Neil Littman on Bringing Science Fiction to Life and Medicine

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if you haven't realized that already by

this introduction in his bio. And before we get things rolling, I also need to say that nothing in our conversation will be taken as investment or medical advice.

Hey, Neil, welcome to the show.

Chris, thank you so much. And thanks for the detailed and thorough background and bio.

Gosh, man, it's like I'm getting a nosebleed with all the high dollar things and valuations that you've been involved with. And I just, you know, I wanted the audience to know.

I mean, this is, you know, there's

not a, you know, a trivial.

I'm sure there's, you know, certain kinds

of things, but man, it just seems

like every time at bat, you, you know, you know what you're up to and you've had such a wonderfully diverse background that, you know, you bring into the power of what bioverge is today. So, you know, you've got, you know, your science bonafides and your leadership street cred in terms of finance and business development. But could you maybe start off with

walking us through that progression from what

we've just, you know, what the audience

has just heard from me. But let's hear from you about how that led to you founding bioverge.

Yeah, sure. Happy to, Chris. So, you know, you sort of heard my detailed background already, but it was really during my time at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which we call CIRM for short, because that's a mouthful.

Yeah.

Where, you know, I really got involved in translating therapeutic programs from the laboratory bench to the bedside of the patient. So that really means going from IND enabling studies, pre clinical studies into first in human clinical trials. And, and so that was really what CIRM was funded to do, was bridge that what's commonly called the valley of death or translational divide, which I hate

that term, especially in healthcare.

Absolutely. But it's true because there's so many promising technologies that for a variety of different reasons, oftentimes lack of funding fall into this sort of like valley of death and can't get out because they don't have sufficient funding or capital or for a whole variety of reasons. And so CIRM was really set up to help bridge that gap. And so I'll just, I'll tell you one, one story, Chris, because I think this really serves to highlight my experience at cirm, the types of things that we did there, and really served as inspiration for me to start bioverge and really, I think helps illustrate the types of things that we do at bioverds today. So when I was at cirm, I really got to witness firsthand the huge impact that investing in these leading edge healthcare technologies can have and how much it captivated literally everyone that I talked to. So I would go, I talked to my friends, my family, really anyone who would listen to me at the time about the amazing technologies and science that we were funding. And they all said that it sounded like science fiction, but in fact it wasn't. It was science fact. And I'll talk a little more about that thesis as we go on, but I'll give one concrete example. I had the privilege of meeting a little girl by the name of Evie who was born with a disease called scid, or Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. It's a very rare genetic disease. A small percentage of children are born with this. I think it's like one case per 50 to 100,000 live births in the US so that's approximately 40 to 100 new cases among babies born in the US each year. If any of your listeners or Chris, if you're a Seinfeld fan, there's actually an episode about the boy in the bubble. And so that is scid. So children born with SCID do not have a function copy of one specific gene, which means their entire immune system doesn't function properly. And so, as you can imagine, these children don't live a normal life. They're subject to very frequent severe infections and hospitalizations and typically died at a relatively early age. So the little girl who I met, Evie, would come to our board meetings at CIRM with her parents and she would talk about her experience being treated with a lentiviral gene therapy that we funded at cirm. Evie was, was born with this disease and enrolled in a clinical trial when she was about 1 years old. Fast forward to when I met her, I think she was about 6 or 7. And she was cured. So she went to school, she had a dog. Like she lives a completely normal life. All things that would have been previously impossible for Evie. Or by the way, 30 other kids who were also treated and cured in that same clinical trial. Like, oh my God, like this is mind boggling. Like, why don't more people know this type of technology exists today? Why can't more people invest in this kind of amazing technology? And so just to sort of wrap the story up right, the technology that CIRM funded was arised out of UCLA and it was spun out into a biotech company that went public at about a $1.2 billion valuation. So early stage investors made a return of like 15x on their initial investment. So they did very well for themselves and they're curing kids of previously incurable diseases. And so, you know, Chris, as I think about sort of what we do at Bioverge, you know, this, this sort of saying that I think it was, you know, Ben Franklin first coined in like the 18th century, right? We can all do well by doing good. Yeah, that's, that's exactly what I'm talking about. That is what we did at cirm. That was really the inspiration for me starting Bioverge. And that's a lot of the types of technologies and companies that we look to fund and invest in that Bioverch.

You know, I liken your, the tagline for Bioverge where you talk about bench to bedside. I think that's really good. I grew up professionally in healthcare systems and we talked about going from spreadsheets to bed sheets.

Similar kind of vibe with that reminded me of that.

So vis a vis, in particular, Bioverge,

are you similar in some stripe to like StartEngine or Angelist or First Base IO or Neurojam? Are those your colleagues and competitors, or

are you distinctive from those other kinds of platforms?

Yeah, I would say that we're distinct. We have some similarities in our business model, but the way that I tend to think about biowords, and at our core, we are an impact investment platform and venture capital firm. And so our mission is really to democratize access to enable more individual investors to invest in early stage health care companies and technologies. And you know, Chris, if I sort of back up, you know, I always, I'm a big Simon Sinek fan, right. So I always like to start with why. Right. I think, I think that'll give probably you and your listeners sort of the best sense of like, where I'm coming from and what drives us as a firm. So, Chris, you know, as, you know, what was once deemed to be science fiction is now increasingly becoming science fact. Right? I mean, that's, that was the sort of the Evie and the skid story that I, that I shared. Right, right. And so if you think about what we do at Biobirds, we really exist in part to help bring science fiction to life and specifically within the realm of human health care. And so, you know, that spans a variety of different sub verticals within healthcare. So it could be regenerative medicine, right? So novel cell and gene therapies, it's certainly digital health and digital therapeutics, it could be care delivery. There's a whole subset of companies now that are using a stack of technology like artificial intelligence or machine learning to improve the drug discovery and drug development process. Those are just a few of the examples that we focus on. So how we're very different than our competitors are in the fact that we are healthcare specialists, right? That is, that has been our career trajectory up until the founding of Bioverse, myself and my partner Rick Gibb. And so we are, we are niche players and we go very deep into a specific domain. And so for us, the other thing that is really important is this combined mission, right? This, this impact, right? By definition, investing in healthcare is impact investing, right? We're trying to have an effect on people's lives. And you know, Chris, as you know, we're all patients at some point in our lives, right? So why shouldn't we all have the ability to invest in the types of companies, the types of technologies that have the potential to have an impact on ourselves, our, our loved ones Our family, our friends, etc. And the chance to make, you know, really great financial returns at the same time. And so, you know, you know, Chris, I think, you know, as you probably have heard, right, there's some, some sort of terms being thrown around these days. But, you know, in. We really do believe we are already living in the age of biology or the century of biology or whatever, whatever you want to call it. And I'll just, I'll sort of circle back to the Steve Jobs quote that I like and has sort of stuck with me. But, you know, and I quote, you know, I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one. And so that one kind of really stuck with me throughout the years because if you think about it, right, we can now tinker with all of the pieces and fundamental building blocks of our biology, right? We all know and are familiar with how computer chips fueled the last big revolution, right, the one in Silicon Valley. You look around at all the enormous technology firms that have arisen over the last few decades, and the personal fortunes have been made over that time, right? So I firmly believe the next great revolution will be in the tools to re architect our biology, our brains, our chemistry, right? And ourselves. And so we're already seeing this play out in real time, right? And if you think back to sort of this idea of bringing science fiction to life or science fiction becoming science fact, that is happening, right? And just a few quick examples, right? If you think about what were once deemed incurable, diseases like hiv, for example, have turned into chronic and largely manageable diseases. You know, I talked about a disease like scid, which was, you know, is a genetic disease that was previously thought to be incurable. And now we found solutions to cure that, right? Perhaps even a more mainstream example that we're all familiar with and hits, you know, very close to home is the development of the COVID MRNA vaccines, right? That, I mean, that was truly done at warp speed.

No kidding. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's really amazing if you think about the first vaccines that were developed. You know, they were developed, tested and authorized with the emergency youth authorization by the FDA in 11 months. That's incredible. But here's the really interesting part, which I don't think is as widely known, is that the company that made the first vaccine, Moderna, didn't even have or didn't even need a physical copy of the virus to make the vaccine. All they needed was a digital copy of the genome to print the vaccine.

I didn't know that either. Oh my gosh.

Wow. That's truly amazing. Right. So a lot of sort of what we invest in, a lot of what we're seeing today is this sort of fusing of the physical and digital world. And so that like, that's incredibly exciting and we're really just beginning to scratch the surface and we're already seeing use cases. Right. I mean, look at the, you know, we just talked about the MRNA vaccines and you know, look how many people that has helped globally. So this technology is here today.

Yeah, it's life changing and world changing. So to the democratizing aspect of this then it's sort of like, you know, unless Marc Andreessen, you know, goes and hires me tomorrow or something, I'm not going to be involved with a 16H or Y Combinator or Greylock or something. So can I, is John and Jane Q. Public then be a part of the bioverge investing side? Is that the democratization part of it? The access?

Yeah, that's exactly right, Chris. So as you said, it's really hard to access venture capital deals. And so one of the barriers that we're breaking down is to provide our investors access to invest in the venture capital capital asset class. In our case specifically healthcare venture capital. We work with accredited investors and that's just an SEC definition.

Right.

But you know, our goal is to really bring them top, top deal flow that have been highly vetted and diligence by us and, and our team and our network of subject matter experts which, which I can get more into. But if you think about one of the sort of the, the biggest barriers is, is, is, is sort of multifaceted, but it's access, it's the ability to properly source and invest in these deals. And the other major issue is that it's oftentimes to have a large enough capital base to build a diversified portfolio. And so these were all problems that I had as an individual. So I actually built biovert to solve my own problem initially,

as is the entrepreneurs. I don't know if it's a dilemma, but the entrepreneur's success.

That's awesome.

No, I think that's true right there. I mean there's so many entrepreneurs who start businesses because they're literally trying to solve their own problem. So for me, I was trying to diversify my own portfolio away from the public markets. I was deeply embedded in sort of the healthcare startup ecosystem. And as an individual, it was really hard for me to consistently source high quality deal flow even when I got deals, I didn't have the diligence framework in place to really properly diligence those deals. And I didn't have a large enough balance sheet to build a diversified portfolio of these things, having to write, you know, whatever 25,050, $100,000 plus checks into each company. And so really what Via Verge does is sort of multifaceted, but access is certainly one providing our investors with high quality opportunities that we have conducted diligence on, that we are investing in ourselves. So we have skin in the game. Of course. And I have to say this, obviously investors have to do their own due diligence on the opportunities we present, but we certainly have a filter and a curated platform. And then the other thing that we've done is we have reduced the investment minimums. And so instead of going directly to a company where you have to write a relatively large check, you know, our investment minimums in some cases are as low as $5,000 to participate in our deals. And those are for our individual deals. And then we have multi company funds, which we call our access funds, where the Investment minimum is $25,000 currently for those. And so we really are trying to democratize access by getting people in front of these high quality deals and then lowering the barrier for them to actually invest and build a diversified portfolio, which we think is absolutely critical.

That's great. So people that do sign the checks, then obviously they would, you know, if they wanted to do the $5,000 entry fee, to be specific to one company or if they wanted to do that, you know, five times, five different companies, or if they want to just let you make the choices and make the decisions primarily that they could then agree with or do something different with. And how do they, how is that tracked for them? Because a lot of these companies are, you know, probably, you know, don't have a product yet.

They've got stuff in the pipeline.

They need to go through FDA approvals, they need to get to market whatever, you know, depending upon what it is and how many hurdles they have to get through. So do folks like then just sort of set their expectation and say, okay, well, it's going to be probably, this is an annuity. It's going to take, you know, 10 years until I can cash this in. Or it's going to be, you know, three years until, you know, they get this, you know, you know, through clinical trials too. Or how did that, how do, what's the information side of it for the investor? John and. John and Joe. John and Jane Doe.

Yeah. So of course, there's actually quite a bit to dive into in that question. So just in terms of the basic tracking, Right, so obviously you come to the bioverds, you know, website log in. Right. We track all of your investments, companies you've made in. We provide updates, typically quarterly updates on all of the companies and how they're doing within your portfolio. So you can see, you know, quarter to quarter, how the companies have performing, what the latest news is, what their milestones are, what their challenges are.

So it's very transparent, very detailed, very data oriented then.

And Chris, you know, I have invested on some of these other platforms and that was always a big issue for me is there was, there was lack of transparency. So I would never know how a company was doing. It was really frustrating and we've tried to.

I know, I agree. And you know, maybe you had the similar experience.

I won't say what, what platform, but I was involved with one and I'm seeing, you know, there's like this initial bump and blah, blah, blah and every you, it's all just butterflies and rainbows. And I circled back to it maybe

two weeks later and the amount that had been invested like actually decreased by

a non trivial amount.

And I thought what, you know, was

there something in the news?

I mean like, you know, it wasn't that it just, you know, and this was just, you know, people like me

being an investor, it wasn't that there was some performance issue or something that, you know, caused a decrease in anything. So. And I had, to this day I have no idea what the heck happened.

You know, I reached out to the

founders, I said what the heck happened? And you know, kind of cricket. So yeah, so I can't emphasize enough. The transparency and data presentation that you guys offer is pretty unique. And to me, as you know, anybody that's investing is, it's mission critical.

Yeah, I would agree. And so that's of paramount importance to us is that transparency, you know, and circle back to your original question. There's a lot of nuances when it comes to investing in health care and that's really why we started Buy Verse to begin with as a standalone niche player within healthcare. Is that a lot of these other platforms. HEALTHCARE is, I don't want to say an afterthought, but it's certainly not a focus of a lot of the other platforms. Right. It's maybe like 10% of the deals and, and Healthcare is its own animal. Right. There's a lot of nuances that go into, you know, as you mentioned, the regulatory Environment, FDA approvals.

Yeah.

Manufacturing, reimbursement, all these things. And so we really felt like it deserved its own dedicated ecosystem. And so for us, what we've evolved to over the years is offering a variety of different types of deals in terms of the stage of financing. So we really started life exclusively focused on seed stage investment opportunities. Today that sort of spans what is now called pre seed. The seed stage is really a core focus of ours. But as our portfolio has matured over the years and some of the earlier investments are now raising later stage rounds, we have followed on our investments. And so now we've done series A, series B and series C rounds and we syndicate all those to our investor base. And so when investors come to buy A, they'll see a nice selection of deals that range from, you know, very early stage, pre seed and seed stage deals would typically tend to be higher risk, right. But also have the potential to generate higher returns to slightly later stage deals in the series A, series B, maybe even sometimes a series C stage deal that are raising much larger rounds of financing that we participate in that maybe don't have as great a exit potential, but still very large. Right. I mean, we're always investing in things that have like a 10x potential return profile. And so I think that's, that's one thing that has evolved and the other thing that has, that we really started doing is offering a whole variety of different types of sub verticals within healthcare. And so I mentioned some of these before, but we have a number of investments that are sort of in the, in what I would call like the biotech platform arena. So these are companies that have some sort of fundamental platform technology like AI or machine learning that's trying to improve the drug discovery or drug development process. Right. That have sort of built this platform and now trying to spin out assets and create assets to move into ind, enabling studies to move into clinical trials. So that's a portion of our portfolio. Then we have the digital health and digital therapeutics bucket. Right. And we're big believers in this area. And Chris, as you probably know all too well, right out of the, I think it's like $3.7 trillion that the U.S. spends on health care annually. Like 86% goes to, you know, chronic, largely preventable diseases. And so digital therapeutics, just for your listeners, just to define this term, as opposed to taking a pill that has some sort of chemical modification within your body, a digital therapeutic is trying to modify behavior typically through a software program or app or coaching or some combination of all those things. And the goal is obviously not just to modify behavior over like a week or two or three, but to ingrain long lasting behavioral changes through, you know, some sort of combination of the app with feedback and coaching and you know, this or that. And so we've seen a lot of successes there. It's still relatively early days in that area. But again, Chris, sort of circling back to your question, right? The investment profile of these types of companies are different because a lot of the digital health or digital therapeutics companies may be already generating revenue. They may have a product on the market. Some other companies that are more in the biotech space maybe won't have a commercialized product for as you said, a decade or so. But again, and this is why we think it's important to have our own sort of healthcare ecosystem is from the investor standpoint, just because a company isn't going to have a marketed product for 10 years doesn't mean there won't be a liquidity event far ahead of that happening. Particularly in the biotech space, we see M and A happening all the time. There have been a ton of IPOs before the window closed over the, you know, the past really five, six, seven years where pre clinical stage biotech companies were getting public at billion plus dollar valuations long before they had a product on the market. They didn't have product clinic. So there's a lot of chances for liquidity for investors well before products ever commercialized. And I think a lot of people just don't sort of understand that nuance when it comes to investing in some of these companies. So again, you know, what we offer is the ability for people to come in and build their own portfolio on a deal by deal basis. And so we have some investors that just like digital health, we have some investors that just like the biotech companies or medicine or whatever it may be and we'll build their own portfolio that way. And then we have other folks that will invest in what we call our access funds, which are our multi company funds where we, we will go on and basically build a diversified portfolio within that fund. And so it's more like kind of, you know, autopilot or like akin to a traditional, you know, venture capital fund. And then you know, surprisingly we actually have a lot of this surprised me. Actually we have a lot of folks that do both that will invest in our access funds and they get broad coverage and a well diversified portfolio and then they will sort of overweight their investment in specific deals that come through that happen to resonate with them. For one particular reason or another, that's great.

I love that flexibility. So if someone then, for whatever reasons, decides to cash out an investor, are they able to do that or is

there a lock in period, or how does that work?

Yeah. So typically the investment is illiquid until the underlying company has a liquidity event.

Okay.

Such as? Such as they're acquired or they go public there. You know, we've looked into some secondary transactions and the ability for investors to get out of their investment earlier. So those are things we're actively exploring. But that, you know, that that is not sort of par for the course. So that it may be something we offer in the future. But typically, you know, the way to think about these investments is, you know, illiquid. You need capital. But I think, you know, there's also, I think, a lot of sort of misnomers with this idea of patient capital. And so, you know, I think oftentimes we're our own worst enemy when it comes to investing. Right. Investing can be, you know, there is a huge emotional component to investing. And, you know, typically what ends up happening is, you know, many of us, and I've been guilty of this in the past, is we hold on to our losers too long. Right. Because we have some sort of emotional attachment to the stock.

Right.

And we sell our winners too early.

Yeah.

And so what actually happens in the private markets is we eliminate these possibilities. Right. And so illiquidity can actually become a very positive and not a negative aspect to the private markets because you, you can't actually get out of your position too early. And you, you know, you can't hold, you know, if it's a loser, okay, it's going to be a loser. But oftentimes, I guess the other thing to think about in the venture capital world is this idea of risk versus reward. I think this is another concept that's a little challenging for a lot of folks to wrap their head around. The way that I think about a lot of our investments that we offer at Biobirds is this idea of gaining exposure to potential positive black swan events and going into an overall, well diversified portfolio of global stocks and bonds. This concept of positive optionality. And so again, just to sort of define this term so we're all on the same page, this idea of positive optionality means there is asymmetric risk versus reward with a positive skew toward the reward side of the equation. Right. So in other words, you have the chance to make more than you can lose. Right. Another way to sort of think about this is it is a low cost mistake, right. With known maximum losses, but large potential unbounded payoffs. So that's kind of a feature of positive black swan events. And that's really what VC style investments are. And those are the types of investments that we offer and we'd look to offer at Bioverse. And so again, it's sort of going back to this idea of risk versus reward. There's this other concept in venture capital which is really called the power laws. But the easiest way to boil that down is this concept of frequency versus magnitude, right? So there's a. And Chris, you probably know this, but there's a psychological battle against what is called loss aversion, right? So losses loom like two to two and a half times larger than gains, Right. For folks who are interested, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky outlined a lot of this in their behavioral economics work. Thinking Fast and Slow was a book by Daniel Kahneman that outlines a lot of this work. And it's fantastic. But if you think about this concept of expected value, right? So if you lose 90% of your investments or your trades, but the 10% that you win make up for the 90% you lose, you will have what's called a positive expected value. And you should make those trades 10 out of 10 times. Right? But the psychological barrier is really hard to lose 90%, right. Nobody really wants to do that, even though you have a positive expected value. And so this, there's sort of this, this halo which is called the Babe Ruth effect, right? So everyone knows, right, he struck out more times than most players, but, you know, he held the home run record for like 40 years or something. Yeah, right. This is the idea that, right, this observation that those who focus on investing in opportunities that could potentially yield these extraordinary gains eventually outperform those who focus only on investments that yield normal returns. Yeah, right. So that's a lot of sort of what focus on it at Bioverds. And we want to give people the opportunity to diversify their portfolio with these types of investments. And you know, this is, this is something that I think is pretty well known by top money managers, even gamblers, right. They sort of all understand that the best way to think about these things is a frequency versus magnitude, sort of, you know, on a probability basis, especially when you're investing in the face of uncertainty. And sort of how we, how we position ourselves to do this is really a focus on the process, right? So we have a relentless focus on process to try to make sure that we're investing in the Right. Types of companies. You know, if I'm intellectually honest, right. I have no idea a priority. Which one of our portfolio companies is going to have a billion dollar outcome.

Sure.

Right. But I need to have a relentless focus on the process to ensure the right types of company that we're investing in the right types of companies to give ourselves that statistical probability of success. So why don't I pause there for a second?

No, that's good. No, that tees it up for one of the things. I wanted to also go into a dive with the like how, what can you say? You don't need to reveal your secret formula or anything, but like how, what

is your process like for doing your due diligence?

Like do you have a how to

or best practices in terms of, you know, how do you separate the wheat

from the chaff when it comes to, you know, know these companies and how do you, you know, vet. Is it an issue of, of founders?

Is it an issue of space and, and market? Is an issue of technology?

How, how do you balance and weigh all those to make decisions, say.

Yep, welcome to the Bioverge platform.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good question, Chris. And, and let me just sort of preference that. Right. I mean, what is like one of the major issues is, is obviously access to high quality deal flow. Right? So I think it's like less than 3% of the 10 to 12 million credit investors in the US have ever invested in a private company. So number one, providing access is critical. But you don't want to provide access to low quality deals. Right? You want to provide. Right to your point. And so there's some numbers that stuck with me from, it's called the Kaufman foundation, but they did a whole analysis and they show that investors who spent an average of over 20 hours on diligence have a realized median exit multiple of about 5.9x x compared to investors who spend an average of less than 20 hours on diligence, have a median realized exit multiple of like 1.1x. So it just speaks to the diligence process. So I'll, I'll talk about our, our solution. Right, so we have built a decentralized network, what we call the Biver network, to help us source a high quality deal flow and then diligence these investment opportunities. So let me just start with sourcing because I think that's the, like the first building block. And then I'll talk a little bit about diligence. And so, you know, in the VC world, you know, Sourcing deals is of paramount importance, right? That's, that's part of what gives us an edge. And so, you know, we have relationships with a lot of the premier health care and life sciences incubators and accelerators throughout the country. We have good relationship relationships with pharma and biotech companies and disease foundations and with academic institutions like Stanford and Hopkins, you know, et cetera. And that's all well and good, and that's great, and we get a lot of great deal folks from those sources. But none of that is necessarily proprietary to buy a. So what is proprietary to buy a that no one else has is our decentralized network of investors, subject matter experts and founders who provide us warm referrals to companies. And I love these because oftentimes when, when these, these folks are referring companies to us, the companies that get referred to us are on the leading edge of the leading edge, right? So we have a portfolio company that we invested in a couple years ago and they give us a warm referral to a company, let's say they're working with. Well, that company is helping our portfolio company solve a problem. And it's like, well, they're literally on the leading edge of the leading edge of something we already invested in. So that's really cool. And so we call this whole thing our internal momentum machine. And that's what's 100% unique to biobirds. And so as we think about transitioning to the diligence process, once we access a deal, we get an introduction to the team, right? Our philosophy is a network of subject matter experts when properly used. And believability weighted, right, are infinitely more powerful than any one individual making an investment decision on their own. So essentially what we've built and, and this is a work in progress and we certainly continue to refine this is, you know, we're getting to this algorithmic based, believability weighted decision making model that we believe and, you know, we hope is smarter than the sum of its parts. So this is all sort of like a fancy way of saying that, you know, the premise is that the power of a group is much greater than the power of any individual. And the whole goal of all of this stuff is we're simply trying to increase our probability of being right. That's it. Like at the end of the day, that's it. And so as we think about how we use all these different folks, right, we pull in different people within our network to help us diligence different aspects of, of, of a company. So if they're doing something in the regenerative medicine space. Perhaps we bring in someone who has manufacturing expertise because that's always a bottleneck. Or we bring in a clinician for whatever disease a company's happening to, happening to tackle or you know, so we try to triage it that way. And so for us, that's a big differentiator. And you know, going back to your earlier question about competitors, like, I don't really know of anyone else doing that.

Yeah.

You know, that is something that traditional VC firms do to some degree. Right. You're sort of leveraging, excuse me, Kols, to assist in the diligence process. So like, in that way, we're much more like a traditional venture capital firm where, by the way, most individual investors can never access and invest in those types of large clients. So we sort of done. We do what they do, but we're trying to democratize access.

So to your point, like, and you know, people hear this all the time now that, you know, the, especially the VCs, the Andreessen, Horowitz, et cetera, Greylocks that they have so many bets on the table that it's almost like in

my head, this is my goofy way

of saying it's like they become the house and the house always wins. So you've got it kind of spread out so much. And their thing is we can eat crow for X percent of all these funded ventures because we can have gravy when it comes on the ones that are the unicorns that periodically pop is the bioverge machine.

Does that also then take into consideration the risk versus reward to say, well,

you get back to this probabilistic kind

of perspective that you were talking about.

So tell us about this in the context of risk versus reward in terms of selecting a company that you've just found from a top Ivy university.

Yeah. So, Chris, it comes as no surprise, right. There are tons of different investment philosophies in general. Right. So there's probably no surprise that the same applies to the private market. So we do not subscribe to this idea of spray and pray. Right. Yeah, essentially. Right. I mean, you're essentially throwing a bunch of darts at a dartboard.

Yeah.

So hitting a bullseye.

Right.

I mean, who knows? So I mean, that's kind of what you're referring to. I'm not saying a 16Z or others necessarily do that.

No, no, no. But I get it. Yeah, yeah.

But so we like, we don't do that. So like what we like, we do is like, we're obviously super Selective. But really what we try to do is exert an influence on the outcomes and the probability one of our companies has in achieving a successful result. And so that's another area actually where our biver network really comes into play. Right. So there's an asymmetry of information that exists in the private markets that does not exist in the public markets. So our network really helps us take advantage of this asymmetry of information when making investment decisions, but then also when helping our portfolio companies. So, you know, we get as involved in helping our portfolio companies as they need or they want. And so we can provide different levels of help from helping connect them with, you know, VCs for future follow on rounds to helping connect them with employees if they're looking to fill specific roles, helping connect them with strategic partners. And by the way, a lot of our investor base are, as I mentioned, subject matter experts in their own right. And so if we have a company in the Alzheimer's disease space, right, we have quite a few folks who are Alzheimer's clinicians, for example, that maybe have a good perspective as this company is looking to bring their therapy into the clinic. We make those kind of connections a lot. So we really are looking to exert influence and we think that's a big factor and a key differentiator for us as a sort of a platform and using our model. Right. Others don't really do that.

Yeah, I think that's huge. And again, you've got the bench to be able to, to do that. So can someone, someone being a startup,

can, can a founder and a startup

be on your platform and others or once they're in Bioverge, they, you know, they got to be engaged, they can't, you know, be, you know, kissing anybody else.

Yeah, it's, it's a good question, Chris. So one of the things that we look for as part of our investment criteria is this concept of third party validation from other professional investors, institutional investors, strategic partners, oftentimes non dilutive funding from places like the nih, for example. So what I will say is we don't really care if they're on another platform per se. What we're looking for is that we are investing in the same round at the same terms as other really other venture capitalists for the most part. So we've actually done a lot of deals alongside some of the top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz or Founders Fund or Khosla or you know, whomever it may be, Orbimet or Arch Venture Partners in the Biotech world. So that's again, that's going back to sort of providing access for investors. Right. Most people can invest in Andreessen's fund, but they can invest in one of our funds that is maybe co investing with Andreessen in a deal, for example. We often don't see a lot of our companies on other platforms because we, we have sort of a different model. So it's not like we're necessarily competing with the crowdfunding platforms or some of the other platforms out there. We're really sort of more part of the venture ecosystem, I would say.

Got it.

But, but we're not. You know, that said, we're not, it's not necessarily exclusive to only being on Bioverse. Right. We, I mean, in many ways, I mean this is a competitive industry, but at the end of the day, like, I really do feel like a rising tide lifts all boats. Right. I mean, we, we are really here to, I mean, obviously serve our investor base, but really serve entrepreneurs.

Right.

And we want to, we want to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are, who are working on this amazing science, amazing technology. Right. Because that's what's fundamentally going to move things forward in this world. That's really what's going to transform healthcare. And so we really do want to, want to serve them in the most efficient way possible and we don't feel like limiting their ability to work with others is an efficient way to work with them.

Yeah, that makes sense. You know, one of the organizations I

was a part of for a number

of years went through a number of rounds of private equity and it was sort of, it was an interesting thing for me at that era. A little bit more naive eyes to it in the sense that they knew that they were, you know, funding us

for a finite period of time to

get us to a specific level of growth. And when that hit, then it was a bit of an equity event if people wish to cash in their shares, so to speak, or let them ride. And then got another, went through a round of due diligence, got another round of private equity that did higher level funding. And also then similar to you guys, brought us other contacts that then helped us be able to have that growth. It wasn't just writing checks. It was really like angel investing in the sense of, you know, contacts and expertise and people to hire and those kinds of things. So I, I get that. I just, I also had, I don't know if you would know him, Brian Cressy was on the show a few seasons back and when I met with him actually Senator Bill Frist was there with him.

I'm like, holy smokes.

And they, they put together Cressy and company was and still is does a lot of private equity stuff and acquisitions, M and A things. And then they, they, they I think I forget if it was M and A or private equity stuff is specifically to healthcare as well. So, you know, kind of further downstream than the kinds of things that you're,

you guys are doing.

And it just, it's fascinating for me to sit on the sidelines and see the ecosystem of how this kind of thing can develop. I gosh, 15 years ago I worked with a fellow at Northwestern that was working in a kind of a virology lab. So in your neck of the woods of history. And he was developing X and his problem was just kind of him and

a board of directors in a very

teeny weeny startup was that he needed

to get through his next round of clinical trials.

And people, the VCs that were interested wanted to give him too much money. And I was like, what do you mean too much money? He said, well, you know, by the time I'm going to have a marketable product, I'm going to be a minority shareholder in my own company, you know.

And again, that was kind of like clicking, you know, blinking the light on.

So it's also nice to hear, you know, like with these different kinds of approaches today, 15, you know, 20 years later, that they're more founder friendly, they're more forward thinking, they're not, you know, just, you know, spray and pray like you were saying. But having greater involvement in the companies, in the technologies, in the founders in some sense as well.

Yeah, And Chris, I mean you had a number of really good points there that I'd love to sort of dive into. I mean the one is sort of the last one about the VCs wanting to give your friend too much money. And that has become more and more common as VC fund sizes have gotten larger, which has happened over the past decade. Right. So VCs are raising larger and larger funds, which means they put, need to put more and more capital to work, which means smaller rounds are not that interesting to a lot of the VCs out there that operate these larger funds because they can't put enough money to work. So even if they, I mean, if you're investing out a billion dollar fund and you make it a million dollar investment, even if it's a home run, it doesn't matter, it doesn't move, it doesn't drive returns for your Fund.

Yeah.

And so actually those are a lot of the companies that we like to invest in are those companies that, you know, needs some amount of capital to hit that next value inflection point ahead of raising a larger round from the larger funds. And so for us, that creates that nice value inflection point, you know, if we can pick those companies, right, and they're successful. So that, that has been really kind of the bread and butter for the bioverge model. The other, I think the other really interesting point that you hit on was this idea of sort of founder led or wanting to maintain ownership, more ownership in, in his company. Right. And so there has been a whole new class of biotech companies that have emerged. Really, it's only been probably the past six years, I'd say certainly within the past decade that has sort of flipped the nomenclature of biotech. And these companies are called tech bio companies. And so there's a number of hallmarks of tech bio companies and obviously technology has some component to do with it, but that's only one aspect of what these companies are doing. Another aspect, Chris, is this idea of being founder led. And you know, that sounds a little funny because all companies to some respect are sort of founder led. But what it really means is maintaining a larger ownership stake over your company. And so what has emerged is. Well, let me back up. So in the traditional biotech company creation landscape, when you go to a traditional biotech vc, they're typically writing very large checks and taking a very large ownership stake in your company, obviously having a seat on the board and really helping to influence and drive where things and where the company is going. This whole sort of founder, what you hear is founder led tech bio movement is really taking a page from the tech investor playbook where they are not taking as large an ownership stake. They are, I mean, they're usually taking board seats, but they're a little more hands off. And they're not necessarily exerting influence on the operational direction of the company. They're leaving that up to the founder and the CEO who, you know, are the closest to the technology and they feel can, you know, make the right decisions. And so that is, that is really this convergence of, you know, tech investors coming into the, you know, healthcare and biotech landscape. And so I think that's a really interesting shift that has really only happened in the last half dozen years. And so a lot of the companies that we're investing in sort of fall into this like tech bio bucket. So that's been an interesting shift that

is You've introduced a new term to me.

I thought I tried to keep up on this, but now I've just learned something here, so that's awesome. Thank you.

Wow.

And I got to get my header. I'm going to be thinking about this after we finish our conversation. That's pretty fast.

Fascinating.

Yeah. I mean, there's always new terms popping up. And because I want to go back to. You also made a comment about angel investing because I think, you know, and, you know, maybe I'll just get personal here for, for a minute, you know, because I, you know, I've listened to a lot of your other amazing guests on the show, right? And so you, you talk a lot about sort of happiness, purpose, you know, deeply meaningful topics that really speak to the title of your show, right? Living a Life in Full, which, which I love, by the way.

Oh, thank you.

And you know, I don't claim to have any answers, right. But what has sort of serendipitously emerged for me personally, and again, don't want to share too much here, is that, you know, bioverge is only a business, right? But it, but it's more than that to me, right? Like, it has sort of emerged as a, like a creative and artistic expression in the form of a business of, like, who I am as a person, right? It's sort of something I dreamt up. I built from scratch with a whole lot of help into what it is today. And so it brings me as a human being, such incredible satisfaction, right? Sense of purpose. And as a result, you know, happiness, you know, at least as far as my career is concerned. Now, on the flip side, right, It's, I think as you talk to any entrepreneur and, you know, they'll, they'll tell you, like, there are intense ups and downs along the way, right? So it's not all rose petals and, you know, potpourri, right? There, There are like, like pits of despair and all those sorts of things. And so, like, going back to your, like, angel investor comment, right, like, entrepreneurship isn't for, for everyone, right, For a whole host of reasons. But as you think about what an angel investor is, right, that is another way to be a business owner and reap the same or similar rewards as the entrepreneur, right, who pours their blood, sweat and tears into building, you know, their, their business. And so the way that I sort of view it is like, well, you know, why not take some of your hard earned capital, invest it into other people who have great business ideas, you know, optimize your portfolio for this concept of A black swan event that we talked about before. You know, give yourself, give yourself a chance to generate, you know, these outsized returns. But, you know, you don't necessarily have to be an entrepreneur yourself. And so there's, I think, lots of ways to get people involved in entrepreneurship without actually going out and starting, you know, starting your own business. I think, think, you know, for, you know, for angel investors. I think the, the really critical point here, I can't stress this enough. Right. Is to have a plan.

Yeah.

And be disciplined around your investment strategy.

Right here.

Yeah.

Otherwise you're just throwing darts and hoping for the best, which, you know, needless to say, is not a viable long term investment strategy.

Right.

So, like, as I think about, I think it was Charlie Munger, right. 1, 1 of Warren Buffett's, you know, Warren Buffett's longtime business partner. Like, I think his core tenant. I think it was him and not Buffett. But anyway, how they think about things. Right. Is, you know, when you're investing, like, the way to think about is, is treating like a share of stock as a proportional ownership stake in the underlying business. Right. And so like, when we approach an investment that's, that's like what we think. We're becoming part owners of this business. Right. Is this a team that we want to be involved in for the long term? Is this a business we want to own? Right. So we really do, you know, want to make sure that we're, you know, we're picking the folks that we think give us the best chance of success. Again, impossible to predict a priority, but that's where having a plan and discipline and building a diversified portfolio comes into play.

Well, and certainly the market will say kind of give approval or disapproval if it was a good idea or not. And there's always people that are a little too early or the ship's already set sail kind of a thing. I remember there's a colleague of mine who went like, he had a very nice C suite position in a very well known company and he wanted to be a founder. He had that similar kind of creative itch. He saw a need. He, you know, had the brain power and horsepower and eventually funding to be able to do it. And one of his mentors said he

just, his mentor could not get his head around this. And his mentor said, you want to

go from being the jockey to being the horse. I thought, yeah. And, you know, but the other part of this, I don't know that this is necessarily a question, maybe just to get your perspective on it, but the difficulty I have seen in successes and in failures has been some founders.

A proportion of founders are excellent at

getting the thing up, getting the thing running, putting in those 80 hour weeks, et cetera, et cetera, doing it with a smile on their face, can't wait to get out of bed to get back at it and then get to a point where it's going to IPO

or it's going to spac or it's

going to do this or that. And then the board says, well, you know what, you've done a real good job. They pat you on the head, they give you a nice watch and a little bonus check or something and say, but you've never ran a public company, you've never ran a half a billion dollar company before, you've never done a blah, blah, blah before. But thanks, we'll keep in touch. And, and here's the exit door. So that's tough. I mean it's tough for everybody, toughest for that founder. But it's also, I'm sure, not a pleasant experience for board members and all that. But what are your thoughts on that? I mean, it seems like sometimes it's inevitable, no one wants to talk about it kind of thing. But are there ways to manage that better?

Is there a best practice in something

like that or what?

What have you seen?

Yeah, so Chris, this is a really important topic, so I'm glad you brought it up. I mean, there's a lot of ways to think about it and you know, starting from, you know, the founder. Right. There's a lot of different skill sets required to build a company. Right. And so we often find founders with, you know, one or two of the skill sets needed to build a successful company. And so. Right. For example, oftentimes in our world there are technical founders who are PhD, MD trained scientists who maybe don't know a lot about business, but they know their technology. And those are oftentimes the exact right person to build a company, raise a first round of capital, prove out the viability of the technology, get early proof of concept, data, etc. Etc. But that person may not be the right person, Chris, as you said, to sort of take a company public because they, they, they don't, that, that's not like a skill set that they have.

Right.

I, I will say in the sort of the, the, the realm that we operate, you know, you, you, you can't only be a technical founder, you need to also be a salesman to some degree. Right. You need to be able to articulate your vision. Right. You need to not only get investors excited about your vision, you need to get employees or potential employees excited about your vision. And so what I found is the Extraordinary founders and CEOs have that within the same person. Right. They are deeply technical, but they, they have that ability to really get people to buy into their vision. Yeah, that is, that is oftentimes rare.

Yeah.

Right. Those skill sets oftentimes exist with different people, which is okay. And so as a, as a team, you need to make sure you have complementary skill sets. Right. So you need the technical person. Maybe you do need the business person. Right. Or you need the salesperson. And that's not saying that those people need to be on the team day one, but as the business grows, Right. They need to, they need to have some sort of, you know, seat at the table, probably in the leadership team, etc, to make sure you're compensating for whatever weaknesses you may have.

Yeah.

The other thing I'll say is, you know, I've seen this a lot within my own portfolio and just within the industry in general is, you know, oftentimes there does come a time when the founding CEO needs to, to be replaced. And so maybe that person is excellent at the technical stuff, maybe they're excellent at the sales and selling the vision and raising capital, but maybe they're not a good operator. Right. Being an operator is very different than being able to sell your vision or being technical. Right. It has a whole host of other issues. And so as a company grows and employees grow and you're becoming, you know, maybe a profitable company, you're looking to go public. Right. You need to focus on, focus on operations. And maybe that's a COO type.

Yeah.

Maybe not. And so, you know, that's a board level decision. You know, I'll just wrap up by saying, I'll never forget one of my mentors in the space who's a GP at a large fund. You know, one of the conversations that he always has very early on before investing in a company, he sits down with the, you know, the founder, the CEO and says, you know, do you want to be rich or do you want to be king or queen?

And I love that.

And it's this idea of there may be some point in the future where you need to be replaced, but it's going to be the best thing for the company and the best outcome for everyone. And so one of the things that we look for is this idea of sort of flexibility. I think before we invest, we want to make sure that people have this sort of growth mindset have a flexible mindset aren't necessarily, you know, just have blinders on at the same time. You know, if you look at, you know, particularly in the, in the tech world, it's oftentimes those founders, founders that have this like relentless obsession on what they're doing, what they're building, they have this vision. Right. I mean sometimes those are the folks that build the biggest company.

Right?

Yeah, it's funny you should say that.

It reminds me I did for a period of time. Like now I've more involved with, with startups and mid level. But back in the day I was doing some consulting work with another group with kind of the, the niche was

family owned businesses in kind of multi generational situations.

And it's an interesting thing.

It's one thing for like you know, the board who you're not related to to like show you the door or what or set up that, you know, do you want to be king, you want to be rich kind of a thing.

But you know, we dealt with these just even prickly here. I mean these were not companies that were, you know, going to be acquired or go public in any stretch of the imagination. But I'll never forget we went into this one office and to meet with the current CEO and he was like, you know, Joe Blow III and Joe

Blow the second and Joe Blow had portraits on the walls. One was above his left shoulder, one was above his right shoulder. And it was just such a, you know, such a, you know, a meme almost of, you know, the, the other

kinds of things and complications that can come along with running a business. You just kind of think, oh, it's a family business and everybody, everything's always rosy and there's no issues or anything like that. It's like holy smokes, family business again.

I don't think there's many family run

businesses and certainly not multi generational necessarily in the tech biology space or biotech space or this whole kind of thing.

But it just reminded me of that.

Yeah, there's a lot of emotional moving parts that can go along with that. And what a wonderful way to say it. Kind of just frankly, boldly right off the, the bat to say, hey, you know, let's set expectations for X months or years from now. So I really like that. You know, I want to circle back. You mentioned this in a, in a little bit around digital therapeutics and one of the companies that I've been working with.

Man, it has been such an eye opener. I feel like I need a honorary

PhD in it or something. But I have been through the FDA websites and through a number of FDA consultants, which I had no idea there were so many of them and stuff. And some just awesome ones too. I mean, just greenlight in particular, shout out to them. They do great stuff. But we're the thing that we were looking into. And I've done this actually with more than one company, but not as deeply with this as this one of prescription digital therapeutics.

And there's some sort of question as

to whether or not someone can kind of call themselves a digital therapeutic. And there's also the flip side of that question, which is if someone is

acting like a prescription digital therapeutic but

they have not gotten FDA approval, the FDA is not happy with that. So, you know, I'm reading about this whole thing. If you think about software as a service or blah, blah, blah, but then software as a medical device and then, man, I have been down so many wormholes and Rabbit holes with 510s and

predicate devices and Q submissions and it's pretty mind bending.

I mean, it's sort of like literally I wrote kind of what would be the equivalent of if you had a physical pill that you had just created a new drug that would be like the bottle package insert, but it's for an app.

And I note contradictions to this app. And it's just, it's sort of like

when you talk about going from science fiction to science fact, I guess the problem. Maybe here's where this leads to the question. So when you think, when you say the word digital therapeutic or prescription digital therapeutic or blah, blah, blah, there's kind of a certain level of like a skeuomorphic kind of perspective to say, well,

we're going to treat this digital thing as if it were a pill. Because what we're familiar with is pills. What we're not familiar with is digital

things like apps or like digital therapeutics or prescription digital therapeutics. And the side effect of that. Well, we have to think of a side effect is like how if we took a pill and, and we got a rash, you know, kind of a thing. So do you don't, you know, disclose anything of any companies that are, you know, that this is private. But I mean, I have just been wrestling with this myself to say, you know, how do I get myself. I'm recognizing this, you know, as a skeuomorphic kind of thing because I'm used to looking at package inserts in a pill bottle of a prescription from the pharmacy. But is that a limiting thing? Like how does a, a visionary leader of A startup where they're in this space and you're, I get it, you have to follow fda, no problem. But then, you know what? Will we look back five years from now and go, oh, what goofballs we were. We should have really seen, you know, all we could do. You know, it's like what someone said this about like with the, the Macintosh computer or something that basically people took the Macintosh and typed in their recipes because it, that what they could do is like sort their recipes by, you know, whatever. Because that was a real skeuomorphic thing

that people, well, what am I going

to do with this computer? You know. So do you have any thoughts about that?

Sorry for such a long question, but

it's just been a conundrum for me of feeling like a Luddite trying to be edgy, you know, with the leading edge. Of the leading edge, I suppose.

Yeah, no, it's a great question, Chris. And you know, it is complicated territory in terms of the regulatory environment and how these things are regulated. And you know, I am not a regulatory, regulatory expert in my own right, so I rely on folks like you do to help me with stuff. But you know, the crux of the issue comes down to, well, how is it being used, right? If it's being used as a diagnostic tool to, you know, inform, you know, a clinician decision, then it's regulated in a specific way. If it's really just data that's like for informational purposes, then maybe it's not under the purview of the fda, for example. And then you talked a little bit about some of the, you know, is it a 510k? So is there a predicate device on the market? Or is it a 510k de novo? Or maybe it's a PMA, right? That's a lot. That's kind of more medical device territory. But there's all kinds of different ways to think about these sorts of things. I'll give you, maybe I'll just give you two, two examples from my portfolio. So one was Blue Mesa Health. So Blue Mesa Health was a, created a digital diabetes prevention program based on the CDC guidelines. They have a DPP digital diabetes prevention program and guidelines. So they took all that, they wrapped all that up into, you know, software and application and coaching. And the whole idea was to help pre diabetics from becoming full blown diabetics and in some cases reverse type 2 diabetes back to the pre diabetic state. So they rolled this out actually internationally. So a lot of what they did was they tailored Some of their like diet recommendations in particular to different geographies based on how people eat in those different regions around the world, which really no one else was doing.

That's cool.

Yeah, yeah, really cool.

Yeah.

They, they had a global partnership with, with a big German pharmaceutical company. It was a Merck. KGaA was the German version of Merck. But anyway, so you know, they had, they had some nice traction, they had some data. I think the last I saw was like their success rate was like 62% of helping reverse diabetes or preventing pre diabetics from becoming full blown diabetics. It was actually a very high success rate. And in fact what's really cool and what a lot of people don't think about, which I didn't even consider until getting into this space, is that a digital therapeutic and an actual therapeutic don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. So you can actually use them in combination. So sometimes maybe the digital therapeutic is successful, maybe sometimes the, the, you know, the chemical therapeutic is successful, but maybe sometimes there's the combination where the digital therapeutic helps and you need a lower dose of the actual therapeutic. Right. And so that's really helpful from a side effect profile and all those sorts of things. So yeah, anyway, that company was acquired a few years ago by Virgin, Virgin Pulse. So that, so that was like one, one company in our portfolio. We have an investment in another company called Nutrasen, which is basically has a cgm. So it's a continued glucose monitoring system, which is nothing new. But what they've done is they've wrapped a suite of sort of technology around that for, to help customize nutritional programs for exercise, for coaching for all these things. So it's not just a cgm. So our thesis was that's cool, like if you know what to do, what to do.

That's a great point. Yeah.

But most people don't know what to do with the data. So you need people to help interpret the data for you, to work with you, to guide you, to coach you, to hold you accountable. Right. And in some respect, I mean, you know, I think the big failure with a lot of the digital health stuff is, is you, there's a failure to implement long lasting behavioral changes. Right. So what we found is often helpful is this old concept of, you probably heard of like a Ulysses contract, right. So it's like having someone hold you accountable. Right. So if you have trouble going to the gym, maybe get a trainer so you have to show up because someone else is relying on you to show up type of thing and you don't waste your money. Yeah, so same idea. So if like a coach, if you're working with a coach through one of these apps, then you have this Ulysses contract where someone else is helping to hold you accountable type of thing. So I think those are the types of companies, the types of digital therapeutics we feel are being, being sort of more effective these days.

That's great. Yeah. And you know, again, me as a psychologist and I also have a long history in public health, just you know, vis a vis behavior change, whatever it is, as a psychologist in the psychological side of things and as a public health person, you know, in lifestyle and whatnot. So I think, you know, there's also kind of this, this merging of all that. I, I wrote a long form piece for LinkedIn a while back just kind of about, you know, science and medicine and woo woo science and you know, the goops of the worlds. And you know, I appreciate the fact that people have, have an interest in health and wellness. Certainly Covid has, you know, put a lot of interesting spins on that. I think there's, I've, I talked to someone the other day that I feel like in terms of reducing stigma around mental health issues, there's been nothing better than Covid to do that because now people understand it, have probably experienced it, that you know, have greater empathy for

it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So all of those kinds of things, you know, I think lead us to these technologies. I know, like even continuous glucose monitoring. I was reading there's like a couple of companies are coming up with ones that are non invasive and you know, you can just kind of nerd out and do fun stuff. But in the, in the time we have left, I kind of want to look a little bit down the road 15 minutes into the future as they used to say of like, do you have, are there any companies, are there any things showing up in your, what you're reading or what's coming across your desk to vet as a possible component

of Bioverge or whatever that deals with

the Web3 or NFTs or metaverse or like I had the former CIO of Cleveland Clinic on Edward Marks in I think my first season and we were talking about like blockchain and security for EMRs and you know, and not having stuff be able to get hacked and cyber cybersecurity around, you know, looking at blockchain that, that long ago. But do you have any, any thoughts or, or things that you think about, can think out loud around?

Is there a role for NFTs web3ish stuff.

What's it going to bring to healthcare and healthcare technology and investing?

Yeah, so Chris, I think that's a really good question. That honestly is not an area of expertise of mine. It is something we've thought a little bit about. I will say, you know, NFTs we haven't really touched. I haven't really given that too much thought how that necessarily applies to healthcare. Blockchain certainly much more so web3. I think I've started seeing more and more pitches that involve Web3 and blockchain certainly over the past 12 months than I have before. You know, we just as a quick aside, we just launched a new access fund specifically focused on digital health with our partner Charm Health. So we call this like the, the Charm Health Bioworks Digital Transformation Fund. And it's all about these sort of digital therapeutics, you know, digital digital LED innovations. One category that we're interested in is, is blockchain and how blockchain can be applied to solving, you know, fundamental problems in healthcare. And so that will be a focus of this fund. So we are actively looking for companies to invest in out of this new fund that, that we we're just gearing up to launch. You know, that said, you know, I can't cite specific examples at the moment, just one, one reason for confidentiality.

But sure, sure.

I think for me some of these trends are still emerging. Right. So how is web three going to be applied to healthcare NFTs? I, I'm still, honestly Chris, I'm not sold on the whole NFT thing at the moment. So we, we've sort of stayed away from that.

Yeah, I know it's, it's been, you know, I, Kevin Rose has a podcast called Proof and I've been tippy toeing into that. I have been horribly lost in. I have a discord account and have

no idea what I'm doing. But it's sort of like, you know, people say, you know, like you gotta be involved in it to kind of help, you know, understand it. That's you know, kind of like the

ending sentence in every, every podcast and every article and that sort of a thing. So I've been kind of tippy toeing into that and collecting articles that I need to just, you know, sit down and brew a pot of coffee and kind of get into and get lost in. But yeah, I agree it seems like smart contracts and blockchain. The super naive perspective that I have certainly seemed to have applicability into the healthcare realm. But yeah, I am still befuddled with NFTs and I'm not going to be doing any purchasing of 8bit monkey tokens

or anything like that anytime soon, so nor am I.

Okay, but I will say because I did want to circle back to the mental health comment that you made because I think that's so true and I think, you know, maybe a silver lining of COVID is that it has shone a light on the mental health challenges within this country and has gotten the conversation started. And so, you know, one of the areas we are excited about is mental health care within Biovergen. So we actually made an investment in a company called Foresight Mental Health. And so they basically offer like a full service therapy and other mental health services virtually. They have a telehealth business which obviously exploded during the pandemic. They have in person clinics as well. And the whole goal is to make mental health care more accessible. Right. And affordable. And they do that by leveraging some cool science and tech which we don't really need to get into here. But, but you know, I, I, one of the, one of the reasons that I like, I even got interested in, in this my, myself is I heard a TED talk by Guy Winch. I don't know if you know Guy Winch, but I think he's a, a psychiatrist. And anyway he saw his TED talk was all about sort of mental health and the one thing he said that really stuck with me and Chris, I'm sure you can relate to this, but it's like, you know, we have a medicine cabinet that contains band aids and bandages for when we get a physical cut or a headache or something. Like why don't we have the equivalent of a medicine cabinet for when we have some sort of mental injury or issue or something. Right. And so like we're like, we're, that's one of the areas we're excited about in terms of the future is a company like Foresight. What they're trying to do. We invested in another company called Alto Neuroscience, which is using blood based biomarkers to try to be able to predict how a patient or will respond to a particular drug, for example, for a variety of different mental health conditions. So I think that that's an area that we're particularly excited about. And then of course there are lots of other areas of sort of like science that we're really excited about investing in today. Which, you know, maybe we can save those for another conversation.

Sure, yeah. We need to have a round two. Yeah, I, one of the things that's come across with a Couple of the companies that I'm advising is this whole area, not to go into this rabbit hole, but we'll save this for as a place marker for round two of ketamine and psychedelics. Delic Corp, who you may know of, you know, they're really kind of pioneering that. And again, it's kind of a tippy toeish kind of area vis a vis regulation and dosing and my. I don't know that you would necessarily know this about me, but sort of the way I grew up in mental health care, initially as a practitioner, but

also as a researcher.

And a lot of the work that I did was on, you know, looking at outcome studies and doing this. Thirty years ago there was very few decently done outcome studies. And now there's one of the companies I'm working with 14 years ago had a randomized control trial on their digital therapeutic. And that was pioneering and that was why I joined them because they were very visionary and foresightful that way. So maybe to wrap up, speaking of the future, what's your long term vision for Biovergen?

Kind of maybe what's next for Bioverge?

What gets you excited?

Yeah, I mean, what gets me excited. Right. I mean, as you can probably tell us, the companies and the technologies that we're investing in. Right.

So it must be so cool to

see behind the curtain.

Neil, I mean, I just gotta say, you know, it just must be like you, the pitches that you get to hear versus a pitch for, you know, some new, I don't know, thing for your car must be just so much more exciting than the others.

Yeah. And Chris, you know, that's what gets me out of bed every day. Right. Like I love this stuff, right? Like I love learning about new science, new technologies. And so, you know, when, when I hear a pitch and I'm learning something, to me that that's, that's incredibly exciting. It's not just building a widget, it's this idea of really fundamentally be being able to transform health care. And you know, maybe I'll just end with like one quick example, but you know, I think there, there's a lot of promise for you heard me talk a little bit about regenerative medicine, right? 3D bioprinting is an area we're incredibly excited about. We had a company in our portfolio called Volumetric that we invested in a couple years ago. I think it's like July of 2020 or something that was acquired last year, but they were developing 3D bioprinting of human tissue and organs. So it's like, wow, that sounds like science fiction, right?

Yeah, I think I saw a movie like that.

Yeah. But, but it's, but it's not, right? They, they have already printed the most complex 3D printed object ever, right? So they printed a human lung scaffold and it's already demonstrated gas exchange in animal models.

Oh my gosh.

That's pretty cool. So like that made the COVID of science magazine, right? Like they have a partnership with United Therapeutics who plan to cellular cellularize the scaffold with a patient's own stem cells. Right? So the idea is to create a trans transplantable human lung without the need for immunosuppression. Right. Which obviously wouldn't. You would prevent rejection for that. So it's like, okay, well that's not here today, right? I'm not claiming that's here today. But it's like, wow. Like those are the types of technologies and opportunities that I get to learn about. And like that's, that's why Bioverts exists. I want to invest in that stuff and I'd love to give more people the opportunity to invest in those types of companies. And you know, that company had a very good outcome that, you know, they were acquired by 3D Systems last year. We had like a 26x return if all the milestones hit on that one. But it's like, well, like that's good. That's the future to me. So those types of technologies are what, like what gets us excited.

That is so cool. It gives me goosebumps too. So. Well, Neil, you have been so generous with your time and everything. I really appreciate today. Like we were talking off mic before. I've just so been looking forward to this. So this has just scratched a lot of my itches and been, been great fun for me. So to wrap up with what are some of the best ways for audience

listeners to learn more about you, your work, connect with your podcast, what are those?

And we'll get them in the show notes.

Yeah, perfect. Thank you, Chris. I must say it was a real pleasure being on the show. I have honored to be a guest and as a fellow podcast host myself. You did a wonderful job.

Thanks man.

So thank you. Thank you so much. In terms of getting a hold of me. LinkedIn always can find me on LinkedIn. The Biovert website is www.Biovert.com is a great place to learn more about our firm and our deal flow. You can write register there. You can reach out to me directly. Neilioverds.com is my email address.

Okay.

The podcast is you want to have

that out there in the ether.

Okay, I'm happy to Filled emails and the my podcast is the Bioverch podcast which is available on itunes, Spotify and Soundcloud at the moment.

Highly recommended here from this side too. Yeah, just big fan. So right back at you man. It's. It's the folks you have are again, I love what you said. The leading edge of the leading edge that is really the case so. Well again man. Oh thank you so much for making the time. I know your schedule is just crazy insane. So I'm glad we could get this done and we'll just have to plan ahead a few months in advance for a round two and catch up with things. I really appreciate the time today and just again, tip of the hat to your amazing work. Life changing, life saving and world changing. Thank you so much Neil for what you do.

Thanks so much Chris. My pleasure.

Living a Life in Full is a

production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien executive producer and host Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other people professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile.

Thanks and until next time,