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 part two, Leslie made the move from teaching into pharmaceutical and enterprise health care sales, learning how much of her old classroom skill set still applied. If you missed it, go back to part two. In part three, Leslie joined Slone Partners at a moment when the firm is still small. She explains how the company grew from its roots in laboratory and diagnostics recruiting into a broader life sciences and health care search business, why relationships became central to its model, and what she looks for when making an early hire.
Leslie Loveless - 00:01:08: Yeah. Basically, it was a promotion opportunity that kind of runs together because right after I went to what was Ameripath and Specialty Labs as the director of sales training, they got acquired by Quest.
Jon Chee - 00:01:21: Oh, I mean, they're like, we need Leslie back.
Leslie Loveless - 00:01:24: Yeah. But simultaneous with all of that was what I shared with you in our initial conversation about starting the adoption process. And so that all sort of ran together, and that really was the impetus for reaching back out to Adam because, I mean, I was mid thirties, and I was adopting a baby, and she was four months old. I mean, it's not like having a baby where there's nine months of ramp up to this. It was you get a phone call.
Jon Chee - 00:01:57: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're going
Leslie Loveless - 00:02:00: to get the baby, and you're coming home with the baby. And so, I mean, all of that sort of happened. And in my preparation for that, Adam and I reconnected, and that's how I ended up joining. And I did bring my daughter home in my first year at Slone Partners.
Jon Chee - 00:02:19: Amazing. I love that. So talk a little bit about I'm gonna imagine Slone Partners was no longer just a one man band. Or was it? Or was it? Were you the second man member?
Leslie Loveless - 00:02:30: No. But it was small. I think I was employee number five. It was very small still at that time. So yeah. I mean, we were a small but mighty little group. Yeah. I mean, it was a risk. And when I think back on it, I've had no idea at that time how big that decision was. That was a really big decision to leave an enormous company and go be employee number five at a small recruiting firm, and I've never I've not been in recruiting.
It was a very big decision and a leap of faith that I didn't actually even realize that I was taking at that time. Now, obviously, it worked out pretty well. But truly, when I look back on that, I think, gosh, I probably should've asked a lot more questions back then, but I didn't do that. I mean, I felt like I had a friend that I'd gotten to know a little bit over the prior couple of years, and circumstances in my personal life just made it such that it was the right decision at that time.
Jon Chee - 00:03:31: That's so cool. It reminds me of when, like, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA was talking about the acquired podcast. First, it was like, would you do it again if you knew, like, everything you know now? And he's like, absolutely not. This is like, no. Like, what? Like, you gotta be a crazy person to do it if you knew everything now to when you, like, took that leap of faith. I certainly didn't know anything. All, like, the hardship and just, like, both business and personal, it's all worth it. And, like, it's all worth it. It's a great experience even if it is a painful one, but, like, I think you gotta be a little cuckoo to, like, start something, basically, just, like, will it into existence with a small team. It's, like, a nontrivial task.
Leslie Loveless - 00:04:14: We were talking earlier about how it's such a shame that you have to get older to get wiser, but in some ways, thank goodness that's true because a lot of things maybe wouldn't happen if people waited until they were wiser and more cautious. Right? Life is interesting that way. It allows things to happen at different times for people, and I guess that's just the way it's supposed to be.
Jon Chee - 00:04:37: Yeah. And I think kind of like a thing too is, like, we want people to be working on hard problems, and you kind of need to have that naivete to even do it or else we would do nothing. Like, I always think back about that, like, scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall where, like, they're doing surf lessons and the surf lesson was like he was just like, gotta do less. He's like trying to get up on the surfboard and he's like, do less. Now you're not doing anything at all. Like, you're just like laying on the surfboards. Like, if you know the world's knowledge and have other world's wisdom, you're just gonna be crippled with paralysis. You're not gonna do anything. You kind of just like have to take that leap of faith.
Also too, it's like thinking about, like, these, like, career trajectories that are just, like, take a turn for whatever reason is like the universe. For me, I was working in, like, a consulting law firm consulting firm, and basically, I didn't get the full time offer after that, but that set me to start Excedr. And I was so bummed. I was, like, so bummed. And my parents are also, like, you need to get a job. You gotta pay the bills. Yada yada yada yada. And not getting that, well, like, broke my heart, but Excedr wouldn't have existed if I did get that gig. By no choice, I'm like it was just like the universe. It's like, no. It wasn't meant to be. Like like, you didn't get the offer. So it's funny how it plays out like that. Like, it's a phone call. Like, you're just like, oh, how the hell did you get my number that turns into your next kind of, like, chapter here? So you went from super massive organization to now five, like, big start up energy and different industry. Just talk about that experience.
Leslie Loveless - 00:06:12: So one of the funniest parts about that is we often joke about the early days and remembering that we didn't even have a conference line initially. So when we were doing a group call, one person would call one person who would patch in the next person and patch in the next person, patch in the next thing you know, we have five people in meeting. And, I mean, it sounds so silly that that was actually something that was happening, but it was. And, obviously, everything is different now. It's insane how fast everything moves. I mean, it was real start up mode, and you worked off of pieces of paper and spreadsheets, and it wasn't like there was this CRM that tracked everything that you needed to track and kept you organized and all of that. So, I mean, it was hardcore startup mode.
And so one of the things that's very interesting for me now is that as a search firm, we work with a lot of start ups, venture backed start ups. And one of the things that we're always trying to vet for is a person's ability to move into and be effective in a start up. And I think a lot about that change that I made from being in this big corporation to being employee number five and patching people in for a conference call. And I can talk to people about that, like, trying to figure out, can you really do this? And not just can you do this, but are you going to enjoy being part of something that is so hands on, you know, where it's not all these big teams that are getting things done, it's you that's getting something done.
One thing though that hasn't changed for me, and I think this is a little bit of an age factor thing for me. So people in our company, a lot of them are younger than me, and they are always, you know, in meetings. I can tell that that they're typing their notes, and everything's getting recorded directly into the CRM, which is, of course, the most efficient way to do things. Me, I still have cabinets full of notebooks. I mean, notebooks that are dated. I started writing in this notebook on this date, and I finished on this date, and then I started the next notebook. And it's hilarious to me because why am I not being efficient and typing my notes the way that the rest of our team is? And it might go all the way back to me being a teacher, and I have this need to hold a notebook and a pen. And I feel like when I'm talking to people, whether it's a client or a candidate, and I'm trying to really understand them and what their story is and learn and ask questions, I feel like I learn best when I've got my notebook and I've got my pen and I'm writing and I'm looking at them. I'm not typing. You know? My fingernails are not clicking on the keyboard. I'm just looking at them and I'm writing. And so it's very strange to me that I'm still in that mode, but I can't break it. Like, I really love my notebooks.
Jon Chee - 00:09:21: Yeah. And that's, like, a stylistic thing. Like, I'm a visual learner. Like, my wife can just, like, crush books. I can do, like, picture books. I'm half joking, like, I of course, I could read, but I think one of the reasons why science just, like, gravitated to me is because, like, there's, like, these, like, illustrations of, like, the cell and, like, the mech and I can just, like, envision it in my head. So, like, for me, I'm, like, don't just give me a wall of text. Can you just, like, whiteboard this for me? Got it. Okay. And I think it's kind of a thing where just, like, what's rad about where we are in, like, this technology cycle now, so almost you can get, like, personalized learning and different way, like, the LLMs can, like, if you're like, hey, like, I'm a visual learner. I need you to put this into a chart or, like, put this into a visual thing, the illustration that I can make sense of. It will do it. Like, it will do it.
And my chief legal officer is similar to you, pen and paper, and just, like, is fantastic at it. And she reads so fast, like, it's, like, so fast. And I'm like, slow down. It's kinda like know your personnel. Like, everyone's got different learning styles, communication styles, and just, like, the better you can tailor your organization to each individual's, like, best mode of learning and operating, the better the organization goes. So with Slone Partners, like, did you guys always had the same mission and focus on science, or did that mission evolve over time? Just, like, talk about, like, as a five person company, what was, like, the North Star for you guys, and has that changed over time?
Leslie Loveless - 00:10:50: It certainly has changed over time. When we first started, we had a lot of clients in that laboratory and diagnostic space, and we still do have a lot of clients in that laboratory and diagnostic space. But as market dynamics change, your business has to change too. And so the makeup of our business today is very different than it was when I joined the company. We do a lot of work with venture and private equity backed companies, but it is more broadly dispersed as far as the types of clients that we're working with.
We work directly with investors, and that's a great thing to have those strong relationships with investors because then you end up getting to work with a lot of their portfolio companies. And when you're placing executives and you understand the investor and what the investors like to see in their executives, Doing a lot of work with the same investors is a very good thing because you get to know the phenotype that is going to serve them well and be a great match for their portfolio companies. And so that has been a really important evolution in our business is that relationship base with private equity and venture capital investors.
That was a very big change, but we also have now a lot of business with the drug innovator companies. So the biotechs, obviously, data sciences and computational biology and AI and machine learning. Like, lots of companies that are in that particular realm are our clients now. Research tools companies, still the diagnostics and laboratory has changed a lot because back today, it used to be primarily sort of mainstream clinical and anatomic pathology work, whereas now it's liquid biopsy and prognostic in nature in addition to being diagnostic early detection work. You know, it's that kind of thing now. And so the makeup of that genomics space is entirely different and very exciting. Uh, it's super exciting space.
And then the other part that has changed for us is on the health care side. So we have a lot of clients that are health tech, digital health, utilizing AI and machine learning more in health care and for patient monitoring and patient engagement and those sorts of things. So we have a lot of clients that are more in that health tech, digital health space. And then we also have clients that are in the hospital health system realm. So we have a handful of clients that are more in the academic medicine space, and we do a lot of physician placement work for them, placing a chair of anesthesiology or vascular medicine or something like that.
Jon Chee - 00:13:31: Very cool. And when you first joined, was the primary focus on the lab, basically, kind of like the quests of the world?
Leslie Loveless - 00:13:39: Lab and diagnostic products, like IVB kit products and reagent and that sort of thing. Yeah. That was very early days, but that singular focus didn't last very long because at that time, companies like LabCorp and Quest and later Sonic, they became very acquisitive. So all of those independent labs that used to exist twenty years ago, they started disappearing because they became part of the big corporations. And so we evolved pretty quickly from there. I didn't mention this, but we also do a lot of work in that pharma services space like contract research, contract manufacturing and development. Those are pretty high volume clients for us as well.
Jon Chee - 00:14:20: Oh, to this day?
Leslie Loveless - 00:14:21: Yes. Very much.
Jon Chee - 00:14:22: I was gonna say, like, the connectivity across the broader sciences is, like, you have a lot of coverage. I would imagine that affords you, like, you can connect the dots, like Yes. Really well. Was this always the grand ambition when you guys were just five, or was this something where like, did you guys have, like, the twenty five year plan? There's, like, we are going to be the connective tissue across all of this. What would your wedge into getting to the point where you are now?
Leslie Loveless - 00:14:48: So the reality is that it wasn't easy to make that transition, and it was kind of one thing at a time. Like, you make the tightest connection you can to that first branch out and then find the next connection from that branch out, and you just keep building it until you have a tree. And that's really what happened, and now we have all the branches under the industry sectors of life sciences and health care, and it's been a really good experience to watch it all unfold. And everything is interconnected, but getting your foot in is still hard because clients have to see the same connection that you see, or it is hard for them to see you as the right choice. So it's great now twenty years later to see where we started and where we are today and how it all happened, but you have to work hard to connect all those dots and get others to see you the way that you are today.
Jon Chee - 00:15:53: Yeah. And when you guys were just getting started, what was the core differentiating element? You talked about when you're, like, selling to the health care systems at Quest. Like, there's gotta be, like, economic differentiation, product differentiation, service level differentiation. What was, like, the secret sauce? Like, got you guys started.
Leslie Loveless - 00:16:12: Yeah. That's a really great question, and people ask me that a lot. Why should we work with you? Because there are a lot of search firms, and they're all shapes and sizes and flavors. And I'm sort of a believer that there's kind of a place for all different types. I don't think that we are the answer for everyone just like I don't think a b c company is the answer for everyone. The business that we are in is absolutely a business about people. People are our clients. People are our product, and connecting them is what we do. And so I firmly believe that being great at search means being great at serving people and understanding people and reading people and really being able to appreciate and care about what fits and what doesn't fit and acknowledging when it doesn't fit and not trying to force it to fit. Like, I think those are all super important realities in the business that we are in.
So when people ask me that question about choosing us, I always go back to the people. I've been here for almost twenty years, but most of our team has been here for ten or more years, many of them for fifteen or more years. And people don't stay in a search firm for that sort of tenure unless they're very good at what they do and like who they're doing it with. They just don't stay. And so that continuity of our team, I think, is a real differentiator in how we show up for our clients. And that part makes me really happy. I'm very confident in saying that because I see it play out every day. I also see how it plays out internally as far as how our group supports one another, helps one another. We all know what our responsibilities are, and we show up in that way. So for me, that's the big thing.
Jon Chee - 00:18:11: I love that. And I would imagine with, like, ten years that long, there's, like, a compounding effect of, like, you learn so much on the job. You meet so many people on the job. And the longer you stay that, like, the tree just, like, starts to broaden. So you're just, like, seeing a lot more and you know a lot more in terms of, like, you can connect dots that most people can't connect. Because, like, if you have attrition, you're starting from scratch again. Whereas, like, with a tenure that long, the learnings and the relationships you made up all the way are all accretive, which is awesome to hear. And I guess, like, a question for you, like, you went from sales training and now you went into recruiting. What was it like for you to just, like, personally learn how to recruit? Did it feel natural? Did it, like, come natural to you? Are there, like, key differences from, you know, previous kind of roles that you really, like, honed in on? Talk a little bit about that transition for you.
Leslie Loveless - 00:19:03: Yeah. Again, going back to that decision, like, in fairness, I don't even know how I would know if I would like recruiting. I mean, there were so many things that I didn't know to think about or ask questions about twenty years ago when I made that change. As it turned out, and I'm grateful for this every day, it was really an excellent fit. It was the combination of what I did before moving into industry and sales and then what I learned from being in industry and working in life sciences and health care. So bringing that all together in recruiting. And so when I think about what I do every day and what our responsibilities are as a search firm, it is all about listening, learning, and communicating. That's what I do all day long is listen and learn and share. So it was those things coming together for me in this role that was very much sort of perfect alignment.
I do think that and this goes back to, again, the early days of being in front of kids and having to pay attention to everything and read the room and know what people are saying and doing and thinking and absorbing and missing and, you know, all of those sorts of things. And recruiting is very much like that. On the candidate side, it is all about understanding who is this person, what are their experiences, what are their motivations, what are their ambitions for their career, and, you know, what path do they wanna follow, what personality traits do they have that are going to either align well or not with the client that we're serving and applying all of that information to making matches.
This is why I say the people part of this is so important. Looking at someone's resume and seeing what their experience is is like just one piece of a really complex puzzle. It's one piece of it. And if you're not paying attention to every single thing that a candidate says to their behaviors throughout the course of a search, to what they avoid in conversations and don't comment on, don't give you the right signs about, like it's all of that that you have to pay attention to, and I've been doing that my whole life. Right? I mean, I've been doing it my entire life, and it's just, like, super fine tuned at this point because of all the conversations over the last twenty years. But that's really what it's all about. And having the courage also to speak up when someone has a brilliant resume for a role, but they are absolutely not the right fit for that hiring manager or for that company, and they might be a beautiful fit somewhere else, a perfect fit somewhere else. It's about understanding the difference between an a plus candidate for this job and an a plus candidate.
Jon Chee - 00:22:13: Yep. That makes so much sense, and I think long and hard about, like, team building. And I talked to my cofounder about this too. So my cofounder, not in life science outside of Excedr, but his company, Evergreen, services group, it's a permanent holdco and they acquire companies in managed services businesses. And he talks a lot about how important it is to find the right person when a company decides to join Evergreen. Like, the executives of the actual company that is joining the fold, it's make or break. Like, if the fit is wrong, it's such a consequential decision that he talks about, like, how much time he spends on just, like, finding the right people. He's like, there's nothing else I do in my job, and they've done, like, a 150 acquisitions, and it's a lot. He's like, people. Just, like, finding the right people. And he's had his fair share where he's like, crap. I thought I had that figured out. I thought this person was perfect. Wasn't the case. And it can be painful. It's like making the wrong people decisions are it's the most painful, frankly.
Leslie Loveless - 00:23:18: Yeah. It is. It absolutely is. Yes. And most hiring managers will tell you that the error is rarely about competency. It rarely is about that. I mean, occasionally, maybe someone doesn't have the experience that you believe that they had or the level of depth in a particular area that you need. Like, maybe it somehow gets missed. But that really is rarely the reason that it doesn't work out. Yeah. And the other things are harder to spot. Right?
Jon Chee - 00:23:51: For sure. And sometimes people are very good at not showing it. Like, people are like professional interviewers, especially, like, if you're hiring very senior roles, they know how to hold it together, like, so you can't get like, reading the room gets harder. Because, like, this is what they do day in, day out. And so it really is both art and science. But the you know, on the flip, like, if you find the right one, game changing. Just, like, absolutely game changing. And I think about, like, the success of a biotech company, a start up, is just, like, those decisions are also just, like, way more weighted and more impactful because, like like you said, you're employee five. You're one fifth of the company. So you have like, that decision is numerically massive. Like Massive.
Leslie Loveless - 00:24:38: Yeah. I often tell our clients, this hire for you will have a major impact. It will either be a positive one or a negative one. It is rarely neutral at that stage where it's like, yeah. It was an okay hire. It's rarely that the feedback is either that it was wildly successful or, oh, lord, because that's what happens when you're so lean. The impact is felt in either a positive or negative way.
Jon Chee - 00:25:07: Yep. Yep. Exactly. Like, I see it time and time again as I'm talking to customers too because, like, sometimes the conversations don't just revolve around equipment. It's, like, just, like, broader. It's just, like, company building. And I'm just like, yeah. Like, the equipment is one piece of the puzzle here, but, like, the people actually, like, running the company, that's where everything, like, flows from there. And, like, I think too, what you said stood out to me is, like, it's rarely about the competency. A lot of it is, like, attitude. That's not something you can really train, honestly. Like, it's like, I can train like, I and I always come back to the sayings, like, I hire for attitude, train for aptitude. Like, I can't train you to like this. Like, I or have a good attitude or, like, have this, like, drive to do this type of work. That's gotta come from within, like, really. But if you're willing to, like, learn, I will spend as much time as I need to to teach you whatever concept it is, but I can't make you want it, like honestly.
Leslie Loveless - 00:26:06: Attitude is everything. It is everything. And in our business where I see that show up and the importance of the right attitude is that search is hard. When everything is about people, let's just be real. It's hard because if people are your product, you have a fallible product. Like, that's just a fact. People are not machines. They have free will. They do things that you don't expect them to do sometimes, say things that you're like, really? That is life. That happens to everybody in work and in personal every day of their lives. And so when that's your work, your attitude about it shapes everything, and you have to think positively about what you get to do and not dwell on the things that you almost can't believe because so strange that it happened. Right? And that is a hard thing to do because when people are disappointing or even sometimes shocking in their behavior, it is hard to not let that in and let it impact your attitude about how you approach the situation. And so in our business, attitude is everything. You just gotta pick back up and keep going.
Jon Chee - 00:27:23: Yeah. And that willingness to pick up and keep going is like, I would imagine as you're trying to, like, match a candidate with a company. Again, it's just, like, making sure, like, when things get tough for either end that they still wanna get up, pick themselves up, and keep going rather than just, like, throw in the towel. It's like, I'm out. And that's why I think too is just, like, so important. It's just like you gotta find people who are willing to, like, go through those, like inevitably, every organization is gonna go through a rough patch. It's like sussing out if they have the willingness to get through that rough patch and keep going. And it's hard. That's, like, reading the room. There's, like you're trying to, like, look into a crystal ball, like, a little bit. But, like, when you get it right, that's when magic happens, like, truly. And, I mean, it certainly sounds like from the earliest days of Slone, as you guys continue to grow and, like, again, like you said, it's like it's a people business and people are staying there for a really long time. What's, like, your guys' secret sauce to just, like, having a place that people really wanna stay for this long?
Leslie Loveless - 00:28:26: It's more than a business now because we've been together for a really long time and, you know, I told you that we adopted my daughter, brought her home in the first year here. Well, my daughter is getting ready to start her second year at Purdue. I mean so the people that I work with know her from being a baby to now being a second year student at Purdue. And I'm just one person. We've got a lot of people that have similar stories as far as what turns their lives have taken over the course of being employees here. And so it's fair to say there's a real love of one another and genuine affection for everyone here and their families and their well-being. And when you have that sort of internal sentiment about the people that you work with, that does very positively impact how you feel about the work itself. So I think there's a lot of that that just comes with time and trust.
Jon Chee - 00:29:33: Yeah. And I think I mean, I'm sure anyone who would work with you can just, like you can feel it. It's much more than just, like, a company. It's like there's more to it. It's more than just the job. It's like we're doing this for other reasons beyond that, which is awesome. Because, like, I think just like talking about, like, the leasing industry, I get questions a lot of the time on, like, you can lease a bunch of other stuff outside of laboratories. Like, you know, there's, like, aviation leasing. There's construction equipment. There's, like, fleets of trucks, like, you know. But we very specifically made the choice to we just wanna serve the scientific community. It's like, why we get out of bed. Couldn't make a lot more money if I did airplanes, but it's like, that's not interesting. It's not my it's not our thing. It's someone else's thing. Our thing is, like, serving the scientific community and seeing what comes of that.
And part of that is just, like, so why would we get out of bed? For me, I was like, I get to stay close to the science, and it's a very privileged place to be as a not so great bench scientist. Like, I was like, I have smarter colleagues, like, doing the actual research, and being able to play a small part is, like, I'm so grateful for that and so privileged, and it's, like, it gets me fired up every single day. This is more than just, like, helping you get equipment. That's, like, one piece of it, which is, like, seeing this come to life is a massive motivating factor. And so I it really resonates with me when as you're talking about, like, your company culture. And every company has their own culture, and you can't really copy paste one company to another company. Because, like, again, as you described, like, organizations or groups of people, everyone is different, has good days, bad days. Like, there's, like, volatility, everything, but it's, like, a unique thing. So I'd love hearing about what you guys uniquely have going on at Slone. So, like, as you guys are, like, expanding and growing the organization, the family's getting bigger. You're now overseeing a large organization. How have you had to evolve as a leader from a small team of five to a much larger team? Like, what does it take to lead an organization that's, like, far larger now?
Outro - 00:31:34: That's it for part three with Leslie Loveless. Next time, Leslie takes us inside the harder part of growth, moving from a five person company to a much larger organization, learning to let go and accepting that strong people may communicate and work differently than she does. She also shares how Slone protects its culture as the team grows. If this series is landing for you, pass it along to someone building in biotech. See you for the finale.
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.
