The Groomed Trail: Building a Women's Health Pipeline the Bold Way | Sabrina Johnson (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, Sabrina shared the hallway initiative that earned her receipt at the FDA, a thirteen-year CFO and COO run at Cypress touching every function in the business, the hard lessons of a stock down 50% over a barely missed p-value, and the post-Cypress realization that women's health had been what she was building toward all along. If you missed it, check out part three.

In part four, Sabrina unpacks the full founding arc of Daré, the Saturday morning epiphany, the Monday morning resignation from WomanCare Global, and the deliberate decision to go public via reverse merger in 2017, not as an exit, but as the most strategic path to capital in a space where only 1% of private health care investment flows to conditions that solely affect women. She also breaks down the groomed trail philosophy behind the pipeline, using existing FDA-approved actives and proven delivery technologies to close the gap between promising science and women's hands, explaining how that approach produced Zaciato, a scented apple cream for female arousal disorder launching in 2026, a first-in-category nonhormonal contraceptive in a pivotal phase three, an ARPA-H funded HPV treatment entering phase two, and more, all with a 25-person team and over $75,000,000 in non-dilutive funding.

Jon Chee - 00:02:10: That's super cool hearing this and how you've structured the companies. I feel like at Cypress, being the CFO of a publicly traded company, it has this focusing—it's a forcing function to keep the thing efficient. But there's a lot of talk about, "We can't be public unless this thing, that thing, you gotta be a billion in revenue to even consider." Right? It's like, no. You don't have to be.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:02:37: You don't have to. It's knowing what your goals are. So for me, the goal was I need Daré to be structured in a way that provides access to the kind of capital that is likely to invest in Daré. If you zoom out and think about the statistics in women's health, only 1% of private health care investment dollars—which is basically the kind of dollars that fund biotech—are going into conditions that solely affect women.

As I zoom out and think about that statistic, and I'm real about it, that is not going to work if we're privately funded in a venture model. We need access to the public markets. We need access to different kinds of dollars as well as grant funding, which we have since 2017. We brought in over $75,000,000 in different non-dilutive funding, and it's been really important across the portfolio. Gates Foundation, NIH, ARPA-H, because we realize, again, if you're dealing with this capital constraint in the normal structure, you have to think about it. How do I create a company that's going to be able to do something different?

So we have a playbook of when it makes sense to be public versus private. But to me, it's more about what your goal is. Companies that are sometimes going public because that's an exit vehicle for their investors, sometimes that does not go well because what their goals are then being public, maybe they're not able to sustain or maintain. But our goal was, this gives us access to these investors that we can build value for in a way that makes sense.

Jon Chee - 00:04:24: That's really interesting because I never really quite put my finger on it, but I think you put it very astutely, just having the purpose in mind. Why are we going public in the first place here? In this case, it's actually a real fundraising moment for us, not just a liquidity event.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:04:43: Exactly. Beautifully said. Yes, exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:04:46: Because a lot of the time, it's just like, no, the VCs need their out.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:04:51: Right. They're just needing their exit at that time.

Jon Chee - 00:04:54: And then from there, as a company, that's when your journey is starting. But you guys went into it knowing this is what's going to unlock the next phase.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:05:06: Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:05:06: And that's really awesome to hear because I hear a lot of friends who are also founders, and they're kind of dreading the day that they have to go public. But you guys are embracing it. This is the right move.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:05:20: For us, this is what we need to do. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:05:23: And so when it came to developing your pipeline, is it all externally sourced and then brought in, and from there you run with it? Talk a little bit about your pipeline strategy.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:05:32: Yeah. So the other thing that is kind of blue sky when you're starting a company from scratch that wasn't built up around an invention—Daré wasn't started around a particular invention. We were starting around this concept of there are therapeutic gaps in women's health, and there is science that exists today to fill those gaps. We just need to get them right in the hands of women so they can be products women can use.

When you start with that perspective, the way we built our portfolio was to start with, what are those therapeutic gaps? Literally talking to women, talking to health care providers, defining where are the biggest pain points, and we literally created a list of the things that everyone talks about. Then we worked with those same people. I'm going to use arousal, because then we'll talk about the arousal product. You told me that arousal is something women say they don't talk about. They don't know, but it's an issue. They would like something. They're not sure, is it even solvable? Health care providers say this is an issue. Women come in asking, I don't have anything. And then we say, well, what would be the target product profile? If I'm telling you don't worry about whether it's possible or not, you tell me what you want it to be. And they would tell us.

So when it came to something for arousal, we got certain themes. It needs to be on demand. I don't want to take something every day for something that maybe I'll do once a week. It needs to work quickly. I don't want to have to do something an hour before. It really shouldn't have terrible side effects because I'm taking it to solve something else. You start to create this profile, and then we take that profile and try to match it to a drug.

Endometriosis is on our list, but we don't have a product for it today. Because what people wanted for endometriosis is something that would not require surgery, prevent surgery, solve the pain, and solve the underlying disease. We're not quite there yet in understanding that. So what we came to is we started prioritizing our list against conditions where there was already an FDA-approved product that had the target pharmacology or what we were trying to solve from a biology perspective.

Again, let's use arousal as an example. The genital arousal process in women is all about blood flow. Same as in men for erectile dysfunction. It's the same receptors. It's the same process that needs to happen. And women, unlike men, can have even more types of things that can disrupt it and impact it because we have so many hormonal changes that can actually impact blood flow, whether it's during a cycle or after having kids or going through menopause, or certain medications. So then we go look at what are the drugs. We looked at PDE5 inhibitors. What's one that can likely work quickly? Can we formulate it into a cream? Because then it could be something that's used on demand.

Sometimes, we will find a technology that maybe was developed for a different purpose but serves that purpose. We have an FDA-approved product that delivers an antibiotic, clindamycin, vaginally for a condition that you really would optimize for vaginal delivery, but that's really hard to deliver drugs that way and keep them at the therapeutic level, especially a time-course antibiotic like clindamycin that has to be present over a long time to have its effect. How do you do that in a single dose, but keep it there in an environment that wants to get rid of stuff? That one, we took a technology that had been originally conceived for wound healing, but was being utilized in veterinary medicine for dogs to deliver clindamycin to a dog's ear or mouth. Same issues. You want it to stay. You want it to bioadhere. You don't want it leaking out.

Everything in our pipeline really came from, what is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the best active pharmaceutical ingredient that exists today that can solve that problem? What is the best drug delivery mode and route of administration to do that? And has someone put all those dots together and already invented it for us? Our FDA-approved product, Xaciato, really came from a technology that had been developed for wound healing and veterinary medicine, and we didn't do anything to it other than study it in women for the particular condition. Our sildenafil cream came from a formulation technology organization, Strategic Science & Technologies, that developed a formulation technology for drugs that are very difficult to get through the skin quickly. Sildenafil is one; it's a highly charged molecule. They did it with ibuprofen, and that's where we were able to find that we can use it now in women's health for this indication.

We have vaginal ring technologies because some things can deliver drugs over weeks or a month, because sometimes that's really the best route of administration for that drug. We have implants that go into the arm. We have biodegradable implants that we're working on that would require removal. We have all kinds, but they all come from going back to basics. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is something that could solve that problem today where we know the science, and then all we're doing is closing that gap between that promising science and something that women can have in their hands and use.

Jon Chee - 00:11:13: That's freaking awesome. My research when I was at Berkeley in collaboration with UCSF was actually in women's health. Estrogenic action during menopause and breast cancer and stuff like that. So this is really close to me and what my research was, and it's freaking awesome to hear. I love that you're solving it backwards, which I think a lot of the time people don't do. They blindly go forward, get something approved, and surprise, no one wants it.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:11:42: No one wants it.

Jon Chee - 00:11:43: No one wants it, no one will pay for it. And then it's a big capital furnace where it could have been put somewhere more ruthless.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:11:52: I think part of that comes from having in my early days been in marketing; that is a big reminder that the FDA approval is not the finish line. It's the start line, and you better be powered up for it to win, because it's too late.

Jon Chee - 00:12:08: It sounds so straightforward when you're describing it, and it's a very powerful thought experiment I encourage anyone to do. A lot of the time, product-market fit is talked a lot about in other industries.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:12:21: Yes. But not ours.

Jon Chee - 00:12:22: But not ours. It's not enough here. We forget that this is still a product that needs to fit the market on the other side and actually be adopted. The FDA approval is the starting line. It's necessary, but not sufficient. And similarly with funding events, too. A lot of the time, they think the funding event is the game has been won.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:12:48: That's another great example.

Jon Chee - 00:12:50: Same thing. And it's just a tool. It's a means to the end.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:12:54: Exactly. Means to the end. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:12:57: It's so easy to forget that, but when you invert it—that very Charlie Munger invert the thing and start working backwards—it makes so much sense. It also goes back to your first experience going to a large company like Baxter and soaking things up and not recreating the wheel. There's so much technology that's already out there.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:13:22: Yes.

Jon Chee - 00:13:23: And approved.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:13:24: It's kind of like I had this thought when I did a cruise in Alaska last fall where I'd never done this before, but it was this adventure cruise. They call it UnCruise because it's not a bougie cruise. You go do real hard stuff every day. They had this thing we were going to do called bushwhacking, which I didn't know what it was. But basically, bushwhacking is hiking through the forest without a trail. Beautiful adventure, I'm creating my own path. But I was like, man, I would rather a well-groomed trail any day of the week versus climbing over trees and under trees. Yes, that's the adventure.

And I thought afterwards, that's kind of like what we do at Daré. I don't want to bushwhack. I'm not starting with a new chemical entity.

Jon Chee - 00:14:11: Yeah.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:14:13: I want this trail I know. You're right. If I'm using a drug like sildenafil that's been FDA approved in Viagra since 1998, I know what sildenafil does. It has been pressure tested. I'm not trying to climb through trees. So I had that thought when I was on the cruise last year, this is the difference between novel chemical entities versus bushwhacking, and I'm doing groomed-trail hiking.

Jon Chee - 00:14:43: Yeah. For sure. And I can imagine there's a lot of glory in doing the bushwhacking.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:14:50: Oh, and someone should do that. It's just personally not for me.

Jon Chee - 00:14:55: Yeah. That's okay. What I'm learning and hearing from your experience and journey is that it doesn't have to be that path. Going public early, that's a very different path. It can work. And pipeline development, the framework that you've described is another way of doing it because out in the zeitgeist, it can be very prescriptive around how you should run a company and develop a pipeline. There's a playbook.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:15:23: There's a playbook. Yes. And how you manage the life cycle of products. Daré, in English, needs to be bold. I am a big believer, and sometimes you gotta challenge the status quo.

Jon Chee - 00:15:34: Yep. 100%.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:15:36: Like we were talking about being public, taking that step back, thinking about what your goals are and what's the best way to get there, and it may not be the traditional playbook.

Jon Chee - 00:15:46: Yep. And I guess so now, the pipeline sounds very robust, and there's stuff at various stages. Obviously, you have one that's already in commercial.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:15:58: Market. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:15:59: And you said your team is still kind of in the 25 people range.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:16:03: Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:16:04: So the product that's in commercial stage, are you partnered with an organization to commercialize it?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:16:10: We have one that's already FDA approved for bacterial vaginosis, and that we partnered with Organon. They have commercial rights globally for that product. So we took it all the way through the FDA approval, and then they took it from there and did the commercialization.

But we're getting ready right now. The arousal product, which is a formulation of sildenafil that's specifically designed for arousal in women, is an example of taking a step back and thinking about what is our goal here and what are all the ways to get there where the normal playbook might not make sense. That's one where it's going to be on the market this year, launching imminently, while we basically continue the path towards an FDA approval with that product. We've completed phase two. We were doing that work. That's the one where clinicians started calling us once the data were published because the efficacy data were published in the Green Journal, which is the journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and they did an editorial because no one's done this work in arousal disorder in women. So it was a big deal.

Because sildenafil is an FDA-approved product, it created this opportunity that any pharmacy could compound it and make a cream formulation available, but that wasn't the formulation that had been studied. So we made a decision after we got clinicians and people reaching out wanting the formulation. We made a very atypical decision for a pharmaceutical company, which is we're going to actually give our proprietary formulation to what's called the 503B outsourcing facility, which is a type of compounding, but where they have to register with the FDA and follow good manufacturing practices, be subject to FDA inspection. We're going to partner with them so that they have our formulation and can make this available for women now. Not FDA approved. It is considered a compounded product. It is not FDA approved for any indication. We're going to rerun some of the studies. Make it available now so that those patients and clinicians who want access to it can have it now via this compounding pathway.

Again, it comes from taking a step back. What are we doing at Daré? What are we trying to do? We are trying to bring solutions to women where solutions have not existed. And it's getting comfortable with, this is a path. People want the product. How do we leverage this pathway appropriately to make sure that we are providing education around just what we know and what we don't know? What was this particular formulation shown to do in the published studies? What safety signals did it have? What is the most common adverse event that someone can expect to experience? Put out there what we know. Make sure that there is a telehealth option for people that might not have a provider in their area to be able to access it. Do all the things that we need to do and collect that real-world evidence, which is a positive, while we're continuing an ongoing development program with an ultimate goal. We'd love to have there be an FDA-approved product for women, but this is a way to do it.

So as I look at 2026, it's a really busy year for us because we are making this product available. We're partnering with that 503B outsourcing facility to help provide medical education and awareness. We're supporting this product, Daré to Play, sildenafil cream. Prescriptions are coming in now to our pharmacy partner, Midvantix, on the Daré Health Hub, we call it. We're supporting that. Meanwhile, we have an ongoing phase three trial for a late-stage nonhormonal contraceptive. This is the pivotal study, and we expect to complete recruitment this year. We're getting ready to start a phase two trial for a product for human papillomavirus infection, which is the virus that causes cervical cancer, but there's nothing to treat it. We normally just wait until cervical changes happen or precancer, and then there's surgery that can happen. So we have a product we're taking into phase two right now, and that's funded by ARPA-H. And then we have a vaginal probiotic that is not a prescription product that we partnered with the European company Probiotical to bring to the US based on clinical data they have demonstrated outside the US. That's all happening in 2026 as well as a preclinical development program that's grant-funded.

We have a lot of things going on with a small team, and it all comes back to focus. What is everyone's responsibility? While it seems like you've got a lot of catalysts that you're working towards in 2026, which is fantastic, we've structured our team in a model where they're working across programs, and that creates huge efficiencies because the things you've learned on one program, you are now directly applying them to another. It also means with a small team, you all know what's going on. One person is dealing with something over here; someone else can step right in and help with that if they need to, or our network of consultants who we use regularly can step in. It creates efficiencies that I think if people are accustomed to larger teams, they might not understand. I get the question all the time, how does Daré accomplish as much as you do with 25 people? I always say it is because we have 25 people that we can accomplish so much. It's not how we do it with that few people. It's because we've structured the team.

Jon Chee - 00:22:10: Yeah. It's not in spite of, yeah.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:22:11: Exactly. It's not in spite of. It's because.

Jon Chee - 00:22:14: Yeah. No, I love that. And this strategy is getting the creative juices in my head going. I'm a marketer at heart; that's always been a big thing for me. I think your strategy of finding technology that's already approved and used elsewhere also solves a communication issue and adoption issue of a patient or a physician. It's like, I've been prescribing this for years.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:22:45: Yes.

Jon Chee - 00:22:45: And it's well tolerated, and patients aren't scared of it. Gene therapy is super novel and can be scary for a lot of people, and they're still figuring it out. How do you get adoption? Yes, it's very novel and can be groundbreaking and world changing, but getting the adoption is going to be really difficult. But if you have something that's safe, effective...

Sabrina Johnson - 00:23:09: Exactly. Yes. And you know it. We hear that talking to health care providers about sildenafil. We have providers that we talk to who have been treating men with Viagra for thirty years, and they run a sexual health clinic. They're seeing men and women. They know the active part. We don't have to explain. They understand what sildenafil does. There's no question. They know the drug. Then it's just sort of, what is unique about this formulation? What do I need to know about your formulation and what you have? Absolutely. And from an FDA perspective, it means you can rely on what's called the listed drug, the prior version of that product, particularly if you're delivering a lower dosage. Even when you're delivering in a different path, so we're delivering sildenafil in a cream, not oral, we can still refer to those safety data that were generated with the oral because the systemic dosing is going to be way higher than what we see with our product.

Jon Chee - 00:24:07: That's massive too because I think that solves the issue of, hooray, we're approved, now what? This is like, no, there's a well-formed path.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:24:18: Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:24:19: And I imagine the conversations with the FDA are far less tenuous.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:24:25: They are. They end up being focused on different things. You're focusing on what is very specific to your formulation. You still have to answer safety questions, but now they're very focused on your formulation. You're focusing on efficacy questions around your formulation. A lot of what we're doing, quite frankly, is we're working to develop something where something is not already FDA approved. Even our contraceptives, there are lots of FDA approved, but every single one of our contraceptives is first in category. There is nothing like it. All those conversations, you're starting from scratch on—well, with contraception, the endpoint's easy, it's pregnancy. But what are the things special to our product we need to look at that are unique because of our contraceptive as a once-a-month nonhormonal? It's very different. How do we think about that? How do we think about the risk-benefit profile? How do we work with the FDA?

Whether we're going after something like arousal disorder in women, or treating human papillomavirus infection, both of which there's nothing FDA approved for, you're checking the boxes as they relate to your own product. It's great where those boxes, a lot of them are already checked because we're using already FDA-approved drugs. And then you really are focusing on the boxes that are truly novel. What do the endpoints need to be? What does success look like? It definitely helps to start with a drug where at least the chemical entity is well known and understood.

Jon Chee - 00:25:56: Absolutely. And I'm going to imagine, now I'm thinking about your company strategy. I'm sure having so many reps with the FDA is just another added benefit. Usually, someone's...

Sabrina Johnson - 00:26:09: Huge. Oh my gosh. We have seven...

Jon Chee - 00:26:11: For one. Like...

Sabrina Johnson - 00:26:12: Yes. No, we have seven different products at various stages of discussions at the FDA, different products, different indications. It's huge because what you learn on one product and with one team might become directly relevant to something else that maybe didn't come up in an initial conversation on a different product. But you've already had to think about it for one of your other products so you can very quickly come up with how you're going to handle it for the third product.

Jon Chee - 00:26:38: This is so crazy. Lots of friends of mine who are going down this path have one candidate that they're praying to baby Jesus that this makes it, and then they can have a good FDA meeting.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:26:51: She makes it, and then they can have a good FDA meeting.

Jon Chee - 00:26:54: You really hope that the FDA meeting goes well if this is going to make or break you. But the way you've designed it so you get reps and there's multiple shots on goal. Having that dialogue with the FDA is incredibly refreshing to hear and also a really interesting business strategy. I imagine as well, having been a public company executive before, this model makes a lot of sense for public investors.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:27:24: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Because we're not a single shot on goal company. And we're not relying on one conversation. You said that so beautifully. Having been in a lot of these conversations, you never get the answers in one conversation.

Jon Chee - 00:27:37: Yeah.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:27:38: Ever. You leave those conversations with things that you're still wondering or it leads to other questions. It's been hugely impactful for us to be able to say, oh, you know what? This thing just came up that now we're unsure of, but didn't we deal with that on that other program? Let's look back at those minutes and see what the outcome was there. How do we turn the corner on that? Let's apply it here. So helpful.

Jon Chee - 00:28:03: That's really, really fascinating. And so when it comes to getting the right investors in the right seats, I'm going to imagine there's a pretty wide swath. It almost feels repeatable, and to be publicly traded and successful, it's repeatable.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:28:20: Right.

Jon Chee - 00:28:21: You were talking about the quarterly increments.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:28:24: Other things in quarters.

Jon Chee - 00:28:25: I would imagine institutional capital would love the predictability of a pipeline like this. I've never heard it so predictable.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:28:34: Yes. Theoretically, yes. And I think what we are trying to do right now with the company is change the dynamic of where those institutional investors have traditionally not been putting money into women's health. We're doing the work to educate, to help them understand when people have gotten out, why, and help them get excited about getting in. I love using the example of the GLP-1s, which are a perfect example of something you touched on earlier. The FDA approval is not the finish line. It's the start line.

All the stories and things that we've seen are products that get to an FDA approval and don't get to adoption. There have been a number of those in women's health, and it's really because the product's not the right product. It either is not differentiated enough to support the pricing, or the side effect profile is not commensurate with the position. They made it through with the condition, they made it through an FDA approval, but that doesn't mean it's going to be first line therapy. I think what the GLP-1s did beautifully is show institutional investors that when you bring the right products to women, there's a market. The majority of GLP-1 users are women. That tells you everything about women are the major health care deciders in their household. They make 80% of the health care decisions or 51% of the population. Going back to that institutional investor question, a lot of it now is around education. I think things are teeing up beautifully to start that education story very nicely where we can now point to a very clear success of what happens when you bring the right product to market for people.

Jon Chee - 00:30:21: Yeah. And communicating it to all these stakeholders is critically important because a lot of these institutionals are not scientists.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:30:33: No.

Jon Chee - 00:30:34: Your Fidelitys of the world are looking at a bunch of different industries, and so that's freaking awesome. I'm fired up just learning about everything you guys are doing. This movement to empower the patient and put it a little bit in their hands to get what they need, meet them where they are is a really exciting one. I don't know how it's going to ultimately shake out, but it seems it's trending in the right direction, which is really awesome. I realized 2026 is going to be a freaking busy one for you. As you're looking maybe even more than a year out, what's in store for you and Daré?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:31:18: Yeah. I do think we're at this really interesting inflection point as a company that 2026 is really kicking off where we've been building Daré for ten years. I started in 2015. We went public in 2017, which really created the capital. So we're now kicking off what ten years of building the way we have, without putting it to pipeline, where does that get you?

As I think of this year and years ahead, it gets us to this really fascinating place where all the work is finally paying off of having multiple products in rapid succession going to market. We have two that we're commercializing this year, one that should be commercializing next year as a hormone therapy product, multiple clinical studies at various phases, Ovaprene in phase three, HPV in phase two, metadata readouts, and other things moving up. I feel like we're finally at that place where we get to show the world, surprise. This is what ten years of building...

Jon Chee - 00:32:17: Yeah.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:32:17: Does. You come here now, it looks like it was so fast and so instant, but this is what we were building to. So that's really exciting and fun to be at that place. As I look ahead for us this year and next year, it's a lot of milestones. It's a lot around execution and different kinds of execution: commercial execution, clinical execution, regulatory execution, which is all stuff we've been doing.

Jon Chee - 00:32:40: Sounds like the bread and butter.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:32:42: It is. It's the bread and butter, and now it's getting to put it on the sandwiches and serve it to the party. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:32:48: Are your commercial launches global launches?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:32:53: Great question. For the commercialization step, we're very much focused on the United States right now. We do look for partners right outside of the United States. It's so specialized, and we made a decision early on, we like to do clinical research more broadly. One of the grant programs that we have in place with the Gates Foundation, their focus is low and middle income countries. We do that work, but in terms of commercialization, we're very focused on the United States for the foreseeable future directly. Partnerships are important to us. We partnered our FDA-approved product. Organon has global rights to that product, so we try to do interesting things from that perspective. But yeah, we're commercially focused on the US.

Jon Chee - 00:33:34: And if you get something FDA approved and then you're commercializing it here, how cross-applicable is an FDA approval elsewhere globally? Or do you start zero to one?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:33:46: No. An FDA approval or European approval are considered stringent regulatory approvals, and there are a number of countries globally that you can register your product on the sole basis of that stringent regulatory approval. Some countries might still want you to do something in addition in their local population, but you're not starting from scratch. You're doing a lot less than you would have to do if you were starting from scratch. So it's huge. Either an FDA or a European approval goes a long way in terms of other markets. The US and Europe haven't energized or coordinated as well on what they each want. I still aspire for the day when that happens.

Jon Chee - 00:34:31: Very interesting. With the whole business model, if you're clinching these FDA approvals, it's very scalable. I know Japan and Korea, they're super strict.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:34:44: They are.

Jon Chee - 00:34:44: And you gotta run studies there specifically for their population.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:34:48: You do. Yes. Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:34:50: But you're not at step zero.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:34:53: No. Exactly. No. That's exactly right.

Jon Chee - 00:34:56: Wow. That's really, really cool. Well, Sabrina, this has been freaking awesome. I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of fun. So thank you for taking the time.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:35:05: Oh my gosh. Thank you.

Jon Chee - 00:35:07: This has been a blast. And in traditional closing fashion, we have two questions to wrap things up. First question is, would you like to give any shout-outs to anyone who supported you along the way?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:35:17: I mentioned both of them already. I'll mention them again. Roger Holly is the person who I ran into in an elevator when I was starting Daré and offered to write the first check, and he did write the first check. He's since passed away, but he was foundational in me being able to start Daré Bioscience and doing that. And then the other is Jay Kranzler. He was the CEO at Cypress my whole tenure there, and he was that CEO who just opened so many doors for me and gave me those opportunities that I wouldn't have.

Jon Chee - 00:35:51: That one pivotal conversation where you're slightly dropping on.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:35:56: Exactly. Exactly.

Jon Chee - 00:35:57: Like, I think I can help here.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:36:00: Do that?

Jon Chee - 00:36:00: Yeah. Yeah.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:36:01: Yeah. And what that did.

Jon Chee - 00:36:03: I love that. And then if you can give any advice to your 21-year-old self, what would it be?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:36:08: You know, it's funny. It's actually advice that Jay had given to me early on, which was kind of trust your read of the room and speak up. There were definitely moments in my career where I saw something. I saw a problem. I saw what the solution could be, and my tendency was just kind of to wait. Someone else will talk about it, or someone else will bring that up, or someone else will be brave enough to raise their hand and say that, and he was a good reminder. I wish that my 21-year-old self had that. Just speak up. Have a voice. Have a place in the conversation, and be respectful with evidence and all those good things, but speak up.

I think the other would be, I landed there serendipitously, choose your mission before your industry or your job. Really think about what matters to you because a job is what you might do every day, but a mission can be your life. When you put them together, that is so powerful.

Jon Chee - 00:37:13: Absolutely. Right?

Sabrina Johnson - 00:37:14: And you can just be so impactful. I think my 21-year-old self was just worried about getting that first job that perfectly fit the textbook of what I had studied as opposed to the mission.

Jon Chee - 00:37:26: Yep. Absolutely. That's great advice. And I think when you raise your hand to get on that FDA meeting...

Sabrina Johnson - 00:37:32: I know. Yes. I was taking his advice. Yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:37:34: Everything changed from that point on. And that's all it takes.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:37:39: Yes.

Jon Chee - 00:37:40: You just need one. Yes.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:37:41: Exactly. No one knows the great idea that's in your head.

Jon Chee - 00:37:46: Exactly. I encourage anyone. It is uncomfortable to do that, but I encourage everyone to say yes to these opportunities. And if there isn't one, try to create one for yourself. I love that. Sabrina, thank you again. This has been so much fun.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:02: Oh my gosh. Thank you. It's been so fun.

Jon Chee - 00:38:04: I'll get out of the rain in San Francisco. My wife is from San Diego, so next time I'm in San Diego...

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:09: That'll be great.

Jon Chee - 00:38:10: Yes. I'll give you a ring.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:11: Connect in person.

Jon Chee - 00:38:12: In the sunshine instead of the dreary San Francisco fog.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:16: Although, by the way, it turns out San Diego is...

Jon Chee - 00:38:18: Also foggy.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:19: I know. Not as warm as I thought and also foggy. Who knew? I did not know that.

Jon Chee - 00:38:23: I was actually going to say, the last time I was there, I was like, oh, it might even be more foggy.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:29: No. And I live by the coast. So yeah.

Jon Chee - 00:38:32: Well, next time, we'll meet up in the fog.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:34: Perfect.

Jon Chee - 00:38:35: Yeah. Thanks, Sabrina.

Sabrina Johnson - 00:38:36: Thank you so much.

Outro - 00:38:39:

Thanks for listening to our four-part series featuring Sabrina Johnson. From a Rome-born theater kid talked into biomedical engineering by a clever science teacher to the biochemical engineering labs of University College London at the dawn of biologics, climbing from the bottom to the top of a sales leaderboard simply by being herself through tissue engineering launches across two continents, thirteen years as CFO and COO at a publicly traded company navigating stock crashes and hostile takeovers, and a Saturday morning epiphany that turned "someone should do this" into a Nasdaq-listed biopharmaceutical company built on the conviction that women's health is not a niche. Sabrina's story shows what happens when you choose your mission before your industry, trust your read of the room, and dare to be different.

If you enjoy the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend. Join us for our next series featuring Alex Telford, cofounder and CEO of Convoke, a South San Francisco-based company building the AI-native operating system for biopharma, a unified platform that codifies decision logic, connects internal and external data, and generates critical deliverables across the entire drug development life cycle. Before founding Convoke in 2024, Alex spent nearly a decade in life sciences strategy consulting, rising to associate principal while advising biopharma companies on some of the most complex strategic and regulatory challenges in the industry and writing prolifically along the way about where biotech was going wrong and what it would take to fix it.

At Convoke, Alex is building what he and his cofounders describe as biopharma's new workspace, purpose-built software that replaces the fragmented, document-heavy workflows slowing down drug development with an AI-powered system that lets teams move faster and make better decisions with the knowledge they already have. With $8,600,000 in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins and Dimension Capital and a founding thesis that the biggest bottleneck in drug development isn't science, but the operating infrastructure around it, Alex's journey from life sciences consultant and independent biotech writer to founder CEO demonstrates what it looks like when someone spends years diagnosing an industry's deepest inefficiencies and then decides to be the one to fix them, 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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