washington business
“I think the unique combination of being a pharmacist and then
technical scientist and then moving into the finance and business
leadership gives me a good view of the whole process and to be able
to make business decisions that support the science and vice versa.”
a fund that we lost from the state, but
it was one of the things that helped M3 become fully independent
and pass the “valley of death.” We had an over-subscribed seed
round, we’re successfully right now going through a Series A,
the second round of financing, which is going very well because
we have a done a lot of advancement of the scientific side. We’re
getting ready to go into the clinic next year. That’s the biggest
milestone.
Where do you hope to be five years from now?
Our business model is actually with our first asset, create value
and push the program forward and license or partially license the
technology that we have at M3 to one of the large pharmaceutical
companies that we are today in conversation with. This will
provide the positive cash flow for us to expedite the pipeline.
With this, we hope to have one of the Pacific Northwest biotech
companies that are focused on huge unmet medical needs, mainly
dementia and Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
If everything goes well, this will allow us the opportunity to
return to investors their investment, but the main goal is to grow
and retain a company here in Seattle and Washington.
Is it difficult to divide your time between a scientist and
business person?
I’m not doing science right now. I understand science, I participate
in the conversations because science drives the business, but also
business drives the science. The main thing that I think, is the
opportunity that I have with my technical background. I worked
as a pharmacist so I do understand the final market. I think the
unique combination of being a pharmacist and then technical
scientist and then moving into the finance and business leadership
gives me a good view of the whole process and be able to make
business decisions that support the science and vice versa.
Seattle has a booming tech sector right now. How
healthy is bio-tech within that space?
The business model is completely different between tech and biotech. The revenue stream happens at an earlier point than tech. I
think having a strong tech base here in Seattle will eventually help
bio-tech because technology now is becoming more of a luxury.
The change in our phones, our computers between today’s model
and next year’s model is so small that you can’t sense it, it’s not
like moving from a flip phone to a touch-screen phone. The real
need that we have today is the medical need. We are getting older,
people are living longer and we are being exposed to new disease,
diseases that are age-related, so I think we need as a state and as
a community here to support bio-tech.
I am really sad to see — although we don’t need it at this point —
but I know how much it helped us to get the seed support from the
Life Science Discovery Fund. I am on the advisory board for the
governor and I think we need to think in ways to help companies
start successfully in Seattle and stay in Seattle. The trend here for
bio-tech once we get to a specific stage, companies get bought out
and they leave Seattle. The tax incentives are not as attractive as
other areas. When companies become large enough to not need the
seed money or continuous investment, they leave because then the
tax burden is huge and it makes sense to locate in other places.
Talent also is a concern here. People feel that coming here to
this area is risky because if a technologist in the bio-tech side
loses their job, they can’t move to the next company. It’s high
risk to come here versus the Bay Area or San Diego where there’s
hundreds of options for them.
But all that said, I think there’s a real recognition that we need
to focus on bio-tech. Having the strong tech base will help biotech because we need to find ways to use the technology to help
and provide applications to further bio-tech. The genetic studies,
we need a lot of strong comput ][ۘ[