EP 165 – Jason Foster: 153 Rejections Later — What Every Founder Must Learn About Resilience

Most founders dream of raising millions. Few survive the 153 “no’s” it takes to get there.

Behind every biotech breakthrough lies exhaustion — late-night calls, failed rounds, and investors who walk away at the finish line.

What separates the ones who make it isn’t luck or timing — it’s resilience built into process.

In this episode, Jason Foster, CEO of Ori Biotech, shares how he transformed relentless rejection into a billion-dollar trajectory. From rebuilding cell-therapy manufacturing to leading global teams through economic storms, Jason reveals how founders can systematize grit, master storytelling, and survive when everything seems to fall apart.

You’ll learn how to navigate fundraising winters, why leadership begins with self-care, and how to build companies that endure long after the hype fades.
 If you’ve ever doubted your path as a builder, this conversation will remind you that resilience is not a trait — it’s a practice.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

1️⃣ The real reason most founders fail long before capital runs out
2️⃣ How to turn rejection into momentum using process and habit
3️⃣ Why storytelling is the most underrated skill in biotech leadership
4️⃣ How resilience and self-care directly drive performance and valuation
5️⃣ The mindset that separates enduring companies from short-term success

👤 About Jason Foster

Jason Foster is the CEO of Ori Biotech, a leading innovator transforming cell and gene therapy manufacturing. With 20+ years in global health, he has raised over $140M, led companies through IPO-level growth, and serves as a mentor and investor to emerging founders in life sciences. His mission: make advanced therapies accessible to every patient, everywhere.

💬 Quotes That Might Change How You Think

(00:14:09) “There are cures for cancer today, but patients can’t reach them — access must change.” 
(00:37:22) “The science is extraordinary — but if we can’t make it at scale, it means nothing.” 
(01:22:17) “Purpose, not money, drives talent to transform lives through innovation.” 
(01:46:17) “Fundraising is a war of attrition — constant rejection tests your resilience more than your idea.” 
(02:02:16) “You only have to get up one more time than you’re knocked down.” 

🧭 Timestamps to Explore

(00:02:00) Embracing Hard Challenges — How Biotech Founders Build Resilience That Lasts
(00:13:40) The Unacceptable Truth: Cures Exist, Yet Patients Still Can’t Access Them
(00:26:23) Navigating Cultures — What European and American Biotech Leaders Can Learn From Each Other
(00:32:52) Why Great Science Isn’t Enough Without Commercial Viability
(00:39:19) Revolutionizing Cell Therapy Manufacturing — The Seven-Day Bottleneck Explained
(00:50:11) Automation and Digitization — Unlocking Scalable Patient Access in Cell and Gene Therapy
(01:09:30) Rethinking Capacity Utilization — Making Regional Biotech Manufacturing Centers Work
(01:14:27) Mass Personalization — The Future Delivery Model for Advanced Therapies
(01:23:00) Purpose-Driven Talent — The Secret to Retaining Top Biotech Performers
(01:32:18) Fundraisin

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:07:05

Christian Soschner

Every founder dreams of changing the world until they hit the wall.

00:00:07:05 - 00:00:19:18

Christian Soschner

Most never make it past the pain. The rejections, the sleepless nights. But what if survival itself is the strategy?

00:00:19:18 - 00:00:24:03

Jason Foster

you have to take care of yourself first. And these are ways which help you be resilient. You know,

00:00:24:09 - 00:00:42:14

Christian Soschner

Across biotech and beyond, leaders are burning out, chasing funding, scaling teams and fighting to stay alive. Yet, one chief executive officer in cell and gene therapy believes resilience can be engineered just like life saving cells.

00:00:42:14 - 00:00:45:16

Jason Foster

And when you get to that 154th call and you get a yes,

00:00:45:16 - 00:00:56:03

Christian Soschner

Chase and foster, CEO of Ori Biotech, has built companies through crisis, dot.com, financial collapse, pandemic and biotech winter.

00:00:56:03 - 00:01:12:15

Christian Soschner

His team raised $240 million while rewriting how advanced therapies reach patients. In this episode, he shares the systems mindset and discipline that turn exhaustion into excellence.

00:01:12:15 - 00:01:17:17

Jason Foster

you only have to get up one last time every time you get knocked down, and you never know what the

00:01:17:17 - 00:01:30:14

Christian Soschner

This conversation is not just about biotech. It's about the inner architecture of leadership because the future belongs to those who build the systems that help them rise again.

00:01:30:14 - 00:01:49:05

Christian Soschner

But before we dive in, I have looked at the data, and only 20% of you who listen to this show actually follow it. If you enjoy these conversations and want to hear more rare insights from deep tech pioneers, investors, and builders, please do me a favor.

00:01:49:07 - 00:02:01:23

Christian Soschner

Take two seconds right now to hit that follow button. It helps me grow this show and keep bringing these extraordinary stories to you for free. Now let's get started.

00:02:01:23 - 00:02:16:07

Christian Soschner

Jason, it's. It's really good to see you today. And I loved your LinkedIn profile, especially your your headline. You wrote on your headline that you are not afraid of doing the hard things. What does that mean to you?

00:02:16:09 - 00:02:16:16

Jason Foster

It's

00:02:16:16 - 00:02:48:03

Jason Foster

funny, because I, I used to have a line that said something like business builder, entrepreneur, director, investor. It was sort of along those lines. And then I signed up for my fifth marathon. And I also do CrossFit, as a kind of my exercising choice. And I thought maybe that my, you know, headline should be a bit more not only one dimensional about my professional life, but about my whole life.

00:02:48:03 - 00:03:05:06

Jason Foster

And so I thought, you know what? Maybe it's just that I like to do hard things in general, not just at work. So that became my new tagline, and it's kind of a conversation starter as well, which is fun. People kind of make fun of me for it, but, you know, good heartedly. But I think, you know, startups are certainly hard things.

00:03:05:08 - 00:03:08:23

Jason Foster

And, you know, occasionally running marathons is challenging as well.

00:03:09:15 - 00:03:12:14

Christian Soschner

What brought you to marathon running?

00:03:12:16 - 00:03:13:09

Jason Foster

I say I run for

00:03:13:09 - 00:03:33:15

Jason Foster

love. My wife is a runner. If you if we ever meet in person, you'll see that I don't have a runner's body, particularly, but, I do chase her around for 4.5 hours or so. So we've, we're running the six major marathons. Which, as you know, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Boston.

00:03:33:17 - 00:03:49:04

Jason Foster

So we run five of the six. We still have Boston left. Tokyo. We ran earlier this year, which are tastic. And I think, you know, it's just, there's no feeling quite like finishing a marathon. No, training is terrible. The running is difficult, but the finish is fantastic.

00:03:49:09 - 00:04:00:23

Christian Soschner

I can be sticking with marathon running because I think it's important for entrepreneurs generally and understand the concept of, not being afraid to doing the hard thing. And as it happens to be, I love marathon running.

00:04:01:00 - 00:04:01:21

Jason Foster

Oh, okay. Great.

00:04:02:01 - 00:04:15:09

Christian Soschner

It's a great topic. I mean, you said training is terrible for a marathon. What? What keeps you going? Why do you endure this? Why do you do that to you?

00:04:15:11 - 00:04:16:00

Jason Foster

I think it is.

00:04:16:00 - 00:04:33:09

Jason Foster

I was doing, a workshop with my leadership team. My, in my last role, which you can talk about, and the facilitator, after about a day and a half of working together, she said, you know what? You're going to build stuff. You're a builder. And I said, I hadn't really thought of myself in that way.

00:04:33:11 - 00:05:09:01

Jason Foster

But setting a goal that seems difficult or even impossible to reach, and chipping away at it every day and having the feeling of being successful. At the end of that marathon, whether it's a real marathon or, or a fictional, marathon, it's a fantastic feeling. And what a feeling of accomplishment. It's something I think I forgot to do, but percentages are, you know, you know, 0.1% or 0.1%, you know, of people ever run, that distance and it's just something to it's in my control that I can set a big goal and, and go out an accomplishment.

00:05:09:01 - 00:05:14:14

Jason Foster

So that feeling of accomplishment, I guess, is what what I seek through, through marathon running.

00:05:15:01 - 00:05:24:13

Christian Soschner

What's what's your secret? You have done you have completed five marathons. What's your secret on the last mile to keep you going?

00:05:24:24 - 00:05:42:23

Jason Foster

I am definitely the turtle, not the hare. So, you know, slow and steady wins the race. Or at least finishes. So, you know, I just. I don't even run. I run for time and that I want to finish under five hours, but I don't really, you know, I think my fastest is like, 432, so I'm not I'm not breaking any speed records.

00:05:43:00 - 00:06:02:13

Jason Foster

But that sort of focus on the accomplishment and finishing and finishing what you start, you know, you don't have to run the whole time in a marathon. You can walk the water stations. You can if you get a cramp, you can, you know, stop and look around and enjoy yourself. So it's about the experience and it's about the accomplishment of finishing and just keeping focused on the task.

00:06:02:14 - 00:06:19:23

Jason Foster

And there's always a way to get the job done. At the end of the day, no matter how much you're hurting or, when I ran New York, it was 74°F on November 2nd. It was far too warm, for a marathon. So, you know, you just have to take whatever the the race throws at you and and get through it.

00:06:20:09 - 00:06:36:03

Christian Soschner

And what are your plans for marathon running? Are you done with, the. I just had six are in the series, and, do you have, bigger plans? Skip, I stop working and just focusing on enlightenment for running.

00:06:36:05 - 00:06:36:10

Jason Foster

So

00:06:36:10 - 00:06:56:10

Jason Foster

definitely doing Boston as the sixth major. So is is in the cards hopefully next year in 2026. They've actually added a major now. I think it's Sydney. It's one of the Australian, major Australian cities. And they're thinking about adding Cape Town as well. So there's a chance we might do 1 or 2 more.

00:06:56:12 - 00:07:14:20

Jason Foster

I always joke that I'm going to finish sixth and never do it again. I never run another step, but who knows? Who knows what happens? There's you know, I have a friend who's run 88 marathons, but he's a crazy person. Marathons and all. Cuz I don't know that I'll go to the ultras, but there's always more. And there's always a bigger challenge to put in front of yourself if you want it.

00:07:15:10 - 00:07:22:15

Christian Soschner

Why do you think, someone must be crazy to run 88 marathons?

00:07:22:17 - 00:07:23:08

Jason Foster

Well, it

00:07:23:08 - 00:07:40:08

Jason Foster

definitely takes its toll on your body. I think people one of the excuses people use is their knees. You know, they're all the shock, the pounding of the knees. And I think, I've found that cross-training actually helps greatly. I don't have any pain or anything, you know, like that. So I think you can stay in good shape and still do it.

00:07:40:10 - 00:07:51:22

Jason Foster

But he runs like, you know, 100 miles or, you know, 150 mile races and up and down levels and I just don't know that I'm cut out for that. But who knows? You know, never say never.

00:07:52:03 - 00:08:02:12

Christian Soschner

Hundred 50 miles races. That's impressive. In kilometers. It's kilometers 220 or 230km for the Europeans.

00:08:02:12 - 00:08:02:22

Jason Foster

Yeah,

00:08:02:22 - 00:08:24:03

Jason Foster

exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a long way. So there's something called the Comrades in South Africa, which is a well known ultra. And I don't think I'll ever do it. It's very much up and down the hills and that's pretty bad on your knees. But anyway, it's a fun hobby, and it's a great way to see a city or to get to travel and do something that you love doing.

00:08:24:22 - 00:08:48:15

Christian Soschner

I've read a lot of books about marathons and philosophical books. And then there is thinking of races in the United States I think is, 50 marathons in 15 days and two runs, 100 miles for breakfast, stuff like that. And, he wants to sell, of course, running. And there is always a lesson for for running in business when, marathon runners want to make money, you have a business background and, you know, marathon running.

00:08:48:17 - 00:08:56:04

Christian Soschner

Is there any lesson someone in biotech can learn from running marathons?

00:08:56:06 - 00:08:56:16

Jason Foster

I do

00:08:56:16 - 00:09:11:24

Jason Foster

think there are. I mean, it's it's anything that's. And I was what you asked me kind of what the three things are that we should take away from this, this podcast. One of them was, it's going to be hard. Building a business is hard. Burning and running a marathon is hard. You're going to want to quit during certain times.

00:09:11:24 - 00:09:30:05

Jason Foster

It's just going to be like, oh, I just can't take another step or I just can't keep going. But resilience is a critical factor. Just reaching down and saying, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to, you know, regardless of the physical or mental pain that I'm in, I'm going to keep going because the bigger purpose, the bigger effort, the goal is worth worth the pain.

00:09:30:07 - 00:09:41:10

Jason Foster

You know, my grandfather was to say it was easy. Everyone would do it. I think, you know, but if I'm running and startups are very similar in that way, it's not easy, but it's it's well worth the pain of doing it.

00:09:41:14 - 00:10:08:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. And you have an impressive, business life, that you are right into. You have built companies across continents. So, you know, Europe, the European landscape, you know, the US landscape, you know, span out activation of Reckitt Benckiser and then decided, yeah, well, I started biotech and run it biotech. At the end of the day, can you share a story or experience that best captures your core mission?

00:10:08:19 - 00:10:09:09

Jason Foster

Sure. I

00:10:09:09 - 00:10:25:09

Jason Foster

mean, I think when you when you articulate it like that, it all sounds very well planned. You know, I think it it really looks planned in retrospect. You know, when you're popping lily pad to lily pad. You know, with the making, the best decision you can with the information you've got. That's what. That's what your life journey is.

00:10:25:11 - 00:10:43:18

Jason Foster

Really? So don't fret if you're out there listening like, I don't know what I want to do next, or I'm not sure if this is the right decision. None of us are. It's okay. But I think that kind of core. If I had to summarize it, it would be take the risk. When I was in, I was in my 20s.

00:10:43:20 - 00:11:10:01

Jason Foster

I joined my first startup. I was the second employee. It was during the dotcom bubble. So that tells you how old I was. You know, early, late 90s. And the company only lasted ten months. It failed fantastically within a year. And I learned from that. You need a business model that works. This is not, you know, ultimately, and I think this is critical for your biotech entrepreneurs as well.

00:11:10:03 - 00:11:32:18

Jason Foster

Ultimately, this is a business, and this needs to make money. And if it's just a science project, it's going to be very, very difficult to make money. So you need to focus on is this a business? Can this idea become a business. But taking the risk. You know, ultimately, the second chance I had to join a startup, I was the first employee, at that reinvent Keyser ultimately spin out.

00:11:32:20 - 00:11:49:05

Jason Foster

There was a division. It was interesting because it was a division within a bigger, much larger company. So Reckitt Benckiser, the big company, competes with, like Colgate and Unilever, a big FMcG company. But they had a very small pharma division that was only a couple of people when I joined and we took that business, I was the fifth employee in the US.

00:11:49:05 - 00:12:12:07

Jason Foster

We took that business to 400 people, in four years in the US. And that was an awesome learning experience. We were working in opioid dependance where people it's a terrible disease. You know, people, we're getting addicted to pain pills like OxyContin, which many a whole bunch of the world has followed. That story. And this was really one of the only treatments that could help people get off the pain pills.

00:12:12:07 - 00:12:36:13

Jason Foster

And, so the mission driven, was the beginning of my kind of mission driven, health care focus in startups. Then I took another risk. They asked me, do you want to go to Europe and start the European business? I was an American. I'd only. I'd only been to Europe one time, backpacking around after college. I didn't really know what I was saying yes to.

00:12:36:15 - 00:12:53:05

Jason Foster

My daughter was two years old. My wife was five months pregnant. We just bought a house and we said, let's take the risk. Let's move to London. Let's see how it goes. You know, we're never going to regret looking back and moving to London and trying to work in Europe for X amount of years. So we took the risk.

00:12:53:05 - 00:13:17:17

Jason Foster

We built the, European business to about 250 people, 200 million in turnover. We then listed that business on the LSC. And it was a carve out. It's now called Indivior. It was a 42, 50 company. We invested it, 3.5 billion enterprise value listing. After ten and a half years of hard work by lots of, smart and motivated people.

00:13:17:19 - 00:13:42:02

Jason Foster

So that was another time where we took the risk. And then, you know, you asked it in your questions as well. You know what motivated me to get involved in biotech? And, you know, I had left Indivior. I was investing pretty much full time as an angel. I was working with big, private equity firms and venture firms like KKR and others and their healthcare portfolios.

00:13:42:04 - 00:14:11:16

Jason Foster

And it's a pretty cushy lifestyle being an investor, being a director, sitting on boards, you know, being an angel investor, it's all very, very cushy. But then I met, Pharma, the founder, Ori Biotech, was a scientist professor at University College London. And he, he said to me, there are cures for cancer and rare disease that exist today, but patients can't get access to them because they're too expensive and we can't make enough of them.

00:14:11:18 - 00:14:26:14

Jason Foster

And I was just blown away by that fact. I had worked in pharmaceuticals at that point for 15 years. I'd never heard of this. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like cures for cancer. What do you mean? And I just thought, well, that's an untenable outcome that we just can't. That's unacceptable. We have to figure out a way to get these drugs to patients.

00:14:26:14 - 00:14:48:13

Jason Foster

And I thought that my role would be as an investor. So I offered to invest in Orie and take Phahlane out to some of my network and to see, if I could help him raise some funds to get the company off the ground, which we successfully did. But, as I joke, at some point I lost my mind and pledged not only my financial capital, my human capital as well, and joined the business.

00:14:48:13 - 00:14:58:22

Jason Foster

So I think ultimately, you'll never regret taking the risk. And that's that's kind of in a few words, the summary of of what I would advise your, your listeners.

00:14:59:11 - 00:15:15:01

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's great. That's great. So yeah, before we dive into your mission with our biotech, let's, let's a little bit that, the 90s, you said you started your first business in the 90s. So probably we are the same generation. Gen-X just turned 50. Yeah.

00:15:15:03 - 00:15:16:00

Jason Foster

Yeah, yeah.

00:15:16:06 - 00:15:39:13

Christian Soschner

Then we have the same kind of the greatest generation of all time, because we experienced the old world without the internet and not a new world. And we lived through the hard days. We survived the 70s and the 80s, and what I mean, the 90s were why the internet was young and it was taking off. And entrepreneurship was basically everywhere in Europe.

00:15:39:13 - 00:15:59:23

Christian Soschner

And what I learned from my guest on the show, also in the United States, what motivated you to then step into a big company and not stay with small startups and just, start from scratch, fail, start over again and fail? Why did you choose then to go into a big corporation?

00:16:00:00 - 00:16:00:04

Jason Foster

It

00:16:00:04 - 00:16:24:14

Jason Foster

was funny. So my first job out of university was for the federal government, the US government in Washington DC. You don't get a bigger corporation. You're a slower moving bureaucratic corporation. When that, and around me was happening, the.com bubble and all the innovation happening around the internet and it was just too exciting to ignore. And also, you know, this may never this kind of innovation may never come again.

00:16:24:14 - 00:16:41:18

Jason Foster

I gotta get out of this slow moving beast of get go do something interesting. So I left, took out Capitol Hill after two years, I think, and went to that startup that I told you about, and that was my first taste of what it was like to be in a startup, you know, fast moving, exciting. You know, every day is an interesting challenge.

00:16:41:20 - 00:17:00:13

Jason Foster

And that was my kind of first taste of that. And when that failed, I sort of had to take stock and say, what is it that I want to do with myself here? I have an opportunity now. And as you know, the economy kind of went into the tank after that for a while. I thought I needed I needed a better business grounding.

00:17:00:17 - 00:17:21:00

Jason Foster

I was going to be involved in business and startups, and I need to figure out what the heck's going on. So I went to business school, which was a great, opportunity for me to really learn from the foundation of, Columbia about business. And then coming out of business, what was. Right. So, I started business school six weeks after 911 happened.

00:17:21:02 - 00:17:42:17

Jason Foster

And so that kind of signaled, as you know, the the.com bubble burst. And then there was a long period of economic decline after that. So I graduated business school in 2003. Knew I wanted to get involved in health, healthcare, wasn't sure how to do it. So I joined a big company to try and say, okay, well, you know, I can get a stable job, I can pay off my student loans, and then I can sort of see how that goes.

00:17:42:19 - 00:18:04:07

Jason Foster

What I found was that even within big companies, there are pockets of innovation. And I started a new division within Merck. So I went to work for Merck, the big pharma company, in their Medco division, which is the PBM. Pharmacy benefit management division, or was at the time. And I started a function called sales marketing.

00:18:04:08 - 00:18:23:12

Jason Foster

So they supported sales with collateral and helped them go to market with, you know, marketing tools. And that was a department of one. And then I got, you know, hired my first employee. And, and that was, another taste of entrepreneurship. And I said, you know what? I'm just not cut out for big company life. It just it's just not moving.

00:18:23:12 - 00:18:49:12

Jason Foster

It's too frustrating. It's too annoying. So after that experience, I went to, the entrepreneurial opportunity that I told you about that small molecule business that we eventually carved out a record bank teaser which operated completely separately, had its own culture. Edison management team had its own office. We were a true startup. The only the only, difference was we didn't have to go out and raise money because we had a parent company that was funding the business.

00:18:49:14 - 00:19:12:20

Jason Foster

So it was different flavors of innovation. And but ultimately the smaller, more dynamic, faster moving, you know, where you could shape the outcome and shape the culture of a business was what really got me excited and got me interested in pursuing this as a career. So the last 20 odd years I've been doing those kinds of activities.

00:19:12:20 - 00:19:36:15

Jason Foster

And sometimes if you're successful in a small business, an entrepreneurial startup, it becomes a big business. And that's what happened with Indivior. And ultimately, it didn't, you know, my, my skill set and interest didn't match what the business needed. And so I ended up leaving after ten and a half years, we went from five people to 1100 people, in 37 countries over that ten year period.

00:19:36:17 - 00:20:00:24

Jason Foster

So I got to see a little bit of a startup to scale up journey as well, which has been useful as I look to what's happening worry right now. So I think that was a kind of learning curve. And again, these sort of, you know, it all sounds very well planned probably in retrospect, but you know, you have to deal with, all of the macro events and things that happen in life around you and try and find somebody that that really, really passionate about.

00:20:00:24 - 00:20:15:09

Jason Foster

And I've been lucky to work in business, as I was very passionate about the mission. And working in health care is easy in that way, and that we know that ultimately, if we're successful, patients will benefit. And that's, that's easy to jump out of bed for in the morning.

00:20:15:15 - 00:20:30:07

Christian Soschner

That's an that's an impressive career. That's, really a lot to, unpack there. You mentioned that you went to business school and then directly into health care. What what what interested you in health care specifically?

00:20:30:09 - 00:20:30:20

Jason Foster

So when I

00:20:30:20 - 00:20:49:22

Jason Foster

was on Capitol Hill in my, in that first job, I worked for the committee that regulated health care. And so I got to see the regulatory side of health care. But I learned very quickly, you know, as a, as a starry eyed college graduate, I went to Washington, DC to change the world. Isn't that where you go to change the world?

00:20:49:22 - 00:21:10:13

Jason Foster

You go to the, you know, the political hub of the United States. And what you realize is that regulation and politics and legislation is reactive, not proactive. You know, they are being pushed on by all these forces, the, you know, capitalist economy and the lobbying of the happen in the big corporations business is actually where change is happening.

00:21:10:18 - 00:21:33:17

Jason Foster

And we see it now at lightning, lightning speed with, you know, the advent of AI and ML and how it's impacting all businesses everywhere. But it's ultimately the private sector that drives change. And so I realized that I needed to make a shift from public sector healthcare to private sector. And so that was really part of the reason for why the business school was the rationale to get that business grounding.

00:21:33:19 - 00:21:56:05

Jason Foster

So, that's how I ended up, getting into that business of health care, post Columbia and going to Merck, you know, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, they call us Merck. If you're in Europe, they call us Merck. But, yeah, Merck, the big pharma company in the US to really understand how pharmaceuticals work.

00:21:56:05 - 00:22:23:20

Jason Foster

And I got a great education in pharmaceutical marketing, market access, regulatory, all of the components that are very important for really discovering a therapeutic intervention, testing it, getting it approved, launching it and getting it to patients and and that education I've always everything else I've done sort of hovers around that process in some way. And it or a we serve pharma developers.

00:22:23:20 - 00:22:46:12

Jason Foster

They're our customers and our partners. And so we understanding what they need has helped certainly in this latest iteration. But really the business of healthcare is quite unique. And it's that's very unique. And even within a given country, obviously the business and the business of healthcare in the US is different from how healthcare and pharmaceuticals are delivered in Europe, where you have nationalized healthcare systems.

00:22:46:12 - 00:23:09:10

Jason Foster

So the ability to have experience in both places, you know, I worked in the US for 15 years in the healthcare system, and now I've worked in the in UK and Europe for 15 years, and being able to draw on that experience, is very useful in trying to help businesses navigate the healthcare system and how they launch their innovation into the U.S or UK or EU markets.

00:23:10:00 - 00:23:23:07

Christian Soschner

I'm curious, you've worked in both regions in Europe, you know, the European countries and as in the United States, what are the main differences between business culture in Europe and the United States from your point of view?

00:23:23:12 - 00:23:45:07

Jason Foster

Oh, well, that's a loaded question. When I came over to London, you know, when you're as an American, I was I was one of those Americans who hadn't traveled very much outside the US. I had I did have a passport, but I hadn't used it very much. And so landed in London and tried to soak up and understand British culture and British business culture.

00:23:45:09 - 00:24:06:01

Jason Foster

And, you know, there is no, you know, Europe is not a single entity. As you know, the culture in, Munich is very different than the culture in Madrid and Milan. You know, as you go around Europe and you have these, I'll never forget when I was with our team in Spain, for lunch. And they brought out red wine at, like, two in the afternoon.

00:24:06:01 - 00:24:24:21

Jason Foster

And I said, guys, if I have a glass of red wine, I'm going to take a nap, and I'm not gonna be able to function for the rest of the day. But some of the norms around communication styles, you know, British communication style is somewhat circumspect. It's, you know, they'll kind of talk around an issue and that's sort of have to infer what exactly is being said and what was happening.

00:24:24:23 - 00:24:45:05

Jason Foster

My German colleagues were very direct, much like Americans. And so we or my Nordic colleagues, similarly, you know, we sort of tell you how it is and, you know, the Italians and the French and the and the Spanish all have a slightly different way of, doing business. So learning those nuances was it took time. And we Americans are known for our subtlety.

00:24:45:05 - 00:25:03:23

Jason Foster

So, I had to listen a lot and not talk very much, for, for the first couple of years to really learn and gain. You know, building rapport is very important. You know, we talk about business. How do you how are you successful in business as an entrepreneur? Building rapport quickly is very important. And you do that by listening.

00:25:04:00 - 00:25:26:21

Jason Foster

You do that by finding commonality. And you know, me as an American meeting, you know, German or, Greek for the first time. You know, it takes, some effort to be able to connect, when you don't share that common historical reference point. You know, growing up in the same country. So these are the kinds of things I learned to listen very actively.

00:25:26:21 - 00:25:48:17

Jason Foster

I learned to, really pay attention to the details. But it was a fantastic education is a fantastic experience, just really appreciating. And now, having lived in Europe for 15 years, I say in Europe, even though the UK shot itself in the foot with Brexit, you know, in the middle of that. But I still consider the UK part of Europe.

00:25:48:19 - 00:26:12:22

Jason Foster

I say that there's a real cultural richness to Europe. The, the food, the culture, the wine, the history, the people, the language. They all have a uniqueness, that is wonderful to explore and to learn about and to experience. And so I'm just very happy that myself and my children have had a chance to travel all over Europe and to to experience it firsthand.

00:26:12:22 - 00:26:19:02

Jason Foster

It's a a very, very special part of the world. And, and somewhere I always hope to spend time.

00:26:19:05 - 00:26:41:16

Christian Soschner

Yeah. No, I think both regions, have a lot to offer in business and, and culturally United States and other European countries. You moved then when we go back to business and, a little bit away from, from the beautiful countries that we have, in Reckitt Benckiser, you were responsible for market access, basically in health care.

00:26:41:18 - 00:27:10:04

Christian Soschner

I worked a lot with scientists, especially in the early stages up to series A, series B, clinical phase one, clinical phase two. And I often realized that many teams that are spun out from, research institutions of course, have a scientific focus and background, make this 200%. While in my personal opinion, the science is important, but it's only 5% of the success and you have 95% other things to care about.

00:27:10:06 - 00:27:20:00

Christian Soschner

How would you explain to a scientist why market access thinking in general in biotech is important?

00:27:20:02 - 00:27:21:12

Jason Foster

So it

00:27:21:12 - 00:27:53:13

Jason Foster

goes back to the point I made earlier, which is ultimately to be successful. Any innovation needs to be able to be turned into a business. It needs to go to make money and to be self-sustaining. The biotech model is slightly different, and that oftentimes what happens is you sell that innovation to a bigger pharmaceutical company. So what we've actually it's a very good question and very relevant to selling gene therapy because very similarly we focused on science with the early cell therapies and gene therapies.

00:27:53:15 - 00:28:21:06

Jason Foster

The science is, incredible, you know, curative potential, for, for cancer in rare disease. But these products haven't been commercially successful. And it is because we only focused on the science. We need to focus on market access. We didn't focus on the what I call the broader umbrella brella, which is commercial viability, is can these products be made, can they be afforded, can they get coverage?

00:28:21:08 - 00:28:48:00

Jason Foster

And can we make them at a high, kind of reliably high quality way to be able to deliver for patients? Because ultimately, and I say this to scientists all the time, if you never want your product to reach patients, keep doing what you're doing. If you're doing it, doing the work. In order to empower positive impact patients lives, you need to think about things like market access, like commercial viability, like how is this product going to be made, how's it going to be delivered?

00:28:48:02 - 00:29:28:09

Jason Foster

Because ultimately it's just a science project. If you don't have those that framework in mind, if you don't have a focus on the delivery of the product to patients at scale, because ultimately many, many diseases have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of patients that could be treated. And if it's not a small molecule, or, you know, in some cases now biologics, if it's something else, we've seen, you know, ADCs and bispecific and radio form alongside Celgene, some of these new advanced therapeutic modalities, they require totally different models, totally different pricing models, totally different market access models, totally different manufacturing and delivery and supply models.

00:29:28:11 - 00:29:53:24

Jason Foster

We can't rely on the fact that, oh, we'll just figure that stuff out later. Because you need to be focused on it early and pre-clinical. And that's most often what I'm advising those teams of scientists is that getting safety and efficacy signals is very important, but it's not the only thing. And really, that's the major mistake that we've made in selling Gene is we focus on solely those two things for too long.

00:29:54:05 - 00:30:26:14

Jason Foster

And now the first generation of products, most of them, I would argue, all of them, at least have yet to prove themselves as commercially they're growing, you know, they're you have incredible, you know, clinical potential. You have incredible curative potential for drugs like connecting multiple myeloma or brilliancy or yescarta. Some of these first generation products, but you see companies like adapt and you just got sold for $60 million after having approved first approved cell therapy in scenario sarcoma.

00:30:26:14 - 00:30:49:15

Jason Foster

You see, Bluebird, one of the pioneers in gene therapy, gets all the Carlyle for $50 million after having three approved products being once worth $10 billion, they got sold for $50 million. And so these commercial things matter. Market access is critical, commercial viability is critical. And as scientists, you need to understand this. And if you don't understand it, you need to hire someone who does.

00:30:49:17 - 00:30:53:19

Jason Foster

Because ultimately, it's critical to the development and the success of your innovation.

00:30:54:03 - 00:31:21:08

Christian Soschner

That's the ideal bit. At this point, before we dive into the bottleneck in cell and gene therapy and how you tackled that, I mean, your vitae is excellent. You worked at Reckitt Benckiser market Access, spun out a division with, I think valuation was $3.8 billion. And public company. So you made it public and then also supported scientists, as an angel investor and started RB biotech.

00:31:21:08 - 00:31:45:20

Christian Soschner

So, you know, both sides were in science and business. At the end of the day, when I talk with scientists and, bring the arguments that you brought, I often hear, Christian, you're not a scientist. You don't understand us. You have a business background. And trust us, when the technology is good enough, they will pay billions. They will come.

00:31:45:22 - 00:31:56:06

Christian Soschner

From your experience, you know, everything. You know, from market back to basic science. Is this point valid or. Tell me something. Or do I miss something?

00:31:56:08 - 00:31:56:20

Jason Foster

So I call

00:31:56:20 - 00:32:17:18

Jason Foster

this the old biotech playbook. It is. You spin up a new, new approach, a new modality, a new target, a new molecule, whatever it is you show that you get, safety and efficacy signal, through phase one, maybe phase two, and then you sell it to Pfizer or Eli Lilly or some other big company.

00:32:17:20 - 00:32:46:24

Jason Foster

And they take it from there. And that has been the playbook that has worked for a couple of decades. And I would argue that if you're in small molecules or you're in biologics, maybe they're not wrong. Maybe that model still could work. And that is because that model has been tried and true, because ultimately the delivery of those products, the manufacturing, the marketing, the market access, that road has been paved.

00:32:47:01 - 00:33:23:12

Jason Foster

And so potentially you only need to work your way up to the beginning of that pipe, and then you can be pulled into the market. What I would argue is that if you're trying to do something novel, you know, think by specifics or, you know, cell therapies or anything else that's in that kind of novel category that's no longer accurate, that that's no longer good enough, good science will not ultimately, when the day because what happens is we have incredible science and cell therapy with your customers, in that case, your scientists, scientific colleagues, their customers are 2 or 3 fold.

00:33:23:12 - 00:33:47:07

Jason Foster

So venture capitalists who fund startup biotechs, you've got pharma, BD and licensing teams that partner in licensed assets. And then ultimately you have the M&A teams within those companies as well that buy companies. And all those investors care about is how are we going to make money with this product? It can be great. The science can be fantastic.

00:33:47:09 - 00:34:11:02

Jason Foster

If we can't make money, they're not going to license it. They're not going to buy it, they're not going to partner with it. And that is where that thinking has fallen over in the last ten years. Since 2017, we saw several big purchases. Obviously, kite was bought for $12 billion by Gilead, Juno was bought by Celgene and then it was bought by BMC and others in the 7 to 10 billion range.

00:34:11:04 - 00:34:39:23

Jason Foster

And then those companies have spent another 10 or $15 billion trying to bring those products to market, trying to create the facilities and the infrastructure around it. And the payback just hasn't been there, at least not yet. And so ultimately, just kicking the can down the road on manufacturing or market access or cost of goods or buy to and ultimately is is, you know, we've seen lots and lots of companies fail now in these advanced modalities because they didn't solve that problem earlier.

00:34:39:23 - 00:35:10:01

Jason Foster

Not so. And so it's really the kind of the tale of Two Cities. If you've got if that piece has been figured out, you know, let's say small molecules and biologics that's been figured out that perhaps they're right, perhaps they don't need to worry too much about some of these things. But if you're doing anything novel, which most of these scientists are, then you really need to be very concerned about this, and you need to be very concerned about it earlier than you thought, I would say before you hit the clinic, which most of the time they're not thinking about manufacturing or any of these things until phase three.

00:35:10:06 - 00:35:32:10

Christian Soschner

Let's talk a little bit with these points and, double down on them and dive deeper into them. When you look at the artificial intelligence movement, for example, and read through LinkedIn feed, I often get the feeling that, what many companies do is trying to fix the science to bring the failure rates down and, just have more basic needs and, speed up the drug development process.

00:35:32:12 - 00:35:46:04

Christian Soschner

This way, when you read through your material, I think you have a different point of view. What really are the bottlenecks in the industry, especially in cell and gene therapy? What, in your opinion, are the real bottlenecks that we need to tackle now?

00:35:46:06 - 00:35:47:17

Jason Foster

So

00:35:47:17 - 00:36:08:23

Jason Foster

ultimately, that the big constraint for cell therapy in the first generation of the type of cell therapy or gene therapy, is slightly different. They often get lumped together. So we'll just kind of separate them for this discussion. For cell therapy, we're taking often a patient's immune cells. We're creating a therapeutic product ex vivo running it through a manufacturing process.

00:36:09:00 - 00:36:33:12

Jason Foster

And then delivering it back to that individual patient. So there's two things that are unique about that. One is it's a personalized medicine. If I make it for Christian it will work for Jason and vice versa. The second is that it's a living cellular based therapy. It isn't a small molecule. It isn't a biologic. You can sort of store and ship around the world and, you know, send out through a distribution channel that will be broadly applicable for any patient.

00:36:33:14 - 00:36:56:10

Jason Foster

So that circular supply chain, is very important, to make sure that we, have figured out how to do that. Well, and that has really been a constraint for the industry, is that we've figured out the science. I mean, no one can argue that 94% complete response in late stage multiple multiple myeloma and multiple myeloma patients isn't great.

00:36:56:10 - 00:37:24:16

Jason Foster

Science isn't great clinical efficacy. It absolutely is. It's unheard of. Actually, and its ability to deliver clinical benefit to patients. But if we can't get it to patients at scale, it's not going to have the clinical or the commercial impact that companies want. So the real bottleneck up until today and still today is the ability to manufacture these products at high quality, at high throughput and low cost.

00:37:24:18 - 00:37:48:08

Jason Foster

Oftentimes, these products cost somewhere between 400 and $50,000. And if you talk about the gene therapies, up to $4 million per patient, that's per individual dose. And for the most part, that is unaffordable in most of the world. You know, in the US, these products are available in some parts of Western Europe, not all and not all products.

00:37:48:10 - 00:38:12:08

Jason Foster

So if we want broad access, we need to be able to bring the cost down and we need to be able to make more of these products. And today we just can't physically make enough products. So we talked about, you know, I went to Columbia for business school, and at that time it's much more expensive now, but it seemed very expensive then I think I graduate, it's $125,000 in student loan debt.

00:38:12:10 - 00:38:32:19

Jason Foster

And there's one thing that I remember from Columbia, one critical thing. I took operations class and there was a book called The Goal. I don't know if you've ever read it. But it depicts some, Cub Scouts, you know, sort of Boy Scouts marching in a line. And there was one called Herbie who is a bit bigger than the other boys.

00:38:32:19 - 00:38:55:01

Jason Foster

He's a bit slower. And Herbie was the bottleneck. So this is how they teach you about bottlenecks in manufacturing, right? So the theory of constraints. So you have a system all those boys in a row holding onto a rope, and there's one boy that's that's the slowest and therefore slows down the entire group. That is how bottlenecks are described.

00:38:55:01 - 00:39:21:04

Jason Foster

And what I remember today is a bottleneck in cell therapy manufacturing is we have to once we get the cells from the patient, we send them to the manufacturing facility. We have to follow them, we have to select them. And that takes about an hour to do each of those things. But then we have to activate them. We have to genetically reprogram them, and we have to ultimately grow them up, expand them.

00:39:21:06 - 00:39:44:21

Jason Foster

And that process takes 7 to 10 days, a process that takes 7 to 10 days, let's say 240 hours versus a product process. It takes one hour. It's clearly going to be always be the bottleneck. And so addressing that bottleneck so that we can get higher throughput, we can take people out of the process. So dramatically lower cost of goods and to improve consistency.

00:39:44:23 - 00:40:21:10

Jason Foster

And that's really where Auggie has focused his attention is on the core bottleneck in manufacturing, so that we can increase throughput, lower costs, improve quality. And by doing that, we are able to address the three core challenges that are facing cell therapy today. And what we've seen very I would say, rationally, is that investors, at least right now, for the last couple of years, since 2021, have been very skeptical that autologous cell therapy, so that personalized version of cell therapy is commercially viable.

00:40:21:14 - 00:40:39:08

Jason Foster

They're just not sure. Can we ever make enough of these products? Can we ever charge a price that will allow us to get, you know, large numbers of patients? And the answer right now is we don't know. And so they've been focused on other modalities. You know, in vivo cell therapy is very sexy right now because it eliminates this manufacturing problem.

00:40:39:10 - 00:41:10:14

Jason Foster

Allogeneic cell therapy has been thought of as a potential solution that brings with it its own challenges. So we're trying to solve in a couple of different ways. We're trying to solve this manufacturing bottleneck. How do we avoid having to manufacture these products in highly manual, very expensive ways that are very low throughput? And so automation solutions libraries, our Eero platform, is one of the ways that we can address this issue, with autologous cell therapy.

00:41:10:16 - 00:41:31:10

Jason Foster

And they're also looking at other ways. And, you know, I would argue that autologous cell therapy is here to stay. You know, when you have the incredible clinical efficacy, the clinical impact that we see, and we've got a manufacturing problem that we're going to figure that out, you know, and we went through this with biologics, you know, 20, 30 years ago as well.

00:41:31:12 - 00:41:50:17

Jason Foster

And we're going to figure that out. And hopefully innovations like Lori's will help, open up access for patients. We'll see. With ALS genetic, there's a lot of challenges with their ability with potency, where you have donor cells that go into a patient, we'll see if that ever makes the leap. I'm not sure there's only one generic product available today.

00:41:50:19 - 00:42:15:09

Jason Foster

And then in vivo, you know, you think about actually we're going to do all that, all those steps that I mentioned. But we're going to do it inside the human body. It's complex biology. And we'll get there with that I have a feeling, but it's probably in my view, about 20 years away. So we need to make sure that we figure out today's challenge, today's bottleneck, with autologous cell therapy, because you've got 20 years of patients that can benefit from it, if not more.

00:42:15:11 - 00:42:37:09

Jason Foster

So I think as an industry, the innovation will will win out and we'll see blood access even first line, you know, we're expressing expecting Yescarta to receive first line approval this year. Having gone all this therapy started out as last line terapie. And they work their way forward. So you got Brian. You've got priority, that have second line approval alongside Yescarta.

00:42:37:11 - 00:42:58:23

Jason Foster

And the expectation is that Yescarta will get first line therapy so patients will no longer have to go through chemo. They'll be able to get Car-T therapy as the first intervention. And that's a super exciting milestone for the industry and only increases the need for wider access, more cost effective products, and better manufacturing. So that's the future kind of the near term.

00:42:58:23 - 00:43:02:10

Jason Foster

I would the next 3 to 5 years that we have to look forward to.

00:43:02:13 - 00:43:15:05

Christian Soschner

So it's basically the manufacturing side and trying to replicate results. Great science, great clinical results. But from the manufacturing point of view, completely different like small molecules. So it's like really tailored.

00:43:15:07 - 00:43:16:23

Jason Foster

Yeah. Yeah. No it's an

00:43:16:23 - 00:43:35:03

Jason Foster

individual therapy. You think about all the rigor you go through to manufacture small molecules and to release the batch in a GMP context. And that's for, you know, you're stamping out millions of tablets. That's what we did at Reckitt Benckiser. And then Indivior or a small molecule company. And that tablet could go to you, me or anyone else.

00:43:35:05 - 00:43:58:07

Jason Foster

In this world, we're making one product using the same rigor, the same GMP, context and framework. We're doing the same batches. We're doing it for one product, for one patient at a time. And that requires lots of innovation and automation to to do that at scale. You know, we're we're the whole industry in total treated 10,000 patients last year.

00:43:58:10 - 00:44:17:21

Jason Foster

And that's with seven that's seven years post-launch for some of these products with nine products, the whole industry treated 10,000 patients. That is less than 5% of the available patient population globally. So that's the that's the challenge is how do we greatly improve throughput and access, and really make these products much more cost effective?

00:44:17:24 - 00:44:37:03

Christian Soschner

Yeah. It reminds me of the conversation I had with Christine 11 about. She also said, manufacturing is basically the bottleneck. How can you do that? For a large number of patients. And I can't remember. Maybe I do the conversation wrong, but, I can't remember that we found a solution. She was more coming from the science side.

00:44:37:05 - 00:44:47:00

Christian Soschner

What's your thinking process? When we look into the future and you say you have our problem solved, how do we want to tackle this problem before it? Biotech.

00:44:47:02 - 00:44:48:08

Jason Foster

So

00:44:48:08 - 00:45:08:01

Jason Foster

there's a couple I think there's a couple of things we need to do to really get to to where we want to get to. And the first really is to think about the supply chain from first principles from the ground up. So we have essentially adopted the traditional pharma manufacturing and supply chain for biologics and small molecules.

00:45:08:01 - 00:45:28:24

Jason Foster

And we've applied it to cell therapy. That may not be the best way to deliver cell therapies. And just recently in the UK, they have created they have the MHRA has put out a regulation saying that we can manufacture in the hospital at point of care, for advanced therapies. And this regulatory framework didn't exist until the last few weeks.

00:45:28:24 - 00:45:53:16

Jason Foster

It was finalized, and that might be one major step forward in trying to bring these products to patients at scale, because ultimately, taking a patient's cells, flying them halfway across the world, manufacturing for them for 3 to 6 weeks, freezing them, flying them back to the patient, to the hospital is probably never going to be cost effective. You know, that sort of whole transportation mechanism is just very difficult.

00:45:53:18 - 00:46:13:05

Jason Foster

Not to mention, these patients are often very sick and waiting three to 6 to 12 weeks for their product, a vast number, the 25% of these patients die waiting, waiting for the product even after it's been approved. So that logistical complexity needs to be solved. We need to figure out how do we bring these products to patients more quickly.

00:46:13:07 - 00:46:41:11

Jason Foster

The second thing I would suggest is that the processes we are using today are very inefficient. They're mostly human being led. So think about, you know, the analogy that gets often used is Henry Ford making the model T going from and person assembly to assembly line assembly and then to ultimately to what you see in like a Tesla Gigafactory today where there's not a single human being anywhere to be seen.

00:46:41:13 - 00:47:10:18

Jason Foster

We are kind of in that very first stage. We've got a highly manual, we've got a lot of very expensive PhD immunologists moving cells. They're micro pipetting, they're doing tube welding. They're shaking bags back and forth like this. They're using two flasks. Essentially. It's a lab scale process on steroids today, and even the GMP manufacturing process that have been approved are those, those don't scale and they don't they're not cost effective.

00:47:10:20 - 00:47:32:00

Jason Foster

And they're highly variable because no matter how good we are, as in beings, we introduce variability into processes. So we need it. We need automation when you take the people out of the process. Because ultimately that's what has been proven to be, very effective in lowering costs and improving kind of standardization and quality. So we are in the process of doing that now.

00:47:32:00 - 00:47:48:18

Jason Foster

And that's part of what Ori is doing, is bringing automation to the core parts of the process that today are manual. And then lastly, I would suggest we need digitization. So a lot of the processes, the vast majority of processes that I've seen today are on paper.

00:47:48:20 - 00:47:49:15

Christian Soschner

On paper.

00:47:49:20 - 00:48:12:14

Jason Foster

Yes, on maybe on. Unfortunately, yes. So a paper batch record for a single cell therapy over a thousand pages. So you can stack 16 three main binders up on top of each other, and it takes two people to leaf through each page and say, that's okay. Yes. That's all right. Yes. Tick the box. Yes. To release a product.

00:48:12:16 - 00:48:45:23

Jason Foster

And not just not only the act of capturing the data on the paper, you know, and putting it in a paper batch record. But ultimately, the release process on paper will always be a bottleneck if we don't if we don't fix it. So we have working with several next generation companies that are doing paperless manufacturing, where we plug our system into their, software backbone, maybe their Ms. or Lims or airline system, so that we can do automate as essentially real time batch validation.

00:48:45:23 - 00:49:12:07

Jason Foster

So continuous validation where the system is always looking for things that are anomalous, things that are deviations from the process, they will load them. And then ultimately all the human being right now has to do is to look at those deviations and say, okay, there were three times when something happened that we didn't expect. They all look okay to me that batches released and they can do that if it's digital, they can do that from anywhere in the world.

00:49:12:08 - 00:49:46:19

Jason Foster

So the problem with being on paper is you have to have those resources in every manufacturing facility, and it has to be qualified by the regulator. In this distributed model, if you have, you know, a hub and spoke model where you have multiple manufacturing sites, maybe at hospitals, you need to have a centralized QA, QC function. So you have the ability to review your qualified person who's going to release that product, has the ability to review that centrally on a digital file, digital batch record, and then they can be fully utilized as they're reviewing as products are finished at the various hubs.

00:49:46:21 - 00:50:12:22

Jason Foster

The batch record comes in to the to the Or at the various folks. The batch traffic comes into the hub, these kinds of innovations. So, you know, standardization through automation, digitization, potentially for distributed manufacturing are how we will achieve widespread patient access or cell therapies and also dramatically shorter range of times and lower cost of goods.

00:50:13:00 - 00:50:32:07

Jason Foster

It's really those mechanisms that we have at our disposal now, just just recently, I mean, we launched our Eero platform in December. So it's only been in the market for, you know, what is that eight, eight months. And so we were just on the beginning of this, next evolution of cell therapy manufactured.

00:50:32:18 - 00:50:58:23

Christian Soschner

Before we dive into your, Europe platform and, educate the audience what that is, what you do. There are three points that they would take in, first, from what you said, because I think, to really matter and would like to unpack it a little bit more, I mean, the, the, the problem for the patient, we mentioned that sometimes when the product is produced, developed, it takes 3 to 6 weeks, sometimes longer, and some patients die.

00:50:59:00 - 00:51:19:05

Christian Soschner

I mean, this is hard for the patient because these are terminal illnesses. And once you lived with a patient who faced that, that's the ultimate fear that these people have. So it is really they're facing death. There is nothing worse than a human being facing death. And then you provide the solution to them and say, look, we have maybe something that works.

00:51:19:05 - 00:51:29:00

Christian Soschner

Scientists, good clinical results are good, but you won't live long enough to experience that. Everything is really hard for the people.

00:51:29:02 - 00:51:30:01

Jason Foster

Incredibly,

00:51:30:01 - 00:51:55:00

Jason Foster

incredibly hard. And then, of course, no, the clinicians, the patients, no one goes into it thinking that that can happen, but it happens because the first generation Car-T products were for, mostly for blood cancers went to logical tumors. So think leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma. And they were reserved for last line therapy. You had very, very sick patients who had weeks to live.

00:51:55:03 - 00:52:14:07

Jason Foster

So there's two ways we could try and handle this obviously is by treating them earlier in the treatment pathway. So if they're less they have been through less rounds of chemotherapy. There's a chance that they'll have a better, you know, clinical outcome. And the second is being able to shorten that time, shorten that wait time and get to get the product to patients more quickly.

00:52:14:09 - 00:52:34:03

Jason Foster

And, these are the ways in which we can intervene. And try and prevent this outcome. Because exactly as you said. And and this is this is something that every cancer patient faces from the time, you know, they're thinking about from the time they're diagnosed is that there's a potential that I'm going to die here. You know, chemotherapy only works in a certain proportion of patients, and you've got some immunotherapies.

00:52:34:03 - 00:52:56:11

Jason Foster

And then particularly after they fail bone marrow transplant or something similar, there's just not a lot of options. And then outside the US today, party therapy really isn't available. It's available for a couple. And, you know, several countries of Europe but not widely available. And outside of Europe, it's not available really anywhere you look in China, you look at India, you look at the Middle East.

00:52:56:13 - 00:53:18:05

Jason Foster

So there are very, very few patients who can even consider this as an option. So you're right. I mean, I think I can't think of anything worse, you know, as a, as a, you know, someone who had a loved one who has cancer will say there's this cure out there, but it's not available in our country, or you can't get access to it or you're too late stage and it'll take too long and you're going to die waiting.

00:53:18:07 - 00:53:32:19

Jason Foster

I mean, what a incredible, incredibly hard thing that would be to hear that news. And, you know, a lot of these patients and often children, you know, as a parent, you can imagine how absolutely terrible that would be to hear.

00:53:32:23 - 00:53:56:22

Christian Soschner

Then display between emotions, fear and hope. This is really unfair to be patient. I mean, maybe it's also, a result of high drug prices. I mean, the US has a lot of advanced therapies because debated past and, debated best. And when you take that away and lower the prices, but you also kill and at the same time is availability of advanced therapies because, I mean, there is not enough margin anymore, and people just don't, move to therapies.

00:53:56:22 - 00:54:30:11

Christian Soschner

Still, I know from from firsthand it was five years ago, and I was on the Christine 11 podcast. That what that means for hospitals is when you want to localize to manufacturing, you need GMP approval at the hospital. You need to mentioned also quality controls. You need actually the whole production process locally in the hospital. And the guest, on the podcast with Christina, said our healthcare system is just not designed for that.

00:54:30:13 - 00:54:49:13

Christian Soschner

It's, just designed for small molecules. You ship it, you give it to the people, and that's it. What do we need to remodel in the healthcare system to make a tremendous change so that these therapies are really available, available in time and not just weeks or months later?

00:54:49:15 - 00:54:49:23

Jason Foster

I mean, I

00:54:49:23 - 00:55:11:04

Jason Foster

would argue that today that they're right. We are we are fit for purpose to do this yet. But with the advent of some of these new technologies, we can be and so having to set up a GMP manufacturing suite in a hospital, used to be quite a lot of effort, quite a lot of money there.

00:55:11:04 - 00:55:29:01

Jason Foster

Are there hospitals around Europe that do have it do, do do these things? I was just recently at the hospital clinic Barcelona. They've been treating over the last ten years 500 patients with Car-T therapy. For therapy that they developed, it can be done. You can do a lot the expertise, but you need lots of very experienced, highly skilled people.

00:55:29:01 - 00:55:55:16

Jason Foster

You need GMP greater in the space you need. All of the systems are in place. And so the way we are helping to navigate that is to develop essentially a turnkey manufacturing solution. So we've got partners like Germ Free who's one of the leaders in mobile clean rooms. And so they can put in the car park or on the back of a lorry, clean room and it can be dropped off anywhere in the world.

00:55:55:18 - 00:56:15:16

Jason Foster

And then we put our technology inside that doesn't require highly skilled operators. You know, you and I could be a trained operator in an hour or two. So even high school graduates or secondary school graduates can operate the system. And so if we're able to bring some of these innovations, then it doesn't seem so far fetched that we could deliver this at the hospital.

00:56:15:16 - 00:56:35:09

Jason Foster

And I would argue, you know, things like bone marrow, bone marrow transplantation or, you know, a lot of hospitals now have radiology, trucks or they have lab trucks that didn't used to get done at the hospital. They used to get it done somewhere else by someone else. But they brought that to the hospital to the point of care.

00:56:35:11 - 00:56:56:15

Jason Foster

And I would argue that this is doable with innovations like the ones that we've been talking about. You know, we need we can't do it today because of paper batch records and, you know, manual processes and all these things that we've been talking about. But with, the era of technology and some of our partner technologies and companies, you can create a turnkey manufacturing suite that can go anywhere.

00:56:56:17 - 00:57:27:07

Jason Foster

You can have a network of of hospitals that are manufacturing party therapies on site for patients at very low cost, and very quickly. And that is the future. We're talking about the future, not ten years away, but, you know, in the next year or two, we'll see this. And we're talking both in the UK and also, in countries like India, in the Middle East, where they want to leapfrog to this model, they want to actually have this be the beginning of how they deliver Car-T therapy.

00:57:27:09 - 00:57:31:15

Jason Foster

And just now these technologies are enabling that to occur.

00:57:31:22 - 00:57:54:12

Christian Soschner

So if we want to improve the situation for patients, make these advanced therapies available for everybody in the world who needs it? One part of the solution is, mobile labs, mobile production facilities, mobile clean rooms. You just, ship that and send them, on tracks, for example, to the hospital that needs it. Easy to train, automated.

00:57:54:14 - 00:58:11:21

Christian Soschner

But then there was a bottleneck that I was really surprised to hear is that a lot of the health care system is still on paper in 2025, in the Western world. Is this really such a big problem today?

00:58:11:24 - 00:58:46:18

Jason Foster

Remarkably, yes, it is a problem I think my, my statistic is out of date. But a couple of years ago I heard the statistic that 60% of patient records in the UK, the NHS were still on paper. Now I can't imagine that's still the case. But, you know, until Obama in the US forced electronic records on to hospitals and medical practices, it was the case in the US not that long ago, because, you know, the inertia of, you know, trying to get an EMR in and try to digitize patient records is extremely difficult.

00:58:46:18 - 00:59:22:02

Jason Foster

So, it would not surprise me at all if the predominant, tools that were being used were still analog, still paper based, certainly in cell therapy manufacturing. That is true. Even company a big pharma companies that are doing manufacturing. Because if you're if you're stepping out a million tablets, having a having a checklist on paper once a month or once a quarter, when you run a manufacturing batch or even once a week, it's not a rate limiter that if you have to do that for every single dose that you produce, for every single patient, you get a mountain of paper that just gets overwhelmed you.

00:59:22:04 - 00:59:41:12

Jason Foster

And so this is another reason why we need to rethink those processes to do this well, and to certainly do it in a distributed manner. You have to have a digital first approach and, you know, our technology is cloud native. You can monitor it from anywhere in the world. You can intervene if something goes wrong. You don't have to go into the clean room.

00:59:41:14 - 01:00:05:18

Jason Foster

You can do Q and QC remotely. It will deliver the data into a batch record, you know, via API. So in the cloud, you know, these kinds of tools are required to do this at scale. And to do this, in a, in a distributed fashion. So unfortunately, I think your assertion is correct. The vast, vast majority of the institutions that are involved in this are still, on paper.

01:00:05:23 - 01:00:26:19

Christian Soschner

I still on paper. That's amazing. That's amazing. So we need to solve this first before we can think about advanced therapies. At the end of the day, if you develop v4 biotech and also the scientists with cell and gene therapy advanced solutions, and then you have, a systemic bottleneck at the end of the day, it kills the entire thinking process and investment.

01:00:26:19 - 01:00:36:19

Christian Soschner

So this is something for the policymakers that especially here in Europe, but it needs to speed up and get all health care systems in every single country on speed.

01:00:36:21 - 01:00:37:09

Jason Foster

Well, I think

01:00:37:09 - 01:01:02:20

Jason Foster

yes, it certainly needs to be done. Our turnkey solution is digital already, so you don't have to fix the whole problem before you could if you wanted to, deliver advanced therapies to patients digitally, we can do it now. You know, as part of that turnkey solution has a digital backbone embedded in it. So if we had to wait for hospitals to digitize, we'd all be here till, you know, 20, 70.

01:01:02:22 - 01:01:17:00

Jason Foster

So we were we were willing to wait. So we did it ourselves. But you're right. I think it's a critical component to. I mean, now, as you know, you've got lots of different systems that don't talk to each other. You go to a specialist and they don't have your records. You got to bring your patient record with you.

01:01:17:02 - 01:01:28:10

Jason Foster

You know, it is what it is. You know, certainly it's it's incredibly inefficient, but we've sort of gone around that problem by creating a whole turnkey solution that's already digital.

01:01:28:18 - 01:01:33:00

Christian Soschner

Can you tell me more about your turnkey solution? What is your place in the industry?

01:01:33:06 - 01:02:03:12

Jason Foster

So the Euro platform, is one of the first technologies that, fully automates cell therapy manufacturing. So we talked about the core bottleneck, you know, where all those people are involved, and we're all the time is lost, around the genetic reprograming and activation of cells and the expansion of cells. That is, as I said, about, let's say, 240 hours in a day, probably, 260 hour process, you know, something like that.

01:02:03:12 - 01:02:25:01

Jason Foster

So it's the vast majority. The process is that particular set of steps. So the Eero system is an automation device. It looks a little bit like, an incubator or microwave oven, something like that turned on its end, where it automates all the steps associated with, activation of cells, genetic reprograming of cells and expansion of cells.

01:02:25:03 - 01:02:52:20

Jason Foster

So that allows operators to go off and do other things that are more value added other than micro pipetting or tube welding. It also allows us to parallelize manufacturing. So within that, remember I was telling you about that tractor trailer, kind of, cargo shipping container, clean room in 1000ft². And you'll have to translate that into square meters for, for the audience and 1000ft² of clean room space.

01:02:52:22 - 01:03:22:17

Jason Foster

So essentially, you know, whatever that is, four by 20 space like that, we can do up to 30 parallel manufacturing processes. So 30 different patient doses at the same time, which will allow us to deliver a thousand doses a year, in 1000ft² of cleanroom space. That is a 95% reduction in the amount of cleanroom space you need today to manufacture the same number of doses.

01:03:22:19 - 01:03:44:05

Jason Foster

So we're shrinking the footprint dramatically by multiplexing the system. So essentially stacking it up on each other so you can go three high and 1010 wide. So I can run multiple patients. So I can make a product for you me and 28 other people. And I can do different products. So potentially we could manufacture things like cryo. Yes.

01:03:44:05 - 01:04:09:04

Jason Foster

Cod perfectly bronzy in the same room using the same piece of equipment for different patients. So multi-product multi patient in the same space because it's a closed system. We have the ability to make sure that there's no mix ups. You know the wrong grids don't go into the wrong place and there's no cross-contamination risk. So it's all digitally controlled.

01:04:09:06 - 01:04:33:07

Jason Foster

It's all automated. And that innovation, the ability to deliver that many doses in that smaller space that quickly will have a revolutionary impact on the ability to supply these products to patients. And that is the only way we can really think about distributed manufacturing, taking the production to the hospital, because otherwise you'd have to have a single box or a single clean room for every product.

01:04:33:09 - 01:04:53:14

Jason Foster

So one for Cambria, one for Yescarta, one for Rienzi, one for a Beckman. And that would never work, that you just have a bunch of unused capacity, a bunch of unused infrastructure, and it would drive costs through the roof. But if you have the ability in the same manufacturing space to manufacture multiple products on the same equipment, that changes the game.

01:04:53:16 - 01:05:29:07

Jason Foster

And that's ultimately what we're trying to do. And that's going to take some work with the regulator. But the regulator in the in the US, the FDA is very, very keen on ensuring patients get access to these therapies. And they've introduced a couple new, regulatory innovations. So one is the advanced manufacturing technology innovation. So it's a designation for platforms like oris to essentially get, stamp of approval from the FDA, saying this technology is suitable for the manufacture of cell therapies.

01:05:29:09 - 01:05:55:23

Jason Foster

And it gives, you know, a higher level of interaction for therapy developers. There's some benefits to getting your product through the FDA faster because they want to see these products make it to patients. You know, the FDA well, it's incredibly hard to evaluate, new drug applications to approve products. And then they sit back and watch these products really not get utilized, and they watch the companies fail, who've spent $1 billion developing them.

01:05:55:23 - 01:06:38:05

Jason Foster

And that's incredibly frustrating for them. And so, of course, they will never sacrifice safety, patient safety. But they are doing everything they can to ensure that these products reach patients at scale. And so this advance, this agency designation is an example of trying to speed the marketing and access and distribution of these products to patients. And that's what we need if we need these kind of, innovations to be able to deliver this new generation of therapies, we need to break out of the old biotech playbook, break out of the old manufacturing, centralized manufacturing models with giant facilities, and deliver these products in a different way, in a novel way, because they're novel

01:06:38:05 - 01:06:41:10

Jason Foster

therapies. And we need to think differently about how we do that.

01:06:41:13 - 01:07:01:19

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's true. This was a conversation with Christine. At the end of the day, you need to remodel that. I remember the conversation with small hospitals, for example, few years ago. What that means selling gene therapy when you want to have it in the hospital, in the patients and treat the patients, you need high investments in the team and facilities.

01:07:01:21 - 01:07:29:19

Christian Soschner

You have high end running expenses. And then you need to explain to the investors, why you have these high expenses for a handful of patients every year. And this is really a hard conversation, especially when the investors are not really familiar with health care, but just have some philanthropic spirit behind them and are used to this at scale manufacturing systems, where you say you push through a lot of patients and people through the system and not invest for a few patients, how does that work?

01:07:29:19 - 01:07:43:21

Christian Soschner

How does the work with you change the situation? So if an investor comes to me and says, how can we do this better? And I tell them, go talk to Chasen, talk with her about it, they have a solution. What changes with your solution for them?

01:07:43:21 - 01:07:45:11

Jason Foster

Yes. So

01:07:45:11 - 01:08:09:16

Jason Foster

there's a couple things. So I would I would call on the analogy of, of lab, labs in hospitals. So there's, there's been cyclical, application of outsourced centralized labs. We send everything to like a LabCorp request Diagnostics or somebody, and they do all of our lab work, and then they ship us back. The result and then hospital said, well, actually, we're paying margin to those companies.

01:08:09:16 - 01:08:35:04

Jason Foster

We should bring that lab in-house, and we develop our own lab, and then we send them downstairs, and then they run the labs and of them upstairs in the hospital. And this goes back and forth and back and forth because the like, manufacturing labs are a capacity utilization business. They make money every time they processes happen. That lab needs to run in a certain level of utilization to make it make sense financially.

01:08:35:06 - 01:08:55:21

Jason Foster

And it's exactly the same as manufacturing. To your point, if we're making 1 or 2 doses a year or, you know, ten patients once a month for ten patients, it's never going to make economic sense because you've got infrastructure, you've got people and you've got you've got fixed cost investment. What does work or would work is the having a certain level of capacity utilization.

01:08:55:21 - 01:09:21:13

Jason Foster

So being able to use that module for multiple products and getting enough volume through that location so that it makes sense. And so we're partnering with CDMO globally, whose expertise it is, is to manufacture cell therapies. We don't supply the people or the expertise we support the we supply the technology. So we would supply that, you know, maybe a germ free pod from our partners there.

01:09:21:15 - 01:09:38:08

Jason Foster

We put our technology inside. We build out this turnkey model and then someone needs the staff and it might be hospital staff, it might be a CDMO partner staff. And so we're talking about these different models going can be completely outsourced. And then who pays and who's responsible for the quality of the product. You know, is a DNA holder.

01:09:38:08 - 01:09:57:05

Jason Foster

Is it the CMO is the hospital. There's a couple of these questions that that we need to answer. But ultimately, if you can get enough volume through that manufacturing space, if you can get a high enough capacity utilization, the economics work and if you can, they don't. And so maybe you don't have one of these at every hospital.

01:09:57:07 - 01:10:18:24

Jason Foster

Maybe you have one, you know, in Vienna to serve all the hospitals in Vienna or in London to serve or 2 or 3 in London to serve all the hospitals in London. So you need to think about maybe a regional Center of excellence model where you might have the ability to manufacture for multiple hospitals, you know, hundreds if not thousands of patients at a time.

01:10:19:01 - 01:10:41:24

Jason Foster

We just did an analysis, on the back of the MHRA regulation that came out a couple weeks ago. If we were to put five locations in the UK, we could serve all the patients. So there's 66 million people in the EU. In the UK, we can serve all of the patients within a four hour drive, to a four hour drive, to a location, to a hospital.

01:10:42:01 - 01:10:59:21

Jason Foster

We could serve all the patients from five locations. You don't need a hundred locations. You don't need one in every hospital. You just need them at the major centers, potentially. And in the US, at something like 34, we did the analysis many years ago to say we could actually out of 35 centers, we could serve 60% of the patient population within an eight hour drive.

01:10:59:21 - 01:11:20:10

Jason Foster

Now, obviously, bigger geographies in the US farther to go. But the the you know, the thought process is the same with, you know, you don't need one in every community, in every hospital. And now today we're talking about cancer. You know, if you think about the application of cell therapy beyond cancer, we're seeing it being studied with great effectiveness in autoimmune disease.

01:11:20:10 - 01:11:45:01

Jason Foster

Think lupus or RA or some of these other diseases, autoimmune diseases, that has a totally different model required because these patients are going to M.D. Anderson, or they going to the Christie, or they are going to other major cancer centers, the Fraunhofer. They're in the community being treated by community specialists. And so you need a different model for this.

01:11:45:01 - 01:12:03:07

Jason Foster

And so if you think about this regional model, the equipment, the aero equipment, it's just as easily can just as easily make a a therapy for autoimmune diseases or cancer. Cancer. It doesn't know the difference. It's the cell therapy. And the cell therapy is a cell therapy for the for the technology. So as you get more of these products approved, this model becomes more and more sensible.

01:12:03:07 - 01:12:30:05

Jason Foster

It just makes more and more sense because you can then get it to patients no matter where they are, not only in cancer centers, but also at community based care. And you're seeing innovators like Johnson and Johnson and Legend Biotech in their car attitude. So they continue to study car victory and different patient populations. In their latest trial, they said they were treating 30% of the patients of cancer patients in the community at community cancer centers.

01:12:30:07 - 01:12:56:04

Jason Foster

So the ability to take these therapies out into the community, to reach more patients, to get more a bigger network of treating clinicians, that direction of travel lends itself very nicely to this more distributed model. And the thinking around, how do we get these more of these products to patients more quickly? So that's how I would argue, you know, we need to think about this innovation as it's ultimately manufacturing as a capacity utilization business.

01:12:56:04 - 01:13:15:01

Jason Foster

If you don't have enough, if you have too much capacity and not enough doses going through it, you're going to be losing money. That's what's happening today. We have these giant facilities. We have only a couple hundred doses going through. It's costing too much money and companies are folding. So we need to make sure we have a smart way to enable capacity to be utilized.

01:13:15:03 - 01:13:38:18

Jason Foster

And the way we've designed the arrow system is that you can essentially scale up in a stair step fashion, so you can maybe have an infrastructure that can deliver a thousand doses. And then when you get to 70% utilization, maybe you want to add another thousand doses of capacity, but you do what you don't want to do at the beginning is to deliver 4000 doses or 10,000 doses of capacity, because that's going to sit idle for years and years.

01:13:38:20 - 01:13:48:00

Jason Foster

And that is what ultimately ends up costing, you know, millions and millions of dollars. So it's these new delivery models enabled by technology that are going to solve this problem.

01:13:48:03 - 01:13:53:02

Christian Soschner

So it's basically the invention of an entire new industry within the pharma industry.

01:13:53:04 - 01:13:53:22

Jason Foster

It is a

01:13:53:22 - 01:14:11:17

Jason Foster

somewhat new delivery model. I mean, it's been being done as kind of a cottage industry in hospitals. So regenerative medicine, bone marrow stem cell transplantation, some of these things have been done. It kind of at the hospital in the basement, you know, tinkering around with the scientists. But it's never it's never been done at scale.

01:14:11:17 - 01:14:29:14

Jason Foster

You know, you treat a patient or two, you know, a month or a week. But now we're trying to industrialize this. So, you know, the way I can talk about it is mass personalization. These are personalized therapies. Again we're making one for Christian. But won't work for Jason. So I need to do that personalized basis. But I need to do it for the masses.

01:14:29:14 - 01:14:49:23

Jason Foster

I need to do tens of thousands or 100,000 doses. And how do I balance mass personalization? That seems like they're competing thoughts. They're opposites. But being able to do this at scale, it's going to take mass personalization. And it does. It requires a whole new delivery model, for therapeutics that doesn't exist or hasn't existed up until now.

01:14:50:08 - 01:15:28:21

Christian Soschner

Yeah. That's interesting. When I talk with scientists, I often hear that they want to develop the next big thing in therapies and wants to bring a new therapy to the patient. And before it, biotech, you focused on the manufacturing. How was the thinking process from the early days of Ori Biotech until now, to come to the conclusion that this is a strategic position in the industry and not to develop the next therapy, was it, a revelation at the beginning that you found that you found the head and said to be just to this thing, or was it, a longer process where you focus the team and discussed a lot and moved forward?

01:15:28:21 - 01:15:32:14

Christian Soschner

How how was the reality of coming to your conclusion?

01:15:32:16 - 01:15:32:22

Jason Foster

So

01:15:32:22 - 01:15:56:10

Jason Foster

the the two founders of Ori, as I mentioned at the time, were both professors at University College London and, biochemical engineering department. So they were doing a lot with bioreactors and, you know, systems that were doing the manufacturing of biologics and other things. And so they were ideally suited to. And also UCL has a very long history in regional medicine.

01:15:56:10 - 01:16:20:17

Jason Foster

So, you know, some of the meeting cell therapy companies were spun out of UCL, in the UK. So they had this kind of, a confluence of these two competencies, if you will, within UCL, within the, the department that Chris and father worked in. And they were also very close to Bruce Levine and, Rogers Labs at UPenn.

01:16:20:17 - 01:16:40:19

Jason Foster

So Bruce and Carl were credited as the kind of creators of camera, the very first cell therapy, which is now licensed by Novartis. And so when Bruce came over to present some of the early data, really clinical data for Kim, he came to London, sat down with Chris and, the founders of Ori, you know, before the company was founded.

01:16:40:19 - 01:16:55:18

Jason Foster

And they said, well, how are we going to make these products? How are we going to make them in scale? So they're always thinking about the delivery process. They're always thinking about the manufacturing process. They weren't thinking about, you know, finding a new target or a new molecule or a new cell type. And so it was really the combination of those factors.

01:16:55:18 - 01:17:14:15

Jason Foster

And Bruce has sat on our scientific advisory board for the last 5 or 6 years, has been a great help to the company. But having some of the best minds in therapy, development and cell therapy come together with some of the best engineering, you know, biochemical engineering minds. It was that conference, and ultimately they were always trying to solve the, the access problem.

01:17:14:17 - 01:17:38:04

Jason Foster

And they first tried by taking, you know, legacy systems, systems that existed then that were being used in regenerative medicine. This is 2015. Ori was founded in 2015. This day some of this data was presented in 20 1314. So it's been, you know, a decade. And there were systems available there at that time that were doing regenerative medicine.

01:17:38:04 - 01:17:59:11

Jason Foster

They were doing, you know, making stem cell therapies or, or involved in marrow transplantation. And so they tried to use those systems. They tried to say, well, can we just repurpose systems that already exist, bioreactors that already exist, you know, there's bioreactors that rock back and forth like this and start to take bioreactors. It's ones that turn around, turn them all around like this.

01:17:59:13 - 01:18:23:19

Jason Foster

And they tried everything. They looked at everything that existed. They tried to, you know, duct tape them together and use and bubblegum and try and get this to work because they couldn't find anything that would work for, for the diversity of cell types, for the kind of specific, needs of cell therapy. So they were always trying to apply an engineering solution to a manufacturing problem while focusing on biology.

01:18:23:21 - 01:18:50:24

Jason Foster

The last point is very, very important. What most companies have done, including some of ori's, peer companies, is they've applied an engineering solution to a manufacturing problem, but they haven't focused on the biology, or they haven't focused enough on the biology. And the biology is absolutely critical. You know, we're a biology first company. Like if you don't get the right cell types, the right cell yields the right phenotypes, the right potency and durability.

01:18:51:01 - 01:19:17:11

Jason Foster

You don't have anything. You don't have a product. You're not actually doing cell therapy, therapeutic manufacturing. You might be growing cells, but you're not having the clinical impact. Ultimately. So you have to be focused on the biology. And so we have married those competencies together. Core deep biological expertise and core deep engineering expertise. And getting those two things to work together and meshed together has been a very difficult, very difficult experience.

01:19:17:11 - 01:19:36:19

Jason Foster

Engineers and biologists think totally differently. And we're very fortunate to have very smart people that are collaborating together. But it's not easy. You know, when we see a lot of square pegs being kind of jammed into round holes because, you know, you've got an engineering solution that looks like it should work, it looks like it should solve the problem.

01:19:36:22 - 01:19:58:24

Jason Foster

You know, it maybe it fixes the bottleneck, but it delivers very low quality product at the end. And so you've actually missed the very you fell over the very first hurdle. And there are systems that have been around for a decade that engineering works well but doesn't deliver the biology. And that ultimately is what has hamstrung the industry and why something like zero is required.

01:19:58:24 - 01:20:00:04

Christian Soschner

Now,

01:20:00:04 - 01:20:29:16

Christian Soschner

that's an interesting point that you brought up. It always feels to me when you look at companies that the most successful companies work at the intersection of different disciplines, like you said, in case for a biotech, deep knowhow in engineering and the same deep knowhow in biology. But for me, it's almost a mystery when I look at people, different disciplines, it's sometimes really hard to get and work together and collaborate.

01:20:29:16 - 01:20:57:15

Christian Soschner

And as I said, the brought example like, round things into square pegs and, they don't really fit together. And I see many companies fall apart in that process because we just don't get along. Well. It's that's a leadership, core competence. What's your secret at biotech? How do you get this? Different solutions, different people fit into one model and get them collaborating into a successful company.

01:20:57:17 - 01:21:02:22

Jason Foster

It's part of the secret sauce. I don't know if I can tell you all the details, but, No, you're right. It's incredibly.

01:21:02:23 - 01:21:03:06

Christian Soschner

What do you.

01:21:03:07 - 01:21:05:01

Jason Foster

Say to that?

01:21:05:01 - 01:21:20:13

Jason Foster

It's an incredibly difficult thing to do. We are, you know, one of one of my three points that I'd written down, that you would ask me about is focus on talent. Talent is what makes a difference in a business. In a startup, you know, everyone's like, oh, I try and recruit the best talent.

01:21:20:17 - 01:21:37:00

Jason Foster

Yeah, of course you do. Everyone does. But how do you motivate that talent? How do you retain that talent? And how do you get that talent to work in an environment that you know is dynamic and work with others that aren't like them? And that's the real secret sauce that's really difficult to do. You know, we hire top talent.

01:21:37:02 - 01:21:56:10

Jason Foster

We do a lot of things that no, actually no other company that I know of, does to try and motivate and retain that talent. It's not about money. I mean, I think a lot of companies feel like, well, if I give them a bonus of 10 or 20% for hitting their KPIs and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do and they're going to stay, I'd be very excited to work for us.

01:21:56:10 - 01:22:19:19

Jason Foster

You know, I think most people, once you take money off the table, they aren't motivated by money. You know, what they're really motivated by is making a difference. They want to have a big purpose. And so we lead very much with our purpose as a company. Our purpose is to enable widespread patient access to lifesaving gene therapies. Everyone it works at or gets out of bed for that reason, not because we're paying them at the top of the market or because we're giving them a bonus.

01:22:19:21 - 01:22:44:09

Jason Foster

And also we want to give them a chance to do great things. And so things like autonomy, mastery, are they getting better at the skills they want to build? Are they are they making decisions for themselves, these kinds of things, building these into a company culture, incredibly difficult, you know, especially culturally. There's a lot of top down, cultures that, you know, the boss or the boss says goes, you know, the boss tells you what to do, and I go do it.

01:22:44:11 - 01:23:02:14

Jason Foster

And that's not how you build a great business. That's not how you retain top employees. You know, one of the things I'll give you one specific example, which I think is super interesting. So most companies, when they do talent reviews every year, they will, you know, say, okay, here we are, objectives for the year. Here's what you achieved.

01:23:02:14 - 01:23:20:18

Jason Foster

You have a meeting with your boss, you get a rating, you get a you're a top performer, or maybe you're a very good performer or you're an average performer, an upgrade you on a bell curve. Every single good company I've ever worked for had this kind of process. And your top performers, they'll say, and maybe that's 5% of your team in a big company.

01:23:20:20 - 01:23:41:04

Jason Foster

They'll say, well, you get a 6% raise. Isn't that great? Congratulations. And then for your other, you know, very good performers, the 20%, maybe they get a 4% raise and then your average performers, they get a 2% raise. So what are we doing for those top 5% for those top performers, we are putting a cap on their ability to earn.

01:23:41:06 - 01:23:59:05

Jason Foster

So we're saying all of you can, even if you're the best person in the whole company, the most you're ever going to get is 6% a year until maybe you change jobs and you get a little bit of extra bonus. But we're putting a cap on their earnings. And if you're a top performer, your earnings in the marketplace, your earnings potential is going like this.

01:23:59:05 - 01:24:24:05

Jason Foster

Right. So what happens when your market rate, your value in the market is here. And we're paying you this. And there's a very big gap here. What happens. You leave. Of course you do. You're a rational person. Someone saying I can make 30% more 40% more out in the marketplace. I'm going to leave the company. So we put systems in place and processes in place that actually drive our top performers out of the business.

01:24:24:07 - 01:24:44:21

Jason Foster

Those that are most valuable, we drive them out, and the people that are in the fat part of the bell curve who don't have a lot of other options, stick around. They're like, well, I'm happy to make 2%. This is talent dilution in action. You know, Reed Hastings from Netflix wrote a whole book about this, which is an awesome book called No Rules, rules, about culture.

01:24:44:21 - 01:24:45:20

Jason Foster

The culture. Netflix.

01:24:45:20 - 01:24:52:11

Jason Foster

Probably on your shelf there somewhere. That's the one there. Awesome book. It's the only book I've ever read. Business book

01:24:52:11 - 01:25:00:23

Jason Foster

cover to cover. And then flipped it over and started reading again. From page one. We thought it was that. I thought it was that interesting, and we modeled a lot of the way we think about culture after that book.

01:25:01:00 - 01:25:19:07

Jason Foster

But to say we're actually driving our top talent out of the business by putting systems like that in place. So we don't do that. What we do is we mark our, our employees to market every quarter. So I say, I'll ring you up and I'll say, Christian, we just did your benchmarking for the quarter. You've dropped 10% below what we think your benchmark should be.

01:25:19:07 - 01:25:34:16

Jason Foster

We're just going to bump your salary up to a ten by 10% to make sure you're a benchmark. Have a nice day. You didn't have to call me up and say, hey, I got another job. Sorry. You know, they're going to pay me 30% more. Oh, we'll match it. Please stay. You know we love you. That's the way most companies operate.

01:25:34:16 - 01:25:51:05

Jason Foster

It's ridiculous. Well, you need to make sure if. If I employ you. And I know that your top talent. I should be willing to pay you market rate or more. Because I know how good you are. If I'm not willing to pay you market rate, course you're going to leave. You're going to go do something else. So we have very high retention rates.

01:25:51:05 - 01:26:10:22

Jason Foster

We have very high job satisfaction rates. And it's not easy. It's not like everyone's always nice to each other. It's always, you know, working at or is a picnic. Every day we have our challenges. But when you have people that are motivated by the big purpose, they're fairly compensated and they're learning and and they're, you know, autonomous, they're driving their career forward.

01:26:10:24 - 01:26:18:18

Jason Foster

Those are very good building blocks to have people want to stay in the business and to be motivated to deliver the best result.

01:26:18:21 - 01:26:39:24

Christian Soschner

This is really great for the tool. There are three points that are important, I think, to double down purpose. So people want to have a purpose. It motivates them that purpose. And you embody that. In your company. Very often I feel when I look at the industry, I mean, we see wanting to make money is not a purpose that drives people forward, to do great things.

01:26:40:01 - 01:26:50:21

Christian Soschner

The second one that you mentioned is team development. You need to develop people that don't come ready made into the company. And when they when they see a purpose, they want also to evolve as a human being.

01:26:50:23 - 01:26:51:23

Jason Foster

Yes.

01:26:52:00 - 01:27:13:13

Christian Soschner

And then the third thing is it's still money. You said at the beginning money doesn't motivate people, but it has an important role. And what I see in Europe especially is very often that, money is just a cost factor and, you are forced to keep costs down and don't pay people well, because actually they are founders and should not make a lot of money.

01:27:13:15 - 01:27:17:04

Christian Soschner

Wise man is still important.

01:27:17:06 - 01:27:17:15

Jason Foster

It is

01:27:17:15 - 01:27:34:18

Jason Foster

important up to a point. So, you know, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right. The base layer food and shelter. If we're worried about, you know, can I pay for my kid to go to college or am I going to worry about where my next meal is going to come from? Or can I take a holiday?

01:27:34:20 - 01:27:49:19

Jason Foster

I'm going to be thinking about those things because those things are at the base. You know, those holidays are at the base layer, but you know what I mean. And these are important things that are kind of basic for people. So you have to pay well enough so that people feel valued and that they aren't thinking about money anymore.

01:27:49:21 - 01:28:05:24

Jason Foster

Because I'm busy thinking about what the guy next to me is making 10% more and he's an idiot, and I'm going to be distracted by that. I can't do my best work in that scenario, but if I feel like you know what? The company values me. I'm getting paid a fair wage. Maybe it's not the highest amount of money I could make out there in the world, but it's a fair wage.

01:28:06:01 - 01:28:24:14

Jason Foster

It frees me to think about these other things, for me to think about purpose and to think about, you know, some of the autonomy and mastery we're talking about. So money is important up to a point. And actually, I don't know if you have it on your shelf there, but Dentek did a lot of work on this. Another great business author, and he actually said that carrot and stick incentive.

01:28:24:14 - 01:28:44:15

Jason Foster

So the idea of I pay you a bonus if you succeed doing these 2 or 3 things, or I punish you if you don't achieve them, cause worse performance, not better. And that is a counterintuitive finding for every single business that exists out there. Every single business I know has KPI driven schemes. They have, you know, carrot and stick incentives all over the place.

01:28:44:17 - 01:29:06:01

Jason Foster

And what he said, the reason for this, if you're if you're making widgets and I pay you per widget, you're going to make as many wages as possible. Then the carrot instead of system works. But if I need you to think creatively about problem solving, what those kind of incentives do, they narrow our field of view. So we are focused on that.

01:29:06:01 - 01:29:25:15

Jason Foster

I'm going to hit that KPI, I'm going to deliver that objective, and I want to get that bonus. And that's what I'm doing because I'm a human being and I respond to incentives. But maybe there's something just out here or just over here that I could be doing this more important, or there's an opportunity for innovation that I don't see because I blinkered by that carrot and, this dangling in front of me.

01:29:25:17 - 01:29:44:22

Jason Foster

And he, he cites the candle problem, which is a well-known problem in psychology, where people have to essentially think laterally, think creatively to solve the problem. And most people don't when they're offered an incentive, when they're not offered an incentive, they often do solve a problem. So it is that kind of it's the ability is kind of blinkers us as human beings.

01:29:44:22 - 01:30:06:02

Jason Foster

And so the psychology behind money, you get to understand how it motivates people and what it does to them and what it does to their ability to innovate. I need people that innovate, that think laterally, that are looking for creative solutions, because we would have never gotten to where we are without people that thought that way. And so we we can't afford to put the blinkers on them by using those kinds of incentive programs.

01:30:06:04 - 01:30:22:20

Jason Foster

But again, this is this is thinking that most organizations don't employ. Maybe they might know about it and not believe it. I have to admit, my own board thinks I'm crazy at times when I talk about these things, but I truly believe that they are part of the secret of our success thus far.

01:30:23:06 - 01:30:43:21

Christian Soschner

Yeah, it's always the crazy ones who built great companies. This is it. I think I agree to what you said. I think this is the trinity of successful companies. Anybody who wants to build a valuable business has to focus on getting the best people. And the three points that you mentioned, I think are fundamental to get the best people and to keep the best people in the company, its purpose.

01:30:43:23 - 01:31:00:09

Christian Soschner

People go on to have a purpose, development perspective. Great people wants to develop and evolve. They want to get to don't wants to get stuck and take their worries away. I think this is the role of money. I mean, if someone has to worry about, can it be a school for my kids or can it be rent? Or where do I get food?

01:31:00:09 - 01:31:11:15

Christian Soschner

Like what I said with much love, they are not focused on your business. They are focused on worrying. And if you want them to focus on developing a valuable business, make them well.

01:31:11:17 - 01:31:12:12

Jason Foster

Yeah,

01:31:12:12 - 01:31:31:22

Jason Foster

that is really funny. So then picked as a YouTube presentation on this, it's like he's got a ten minute version. There's a like a 30 minute version. He boils this down to business. Doesn't do what science knows. The science is very clear on this stuff, on on human motivation and why people behave the way they do. The science is very clear.

01:31:31:24 - 01:31:51:22

Jason Foster

Business doesn't do what science does. And that's, you know, you just let it out. Very fundamentally. It's it makes logical sense. Most businesses don't do it because it's not the norm. It's not what they're used to. And that's for a better reason, I guess it's, hopefully it's a competitive advantage for. Because if we can do things a little bit different.

01:31:51:24 - 01:32:16:10

Christian Soschner

Absolutely. Apps. I think you mentioned Reed Hastings and look how far Netflix. Got a minute? You're doing kind of a thing, but you also I mean, you also convinced the investors, I read in your material that you have raced with your team since 2019, hundred, $40 million in an environment. This what? That was not nice. Nice? Not nice.

01:32:16:12 - 01:32:20:05

Christian Soschner

How was that for your team?

01:32:20:07 - 01:32:20:22

Jason Foster

Fundraising is

01:32:20:22 - 01:32:40:16

Jason Foster

terrible. I think it just you just. It's a necessary evil in a startup. People say I'm good at it. I don't know what that means exactly, but, we've been we've been blessed to have partner investors that really believe in our mission. And they want to be to build a big business and a leader that has a big impact.

01:32:40:16 - 01:33:00:14

Jason Foster

So it is really important to get investors whose vision aligns with yours. As a as founders, as a management team. But fundraising is a war of attrition. It just really is. You just have to make the calls. You have to do the outreach. You have to. I mean, Impolitely I say, you got to kiss a lot of frogs until you find your prince or princess.

01:33:00:14 - 01:33:22:09

Jason Foster

You know, it's sort of, you know, there's there is, ultimately business is a human endeavor, right? So and believe it or not, investors are human beings. And when you interface with them, they have the same hopes and dreams and fears that that you do. And they, you know, they will have family members who have had cancer and they will understand this challenge and intuitive ways.

01:33:22:09 - 01:33:52:01

Jason Foster

And so finding the right investor that believes in what the team's doing, that believes in the management team that sees the opportunity and wants to support you is incredibly difficult to find all of those pieces and to match them up and routinely, it always takes me nine months or longer to to raise money. So, whether it's a good market or bad, you know, even in 2021 when it was quote unquote easy or 2020 or 2021, it was easy to raise money.

01:33:52:03 - 01:34:10:23

Jason Foster

Sounds like nine months. You know, it just it's just how long it takes. You know, you have to make all those calls and have all those people, all those pitches and have all those discussions. And there's a lot of people out there that are really good at this and good at training founders at doing this. And they'll tell you that storytelling is a critical skill to build.

01:34:10:23 - 01:34:34:00

Jason Foster

As a founder. You must be able to tell the story of the disease area, of your technology, of your company, of yourself, of the history. You need to be able to engage other human beings on an emotional level that might be investors, that might be future employees, that might be board members, that might be, you know, who know customers, partners.

01:34:34:00 - 01:34:53:24

Jason Foster

There's ultimately the only thing that's happening at work is one human human being talking to another human being. That's the only thing that's happening at work. Right? So you need to be able to tell the story. That is a skill set that not every founder possesses and not every founder think is important. So I'm an angel investor.

01:34:53:24 - 01:35:25:01

Jason Foster

As I said, I've got a portfolio of 20 companies that I've invested in, all in the intersection of healthcare and technology, and many of them have a technical background, technical or scientific background, and rather impolitely. I say to them, no one gives a shit about your technology. Excuse my French, you know? And because most of technologists are really excited about the technology and they'll tell you all in four hours, they will tell you about the technology and I'll tell you every last detail and they'll tell you every minute, you know, incremental benefit.

01:35:25:03 - 01:35:44:05

Jason Foster

No one cares. No one cares about that. They don't care about your science either. What they really care about is is this problem serious enough to to try and solve? Can it deliver venture returns? Is this the team to try and solve the problem, and does the technology have a chance of actually delivering that benefit, delivering that solution?

01:35:44:05 - 01:36:03:07

Jason Foster

If you can answer yes to those four questions, you're investable. If it's no to any of those questions, you're not investable. And when you spend the whole 30 or 60 minute call talking about your technology, you're not answering the other three questions. You're only answering one question. And that is the biggest downfall that I see of technical founders and technical teams.

01:36:03:07 - 01:36:14:10

Jason Foster

They spend hours and hours on talking about the science, or hours and hours talking about technology, and they're not answering the right questions. And that is the biggest challenge people have. And fundraising, in my experience.

01:36:14:18 - 01:36:34:13

Christian Soschner

No, I totally agree to what you say. And you put it very nicely with the three important points. And the fourth one, you first needs to pick problem and understand the problem. And that is really a willingness to pay so that you can deliver venture returns. I think this is a point that is very often forgotten that venture capitalists actually want to make money at the end of the day after.

01:36:34:15 - 01:36:47:00

Christian Soschner

Otherwise. And the third point, the team and I will take it a step further. You don't even need to have a solution yet. You don't need to. The solution is you can deliver the first three parts.

01:36:47:02 - 01:36:47:08

Jason Foster

Right?

01:36:47:09 - 01:36:55:01

Christian Soschner

Agarwal. Right. Investible because the solution very often you can buy it. There's so many people with great tech on the market who just like this. Three points.

01:36:55:03 - 01:36:55:08

Jason Foster

That's

01:36:55:08 - 01:37:08:05

Jason Foster

right. Or you're you're betting that the team is going to be able to deliver deliver a solution, whatever it is. You know, you just bet on the team to do so, especially particularly early, you know, if you're doing pre-seed or seed investing, they just part of the team. You guys will figure it out or you assume so.

01:37:08:07 - 01:37:12:03

Jason Foster

So here's some money. Go do it. You're exactly right. You're exactly right.

01:37:12:05 - 01:37:29:09

Christian Soschner

But I like the Microsoft story I think Bill gates, this is what Bill gates did in the early days of Microsoft. I mean, he saw the problem. He saw this solution. He had the customers at the end of the day willing to pay. And that just went out of the market on the market and bought it and delivered and founded Microsoft with that.

01:37:29:11 - 01:37:43:04

Jason Foster

Yeah. And he's one of the most, impactful change, major change makers ever. You think about the impact of that innovation. Yeah. On business and and also the result of the Gates Foundation, you know, the most incredible change makers ever.

01:37:43:06 - 01:38:00:08

Christian Soschner

Ever still use Microsoft these days. At the end of Cliff, you mentioned those are some, one important points that I would like to take a little bit deeper. I really I very often hear these hero stories. I went out on to market six weeks and they closed around, and it's, it's so great. And you say nine plus months.

01:38:00:10 - 01:38:10:09

Christian Soschner

Can you can you lead the audience through a standardized fundraising process where they plan for 9 to 12 months?

01:38:10:11 - 01:38:11:03

Jason Foster

9 to 12

01:38:11:03 - 01:38:31:02

Jason Foster

months? Is the active fundraising phase. You should have spent six to 12 to 24 months ahead of that. Building relationships with the investors who you intend to pitch. So it's not only a nine month process. I knew all the investors that were going to invest in or before that for a year or two years.

01:38:31:04 - 01:38:53:21

Jason Foster

And you want them to a believe believe in you and believe what you're doing. Be interested in what you're doing, even if you're not investable for them. Now, you haven't had the phase of growth or stage where they might invest, but you want them to know about you. They want them to follow the story. And that network building and rapport building is a constant effort, and it's something that most founders lack.

01:38:54:01 - 01:39:16:01

Jason Foster

And they they do not pay enough attention to. They think, I go out, I flash my technology, I get a check. And that, you know, unfortunately, you see things with AI today where that happens and that leads people to believe that that's the norm and that's that's the exception, not the rule. Where you can get funded on a, you know, a business plan and nothing else.

01:39:16:03 - 01:39:34:02

Jason Foster

But, outside of those kind of major booms, you know, we talked about the 2000 dotcom bubble. You know, it's a similar time any business plan is going to be funded. And we see it. We saw how that ended. I'm afraid that, something similar might happen with cable, but we'll see. Ultimately, the way to do it right.

01:39:34:02 - 01:39:55:23

Jason Foster

And the way to do it consistently is to develop those relationships 12 months, 24 months ahead of time. You want people knowing your company. You want to be able to build your founder brand. So I'm very active on LinkedIn, as you saw, you know, getting to people to know already know what he's up to, to be a credible source of information for the industry, helps with business development.

01:39:55:23 - 01:40:14:23

Jason Foster

It helps with investors. It helps with, employee recruitment. You need to get your company's name out there. You need to get it known. And that takes work. Takes time to invest time in that. But those things pay dividends when it comes time to time rising and you hear, oh, I've been following the story or. Yeah, I remember we spoke a year ago and, you know, you've kept me up to date.

01:40:14:23 - 01:40:31:24

Jason Foster

That's great. You know, what's the latest if you're coming in cold, you know, three months before you run out of runway, you're stuffed. I mean, maybe someone might, you know, you might get lucky, but that's not the way to successfully fundraise. So you got to build a foundation, you know, 12 to 24 months ahead of time with the next round of investors.

01:40:32:01 - 01:40:55:24

Jason Foster

When you get kicked off the process, it's very important that you target the right investors. A lot of fundraising is massively time consuming, but at the same time, you're trying to run a business, you know you're a startup. Things are right. The day job doesn't go away. But you got this whole new other day job you've got to do, and fundraising is massively time consuming, so don't waste your time pitching the wrong investors a lot, a lot, a lot of startups pitch the wrong investors.

01:40:55:24 - 01:41:16:00

Jason Foster

And I did this to, the first round I raised 40, I went out and I pitched all the cell therapy, therapeutics, investors, the arches, the organ that the FDA is the, you know, you name it Atlas, you name it, I pitched them, I said, well, if they invest in cell therapy companies, surely they must be concerned about manufacturing.

01:41:16:00 - 01:41:37:13

Jason Foster

And surely they must be interested in what are you saying wrong? Not at all interested in what we're doing because their investment thesis is around therapeutics, binary outcomes, big, big wins. Everything else goes to zero. Their financial model model builds on that. Their risk tolerance is built on that. They're not interested in tools. And they get, you know, confused by well, you've got hardware move.

01:41:37:15 - 01:41:51:22

Jason Foster

We don't like that. We don't we don't invest in that. You know this is 2019. So I spent a lot of time pitching people who I thought should be interested in our solution, but weren't. And so you need to make sure, you know, maybe you can find an advisor or there's some people out there that can help you.

01:41:51:22 - 01:42:13:10

Jason Foster

If you don't know how to vet these things, find the right investors to stage you know their investors and invest in precision. So they like that stage. They want to take that risk. There's other investors who don't invest until you've got a product and you've reached product market fit or you've got a certain amount of revenue. I see all the time founders pitching the wrong stage of investor for the stage that they're at, and it's just a waste of time.

01:42:13:12 - 01:42:32:15

Jason Foster

So you have to call the list. You have to get to a core set of investors that, that, you know, are relevant for you and your innovation. Where, where does and where is that at its lifecycle? The next thing is making sure that you get a warm introduction. I know this is a controversial topic, but think about your own inbox.

01:42:32:20 - 01:42:54:23

Jason Foster

How many unsolicited emails do you get trying to sell you stuff every day? Hundreds, literally hundreds of emails every day. And LinkedIn messages about people trying to sell this stuff. So as human beings, we have to have ways to prioritize and filter what's important, what's not. The way venture capitalists do that is that the direct, the referral comes from a trusted source.

01:42:55:00 - 01:43:13:12

Jason Foster

So a portfolio company, another investor, a thought leader in the space, get a referral to a target investor from someone that they know. The only way to break through. You know, all these there's there's several investors out there that say, oh, you can submit a business plan on our website, and we promise you look at it. Yeah, they will.

01:43:13:12 - 01:43:30:10

Jason Foster

Some of them will, but it's just a much harder way to go. So figure building your network again, building your invest, your founder profile, your founder brand, your company brand all these things will help you get more of interest to investors. And then once you're in there, make sure that you are focused on those four things you're talking about.

01:43:30:13 - 01:43:50:17

Jason Foster

You know, make sure you're not just spending the whole time talking. If your first slide is a deep dive on technology, and so is the other 3 or 4 slides, after that, you got to fix it. You got to fix the deck. And ultimately, what will inspire a VC to spend more time with you beyond that first call is that they're interested in the problem you're solving.

01:43:50:17 - 01:44:07:04

Jason Foster

They're connected emotionally with it. They're interested with you as a founder, and they connected with you as a founder, and they're willing to invest time in you. And that that is all you want from that first discussion. You're not going to get anywhere to say, here's a term sheet on the first call. You're not going to get anyone to say, yes, I'm ready to invest.

01:44:07:06 - 01:44:26:10

Jason Foster

You are only goal in that first call is to establish rapport and get a second phone call. And if you can kind of it's it's a formula. It's a formula that you can learn and you can you can practice. But there's just so many pitfalls and so many areas. I see founders fall down, particularly scientific and technical founders, and they're just shooting themselves in the foot.

01:44:26:10 - 01:44:36:07

Jason Foster

These are lessons that can be learned from myself and others out there in the world who've done it. Do your homework at a time. You'll save yourself so much anguish and heartache when you go out to fundraise.

01:44:36:14 - 01:44:56:18

Christian Soschner

I couldn't agree more, but many people just don't do that. On the investments. I had many investors, hold their teams back and say, don't go out on the market. Important points that you mentioned. Do your public relations work before you need money, get to know the people in the ecosystem. And then the nice thing happens when you know the people, you don't need warm introductions because they come naturally to you.

01:44:56:20 - 01:45:17:18

Christian Soschner

And this is also something that I experience very often that people call me who I don't know and say, you know, this person came to give me a warm introduction. I don't know you, I should it doesn't work. Then comes the nine month period to really fundraising existing reality, hard core period where we have to bring people through and this is more or less a sales funnel.

01:45:17:18 - 01:45:36:17

Christian Soschner

At the end of the day, you need to understand what they want, and then you can pitch and just be patient. Don't try to do it all at the same time. And then you mentioned an interesting point that you need to write partners in pitch to the right VCs. I mean, fundraising when you do it and even when you pitch to the right folks, you get a lot of no's.

01:45:36:19 - 01:45:56:14

Christian Soschner

And it's not that, as you said, you pick up the phone to call one person and the person says, yeah, I'm super happy. Here is the check hundred million right on your bank account. It's another process that starts. That's how is a human. Then you get a lot of nos. What's your secret? How do you deal with that?

01:45:56:16 - 01:45:57:11

Jason Foster

Yeah,

01:45:57:11 - 01:46:19:02

Jason Foster

153. That's how many no's I got in the last month. I was raising 255, 143. It's hard. I mean, it's, you know, constant rejection is hard. But, you know, my first point on the three takeaways from this podcast should be, I know this is hard. You know, we talked about doing hard things and it's hard, but no one says it's going to be easy or hard on you.

01:46:19:02 - 01:46:38:18

Jason Foster

It's harder on your family, harder your relationships. It's it's thankless. Often work, and fundraising is no exception. It's very hard. So I think you just have to learn to pick yourself up. You know, I've, I've, you know, I always joke and love that I do the the West Coast swing. It starts at 9 p.m. and London time it goes till midnight.

01:46:38:20 - 01:46:53:18

Jason Foster

So, you know, I'll work until 5 or 6, take 2 or 3 hours off. Family, you know, dinner, family time, kids go to bed, and then I'll get back on the phone for for three hours. You need to figure out how to integrate work and life together. You know, I don't really think there's such a thing as work life balance.

01:46:53:18 - 01:47:09:04

Jason Foster

It's work life integration. You got to just put the pieces together. And that's how I handle it, is, you know, you schedule the time, you do the work, you make the calls, you'll get the nos as part of that. Just, you know, for whatever reason, does it fit? You know, it could be that they're where they are in their fund's life cycle.

01:47:09:04 - 01:47:24:23

Jason Foster

They're towards the end. They're they're saving reserves for their portfolio. Companies are raising new fund. You know, partner just left. They're waiting for something to come in. There's so many reasons why you could get a no. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with your company, has nothing to do with your future potential, potentially.

01:47:25:00 - 01:47:53:22

Jason Foster

It's just that it's not the right time for that fund or as you call them, on a bad day or so. You can't internalize all of that sort of negativity. Oh, that was my 100th. Now it's never going to happen. And if and if you do and you'll feel that way for sure. But you got to get a good night's sleep, go to the gym and get back at it the next day, you know, and that's you know, I think I also advise my founders of my portfolio companies like you have to take care of yourself first because you'll be no good to your company if you're tired, if you're stressed, if you're, you

01:47:53:22 - 01:48:03:01

Jason Foster

know, depressed, if you're not, not eating well, if you're not sleeping well, if your things at home aren't good, you can't you can't serve the company well. So

01:48:03:01 - 01:48:06:14

Jason Foster

you have to take care of yourself first. And these are ways which help you be

01:48:06:14 - 01:48:12:12

Jason Foster

resilient. You know, when the notes don't hurt quite as bad, they still hurt, but they don't hurt quite as bad.

01:48:12:15 - 01:48:15:17

Jason Foster

And when you get to that 154th call and you get a yes,

01:48:15:17 - 01:48:30:07

Jason Foster

the best feeling, you know, you wouldn't think you have to work so hard to sell part of your business, but you do have to work that hard. As part of the founder journey, you have to get good at fundraising because it's just part of the part of what keeps your company alive.

01:48:30:15 - 01:48:40:19

Christian Soschner

And that is true. I couldn't agree more. And this is also where marathon running comes into play. So training, resilience, basically going 42km 26 miles.

01:48:40:21 - 01:48:41:02

Jason Foster

Well you

01:48:41:02 - 01:48:59:08

Jason Foster

know when you go out. So a lot of the marathons take place in the spring right April. And then so that means you're training in December January in London raining gray cold. You definitely don't want to go to bed. You go to bed at 5 a.m. and go running. But you do, it's the same as same as making that fundraising call.

01:48:59:08 - 01:49:06:22

Jason Foster

You don't want to stay until midnight. Make another call to San Francisco to a VC. But you do. You do the work, and eventually you get the result.

01:49:07:12 - 01:49:27:20

Christian Soschner

And this is, in my opinion, where you can learn that processes and plants matter. Because when you have a process in the plan and in the morning, you get up, you don't have to overthink your emotions. It's just okay, it's Monday, it's a fork. I lace up my shoes, I get the job done, and then on to the next task on the list.

01:49:27:23 - 01:49:47:10

Jason Foster

Absolutely right. Yeah, we use the 17 week marathon training plan and you maps it out every day and what you need to do, and you guys go do it and you set it on autopilot. Same. You know, you make three outreaches two weeks per day. You have schedule two calls. You do, you know, five follow ups to systematize it.

01:49:47:11 - 01:50:09:11

Jason Foster

You got to program it in and you do the work and then you start not even thinking about it. You know, I'm sure your listenership is at least as big or bigger than Stephen Bartlett's. I don't know if you know, stories of a CEO. Yeah. I've recently I'm reading a book right now, and he's he said, you know, I just had a program, go to the gym, and I do it every day I wake up.

01:50:09:11 - 01:50:25:11

Jason Foster

I don't think about it. I don't care what day it is. I go to the gym, I do the workout. And this is the kind of do the ways in which highly successful people do things is that they just systematize that. Because, you know, that old phrase about swallowing the frog, doing the hardest thing first, whatever, whatever it is that that works for you.

01:50:25:13 - 01:50:44:17

Jason Foster

But if every day you have to pick the same, it's like, oh, I just don't feel like getting out of bed. I don't feel like making that call. I don't feel like going to the gym. It's just going to be too hard. Eventually inertia will get you. It'll drag you down and you just you just stop doing it and then you won't schedule, you know, you just have to take take the mental part of it and just turn it into a habit.

01:50:44:17 - 01:50:54:06

Jason Foster

And I just finished Atomic Habits as well. It's a great, great book on how to build, habits and positive habits that have positive outcomes.

01:50:54:09 - 01:51:09:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. System society canceled life at the end of the day. Good news. Bad days. It's part of life to come and go. But when I have a system, when I have a plan which just executes at the end of the day and you don't have to give in and, stamp it and say, oh, it's just a bad day.

01:51:09:17 - 01:51:11:24

Christian Soschner

It's raining. It's just no, don't do that.

01:51:12:01 - 01:51:16:05

Jason Foster

But human nature, it's human nature. But yeah, you have to you have to fight human nature.

01:51:16:07 - 01:51:37:03

Christian Soschner

Yeah, absolutely. Every single day, I hear very often in the industry these days. Fractionalized roads. So you have a fractionalized CPO, a fractional CEO. Can you build great business on, fractionalized. 20 hours, five hours, one hour, 50 minutes. Rolls.

01:51:37:05 - 01:51:37:23

Jason Foster

There is a

01:51:37:23 - 01:52:01:00

Jason Foster

role for fractional, functional leadership, I would say does an early stage kind of seed or precede company need a CFO full time? I don't think they do. I think you can get by with five, ten, 20 hours as you grow and then you know, at the right time you will need to hire in functional leadership, I don't think you can be a founder or a CEO part time.

01:52:01:02 - 01:52:24:01

Jason Foster

I just it's an on, you know, all encompassing, you know, life consuming experience. And I think you're either my personal perspective is you're either all in or all out. I know a lot of academics try and be part time founders. They don't want to leave the safety of academia. So they start a company, they get it going, they get it funded in the maybe they hire in professional management.

01:52:24:01 - 01:52:44:22

Jason Foster

So maybe for a short, very short period of time, it's possible. But I think you need people that are full time, dedicated and focused on the success of this business. And that's all they think about. And they eat, breathe and sleep. At, I do board work in addition to worry. You know, I'm on the board of a couple of my portfolio companies.

01:52:44:24 - 01:53:12:01

Jason Foster

And I actually work with a couple of weeks as a advisor or, you know, member of the IC. And I find that those additional outlets, because it's all it's all confined to health tech. It's all confined to the same stage businesses or is I find that they're quite complimentary. I learn things being a director of another company or being an advisor to a VC fund that help authority and vice versa.

01:53:12:01 - 01:53:29:20

Jason Foster

So I find that the synergistic, but if you're going to try and do something, you know, like, I would never go and try and start a like food tech business or a climate tech business for a, you know, agent business. I it's just so totally different from my experience and my what I do today that I think it would be dilutive.

01:53:29:22 - 01:53:48:08

Jason Foster

So I think you really need a high level focus. Maybe there's some complementarity if you want to do some other things, but you need to be highly, you know, always thinking, you know, I do some of my best thinking in the shower, about worry and its problems. So you want someone who's always thinking about your business and the challenges that they face and trying to solve.

01:53:48:13 - 01:54:13:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah. I don't like if someone wants to build a game changing company with venture capital, there is no other way than getting a focused, important focus on just one thing. And move it forward. Otherwise, you can build other things with other life, life models, but not the unicorns. When we look at the future of your company or for biotech, where do you see a company in ten years?

01:54:13:12 - 01:54:13:20

Jason Foster

Our

01:54:13:20 - 01:54:41:02

Jason Foster

ambition for Ori is to build the leading infrastructure provider in selling gene therapy. So we want to build, the pick and ax supplier that helps the industry move forward, if you will. So the previous leaders, you know, the thermo fishers, the sartorius is the kind of society of the debtors that have really supported biopharma through its journey through biologics, the kind of first and second pillars of medicine.

01:54:41:04 - 01:55:04:05

Jason Foster

We want to build a competitor to those businesses, but specifically for Synology therapy, we want to build the next generation of innovations that really take these products from R&D all the way through, through GMP. We just brought a gentleman named Tony Hunt on to our advisory board. Tony was the former CEO of Religion and I think represents a great model for what where he wants to be when he grows up.

01:55:04:10 - 01:55:22:06

Jason Foster

So they built a competitor to those companies and at one time was over a $10 billion market cap company. And they did it through innovation. They did it through organic and inorganic growth, and they did it by serving customers really well. And so I think there's a great model there for, for Oregon to become what it wants to become.

01:55:22:06 - 01:55:43:04

Jason Foster

And that may include, you know, we'll need additional financing in the future. We'll do, you know, another round of private financing, or we may do go public at some point so that we can satisfy that ambition. But ultimately, the ambition is to build something that's lasting and that has an impact, a huge impact on patient lives. And to do that takes time.

01:55:43:06 - 01:56:00:02

Jason Foster

Takes time, takes money. You know, we are in this for a short term flip, you know, build a product and sell it to one of those guys and have them take it to market. We want to build a lasting enterprise that outlasts us in our professional lives. Not that's the ambition of a company.

01:56:00:10 - 01:56:09:20

Christian Soschner

So I think even you'll succeed with your plan. You'll target the public company market cap north of $10,000,000,000 billion. At the end of the day.

01:56:09:22 - 01:56:10:19

Jason Foster

I would that would be the

01:56:10:19 - 01:56:28:24

Jason Foster

ambition. We'll see. You know, ultimately starting with, 500 million and then you get to a billion and then you go to 2 billion, and then maybe you get to 10 million, but, yeah. So we, you know, ultimately we need to satisfy the needs of our customers and, to drive revenue by working with our partners to deliver great products for patients.

01:56:28:24 - 01:57:01:16

Jason Foster

And as I advise my founders, if you take care of the business, the exit will take care of itself. Ultimately, if you're trying to build a business for a particular exit, for an outcome, oftentimes you make decisions that hamstring the business from being a self-sustaining going concern. My thesis is that if we build the best business we can with the great kind of metrics and growth and the that delights customers, that will have lots of exit opportunities and, you know, it could be one sale, could be another.

01:57:01:18 - 01:57:20:21

Jason Foster

But as long as we're building for that outcome, then all of the doors are open to us. If we only build for one particular exit outcome, those other doors are closed to us. And so we are then beholden to that outcome actually coming to fruition, as we've seen for the last three years, known with IP telling, no one was behind anything really.

01:57:20:23 - 01:57:40:01

Jason Foster

The transactions were happening. And if you were, if you had your runway scheduled to achieve that outcome and you missed your window, you're stuffed. So you have to build a resilient business that's self-sustaining and profitable and can grow and do all those things. And then you'll have lots of options from the outcome that you want to achieve.

01:57:40:12 - 01:58:05:14

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I totally agree. Resilience is all of that constant businesses that are good times, they're bad times, like running. And when you focus on resilience, then you'll survive the bad stuff. I'm saying that they are when they go to the market like Nvidia, I think it was Jensen Huang. It recent conference in the United States with the oil import coast who said, he has produced more millionaires and billionaires than any other CEO in the tech company.

01:58:05:14 - 01:58:12:02

Christian Soschner

But it took him 30 years. And still, you know, this is just the way it is now.

01:58:12:02 - 01:58:12:24

Jason Foster

Exactly. I

01:58:12:24 - 01:58:37:05

Jason Foster

you know, as I said, I just turned 50 not that long ago. And so I was an operator in the dotcom bubble in the years after. I was an operator during 2008, the financial crisis. And now post 2021, the bubble burst. And there are when you go through that, you learn to really focus on the important things to build a sustainable business.

01:58:37:07 - 01:59:07:18

Jason Foster

And I've seen too many businesses that were hot and then ran out of money and crashed because they just didn't plan for it. So we closed our series B, a $100 million round at the end of 2021, and rounds were still getting done. Business was still good, but you could tell the the clouds were rolling in, the sands were shifting, and having had that experience a couple times before, we changed what was then going to be a two year use of funds until, you know, we need to make this my last as long as possible and still get to market and still start to deliver revenue.

01:59:07:18 - 01:59:29:10

Jason Foster

And so like I said, we totally changed our use of funds. I guess muscle memory kicked in from those last experiences. But, you know, survival as a strategist, what I tell my founders and, you know, you talk about Airbnb and Uber and some of these companies that were built up in the financial crisis, and they survived.

01:59:29:12 - 01:59:49:10

Jason Foster

Other competitors were better financed that were ahead of them and had better technology, but they didn't manage the business. Well. And so you always have to be thinking about what could go wrong. Good times don't last. And you know the bad times. You know, I hear you know this. I think April of 2025 was probably peak peak despair.

01:59:49:12 - 02:00:09:02

Jason Foster

In biotech and, cell therapy. Because, you know, Trump was announcing a new tariff every day that he fired everyone on the FDA, and he canceled NIH grants all in one week. And it was pulling their hair out. And, you know, I just said, like, it's not going to be this bad forever. Like, you know, we have to just weather the storm.

02:00:09:02 - 02:00:32:02

Jason Foster

Survival is a strategy. We need to keep going, keep delighting customers, keep being frugal with our runway, keeping focused on, you know, retaining cash. And when the cycle turns, not. Is this like when the secretary will be ready? We'll be ready to accelerate. We'll be ready to capitalize on that uptick. And, you know, we've been able to manage that runway out for four years.

02:00:32:04 - 02:00:52:20

Jason Foster

Plus. And I'm pretty positive about 2026. I think 20 2025 will be, you know, even in the last month or so, we started to see things unlock. And CapEx spending increase. And pharma companies coming to us have been keeping us on the back burner. And they said, okay, we were engaged. Now I could feel it, sort of. I'm hopeful about the second half.

02:00:52:20 - 02:01:13:19

Jason Foster

I think it'll really unlock in 2026 and I can see, you know, the next cycle start then, but that to survive, to be in the game, we've got to survive and I think to two of the founders, I get a $10 million in the bank or whatever, and they start spending with wild, abandoned, exhausting. You got to treat it like it's your own money and make every penny count.

02:01:13:23 - 02:01:38:09

Christian Soschner

Yeah. Totally agree. This is the nice thing. When, getting older, you survived many crisis. People experience a crisis. When I look back, it's 1987. Big crisis. It didn't last forever. 2000. The crisis didn't last forever 28. Especially in Europe until 2012. Fish 13 is nation big, big crisis also went by. And now I think in 2025 you're also at the bottom in biotech.

02:01:38:11 - 02:01:38:20

Christian Soschner

And

02:01:39:00 - 02:01:39:17

Jason Foster

I agree.

02:01:39:19 - 02:01:47:00

Christian Soschner

With that. We come back. Jason, it's really great talking to you. We are it's 12 hours already. Time flies by.

02:01:47:00 - 02:01:47:14

Jason Foster

Yeah.

02:01:47:16 - 02:01:53:06

Christian Soschner

Is there anything that we missed in this recording? Just any points that you want to bring across?

02:01:53:08 - 02:02:17:24

Jason Foster

I just wanted to reiterate that ultimately, what drives value, what drives change in the world is innovation. The innovators, people that work hard with new ideas, new ways to solve problems. You know, you guys are the ones that will change the world. And so in the dark times when it is hard, when you need to make that extra call and you get that extra mile, just keep going.

02:02:18:01 - 02:02:19:07

Jason Foster

Ultimately, you know,

02:02:19:07 - 02:02:24:09

Jason Foster

you only have to get up one last time every time you get knocked down, and you never know what the

02:02:24:09 - 02:02:35:04

Jason Foster

next time could be when you reach success. So don't think it's unique. Don't think it's unusual that you suffer setbacks, or that you know you get knocked down or you have bad days or it's really hard.

02:02:35:06 - 02:02:39:12

Jason Foster

It is. All those things are true, but it's worth it in the end. So just keep going.

02:02:39:14 - 02:03:03:17

Christian Soschner

Yeah. Totally agree. Great final votes Jason, thank you very much for this fantastic conversation. I loved every single minute of it. Keep building the future of cell and gene therapy. I think manufacturing needs a solution and also keep pushing forward to motivate our policymakers, to automate and to improve the end industry so that the best therapies reach the patients.

02:03:03:19 - 02:03:07:15

Jason Foster

I said expression together, we'll keep doing hard things. I promise.

02:03:07:17 - 02:03:12:02

Christian Soschner

Yeah. Good to know, good to know. Have a great afternoon and talk to you soon.

02:03:12:04 - 02:03:13:07

Jason Foster

You too.

02:03:13:09 - 02:03:14:06

Christian Soschner

Bye bye.

02:03:14:08 - 02:03:15:06

Jason Foster

Bye.

02:03:15:08 - 02:03:44:20

Christian Soschner

What Jason shared today is not just about biotech. It's about the art of endurance, about building systems that carry you forward when motivation fades. Because every founder, every policy maker, every investor faces the same moment the night before the next call, when it's easier to stop than to try again. And that's when discipline replaces motivation.

02:03:44:22 - 02:03:49:02

Christian Soschner

That's when resilience becomes your greatest asset.

02:03:49:02 - 02:04:09:15

Christian Soschner

Jason reminded us that innovation is not a bad luck. It's persistence built into process that self-care is not indulgence. It's a leadership theory and that the real breakthroughs happen when biology, technology, and human purpose finally align.

02:04:09:15 - 02:04:21:20

Christian Soschner

if this conversation moved you, if it gave you one new idea or one spark of energy, please take a moment now to follow the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.

02:04:21:22 - 02:04:46:03

Christian Soschner

It costs nothing, but it helps me bring more of this real world class voices directly to you. And if you want to keep growing with us next week, I'm joined by another extraordinary guest pushing the boundaries of science, business, and leadership. So hit follow. Stay curious and I will see you in the next episode of Beginner's Mind.