Not All Who Wander Are Lost: with Iva Toudjarska, founder and CEO of Zeal Therapeutics

This week I spoke with Eva Tudjarska and she has an amazing career. I really enjoyed my conversation. She started out getting her PhD in molecular biology. She's been in business development. She's worked for venture firms. She's been operator. She has pretty much done it all. And it's really interesting how she's married all of those things together as she's now founded a new company. She also took a little stint away from biotech and founded and sold a really successful SaaS company in the tech space. And she brought a lot of what she learned there back into biotech, which I absolutely love. I think you'll enjoy this conversation. She's a really dynamic individual. So without further ado, let's get into it. Welcome to the Building Biotechs podcast. Over the years, I've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground up. I'm your host, Karina Klingman. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show. I'm really excited to chat with you. You have such an interesting background, and I think the experience you're going to bring is going to be really valuable to a lot of founders. I'd love to start out with kind of an overview of your career. So I like to ask, what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now? And how did you get there?

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate that sentiment. What I wanted to be When I was seven years old, I wanted to be an astrobiologist. I was reading this science fiction book where the protagonist was traveling to other planets, discovering this really cool creatures and flowers that record. And I still to that day refer to that book as sort of foundational in me wanting to aim for the stars. And even though I didn't end up being an astrobiologist, I grew up in Bulgaria. I don't think there was a astrobiology opportunity there. So you really had to be here, work for NASA. But I did end up being a biologist, and that started with more on the medicine side. I wanted to help people cure people of diseases, and that really took me into molecular biology, molecular genetics. I think. 25 years later, I too think my career path has been interesting. It's never been a straight line, it's always been weaving through. But I was Lucky to work at one of the, I would say best biotechs right now, that is commercial online pharmaceuticals. I was one of the founding employees very early on with very entrepreneurial culture and that was also very formative of my professional experience. I've worked with many platform companies which is a real art and real skill to figure out how to develop a platform and find an indication. Just the killer app, right? Just the right thing that only you can do. I've worked with CRISPR Therapeutics, RNA activation, Mina Therapeutics with Nimbus Discovery early days and I've been lucky to also be trusted with building strategic partnerships and collaborations and building companies and that's what I've been doing for the past six years. I was part of Evotech and the academic partnerships there, did some quite entrepreneurial like led the first LP investment for the organization and partnered kidney platform and that's what led me to my current company. I've worked at Zontogeny also with the seed portfolio companies and with first time CEOs and know their challenges as their right hand. And I've also led a venture studio which is a fun fund and an operating company and we're building a portfolio of multiple opportunities at the same time. So really learn how to prioritize how to set up a company for success. I've also taken a step outside of biotech. When I was transitioning out of Alnylam, I took a three year sort of gap, finished my MBA and I started a software company as the only non technical founder. Ran that for six and a half years and we sold it to private equity. So really building for scale is something I learned outside of the biotech industry. I've learned a lot along the way and it's now very interesting to not be in the investor seat but to sit at the be the entrepreneur, standalone entrepreneur as I lead Zeal Therapeutics, which is a kidney precision RNA therapeutics company.

Your career is so interesting. I want to talk about all of those things so we'll sort of take them in turns. But one thing our audience asks us a lot on this podcast is about funding and you have a lot of very good experience across several organizations thinking about how baby biotechs can get funding. And so I was curious, you know, as a venture partner, what are some of those key factors that you were looking for when you were thinking about what might make a successful biotech and how they can present themselves?

Yes, there's a lot to consider. What are you building? Is having a unique value proposition. What are you going to do and how you're going to do it. And that even starts with building the right relationships within the industry and being very clear what you're going to do, when you're going to do it and really living up to those expectations. There's a lot to consider when building a biotech, whether it's a small molecule, biologics, rna. The important thing is right now, in this environment, whatever your platform might be, you have to think critically how to get to a program and a value inflection point. So whether I am listening to a healthcare pitch at Launchpad as an angel investor, or a device or a software company, or a biotech company, having those key value inflection points is critical. Oftentimes an organization will come and pitch and will say, we'll use the seed investment to build our team and then forget that the team is focused on specific goals. So those value inflection points are really critical. Differentiation, unique value proposition, value inflection points and the relationships you have around you that's going to help you to get there are the critical components. Investors are part of that. So while the makeup of who investor is has dramatically changed in the past, you know, five years, there's a lot more groups, there are, you know, everyone's a lot deeper on the science side. There's younger PhDs that dig very deep on the science very quickly. I think starting those conversations early, getting feedback and socializing is really part of how you build a company. And what are the key factors for you to be successful? Those small pivots to get to the right roadmap are critical.

I really like your point about those inflection points because that's not something we hear as much. How do you evaluate what might be a successful partnership and what are some of the red flags that you actually look for during this process?

I'll start with what is not good. I think anyone who's listening to any pitch and then engages into a deeper conversation with an organization can pretty quickly figure out if that's the case. So one is lack of integrity. So anything that has to do with not speaking the truth or over exaggerating or there's financial mismanagement, what is the decision making process? Right. So that is an absolute, you know, no in any industry in any case, and something that people across the table are pretty quickly to understand. If you're not open and you're not honest. The second really big factor is the inability to make a decision. So I think that's the bane of many groups, teams, organizations, and you know, you don't have to rush, but decisive decisions based on currently the best data and the ability to clearly communicate that is a key. Also the ability to clearly communicate what are unanswered questions. I think there's something very refreshing about a leader saying, we don't know that yet, but this is how we're going to address it. We're going to address it tomorrow, we're going to address it a year from now. This is what we need to address it. Can you help us get there? Do you have a suggestion? Right. This is really a key part of any partnership and you know, sometimes VCs don't have the time or the appetite to engage deep with you and tell you exactly what your roadmap should be. That's your job. Right. But there are ways to ask for that input. In the N job community that I'm part of Launchpad, I see a group of phenomenal professional knowledge and desire to help entrepreneurs. And so there are many people that would like to engage with you and help you build your path. And so being able to make decisions is critical to use those resources wisely for you to get to the right answer. Another big no is selfish leadership. I think we've all seen it in some shape or form. And so I'm a firm believer that the company and the company needs are and should be above one individual. And so that comes through in founder dynamic, in a team dynamic, that comes through in decision making, that comes through in how institutional knowledge is managed and succession is managed. And while early stage companies are maybe not entirely focused on that, it just comes through in the DNA. And let's see, I mean innovation, ability to pivot. I think there's a fine line between being able to so be visionary but then focus and execute on it. There are people who only do the first part, that only can be big picture and visionaries and they're people that can do the execution part. So I look, even when I'm on one side or the other, I look for that successful partnership to have the vision but then be able to execute.

I love that you just also talked a little bit about the different types of leaders, the visionary leader versus more of an operator leader. And that sounds a lot like the entrepreneurial operating system. That's something that I've used when I've created my companies. I happen to be that visionary type person, not super good at the execution. And so I've always had to have a really strong counterpart who is an integrator or operator.

You know, it's really interesting. Yes. You need a full team sometimes, you know that company builder or the investor, we see it very often in the angel world. The founder and the leader will be, will be the right one, but they just don't have enough people around them to help with, go to market, to help with, commercial, to help with even you need critical mass. And so organization evolves. It doesn't have to be the same people. At day one, at, you know, year one, at year 10, I think some people are able to get the breadth of experience and rise to the challenge. And we've seen many successful biotech leaders do that. I personally know when I need to step away. And so I think the important part is are you able to let go? Are you able to step, scale up and set up the systems for the organization to be successful and then support it in the way that's needed?

I want to talk about this angel investing you've mentioned a couple of times. This is not something we hear a lot about in biotech. Can you tell us where that kind of fits into the investment puzzle and where you see yourself in this as well?

Absolutely. First of all, my angel investor interest started outside of biotech. The software company building experience is completely different from building a biotech. When you are building a non biotech company and there are many flavors out there, the scale is different, the development path is different, the barrier to entry is different. Hopefully the regulatory hurdles are either not there or they're much lower. And so one is able to bootstrap and execute on in our case software as a service enterprise company. And that is a much shorter time horizon. You have to think about very different things. You don't think about who's going to buy you out necessarily on day one and what's the commercial opportunity. Could you be a billion dollar drug? And the fact that it takes 10, 20 years to go to market and oftentimes 10 years to get into a patient. You think about customers, customer service, product, product features, problems you're solving and scale up. And so I wanted to repeat that as an angel, not as an operator. And that's my first intent when I joined Launchpad Venture Group. I am seeing however, a lot more activity within the biotech space because our funding environment is very challenging right now. Traditional VCs are focused on supporting their portfolio companies, extending that Runway as well as new investments that are in the clinical space that are closer to clinical proof of concept or closer to commercial point and revenue point. And so those early stage biotech companies are turning to angel groups while Launchpad Venture is not one of the organizations that supports therapeutics. We do support diagnostics and device companies. But there are a number of other angel funds that do. And in this funding environment, angels are now stepping up to support pre seed or seed companies. I think the one thing to realize still is that there's a long path ahead. And I've seen many biotech pitches through the angel network that are pitching very much like VCs or very much like pharma, with really focused on more the strategic partnership aspect as opposed to this is what use of capital is going to be. This is the value inflection point that it's going to get us to. And that's a problem. Angels are able to support with much smaller amounts than VCs are. And I think even when you go to look for an angel investment, you still need to have as part of your investment mix more of the traditional shops because you need someone to know your data, to trust you can execute and be able to come in on the next round. And you need those people early. So we do see angels sometimes supporting a full round and sometimes coming in as initial tranche to generate some very key early proof of concept data while VCs are guiding or strategics are guiding what that data needs to be so they can participate in the next round.

Yeah, it's an interesting puzzle. Right. And how do then angel investors think about de risking those investments? Do you want to tell us about that?

Angel groups that invest within biotech, they have people like me who are deep experts in particular areas. Right. Particular technology. And so they're usually pretty good expertise to understand what the technology is. I think the decision criteria varies. Varies on the people involved, varies on the fund involved, varies on the portfolio mix that they currently have. Right. So that's a very, very complex decision. And in a lot of cases it's either a fund manager or individual investors. And that's much harder to manage. Obviously you have to do a lot of internal selling. The same considerations apply. Right. If you are looking at a horizon of 10 to 20 years, that's very different than go to market in much shorter time frame for other investments. And so angels have to decide on their own. And I think a lot of them take a stand that because of capital intensity, that's not the right investment for them. Some do in cases where there's clear value proposition, clear development path that's streamlined and I see that it's not a large platform but a very specific program that they understand has competitive positioning within the current market.

So how about a strategy where a company's plan is to license their technology as opposed to develop it all the way through the clinic? Is that a little bit of a safer bet?

Strategic alignments change, markets, market changes, competitiveness changes as well. And there is inherent technical risk in everything that we do. The biggest challenge that we have is both the technical and the biological risks that we take. And so we know majority of drugs fail on safety in human trials or efficacy in human trials, phase three. And part of that is the diversity of us as patients. And we often start in a very narrow group because of those reasons. So as the group genetic diversity, biological diversity increases in phase three, we understand drugs safety and efficacy better. And oftentimes it doesn't meet expectations or patients needs. And so licensing is one way to commercialize and it has to be aligned with particular acquirers portfolio strategy needs at that time. So while I think that's strategy every biotech has as part of their portfolio, we're building from five years from now, right? We're building something that will realize what it looks like, how does it behave and whether it has alignment with a particular strategic, you know, years from now. And so sometimes we hit the mark, sometimes we don't. But the one point that's very important is when you talk to pharma, the data has to meet certain quality, certain robustness. And so we know very well what the demands are from pharma. And that is really great and has been great because of all the expertise they require. But if you build with that in mind and you have the capital to do that, I think that's going to be great for venture, it's going to be great for licensing. One thing I often say is I'd like to do it right, not to do it over. And many organizations that I've been with have lived by that mantra.

Sounds like a good mantra. Hey there, just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which is, it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in Biospace, but we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds Interesting. Click the link in the show Notes or search for biotech career coach on Apple Podcasts or wherever. You get your podcasts back to the show. You have a lot of different skills in your background. So you have a PhD, you've done the business side, you've done the investment side. You're a company builder, a founder yourself. What's most useful to you in terms of what you're doing now with building your current company?

I think people like me like to be in the early stage of figuring out what is best, how to apply it. So the, the ecosystem needs risk takers like me. I think my superpower is being able to bridge very deep scientific understanding with how to apply it and how to get to a commercially relevant area. So basically, very deep scientific understanding and finding the killer app. That's particularly relevant for platforms. It's particularly relevant for areas where there might be some clinical data that shows validation, but it's buried in, I think there's a little bit of bandwagon effect in biotech where at a particular time everybody's jumping on the really hot thing right now. And so given that we have to build for five to seven years ahead, having that foresight, it's really interesting and it's really important. So talking about Zeo therapeutics and kidney precision RNA therapeutics, it's a really hot area right now to find the next, you know, GALNAC for kidney, for example, and build on what Alnylam has been doing in RNA space. Also additional approaches to target the kidney. It's almost the last frontier. You know, we know more about liver, we've been able to target liver. We know even the CNS is ahead of the kidney. So the skill set that I bring is looking at targets and indications in a way that can meet the needs of a platform. And I have a great example. When I was at Alnylam, we knew that we had to focus on liver and somewhat more genetically defined diseases and coming from oncology, respiratory syncytial virus, right now looking at chronic disease diseases. And so I conceptualized and started the hemophilia program going after antithrombin 3 as a target for hemophilia. And it was really very interesting how, you know, hard that cell was internally because it was a little bit of an untraditional approach to increase the per thrombotic capacity of a hemophiliac patient. Also within Alnylam there was a program that was deemed unattractive. It was targeting beta thalassemia with a particular, particular gene. It was deemed unattractive. Because a particular commercial consulting firm said, well, the field doesn't need another chelator. There's a new chelator coming to market and coming from, again, deep scientific understanding. I knew that this was the mechanism of action and it was to change the hematological basis of the disease. And so you have to build the business case around it. You have to show some preliminary data, you have to go all the way to clinical and commercial opportunity, even when you are, you know, pre clinical startup in order for you to build the full business case. And so I think having these skills is essential for any leader in the early space and to build a team around themselves and generate the data that supports the full business model.

I think it's really, really valuable. I'm curious, were there any setbacks or failures that you really learned from that you'd like to share with our audience?

Great, great question. I personally think the path is never linear. So I don't think about that as a failure necessarily, as just, you know, finding your way. After I left Del Nilo, finished my mba, it was a period of three years where I also had my second child. That was also the time when I decided to step out of biotech and start the software company. And so being entrepreneur in this time, in this environment is very much the same as like now I'm starting a biotech company, it can be a little lonely. People at times ask themselves, what am I doing right? Who's on my team? Like, what am I building? It's a lot of peaks and valleys, right? Your happy days are really strong. Your, your low days are really low. And what I would say is, that's okay. I've learned a lot. I mean, first I built an amazing company that we sold for tens of millions of dollars. Six years later that created a great product and supported by a great team. I also discovered things about myself like I can do anything. And the skills that I've built in biotech, both analytical communication, how do you build a business skill case as well as, you know, financial analysis structure? I can do that. I can set up a company that is not what I've studied and worked in the past 15 years and have those transferable skills be valuable. The other thing that I've learned from that experience is that just give it time, trust yourself, surround yourself with the right people and make sure you have an accountability, accountability to yourself, accountability to your family, accountability to someone else to keep that line open. And I firmly believe that not all who wonder are lost. I think it's okay to explore other interests that you have. And that's not going to hurt your career. I think it's going to be valuable maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe 10 years from now. But I've learned a lot from my time away from biotech. How to build a better biotech company in a way that not necessarily bootstrap, but with a very good business fundamentals as a basic.

Thank you. That was really impactful. So did you bootstrap that SAS company?

Yes.

That's a really good skill set. I've bootstrapped all of my companies and it is. Yeah, you learn, you learn a lot doing it.

It was all founder company at the end. We started with a $30,000 loan from one of the founders. We sold it for 21 million. That was, you know, very significant X on the investment. And it was because of how we built the company initially for profitability, for client satisfaction, client retention. And very similar parallels could be applied to biotech. Al though EBITDA is very different.

Right, right. And that's really fascinating and not many people in our field have that experience. I belong to an organization of founders and CEOs called Hampton and it's specifically for tech and tech enabled companies and I have learned so much from those founders.

I, I love that.

And you're right, it's so lonely sometimes to be a founder, to be building a company. So as an entrepreneur right now, what can our audience do for you? What are you looking for in terms of support?

Thank you. I really appreciate that question. I'm building the next generation precision kidney RNA therapeutics. I'm looking to connect with drug hunters in the field of renal cardiorenal cardiovascular rheumatology. Anyone who is a fan of rnai, as well as clinician researchers who work in these areas and so looking for people to bounce ideas off and validate some of our assumptions. So if you like to be an advisor and early stage biotech, you know, helper and supporter, please do reach out on LinkedIn and connect with me.

Amazing. We'll put some links in the show notes. We'll have a link directly to Eva's LinkedIn profile so you can link in directly and also to any company pages that you have. What are you hoping to achieve in the next 10 years?

A couple of things. I would love my family to continue to, you know, thrive and be successful. I have a sophomore in college who's finding his way and a sixth grader who's also taken a couple of leadership roles within his school. So family and balancing this with my work is very important for me. I'm very much looking forward to building Zeal Therapeutics as the platform and the company that can be. So that's a pretty big goal. I'm slightly obsessed with learning about AI and ML data analytics and so while I'm just sweating my feet into that, I think 10 years is a pretty good horizon to hone in some of those skills. But really going back to astrobiologist or biotech, drug discovery and development dreamer. I think it's all about big goals, helping patients, patients in need and really enabling technology that can change patients life. I think that's a pretty big goal and that's what I've always wanted to do. So my next 10 years are not going to look very different from my past years. Just still aiming for the stars, reaching patients.

I love that. And you mentioned a book earlier that you loved growing up. Can you share that with our audience? We love to hear what you're reading.

This was in Russian very long time ago. I don't have a copy of it anymore and I don't think one can find it.

Oh no.

But a book that I recently reconnected with was the Alchemist from Pablo Coelho which sort of symbolizes. Right. That self discovery journey. I've also recently shared with my, my older son as he's discovering his professional and personal journey. So that's something I go back to at this moment of my life and career is, you know, wandering through with purpose to really be able to, to reach your goals.

That's a great book. Thank you for the recommendation and I already let people know that they can reach out to you through LinkedIn so we'll have those links in our show notes. Thank you so much for this. This was really, really good, really impactful and I wish you all the best of luck on your founder journey. Your new founder journey, I should say, not your first rodeo.

Thank you so much Karina for the opportunity to be here and share my thoughts and for the thoughtful questions. I very much look forward to reconnecting again in the future.

Yeah, anytime. Thanks so much.