The Biotech Startups Podcast

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Alex Telford, founder of Convoke, who raised $8.6 million to build the AI-native operating system for biopharma. Part one traces his path from an expat childhood across Switzerland, Germany, and Spain — shaped by international schools, disappearing friendships, and a New Scientist subscription — through biochemistry at Bristol and into a synthetic biology master's at UCL that promised biological engineering and delivered toggle switches.

In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of DARÉ Bioscience, to unpack the founding arc of a company built on a singular conviction: women's health is not a niche. Sabrina explains the choice to go public via reverse merger in 2017 to access capital in a space where only 1% of private healthcare investment funds women-specific conditions, and breaks down the groomed trail philosophy behind XACIATO, DARE to PLAY Sildenafil Cream, a pivotal Phase 3 contraceptive, and an ARPA-H-funded HPV treatment—all with 25 people and $75M+ in non-dilutive funding.

In this episode, Jon Chee continues with Sabrina Johnson, DARÉ Bioscience CEO, tracing 13 years at Cypress Bioscience — from a hallway eavesdrop that earned her an FDA panel seat, to VP of Marketing, an "interim" CFO role held for nearly a decade, and COO. She covers a fibromyalgia Phase 3 that missed at p=0.058, the disclosure gap, and a hostile takeover that forced the sale — then shares the Monday resignation and elevator pitch that led to founding DARÉ.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of DARÉ Bioscience. Sabrina traces her path from a name-tag encounter that led her to Advanced Tissue Sciences to joining Cypress Bioscience in 1998. She unpacks pharmaceutical marketing regulation, the medical-regulatory-legal review process, and the gray zone of compounded GLP-1s — including DARÉ's decision to make its sildenafil cream available via 503B rather than leave women without a validated option.

In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of Daré Bioscience, a Nasdaq-listed biopharma advancing women's reproductive health. Daré's team of 25 executes the groomed trail approach — matching therapeutic gaps to FDA-approved actives — with a non-hormonal contraceptive in pivotal Phase 3 and $75M+ in non-dilutive funding from the Gates Foundation, NIH, and ARPA-H.