Building and Scaling the Tools and Technologies that Underpin Lifesciences

What do you think it takes to make biotech and format as cool as tech and people's minds? You have to talk about AI probably. Wow, we made this with AI. Yeah, it's so complicated. You know, tech, you can experience yourself. Yeah. You can try it out. And you can say, yeah, this AI works. I made a cool picture or whatever. Yeah. So it's more believable. This is highly technical. The progress always in, okay, I know someone who had this disease and they were pure. Not just treated them, but pure. Yeah. Have a few examples of that and that's super exciting. All right. mine. Thanks for coming to biotech and boba. And it's not that you had never had boba before. So what did you think? No, I think the top of your cross-interesting. Fantastic. Good taste. I like it. Super taste. Yeah, okay. Not too sweet. The nice thing is there's many, many varieties to choose from. I went mine as like the classic brown sugar. Brown sugar? Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Sugar. I can be very excited and drive everyone in that office crazy after that. But thanks for joining. So if you don't mind just a few minutes on my career, backstory, because I think yours is particularly interesting for some of the stuff we'll get into later. Yeah, born and raised in Germany and Hamburg Germany. I never wanted to be a business person. I ended up in business. I don't know how, but I pursued my passion, which was horseback riding. So that became a horse that narrowed in practice three years. Decide, no, I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life and join the pharmaceutical company and diagnosis company. And the rest was history. So and then why didn't you want to do it for the rest of your life? Burnouts, you know, you worked 12 days in a row, two days off. Oh, I'm sure. So it's private business. Exciting, but I couldn't see myself doing for the rest of my life. And I was when I made the decision on 28, I graduated 25. I finished my PhD. And then I needed to become a specialist. Yeah. And then I said, no, I'm not going to do that. And what drew you towards some of the diagnostic side? I knew people in the industry. I had no idea what it was. And they also, which I studied with. And they also said, yeah, this is a really interesting work, very international, very global. So I started an international product management position as a technical product manager. Yeah. And it was good about that company. They gave you a lot of training and business courses and all this. So I learned business. I don't have a business degree by doing it. Yeah. Which I think is a good way to do it. You don't need an MBA. Could be helpful, but yeah, you don't have to have it. So. And then as I recall you then chanted up at Roche on the Roche side and then Merck. Yeah. Or in, sorry, Millie Poor. Yeah, it was a diagnostic for 15 years. I had an opportunity to run a public company first time. That was Millipore. Yeah. I brought me to Boston. Millipore was sort of in trouble or not. But we doubled the company then. We were unexpectedly sold to Merck, the German Merck. After that, I worked for Carlisth. They do and then ran a Carla company, ortho-clinical diagnostic for five years. Which merged in my public afterwards and now I'm basically half-retired, work on birth, boards and try to help people like yourself. No. I'm the person who's making something happen, which is, I admire because it's a very difficult challenge. Yeah. But it's worth it. So it's interesting. Yeah, and you have all the insights on the field. I think one of the big questions that a lot of technology developers, entrepreneurs, will face in our zone is they come up with a new technology and then they have this issue of, do I go for a platform business model where I just sell the tool to others or do I use the tool to actually make a new therapeutic or something? And so how do you view that debate and what do you feel has been the pros and cons that have played out when people go one route versus the other? Yeah. I think the therapeutics are totally different game. Yeah. And you're focused on much higher fundraising, much longer development cycle. So you need to decide very early on whether this is possible with that approach. And I've been involved companies have done that and but they decided early on, yes, as a therapeutic, we can get a differentiated molecule or clinical solution. And your fundraising will be very different, different investors, different timescale, different partnerships you will need. Tools is faster. Yeah. It's a more, it's definitely totally the market much smaller, but you can get a product out in a year or two. Yep. And so early on you will see if there is a market fit, you can also lose it faster. Yeah. That's that's that's that's much less money. You can do it more bootstrap than once you have a certain size, you can then scale it up. It's much more flexible, but it's a smaller market. I don't know if you would agree with this feeling, but at least from my experience that felt like people will, on average, view the therapeutic side that's kind of like the white collar and the actually superior thing to do. And then the tool side is more the blue collar grants that do it. I mean, do you feel like that perception kind of exists? I feel like the scientists do that. Yeah. Yeah. Or why do you think that perception is like that? Because I remember when we were starting to squeeze an issue being a tool that therapeutic people would kind of look down on us. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. You're the nail, right? Well, I think there's some truth to it, but think about this. When you develop pharmaceuticals, you do it from the beginning. It will take 14 years until you see it in a patient. And then you have a few years to sell it. So how many of these will you do if you're in your life one or two? Of course, it's the big goal, but it's a slow game. It takes a long time. It has huge failure rates. Yeah. And yeah, you do interesting signs. But not always. Sometimes you just make a different version of the pharmaceuticals that already exist. Yeah. But it's good for business. You can sell it. So I would say it depends. The science and tools is not inferior. My view, many times you have to integrate pretty complex technology, biology, AI, software, robotics, many of you need more sophisticated tools today on multidisciplinary. And in diagnostics, if you take the tool into diagnostics, it's even harder because then you get the reimbursement of the study's regulatory approval. So no way this is intellectually different. I'm not saying it's my opinion. Yeah, it's nice. I'm just saying others. But you have to agree because they're customized. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, yes, we're the losers, please. Go make our tool do great things. What do you feel like is the most common reason for failure in the tool space? I mean, basically you have a technology that fits for a certain purpose. Yeah. And you underestimate what it takes to get customer adoption. And sometimes it just takes much longer, not because your tool is working. It's because there are other tools that are pretty good, good enough, where they are used to using it, doing it a certain way. And so you don't get the adoption, and it takes a lot of time. So you think of what's happening and you want to a three, but it's not happening. And that is a big problem for startup because you have very little room for error when you scale up, because that's just go out, the cat burn goes up. So that's how a couple is fail. And the leadership teams or entrepreneurs that you feel like do pull it off versus the ones that don't, like what do you think tends to be the common defining feature that overcomes that hurdle? I like teams that are first of all agile and very active in adjusting to new information. And not just say, yep, we have raised the money now. We're going to spend it on scaling up no matter what. If you have signals in the market that tell you, well, you need to validate this first. But slow down it, even though you just raise all the money, makes it big promises. You should be realistic that that would be a waste. And don't believe because you can raise money, you can build a business of two different things. So raising money is very important, but building a business of different skills. So I would look for basically validation with each customer. So if it's a new tool, you want very important customers saying good things about you publishing. Yeah. And then then using them on an ongoing basis, you look for repeat purchase. And then you have to look at your P&L, is that bringing our over time enough cash that you can actually build a business? Yeah. If you have that on a small scale, you can gradually increase. Sometimes you can go very fast. All right. And because you had the benefit of seeing this on the side of the much larger companies like, you know, Groge, Millipur, and also watching the startups do it, what do you think are the key things that are different between like a big company trying to launch a new technology versus a small company trying to do it? It couldn't be more different. Yeah. If you're a small company, the launch has to work. What once you scale it up? The margin of error is very little. Having been a large company is if you have a new product and it doesn't work, well, that's not good for it. Well, the company, but it doesn't sink the company. Right. And if it takes a year longer or two, because you have to redo a study or do redo some development or your production issues, so be it. I mean, you're just going to plow through it. Yeah. We had products at Waller's that took five, six years more to get through regulatory approval. And I just said, yep, we're going to do it. Yeah. So that would be dead. Can you imagine how much more money that costs? Yeah. And the star would say, well, you know, you have to live ring on mine. And now you have to raise more money. So you can't do that. So that's what I mean by margin of error is small. You make it sound like it might be a lot easier to do it on the big side. Are there things about it that are much easier on the small company side? Yeah, you can adjust much faster. So a large company has to scale up their commercial operation, their production. Usually the quality requirements are higher. There's much more to document. Yeah. The whole process and the machinery takes longer to put in place. Once it is in place, it's got a goal. Yeah. So if you have like a massive recall of a scale of product, that's very tough to manage. And so small companies have that. You can test it more. You can pull back faster and turn it out. And OK. And then with the startups working their way through this, how do you see the pros and cons of VC funding for this stuff versus private equity? Because I know they have different mindsets. But they overlap a little bit. But they also very different. Yeah. So VC's that I know are different startups that could be very early on. They could be incubating their business or they could be later stages. And the later stage VC's overlap a little bit with private equity. But by definition, in general, private equity invests into possible business. And not all of them. But you see the growth private equity. So you can see the break even, but you're rapidly, or it's a profitable business. Because the model is to take the business, grow it, and many cases put that on it. Yeah. So that's what VC does. Usually it doesn't do. Usually it doesn't do it. There are always many exceptions. But that's kind of the big difference. So I think they've played together. Yeah. But usually private equity goes in much, much later. Yeah. And when it comes to the outcomes for these tool companies, I mean, when do you think it makes sense for these companies to go for M&A if they're showing success and versus continue to try to be independent, whether it's private or public. Yeah. Yeah. It's the question of cash and fundraising. So if you think your ability to raise money, attract investors is limited, then you have to consider M&A. But you should not do it. If you can build a standalone profitable independent company, that's the best path to value-period movement. Yeah. If you can see that, and it's hard to do it, and in many cases, I would say today you probably need 75, 200 million in revenue in most cases, in tools and diagnostics for sure, or more like 200. Their company is worth several hundred, and not profitable. So that's why I say, so where would the money come from? You know, you could go public, which is difficult right now, but it is possible. Raise money. That changes how you manage the company. But usually you should focus on, OK, can I build a sustainable business over time? And you shouldn't worry about M&A if you can do that. It'll happen by itself. It might. Yeah. OK. And one thing I've heard or wondered about is, it feels like once people have these commercial machines, they need more and more items to add to the commercial things basket. And so if you're kind of a single technology play, it's relatively expensive to have that commercial machinery. So you might feel obliged to add things in that may or may not be as great, whereas the big guys already have the machine. So they might get more incremental economics from new fun toys getting added. How do you view that part of someone's trying to stay in the company? Yeah. I mean, for the large players in the industry has gotten much more consolidated. To matter, you need a certain size. So just the math, otherwise, a whole acquisition of small businesses is not worth it. So they are mid-scale players, or this will probably apply a little bit less. But usually before you hit 50, 60 million, is it really worthwhile to spend time and acquiring it? Yeah. So that's fair. Yeah. And man is a question of fit. But if you're a large diversified player, a lot of things fit, and you just more depends on what is the strategic focus. So you, again, back to build a business that's attractive, fast-quowing in that stage. And if you're a unique fast-quowing tools business, very attractive for these players, that's one thing that not so good at is building really new technologies, new businesses. They're very good at commercialization, and supply chain logistics, but globalization. But coming up with really new stuff, that's hard. OK. And because, again, you've had the benefit of you've been on the operator side, then the investor side, the board side. As you watch some of these other leadership teams go through the phases of, let's say, initially, they're trying to do the actual product development. Then there's their initial launch of things. And then scaling, are there signs you feel along the way that tell you, oh, this team isn't going to make it? Or, ooh, like, at this next phase, we're definitely going to have to switch them up. You mean in tools and startups? In tools platform startup, yeah. Yeah. So many times, when you come, particularly a startup that's been spun out of academia, many times, you have excellent technical people, incredible inventors. They know everything about the application, T-customers as well. Usually, week on commercial. So this is something you have to build. So I'd like to see people who are trying really hard to understand how you commercialize that, because it's a very different ballgame. Yeah. And so if you have both, I think then that's a good team. Which parts of that ballgame tend to be hardest for the technical people to learn? Commercial definitely. Oh, sorry, what aspects of commercial? Well, there's a belief that the technology sells itself many times, but it doesn't. So, or the technology is ready, and it isn't. Because not because it doesn't work, and the lab, it doesn't work the way the customers want to use it. So you have to do more development. And so judging that, that's where you see some of this. So it's in the product development. And then adoption, how long does it take? We talked about it earlier. So does it take-- what's the selling cycle? Is it six months, nine months? And so how long does it take to convince people how do you service? And you get the insominable brand new. Well, customers don't know how to use it. What you need to need service. We're going to have enough service. What I'm afraid, is that the end stop? It's hard for people who in the lab, they know everything about it, not to fix themselves to get that you actually need a whole organization to do that. And it costs money, which you could put into the next product. That's always tough. So you need both the balance here. Yeah, I feel like first time around, sometimes when there would be trouble, I'm like, why are these customers all idiots? And then this time around, I'm like, no, no, no. We need to make damn sure we're holding the end throughout, because we just know way more than they do. And they're coming at it from a very different view from us. What you don't want is it's a brilliant invention. It works well. It goes to the customer, the customer says, well, we tried that, but immediately it's a little bit-- yeah, it works, but it's sensitive to these interferences or whatever that is. Yeah. Then you have to fix it. It's much better if the product works. Or you don't give it up. You just make it as a service model for a while. So some companies do that as well until it's solid. Is there, among those technical founders-- I mean, it's not that there's many points there, but is there like, most prominent misconception that if you could like scream it into their ear from day one, you would have? Hey, I quite sure I don't understand the question. I'm just going to say that they have. Or-- Yeah, misconception that they have. Or like, misread that you think is the most common failure mode. They just read that part wrong. I think it's the overestimating where the technology is and it's a technology cycle. OK. Yeah. Like always, it's ready to go. It's seen this many times. So it's ready to go. Yeah, it works in your lab because you are a world expert in it. It doesn't mean it's working in the next 100 labs. Yeah. They understand this takes time, you know? Yeah. Because other people have to catch up, particularly with breakthrough innovations. Another reason I've seen this, yeah, it works. But customers don't want to use it yet. They don't trust it. And they have alternatives. Yeah. And you work more in the conversion. And it's more about, OK, how much better does it have to be? Yeah. And that's tricky, just with something works. You come in this is better. But if it's not dramatically better, and you say, well, why should I use it? It's much work to try a new technique, you know? Oh, yeah. Now, people don't want to change their day-to-day. I think when we're mindset, we land that on. was kind of, when you're the new tech, you're guilty on top of an innocent. Anything that goes wrong up, this thing sucks, I'm not gonna bother, whereas eventually once you become established, you're innocent on top of a guilty in the sense that if people do it for the first time, it doesn't work like, "Oh, you know what, "Christopher does work, I must have done this wrong." And they'll go do it again. And getting across that line is very hard. - Yeah, or you have something that is completely different, like PCR or sequencing, or you detect something that you could never see before. - Yeah. - That's easy, then you can, I can show you something that you've never seen before in your lab and you cannot do it, any other method. Yeah, it's like, "Oh yeah, let's see, how does it work?" And if it's hard to use, well, let's get through that, you know? - Yeah. - And so that's compelling, nice feeling. Many times, as a small company, you have to have a super compelling reason why customers should try it. If it's like a little bit better, yeah, but it takes much more pushing and selling, you know? Do you think that becomes a tricky judgment call in the sense of like, if you survey customers asking like, "Hey, what problems do you have?" They don't usually bring up the thing they could never do. They're saying, "Oh, I do this thing, it's 70% efficient, I really wish it was 80%. So a customer survey would say, "Go through that application." - Yeah. - Whereas you have to be able to take the leap of faith of like, "No, no, no, I know what they want, even though they don't know they want it yet, is that new thing they can't see?" - Yeah. I can give you one example from over 10 years ago. So when super sensitive proteomics was invented over 12 years ago, you talk to the incumbent diagnostic companies and they would say, "Yeah, that's interesting, but we have all the sensitivity we need." - Okay. - And today, if you didn't have ultra sensitive proteomics or protein hostage, you couldn't do an orology. And today these companies have these assets. So they couldn't see at that point in these world companies that there's a market and emerging market for these ultra sensitive assets. So yeah, many times it's like, "Yeah, these work pretty well, we don't really need it." And so what you need to do is you need to find one compelling case. In that case, it was tests that you can only do by imaging, you can do how to blood. - Yeah, that's compelling. Then people start to listen. Then you publish and show it and then get, "Oh yeah, we should try that." - When people are trying to navigate that, on average, how many, let's say, new use cases, do you think they have in mind only one or two of which are gonna be that win? And then they need to judge, are we on to something or not? 'Cause I feel like in those early days, it's really hard to tell. - Yeah, it's trial and error and you will find maybe four or five different applications and the one or the win. - Yeah. - I think it's hard to predict, but because you're a small company, you can have multiple approaches and see what works and then you can focus on the one early on that shows some traction. - Yeah. - That's more iterative, but that's a good method. It's happening in the spatial podium, it's right now definitely what you can find using, so you could see before. So. (electronic beeping) - I guess related to a little bit more on the technical side, are there areas of current technology development that you're particularly passionate about, like themes that are out there right now? - Yeah, I like the field of micro-physiological devices to replace animal testing. - Yeah. - And get closer to the biology. So organ chips is one, I'm involved in my company. And because of recent changes with FD regulations, it's gotten some traction after being pretty slow for a long time. The technology's amazing, it works really well. - Yeah. - Biology, you're closer to what actually happens in human cells, but the regulations slack, and now they change and know there's real traction, which is very cool. - So you think people will move away from doing too many animal models? I mean, I agree a lot of things are not very predictive anyway. - Yeah, they're not predictive and also for ethical reasons. You cannot continue the slurring of monkeys and dogs. It was just not acceptable in my view. - Yeah, I agree. And I think as these organ on a chip or other replacement systems come into play, hopefully they can just displace that. And it's nice that the regulatory side seems to be coming on board with that. I do think it'll be interesting in the academic world, though, 'cause I feel like a lot of the highlight point for your nature or science paper is the animal model that you did. - Yeah. - And if you did it on an organ on a chip thing, that it'll appear less lackluster, but hopefully it'll shift them to, or I don't know, do you think it'll drive their incentives in the right direction too? - I don't know, it's very entrenched technology, very entrenched methods. And there's gonna be a transition period where you both, but the fact that we use dogs, and particularly that we love pets, and then they end up in the lab, the same dog. It's basically an asset that can use that doesn't add up, I mean, ethically is completely unacceptable in that many examples. And so there has to be other than it's more work to establish these methods, it has to be also an ethical reason why you want to move away from it. And there's some countries are pretty proactive on that. It takes good. - And I would argue it would shorten the pre-clinical development cycles, 'cause usually then, vivo models are by far the biggest time drivers. - Yeah, I've seen data where you, when you look at toxicity in particular, kidney or liver, if you use not human cells or their organ chip with four different types of liver cells, you can definitely pick up molecules that have off-target effects earlier. You couldn't pick up in the rat study. - Yeah. - Of course. Hey, I'm a veterinarian, I know rats are not humans. So why is that the standard model? Well, that's because what we have, right? It's just like, doesn't make any sense. - Well, as I remember, 'cause my postdoc was immunology, and there was a lot of mouse system stuff, it was some immune mechanisms in a mouse, like they would tolerate it perfectly fine, where it would have definitely killed the person. And then there were other mechanisms that to a mouse tumor wouldn't do anything. And like PD1 famously, which is obviously a huge drug, and melanoma was its kind of flagship indication. It doesn't work in the most common kind of melanoma model in mice. - No, of course, yeah. So there's a lot of disconnects. If you're a trainer's veterinarian, which I have, you basically have to study seven species. So, oh wow. And once you, yeah, but not so deep. (laughing) So once you practice in different animals, you know that certain medications, you can use on a cat, but not on a dog. And you know that because of those effects. - Yeah, yeah. - Inside effects, yeah. Or you can use a drug that works in human, but you can't use it in a horse, or you can use it in a horse, but not in human. So there's a lot of overlap in medication. We can, you know, come up from human medicine, you can use an animal. - Yeah. - And they have been tried and have been tested officially, but they've been tried. And you can see when you have a side effect with its works or not. So I've seen this personally when it doesn't work. (laughing) - I love that so obvious to you, but I was on the PhD, so you said I've never been exposed to that. And I'm sure the MDs aren't exposed to that. - So obviously you shouldn't do that. And so when I read like, oh yeah, cancer breaks through so and so my study, I look at it my study, congratulations. That helps the mice. (laughing) - It's really good. - It's really good job. - It's smoking too many cigarettes getting a house lung cancer. And then are the more diagnostic side, are there any trends that, or tools that you've been excited about that you think are underrated right now? - Well, maybe not underrated, actually very rated, but there's a lot of progress in cancer diagnostics with MRDs, minimal rejuvenation testing, and incredible success commercially. Also, more companies are getting into acquisitions that we've made, but there's some true progress and there are different technical approaches to get to earlier detection and monitoring of recurrence. So very exciting, fully supported reimbursement, you can get it approved. That's a good, very hot field. I like spatial proteomics, and that is emerging to be a very good field also for precision medicine. There's so many biomarkers that we don't know about that are needed, particularly in tissue, for targeting drugs. And then new tools now available that help you to identify spatial proteomic biomarkers that are not known. So, very good mass spectrida, microscopy, mass spectrida, another example of pretty complicated technology, but that is delivering breakthrough. But it's early days as just being used now and research, I'll be excited. And I'm not as familiar with that space, but have you seen any dynamics changing among the buyers for diagnostics like the hospital of the lab that farmers has anything changed over the past decades or that's still more or less the same as it's always been? I mean, for, you can see in the material markets that chemistry and molecular diagnostics mainstream, it's the same, it's just more buying power. You have to have a scale, you sell a system, you sell a solution, yeah. So it's more enterprise level sale. And that's why you have the incumbents, the big players, they command a market share here. On the delivery side, reference labs, they're definitely more change. They're definitely more interesting getting more innovative diagnostics. And what I've seen recently in the US, Quest is doing a lot of direct consumer testing. - Yeah. - So that's interesting. And that's integrated with other devices people have. It's more like wellness testing. But they've been very active in delivering diagnostic testing directly to patients. So you can just go to a lab and get the test done at a better price point. (electronic beeping) Going all the way, just in case you have views there on the clinical and therapeutic site, or they're not necessarily, it has to be therapeutics, but are there areas where you see that you think the next major shift in clinical impacts is gonna come from, based on what's brewing these days? - I mean, cancer will continue to be a focus and we've seen this, but that continues definitely. My hope is self-therapy. - Yeah. - Much in development in the pipeline. Last time I looked 300 different molecules, I would say molecules now. - Self. - Self. - Yeah. - Engineered cells. - Engineered cells in development. I think you see much more coming from China. They move from being more of a copier to a developer of drugs, and particularly in self-therapy, car too self. That's exciting. So it needs to show itself, but the data I've seen there's a lot of expectation of that market will be very strong. - Yeah, I mean, obviously we are super biased, so we agree, and I don't know if you agree with this notion, but we also think that a lot of the kind of current generation self-therapy is where they're essentially manufactured, and they need to move towards point of care. Another issue they have aside from getting closer to the patient and being more practical to make, is that right now there's a lot of genetic modification involved, and when you touch the genome, it is unlikely it'll ever be a first-line treatment, because of the long-term risks you're taking, and so we think a lot of the future is going to be for lack of a word, software for cells. So like, the mixture of mRNA and AS RNA, et cetera, you put into itself to give it a new program to run, and only then can you be first-line. But I don't know if you have views on that side. - I think, I don't know too much about that. But I know that the self-therapy has to prove itself out, and I would say on the production of the cells, you have major hurdles to overcome, but the fact there's so much investment and so much pipeline makes me believe that it should be a good field for the future. Yeah, I think we are in a stage right now, where you have many more therapeutic technologies than we used to have used that molecule, anti-garden, and basically chemicals or small chemical entities. And now we have bivailant antibodies, we have cell therapy, we have gene therapy, we have so many different mRNAs. - Yeah, yeah. - So in a way, the pharmaceutical industry is poised to do very well, is success rate continues because the investment has been tremendous in finding these new technologies. So it's been good for that. What do you think it takes to make biotech and formats cool as tech and people's minds? So we can get more of that retail money into the stock market. - To talk about AI probably. - We made this with AI. - Yeah, it's so complicated. Tech, you can experience yourself. You can try it out. You can say, "Yeah, this AI works. "I made a cool picture or whatever." So it's more believable. This is highly technical and the progress always in, "Okay, I know someone who had this disease "and they were cured, not just treated, they were cured." - Yeah. - And we have a few examples of that and that's super exciting. - I think you're a good point. I wonder, maybe it's-- - What's too bad is the COVID, I would always say. The mRNA vaccine for COVID was one of the most successful pharmaceutical developments ever in humanity. So impact, time, life saved. - I heard, I heard Dr. Fauci's speaker said there were 24 million people saved worldwide. What's that vaccine? That's one of the most successful technology rollouts in an emergency ever. - Yeah. - It's just unbelievable. And should talk about it. That is a cool story, I think. - Why don't you think it gets credit? - I don't know. (laughing) Mine bugger. (laughing) - I could be some people who think vaccines aren't good, but it's, I mean, it's from a medical stomach, but that's most logical thing you can get because it prevented disease, you don't get it. - Yeah. So to me, that's a great story. It's not talked about enough. - Yeah, and I think, relatedly, just broadly, the class of how much of a difference vaccines have made for the world or how much of a difference any biotics have made for the world. I think at this point, they're just taken for granted. 'Cause people don't have the mental reference point. I'm like, yeah, this is primarily what would kill people back in the day. It wasn't cancer and all that stuff. It was just-- - It's infectious disease. - In the most curative, I don't know how many thousand animals are vaccinated, but that's kind of the basis. You need vaccination. - Yeah. - So that other animals, other humans don't get sick. - Yeah. - It's like, yeah, this is like, we wouldn't have agriculture without vaccines. - Yeah. - We wouldn't. Not no animal agriculture would exist because we put these animals together and they get sick. So they have to be vaccinated. When you bring your dog to the kennel, because you want to grow somewhere in the weekend, you have to be vaccinated, right? - Right, right. - No, I mean, I agree. I'm with you. (laughing) - Yeah, I think it's because it's just not top of mind to people. All right, I probably was around the home stretch. As you've gone through your leadership journeys, are there things that you wish you had learned faster? Or you could go back and talk to 30 year olds, Martin, what would be like the one thing you would want to tell them? - You know, I'm not one who looks back a lot because you know, you're more forward oriented. But I should have probably moved into business sooner. - Okay. - You know, because I played around, you know, I studied six years and I worked three years. So I spent nine years thinking I'd be a really good, you know, horse surgeon. - Yeah. - Where's, I didn't. (laughing) So it's like, that was interesting, but it's, so yeah, I could have used these nine years to be an entrepreneur maybe. Who knows, but. - Okay. - Maybe. (laughing) - And then if you could change, like speaking of looking ahead, if you could change one thing about the life science tools and diagnostics ecosystem, like what would you want to change? You just had a magic wand, whatever you wanted. - Oh, lots of things. - Well, as you got it prioritized. I think we need to continue to help entrepreneurs to build business because the industry is also getting more consolidated. - Okay. - It's unfortunate, but it's kind of the nature of business when you have more capital and more power, you'll be building a more resilient business and you get more investors. But that's not necessarily good for innovation, seen in diagnostics. And I don't want this to happen in tools. It's just a lot of consolidation, I think. And it's important to have, but it's not the answer. - Yeah. - You need to have vibrant, not just companies of different sizes to make the industry interesting. - How do you vaccinate against consolidation? - Well, there's regulatory approaches obviously. - Yeah. - Which I think should be looked at. And you should give smaller companies and unfair advantages. Because it's harder to build a small company. - Right. - About the harder. - Okay. Any other spicy or ate-to-polar canyons we didn't get to? - Talked about it a little bit, but I'm obviously against animal testing. - Yeah. - Support this company. It's my background. I've seen this happening and I think I would encourage pharmaceutical customers to embrace them in technologies. Because it will take a while or generate the data. So that alternative animal testing can mainstream, can be used. Because what we're doing today is ethically, totally unacceptable. You cannot justify that you take a dog that is your pet at home. And if the dog happens to be in the lab, he gets tortured and killed and that is ethically not acceptable. So whenever you see that, you have to remember that that's very hypocritical approach you're taking there. And I think that's what we talk about it, but I think it's not okay. - Now I'm with you on that. And I think hopefully the, as the generations of stereotypes have evolved, hopefully it makes the talks elements more and more predictable anyway, such that you don't even have a good excuse to go to animals. Because I would argue like small molecules, it's so insanely unpredictable. That's what drove people to do the animal testing and the first thing. But byologics it starts to get more predictable. Because it's usually just on target talks. It's not something really random mechanism that got hit. And then I bet even South Air, if he gets even more predictable because everything you did is confined to that cell you rejected. So it becomes even more on target than a biologic. So hopefully that'll help in addition to the organicip. - But I also wanna say, okay, there are technical practicalities that are very important to consider. But the assumption that you can just take an animal like this and say, "You're a good guy." Yep, we're going to use you for that is already highly suspect and not accept. Yes, I agree. I'm making an excuse for the for a market. So it's not it's not okay. So I would say just don't do it if you can't do it anymore. Yeah. No, I think that's fair. You find other ways and you know, people are very inventive and very innovative and there are other ways now. So there's no excuse anymore. I think it was always an excuse here. Let's see all the way we can do it. Well, it doesn't look for other ways. Now we look for other ways and it's possible. Yeah, yeah, and it's so uninformative anyway. So it makes it even not much harder to justify in the end of it. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. Good talk to you. Cheers the boba. Thanks you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you doing this. [BLANK_AUDIO]