do it your way, you create this kind of magnetism for other people to gravitate towards. Especially with the age of the internet too, you can voice your own style, opinion, or viewpoint, and the internet has a way of just connecting you with like minds. Whereas before the advent of podcasting and social media, I just remember going to a career fair and just being told, "Go network." I was like, "What do I do? I have this ill-fitting suit. I have no idea. How do I make a network?"

Krish Ramadurai - 00:15:01: 100%. And you come to the realization that most people don't really know what they're doing. Right? It's a funny thing. Whenever somebody's like, "Oh, that went according to plan," I was like, "That's like the same gradient of happiness." Everybody's under the predesigned thing of, "If I do X, Y, and Z, this opens a portal for me to be happy." And I was like, "It's a totally relative construct."

Jon Chee - 00:15:23: Exactly.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:15:24: Circumstances that influence the outcome of you being happy... and most people don't even have the tools that you're supposed to acquire over those years to lead to that outcome. Right?

Jon Chee - 00:15:37: Exactly, exactly. And so your experience hands-on going to Africa sounds like a rare opportunity for an undergrad. For me, I had a more classical, "I was at the lab benches and doing my thing." And then you mentioned that this inspired you to pursue that work and continue it into grad school. Before moving on to grad school, was there anyone during your undergrad, perhaps your PI or postdocs or grad students, that took you under their wing or influenced you in any way?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:15:59: It's funny, since my degrees were all over the place, I had a bunch of unique people across all the different departments. I think the biggest thing that I got... well, there was a guy named Professor Werner Baer who passed away. He was one of my economics professors, and he was also a Harvard guy. He was like, "There are a lot of things where you can actually..." Because when I was looking at economics, I was like, "I don't wanna be wearing a suit sitting behind a desk." I was more interested in the applied domain of it.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:16:35: And that set the impetus of, "Oh, you can do econometric tracking of both the applied intervention that you're doing—that is the science engineering thing—and then measuring the social outcome from it." So Professor Werner Baer was a really cool dude. He didn't take me really under his wing until my senior year of college. But I think that was helpful just to have some context as to, "How do you find what you're actually passionate about?" And for me, it was translating the gap from empirical research to actual functional net benefit for humanity.

Jon Chee - 00:17:01: Very cool. And is that how you found your way over to Harvard?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:17:05: Yeah. So for me, being from the Midwest, being told, "You're gonna go to Harvard and Oxford, man," that wasn't really a thing. Most of the people I went to high school with barely graduated, and they all went into trades. It wasn't like, "Uh-oh, you're gonna go to this tier-one school," let alone the ultra tiers.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:17:25: Harvard was a unique thing where I had actually taken a class. It was a really cool global health class that I had taken, and it was my first foray into it. I was fortunate enough to hang out with a lot of really cool global health pioneers and really enjoyed the class. And that first class was Paul Farmer. I don't know if you know him; he's super famous.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:17:48: And I was like, "Oh my god. I did take a class with Paul Farmer." This was a class that I was taking as a hybridized bridge between U of Illinois at the time, and I was like, "Wow, this is really cool." So I took his class and did really well. It broke all the rules because I took a graduate-level course while I was doing undergrad—special exemption for that. And when I took the course, I was like, "Yeah, this is cool. I wanna go be there."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:18:13: So I talked to Paul and a few other folks that were running the course, and he was like, "I can put you in touch with a few people, but can't make any promises." And I was like, "I didn't have the grades for it either." So I was able to meet my PI, who's Sujata Bhatia. She was the Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the time. And she was like, "Take a couple of classes, audit them, see how you do."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:18:36: And that's exactly what I did. Basically audited it. It was a weird thing because I was literally taking classes cross-enrolled, but had not been formally admitted yet.

Jon Chee - 00:18:46: No way.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:18:47: Yeah. So I was essentially auditing them off the transcript. But then she was like, "Take these classes. If you actually can survive them and do well, then I can spot you essentially for a spot." So it was a totally unconventional route. It wasn't like I just applied aimlessly. It was, "Okay, I took the audited class as an entry point to meet some really well-connected people and then got in the door." And then after I did those classes, I applied, got in, obviously, and then went from there. But, like, it was also, once again, nothing went to plan. I know everybody applies to grad school and does, "Here's my list. Here are my GREs." I did the weird loop thing and only applied technically to one graduate school, which is probably the biggest no-no ever.

Jon Chee - 00:19:37: I love that, though. Like, that's the coolest part. You're just like, "No, I'm gonna do this in an orthogonal way."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:19:43: A totally batshit crazy way, because when I wrote the advisor from my undergrad, they were like, "What are you doing?" And I was like, "I don't know, man." Then I took the shotgun. After I got away from U of I, I moved to Boston and got to know Sujata, and she was also working at the Belfer Center.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:19:59: That was what got me in because I couldn't afford the tuition at Harvard—insanely expensive. So the only way I could do it was to become an employee effectively and get the Tuition Assistance Plan off of that. So I was working full-time while going to school full-time, essentially. She was able to get me a job and help me at the Belfer Center and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Hence why I was doing both of those at the same time. I was also working the night shift at the library, the Harvard Library called Lamont. So I was effectively working three jobs to keep my head above water so I could survive and pay rent in Boston. Hence, the dichotomy of being at two major institutions at the same exact time while doing a degree full-time. So, don't recommend it, but when you have no other options, you just go with it.

Jon Chee - 00:20:51: Yeah, no. I mean, the saying comes to mind, "If there's a will, there's a way." If you want it bad enough, you're gonna do all these things. And so now you're not at your number one, but you've decided to pursue IB, economics, and chemistry. So, talk a little bit about your undergraduate experience... wait, sorry, moving on to grad school. So how was the academic side? How was your Master's experience?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:05: It was good. I mean, typical Master's experience. Right? At the end of the day, Harvard's quite nice because, yeah, you have your core block of courses and everything, but they're quite flexible. My first course over there was cross-registered with the medical school. I had a terrifying immunology professor, a European woman who scared the shit out of me. So probably not the best foray.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:28: I remember that class. She gave us a paper, and we're all sitting at a round table—nine of us. And she's like, "I want you to finish the abstract for this paper. If you get an email from me, that means you haven't been dropped from the program." And I remember we're all sitting there being like, "Well, we just moved out here."

Jon Chee - 00:21:44: Oh my god. "If I don't get in, then I have to recycle, essentially. I don't wanna do that."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:47: Yeah, yeah. And that's how I met one of my best friends, Yu Chun, because I didn't have a pencil at the time to do it. And I was like, "Oh, man. I need to borrow your fanny pack. I look like I could write this abstract and hopefully not have my entire future destroyed." I just signed a twelve-month lease, right? Money to get out of it.

Jon Chee - 00:22:12: Oh my goodness.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:22:13: Oh, the good pressure cooker of being like, "Welcome to Harvard. I hope you make it. Good luck." So after that, it was fine. You know? It was very cool. I think the biggest thing was reaffirming the basis of, "I wanted to work on applied stuff."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:22:30: So while I was there, I got to work with Ash Carter, the US Secretary of Defense; David Petraeus, who was the head of the CIA; Ban Ki-moon, who was UN Secretary-General. They're all on the same floor of my office. So I got to hang out and have a lot of cool coffee conversations with them. And that's how a lot of the stuff also manifests. They're like, "We got to meet with Ash," and he was the one that was like, "You should work on this USAID project that I'm having." It was kind of a perfect blend of that. And he introduced me to Michael Kremer. And Mike, you know, won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:23:03: So I got to work with Mike on all of those projects and got to work with the Vatican and the UN and a bunch of other things because the Belfer Center is a think tank, so you get rotating patents and products and everything. Then I was like, "This is cool. I like the work." At that time, I'd finished my thesis and co-authored a book with Sujata on 3D bioprinting.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:23:25: And it was nice because the think tank environment actually set me up for venture—effectively doing the same thing. In the think tank, you're critically analyzing the solution, getting to the point very quickly, and making an executive decision. It's kind of the same thing as venture: systematically market mapping, taking some bets, and then making a decision off of it.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:23:44: So while I was working there, getting all these great exposures, and working with Mike on the USAID project... once that project kinda wrapped up, I kinda had two options. Either I was gonna go into intelligence because that's where David was. The other option was, you know, Ash introduced me to a guy named Eric Schmidt, and they were talking about venture. And I was like, "Well, I think I'm pretty decent at this."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:24:08: That work at USAID was more of a quantitative assessment and portfolio metrics, but I started to get a taste for how you actually invest institutional money, how you build a portfolio, and everything. So that's what segmented into me getting into venture, basically. Being like, "Okay, well, I could be a desk jockey at the CIA at Langley for the rest of my life and probably hate it. Or I could go—and this is 2019—into venture, and do all the cool stuff we've been talking about in real life and continue to do that kind of narrative of applied science engineering at scale."

Jon Chee - 00:24:37: Very cool. And I guess, as you're looking back, I mean, you're doing a lot. But it's certainly a thing where it seems like when you get that active, you find yourself on these floors and bumping shoulders with people who you never imagined you would ever bump into, which then opens doors and opportunities. It's kind of this thing where I see a common thread: just putting yourself out there. We talked about "what is networking?" It's almost like what I'm hearing is just: go do things. Just get active as much as you can and try to follow that "passion." And then you ultimately bump into people who are ballers like that. Is that kind of how you saw it manifest?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:25:19: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think the most important part is there's a massive asterisk of what happened behind the scenes to get to this point. Like, behind the scenes was I had sent out 500 cold emails, and it's hilarious now that a lot of those PIs that turned me down are now asking me to invest in their companies. And so there was a whole thing of, like, I had gone brute force and was getting rejected nonstop.

Jon Chee - 00:25:45: All of the time.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:25:45: All of the time. And being like, "Well, I'm in the system, but I'm still getting rejected by the system."

Jon Chee - 00:25:50: Oh, so basically you got in. You're like, "Okay, I was able to write this abstract. I could stay here." I got in another program, right? I'm in the program, but I'm just going to brute force and just get in touch with people any way possible.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:26:05: Yeah. Alright. Because unfortunately, still in Harvard, it's very siloed, right? Between departments and everything. So it's not like you get in and it's like Candyland. Right? You still gotta apply. Because at that point, I was like, "I have no money to be over here." Everything for me always reverts back to "I had no other options, you gotta do it." So at that point, I was like, "Okay, I need to get a couple of jobs to get this going." So I had sent out zillions. And I was like, "Yeah, okay. I got the Harvard email. I should be getting a response with some help."

Jon Chee - 00:26:36: Yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:26:36: I'm like, "Come on." So I was doing that, and there was a bunch of rejection. I just did it in an accelerated framework. And I lucked out that even having the "in" with everybody was great, but you still had to be qualified for it. So it still took a while. I started the program back in June, and it took me until November to get some kind of position. And at that point, I was running on my last nickel. I'm like, "Okay, thank god."

Jon Chee - 00:27:04: Yeah. I was like, "I was about to miss rent. This was gonna be bad."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:27:08: I was glad to do that. And then that came through, and that first job was from the Taubman Center in State and Local Government. I got to work with an awesome person named Rachel McCleary. She was writing a book on moral scruples and everything and wanted more of a science person on it. So I was like, "Perfect. I'm your guy." And then Rachel was ultimately the one that facilitated the intros to Mike and everybody else as well. So there was kind of a weird thing on that.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:27:32: So, yeah, I think for people that are like, "Man, you know..." I would say it's a lot of random collisions. But then also just being like, you just gotta embrace the suck. Right? Like, this is the hard thing. It's funny when I talk to Werner, I was like, "What is the one thing I wish for you? To suffer." Right? Because at the end of the day, when you do that, it makes just your understanding and purview of perception and perspective... they are two different things.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:27:54: And I find that when you're like, "There's nothing left that can get worse," and you just execute against it, it's nice because then when that situation happens again—which adult life works like that all the time—you can be more systematically prepared. And I think a lot of people are just like, "Yeah, I get the whole mantra of 'failure is good.'" I was like, "No, you really have to embrace it." Like, when everything sucks.

Jon Chee - 00:28:22: Yeah. Yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:28:24: And they don't show that in movie montages. They hoard through the nine months of sucking it took to get to that one point where that random collision actually led to something valuable, because the other 9,000 random collisions led to absolutely nothing.

Jon Chee - 00:28:38: Yeah. That's so funny. There are so many directions I wanna go with this. But the first thing is, I used to skate a lot—skateboard. And back in the day when you had skate videos, it's very different than now when you have social media skating where people are just clipping. It's perfectly manicured clips where they're landing every trick, but you have no idea there were a 100 attempts behind that one clip. And it gives people the wrong impression, or at least expectation, that I should just stomp the landing on this on the first try, when in actuality, it was pure pain and suffering for probably weeks to months. Just trying to, whatever, hit this handrail or wherever it may be.

Jon Chee - 00:29:21: And also, same experience when I was starting Excedr a long time ago. I was super broke, and it was funny because when I was sending those original emails out to PIs, I was like, "Hey, would lab equipment leasing as a concept be helpful in your lab?" And they did not like the idea of talking about business, or anything that wasn't directly related to their research. And so this got denied. Some people were helpful and willing to talk.

Jon Chee - 00:29:48: But it's funny now because now, just kinda like what you said, they're all asking for equipment leasing. The folks that really kicked me out of their office from even daring to bring up the concept, they're like, "Hey, we need to outfit our lab." I'm like, "Oh, so it's great to see you again."

Jon Chee - 00:30:04: But I think during those early days of just getting rejected, those are the formative moments that I think really shape a founder. Especially when, from what I'm hearing, it's kind of like, "I can't go any lower. Just everything is upside." And you start getting really creative too. Because when you're not at that point, you can kind of just get lazy or complacent. And what ultimately happens is you go for the convenient route rather than being forced to do the hard thing.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:30:34: Sure. Right. And I think rejection actually opens the door for conviction. Right? Because what I found was I actually started to understand myself more in the value prop that I had. But also most importantly, I only applied to one graduate school ever because I think rejection led me to author a narrative of myself where I had ultra conviction in my doing. I think that was the interesting thing. It actually served as a fundamental basis for who you are as a person. Right? Because once you have conviction, that leads to confidence, and then the confidence inevitably leads to, "Okay, I can manifest my own situation how I want it." And if you do that step-by-function, it's quite interesting to see how that tethers to you being successful in the future.

Jon Chee - 00:31:21: Yeah. It's kind of a thing where it's just like, "I've seen all the shit," or it's like our lacrosse coach would say, just, "Burn the boats."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:31:28: Yeah, man. 100%.

Jon Chee - 00:31:29: If you're gonna do it, commit.

Outro - 00:31:33: That's all for this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast featuring Krish Ramadurai. Join us next time for part two, where Krish recounts his leap from academia and policy intervention, what day one as a remote analyst looked like at a blank slate fund, how he built a thesis from evidence and market maps during COVID, and why compute-driven biotech kept surfacing in the data. He also explains the problems with shot-calling in VC and what it really takes to raise capital from LPs as an emerging manager. If you enjoy the show, subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend. Thanks for listening. 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.

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