Ana and Octavian Florescu of In Diagnostics

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Business for their support of the community. All right, welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I am here at Indy headquarters with Octavian and Anna Flora.

Scoop, nice to have you.

Thanks so much for having me. So give us a quick overview. What is Indy?

Well, Indy's a biotech company that is commercializing a single use chemistry panel. So we're using integrated microchips, so basically digital technology to try to miniaturize a blood test to a small single use disposable that you put a drop of blood on, you use and then you discard.

Okay, cool. We're going to dive deep into that. We love the versions of bio and big data and hardware. That's San Diego's bread and butter. So we're going to dive way deep in that. But take us back, take us both. Where did you grow up? And then we'll ask a little bit about where you grew up too.

Sure. So I was born in Romania. My parents left when I was about four and a half, five years old. It was a pretty crazy situation because there's a dictatorship in Romania and they took off and we were supposed to come to Berkeley, but then the people sponsoring us, the mom died giving birth to her second child. So we were stuck in a refugee camp for quite a while, seven, eight months. And we ended up in Canada because they accepted our asylum application. And that was pretty rough too because we didn't have any money, my parents didn't speak the language. And we bounced around until my parents could get reasonable jobs. They were highly qualified. My mom was a mathematician and my dad was an engineer. And I grew up in Canada until the age of, until I went to college there at University of Waterloo. So until 22. But while at Waterloo, it's this really interesting school that has a co op program where you do four months of school and four months of work and intermittently accrue multiple years of Experience by the time you graduate. And I was coming down here at Qualcomm to work, and that was my first exposure to San Diego. I went to grad school in Berkeley, but then after that I spun out of company and came down here after we were done with the company. So it's sort of a homecoming for me. But I've been all over the world and this is the first place I would say feels like home.

That's awesome. It's great to hear. And you also have a Romanian background, too.

Yeah, we're actually from the same hometown and we met up in the Bay Area.

Right. Of course.

It's funny because I also lived in Canada for a while, and then I moved back to the Netherlands because I wanted to be closer to my family in Europe. And then I was offered a job in Palo Alto. So I moved to the Bay Area and met Octavian. I learned a little bit about his previous company, and we actually ended up working together a little bit and got married, had a little boy. Now we're working on the second one.

Second company. Second company and second boy, of course.

Co founding a lot together.

Co founding a lot. Yeah.

We found each other. Now we're co founding everything together.

Yeah.

That's awesome. Yeah.

But you didn't know each other in Romania?

No.

Families didn't know each other.

No. Just coincidence. 100% coincidence.

My mom and his father lived on the same same street. Didn't know each other. I had the same math teacher, like his father. He was a renowned scientist. It was really interesting. Yeah.

So, wow. Really cool.

Just serendipity.

That's awesome. And so tell us a little bit how you. How you both decided on San Diego. And you'd been here a few times, you had not worked in San Diego before?

No, but actually we did our honeymoon in La Jolla, so we knew a bit of it. And Octavian's brother is here in Del Mar. And all the time, we. We basically all of our vacations were here.

And it was cheap. When you're an entrepreneur, you got to be right. Anna still gets on my case about this. Our honeymoon doubled up as a conference as well.

That's going to be all expense, you know, written off.

We drove down and I was writing patents. I was writing patents on the laptop.

Yeah, it was very. It was very romantic.

I think it was your state.

Were you already working on this company then or. Not yet.

It was the previous company.

Okay, got it.

And we were down here on vacation and decided to just go for open house. The third house. We saw, we decided to get, I.

Mean it was a bit longer process than that. I mean, we had family here. My brother, when I was a co op here, he would come visit and he actually took a super rash decision. Within a couple weeks he quit his job and came down to live in San Diego. It has that sort of appeal. Right. And so we had family here and there's obviously the microchip talent that's here from Qualcomm and all the other spin outs. So we were aware of that. And there's a very large biotech and diagnostics ecosystem here. And so between the family and the fact that the talent's here, it was a little bit of a no brainer. And then we came to Carlsbad and saw how family friendly it was and having a kid on the way and another one soon after, it just was a bit of a no brainer.

That's awesome. So you've been in Carlsbad a year and a half, you said year and.

A half at this point? Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So great. And what are you liking about north county so far? Besides being family friendly? I mean, you're a little bit away from, you know, city of San Diego and it's a little bit different from the Bay Area, but you're in, you're in Silicon Valley. Palo Alto.

I was in Berkeley for about, I guess 10 years, maybe a little bit more, 14 years. And Anna was in Palo Alto for probably about one. One year.

Yeah, one and a half years.

Okay, so like a little suburban with a little bit of a downtown thing, which Carlsbad has too. Maybe a little bit more sprawl here.

Yeah, yeah, we like everything about Carlsbad. We have so many friends here. They're so welcoming. The park is right there. It's beautiful. We love it.

Yeah. And you're a big surfer?

Yeah, yeah, I love to surf every day when I can. My mantra is when there's waves you gotta go surfing because sometimes there's no waves for months on end. So you know, you gotta appreciate it when you have it. So when there are waves, you try to finagle something. Maybe early morning or if the tide isn't right, you try like a two hour lunch or maybe catch something in the afternoon. So you know, you gotta watch the tides, the winds and your meeting schedule and, and if there's an opening, you got to take it.

Totally.

It's the company policy.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't go that far.

Board meetings for sure.

Exactly.

That's right.

That's right.

There's A surprising amount of companies that have surfboard closets, lockers.

Yeah, yeah. Here in town. Well, we are looking for places right now like a facility for our operations and if it had an in unit shower, that was definitely a plus.

That's awesome. Well, tell us a little about kind of the history with this technology. Do you have kind of a bit of a history with microchips, right?

Yes.

How did you bring us to the genesis of this?

You know, I come from a long family of engineers in the sense that my dad was an engineer, my mom was a mathematician, my grandparents were engineers. So it was pretty much driven into me that it's something I had to pursue and for a long time I pursued it pretty robotically, but I ended up actually really liking it because it's quite fascinating to be able to build something. I started out as a nuclear engineer at GE working on their power plants, but I realized very quickly that these facilities were in the middle of nowhere, far away from civilization, and usually manned by an older generation than a 19, 20 year old. Then I went into software. I did some networking software at Nokia and I didn't really like it because there was, I felt, and this is probably totally incorrect perspective, but I felt like there wasn't really a right answer. There's so many answers in software that sometimes arguments that were more political could get in really easily. I wanted something hardcore like a hard science. So I went into chip design, working on high speed Ethernet connections for a startup. And that was in 2000 when the market crashed for optical components. And that taught me the lesson, like, if you're going to do something, make sure it's going to last a long time because it takes a long time to get up the learning curve. And I mean, I saw engineers that were 30, 40, 50 years old that basically their entire industry collapsed underneath them. And a lot of them did find new things and were okay, but it's just something you want to avoid. I came down to Qualcomm after that and started in RFICs and that was really cool. I really liked it. But when I went to grad school, I saw more of the projects that people were looking at and moved into biotech because it just felt like the RFIC world was going to become mature halfway through my career, much like the optical devices did when I was young. So the biotech, the combination of the biotech and the engineering you'd think is an absolutely natural intersection. But companies are struggling to develop products there. The two teams often talk different language, even though they're both rooted in science, it's IC design is a bottom up, you design everything from scratch. Bio is top down, you observe and you try to make inferences on what's going on. And it's different languages, different cultures, different approaches. And to really put those two together is quite challenging, I think for most organizations.

Is an example of Illumina, someone who's trying to figure that out from a hardware meeting. The bio, yeah, absolutely.

Illumina would be a great example, which also is one reason we came down here, because there's talent and there's knowledge in that exact interface. The IC guys made really strong headway into the genomic space because genomic ultimately is big data. And so there was. It just really sparked the imagination of not just the device level guys, but also the system and signal level guys. Love that kind of approach. And also in genomics there is the opportunity to abstract the biology away through sample prep. You know, so a lot of the sequencers that you have out there rely on sophisticated sample prep that a team of biologists perform and then the back end detection and analytics is performed by the hardware guys. Now unfortunately, in point of care, you can't really segregate those two that easily. You basically have to combine them both cost effectively in a package that's inexpensive and is quick. I think we're trying to push even one extra level of integration where we have the clinical applicability on top of that combination of engineering and biotech. So it's aggressive, but it's sort of a fun little place to be.

Got it. So the clinical piece also being that it's disposable, being that you don't have to have this huge kind of install and everything like that.

I mean, clinical piece, like you are working in clinics using clinical samples, so you have to go directly from a drop of blood to the results very quickly, very accurately, without any kind of intervention by the user.

Gotcha.

As opposed to the genomic space where like I said, the sample prep is handled by a dedicated team of front end specialists. And then once the sample is cleaned up, then it could be provided to the analytical team to really crunch the numbers on what's in there. We have to combine those two and not use an instrument. So it's really now taking advantage of not only the data processing of the microchip, but we're also taking advantage of the user interface that the microchip provides. Right. Which is a forgotten good that it comes with it for free. Yeah, that's what we're trying to leverage and I think we're one of the few in the industry that's going as aggressively towards that as we are.

That's great. In San Diego specifically, are there any other kind of adjacent companies, especially in diagnostics at all, that you're already finding some collaborations with?

It's too early for us to collaborate yet, so we don't know. We'll see about that. We don't quite know what the strategic landscape looks like. We're working on general chemistries, which are general indicators of wellness for a variety of different organs. It's usually a first line test that's performed in almost every occasion to determine how your pancreas, how your liver, how your kidney, how your lungs are working, how your heart is working. It's nonspecific indicators that have shown to fluctuate according to different organ functions. Those tests are not strategic in the biological sense. They're generic tests, they're standardized. If you're buying a system from idexx or a system from Zoetis or a system from us, they should all be the same. And so it doesn't really matter. And so we don't quite know yet who is ultimately going to be interested and why. It's something that we have to develop, but our ideal would be basically to take this ourselves and develop a product and field it and build a company based around that.

Got it. Really cool. It's exciting. Early days for sure. And I want to ask, what were you doing when you first got to Palo Alto?

So I was working with an incubator there who's connected with Google for entrepreneurs. So we were helping entrepreneurs from all over the world launch in the us so you get successful entrepreneurs from Iran, for example, coming into Silicon Valley for a few weeks, connecting with investors, with the thought leaders, with mentors, and understanding what it takes to launch their branch in the us.

Oh, wow, that's really exciting.

Yeah, it was fun.

Where did you go from there afterwards?

I started working with Octavian. Actually I consulted for a bit. So I was connected with a large organization in the Netherlands and they also have huge ambitions to become one of the best areas in the world for smart materials. They have a big campus, lots of companies, very interesting stuff happening and they needed a representative in the US to help in the same way companies were interested in launching. So I did that for a while and then afterwards I started working with Octavian. I'm an operations person, so I love everything that's detail oriented optimization. Connecting with the best suppliers, just getting stuff done.

Yeah, she's the chief. Getting stuff done.

How did you guys, I mean, take me through the process of deciding to work together? How did you know you're gonna take that leap? What was it like?

Well, it was sort of fun, right? I mean, that's how I would characterize it. We were working together. And, you know, at first we definitely had our misgivings about all the problems that can pop up, but we were. This is my prior company, Zip Diagnostics, and we were working shoulder to shoulder, just pushing really hard. And we got on this weird little routine where we would, like, wake up at 6 o' clock in the morning, and it was just like, everything was regimented. We'd eat half an hour, an hour, we'd be out the door, we'd get there by seven. We'd just crank all day, and we'd come back, have dinner, watch, like, Netflix and pass out. And you repeat that over and over and over for, you know, maybe a year straight. And we weren't losing. We weren't losing energy. You know, we were gaining energy from it. I felt more and more alive just doing that. And so after that, it was like, it was obvious we liked working with each other.

That's awesome.

Same attitude, you know.

Yeah. So when after Zip to Indy, you pretty much same thing, started from the beginning, said, this is natural. We're just gonna do this together again too.

Yeah. So I didn't really talk about the final stages of how I started ZIP from when I started Berkeley, when I started grad school in Berkeley. So I joined thinking I would do wireless design. I saw a little bit of the projects that were there, and really, it hit me instantly. It took me 15 minutes to realize that I wanted to go in another direction when I started there. They don't put you with an advisor that you choose. They basically put you with a temporary advisor. And my temporary advisor, Professor Boser, showed me a few of the projects that he was working on. And he was working on biological detection. And within 15 minutes of having that conversation, I was like, well, obviously, I'll take what Qualcomm is doing, which is integration, put more and more pieces on the same chip and apply it to detecting molecules. So my goal within 15 minutes of walking into Berkeley was I want to make a microchip that could detect molecules without any external components. And so I started working on that. We worked on what was called an immunoassay, where we were using antibodies to capture a target protein. And we used magnetic labels to bind to the surface of the chip, and the chip generated magnetic forces to remove the non Specifically bound ones. And it had individual sensors for each particle to detect single molecules if they're bound to the surface. So that was a really aggressive technology. But we incorporated in April 2009, and I believe the S and P at that point was about $6,700. People were openly discussing whether or not ATMs are going to be open the next day. It was a topic of conversation. And so it was a very tough time for financing. And historically, diagnostics haven't been very successful for venture capitalists. And that era of venture capitalists were basically booted out because they didn't make the next fund, they didn't make the returns, they didn't make the next fund. So Silicon Valley Sandhill Road was hollowed out of diagnostic investors. So I started in 2004 working on this. I graduated in 2010. And then it took us another six years just to get our first series of financing. Yeah, so it was a long haul, but it was fun. You know, it was starting from scratch. It was just fun to put all the pieces together. And then when we started Indy, it was the same perspective. We thought it would take forever to get off the ground, and we were lucky enough to find an investor that had the same philosophy as we did. And, yeah, that really propelled us now. So I think this one will be a little bit faster than the prior company.

It already has been.

Yeah. You kind of know certain corners to cut. Right. And how to get there quicker.

For sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

So you have a home lab. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the home lab is just a cheap and easy way to get a prototype up. We basically. I wanted to be close to the Kiddo. The Kiddo was born in May, and we started that fall working. And I wanted to be close to home. I wanted to save as much money as possible because I didn't know how long this was going to take us. And it just made perfect sense to set up a home lab. So we do our little engineering there, we have our little biology there. Whatever is sensitive or clinical. We go into biotech and beyond space in Carlsbad. That's right. And little by little, we just built our little system there. And it was a lot of fun, actually.

That's really cool.

Yeah, it was really fun to actually go back to roots, because by the time I was at zip, I was managing a dozen people. And you tend to be a little further away from the technology. But being brought right back to the bench is scary. But I didn't know how much Fun it would be just to get down into the roots of things again. And it's. It's almost like a touchstone, you know, every few years, every decade, you touch the stone and you get back to reality. And it was. It was sort of good.

Yeah. Well, the goal is to eventually get you away from that. Right? That's the goal of building a company.

It is.

Got to grow it with someone else managing it.

Yeah, yeah.

So let's take us through a little bit of like, what growth's like now. We can talk about how you guys raised recently. Yeah, I'm guessing we can talk about.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So maybe Anna, maybe you can go for that.

Sure.

Yeah. So we found a great investor, basically a friend of the company, which is wonderful because it's really good to know that he's on the same page with us and he supports our mentality and our decision in growing organically. And now we found a good location as well, close by in Carlsbad, which is wonderful. 10 minutes away. And that will give us basically enough Runway to get to manufacturing and put together the whole line there. So we're going to be hiring about at most 10 people in the next year and then see where it takes us. We're very excited.

That's really exciting. Is it all from one investor then?

Yes.

Okay, that's great.

Yeah. So at first we plan to launch in the veterinary space because of lack of regulation. So now we're basically putting together our network of veterinary hospitals, teaching hospitals, and good universities across the states who will help us basically troubleshoot the device and do some correlation studies with the large instruments and get us ready for launching. Once we launch in the a veterinary space, then we'll start our clinical trial in the human space and launch a liver panel to test if, for example, you're trying to up your prescription or renew. And then you can do a little test to make sure your liver isn't damaged. And another option would be you have all of these adolescents who don't really have a good diet, unfortunately. So there's apparently a liver epidemic. So it would be great for a physician to just have this in their office and use it whenever it's needed.

Yeah. Oh, that's really exciting. Do you find, is it the universities that are sometimes more the early adopters to like some new technologies and try it out versus going straight to a vet vet themselves?

Well, it's a good question. So first of all, they're interested in any new technology and understanding how it works. So they're going to Be partnering with us to make the device better.

Right.

So.

So for vet clinics, it's not the best field, unfortunately. So vets go through a lot of school and they end up spending a lot of money. Starting a vet clinic is not an easy thing to do. So if you look at research, there's a lot of problems there, unfortunately. So you don't want to waste their time. You want to go there with something ready and useful for them that makes sense that they can use right away. So schools are wonderful at helping us troubleshoot and also with the correlation studies. So they've done it before. They know what's out there. You know, it's very easy for them.

Got it.

Yeah.

Really cool. Okay. Well, we're really excited for one to have, you know, great team here in north county, San Diego, for sure. You'll find a lot of entrepreneurs here as you venture out of the home lab a little bit more. But take us through a little bit. Some of your favorites in town. You guys, I know have a favorite spot to grab some tacos locally.

Yeah, we love fish 101. We're right up Leucadia. So fish 101 is pretty good. If you can find a seat there. Sometimes it goes out the door.

Great.

I know they need another location.

Yeah, Well, I thought they had one down in Cardiff, right?

They do, yeah. They need another one.

Another one?

Yeah, Further north.

Right next to each other.

Yeah, yeah. Fish 102.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, you know, it's a bit of a dream to be up here. You go surf beacons when there's no sharks and you come out and you have all that salt in your mouth and you grab a tasty taco.

And some local beer.

And some local beer, yeah. So our favorite, we have actually someone on our street that works there, and he gave us some samples, and they were delicious. We like the latitude 33 blood orange. Those are really good. I think they're pretty popular, so I don't think it's very niche, but, you know, it's.

Yeah. You guys coffee drinkers, you like, go out and find some new coffee shops at all? Not as much.

No, not really.

I like boba tea. Octavian is a big ice cream.

No, my guilty pleasure is McDonald's, but I don't think that's fit to print. I try to keep it down to once a week.

I love Gelato 101. That's in Encinitas. If I have some spare time, that's where I go.

That's awesome.

Well, guys, thanks so much for the time.

Thanks for coming. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, yeah. And we're excited to help you grow and watch you continue to grow, too.

Well, we thank you for your friendship and we look forward to growing in this community with you guys.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation's SD Life Changing Campaign. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom and on Linked.

Sam.