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🧬 Mark Kotter - bit.bio - Part 3 | Success in Academia vs. Industry | Vital Things All Founders Should Know | The Importance of Company Culture | bit.bio & the Operating System of Life
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Part 3 of 4.
My guest for this week’s episode is Mark Kotter, neurosurgeon, stem cell biologist, and CEO and founder of bit.bio. Bit.bio is an award-winning human synthetic biology company providing human cells for research, drug discovery, and cell therapy. Bit.bio applies a patented safe harbor gene targeting approach to inducibly express transcription factor combinations that reprogram human-induced pluripotent stem cells into highly defined and mature human cell types. Bit.bio spun out of the University of Cambridge in 2016 and has since raised approximately $200 million from Arch Ventures, Foresight Capital, Milky Way, Charles River Laboratories, National Resilience, Tencent, and Pulau Capital, among others.
In addition to bit.bio, Mark is also the co-founder of Meatable, scientific founder and chairman of rejuvenation startup clock.bio, and co-founder and trustee of Myelopathy.org, the first charity dedicated to a common yet often overseen condition causing a slow-motion spinal cord injury. Mark has also been a professor and researcher at Cambridge for more than 15 years. His diverse experience as an academic and serial entrepreneur offers a wealth of insights aspiring scientist founders can draw from.
Join us this week and hear about:
- Gene expression discoveries and the technology bit.bio is developing around them
- Vital questions and concepts that every founder should know before they start developing their company
- The benefits of founder-led companies and their relentless focus on their mission
- And much more!
Please enjoy my conversation with Mark Kotter.
Timestamps:
00:28 Intro
01:55 Explaining the technology they developed while at the stem cell institute
03:26 An unexpected gene expression discovery and dealing with the issues that followed
05:32 Comparing what it means to be successful in academia vs industry
06:53 The dangers of having a misalignment of objectives while building a company and other lessons learned by Mark
10:18 Vital things that founders need to address before taking their idea from the lab and building a company around it
14:08 How Mark and his COO’s skill sets compliment each other
15:29 The importance of company culture and how it can affect both building a company and investing in one
17:55 Benefits to the relentless objective-based focus that some founder-led companies have over professionally managed ones
19:44 Parallels between Excedr’s all-in origins and bit.bio’s complete dedication to its mission
21:47 What Mark’s operating system of life is, what are its applications, and why it fuels bit.bio’s culture
24:07 Outro
Find Our Guest, Mark Kotter, at these links:
Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:
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Podcast Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/
Enriched Notes:
Topics Mentioned:
Cambridge Stem Cell Institute https://www.stemcells.cam.ac.uk/
University of Cambridge https://www.cam.ac.uk/
Single Cell Analysis: Considerations & Applications
Lab Equipment for Genetic Engineering Research
What is Live-Cell Imaging & How Does It Work?
Common Lab Equipment for Life Sciences Research in 2024 https://www.excedr.com/blog/common-lab-equipment
People Mentioned:
Kathryn Corzo https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-penkus-corzo/
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