Leadership and Bioengineering with Omar Ali

Welcome to the Axial Podcast. Axial is an early-stage investment firm based in San Francisco. We partner with great founders and inventors investing in early-stage life science companies, often when they are no more than an idea. Axial is fanatical about helping the rare inventor who is compelled to build their own enduring business. Okay, we just talked for like 40 minutes, so Probably should have recorded that. That conversation is going to be so much better than this conversation because it was more off the record. But I'm really excited to talk about your story and something that's maybe more useful and enduring than maybe some of the stuff we were talking before. For context, Omar Ali is— what's your position at Lyle? SVP or—

No, no, no, no. I'm a senior director of research.

At LION ImmunoPharma. I wrote a whole blog post about this, so everybody's gonna know exactly who you are. But in short, Omar's one of the best leaders in biotech. He still has a lot of work left to do. And I think in my opinion, why he's such a great leader, he has a lot of morality. He's just one of the kindest persons I've ever met in general. And I think that, I think everyone loves working with, working for Omar. And I think many of my portfolio companies are trying to poach you. Right over the years, and everybody's trying to hire you from Lyle, and, and, you know, there's a reason for it. Um, everybody wants, everybody wants Omar to be their executive, or everybody wants Omar to start a new company. Um, but maybe we can just chat up, you know, you know, we don't have to talk about your story. We know, we know each other too well, but maybe we can just talk, get into it, like, uh, you know, How do you think about leading teams in biotech or science? And how do you think about leading science-driven organizations when you have pressures of money, timelines, interdisciplinary fields, engineering, biology, chemistry? You operate at the interface of a lot of different fields. Like, how did you get that knowledge in the first place? How did you learn all this? How did you learn how to lead people? How did you learn how to do engineering, biology, chemistry? How long did it take?

Yeah, Josh, thanks for having me. You know, many things you said about me I want to say about you in terms of kindness, and, you know, one of these guys you always want to work with, so it's always fun to chat, and we chat a little bit about—

I'm blushing, I'm blushing. So I'm blushing.

So it's true though, it's true. You're a very nice guy, right? One of the nicest guys in the business. So I appreciate all the kind words. Um, I would say one of the main things when it comes to management or leadership, you know, you can throw these words around and you often have— everyone has sort of a vision of what that means to them. You know, in order to, I think, lead, you want to lead in a healthy way, right? And you want to lead with— by creating healthy environments. And the only way you can do that is if you yourself are in a healthy state of mind and in a healthy place. And It starts with yourself. And at the end of the day, for me, well, I always come back to what is intrinsic in me, what is motivating me, right? And then if I can be true to that, then I can be true to others, right? And so, you know, early on, um, I was very much driven by not being bored. And so I was just not— I was, I was working. So I did my bachelor's in chemical engineering. And I got a scholarship from 3M. So 3M was, you know, supporting some of my tuition. And this is in Minnesota, and where I grew up. And I went to the University of Minnesota, great program, actually, chemical engineering program, shout out. To them. And so part of my summers, or pretty much all my summers, I was interning at 3M. And great company. I learned a lot. Love them, actually. Great people there trying to do really cool science. But I was working in like chemical manufacturing, chemical design, especially on Post-it notes, you know, so like different adhesions, adhesive, like formulations and trying to become more—

You worked on Post-it notes? That's crazy.

Yeah, I worked on Post-it notes. Yeah, I still take them off the same way. Like, there's a way that you take them off so you don't, like, induce, like, variations, so we can test the adhesion properties and, you know, properly. So anyways, it was a fun time. I learned a lot, but I also learned that I was, you know, it just wasn't the type of science I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be a scientist. 'cause I love the idea of like constructing problems or like thinking about problems and trying to construct a way to answer them or create experiments to like, you know, look at these problems. And to me, biology was much more interesting. And so, you know, first thing was like not being bored for me, right? And like enhancing like curiosity quotient of my life. And then As I got more into biology, you know, the immune system became something that was much more a part of my life personally. So on my mother's side, you know, I have two sisters. You know, they've all kind of suffered from some sort of version of autoimmune disease, right? And so my mother has lupus, my sister has Crohn's, one of them, and You know, I've seen this, you know, because it's sex-linked in many ways, so autoimmune disease often hits the female. Um, it was big for me. And then, you know, I lost an aunt that I lived with to cancer as well, which is also— could be considered an immune disease. And so I started just looking into immune immunity and learning about immunology and immune engineering. It's very fascinating to me. It was a good combination of my material science background, supplementing that with biology, and then, you know, really becoming something that was important to me, right, which is an immune engineer, synthetic biologist, right, something along those lines. And I've kind of, you know, reached different, different aspects of that. I've been able to, like, you know, delve into more and more, and that's been something that's really been true to me. So I think As a leader, having that being a fulfilling thing for you, it comes out in every interaction that you have, whether it's, you know, people that you're managing, people that, you know, you're trying to partner with to invest in a company, you know, or even your everyday life, right? Like, when you're fulfilled, you're able to be a better person. Like, you don't, you don't have the stresses and anxiety of like, am I doing what I should be doing? You know, and keeping that intrinsic motivation in mind is really, really helpful. I guess that's intrinsic, right? And I guess we need to talk— maybe if I could keep going, Josh, here on management of people. The transparency of all that comes through. Thank you.

We can edit this out. Don't worry. How you doing, man? In-laws.

I got food delivered because I have my in-laws in town.

So, um, whose side? Your wife's side or your side?

My wife's side.

Okay, good.

So I just got like steak delivered, you know, breakfast.

So Ari's jealous. You have intrinsic and then you have Uh, yeah, I guess extrinsic.

I mean, in a way, right? So there's things you don't control. There are people, right, that you— but the one thing you do control, I think, is the people you work with, right? And so, um, I have been very fortunate to work with amazing teams at Lyle. Um, you know, I joined Lyle as part of an acquisition of a company that I started called Immulus, and the reason we decided to do this acquisition was because Lyle had a fantastic and has a fantastic, you know, scientific, uh, team which we would work closely with. Obviously, as you know, that was the plan on the research side. Business was great. Um, the concept was something I thought was revolutionary in trying to battle solid tumors, but really was about the people. It was, you know, we met those people, we're like, man, this is a real good connection. There's complementary, um, talent on their side and know-how, and then there's complementary talent and know-how on our side, and we thought it would mesh together really, really well. And throughout all my, um, you know, I started another company in the past, and then I had a research group a little bit that I worked with, um, at the Harvard Med School. I've been able to like just work with people I've been really fortunate to work with people that I really loved, actually, and admired as professionals, and then became friends as, you know, personal— on the personal side.

And I think honestly, your career is like— knowing you, just like you've built up a lot of goodwill. Over 2 decades, and I think it's only beginning to pay off, you know, in my opinion. I think it's just barely starting. You know, your, your steps will get bigger because of all that, that foundation you set early on in your career. I remember on, I remember on Amylase and Lyle, I remember you chatted up, I remember on a Saturday you called me up. I remember Rick Clauser called you up on a Saturday, and we chat up after. Yeah, Rick, Rick is so good. Rick was telling me like this is gonna either be the biggest thing in cell therapies or, you know, it's gonna be a huge swing. And then, you know, these are some of the best people. And I remember that you were really excited about like just Rick and Crystal and all the people at your assembly at Lyle. And then you can talk about your work at Lyle, whatever you wanna talk about, but maybe we can talk about like the Intrinsiq thing first. How do you think about like the prerequisites to be a leader, to manage a team, to found a company? You know, I think there's— something I think about a lot too is like, you know, there's one argument to say just do it. There's also another argument to like get the necessary set of experiences and build a solid foundation personally to then enable your success professionally. I think you definitely took the latter approach, but when you reflect back on your career, do you think about, man, maybe I should have just started a company sooner, or maybe I should have just done this sooner, or do you feel that, hey, maybe getting your personal life in order, you know, building a family, things like that were essential for your success? Yeah, I personally, I'm in the latter group too. I think you need personal life, this stability to take more risks.

Yeah.

If you just take risk all day, you're gonna blow up. And I've seen it, I've seen it even like last few years. So yeah. But when you reflect back on your career, do you think about, man, like do you, sometimes I think about that too. Maybe I just should have just did this earlier and I would've had X amount of years extra. I would be so much farther along.

Yeah.

But like the counterfactual not, might not be true. But like when you think about like intrinsically, what are the prereqs you, What kind of essential prereqs are there?

Yeah, I mean, you definitely wanna have stability, right? Like there's some things that you just need and you need to have. And I, you know, I'm not a big fan of like risking it all for a company, right? I think that some people might tell you that. Yeah. I think again, going back to the intrinsic part, you don't need to be in a healthy state and you need to understand kind of what's motivating you. And that's also going to define your success later on. Like, some people might define their success like they made so much cash, right, out of a particular exit. Or some people might define their success a little bit by that, but then also a little bit by, you know, impact, you know, what they're doing, who they're serving, right? Especially in biotech, right? There's a patient population that most of us are aiming to serve, right, as a part of being a part of this. And that's, you know, incredible for me. And hey, I mean, everybody loves exits and everybody wants to make money, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I think if you compare the two, you know, that can be part of your success, but not all of it has to be defined by one thing. Yeah. And I think when you're thinking about, you know, maybe for some of the younger founders or potentially people thinking about starting a company. You know, you don't have to do it alone. There's a lot of people that are out there in the network. Josh knows a lot of them, so that are willing to help you, that want to help you, you know. And so it's really about making that risk that you're taking, which is, you know, your career, and making it a calculated one. You know, what do you need? To take something to the next level. If it's, you know, at a certain stage, whether it be kind of more research and maybe in an academic arena at the moment, and you want to take that out. Um, and so there are probably more people than you know or realize out there that are willing to mentor you, that are willing to even spend their time and not even be paid, right? Like, I mean, they're, you know, I'm one. I love to talk to founders. About what they're trying to do and what kind of the next step might be. And that is incredibly, like, fulfilling for me because people did it for me when I was starting out, right? And these could be former founders and stuff. And so that was the first thing I would do is, you know, reach out to your, you know, people you know. And they don't even have to be in biotech. They could have just started companies, or they could have just— they could just be professionals in a certain business. And they can give you management advice, right? Because they've probably managed people, people, any manager out there has managed people. And a lot of those things go across industry, right? Like these skills in terms of just emotional intelligence, you know, dealing with a certain hiring or firing, dealing with a certain type of cash flow problem, right? Like these people, people budgeting, you know, like these are things that people have dealt with. It goes across industries. And, you know, don't be shy. Like, you know, one of the things about our culture now is it's getting a little bit more lonely, right? Like, we're kind of like isolated, doing things on Zoom a lot and not seeing each other. Um, and so you tend to gravitate inward when you're dealing with a problem. And one of the keys, I think, to continuing to be successful is to reach outward to everyone that's out there. And people want to connect, and it's a really important thing that we hold on to, is to connect. Um, and, you know, that's, that's a big part of building teams, right? Yeah.

And maybe get something— the extrinsic side of like, yeah, like finding people to reach out to, that's a lot harder. I mean, it's like, I think intrinsically Would you say it's harder to get your personal life in order and making sure you're set, or is it harder to navigate the whole company? I think it's harder to navigate all this stuff. I think the first step is making sure you're stable, which I think is solvable. The more, in my opinion, the more opaque thing is everything else.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? How do you navigate? I think the harder thing is having good taste in people. Who's a good person? Who's somebody who can actually be useful and helpful and who's not? And who's trustworthy? That's really hard. Like, when you think about, like, how do you figure out who to reach out to? How do you— yeah, for me at least, I don't have— I don't have a secret formula. I think it's like time. It just takes a lot of time. It takes like 2 decades to It takes decades to find good people to work with, but any shortcuts potentially, or any kind of heuristics you use?

Yeah, you know, I think there's some of the, like, classic ones, which is, you know, if you've worked with someone in the past, or you know somebody that's worked with others in the past, you just sort of ask around. And this is why I was saying you got to reach outward, is because it does take so long. Yeah, you know, you have to do multiple interviews, you have to do multiple meetings with one person who might, you know, connect you to another person or might connect you to another person until you find maybe that niche type of person where you really connect and is, is the person that has like, I mean, those niche skills that maybe you were looking for to potentially— that's going to be like your tight partnership that you're going to, you know, be your business partner or be your, you know, somebody that leads your— leads one of your teams if you're thinking about that. And so it's going to take time. It always takes time. I think— can I get back to being philosophical again? Because I think you're asking more technical questions here about like how—

Well, the philosopher, I love it.

I know, but I just am a big fan of intuition here. So like if you are in a, again, healthy state, you're going to have an appropriate intuition about a person. And so you're like, but if you're sort of maybe a little bit unstable, let's say, in terms of why you're doing this and all that, your intuition is going to be a little bit off, right? Or you're not going to be able to read those signs. That's the philosophical side that we could get a little bit more into that if you want, Josh. But I guess, look, I mean, when you're talking about starting a company. I mean, there's so many— you're a good example— other people in the venture space to talk to about how do you form a team, the mechanics of forming a team. You know, there's actually a lot of resources out there, um, you know, academic playbooks come to mind. I'm forgetting the— there's a good VC firm that has a nice academic playbook. If you're just trying to license the technology and build the team out some of the, like, top 10 things to really think about, you know, as you're thinking about this. But when it comes to team building, I think you'll find as you start the journey that there's going to be team members that want to be part of your team. As you have these conversations, it's going to be really obvious. It's something that kind of I found as I just started some of these journeys is that, and even now, you know, at Lyle, we do the hiring, right? And, you know, you have a certain pool of candidates. And there's some candidates that are just a real fit, you know, you just know right away, they just— everything fits. And some candidates, you do the interview process. And it's pretty obvious on both sides that like, this isn't really a fit, you know. And you, you know, this actually is a, it's a good example for people because, you know, we'll interview maybe 10 to 20 people for a position after it's— that's after it's been through an HR filter, right? And so then, and then you do all that, and then you get down to one candidate, right? And so you spent a good amount of time, you know, just to fill one position. You know, there's multiple interviews, multiple people doing interviews. We all come together, you know, discuss that person, think about the fit, not only like technically and all that, but culturally, you know, we're trying to have a core culture that we're building here. And, you know, to the degree that we can, you know, discern that from like 3 or 4 interviews, we talk about that. And so you'll You'll, you know, as a, you know, whoever's out there listening to this trying to build a team, as you— again, you got to do multiple interviews, reach out to the right people. You, you probably have a larger network than you think you do that's willing to help you, like actually more than willing, like excited, you know, to help you. And it's just about spending that time and investing in that properly to find the right the right team for you. And then intuition-wise, you'll, you'll feel it, right? You'll know culturally whether it's a fit with you. Technically, that's actually kind of the more easier thing. It's like, you know, complementary technical skill set, you know, though they have this experience that they've done this, they've done that, that would be really helpful when we start this company, because we need to have somebody who has some deal-making experience, for example. But that person, that's where it's kind of easy. Right? Um, although maybe not in San Francisco. It's hard to find like a good business person that's available sometimes. I get that. But they're there, and you know, people can help you with deals. It's just like if you go to Josh and you're like— you meet Josh, you're like, man, I really connected with Josh. I really— there's something about him, you know? I want to see him again. I want, I want to work with him again. You, you, you feel that, right? Just be So, you know, that's, that's my maybe more philosophical answer to your question.

Yeah, I think there's like the intrinsic part makes a lot of sense, and then the extrinsic going outward, meeting people, it's just like, uh, he'd be very noisy.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think this probably— when I'm— this conversation, and I've never had this conversation with you before, so it's kind of— I'm learning stuff right now. It seems like you're— and I agree with this— like, the first step is making sure you're in order. And then once you're in order, then you're capable to then reach out to people, engage your people, because your intuition is kind of calibrated correctly. But if you're kind of disordered and just desperate and you're just trying to make it, you might go down the wrong path. You might meet the wrong person. You might, you know, people make mistakes. The biggest mistakes you often make are surround yourself with the wrong people who you're not fit for, or you're not a fit with, and then tension arises and it ends up not working out. So it kind of seems like, maybe on the hiring part, like when you look at candidates or just people you wanna work with, like do you assess, Like, how deep do you go? Are you just looking at like their fit and technical capabilities, or have you found value in like maybe going a little more personal and say, hey, what do you do as a hobby? Or, you know, how do you delineate between professional and personal? Because they're both very important, but as a leader, you know, how deep do you go? Because you don't want to be too intrusive either, but you also don't want to be too impersonal. How do you find that balance between understanding these intrinsic motivations versus extrinsic? When you lead somebody, manage a team, you know, you have external goal, but you also— everybody has their own mission. Everybody's on their own adventure. Yeah. How do you deal with something? I don't know. How do you deal with like, if he had managed to lead the team of 20, they all, they all want to do separate— they all have their own dreams. But they have one goal. How do you, how do you like reconcile those two things?

Yeah, yeah. Um, I think on the intrinsic side, I, I, it is something that we talk about a lot, um, in terms of when you conduct the interview. And sometimes HR is really good at it, to be honest. You know, they kind of just, they kind of just ask like, you know, what is, what is, you know, long-term goals What— and, and through kind of a discussion of long-term goals and kind of short-term, what this opportunity provides, it all sort of comes out, right? Life experiences come out, um, and people talk about what they, they feel comfortable talking about, right? And under those parameters. And obviously you gotta keep it professional, um, and so there's only, you know, there's only so much you can do with within that environment and that amount of time. But it definitely comes out like you can, you can kind of get a sense of where people want to go. Sometimes we have, you know, maybe junior level positions, and somebody wants to take a step toward graduate school, right? But they're not really want to go to graduate school right away. They want to, you know, get some experience in industry. And we know that, right? And that makes a lot of sense. And sometimes that can be a really good fit for our position. And just technically thinking about that, you know, it's really helpful as a manager to know that because, you know, I've been to grad school, you know, in that position. And I kind of know like in many ways what are the skills that you want to build, what type of situations can I put this person into under the work environment that's going to prep them for grad school, right? And so we talk about that. You know, this is obviously, person gets hired, you know, but we sort of can envision if this is the person we hire, this is the type of role they would play. This is the type of experience they're going to get in terms of presentation, communicating their science, and then the science that they are performing at the bench. And then Do they get any chance for management experience? So somebody might come in and, you know, they just, they just really want to manage a team. And, you know, that might be a different level, but, you know, they want to manage a team. So what kind of support can we offer them if that's something that's really important to them, right? And some people come in and they may want— they just love experiments. They just love to run experiments. They just love to run do the bench work, right? It's like soothing to them, you know, it's something that it just gets them in their, you know, their happy place. And oftentimes you'll find that that's all they wanna do, right? And then we try to come up with situations for them that make sense for them and what they want. And so it's like you spend 50% of your time doing what's in your wheelhouse And then we're going to spend another good amount of your time coming up with new experiments, right? And new questions that you can answer using this thing that you're really driven for, which is just technical, you know, performance, right? You know, I don't know how else to say it, but just technically going through experiments. And so there are people like that, and you know, that, that's just like a conversation that just comes out. And sometimes there's a role available, and let's say that role doesn't involve managing people, but somebody's coming in, it's like, you know, I really want to manage people, I want this growth set, I want to like grow in these areas, and we're just like, well, we don't have that role, right? Um, you know, you just got to be honest about that. And so that's sort of how it comes together in terms of like what I'm doing now. Um, I think when I started a company, which was a different environment, yeah, we talked about roles and responsibilities right off the bat. Like, we're gonna all have to do a lot of different things, but there's going to be 3 or 4 people, right, that are founding this company. Um, they're gonna— there, we actually listed out what those technical roles would be. And for me, it was an interesting process in that there were some things on my list that I didn't want to do, you know, but I mean, we kind of just had to, right? I mean, somebody had to do them. Um, not necessarily from like, you know, it's like, well, this is part— but I wanted to do it for the purpose of the mission, right? And, um, and that's a key thing is like, you know, there's going to be things that, you know, I want to make all this is rosy, right? There's gonna be things you don't want to do. That you have to do. But I think if you can shift your mindset into not that there's things you don't want to do, but things that are growth areas for you, like you just continue to grow, and the more experience you gain in them, the better you are. That helps too.

So yeah, I think what I'm hearing is there's no shortcut to good management. A lot of work. A lot of conversations, it's a lot of work. That's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing just the, you have to talk to people, set expectations, catch up, touch base, and across 20 people, that's a lot of time. And so there's no shortcuts here. It's just a lot of hard work and building trust through repeated interactions and kind of you build rapport over time, not immediately. And so yeah, I don't know, Elmar.

Yeah, you know, I want to say something here, Josh. Like, you know, it comes with shortcuts.

I'm looking for tricks, tricks of the trade, like something, something like, you know, you picked up a little, you know, along the way. Like, like maybe, you know, if you want to hire somebody, you, you know, take them out to a steak dinner. I don't know, something like that.

Yeah, uh, let's see, I don't know.

Um, what's work for you? You know, like, um, for me at least, you know, I take people out for walks. Good walk, man. A good walk, you get to know somebody easily. Um, just walk around town, something I like doing. Um, play basketball. Play basketball. Once I started playing basketball with you, I was like, this Omar guy, he's good.

Yeah, actually, I saw Omar—

when I saw you play basketball, I'm like, man, this guy's getting the rebounds. Yeah, I'm in. Whatever Omar does, I'm in. This guy's getting rebounds. Like, this guy's fighting for the rebounds. You were like, I might play basketball, dude. You were just getting rebounds. You were like, you know, uh, Dennis Rodman out there. Seriously. So once I saw that, like, things like that, like little tricks like that, when you assess somebody, when you want to hire somebody, little tricks, little heuristics you use, because, you know, you know, like, you talk to people, set expectations. I think a lot of people do that. It's a lot of work. But like, have you— do your skill set— have you found like, uh, like anything that like helps you assess somebody or helps you build trust, uh, better?

Yeah, I mean, trust takes time. Yeah, but you know, losing trust, um, is a quick thing. Yeah, all it takes is one mistake really, and it's pretty much over. Um, So it's about daily practice of just doing everything.

It's back to the hard work part, Omar.

I wanted to say something about shortcuts. I mean, when was a shortcut worth it? I don't know. I mean, at the end of the day, anything worth doing is going to take hard work. So, you know, I mean, I don't know, probably most people can think about times in their life and try to think about a time in my life, maybe I tried to take a shortcut. Um, and really it was always just filled with like regret, right? Or I should have done something differently, you know. Um, but what's really hard in life is to do something small and consistently that's the right thing to do. You know, one of the reasons for that is because you don't realize the reward for that until very later on in your life. You know, like, imagine you could probably sit back and say to yourself, you know what, if I had started exercise 20 years ago, you know, and I just lifted weights for 10 minutes a day— I'm just throwing some numbers out there, you know— if I just lifted weights for 10 minutes a day for, you know, 20 years, right, that would be— you probably imagine there's significant gains to that, you know. Um, but you know, over the first 2 weeks of that, your gains are very small, very minimal. Yeah, not that big a deal. And it's very easy to lose, you know, course, or, you know, lose track of where you're trying to go with that. So, you know, it's about habits, you know, building the right habits. So I want to say that about shortcuts, right? Just because I think it's a very important concept.

I think, but I think a lot of fields like scientific fields, engineering fields, Yeah, they have a lot of— there's a lot of, uh, shortcuts, or you might want to call them like tricks, where it's like, yeah, you can do this brute force way, but here's a clever way to solve it. Like, oh yeah, if you're sequencing something and talking to you, and even I kind of, kind of had a hunch on this too, you're getting to know founders, working with them, management and leadership, there's no shortcuts, there's no tricks, there's no like little easy thing you can do, to be honest. Like, other fields have little things you can do that make things faster and efficient, whereas good management, good leadership, it's hard to scale because it's so interpersonal. You have to get to know everybody's story. And even listening to you right now talk about intrinsic, extrinsic, and how to build teams, a lot of it is just doing the work. Doing the small things right route. And, and I think that's what makes management really hard versus other things. I think other fields have shortcuts, whereas management and leadership doesn't. Um, and so that— I think that— I think that's why a lot of smart people are bad at it. Yeah, they— every smart person's looking for a shortcut. Every smart person looks for like something easier, easier way to do something, whereas management, there's no easy way. It's just a lot of work. And I think that's what makes you really good at it. And how do you do the small things well? Is it something you just love doing? Is it just something intrinsic to yourself, like getting to know people? Or do you have a system in place to keep in touch with your team, stuff like that?

So I made a lot of mistakes. You learn from your mistakes, uh, and this is just a reflection of all that. But I think in terms of, um, you know, doing the small things well, um, and it's something I'm getting better— I will admit this is a weakness of mine— is like really paying attention to detail. And so I have people that work with me that really are good at paying attention to detail. Right? Um, really good at it, right? And they're on me all the time. It's like, Omar, you got to do this, you got to do that, you got to be on this, you got to be on that, right? Um, and this— I'm not talking about my managers or people that, you know, this is like, you know, people that work with me, right? There's, you know, or, um, technically maybe even under, under me in the hierarchy, right? But, you know, these are people that are like, you know, we gotta, we gotta really be on top of these things. And that's something that you know, helps me understand and keep track of what the details and doing the small things well. I think you can, you can have 3 or 4 sort of barometers or metrics that you can kind of come up for yourself to see if the small things are going well. I think one thing that helps me is intrinsically, again here, journaling. You know, writing periodically about what— how your day, your week, your months are going.

Do you have a diary, Omar?

Huh?

Do you have a diary? I'm gonna read your diary one day. I'm gonna go to your house. I'm gonna read it to everyone.

It'll be very boring.

Omar, it's like I'm a little girl, like a little middle school girl reading Omar's diary to everyone else.

It'll be very boring, but I actually think journaling, writing things down is really important. I mean, I'm talking more of like a business diary, I guess, but you know, um, I'm gonna—

that's gonna be— that's gonna be on the newsletter. Uh, good way to be a good manager: write a diary.

Yeah, write a diary, right?

That's a good trick. See, that's what I'm talking about. That's a shortcut. Write a diary.

I think so. I mean, what went well, what didn't go well, you know, and you can like compartmentalize it however you want in terms of your team and stuff like that. Um, I think obviously like there are technical things that you can do that I think everybody does in terms of like, you know, short-term, long-term goals, some stretch goals, you know, you're always monitoring that, right? So that's more like kind of conventional sort of thinking, I think, right? Um, and then I, I think as a manager, it's really important to think about everybody that you manage and lead and you know, check up on them, not from the point of like, how are they fulfilling all their goals, right, technically, but just how are they emotionally doing, you know, how are they like feeling about their growth, what is it that we could be doing differently, you know, and having those like open conversations with them, right.

So would you say like, in terms of like touching base with a team member, Have you found it more effective to catch up with somebody with no agenda, or is it more effective to have like a plan? Like when you meet, say, hey, we should catch up, here's the topics. Or when you email your team member about catching up, is it just blank? Because like, I can see why you do one or the other and vice versa. From your experience, what's been the most effective way to lead people?

Yeah, I think both, right? So you want to have an agenda-driven thing where Maybe it's, you know, depends on the relationship you have, but like if you're managing someone, you want to have— I think it's really helpful because everybody's so busy, right? Yeah. Is that you actually carve out time and you kind of leave it up to them, you know, they can— but you said, look, this 1 hour, you know, every 2 weeks or every month is just reserved for you to talk about what you need, maybe what's going on with you, and like professionally, what can we do to really get you in the right situations, the right experience, to help you continue to grow the way you want. And if you carve out that time, it shows them that it's important to you to have this discussion, right? Um, and then they're going to hopefully feel like that you're accessible that you can actually be talked to. So that's— I think you got to do that.

That's really good, Omar. Omar, I would work for you, man. Every 2 weeks, talk to Omar. I'd be like, yeah, what's going on?

I hope, I hope I'm doing it, I'm doing it right.

You're doing really good. I mean, I know, I mean, a lot of founders and people who lead companies and manage people, and I think some people, a lot of— especially a lot of founders of startups, they— and even corporations are probably worse. Agenda-driven, like, here's our— here's the KPIs, how are you meeting them? And it becomes almost impersonal, and you don't, you don't touch upon the professional development, personal development. And it's, you know, really important to retain people. It's just so much focus on metrics. I, I've observed most talented people walk out the door. They feel like they've reached their max capacity. They've already developed as much as they can develop at that organization, the company, and they move elsewhere. And I find the best startups create an environment, have good leaders that allow people to do the best work of their career. You know, like, you— I think you want to start— have a company, an environment where employees and the team members do their best work ever. I think we all have moments in our career where we're like, man, that year I was killing it, right? Like, man, I was doing— I was so locked in, such a great team. Like you said in the beginning, it's all about team, right? All the people you surround yourself with. And I think that's kind of the— as a manager, cultivating that is— it's a lot of work. And I'm sure you have to have all these conversations. How do you, how do you, um, how do you manage the threads? Because each person's individual. And one thing I've observed too, it gets a little challenging to, as an organization grows, to personalize each meeting, to know each person's story. And that's why it becomes impersonal and metric-driven, because you just can't. But as something has grown, as your team has grown, how have you kind of stayed connected to each person?

I think that's been a little bit of a struggle these days, you know, Zooms and all that. No, we're just getting back into the office and doing things more, more in person. So, you know, I— this is where I think the other part of your last question makes sense, is where, you know, you have these times that you carved out for to have these open discussions, right, that's more professional. But I think the other part of your question was like, you know, do you do that, you know, do things kind of more casually, right? And I think that's where this comes out, right?

A little dangerous too. I'm a very casual person. Well, dangerous sometimes. So you got to be— that's what makes you really good, you know, to thread the needle.

The casual part, let's see. Yeah, I mean, you, you know, you do the right social events and things like that, and, you know, people go out for coffee. I love coffee. Me personally. So, you know, we've had coffee over in Berkeley many times.

I remember, I remember coffee in Rockridge. You had your place in Rockridge, and you're like, man, I'm gonna start a company. What's it called? It's called Emulate. I'm like, horrible name.

I forgot about that, babe.

We got coffee at that Rockridge Cafe down the street from where you live in, and you're saying, I'm gonna start this company with David Mooney and my friend Alex, who published a paper in Nature. Yep. And called it Emulate. I remember we talked about the name. We want to call it Emulate, and I'm like, ugh. Then you called it EmuList, which makes a little more sense.

Um, but, uh, I love EmuList actually. It was great feedback.

Great thing. Emulate was too much like Imolate.

Yeah, yeah, it was very similar to another VICE company.

Yeah, no, no, no, there's a word called emulate where you burn yourself or something.

Oh shoot, I didn't even realize that actually. Like, there was this other VICE company called Emulate, right?

The Oh yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of that too. That was part of it too. I think, uh, I think, uh, your first company's name was way better though. What was it called?

Gendrix?

Or, uh, what's it called again? Um, Insightu. Insightu is a cool name. Yeah, Insightu. Maybe we get that back. Maybe we get 2.0 going. Insightu is a good name. Imulus is kind of, uh, Imulus It kind of sounds like Incubus, like it's this rock band. Insightu is good.

Yeah, that was like more, you know, engineering in the body. You might be seeing some of these companies, Josh.

I'm gonna be honest with you, if you started Insightu today, be a huge company. Like, look at Umoja. All these companies essentially are Insightu, like what, in vivo cell therapies, transforming the meme cells, Insightu, right? It's a, it's a huge category right now. I think there's like 7 companies. Like in total, like raised like $300, $500 million in total.

So yeah, the lab I came from, Dave Mooney's lab, you know, it's very much a drug delivery lab, right? And now delivery is a big thing, you know, it's really interesting to me.

Omar, your next company is going to be huge. Easy, easy peasy. You're just building yourself up.

All right, now I got Lyle.

That's incredible. I think Lyle will enable you to do your next company or some something, right?

Uh, Yeah, there's a lot of great, great people at Lyle, a lot of great scientists, and so I'm learning a lot. And, you know, we're thinking about different challenges, you know, moving forward and stuff. And, you know, one that's always been interesting and that's like top of mind technically is like now the delivery problem with CRISPR, the delivery problem with gene editing, the delivery problem with even solid tumors, right? Getting the cells or molecules to the right tissues, you know, um, in the body. So it's something I thought about a long time ago during my PhD, um, and now it's like becoming a thing again. And it's like really, really interesting and provocative because now, you know, even Moderna is, you know, investing a lot in lipid nanoparticle technology. Delivery technology. There's several companies now that have just like come out just based on delivery alone, being able to deliver specific cargo. You probably see this more than me. So it's, it's a super intriguing time to be in this space.

Yeah, there's like a whole category of trying to reprogram immune cells, and you know, I think that The opportunities there are to sidestep a lot of the manufacturing issues, and that was the premise of Endless as well. And I think that there's challenges around like specificity and like, are these— I think what makes Lyle such a great company, it was the first company— maybe it was first. As a VC, you meet companies and you talk to entrepreneurs. If they can give you an insight you haven't heard about, like, wow, that's the fun part about VC. Is sometimes you interact with somebody and they just give you, offer you a new way to view the world, and it's right. I think Lyle and Imulus is part of this too, just like, uh, trying to find the active ingredients in cell therapy. That's something you taught me too, is to think of cell therapies as a, like, an ingredient. You're just formulating something. It's not just like a one cell, a collection of cells, and understanding how to expand certain cell population and manage other cell populations and think about what are the active and inhibitory ingredients. And I think for Lyle, all the technology they built out and all the programs they built out is at the end of the day trying to identify why CAR-T needs a billion cells. Why not just 10? At the end of the day, theoretically, you should only need a few engineered T-cells that put them in the body. Why do you need a billion— infusion of a billion cells? To make it work and understand that pulling that thread, I think, is going to lead to a lot of interesting leads. And it's for the in vivo cell therapy stuff too, that's similarly trying to identify which cells to transform. Yeah, and then they also did— we did a podcast with Nina Hurwitz. So she was a PhD student at Stanford in John Sun Woo's lab on NK cells, right? And one thing she was, uh, um, she touched upon at the end was She feels biomaterials is probably going to make a huge impact in cell therapies. That's delivery, because we're programming. You're going to need not only new nanoparticles, but biomaterials to expand certain cell types, to deliver cargo to certain cell types in a micro— true microenvironment, and not just do it so systematically. Those are interesting. You know, you're, you're the, um, if we could touch upon, uh, there's two, three parts of your career, three phases of your career. There's the academic phase, there's the kind of the, the first company phase, and then there's the second company phase. And then, you know, in between, you know, work at the VCs and then you go to Lyle. That first phase, how did you not get sucked into 3M? How did you not get sucked into Why aren't you just working at 3M right now and have 7 minutes? How did you get out of that matrix? How did you escape 3M's clutches?

Yeah, so there was really, again, maybe going back to the theme of there's a lot of people out there willing to help you. So I had a professor in our program and He kind of came up to me one day and was like, Omar, what do you want to do? You know, he just asked me, you know, and I kind of didn't know. And he said, well, I have this program that helps students kind of figure out what they want to do. And basically, I'll just pair you up, you know, you can kind of look at all the different research that's happening in the department. It's basically to, you know, place undergrads into like a research position. Interested in that. And so, you know, he actually provided me with a little bit of funding because he had that as part of his program, and I started an undergrad research project during my time in school, and, you know, I spent my spare time doing that. And I guess that's one of the main messages is, you know, always try to do some different things in your spare time and give yourself a well-rounded experience as much as you can and makes sense. And so But he helped me out. I started doing undergrad research in, like, just wound healing. Like, wound— we came up with, like, synthetic wound healing models using, you know, different collagen constructs and things like that. And we were seeding, you know, different fibroblasts into these collagen constructs and then looking at, like, if you dosed with different types of molecules, would these cells contract? The tissue or not contract. It was super interesting to me. And I thought, wow, man, I don't want to work on Post-it notes. I want to work on this. So, you know what I mean? That was basically—

That was basically it, okay.

To distill it down, that was like, I want to work in biology. So, I mean, you know, that was sort of one thing, right, is, you know, give yourself some experiences where you can kind of help decide, you know. I had no idea what biology was all about, that you could do this type of stuff. There's so much that went into that research, you know, it was cool microscopy, there was like, you know, there's a lot of stuff that was in there, you know, thinking about biology and the mechanisms of action, it was all very fascinating. And so that really, that was the first phase, right? I think now I'm like, oh, I really want to get into biology and like learn a little bit more about it because remember I was a chemical engineer, material scientist, right? Biomaterials maybe. And now at this point because of the wound healing work. And so to me, it was just an obvious next step, like, to do grad school. Like, I just wanted to learn more about biology, and grad school was a way that I could do that. Um, I guess I could have went the industry route, but, you know, I just wanted to ask more kind of basic questions at the time.

Yeah, one thing doing these conversations and getting to know people's stories, like It's just those lucky moments. It's often somebody coming up to you or somebody like kind of having a conversation with you and, and it at the moment maybe doesn't feel impactful, but you look back on it like that was a really— even I had that conversation with my old mentor, like there's like these moments in time where they have a massive ripple effect on your career. Just something as simple as a conversation to somebody encouraging you to do something or giving you, somebody give you an opportunity and then it kind of transformed, that one moment transforms everything. And then it's really crazy, like you just have one person that can just transform your life. It's like, and then you become the older person and you start realizing, oh, you have a lot of influence on you. You have a lot of unexpected influence potentially on somebody. And so, you know, it's kind of, uh, you reflect back on like some of the simplest interactions can have a massive impact. Over a decade on somebody. If you look back on it, right, that one moment that professor put you on this trajectory, if you didn't have that interaction, he didn't come up to you, you know, who knows, you might be making Post-its right now.

Yeah, totally, right? And I had a great postdoc that was like helping me out, right, as an undergrad, and then, you know, we became friends, and I even, when he had a baby, I was at his because he's Jewish, so he had like the circumcision ceremony. I was there. I was like, you know, this is a real way I connected with a lot of people, man, in like very intimate ways. And so, you know, it's like, um, and important ways for me because they became big mentors for me, um, down this path, you know. They helped me decide like which grad school to go to, who to connect with, all these things, right? Like we were talking about earlier.

So Maybe one thing, then we talk about the second phase, go to grad school, then Michigan, right? With David Mooney.

That's right.

Okay, so David, then David is at Harvard right now. David Mooney is like the best person, one of the best people, best labs in biomaterials. So you get his PhD with David. How did you— maybe, you know, we don't talk about the science particularly, but like, how did you— what was the buildup to Insight2? Like, how did you get this, that entrepreneur itch? And how did you learn— like, you started this company like 2008, '09, '10, uh, I forgot which year, but you, you started this, you start your company in an environment where very few PhDs start companies. Yeah, 2009. It was not fashionable at all, and it was bad economic times. So what was the build-up to Insightu? How did you like— what was the spark? How did you learn even how to start a company?

Yeah, yeah. So, um, not really get too much on the technical side of it, but we had some really amazing technical data, and I think that that is important, right?

And key, the technology part, the premise was to create a synthetic dendrite, if I remember correctly.

It ended up being more like a synthetic lymph node, dendritic cell.

Sorry, not dendrite, dendritic cell.

Yeah, so Imulus was more like the synthetic dendritic cell in a way, but before that, this company was more along the lines of programming dendritic cells in vivo using a material scaffold that could recruit them and then activate them in the body, and that was fun. It was a really interesting project at the time, and then when we applied it as a cancer vaccine, because, you know, if you can program dendritic cells in vivo, you can really program strong immune responses, right? And you need those potentially for cancer therapy. And when we applied it as a cancer vaccine, we got some really interesting results in certain models. And then we presented that to people at the Dana-Farber, and they got really excited. And when we saw that, then we're like, man, maybe we're onto something. And it seems responsible to just like try to make this into a product. And so You know, when they said, yeah, we'll help you be part of the company, we'll help you develop a clinical plan, we thought, okay, this is— there's something here. So we started this company in situ, but, you know, we, we really focused on a very difficult cancer type, which is glioblastoma.

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, we got some funding from the NIH, we got a grant, we got some, um, some VC funding at the time, or investor funding, and Um, we were rolling pretty well. I, I, you know, there's a lot of things to talk about there.

Maybe another podcast, another conversation. Yeah, just—

yeah, yeah, because there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of trust was lost. But we ended up, um, you know, pursuing the glioblastomas part of industry, and then we actually started another program at Harvard which was focused on melanoma, right? And we were able to build the manufacturing suite there. I learned a lot about like just you know, CMC, right, manufacturing in the clinical space, getting things to like the appropriate GMP levels and all that type of stuff so you can use them clinically, right? And so we built this manufacturing space with a team at the Dana-Farber so we could create these vaccines to be used in a clinical trial that was sponsored by one of the physicians there. And that was part of my time at the Wyss Institute.

Um, one thing, one thing I think for Insight too, which is like, I think it's the first instantiation of your entrepreneurial pursuits. You know, from my understanding, you made a lot of progress. You know, there's some people you met, you know, some people like Ed, for example, you kind of met a lot of people along the way that then played a role later on, um, in your career. And I think for context on the cancer vaccine side, it was actually a dendrion— what was dendrion's vaccine called? Provax, or was it called—

Provax?

Was it Provax? Provax, yes. Provax had gotten approved, and I was like, oh my gosh, cancer vaccine. This whole immunotherapy is going to be huge. And they kind of got caught up in pricing issues. And so I think just like you kind of started the company at the right time and just kind of other things happen. You know, it's also the challenges of building a biotech company as a new entrant, and it definitely was not as accessible as it is now to start a company. But like, so Insight2, kind of bring Insight2 as far as you can, and then you go back, then David joined Harvard. When you, you know, started your work at the Wyss Institute, what was your kind of state of mind there? You did InSight2, scientific training, you're at a crossroads from my perspective, right? Like, you think about your story, right? Like, you're 3M, PhD program, sort of company, now you're doing something else, you have the visa right now, and you have unlimited options. Maybe we could talk about the intrinsic part too, where it's like, when you started InSight2, was your personal life in order? Or maybe not. And then when you got to the VCs, how did you think about dealing with all these options? Did you first think about intrinsic and then extrinsic, or did you have another framework?

Well, when I first started the VCs, I think it was a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic. I think it was, you know, I was hyper-focused on getting this to the clinic. Like some sort of way to get this to patients. And so that was intrinsically probably what was driving me in many ways, is like, why am I doing all this? You know, I want to get into patients and like see if this works. Yeah, um, we can help them. Uh, and then there was the curiosity part at Harvard and the visa. I could also potentially run several research programs, you know, I could do my own thing on the side and when I had time So I was doing that. I was working sort of in the autoimmune space, again going back to like my sister and my mom, you know, like I could, I could work in the autoimmune space. I did some research and at the Diabetes Center there as well. So it was, it was a cool like spot for me where I could explore some things but then also just push this vaccine in the clinic with our collaboration with the Dana-Farber. So that was just, it was just a a nice spot for me to be at the time. And, you know, I was learning from, from a variety of mentors technically, and then I also could work with Dave Mooney, who I, who, you know, is a great mentor for me and continues to be a great friend. And so like that made the world of sense. So, you know, I think The extrinsic part was more around the responsibility, I think. I felt like it was just responsible, you know, spent all this time and, you know, if you want to look at it like bigger picture, taxpayer money on this work, right? You know, because you're getting grants and stuff, you want to just do the right thing. And so like, I was just like, man, we got to just get this out there. And so, you know, there was a cool team there. Um, they were all— all the components were in place to do it. So I just thought like, okay, we could do this, um, because we just had all the people and the buy-in that we needed. Um, so the physician sponsored the trial, we did the trial. At the same time, I had the entrepreneur bug still, and I was like, once we had basically filed that IND, I was like, well, what do we do with this? Like, it can only go so far here in this setting. Like, now we got to start a company or something. And so we actually had conversations with VCs about starting a company again. Um, you know, it's in Boston at the time. The situation was much different than in Site 2. Actually, there was a lot of, um, excitement about what we were doing at the time, and And so we, we had several groups, you know, that we were chatting with about company formation. They were going to help us out with this. You know, Boston actually more like— there's a lot of VCs that are in company formation, right? And they'll, they'll help you out with that. And we can talk more about that. But, um, what ended up happening there was Novartis was quite interested in the technology, and we ended up licensing the technology to Novartis. And they took it in and did it.

Oh, now I remember. That's how you bought your house. That's how Omar bought his house.

That's definitely contributed to it. But you know that there's a connection there because the physician that sponsored our trial, he ended up joining Novartis. And so he was like, I'm going to take— I'm going to work with this. And, you know, there was You know, I helped them with that transition a little bit, not too much, and then I decided to move on. And I moved to the Bay Area at that time. It was more to be closer to family, um, on my wife's side. So it was, it was a good— it was actually a good transition point for me.

Like, and that's how Omar met your mother. I think you met your wife at Harvard.

So I met my wife at Harvard. I also met my, my future business partner Alex, at that time too, when I was at the V's. So, you know, it all, it all worked out really well.

That makes— yeah, I think it all, it all works out.

I want to say something personal. So there's a lot of stress that's put on your personal life. I mean, it was not all rosy. And, you know, I had my, my wife now, she, she was great. And so she supported me quite a bit. And it was, it was difficult, like definitely a lot of stress on our relationship. Even more so actually during the Immulus days. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, and being more grounded then.

And COVID happened too, so it was just like the little ducks.

And she was— she had her own business. I would never recommend this for anyone out there, never to have two startups in a family. One is good enough, you know. There's a lot of, there's a lot of like, uh, instability at play, things you cannot you're always fighting problems, and that's where you need some stability. So I think two startups is too unstable.

Makes a lot of sense. So like, how did you— I think one last question is just like, I never asked you this, it's just like, I meet a lot of people who are like founders of a company and they start a new company, and maybe the first company didn't work out perfectly, right? Because it rarely does. How did you not get discouraged to start your second company? It's something that's a very underrated skill, is to like, do a first startup and you know, it's hard, a lot of work, made some mistakes along the way, did some really good work along the way too. You know, less about the ideation of formation of Immuless, but more around like the motivation. Like how did you not, did it take time for you to kind of, to, uh, unwind or kind of just like kind of stabilize to recover, or was it some other thing that you had to like— did you feel that you had to like learn something new before you started your company? Was it time, or did you feel like after the first company, do I need a new skill set to start this next company?

Well, I ended up joining, you know, working with a VC firm, right, OS Fund at the time. And so like That, that was kind of a transition phase for me in that, okay, you know, kind of learn more about the investment side. I had worked as a consultant with some VC companies as well, talking more with VCs about this company formation. I just learned a lot more about VC, the VC space, you know, being, being more involved in the work that they were doing as a consultant. Um, and so So that was kind of my bridge. And, you know, as I was doing diligence on different companies, I got, you know, more ideas were coming in and stuff. And I wasn't discouraged by my past experience, I was more encouraged, right? Because I kind of knew, you know, points of failure, I guess, in some ways, and points where we really did well and succeeded. And it was more like, oh, I could build off this and do it better the next time. You know, and so I was more encouraged by the past experience. Um, I mean, it definitely helped that we, you know, did the Novartis thing, right? Like, it was a positive sort of ending to the whole thing, um, and that we actually succeeded in, you know, doing a clinical trial. Yeah, you know, these things helped, um, but I just felt like I was more prepared for the next company. I think anybody who has who's done something once feels better about doing it a second time, like in terms of being more prepared. Whether they want to do it is a different question, right? And I still, I still wanted to do it because, you know, the impact was great. And I think I also knew what was important to me was working with the right people. And so like for the Endless opportunity, what was a— what was huge for me was Dave Mooney again wanted to be involved and work again together, and then You know, Alex, who I had known, um, Alex Chung, who's now at Lyle, he, um, he, he wanted to be a part of it, and he technically knew that there was something really strong here. Again, we had that technical sort of readout before in situ that was really strong, and then Alex was working in the space that we wanted at the time, that we wanted to really address with Imulus, and he was saying this technically is really strong. And so that was just all coming together— people, two people I really love and wanted to work with, and then a technology that was cool in the space that I wanted to talk about.

The team formation, because Alex definitely has his own story and motivation, and you should definitely talk about it too. It's like he had invented technology and, you know, got it published in Nature Biotech, and then he actually had to work at the CAR-T startup for a year or two So he had his own kind of background and journey to Imulus where his motivation was he knew he developed technology and he had seen another company do something similar and that kind of maybe motivated him to say, maybe I can do it. Or you had a different journey where you did it yourself already and you kind of maybe knew what to do, not to do. How did you, uh, Was the team formation just organic, or was there somebody who was like spearheading the company? Was it you? Was it David? Somebody?

Alex? No, it was just all three of us, you know. At the time, we, you know, we didn't grow much beyond that because we got acquired very quickly. But, um, we, uh, you know, we worked with a lot of consultants and we sort of like you know, just tapped our network to kind of fill in the gaps while we were proving out the concept, right? And so team formation at Imulus was, was very minimal, actually. It was just us three. And I think we just sort of decided, like, we had this conversation about what roles we're gonna all fulfill.

Who was the— let's talk about, like, the— maybe the team, crazy, like, who came up with the idea? Like, hey, just somebody raised their hand, think we should do something here. Like, how did it functionally work out?

Is somebody— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, I was in the, I was in the VC space, and Dave Mooney knew about that, and he, he contacted me when they were about to publish their paper, that Nature Biotech paper. And I had known of the work because it, it was going on when I was there, the first, you know, parts of it. And, uh, so I was like, oh yeah, that's super interesting, can you just send me the paper? So Dave reached out to me, he was like, I think there's a company me here, maybe. Alex is at this Carpe company, right, in Boston. And so we're, we're thinking, okay, well, if this is going to be a company, we gotta, we gotta talk to Alex. So we talked to Alex, and, uh, and he was, he was, he was excited. Like, he wanted to do it. Um, and so when he was in, I was in. I mean, it was just like kind of obvious at that point. But really, it started with Dave. Dave was like, I think there's something here. Technically, but can you help me figure that out? And so he reached out to me. I mean, it was just as simple as that. It was like, we're going to publish this paper. Like, I read the paper, the manuscript they had, um, I was like, oh yeah, I think we should do something. After talking to Alex and a couple other people, and it made a lot of sense.

Cool. Okay, then maybe talk about Lyle experience, because then you get yourself— you listed Lyle. I indirectly got exposed to Rick, the legendary Rick Clausinger, and his negotiating skills and You know, he's talking to you, to him, you know, Rick Clausner is a legend actually. So you guys doing Lyle, what's it been like in terms of maybe your first two companies were resource constrained, so kind of had to make you creative and think out the box. For Lyle, definitely maybe are less resource constrained. Yeah. What's that been like? And how have you kind of maybe— have you evolved as a leader and a manager versus your first two experiences? Lyle, have you added something to your repertoire? And what's it been like to be in an environment where maybe money's not an issue, but time is? And, you know, kind of maybe you have too many options now.

Yeah, I think I've become more comfortable not being in control. You know, you kind of like less control when you're part of a bigger company, right? You have to work with a lot of people, um, you have to work cross-functionally with a lot of different groups, um, you know, in terms of research, process development, manufacturing, business, right? You're working with all these groups that are much bigger now than a smaller company would be, right? And so you have to be able to like just let go, you know, like trust people to create that trust. And I think that's the biggest thing, right, in terms of the transition. Um, so I've been, you know, that's been a big growth area for me being part of a bigger company is like trusting that there's going to be people that, um, that do really great work there and are going to complement what you're trying to do. And how can we work together? And so gaining these experiences has been invaluable to me because Lyle has great teams on all fronts here, because we, we not only have research division at Lyle. One of the things that makes Lyle unique, and one of the reasons we were attracted to Lyle, was it has its own manufacturing division, right, in Seattle. And so they're— everything, most, as much as we can, we keep the cell therapy manufacturing in-house. And it's got to be one of the maybe top 10 places to manufacture T cells in the whole world. Yeah, right. That might be a conservative. It might be even better than that. But, um, the— that facility is amazing. Um, what they've done there is amazing in terms of the infrastructure. And so, you know, at some point in research, you're able to hand off what you're working on to them, and they, they could— they can develop it into a clinical product. It's amazing, right? But you have to have that trust that, like, it's going to transition, and you have to work with them and be able to to facilitate that transition. So being able to let go of control has been a really big thing for me.

That's cool, man. I didn't know that. I think it's interesting, like, you're evolving, right? I think you're— each new experience, you add something to your own toolkit and you become an even better leader. Um, when you think about like biotech in general, life science in general, what if you had to go back and say, say you were 20 years old right now, what would be like— what would you want to work on? Would it be biomaterials, or would it be—

what kind of—

what would you be working on right now if you're a PhD student? Yeah, trying to start a company quickly, or, you know, in this type of environment, like, if you do it all over again, would you do the same thing, or maybe would you focus on a different problem? Would you maybe try to pursue entrepreneurship a little earlier, things like that?

Well, I would have probably done the exact same thing, immune engineering and all that. I think immune engineering is fascinating, but that's for me. I think for anyone who wants to get into biotech and they're into biology, I think they want to— you want to just pick a biology that's interesting to you, um, and that's the first thing I would say. Entrepreneurship-wise, Uh, you know, as long as you're stable, you feel good about yourself, you know what your situation— you know, you can support it, make that calculated risk. And if it makes sense for you, I, I think you could do it earlier usually than you think you can. Um, because the risk that you're taking, especially early on, is not in my, in my opinion, a big risk as it could be later on in your career. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of forces at play later on in your career if you have a family, if you have other things. So, you know, I did it with a family. It's, you know, it was a calculated risk, but you're, you're, you're likely going to get paid a salary at some point. You get some investment. And as long as you have the right team around you that can manage all the problems that a startup has to, like, manage, you feel good about the team, you can trust them. That's a big part of your risk here, is the team. So if you can have that right core, you know, that's, that's the time to take a leap in my mind. If you— because you join another company, it's very hard to pick your team if it's a bigger company, especially in the situation that you might be in. Under the circumstances that you joined as a new hire. But one of the most powerful things you have as part of a startup is you pick it, you pick the team, you know, or you at least get empowered to pick a team that you're going to play— you're gonna, you're gonna play ball with, right? And that's cool. That's like the funnest part of the whole thing. Um, so you can probably do it earlier than you think.

Um, take that calculated risk, reach out, and as long as you have your personal life in order I think it's kind of the—

yeah, that's one thing I would say for sure, because you see a lot of people get burned out.

It's sad. Definitely. I see that all the time. Yeah, I think one thing too— okay, a few things. You should write a book one day, a high-performance management.

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe.

Okay, maybe you can read it and then we'll see if there's a larger audience.

And I think there's like, uh, intrinsic, extrinsic, and I agree with you, right? Make sure your personal life's in order, you have a good foundation, then you can take more risk and then you'd be more prepared to go outward. And then I think some of the tactics you alluded to, you talked about keeping a diary, having meetings with no agendas, things like that are pretty useful to be a better manager. But I think the key takeaway to be a great leader is just a lot of work, no shortcuts. At the end of the day. There may be things you can do to make it easier, but at the end of the day, it's getting to know people and building and keeping relationships. One thing too, just hearing you, my mom listens to all these. She's gonna really enjoy this conversation. And you know, my mom listens to every podcast. So each conversation, I think by the end of all these podcasts we'll do, I might invest in my mom's company. So maybe, My mom, we call—

I would love to hear your mom's feedback on this one, so please.

Well, I'll let you know if she's gonna listen to this one. Okay, great. She's doing that for me most of the time. She's like, yeah, you should ask this question.

She was—

she always wanted to ask— what's the question she wanted me to ask? Like something— question about like, uh, I got you a question. I need to talk to her. But like, uh, yeah, I think— thanks for doing this. I I think the best is yet to come. We'll do the next one in person. Yeah, that'd be great. I think just from this conversation, I think most people get the feeling Omar's a really kind person and very thoughtful and long-term, but in my opinion, just getting started. And I think the best is yet to come. And I know that for a fact because you have a really solid foundation underneath you. Great family, great, great friends. So I think that's probably why you've been so successful, is all the friends you've had, you kept along the way. I think it's harder to keep friends than get friends, and I think you've kept a lot of them. And so that's something that's like, you know, kind of signal of your character. So to be friends with you for life and do more with you, right? Whatever you do next, I'm in.

Let me know. Thanks, Josh. I appreciate it.

Same, same.

I'm definitely going to talk more and do the next one in person. I love it. Thanks for doing this. It was fun. I had a lot of fun. I mean, usually talking about myself is not something I want to do, but I totally agree. This was fun. I really enjoyed it. I actually learned a lot just talking through it myself. I never— that's the quotes for my diary, my business diary.

I, I had never spoken to you about this ever. So, uh, we're supposed to talk about sound therapies or blah blah blah, but this is more interesting actually, uh, at least for me and, and the audience of my mom and some other people.

So yeah, yeah, I hope it's— I hope it's useful for them. I'd love to hear the feedback. At least it'll be useful for me. So I appreciate it, Josh.

I appreciate it, Omar.

All right, take