Seed Rounds Are the New Series A: How Funding Benchmarks Shifted | Krish Ramadurai (4/4)

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 balanced venture investing with graduate research at Oxford, the path that led him from nanomedicine to firm building, and why boundaries became just as important as ambition. If you missed it, check out part three. In part four, Krish unpacks the state of AI-native ventures, why the core AI layer is being commoditized, and how defensibility now lives in full-stack applications and what founders often misunderstand about market fit and real enterprise value. He also breaks down the shift in funding benchmarks, where AI is truly driving impact in biotech, and how the next generation of tech bio companies can separate painkillers from vitamins, all while reflecting on firm culture at AIX, what sets their partnership apart, and why EQ, humility, and tactical suffering are just as essential as technical brilliance.

Jon Chee - 00:01:32: You found your kind of, like, niche, your kind of focus. We talked a little bit about how you're differentiated amongst, like, kind of, like, these other firms. Can you just talk a little about, like, just to set the table, what is the state of the market for kind of this type of investing, like AI-native venture capital, and how you guys are, like, disrupting that status quo?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:01:50: Yeah. I think, as I mentioned, it's going to be fundamentally ingrained in everything we do. Right? It's essentially this critical infrastructure at this point. The biggest problem that we're seeing, right, is—and I told the YC batch this—everybody's doing the same thing. The problem is with AI right now is that the efficiency gains have not translated to enterprise value. Like, "Oh, man, we go from A to B this much faster," it's like, amazing, but, like, the customer is not seeing that result transcend into unit economics yet. And that's where, like, we're seeing the differentiation. Even most recently, we pivoted from foundation investments to application because the problem is that AI is being commoditized so quickly that the foundation layer is essentially eroded. There's no money to be made in that. It's insanely expensive and takes a lot of time. And, typically, market revelations like that don't happen that quickly. Right? Because the tech takes some time. But now the tech rolled out so quickly that you're having entire market sections be obsolete overnight. And this is the problem with, like, OpenAI or some of the primes, right, where overnight, they can roll out a tooling solution that makes an entire segment obsolete. And we saw that with Epic and medical scribe coding. Right? As soon as they rolled out their whole thing, that entire market, which has a zillion companies, is now obsolete. It's so insane. But now you have to figure out, like, where do we go? And this is where we think that at the end of the day, you have to own your wedge. Right? If you have the primes that are focusing on the whole pie, just take a slice of it and own it really well because odds are the prime is not going to have enough market know-how to actually own that. Right? And this is what we're seeing. Right? Because, like, a lot of the AI stuff is point solutions, but the only way to own a wedge is if you're a full stack, A to Z, comprehensive coverage, and doing something that can be upsold in perpetuity and be super sticky. And this is really hard. Right? Because, like, every time I see an AI company, it'll be like, "What's your defensibility ?" Right? And I'm like, "If I can rip your back end code off GitHub five different ways, then, like, this doesn't matter ." Right? And luckily, in health care and life sciences, the barrier is health care and life sciences.

Jon Chee - 00:03:47: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:03:50: I still do the same diligence motion: defensibility, proprietary data aggregation, patents, all that stuff. But on the applications I work, it's a wild, wild west. Right? And you have a 14-year-old kid with an idea that's going to raise a zillion dollars. Right? It's more difficult. Right? So you're underwriting jockeys at the end of the day way before they build a horse, right, in pedigree and everything. So, yeah, I think with this AI stuff, it's just like, there's a lot of froth to it. And the problem is that, like, we're still waiting for the tail to figure out what the enterprise customer use case is actually going to fundamentally be, and everything else is pretty bad. Right? So, like, the overall financing market is pretty horrible. Right? Like, we have high inflation, a liquidity problem, a substantial liquidity problem. Like, like all the parking lot situation, too many institutional investors, like, were assuming that cars would be removed from liquidity and new slots would open up, but we've been in a in a lock. So those parking garage that, like, you'll hear from a lot of people, would be like, "Man, it's impossible to raise money out there ." It's like, because of the parking lot situation. It doesn't matter how great your returns are; they're fully allocated. And if anything, they're seeing losses from 2021 vintage, and that's making them more hesitant. Right? So I think on that end, the state of AI is just going to be turned into a commodity play at the end of the day. And it's just trying to understand how do we find a defensible playbook. I always ask the customer, "What do you want ?" and I'll go shopping for it. And that helps me understand, like, how to invest in businesses that are sustainable on that end. But, also, like, we're seeing the transcendence on benchmarks. Like, a lot of our companies don't even raise seeds anymore. So the whole funding paradigm has been shifted, of raise a $500k pre-seed, a million, and then shotgun to a Series A because your revenue run rate is actually a Series A milestone. So now you have founders that just skip complete stages of financing. You're like, "Wait a minute! We actually have to retune for this because that's why we did Series A's, because we had founders that were skipping seed stages." And I was like, "If seed stage fund, then that stage doesn't exist anymore. Oh, f*ck. Cool. How do you adapt?" But it's cool to see, like, a lot of the seed stage deals I lead. Like, one to two million ARR run rate used to be a Series A benchmark. Now it's a seed benchmark. And now the A's that I'm doing are doing 7 to 15 million revenue. Right? And then the B's are doing north of that. Right? So, like, it's weird to see this moving of the goal post a lot as well. But the other concern is, like, great. These companies are ramping very quickly, but they're also plateauing very quickly. Or they'll run to 10 million very quickly. And then it'll be, like, "Well, the scale revenue actually doesn't go anywhere after that. That's it ." So that's also the other thing of, like, a lot of our investors are seeing that happen right now. And that's a concerning thing because it's like then you're stuck. Interesting. Interesting.

Jon Chee - 00:06:37: And I guess, like, I'm assuming you're seeing a shit ton of deals. Like, what would you say is overhyped and underhyped in terms of this whole kind of AI-native wave?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:06:41: Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing is the founders just don't understand the markets , right, from the customer's perspective. Right? Because every customer I talk to is overwhelmed. They have 90,000 different AI pilots. Right? And I'm always like, "Pick your three that you actually care about, and then I will go back those companies." Right?

Jon Chee - 00:06:57: I mean, I'll just pause right here. I'm overwhelmed. And I'm like, I adopt a shit ton of technology, and I'm like, "Dude, too much!"

Krish Ramadurai - 00:07:04: Too much froth, dude. The biggest concern is, like, "Well, if I'm having that problem, then how is the customer that's operating on a way different wavelength , right, going to be able to respond to this stuff?" Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:07:16: And it's almost like a thing where I'm almost like—I'm speaking for me—where I'm just like, "I'm not even going to bother to, like, invest my time to, like, get kind of locked into this product because, like, I just assume there's going to be another product that just, like, comes up that's going to displace this thing ." And then I'm like, "Well, all that time and effort to make this thing work, now just like, there's a new tool that just like—I should've spent my time over there ." I'm kind of in the paralysis, honestly.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:07:42: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And that's the problem that I'm going to see as a great shakeout with these AI companies of, like, who's actually building a painkiller, not a vitamin for the customer. Unfortunately, all of them are doing vitamins. We're just fundamental mismatch on, like, how to approach the market. Like, the AI people are like, "Oh, I'm going to disrupt health care," and I'll be like, "Amazing. It takes 16 months to do any type of contract procurement in health care ." That's a very slow, long, slingy process. And AI people are like, "Nope. We're going to brute force it. I'm probably going to have 7,000 customer calls by tomorrow," and I'll be like, "Amazing. Let me know when none of those work."

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:08: So there are four fundamental elements of this. So it's like, are you building what people actually want? And a lot of the founders are just assuming that.

Jon Chee - 00:08:22: Like, they... they... they...

Krish Ramadurai - 00:08:23: ...want all these efficiency gains. Like, it's funny, like, in legal tech. Right? Lawyers are not incentivized by efficiency because they're getting paid by the hour. They're like, "I don't care, man ." Like, it's those fundamental nuances. Right? Like, you need to understand that. Otherwise, if you built a legal tech company around that assumption, right, then you realize nobody cares. And that's what you're seeing a lot in these spaces. Right? And I'm finding the differentiators are the operators that understand that and then are building something that the customers are salivating over and that actually want. And there are very few things that I find customers get excited about. Like, big pharma and health care folks. Like, they get excited about just nothing. If you're excited about the one thing, like, I'm going to listen to that signal super hard.

Jon Chee - 00:09:07: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've been hearing in life sciences that AI is going to change everything. Where do you think it's actually making, like, a material impact and actually exciting large pharma? I mean, just or just, like, maybe the community at large?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:09:20: No. I think Recursion and Schrodinger and everybody did a dog-sh*t job in showing any of this stuff matters. There was a reason why I backed Insilico instead of all those other companies because at the end of the day, biotech is a drug business, and the AI people were assuming that it would become something else. And I was like, "No ." Like, the reason why we're having this biotech winter is because in 2021, everybody invested in platform and forgot that growth stage investors can only underwrite assets. Like, that's it. Like, there are no growth stage tech bio investors, so you can have the best f*cking AI on planet Earth and have a great services model, but you'll be valued as a CRO. You won't be valued as a tech company. And I think that was, like, something that I was like, "You know, it's going to revert to the mean ." Everybody's like, "Nope, you know? We're going to build $10 billion platform companies with no pipeline ." It's like, that doesn't work. And I think everybody gets the firm's software budget confused with the drug budget. The software budget is $10 million. The drug budget is $10 billion. Like, it's a totally different thing. Yeah. So I think the biggest thing in tech bio, like, what I'm excited about is, yes, in Insilico, we made the first AI-developed drug in human trials. Why? Because, like, we took an evidence-based, first-principles basis to building a massive dataset that we could actually train that was heterogeneous, train our own patient responder data, right, and everything to know that, like, with the highest degree of certainty, that this drug is probably going to perform exceptionally well. So turned it from a drilling-for-oil discipline into a predictive discipline , uh, which is very cool. But, like, how many playbooks are there out there? Like, you have all the other AI bio companies, like—and also we've been using AI in biology for, like, 20 years.

Jon Chee - 00:10:57: That's what I was going to say. It's like this has been around.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:10:59: But the problem is that all these AI companies are using the same crap data, and then they're just screening stuff into oblivion. And pharma does not care at all about that. All they care about is better drug candidates and getting to human trials. If you're not doing that, then it's, like, totally lost. But, like, all the AI people are like, "Oh my god. We found this new coupling thing! It'll be, like, amazing ." "What's your line of sight to clinic ?" They're like, "Ten years from now ." It's like, come on. Like, that's not showing how you can do better, faster, cheaper on drug development. So all the companies I backed, it's like, "Great. We have the AI-native architecture, and we call it 'lab in the loop,' which is amazing because you can build a closed-loop system that's constantly testing and churning out drugs, but you have to have a pipeline ." And the other thing is, like, a lot of the tech bio founders forgot that your lead program defines who you are as a company. Doesn't matter anything else you do. And they would pick random stuff, then you'd be like, "Oh, I picked Alzheimer's or ALS," like stuff that's super gnarly and hard to do. And then be like, "Why can't I raise money ?" It was like, "Because you picked the wrong lead, man, and nobody told them about that life ." So it's tough.

Jon Chee - 00:12:06: It is rough out there. Like, I think we are still, like, digesting, like, the 2021 kind of what you described. I love how you're just like, the people didn't realize that, like, platform companies more resemble, like, a CRO than, like, you know, if you have a pipeline candidate that can get into clinical trials. And it's like, but I think what we're seeing right now is just working through this, like, indigestion of, like, working its way through that parking lot problem that you're talking about. One way or the other, the parking lot is going to have to empty out at some point in time. It might not be pretty, but it will have to clear out eventually.

Jon Chee - 00:12:35: And I guess, like, you've kind of had a very, I would say, wide-ranging experiences from, like, academia to, like, a crash course in venture. And, like, when you think about where you're at right now, like, what's the most fun and, like, least fun of, like, being on the job as a venture capitalist?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:12:55: Yeah. I think it's, like, hyper glorified. I mean, I appreciate it. Like, every time we hire someone, I'm like, "Oh my god. That seems so cool," and everything. I'll be like, a lot of it is just being a fund manager. Right? All you're doing is portfolio management. You're, yeah, sure, you get the one percent of the time that's the super sexy stuff. And I think for me, like, I take it a step further where, like, I'm there for every patient for every drug I've worked on. It's a little bit different because most VCs are not actually practicing in the field that they're in, like, as, you know, as a scientist or engineer. So it's great to meet founders and everything, but I'm a yes person in a no business. I say no 99.8% of the time. Right? That's soul crushing. At the end of the day, at the end of every week, I get 50 pitches. I'm saying no to 49 and a half of them, and you're just doing that forever. So I think the hard thing is, like, yeah, you know, sure. It's cool to get that energy and meet the founders, but also, like, it gets to the point where you're like, "Oh my god. Another pitch," or whatever. So it's hard to not be. I think you'll see a lot of managers become quasi-cynical, uh, in the future because they're just like, "Oh, man. Here's another terrible idea." But the cool part, though, is, yeah, it is great to be there when you're there for the breakthroughs, right, of being like, "Wow! This has literally never been done ever ." And for some reason, like, we turned a fiscal asset class into an impetus for doing all the crazy stuff in the movies. Like, it's wild. Even when I look back, I'm being like, "How the f*ck did we do that ?" You know? Like, yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:14:26: Yeah. Yeah.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:14:27: To be a part of, like, human history, that's the cool part. But, like, that part is typically overwritten by the Excel sheets and portfolio modeling.

Jon Chee - 00:14:35: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. You know, it sounds like similar harmonics: you came in kind of like Play-Doh. You guys are building the plane as you're flying it. Can you talk a little bit about, like, the firm-building aspect of, like, building a venture firm at AIX? Like, what is the firm that, like, you guys are aspiring to be? What is the firm culture like? And what are the partnership dynamics like?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:14:58: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So, I mean, our thing is to be the go-to firm for AI-native founders. Right? Which, yeah. That's great in practice, but, like, to actually have the track record behind it and everything is a different thing. And I think that's the most important thing. Because everybody's saying, "I want to be this in AI." I'll be like, "Amazing. Show me the track record," and zip. And to do that, right, like, it's not that hard. Right? Because you're not raising an insane amount of money. All you're doing is just sticking to your guns and making sure that you're backing the best jockeys that are building the best horses and then going from there, because you really only need—it's still a power law business. One of those 35 positions we make is going to go to the moon while everything else does hopefully decent, but, like, isn't, like, a massive return. But, like, for us, it's just pushing the limits on next-gen computer architecture for scientific discovery and innovation. I think that's probably the biggest thing. And that's why I vibe so much with this. I was like, "Great. You can produce alpha, but, like, what is ultimately the net benefit for humanity ?" And I think fundamentally showing that on a prescriptive basis shows that, yes, you can be a financial manager, but you can actually quantitatively define how you're improving the world through patient outcomes or whatever. So it's that hybridized mentality of, like, great. It's not the crazy evil AI people because I know the one for, like, Blockchain to crypto to AI now, and it'll be, like, "Great. What's the next thing ?" I remember when Web 3 was the thing and all that stuff. Right? Like, and that was my thing, of like, "I wanted to be at the firm that is the cornerstone of that, not just, like, something that's floating on to the next thing ." Right? I think now they're calling climate tech 'existential resilience' or whatever, because, like, and it's just like, I don't want to be where I'm just going under a different wrapper based on the flavor of the...

Jon Chee - 00:16:42: Totally. These deals are competitive as hell. Like, when it comes to a founder that has a bunch of options, why do you think AIX is, like, the best choice for a founder approaching you guys?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:16:52: I think it's EQ, IQ. Right? It's funny how I'm like, "It's not that hard to be technically proficient and not an asshole," but for some reason with this business, that seems like Mount Everest. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. I don't know if it's just the Midwesterner in me, but I'm just like, "It's not that hard to know what you're talking about and then just be nice to people ." And it's funny how that's 95% of winning a round, I will honestly tell you. And then, yes, it does help to have the pedigrees and the background and everything because I could be like, "Oh, I invest in this company." Most of the time, I found it to be like, "Holy sh*t. Like, yeah. I want to work with you guys on that." But, I mean, like, we're there to actually—and I think this is unique—that, like, I can actually build what the founder wants. It's like going a step further from, like, not like building the company, but actually the science part of it. Like, we have one of our companies, like, "We want to develop the first foundation models of the human immune system." Like, "Amazing. This is how we do it." Right? And I don't think there's, like, any way on Wall Street that would be like, "Yeah. This is how you do it," and then actually, like, do it. Like, I mean, half the time, I'm actually coding the actual technical breakthrough of the company, like, for ... And I think that's, like, when you take it a step forward, that's like even going beyond just operating. It's like a next level of, like, you are the person that actually does this sh*t. We should probably do that. And, like, all the Series A's, like, we were leading Series A's with tiny baby checks, like, 6 to $8 million checks. Right? Like, and I remember the first batch of A's I led, I was like, it's going up against every single Tier One and Peter Thiel and everybody to get the founder to produce the post-money from 200 million down to 70 at a post and then let us lead that round with the tiny check. Right? Oh, man. Like, that was even an exercise for me. I was like, "This is going to be so bad. They're going to say, 'You're an idiot,' 'Well, hey, I'm not going to f*cking do it .'" And yet it's worked five times now, and that was the realization of why we needed to raise a larger fund because we're like, "Wow! We can win all the Series A's even with the tiniest, dinkiest check on planet Earth ." Right? When you're going back, I'll be like, "Oh my god! I just led the Series A with a $7 million check ." I was like, I remember on Peter Thiel and people were like, "You're missing a zero. You mean 70 million you're going to lead this round with ?" I was like, "No." It's a good problem to have. But I think, like, at the end of the day, you're just successful being normal and just, like, knowing what you're talking about. If you just do that, you'll be fine. But for some reason, people have to stratify it each way. I find that the other thing too is, like, I'm just the same person in the office as I am out of the office. There is no, like, dissonance here. And I find that when you're comfortable with yourself, a lot of other people get comfortable with you. That makes it easier. Like, I don't need to go from, "Oh, am I a normal dweeb outside of the office ?" I'm a dweeb in the office and out of the office. Now a lot of founders just vibe with that because they're like, "Great. I'm also a dweeb in the office and out of the office."

Jon Chee - 00:19:49: I feel the exact same way about it. It is not that hard to just not be an asshole, like, and it goes a long way. It really goes a long way. It doesn't, like, cost you anything to be nice. And I think you're exactly right. I think, unfortunately, financial services tends to put you into the asshole bucket. But if you can, like, just not be, that's a competitive edge, to be quite honest. Because life's too short to be working with assholes, to be quite honest.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:20:15: We got it. Right? Right? And with these founders, if you're going to be stuck with a VC for up to ten years, like, a lot of them get in bed with the wrong person. It's funny when I tell LPs that. And I was like, "I don't really explain this intangible of just being normal ." Right? Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:20:27: Yeah. I do truly think that's, like, a massive edge. And, also, this is funny because for the leasing business for Excedr, we're super weird because we only do lab equipment , and everyone in the leasing business is just like, "What ?" Like, because they're usually, like, industry agnostic. They're, like, "Construction equipment, planes, cars, trucking, you know, whatever. We'll do it all. Lab equipment too ." But for us, we found that it's just, like, having come from the bench and actually knowing how to, like, use the equipment that we're leasing out is like—you know how it is. Like, most scientists and academics are just like, "Stay away, business people !" But, like, it's kind of this thing where you're aligned. There's, like, there's, like, alignment and can be value add above and beyond the check. It also goes a long way in addition to being nice. So I I love that kind of strategy.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:21:14: Represent. I feel like if you're a master of your craft, you should be able to explain anything in a way that's conducive for everybody to understand. And that's the funny part. That's how I actually know if somebody doesn't know what the f*ck they're talking about. We'll go immediately into the paper or whatever. I'll be like, "Great. Explain it, uh, not in a way that's baby food, but in a way that could be framed for everybody to understand ." That takes even a higher order of intelligence to do. Just remedial, okay, let me explain. And I think that's why most people are turned off from STEM. Right? It's just explained in a way that's conducive for them to understand or learn, and it's very segmented into one type of, "This is it. This is the frequency that you need to understand. And if you don't, that means you're dumb ." Right? And then, actually, the frequency does not tune correctly.

Jon Chee - 00:21:59: Yep. Spot on. Spot on. And, like, as you're looking forward one year, two years, what's in store for you and AIX?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:22:09: Yeah. I mean, I think for us, it's just business as usual, man. I think we'll move on to Fund Three, and we'll be fortunate enough to hire some additional really cool rock star principals to join the team. But this is kind of like when you've built the mothership out. It's like, "Okay. This is it ." This is our identity for the next 10 funds, right, of us doing this. And I think just continuing to hammer down and backing really great technologies that actually are doing good for the world, but also, like, I think for us, like, continuing to practice our craft. Right? Because there's a very fine line, uh, because a lot of VCs are not AI experts, and not a lot of AI experts are VCs. Right? I like when you're in that ebb and flow right in between both of them where you can practice it and then be an allocator. It's a very unique, weird spot to be in. So I'm excited for us. Like, my side of the fence, I want to have a hundred new cures for a hundred new diseases over the next decade at the firm. And I think, hell yeah! Like, so it's kind of stuff like that. And then just just staying low key. Just staying away from being a d*ck and then just doing the same thing. You know? Yeah. So I wish I could be like, "Oh, man. We're going to do some Tony Robbins a** sh*t and talk about how we're going to IPO on Pluto," or something. I was like, "I'm all pretty just f*cking normal."

Jon Chee - 00:23:23: I love that. I love that. And, Krish, I've had a blast. You've been so generous with your time, and it's a breath of fresh air to be normal. Like, and, like, it's like, to have someone who leans into that. Because whenever we hear, especially in the media, Zeitgeist, like I said, venture can be very loud, and you could suck the air out of the room, but it's a breath of fresh air when you're just like, "No. I'm a normal dude ." I'm interested in a lot of things, and I'm a geek. And I'm that way inside and outside the office, which is, I think, you know, again, a breath of fresh air. So thank you so much for your time for sharing your story, and I've learned a lot all the way through this. And in a traditional closing fashion, we have two questions for you. So first, would you like to give any shout-outs to anyone who supported you along the way?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:24:04: Yeah. I mean, I would love to give a shout-out to both my grad school advisers, Sudhakthu and Abby Banerjee at Harvard and Oxford. And they're all partners, too : Sean, Richard, and Chris, and Anthony, and Peter, and all those folks for giving me a shot. And, yeah, I think those are the good folks. I think if you're surrounded by good people, good things happen inevitably. Right? Absolutely.

Jon Chee - 00:24:28: And the last question, if you can give any advice to your 21-year-old self?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:24:30: I would tell him: "Don't drink that much. You're going to have to take Tums in the future ." So, yeah, maybe ease up on the tacos, uh, my god.

Jon Chee - 00:24:40: No pain, no gain. Right?

Krish Ramadurai - 00:24:42: Yeah. I mean, I would be like, "Don't be afraid of failure ." I mean, that would be honestly it because I was absolutely terrified of it, and I was doing everything in my power to avoid it. And I was just like, "You know what? When you're just constructive about it, it ends up just being kind of, like, you're falling down a step, but you actually learn how to climb the next two ." And nobody told me that. Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah. Failure is great. You just kind of suffer and do it ." I was like, "But this is horrible ." Like, when you're in it, when you're in that part of the montage they skip in the three years of where you're just suffering. Like, you can listen to as much Katy Perry as you want, but you're like, "Man, give me a break here ." I think as long as you're actually tactical with it, I would say tactical suffering.

Jon Chee - 00:25:25: Tactical suffering. I love that. I I could see myself at 21 just being absolutely terrified of failing as well. But like you said, like, if you know where the bottom is and everything is up in gravy from there, it's really it's only truly liberating. It leads you to really interesting places. So fantastic advice for, you know, anyone out there. Well, Krish, thanks again. This has been super fun. I can keep doing this for hours and hours with you, but I realize you're a busy guy. So thanks again for being so generous with your time.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:25:51: Absolutely. Super appreciative and grateful for the opportunity, Jon, and I appreciate you letting us tune into the channels to to nerd out with fellow super freaks in the world.

Jon Chee - 00:26:00: Yeah. Yeah. Fellow super freak. Hell, yeah. You know, the next time, let's do this IRL rather than the Zoom thing, and let's grab a cup of coffee.

Krish Ramadurai - 00:26:07: 100%, man. Anytime. I'll see you soon. Thanks so much, Jon.

Outro - 00:26:12: Thanks for listening to our four-part series featuring Krish Ramadurai. From his early days in Chicago to navigating academia and venture capital, Krish's story shows how curiosity, conviction, and an appetite for challenge can shape an unconventional path in biotech investing. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend. Join us for our next series featuring Amy Hay, Chief Business Officer at CTMC, a joint venture between MD Anderson Cancer Center and National Resilience, accelerating cell therapy development from discovery to clinical translation. Before joining CTMC, Amy served as Global Head of Oncology Strategy Initiatives at Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company, where she launched Oncology as a Service, OAAS, a global platform integrating medical technology, clinical solutions, and digital services to expand access to advanced cancer care. Under her leadership, Varian forged partnerships with Ayala Health in The Philippines and Christus Health in The US, generating more than $75 million in new revenue within the program's first year. Amy is also a founder, having founded Evolv International, a health care strategy firm, advising leading cancer organizations. With a master's in health care administration and deep experience spanning oncology strategy, partnerships, and innovation, Amy's career demonstrates how collaboration and execution can accelerate the future of cancer care, making this a conversation you won't want to miss. 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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