The Biotech Startups Podcast

You need a lab. James Evans found hoods for $500, looked at JLABS in San Diego, and walked away because the price and the fit were wrong. A decade later the company still hasn't taken the predetermined fundraising staircase. He went for a walk before the taping, told his wife those other podcast guests were rock stars, and landed on the only label that fit: scrappy.

Paul Matsudaira took a job in Singapore, and James Evans did not wake up one morning craving entrepreneurship. He left MIT's Whitehead Institute, bounced through venture-backed biotechs, and got a baptism of fire defending data in rooms that wanted a fight. One San Diego client won a contract, and that was enough to plant PhenoVista in California with a year of runway and no paying customers yet.

James Evans calls himself a late starter. Childhood in the UK was skateboarding and video games, not science kits. His dad was an engineer and his mom was a nurse, which only looks like a straight line if you draw it afterwards. Science wasn't in the house. Soccer was mainstream. Skateboarding was not, and that counterculture stubbornness is the part he still recognizes in company building.

Steve Visco grew PolyPlus Battery Company on government contracts instead of a stack of tiny SBIRs. Lawrence Berkeley had already taught him how to write large proposals. The danger, he says, is chasing money that pulls the company off its North Star. Once you sign, you cannot renegotiate the work. You get reports, audits, and no BMWs in the parking lot. ARPA-E will kill a grant that stalls. His grant-writing rule is the same as a venture pitch: why should anyone care, who is on the team, and don't ask for too little.

Steve Visco's spinout found its first CEO in the audience. Rudolph Hurwich had already built Dymo, cashed out, and was hunting for another shot at something big. He offered to raise the angel round and take the job when Steve said he wasn't ready. The founding four were faculty: Steve, Lutgard De Jonghe at Berkeley, Michel Armand in Montreal and Grenoble, and Meilin Liu at Georgia Tech.