Controlled Chaos: Why Success Isn't Planned (And Doesn't Need To Be) | Krish Ramadurai (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, Krish shared how he transitioned from academia to venture just as COVID hit and spotting the rise of compute-driven biotech before it had a name. If you missed it, check out part two. In part three, Krish talks about studying nanomedicine at Oxford while investing full-time, how the university's tutorial system shaped his approach to research, and why he pushed to complete a master's and PhD remotely. He also shares how the experience informed his next moves, what drew him toward being a General Partner (GP), and how that path led him to AIX Ventures where he joined a team of world-class founders and scientists building the next generation of AI-native biotech companies.

Jon Chee - 00:01:18: I know you also went to Oxford. Was this during Harmonics, or when was this?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:01:25: Yeah. And so, if you want to add more to the insanity... once again, doing that full tilt, let me go work full-time and go to school full-time.

Jon Chee - 00:01:34: Dude, do you sleep?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:01:36: That's a funny thing. I find that it's not that bad because I just protect my time. I'm super work-right [work-smart]. When people are like, "You've got to work a hundred hours a week," I'm like, "Your efficiency curve drops after fifty-five hours". There's absolutely no point in doing that miscellaneous thirty-five hours. Can I optimize my time enough to where I can do this? But then, also, if you like what you're doing, it doesn't really feel like work. When I was doing these degrees, I wasn't doing it to get to an endpoint. It was because I'm already doing this on a day-to-day basis; I might as well get paid for it and get it. I think that's where a lot of people would be like, "Oh, man." I'd be like, "Yeah. It was a lot to manage, but I was like, why not just get a twofer [two-for-one]? Because I'm going to do this anyway. If anything, it makes me more sharp because I can actually fully master my craft, but then also get a credential that I'm like, 'Great, I didn't have to really pay for it'".

Jon Chee - 00:02:31: So talk about your time at Oxford. I think you first got your master's in nanomedicine. Did you move for that, or was it still kind of where you could do it remote?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:02:39: Man, and here's another rule-breaking thing: could do it remote. Only because I asked them. Once again, testing that, "Oh, I only applied to one grad school. I only applied to Oxford". And I met my adviser there, and once again, it was the same relationship I had previously. The Oxford interview process is pretty gnarly. So I had done decent on it. I wasn't a rock star, like, Rhodes Scholar-esque kind of thing. I was still like, "I hope I got it. I don't know". But the interesting thing on that was like, "Okay, great." I was already doing that in nanomedicine and materials engineering and everything, but the firm, Harmonics, wanted me to have more in-depth expertise on basic materials and translatability and everything. I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, let me go do this for free, essentially". So we did that and would have to ping-pong to Oxford once a quarter, which it wasn't that bad for a couple weeks to meet the thing. I think the main thing was I did that and got so ingrained into it that I was like, "Well, let me just stay. Just wrap up the PhD over there." Right? So that's how it led to that. When I finished the program, my advisor was like, "Why don't you just stay and finish your PhD? You're already there". I was like, "That was not part of the plan: three master's degrees and a PhD". Like, did I go into that like every Asian kid and be like, "Oh my god, I only get seven fucking degrees?" No. And then I did everything, and I was like, "Wait. Can I work full-time and get my PhD in another country? Is that even a thing?". And that was the other exercise I had to do. I was like, "Because I don't want to tell the LPs and everything." Right? That's a lot of work to do a PhD for fun, or to work full-time? Oh, I don't know. That was a bit weird, too. So that's why it's been on the stealth burner of them being like, "So how is that going?" I was like, "Yeah, it's going good, and I have to go back to Oxford in two weeks." Right? Do I recommend it? Once again, no. But if you're like, "I'm doing this anyway..."—and that was the same thing—"I'm doing my dissertation research and doing exactly what I'm doing at the firm". So I'm like, "It's complimentary, but, you know, telling a new firm you join that you're doing that, it's a bit odd".

Jon Chee - 00:04:45: Yeah. Talk a little bit about the master's and the PhD experience. It seems a little bit, you know, a little bit atypical, but you're spending some time there. What was your research specifically? And, like, you know, talk a little bit about the folks within your orbit and advising it [advising you].

Krish Ramadurai - 00:04:59: So my master's research was actually is getting published as a book that gets released tomorrow [getting published as a book] , was all on how to take mRNAs and optimize transaction efficiency to actually get the mRNA to become an oncology drug to actually transfect the cells. So I worked on the first set of machine learning algorithms for that. And, like, Hogwarts [Oxford] is cool, man. It's funny because, you know, Dangla [Oxford] is full-time Zoom, so I had a dorm and everything that I never used. What I loved about Oxford was that it's not structured. It's a tutorial system, right, where, like, you don't get grades or really any of it. Well, you get grades, but, like, it's taking everything as a discussion-based kind of thing. And the PhD is completely different from any other PhD out there in the world. I don't have classes or anything. It's all based on your research. And since all my research is computational-based, I can do it on a laptop anywhere. I don't need to be in a lab or anything. So that was probably the most interesting almost. When I first started a traditional PhD, you've got to take the courses again, you have to be a TA and everything. Oxford's like, you actually apply with your dissertation idea before you actually get admitted. And this is really different. You can't apply to Oxford without your dissertation topic. So, like, you actually have to know it before you get in.

Jon Chee - 00:06:14: I guess that's a forcing function. I heard, too, it was like—I think this might be just like a UK thing—but they're like, "It's like a straight three years or something".

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:23: Exactly right.

Jon Chee - 00:06:24: They're like, "Get it done in three or else you're out."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:25: That's why you get it done so quickly. As opposed to the US where you're spending the first three to four years trying to come up with your idea. Right? And then you actually do it. So, like, when you start day one in Oxford, it's like, you already came in with this. And then the other part of the admission process is the whole point is to get a faculty member to say your idea isn't stupid and actually support it. Right? That's exactly how you get in. So that's the other thing why they say it's such an intense interview process. They put the world's expert in that area on the call with you, and they rail you. Until you don't give up. Yeah. So I was like, "Okay." So my PI [Principal Investigator], that's how it kind of worked because he's like, "Listen. Your master's idea wasn't stupid. I like you, and I think we can do some stuff together." And that's kind of how it worked. I just did the formal application thing. But, like, when I did the interview, I was like, "Are you sick of seeing me?" No. So it was a bit interesting because most people get flustered with the Oxford admission process if you didn't go there previously. You have to go manually reach out to a faculty member to have them respond to your email and then actually want to talk to you and then actually sponsor you to apply. So it's a way more different experience than a traditional thing.

Jon Chee - 00:07:41: Once you got your dissertation accepted, how was the actual experience?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:07:45: Yeah, I mean, it was cool. It's pretty intense over there. Like, when they do a review, it's soul-crushing, essentially. Like, British dark humor, man. It's a thing. And so, like, they're there to make sure the whole point is that you're creating new knowledge. And if you're not doing the framework that's conducive to them, it's very tough. But for me, I was already aligned one hundred percent with my adviser and everything. And if anything, I was like, "We need to go faster". And that's why, my first six months of my PhD turned out a book. Like, you know, I was like, "At this phase, we're going to have a whole Harry Potter collection, man".

Jon Chee - 00:08:27: You're building conviction as them thinking that you know what you're doing.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:27: Yeah. He's like, "Thank God. You can just do whatever you want because you're doing this anyway in real life. I don't care". But the other candidates that don't have the industry experience, it's a harder way. So, yeah, once again, one of that unique approach that probably only had both people actually do [approach that probably only a few people actually do], but, like, for me, it worked out.

Jon Chee - 00:08:45: As you're looking back on that experience, what are some, like, challenges that you overcame? And I guess, like, maybe some, like, key lessons you took away from that experience.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:53: Yeah, I mean, I think it's cool to be passionate about what you're doing and everything. And it's very hard because I feel bad for all the people that just exist for the sake of existing, and don't have another structure calling. No, it's not everybody. It's different strokes for different folks. There are some people who are just totally fine being in the box, but I was always that person who's like, "What happens when I pop my head above the box and see what else is out there?". So it's good to be an achiever, but it's funny how I don't view them as, like, tombstones or achievements. I just view them as, "I was fucked in this situation, and this is all I could do". And it's funny how people are like, "How did you achieve anything?" I was like, "This was not an achievement. I didn't have, like, a vision board or whatever. 'Let me do this. Check mark.'" It's just controlled fucking chaos. This still happened to likely manifest in some weird, bizarre outcome like that. But, like, if you told somebody on day one that's the case, it was insanely stressful. Because, like, every couple years, I'd have to do a recalibration exercise to be like, "What am I doing next?". As opposed to just being like, "I'm just going to do X, Y, Z success". So I think it was good. It was good to basically get to grow up very quickly early, but also the caveat to that, it was like as I keep mentioning, is that conducive to everybody? Absolutely not. It was just conducive to me at the time, and I just did what I could because I was backed in the corner to do it. And I think, once again, that suffer mentality, if you're doing that, then you're just like, "I just did this to survive". And I think it's funny when you hear Jensen or whatever be like, "Oh my god, what was that coming-to-Jesus moment?" It's like, "I didn't have one. I was just doing stuff". It happened, like, snowballed enough to get to the optics of it thing that seemingly like that. But I think a lot of people think it was prescriptive, and they'd be like, "Well, you must have totally known what you're doing." Everybody is always like, "No". So I think from a quality of life perspective, like, establishing boundaries, probably the biggest thing I learned, is, "Great, I got to push the limits to who I am, but then realizing what are the opportunity costs associated with that". And it's like, the opportunity cost of that is, like, "I'm living my twenties and my thirties now because I didn't get that time to actually manifest in that time period". Or just realizing, "Great, you get this accelerated clip of moving forward in your career, but then you realize, well, that's it. Nothing left to do. Thirty-five years, you're tapped out, or what's up". So it's some interesting forward insights of people would be like, "Oh, I want to get successful quickly." Like, great. But then there's also a host of baggage of being like, "Am I sufficiently equipped to maintain that in the future?". And that's the revolving question.

Jon Chee - 00:11:34: It's just that there are trade-offs.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:11:36: Right.

Jon Chee - 00:11:37: Everything has a trade-off, and just going in eyes wide open into that, and not just doing it for the sake of going through the motion and doing it for the sake of doing it. But, like, I would imagine you've had these kind of, like, very condensed, like, it's like baptism by fire, just condensed really quick. And it sounds like the Oxford experience was that. Now you're still at Harmonics. You finished up grad school at Oxford. At that point in time, were you, like, just, like, implementing kind of what you learned in the UK into your practice?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:12:08: Yeah. And I was taking it in almost every day, right, of just being like, "Okay. What's the new iteration? What's the new thesis to test? What's the new modality?" Etcetera. So it was helpful in that. It was also helpful to have structure and then also identify, like, "I'm doing this anyway, might as well do this". If the optionality wasn't there, then I'd be like, "Okay. Well, then that's a total waste of time". When you talk to most people, they're like, "Yeah, that was a waste of time". It had to be very clear for me. I'd be like, "I'm only doing this because I'm already doing this or because I couldn't afford to hypothesis test".

Jon Chee - 00:12:41: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, this kind of grad school overlapped with Harmonics. This was kind of at the tail end?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:12:48: Yeah. Basically, I didn't start Oxford until, like, my third year of Harmonics. So at that time, I was like, "Well, did the venture thing," and then for some reason, the firm mandate and everything and then being like, "Hey. I want you to get this exposure." Like, it worked quite well to find that. So I was like, "Okay, great." Yeah. I get it. I don't have an engineering background. Right? And that was the thing where it's like, I don't have an engineering undergrad either. So that was the like, when I first applied to Oxford, they're like, "This program at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, you don't have a biomedical engineering degree". And I was like, "Amazing how, yeah."

Jon Chee - 00:13:27: Did you know? Did you know you don't have that background?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:13:30: That's why I got railed in the interview. Right? Yeah. "Wait, you're going to do engineering?" And I was like, "Yeah." My PI, Sujata, had to spot me, basically, and be like, "Hey, yeah. I get it. He doesn't have formal engineering training, but just give him a shot". So Oxford was like a crapshoot, too, because they were like, "Dude, you're probably going to bomb out." Yeah. There wasn't a lot of conviction on their side in me. That's so funny. And so now you're back at Harmonics. And I guess as you look back on that experience, were you just, like, blazing trails, or were there any, like, folks that showed you the ropes in some ways?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:14:11: Yeah, I mean, in venture, I solely was talking to other firms in every shop, and I think it was helpful. At my firm, it was, like, we had a great scientific advisory board that they put together. And I had some of the best folks around town that had run Novartis funds and everything. And the SAB [Scientific Advisory Board] and I became really close because I would run deals through them and everything and get their purview and a little bit of mentoring and guidance and everything. And they served as my references both for grad school as well as for the firm that I'm at right now. So I think, like, you want to cultivate your tribe, essentially, of people that will be like your choir for how great you are for the rest of your life. It's good to have that. So I'd done that between advisers, but also the other VCs out there and setting up, you know, the usual stuff, rotating quarterly calls and everything to do temperature checks and everything. But as you know, VC is a very human-centric business. It's high touch and everything, and it's a very hyper-niche space, so everybody knows each other. So I think that was probably the element where I was like, "I've been basically doing a brute force pitch book style." Right? Doing that, and I was like, "Okay. Well, they're also the best deals get more socialized around". But the main thing I wanted to build quickly was the flywheel, essentially. Because at the end of the day, inventory comes down: can you diligent source and execute and operate? And if you can build the flywheel where you're able to build the track record very quickly and then back some of the best founders, that flywheel just is inertia afterward, and then you don't really have to do anything. So, like, I was hell-bent on the first five years of venture to build that flywheel to get to a point where once it starts moving, that's it. And you don't need to worry about, like, "Oh, okay. Do I need to keep building out my sourcing channel and diligent and whatever?" because you're uncomfortable. And I think, once I did north of 40 deals, I had the unicorn founders and the track record and all that stuff, so I didn't have to be like, "Oh, this is me," and everybody be like, "Who the fuck are you?". Yeah, which there are plenty of people like that in venture. Resilient people like that all the time. Every time I get an inbound from somebody, I'd be like, "Who the fuck are you?". And I find the best managers are dark horses. We don't really want to be out there. We're just focusing on rinsing and repeating our playbook, but don't need to be on prime-time TV every day talking about how great this is.

Jon Chee - 00:16:33: Interesting. So it sounds like at this point, you're kind of, like, you're at Harmonics for, like, four, four and a half years? And so how did you know it was time to leave?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:16:42: I mean, you know, it's funny. I always say humans are hard. And, like, in every shop, there's always something. And at that point, I was like, "Man, I'm running all the time," and I wanted to be at a firm that was going to give me a line of sight to a GP [General Partner]. And I also wanted to be, like, I wanted to be a shop that just had more firepower.

Jon Chee - 00:17:03: Back up a little bit. So when you become a partner, you're not necessarily a GP?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:17:06: Right. The partner, like, format is, "Okay, great. Now you're pitching the fund and everything. You're getting carry," which is great, but you're not actually investing in the firm. You're a non-direct equity partner. A General Partner is when you're actually putting in the cash and fronting it into the firm. But then you own a part of the firm. So that's also the differentiation. You might see people that just tap out at Senior Partner because they're like, "I'm never going to have the cash to actually put my GP stake in the fund, nor do I want to be indemnified". So it's a personal decision. There were some partners like, "Hell no. I never put a penny in this shit". And then others are like, "Oh, dude. I've got total conviction. Let me do this".

Jon Chee - 00:17:46: Interesting. Okay. Sorry. Interrupted you. So you wanted that GP path, it sounds like.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:17:51: Yeah. I wanted to get there, but I also wanted to be, most importantly, at a firm where I was surrounded by other super-freaks. That's essentially what I wanted. I was like, "Okay, great. I got the one freak show element here. I would work with eight super-freaks and see what happens." And that's how it happened. Like, when I was interviewing at this firm, I was like, "What is AIX Ventures?" I never heard of it because this came as a referral from Lux Capital. So I was like, "Yeah, okay. I know Lux. Sure, I'll take this miscellaneous call". And I had met our GP Sean and everything, and they weren't actually looking. Most of the time, at venture, they're not actually actively hiring. A lot of the positions just get filled because, like, you met the partner, and then they're like, "Yeah, probably six months I'll hire," and they'll be like, "You should just hire right now". And it's not like a robust recruiting timeline or anything. And I'd met our general partner, Richard [Socher]. He invented prompt engineering and everything and worked on AlphaFold, and he was super famous in that. And I was like, "That's the person I want to work with," that kind of group of people now, like, the real people that actually built the foundation for modern society in some way. So that was it. It was more of like a, "Okay. I'm good at the strategy stuff." It was like a higher call of, like, "What if I could work with the fellowship of the ring, essentially?".

Jon Chee - 00:19:05: Yeah. Very cool. And I guess before we dive right into the AIX Ventures, kind of your current work, I know you're involved with Nucleate and also with ARPA-H. Can you talk a little about your involvement there in both?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:19:19: So the nice thing about working with, you know, Ash and everybody else plugged in with the Department of Defense (DOD) quite thoroughly. So, you know, it's been nice to work with them on a whole bunch of initiatives. I've sponsored Softworks and worked with special operations on all different projects and everything. And my last firm, Harmonics, we disguised Defense Tech under DeepTech. We just called it that because it was more acceptable. So I got to work on all those cool projects and everything with the DOD. And, like, I got intro to ARPA-H and DARPA BTO and a few other organizations I've worked with. Silicon Valley is in the year 3000. DOD is in the year 2000. So there's a fundamental mismatch here. So they're always keen on poaching people from the venture community that actually gives them a temperature check. So it's been cool to work with ARPA-H since inception, essentially. I mean, at one time, they were going to be in existence, and now, I guess, they are. And, like, Nucleate, I'd been working with them since day one when it was called Activate. And it was a bunch of garage band kids at Harvard. And Michael Retkin was the original founder of it, and he was like, "Yeah, we're going to do this student organization". I was like, "Yeah, I don't really like to lend my name off on student organization things because I'm like, 'It's a student organization'". And then all of a sudden, two years later, Nucleate is on every university on planet Earth, essentially. Now they have their own venture fund and everything, and I was like, "Okay, this is cool". But in that capacity, I'm an advisor. I'm typically there for helping the founders with the BD [Business Development], the actual pitch deck construction, vision, picking out the cohorts, and all that good stuff. So I have, like, a sidecar pocket every quarter of ten hours for miscellaneous things, and that will be for the advisory positions formally. And, typically, I'll cycle off every couple years from it to be like, "Hey, yeah. I think I provide my value. Here's the recycle". But it's also good for deal sourcing and stuff like that because you never know where the next best team is and everything, and it's nice to already be plugged into those affiliated networks.

Jon Chee - 00:21:14: Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm guessing part of those ten hours per quarter is, like, Nucleate and the ARPA-H work. Are you still doing both?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:21: Yep. So I'll do those and then other miscellaneous thing like I have the Modern Warfare Initiative with Softworks and stuff like that. I'll be like, "Okay, I'll plug in a couple hours for this".

Jon Chee - 00:21:31: Very cool. Yeah. We're big supporters of Oliver and Sooth and Michael at Nucleate. Love what they're doing. But, yeah, you're exactly right. It was like this thing which is just like, "Oh, okay. Like, we're everywhere now".

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:43: Why the hell is it running [raining]? That's got T-shirts and stuff now?

Jon Chee - 00:21:46: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So to get back to your current gig, you basically, you know, friends over at Lux are like, "Take the call". And you're like, "Yeah. Sure. I'll take the call." And you realize that there's a bunch of super-freaks that you've been looking for. Sounds like you have now found your tribe. Can you talk a little bit about AIX's mission and focus as a firm?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:22:08: Yeah, definitely. So I joined the firm essentially as the first institutional partner , meaning, like, "Okay. This is a partner who actually has run multiple funds and actually runs a formal process on all this stuff". AIX technically started in 2021, very new fund. But the fund has grown to over 80 portfolio companies, over a hundred billion enterprise value across them, and I believe we're number two in the world for VC fund performance. So, like, we've had over eight unicorns out of the first fund, which is 2021, and back pretty much every single major AI company ever who were actually students of most of the partners.

Jon Chee - 00:22:47: That's the classic.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:22:48: Exactly. Like, Hugging Face's Clem was the student of Richard, and Richard invested at a five million valuation. Perplexity's Arvin was a student of Peter's. Like, we invested at a sub ten million valuation.

Jon Chee - 00:23:01: That's so crazy.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:23:02: And that was the caliber person I wanted to work with. You know, the first fund was a fifty million vehicle that's done exceptionally well. It was already returned a lot of money. But also then, they went into the second fund, and that's where they hired me to be basically, like, "Hey, we're institutionally anchored now. We need partners that can do this full-time and run a book correctly and everything". And I joined mid-cycle of the fund. And once again, it was the PLATO [Plan, Lead, and Take Ownership] thing. I joined; there were a couple investments done in the space, but there was an actual thesis construction, institutional-grade construction, and that's exactly what I was hired for. I was like, "Okay. This is essentially Harmonics once again. My is [it's] the defense tech stuff". So I joined a little over a year ago, and I've led nine deals and still doing the same kind of vicious clip on execution. Most partners don't lead nine deals in a year. They do that over a couple years. And Med still had the same thing of, like, "Let's just go and do this". And that fund has got 26 positions. We'll soon be at north of 30 by the end of the year, and then we're going on to our third fund, which will be a five hundred fifty million vehicle at the end of this year. But AIX wanted to be the preeminent AI-native fund out there that was staying boutique on the early stage. We're not doing multi-stage or anything, but most importantly, helmed by the world's most foremost practitioners before it was cool. And I think this is super important because it was like when I was looking at other shops, I was like, "Everybody's doing AI stuff, but they're doing bolt-ons". It wasn't actually from the ground up that we built a firm with the best people in the industry that actually do it and that aren't assholes. And it's very hard to find in a shop either. It's one or the other. And then to have conviction to build out the thesis. Because, also, like, when I joined, TechBio, the practice I lead, it was actually less than 10% of the portfolio, and now it's 25%. So I also had to pin my balls to the wall essentially. "This is where I've got to go." Right? Once again, I've backed the coin. I've got to prove myself. So I'm going to be stuck. So that's exactly what I did, to get conviction on that. So it's been cool to be there and see the evolution of the funds institutionally, but also build an exceptional—from a manager perspective—excellent returns, great portfolio management, then be with really great people. And that's what we've continued to do, of the partner structure set up. You have the investment partners and the HQ partners. One of the HQ partners, they're the market sector experts. "I understand everything about that vertical and everything," and then you pair it up with, like, Chris Manning or Anthony Gillblum or Richard Socher, and then that's kind of your right to win with every founder. It'll be like, "Wow, you're super stacked on AI, then you're super stacked on the market." Like, that combination of two leads you to win. So that's kind of what we built the firm off of.

Jon Chee - 00:25:46: Very cool. And when you said you invest in the early stages, like, what stages would that typically be?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:25:53: Yeah. So for us, pre-seed, Series A sweet spot. A Fund Two, the checks are one to ten million normally , and thirty, thirty-five shots on goal, 10 to 15% ownership. A Fund Three, which will be a larger vehicle, will be the same exact strategy, except the checks will go up to thirty million just because AI-native is expensive. But we always were cognizant of—and this was an exercise we did—of, like, once you get past five hundred fifty million, it becomes very difficult to return capital. If you're a billion-dollar fund, how are you going to return three billion to your LPs? That's a ridiculous burden, and that's what leads to that whole slide of, like, the slippery slope of suboptimal performance. So we just identified, like, "This is the perfect strike zone. This fund will be the same in perpetuity". And that was the most important thing I was looking for. I was like, "I did not want to be at an anchor shop, and I also didn't want to be at a shop where it was being terraformed incorrectly," and that's important.

Jon Chee - 00:26:46: Which just becomes capital agglomeration.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:26:49: Quite right. Because, like, Andreessen and all those folks, they're asset managers now. They're not venture capitalists. There's only so much money you can put into startups. Like, look why Andreessen is doing Speed Run and cutting a million dollars a year.

Jon Chee - 00:27:03: Yeah. Interesting.

Outro - 00:27:06: That's all for this episode of the Biotech Startups podcast featuring Krish Ramadurai. Join us next time for part four where Krish takes us inside the current AI-native market, why foundation models are commoditizing, where defensibility really lives, and how application layer wedges translate efficiency into enterprise value amid a tight fundraising environment. He also digs into what's overhyped, what's underhyped, and why pharma pays for better drug candidates, not shiny platforms. Lastly, we'll hear AIX's strategy for winning rounds, the stages and check sizes they target, and the culture they're building, plus his goals for the next fund and the next 100 cures. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening, and 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.

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