How SynBio Is Transforming a $100B Industry | Michael Newton (Part 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, Michael Newton shared how business school helped him to reconnect with his passion for science and health care, explore new ways of thinking, and lay the groundwork for his transition into entrepreneurship. If you missed it, check out part three. In part four, Michael reflects on founding Qorium, how a big scientific idea, a clear mission, and the right team came together to build something novel and high-impact. He shares what sets Qorium's platform apart, how he's approached team building and culture, and why being values-driven is essential when leading a biotech company through uncertainty.

Michael Newton - 00:01:12: Qorium's mission is to reinvent the leather industry. And it really is this premise that the only way you can do that is with real leather. You know, there's been pleather for fifty years, right? There are a lot of alternatives available today made from pineapples or other things that can be great materials. They can be great for the environment. But at the end of the day, leather is a unique material with its unique properties.

And the only way you're going to actually be able to disrupt that industry is by taking the same biological engine to make that same natural material. And so that's our whole premise as a business. And, you know, there are certainly huge sustainability reasons for doing that, and we are a very sustainability-driven company, and our employees are very focused on that, but it's actually not our reason for existing.

You know, we want to make beautiful leather that makes beautiful end products, that is available anywhere in the world at a price point that is comparable, and that makes, essentially, a better end-world. And we're really convinced we can do it. We're now using synthetic biology repeatedly to be able to coax these bovine fibroblast cells to go build collagen sheets that get turned into leather. And the impact has the potential to be massive, but you've got to be able to scale it, and you've got to be able to get the price down. And, you know, we're working every day on that.

Jon Chee - 00:02:32: Yeah. I mean, I can imagine the experience from Nike, in the supply chain and the optimizations, are definitely starting to fire off. What is the current state of the leather market? And why is it this way and why is it problematic? And then how does your technology disrupt this status quo?

Michael Newton - 00:02:53: So the leather industry is a very opaque and, frankly, very antiquated industry. It's very much still run by relationships. You can't get a lot of good data around it. It's very artisan in that way. And so it's hard necessarily to understand what it's all about. It's taken us a long time and me a long time to really get a handle on it.

But, yeah, there's $100 billion worth of leather traded every year. That's not end product. That's not like the bag or the shoes. It's just the value of the leather. And that leather is very much a global market. Right? So, hides can come from anywhere and go to anywhere and be turned into a variety of products. Obviously, there are very different ranges of quality in that. And so, if you're buying a really nice car or a handbag or something, it's going to come from certain places because you get the quality of a French calf, a Dutch calf, a German bull—all those different things. And so it's a very dynamic and fluid and global market.

The product itself is a co-product of the broader livestock business. A lot of people will think and just say, "Well, it is a byproduct of meat and it's free." It's just totally untrue. It's easy for people to say that, but the leather, especially in the higher-end markets, has a real economic value that's very important to the supply chain. And so it really contributes to supporting the overall livestock market.

To put it crassly, cows are the worst factory you could ever imagine. I mean, they're super inefficient. They're incredibly polluting. The way in which they convert energy intake to product output is terrible. Right? They require a lot of land. They're the number one driver of deforestation globally. There are 1.55 billion cattle in the world. We're just talking about a supply that doesn't make sense, but we're super dependent upon it. Right? You know, meat, milk, leather—there's a bunch of other stuff that comes with that people don't like to talk about, but, like, gelatin and stuff from the hooves and the bones. And there are a bunch of medical products that come from the serums and stuff like that too.

So every piece of this cow is ultimately used in different ways in different places, but it's a way of making stuff that frankly makes no sense. For meat, cultivated food has taken off and it's become kind of a political hot potato in some places. If you can grow just the meat, growing the whole cow just doesn't make sense. And so that's how we think about it.

But for us, I come at it particularly with a product-first point of view, because when the leather comes from these sources, every piece is unique, every piece is bespoke, every piece requires very specific handling as a result to ensure your shoe doesn't end up with a big blemish on it. Right? And so it's just a highly inefficient place to work. We've had high-end bag companies come to us, and they have 50% waste. They throw away 50% of the final material because it's just not up to their standards.

And so what we think about is we're not making a more sustainable leather. Yes, we do that. What we're making is a better leather. It's real leather, but it comes completely uniform in rectangular sheets that you can then work with super efficiently. And I know this from my days at Nike. We had projects that were trying to bring in computer vision and technology and other things to increase utilization of leather. But then you would look on the other side of the factory, and they were bringing in polyester or cotton and other things. And they bring this material in on huge rolls, roll out 10 layers of it, vacuum-sealed, and cut it all at once to optimal efficiency. Right? And it just enabled a level of efficiency in the manufacturing, reduction of waste, and then a higher quality product at the end.

And so how do we bring leather into that future is a big piece of it. This goes back to our conversation about Nike and where companies can go wrong. We're a product company, period. Our goal is to make beautiful, covetable leather that consumers want. And in doing that, right, we're going to significantly improve the supply chain. We're going to significantly reduce the environmental footprint. We're going to get rid of any ethical concerns associated with that. Right? And so that's the win-win of our business and why we exist. And so it's, I think, a really fun and interesting opportunity, but it's a hard thing to do.

Jon Chee - 00:07:10: Absolutely. And I love that because you have that North Star. As you said, it's like, "We're going to make high-quality leather." And it's not to say the ripple effects don't matter, but when you have that North Star, everything follows. The sustainability, the efficiencies, the economic efficiencies across this, and it's better for everybody. So I love that. Can you talk about the technology that effectuates this North Star and makes it happen?

Michael Newton - 00:07:38: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm not the expert here. Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Mark Post, is. I joke that I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night; I've learned enough to be dangerous. So, essentially, we have two primary technologies. One is cultivation, and the second one is tissue engineering.

Our process is, you know, you take a biopsy from a cow, a primary cell line, a bovine fibroblast cell. We then do genetic modifications of those cell lines to create a more optimal cell line. So you immortalize it, you'll try to get it so that it creates more collagen, and it can do that more efficiently. There are a number of things that we are looking for, and we create those lines. So we're always looking to improve those. Once we do that, we create our cell banks. And then the first step from a cell bank is actually a relatively straightforward step. You basically just proliferate the hell out of this thing. And luckily, bovine fibroblast cells are pretty robust cells. They like to copy. You can go put them in standard stirred-tank bioreactors, and you can grow them at high densities and high volumes. We still have a lot of optimization work to go, but that's an engineering challenge, not an innovation challenge for us.

Then you get into more of the bespoke side of it. What you do is you feed those cells in a closed-loop system into a tissue bioreactor. As you'd imagine, it's a big, flat, thin bioreactor that has certain properties—how we feed them, the environment we put them in, how you seed the cells, all kinds of different things. And you put the fibroblast cells into there. And then with the right kind of inputs and signals, you get them to stop proliferating, and you get them to start differentiating. And that's when they start coming together, and they will create and grow collagen. And that collagen naturally starts to cross-link and starts to create what is—I don't want to say it is biologically identical to a cow skin because it's not. Because a cow skin has hair on it, it has blood vessels in it, a bunch of stuff like that that actually degrade the product. But we end up building these really uniform collagen sheets. And if you can achieve enough collagen in those and enough cross-linking in those, you create something that can create really beautiful leather.

And so it's a matter of, essentially, the cultivation of creating those cell lines and then being able to tissue engineer in a way that is very efficient and low-cost. So I actually think the coolest thing that we do is we're building tissue in sizes people don't comprehend at costs that are... and we have a way to go. We've got to get our sizes bigger. We got to get our costs down, like, orders of magnitude still. But the progress that we've made is just really tremendous. And so the core technology is just needed. And our chief scientific officer, Dr. Mark Post, he's kind of world-renowned in this space. He was the first person who ever did a cultivated hamburger back in 2013. He's also the chief scientific officer of a company called Mosa Meat, which is going to be one of the leaders, one of the survivors in the cultivated meat space. And so there's a lot of overlap between that technology, but we are also then obviously taking it in a way that makes what we need versus a hamburger.

Jon Chee - 00:10:53: Very cool. Very, very cool. You know, as I'm thinking about this, this is a product that I think the world needs. How are you thinking about taking this thing to market? Let's fast-forward a little bit. What is your go-to-market strategy with this?

Michael Newton - 00:11:07: It's a real question. I know personally from my time at Nike, you can have the greatest innovation if you don't figure out how you actually get it to scale. And the alternative material spaces or new material spaces or whatever you want to call it, it is just a minefield of companies that have not been able to make it through here. And there are a lot of lessons we can learn to try to do better.

But for us, it's pretty clear. So there's a couple of industries we're focused on. Luxury leather goods, automotive, call it fashion apparel, footwear, that type of space, are our primary focus. There's a lot on furniture. You know, there's transportation as well. We're not as deep into those areas yet. Those will be in the future for us. But it's about, okay, what are these industries, the sectors that make the most sense? And then for us now, it's really about how do we build the partnerships that allow us to co-develop this product. And so our whole approach is to be narrow and deep with the right folks versus just trying to spray and pray.

And so we really want to co-develop this product with great companies who see a vision of what this could be and then work with those companies to bring it to market. So, that might be an automotive company and, you know, you start small. You're not going to build a seat for them off the bat. You'll build something else. And we're talking about that now with a company, a luxury leather goods company. We're doing tanning trials in their tanneries and really figuring out, how do we get this?

Because we, at the end of the day, actually don't make leather. We actually make collagen sheets. Collagen sheets are equivalent to basically a highly treated cowhide. And so we don't have to do any of the treatment and all the nasty stuff they have to do to turn a cowhide into a collagen sheet. But then it gets tanned. And the tanning process is actually a really cool process. And people tend to think about tanning as being awful, but when it's done well, it's actually not awful at all. It's actually a great process.

But you can turn a collagen sheet, and you can make it into a very durable wallet, or you can turn it into a pair of supple leather gloves, or you can turn it into a car seat or a handbag. And so our real approach is to build these kinds of guaranteed partnerships with a couple of people. We're building a lot of relationships, to be fair, but we never want to overpromise and underdeliver. And so we're just focused on how do we start to drive co-development.

And then as we start to scale up and bring costs down, right, you have to then start to really think about, okay, what are the ways in which we can launch this with people and get in there? And that's not going to be easy because you can work with the innovation folks and the materials folks at all these companies, and they can love it and think it's great. But at the end of the day, you have to convince the designer at brand X. You have to convince the person. And to do that, it's got to be a great product that's at the scale they need, that's at the price they need, and there's a lot of requirements there.

So I'm confident for us, based upon the work that we've done, is that if we do our job on the product, it may not be completely linear, but there's going to be the demand there. And so by the product, we've got to be able to—key things for us are how do you make great high-quality product, how do you scale it up, and how do you bring costs down? There's nothing unique. Those are challenges everybody faces. But I think for us, what we've just been very clear about is we understand what the drivers of each of those problems are and have specific roadmaps with specific targets that we're measuring against this driver. So, in our bioprocess to bring down the cost, we're tracking eight bioprocessing metrics, and we just know exactly what we need to do in order to get to a place where, through our TEA calculation, it'll bring that price to X amount. And we can just spell it very clearly. I know how much when I scale this up, how much that will bring the cost down. And so that's just a little bit to what we talked about before, Jon, hard things are hard.

Jon Chee - 00:14:57: Yep.

Michael Newton - 00:14:58: And so we just have to, every day, just chip away at this problem. And that can be frustrating at times, right? Because you're like, okay, well, did we chip away enough today?

Jon Chee - 00:15:08: Yep.

Michael Newton - 00:15:09: But we're seeing progress. Our quality's improving. Our efficiency's going up. We're figuring out how you scale up the pieces. You know, we started making pieces like this big. We then went to sizes like this, and now we're at the size I just showed you. And we're about to go up again. And so it's, in some ways, super sexy. In other ways, it's not at all because you're just like, "Okay. We're just chipping away at this every day."

Jon Chee - 00:15:33: I think that is something that is worth highlighting: the hard work isn't always sexy. Most of the time, it isn't. It's kind of like what Jensen Huang at NVIDIA was talking about. This is an overnight success thirty years in the making.

Michael Newton - 00:15:48: Thirty years. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:15:49: Yeah. Just of just grinding, doing unglamorous, unsexy things. And then you fast forward and, oh, there's just this amazing thing that has been manifested and willed into existence. And I think that's incredibly important for anyone who's in the trenches doing it right now or contemplating leading a company, small or large. It is a lot of that. And I'm really pumped, and it sounds like you're finding some folks who are embracing this idea in these industries because leather has been used since the dawn of time. I know. It's like...

Michael Newton - 00:16:26: It's like leather and prostitution, the oldest professions.

Jon Chee - 00:16:29: Exactly. So, I'm going to imagine people are set in their ways when it comes to this. So I guess, have you found challenges with that? Where it's just like, "We've done this for a millennia."

Michael Newton - 00:16:42: They're like, "Well, you know, there are a lot of cowhides. Like, why does it matter? This is working." Well, we got to drive the transition away from cow-derived proteins overall. So, we've got to play a role in that as much as milk and meat and other things. Okay. So that's a good impact reason. But at the end of the day, it's the quality of the leather, again, the manufacturability, the waste story. We can do it better for people while also doing that. And, actually, the world's changing. Right? So there are fewer cows in Europe, so super high-end leather is becoming less available. It's tighter supply chains. You're looking at how do you have the right traceability in those spaces? So, progress has to march on.

And, you know, there are a lot of people in the leather industry who hate what we're doing. Right? And they're just like... because we're disrupting their way. It's not even like we're disrupting their business. We're disrupting their way of life because they're just leather people. Right? And we're super fortunate. We have one of our co-founders, a guy named Brad Koplum. He's a third-generation tanner; he worked in tanneries for over thirty years. I kid you not. He is a sixth-generation tanner. Right? So his family's been tanning for longer than America has existed or something crazy like that. Yeah. Right? But he saw it. He was like, "You know, this industry sucks, and it has structural challenges, and it's not doing what it needs to do for its customers. We can do better." And it was actually he who heard and learned, "Okay, we're making cultivated meat. Why can't we make cultivated leather?"

And so it's actually Brad who approached Dr. Post, as I said before, and was like, "Hey, is this something?" And at first, Mark was like, "Get out of here. You're crazy." And then he thought about it. He was like, "Oh, shit. That makes a lot of sense." And so, they founded the company and started pushing it forward. And in some ways, it's like leather probably should've come first. You know, food gets hyped because it's food, and it was at a time when money was falling from the sky and all that stuff. But, you know, food has a lot of complexities. It's super low cost. There's a lot of regulation around it. People are very emotional about food, all that stuff.

For leather, you're like, no regulation at all, simple manufacturing process, single protein. In food, you need fats, you need proteins, you need a bunch of different stuff. Right? I've never met a consumer who's like, "Oh, I don't want to touch your leather." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Like, "When can I get my jacket?" you know? And so it's just a lot of structural dynamics, no regulation, all these things that just make it so that I'm like, leather's actually the way that maybe we could have built this industry with a little less resistance, let's say. But, you know, cultivated food got a multi, multi-year head start, tons of money, all that stuff. And cultivated food went to the moon, huge bust. A lot of companies either have gone bankrupt or will go bankrupt, and then the ones that will emerge out of that will start to really change the world. And it's going to happen. There's no doubt about it. And I think leather will be part of that broader journey. And so it's important.

Jon Chee - 00:19:35: Absolutely. And I tend to agree, at least, the way you're describing it. It's just like, this should have been the first natural step before facing the more final boss.

Michael Newton - 00:19:44: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Like, fight baby Bowser before you fight Big Bowser.

Jon Chee - 00:19:48: Exactly. Exactly. It seems like there's less red tape and less of these multivariate aspects to it. So I love that. And the past few years have been tough for startups and science and funding. When it comes to your philosophy on fundraising, capitalizing the company, strategizing on that, and doing all the hard things that you're doing, what's your take on fundraising for a company that is tackling hard problems like this?

Michael Newton - 00:20:16: Well, we're raising our Series A now and are hopefully getting pretty close to finalizing it, which is great. We still have some final hurdles ahead of us to get through, but it's been a brutal fundraising environment. And I don't think that has anything in particular to do with Qorium. Right? To your point, Jon, funding for hard science is just not in fashion. You could basically be an AI company or a defense tech company or, you know, might as well just go out to pasture.

And so, I think you have to just be relentless on it and really make sure you are finding the right partners who see this vision, who understand the cycle, and are willing to partner. And we're lucky to have some great investors, and we're lucky now to have a term sheet from other investors who I think will help us get to where we need to be. But it can be really disheartening. I mean, because you got to just be relentless on it. And we may still fail. Right? You know? As a company, if we can't put the right gas into the engine at this point, god forbid, we may have to shut this down. And that would be a real loss in many ways.

And I think, is that a specific reflection on Qorium? Yes, it is. But we're talking about an industry where people are just like, "This is the hardest fundraising environment we have ever seen." And you're talking about people who've been in the industry for forty years. And it's just, you know, what's happening on your side of the pond in the US doesn't help. Essentially, it's a perfect storm of bad stuff right now. And you can't give up on it because if we do, you're going to lose a generation of technology, and that sets you back so much. It's critical that every wave is continually coming through. It just takes time to commercialize these things. And that's why, if you look at some of the defunding that's gone on, the NIH and other stuff in the US, you just get really saddened about it because you're like, "Oh, we'll never know what we lost." You just know. It's impossible to prove the contrapositive.

So I think we're at a very tough moment. But as a result, I think we're in a more important moment than ever. And so, we're giving it the old college try. I would say we're giving it more than the college try, and I think we're going to pull it off. But it's definitely tough, and I know other founders and go to these conferences. And people are tearing their hair out because the environment just changed in such a way that the expectations from investors just dramatically shifted.

So, what I could have done to raise money four years ago, I basically could have done that on the back of a napkin. Right? Now the expectation is that your time to market is super short. You're incredibly capital efficient. You have all these commercial relationships. Right? And it's just frankly unreasonable. You just can't meet those hurdles.

And it's actually interesting. There's some data that was done by a group—I think it was founded by a couple of different VCs here and a nonprofit foundation, and then McKinsey got involved. It's based out of Belgium, I believe, and it's called ClimateBrick. And ClimateBrick is a study of ten years of, basically, in different sectors of green technology or new technology, what is the journey to go from seed all the way through to commercial scale and what should be expected. And because that's a longitudinal study and over time, what you can see is that what investors are asking for now is a total mismatch. At the Series A, they're like, "Okay, why don't you have an offtake agreement?" They're like, "Nobody has offtake agreements at the Series A." It's just puzzling. "Why can't you show me the proof and unit economics of manufacturing scale?" I'm like, this is like going to a high school kid and telling them to build you a rocket to land on Mars. It's just not credible. So there's become this real mismatch in expectations and just a huge amount of risk aversion as a result. And I think that's been especially acute in the biotech space, and I think it will change, but I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.

Jon Chee - 00:24:15: Yeah. I think I always try to think about it like zooming out for a moment. It's kind of like going back to your Dartmouth days and your HBS days, the macro trends. It's like there were these couple years of massive—you look at the chart, capital inflows were just going to the moon. Crazy. And then there's this digestion period. That's just like, we're just digesting all of that. And for me, and for anyone listening out there, it's just like, we will get through that too. It's this correcting force. But, obviously, it doesn't make the moment right now feel any less tough.

Michael Newton - 00:24:59: I agree 100%. If you have a sine wave and a cosine wave, right, those can balance each other out. A company goes through its journeys. And so you go through a valley of death, if you will. Everybody talks about this when you're commercializing the technology. You want to be doing that super hard shit at a time when the market is frothy as hell, so they give you room and money to go run. But that's just if your waves are well-timed, cool. If they're not, you know?

And so, so much of every company has so much to do with luck. I mean, I'm sure you listened to the Acquired episode around Google, the most recent one. And they're talking about how if Google had been two years earlier, two years later, it never would have happened. The moment was right. And so just a lot has to come together. And you can will it and manhandle it and be as good as possible to try to make it happen. But at a certain point, it's like, if you're going through the hard time where you need a lot of capital to commercialize your industrialization facility or whatever, are you at a time when that's possible? Or do you happen to hit at a time when the market has no patience for that?

And so, a lot's got to go right. But, again, I go, hard things are hard, and if nobody's working on them—and that's my big fear because there's going to be a huge, huge... you know it. There's going to be a lot of egg on a lot of people's faces with all these AI investments. I think the defense stuff too will come, and now that's taken oxygen out of the room. You talked about Buffett before, but I can't remember the exact expression. I wish I could, but it's like, on a daily basis, the market is a voting machine. On a long-term basis, it's actually a weighing machine. The problem is, right now, I feel like we're just in crazy voting mode, if you will.

It's just, you know, humans do not allocate capital in an intelligent, efficient way. Maybe some groups do, like a16z and those guys. They may just crush it. But, I mean, it feels to me like they're just taking a spray-and-pray approach, you know, putting money on everything. And that may be a really wicked smart approach when it comes to these AI tools. But it feels like it would be a little bit smarter if we could think about how we do it. But my whole frustration in the world is there's this opportunity cost everywhere, and we as humanity just don't think about that. So I don't want to get political, but you can argue, "Okay, well, should Europe be spending 5% on defense?" But nobody's ever thinking about the opportunity cost of the additional 3% of GDP that otherwise would have been building roads or schools or something. And the ROI on investments—to be fair, military investment can have great ROIs for society. Like, look at GPS. And the ROI in that, it's got to be off the hook. I mean, the Internet basically came from DARPA. But some of these things, it just feels like we're not calculating and doing good capital allocation as a human race right now.

Jon Chee - 00:27:54: Yeah. And I always tend to—and maybe this is the optimist in me—think that it will eventually see its way through to a more rational capital allocation decision. The science is solid. We, as a humanity, I think, ultimately want this and need this, and the capital will ultimately follow through. But it just takes time. And not to poo-poo on any AI companies, there are only so many opportunities that can come of that. And I think also too, the savvy investors know the best time to invest is when there's a correction. That's a Buffett thing, right? That is a Buffett thing too. It's like they're—that's the best time to invest.

Michael Newton - 00:28:38: Yeah. Be greedy when everybody else is scared and be scared when everybody else is greedy.

Jon Chee - 00:28:42: Yeah. Exactly. So it's kind of this silver lining to it all is that the savvy folks will be there. And then I think at the end of the day, for everyone, it's remembering these things are cyclical, and we're living through a cycle. But at the end of the day, everything you've—you've been so generous with your time—and learning about your journey and how you're bringing it to Qorium is incredible. And I'm pumped that you're having these conversations with these folks. When it comes to their leather, they've been doing it a way for a very long time. And you guys have the courage, the technology, and the team, and the know-how to really get it done is incredibly inspiring, to be quite honest. You're tackling a big industry and one that's been around for a very, very long time, and I commend you and your whole team for doing that. As you guys are looking one year, two years out, what's in store for you guys? And what's in store for you?

Michael Newton - 00:29:34: So, Jon, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think you're right. So we'll see. But where we are as a company, we break down our work into phases. And so we're just coming to the end of what we call our product development phase. And our product's development isn't finished, but that's been the primary focus. We've been really focused on how we optimize that product over the last twelve or so months. We're now moving through a phase that'll be funded by the Series A that's really all about cost optimization and scale design. And so we're really then getting into, "Okay, how do we make this thing more commercial?"

And then we'll move into a phase where we industrialize it. And that's when we'll start making it at scale. We'll start selling it. We'll start being able to make some great product and put it out there in the world. And once you do that, with the nature of our business and the way in which we manufacture it, we believe at that stage, we'll really be able to prove the process, improve the economics in such a way that when we're going to go really scale it, we're not scaling up, but we're scaling out. And I think that's really critical because it's going to be very, very hard, if not impossible, to say, "Hey. We've never demonstrated that this works, but I now need 200, 300 million whatevers, euros, dollars, etcetera, to go do that." I think that's going to be really hard.

Whereas what we're going to say is, "We've built the unit. We've operated the unit. Of course, it's not as profitable as it could be because we only have one of them right now, but that is the unit. Now we're going to go build 30 of them." And when you do that and you work on scale... so it's phases of work, and we got to go through it.

And it's interesting because the core science is obviously critical to who we are. But the commercial relationships you were asking about before, Jon, frankly, the financial structuring to be able to do this... I never thought I'd be doing as much finance work as I am doing now. But, you know, we're very specific about how do we think about creating entities that will enable us to finance this effectively and raise the capital needed to return the amount of investment required to different places and own the IP in the right locations and all of a sudden, it's as important as, "Can we make collagen?" You know? So you don't always think about that, but it's definitely been something that I feel fortunate to have the background I have to help do that.

Jon Chee - 00:31:53: Awesome. I mean, I kind of geek out on that type of stuff too. You have to have it all. It really does take a village and making sure the incentives are properly aligned across every stakeholder. And look, I'm rooting for you guys. This sounds like a great opportunity and, honestly, a fun one at that. And, you know, in traditional closing fashion, we have two questions for you. So first question is, would you like to give any shout-outs to anyone who supported you along the way?

Michael Newton - 00:32:19: Well, I think I've given out a bunch of shout-outs already. Obviously, I talked a lot about my parents and what they've done. They continue to be tremendous supporters and dear friends, frankly, at this point. I had the great blessing that I graduated from not only university but from a master's program with no debt. That's a gift that I'm working hard to give to my kids because it's just a game-changer in what your life means. A little bit different here in Europe, by the way. What Europe does on education is amazing compared to the US.

But so, yeah, there's a bunch of people there. I think I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out my wife because she's a kick-ass person in and of herself. Right? She is an amazing business person and a great partner. And the most important decision you can ever make is who you marry, basically, who your partner is. And I was just super fortunate to find her, and she's been super supportive. I was working and traveling like crazy at Nike, and she was working full time and dealing with young kids and all that stuff. And she's such a thought partner in everything that I do.

But there are actually a couple of people—when I worked in private equity back in the day, there was a gentleman named Ramanan Raghavendra, who hired me out of college, and he's still a dear friend. We text all the time. And he's just been an amazing supporter, and I've learned so much from him. He's a great—he's actually the chairman of the board of UPenn now. So he's got some serious responsibility and cool stuff that he's doing. And so he's just an awesome guy. So I've learned a lot, not just about business from him. Obviously, he kicked my ass a lot when we were back in private equity, but then, just about life and family and stuff like that. I know his family super well and everything, which is good.

Then totally, something we didn't talk about at all, I was on the board of Planned Parenthood Federation for America for a long time, and that's obviously can be a controversial organization. I believe it's a very important organization. I'm always pleased to be part of it and to help lead that for a long time. But there's a woman—unfortunately, she died recently—a woman named Cecile Richards. She's Ann Richards' daughter. Ann Richards was a very famous governor of Texas. But Cecile Richards, she has a book she wrote called Make Trouble, which is worth reading, and that woman was a force of nature. I mean, she was incredible. And to sit and—I was on the executive committee. I got to be, technically, her boss, which was a joke because I was, like, 35, and she's this genius. And so she's just a woman who really shaped who I am, and I learned a lot from her. She died of brain cancer, which was super, super sad, and not just for her and her family, but for the world because of who she was. But these people teach you life is short, and people should have the ability and the rights to live life to the fullest how they see fit. I'm not one to judge anybody's personal life decisions. And so we want a society that empowers people to live healthy, productive lives, whoever they are. Unfortunately, I don't think we are in a society that's moving more in that direction. We're moving away from that right now. In some ways, I'm glad Cecile's not around to see some of it. But in other ways, I'm like, fuck, she could kick a lot of people's asses because she was badass. Totally. So Cecile's an amazing woman. It was really a privilege to get to know her.

Jon Chee - 00:35:38: Man. Yeah. I mean, I agree on all the points. And along the way, you've given a bunch of flowers to the folks that have kind of really changed the trajectory in your life, and I can see the deep appreciation come through. I think everyone's journey is always a worthwhile thing to do. Just to take a moment to think about those people because I think you can't do it alone, really.

Michael Newton - 00:36:04: No.

Jon Chee - 00:36:04: You really can't do it alone. And, you know, shout out to my wife too. That's like, I am certainly a lot, and she deals with a lot. So, I got to give her her flowers. And the last question is if you can give any advice to your 21-year-old self, what would it be?

Michael Newton - 00:36:19: Oh, man. Maybe a couple of things. One is I should've taken more risk. When you're 21, you're worried about stuff. And that's fair, but I could've taken more risk and tried to be bolder and do different things. So I think I should've done that. And that goes hand in hand with a little bit of riding the trends.

Back when I graduated from college in '04, the smart money, the risk-taking money, would have moved to SF and gotten deep into tech right away. Amazing trend, changing the world, be in that community, take the risk. That would have led to a very different... to your point previously. We've passed that. But I would really encourage people and I would really encourage my kids to just take risks and ride trends. And it's interesting. You know, AI is obviously the trend right now. But this synthetic biology thing, it's just a slower, longer trend, but it's going to be massively impactful. And so, how do you kind of ride those trends and how do you figure out what it is?

I think we are all just generally too risk-averse. And if you're fortunate, you know, like us to be able to come from great places, from places that, you know, you've been able to go to great institutions and work hard, you're incredibly resilient. Things will be okay. And so I just think people are just too risk-averse, and I would encourage everybody and my 21-year-old self to take more risks.

Jon Chee - 00:37:46: Absolutely. And I think too, especially setting yourself up for almost too much optionality can be a bad thing too.

Michael Newton - 00:37:53: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jon Chee - 00:37:54: And I think sometimes it is important to just—especially when you're young, the risk that you're taking, there's less on the line.

Michael Newton - 00:38:01: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jon Chee - 00:38:02: There's way less on the line. When you have a mortgage and a family and things like that, then you think, "Oh, that's risk."

Michael Newton - 00:38:09: Yeah. Well—

Jon Chee - 00:38:11: Not to say that you can't take risk and you shouldn't be taking risk later necessarily, but it's just—

Michael Newton - 00:38:15: But at that time, exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:38:17: Yeah. At that time, you're just like, seize that opportunity. While you're at school, see that opportunity right there. It's a rare moment. And when you're young, there are these rare moments. What's there to lose? Kind of like with your experience, "Hey, mom, dad. I'm back. Can I crash?"

Michael Newton - 00:38:37: Can I crash?

Jon Chee - 00:38:37: "Can I crash? I'm back from school. Can I crash at the house?" And there's an opportunity to do that, and it helps. And so, that's definitely advice I would have appreciated and I wish I had when I was younger. So, Michael, you've been so, so generous with your time. I learned a lot.

Michael Newton - 00:38:52: No, this has been super, Jon. I really appreciate it. It's really a pleasure and a blessing to be able to do this.

Jon Chee - 00:38:57: Yeah. And thanks for giving me a peek into Nike as well. I've always just kind of been fawning over Nike as a reader and a fan, but it sounds like a rare experience too. So indulging me on that as well, thank you for that.

Michael Newton - 00:39:12: No. No. Well, thank you. You did the indulging today, not me, so I really appreciate that.

Jon Chee - 00:39:16: Yeah. Well, Michael, you know, next time you're in the States, give me a shout. Come to the city, San Francisco, and we can grab a bite to eat.

Michael Newton - 00:39:26: A burrito? Come on. That's what you're going to do.

Jon Chee - 00:39:28: We'll get an SF burrito. We'll do an SF burrito proper.

Michael Newton - 00:39:31: That's the way to go.

Jon Chee - 00:39:32: Well, thanks again, and I hope to see you again soon.

Michael Newton - 00:39:35: Super. Thanks, Jon. See you.

Outro - 00:39:38: Thanks for listening to part four of our conversation with Michael Newton. From founding Qorium to building a values-driven team and platform, Michael's story shows what can happen when bold ideas are backed by thoughtful, mission-driven leadership. If you enjoyed the series, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend.

Thanks for listening. Join us next time for our series featuring Eswar Iyer, CEO and co-founder at Ikena, a biotech company pioneering AI-driven synthetic biology to unlock the undruggable proteome. Under his leadership, Ikena has developed Y-PRIMED, the first AI-powered platform capable of screening a trillion proteins. Combining generative AI with large protein display technology, Y-PRIMED enables Yotta-scale machine learning to tackle diseases once considered out of reach.

This work builds on Eswar’s deep background in AI, multiomics, and protein engineering. He holds over 100 patents and helped launch spatial biology platforms like Xenium and Visium HD during his time at 10x Genomics. At Harvard and the Wyss Institute, he led foundational work in transcriptomics, CRISPR screening, and tissue engineering. With deep expertise in synthetic biology and AI-driven discovery, Eswar brings a rare perspective on turning cutting-edge science into real-world medicines, making this a conversation you won't want to miss.

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