Lab to Startup Naresh Sunkara PhD

Abhishek Tripathi, is the Director of Mission operations of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Abhi is also the Chair of the Air and Space track startups at Skydeck, which is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator program.
For over two decades, Abhi has been at the forefront of human and robotic space exploration. At SpaceX, he spearheaded the certification of both the cargo and crew Dragon programs, a pivotal achievement in commercial spaceflight. His expertise was further showcased as Dragon Mission Director, where he orchestrated a dozen critical cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. Abhi's technical acumen reached new heights when he assumed the role of Dragon Chief Engineer for Flight Reliability on the groundbreaking Crew Demo 1 and Demo 2 missions. Prior to his transformative work at SpaceX, Abhi honed his skills during a decade-long tenure as an Aerospace Systems engineer at NASA, laying the foundation for his remarkable career in space technology. 
We talked about the lessons learned from Abhi’s journey at NASA, SpaceX and his work at the University of California, Berkeley, where he continues to lead several space missions. He shared some of the lessons learned from working at a highly demanding job at SpaceX; and also translated his experiences into lessons for startups and life in general. And Yes, he did share some of his experiences working with Elon Musk.
Show Notes:
Abhishek Tripathi https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/ Setting overarching goals that ties with the vision for a company Building factories to vow consumers and the larger population (new age moats) Journey at NASA Try to work at a cutting edge company before launching a startup, (except if you are a deeply involved in a research area during postdoc or similar compelling situation) Picking advisors: Pick tactical advisors instead of strategic ones End all instances of gatekeeping (one of the rules set by Musk) Leading the Dragon mission to deliver cargo to ISS Regulations: Working with NASA/government for approvals ‘Bring me a rock exercise” Experiences working on Falcon 9 mission Transition to academia https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/ “Other than the brutal pace of Space X, we have many of the elements of Space X at Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.” Space track https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/ What startups in the space track should possess Timing, funding, technology readiness SSL LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACTS https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/administrative-contacts/ https://x.com/SpaceAbhi

Richard Lyons, Ph.D., is the Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer, at the University of California, Berkeley. Rich is an economist and the former dean of the business school. Rich will become the next chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. 
We talk about a wide variety of topics around the Evolution of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Berkeley. We covered topics like paradigm shifts, cultural transformations, overcoming inertia; global impact and many others. 
I hope you get some insights from this story, and walk away with appreciation and potentially actionable steps if you are trying to build startup ecosystems on your campuses.
Show Notes:

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/rich-lyons Report on entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley from the Faculty Entrepreneurship Committee: https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2018-08/Entrepreneurship_at_Berkeley.pdf  UC Regents taskforce report: From Discovery to Societal Impact: A Roadmap to Unleashing UC Innovation and Entrepreneurship: https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/may21/g1attach.pdf Cultural transformation at UC Berkeley: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/berkeley-named-top-university-for-number-of-venture-backed-companies-founded/#:~:text=PitchBook%20has%20ranked%20Berkeley%20%231,public%20university%20for%20startup%20founders. Bakar fellows program: https://bakarfellows.berkeley.edu/ Cultural transformation to embrace entrepreneurship Mission of academic institutions is impact Overcoming inertia at academic institutions Ecosystem dynamics & talent pipeline Start with “Yes, if” framework to address difficult questions Pilot programs Berkeley RIC  I&E Council Inclusivity: Dual degree program  Berkeley Changemaker program Failures and hurdles Ethical considerations Parts of the ecosystem that could be replicated and hard to do so by other universities Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (SCET)

Shahram Seyedin-Noor is the founder and managing partner at Civilization Ventures. Shahram received a JD from Harvard and worked at Wilson Solsinis and Cooley before going into investment banking at firms like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. He then entered the startup world co-founding several startups. He eventually ended up Angel investing and in 2017, launched Civilization Ventures, focused on supporting cutting-edge innovations in health tech and biology.

Shahram has over a dozen exits under his belt, which is a phenomenal achievement. Here are some of his investments: Rewrite (acq. by Intellia), Replace (acq. by Tome), Lemonaid (acq. by 23andme), Singular Bio (acq. by Invitae), Rocket Pharma (listed on Nasdaq), Palamedrix (acq. by SomaLogic), Foresight Diagnostics, BillionToOne, Omada and others. Shahram takes an active role in company building. Prior to founding CV, Shahram was the founding CEO/Chairman of Inspirna, an oncology therapeutics company currently in Phase 2 human trials, and the CFO and VP of Corporate Development at NextBio, a genomics software pioneer acquired by Illumina.

Shownotes:
https://www.civilizationventures.com/ Success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan Accountability: Few people blame themselves for failure and give credit for success to others Evolution of mindset: Don’t let others dictate what you can or supposed to do in life EQ is more/equally important than IQ Transition from law school to startups Advice for recruiting a non-scientific co-founder Rewrite therapeutics acquired by Intellia Investment thesis at Civilization Ventures: Drive to do things differently Lessons learned from exits Contact email: shahram@civilizationventures.com

Leo Polovets is the Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Leo focuses on enterprise software and technical products at Susa. About two years ago, He also started Humba Ventures, a fund that invests in deep tech and critical national sectors like energy and defense at Humba.  

Leo led Susa's investments in Mashgin, People Data Labs, Scalyr, and Treasury Prime. Having been a software engineer for 10+ years, Leo approaches challenges with an engineering mindset and supports portfolio companies in vetting and hiring technical talent. Prior to Susa, Leo was the second engineering hire at Linkedin, where he worked on the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups. Leo then worked on payment fraud detection algorithms at Google, and was also an early engineer at Factual, where he built data processing software. Leo received a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science) from Caltech.

We talk about lessons that translate from investing in traditional startups; explore lessons learned about market sizing, pricing, team dynamics, managing burn, scaling, valuation and many other topics in the deep tech space.

 
Shownotes: https://humbaventures.com/ Leo’s presentation on “Exploring Startup Ideas” https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1C-JFkqsY40tidqPD1OZbV3-OXPAyrsPIV5Q_00PkToQ/edit#slide=id.g221d008c440_0_35 Thinking about making money for scientific founders Thinking about market attributes for a potential startup Intro to Humba ventures Investing in deep tech Founder-market fit; Time to make money Investment thesis Communication: between team members, to investors and beyond Working with startup teams: Commercialization Pricing in deep tech: Think of value being created How to ask for money for your product? Aloha robot- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaaZ8ss-HP4&t=5s Story telling Manage your burn! Scaling: Calibrating on talent; learning to delegate; firing Bs and B+s on the team Keeping up with new technologies Thoughts on valuation What Leo likes to hear while being pitched to

Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of Berkeley Skydeck, a startup accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley. Skydeck started as a mentoring space in 2012 and soon translated into one of the leading startup accelerators in the world.

SkyDeck was Formed as a partnership between UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. While it offers all the benefits of a traditional accelerator, what makes Skydeck special is the vast resources of the world’s number one ranked public university. The robust and vibrant ecosystem includes a deep network of advisors, industry partners, and attracts some of the best investors. I have seen its evolution first hand because of my own association since my postdocs days at UC Berkeley

We discuss the evolution of the startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley and then dive into how Skydeck has been supporting deep tech startups, challenges and lessons learned.
 
Shownotes:

Berkeley Skydeck: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/ Startup resources at Berkeley: https://begin.berkeley.edu/ Berkeley named top university for number of venture-backed companies
Evolution of startup ecosystem at UC Berkeley: Pre & post Skydeck Changing academia-industry relations Skydeck is just not for UC Berkeley community Support for deep tech startups at Skydeck Criteria for picking deep tech startups for accelerations Lessons learned from working with scientific and faculty founders Scalability and market potential of deep tech startups Partnerships with corporations: realistic expectations Picking advisors Commercializing deep tech startups Investing in deep tech: Evaluating founders Tips for applying to Berkeley Skydeck Apply here: https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/apply/

Paul Grand is the founder and CEO; Ayelet Marom is the Program Director for BioTools Innovator, which focuses specifically on biotools; and Jim West is the Associate Director, BioTools Innovator, who was previously the Co-Founder and CEO of, Clara Biotech, which was founded in 2018 and was acquired by Innovaprep in the summer of 2023. Jim was the first founder to go through the biotools program.

In this episode of lab to startup, we first discuss some of the challenges that affect medtech and biotool technology startups, and then go into ways that medtech innovator, an accelerator program is helping founders in this space, especially around lessons learned and how the program has evolved into one of the best accelerators in this space.
https://medtechinnovator.org/about-us/ Founding story of Medtech Innovator Things medtech startups struggle with: Articulating value proposition; understanding reimbursement; having the wrong CEO; staying in stealth mode; choosing the wrong indication Medtech innovator “Value program” Value coaches from established companies like J&J How startups get accepted to the program No equity, no fees and no strings attached for being a part of the program Bringing the right investors to the table to support founders Biotools innovator program: https://biotoolsinnovator.org/ Challenges in the biotools space How investors are different in this space Pay for Service as a model Story of Jim West, Founder and CEO of Clara biotech, that went through the program Advice on slide decks Info session videos: https://www.youtube.com/@Medtechinnovatorchannel