Thanks for joining me today, Nikki. Hey, Rashad,
great to be here. As we said today, you are leading
a biotechnology startup at the forefront of medicine.
How did you get here? Well, it's an interesting
story. I actually am the co -founder and CEO
of Swaza, which is based in Mountain View, California,
Silicon Valley biotechnology startup. But how
I came to it actually was as the first outside
investor to the company. And the story really
starts in COVID, as many of the stories today
start. But in my case, in 2020 is the year that
I call my Jobin year, because in that year, I
lost my mom very early to COVID. To tell you
how early it was when she passed in Virginia,
they wrote about it in the Washington Post with
two other people, because it was so exotic to
actually have someone die from SARS -CoV -2.
In that same year, I lost all of my dependents
who lived with me. They were older dependents.
And I suffered a head injury where I had to relearn
how to walk again. I had so many different life
changes in that one short period of time. I found
myself at the end of 2020. alone with the mirror
and God and asking the question, you know, when
we lose those aspects of our identity that we
define our daily lives by, then who are we really?
And at the end of that time, I sort of just realized
that, well, whatever I have or I haven't done
or whatever I've achieved, I haven't achieved.
I'm a steward. We don't really own anything.
It's all on loan to us, time, money, resources,
and talent. So I thought, well, what I need to
do is basically spend whatever time I do have,
whether it's 10 years or 100 years, it's all
really short, building things that matter. And
so I radically changed what my Focus was on,
I radically changed the things I was investing
in. I had a very different risk profile and risk
appetite. And it wasn't really for money, but
it was for impact. And so in parallel, at that
same time, my co -founder Jay Rajadas had been
rapidly trying to race against the clock to develop
key technologies in response to COVID. a vaccine,
a therapeutic, a number of other technologies.
But the fourth technology he developed was this
nanofluid breathing aid technology. And so when
we met and converged, it really was about time
and purpose. And I saw the utility of what we
were doing in not only in respiratory care, but
really the approach using these advanced drug
delivery techniques to really create new kinds
of therapeutics that really addressed the host
or the person rather than specific underlying
biochemical processes of disease as being not
only very useful, but having huge utility and
in meeting a huge unmet need. So my journey to
this type of entrepreneurism rather than having
it be a progression or departure from something
that I had been doing before was more of a homecoming
to a really intentional grounded and purposeful
approach to not only investing my time but resources
and an effort into. So when I came upon Swaza
technology, it wasn't the question, should I
do this? It was the question, how can I not do
this? Because this matters. This is what I need
to be called to build. And so that alignment
of purpose, that alignment of mission was really
what drove what drove all of this. Jay, who's
the inventor of the technology, he spent his
entire life creating life -giving therapeutics.
And it's not for money or for fame. It's because
he wants to see people benefit from good science
and have better quality of life. So it's a real
privilege to be able to do this and to represent
a team of people who have decades of experience
and passion creating therapeutics and regenerative
biomaterials. I'm sorry to hear about your mom
and your family. It sounds like you went through
a very difficult time. to almost reprogram and
rewire your thinking and your purpose to a different
mission. If you're open, maybe talk to me about
how did you think about purpose in life and how
did that translate to different career opportunities
you undertook before? It seems like you did amazing.
work even before the COVID pandemic, and you
continue to do amazing work after. To me, it
looks almost like a linear trajectory, if I'm
being frank with you, although I'll be in different
industries and different radicals. How do you
think about purpose now? And what advice do you
have to say a 20 -year -old Nikki, if you had
a chance to talk to her, what would you tell
her about? purpose and maybe let's, you know,
feel free to go into the personal side of things
as well, but if you can give a synopsis on the
career or the work side of things as well. Well,
thanks, Rashad. I had been blessed with a very
good career. I was good at what I did before.
I was an executive leadership, particularly at
the intersection of academia and entrepreneurship.
We were building businesses spinning out of academia
to actually scale up higher education. This was
with the growth of online learning, with the
growth of digital. textbooks, and the growth
of competency -based education. So we were really
one of the pioneers that ended up building an
organization that was sold to University of Massachusetts
in 2021. And so the educational mission, again,
it ties back to a sense of purpose, a contribution
to the world leadership. At the same time, I
think, in the course of that career, which was
very meaningful. I think we all reach these certain
plateaus where you know that you're very good
at it, but you're not learning more, and that
the thing more that you should be doing may be
outside of your comfort zone. And so I had reached
that point at several different stages in my
career. And I would always respond to that by
stepping back and then seeing, given where I
am right now, what can I do to explore these
other aspects or talents that I want to cultivate?
And who are the people that I should be doing
that with? And that actually led me to a lot
of my angel investing too. So prior to coming
on board with Swaza, I had been doing a number
of investments. investor with a little I, but
you know, I had had the fortune of being just
being in the Silicon Valley, right, persisting,
getting getting some wins in that that area,
which then, you know, rolled into my entrepreneurial
journey at swaza. But to tell the 20 year old
self, I actually have one of the really profound
joys that I have is when I talk to young people.
A couple of years ago, I was invited to University
of Chicago at the Booth School of Business to
meet with students there and talk to them about
their journeys. And what I actually told those
students, and this is something that I did after
that profound year in 2020 at the end, was I
sat and I made a list of everything that I wanted
to do, be, and see like in terms of achievement
and these are not necessarily a career achievements,
but I didn't want to die before I knew this list
of things that I had touched upon them and. It
and it had to be a very honest list. It wasn't
about what would look good to somebody on the
outside. You know, the house car, everything
that it wasn't from the outside in. It was from
the inside out and having to sit and very be
very honest with that list. And I sat at one
point and I wrote and I kept writing and I kept
writing just each line a different thing until
I found myself starting to repeat things. That
means I had exhausted that. And that became what
I call the list, not very creative. But the interesting
thing is when I committed to that sense of vision,
that real true heart list, that's when everything
really shifted for me that brought me to this
part of my journey. Some of the things on the
list were actually quite outlandish and ridiculous,
like things I would have never imagined happening,
but they felt truly aspirational to me. And the
interesting thing is that over the course of
time, I started noticing even those outlandish
things on the list actually start to happen,
because there was a fundamental truth, I think,
from the inside out and then connecting. With
the world that you live in and the life that
that you you live in it there's there's an alignment
there so i tell young people. Spend time making
that list and be 100 % honest with yourself and
then if you think you want something stop and
say why do i want that is is it because i'm supposed
to want that. Because social media tells me to
want it, or whatever, or my classmates in my
grad school tell me that that's what I should
aspire to, or do I really want it? And it can
be simple things as well. So my list ranges from
the outlandish, about building my company, et
cetera, to just small daily rituals of like,
well, I want to have nice flowers in my house
every week. Like, down to that level of detail,
it somehow is important to my soul. I put it
on the list. So that's what I tell young people.
And that's what I tell myself, because that was
a transformative process for me. And I still,
every day, every morning, I put that list in
front of me. Because you need that on the entrepreneurial
journey, as you probably know yourself, to remind
you, what am I doing? Why? Where does this come
from? and every morning I put in front of me.
And that's what orients my thinking that day.
That's fascinating. And I'm someone who struggles
with routine a lot. Every day is different, and
I kind of like it that way. Which isn't ideal
because often I get into Friday and I have 30
things to do and I'm up till midnight. How do
you think about routine and having say weekly
or monthly goals or even daily goals as opposed
to more going with the flow to an extent and
just kind of seeing where the opportunities and
problems lie in both here. personal and business
life and dealing with those as they come? Yeah,
that's a really good question because I think
like you my natural tendency is to want to Not
be limited by routine and then as an entrepreneur
you can't really have professionally a routine
as you would in a corporate environment where
I know that these sort of set meetings are what
I need to get to in order to, quote, do a good
job. In a startup, which is not a company, it's
a startup. It's building something that doesn't
exist yet. You need to get to the milestone.
You need to solve the problem. You need to address
the the situation, whether it's equipment in
your lab or if it's closing an investment. And
those things can be very stochastic and they
are the enemy of routine. What I found probably
be more helpful rather than the routine itself
is to have a very stable mental model about how
you manage your objectives and time or effort
rather. And I think effort and energy That's
now what I think about things more. And so I
was not, for example, prioritizing my health
very early in the startup. It was all living
very cognitively trying to just focus on the
work of and the thousand different things that
you need to pay attention to. But I realized
that having a proper routine for my sleep, my
diet, my exercise, if I didn't have that, then
I couldn't support this cognitive life that had
to drive. I couldn't make the right decisions.
I couldn't have the right level of energy to
do what I need to do. So it was more aligning
to the bigger goal and then having that be what
drives the sense of routine. And then also having
some flexibility and then having those habits.
So I like to think about things more in terms
of a weekly container. What are the priorities
for the week according to the role that I'm playing?
And I'm a student of 1990s management theory.
So like the Franklin Covies of the world, in
1995, Intel had adopted this kind of universal
time management system, which was called the
Franklin system. This was ultimately acquired
by Stephen Covering and became Franklin Covey.
But that kind of model of having understanding
what the important things are versus what's urgent.
Did you explain the system to us? Yeah. So this
paradigm is kind of understanding the difference
between important and urgent. There are things
that are both important and urgent. Those have
to be top of mind. There are things that are
urgent just because they're emerging contingencies
and exigencies, but they're not necessarily important.
They're little fires. But then there are things
that are Neither important nor nor urgent or
not strategic but oftentimes these take up a
lot of our our time meaningless meanings pro
forma kinds of things random emails but. because
their activity, they can feel productive. And
so the paradigm that I found very useful was,
I think, one developed by Stephen Covey himself
was called the big rocks, where you focus on
what the big rocks are in your week, like the
big things that you know have to get done that
are really important. And then everything else
gets organized around them. And then sort of
organizing things by the week tend to be the
right time scale for me, because then the day,
you can slot things into the day. But as long
as you feel that you are in the right direction
for the week, I tend to find that that's been
my sweet spot in terms of routines and in organizations.
It's still a work in proc, still a work in process
and progress. You know, I have colleagues who
are very routinized, and I kind of admire them
from afar for consistency. But that's what I
do for me. There's a common mantra in this world
or in this ecosystem that says, you know, move
fast, break things, have a strong bias to action.
And from an experiential perspective, I feel
like that can go wrong very often in health care,
because often you don't get second chances if
you move fast or break things. And I have a very
strong bias to action, so I have to temper this
bias. Sometimes I need to plan a bit more before
I launch a new product or even simple things
like editing this podcast. I need to spend some
time editing it and listening to it, coming up
with some promotional materials. How do you think
about bias to action versus bias to planning?
I like Adam Grant's philosophy of moderate procrastination
here. I don't know if I like it because that
resonates with me, but how do you think about
kind of these two opposites of planning or just
acting right away? I think probably my experience
is that overall a bias towards action tends to
move the ball down the field. But a bias towards
action isn't an excuse for lack of very intentional
thinking and planning because you can move the
ball the wrong direction. You could score the
wrong goal, but probably on average, it's better
to move than to keep still. That's just been
my experience. I think procrastination is probably
inevitable with any kind of thinking work that
requires deep, deep thinking. And anywhere you're
dealing with an unknown, that is, in fact, what
you're mulling over. Where there could be multiple
possibilities for a problem or a solution, you
can't just act your way towards a solution sometimes.
You have to think through, iterate, create small
experiments, sort of test a hypothesis, and move
forward. But I think the world as it's structured
now is made for people who take action. And we
know this intuitively. Is it always the most
clever, the most competent, the most qualified
who win the prize or win the game? No, it's often
people who reach out and take. Take it right
and that said. You know we want we want people
to be thoughtful I don't believe in breaking
things and we're in and you and I are in the
sort of the health. You know field right where
it's not about breaking things about first doing
no harm and so. That's a guiding principle for
us. Whatever we build, we need to make sure we
spend the time. And if it takes longer, that
it's 100 % absolutely safe. And it's 100 % absolutely
we are confident that it's not going to cause
harm. Or if there are harms, we understand every
aspect of that potential harm. I think even if
you're not building a medical technology, that's
a good stance to adopt. And I think more builders,
more engineers should think of that first. Why
am I doing this? And what is the broader impact
of what I'm doing? And therefore, I should force
myself to slow down where it matters so that
I don't create unintended consequences for what
I build. Yeah, unintended consequences and downstream
effects of what you build are critical in healthcare.
You said something in the previous answer that
I really like is activity can feel like progress.
I feel like founders, sometimes they seek external
validation more than internal validation. And
by internal, I mean, internal company validation,
which is, you know, does this drive revenue growth?
Is the internal team aligned on the strategies
we're foreseeing and is everyone happy? Is the
team happy? Are we getting along? Sometimes I'll
meet founders and then I see they're jumping
from pitch competition to pitch competition and
stage to stage and I go, oh no, these guys or
these girls, they're going for the external validation
of speaking on stage and winning. You know, usually
these pitch competitions are $1 ,000 to $5 ,000
as opposed to, and their team is staying back
and working. And you can kind of see the path
there. And usually it does not work out. Maybe
let's give you a scenario. Let's say you got
invited to JP Morgan Mainstage keynote speaker
for Swaza. So something that maybe could. move
the needle for revenue in some aspects, or at
least from an investor perspective, although
I would argue raising money is not the goal.
It's a signal, but it doesn't really move the
needle that much. There is some internal team
dynamics at play that urgently happen that kind
of need your attention to fix them. You know,
your co -founders are fighting or something that
I'm sure happens with every startup at some point.
What do you pick and how do you kind of think
about external validation and internal validation?
And I'll kind of wrap this whole question up
and with one more caveat, given that marketing
matters and the world that we live in is designed
where people make emotional decision and organizations
make emotional decisions as well. And brand and
marketing is important. I think your last caveat
is so important and is so often under looked.
And I'll get to that. But when you said JP Morgan
main stage, sorry, the building can be on fire.
I'll be on that main. that main stage. That's
an opportunity you don't really pass up. But
joking aside, that points to the bigger point,
which is being selective about those stages.
And you always have to tie it back to the mission
of the company, what you're actually trying to
achieve at that point. People and team, you're
not going to achieve anything without them. making
sure those things are taken care of. And we've
had critical points where on the surface, all
the external things were great. But I knew if
we didn't address some internal dynamic, that
surface success was going to disappear. quickly,
or it would evaporate. And so sometimes doing
the deep work of really realigning everybody,
and myself included, actually, is important at
key touch points. And then being able to also
reflect back, because oftentimes, particularly
in the startup world, we're running to the next
thing. We're winning, but then there's you climb
one mountain. You see the seven others. You've
got to climb still and you don't stop. You have
to stop and reflect back because you can't keep
everybody with you, right? And with this, if
you can't step back and and really in gratitude,
see where you've come from that that that's really,
really important. But your last point about.
Well, the marketing and the story, I think there's
obviously two extremes where when you say like,
what gets measured gets done oftentimes in a
very media rich environment and an information
heavy environment. What you post and what seems
external looks like what you're measuring. And
then you create this self sustaining loop where
the more you do that the more it seems like you're
making progress and it it tells a good story
but i i was recently in conversations with a
very close friend who is the managing director
of a big investment bank in new york that specializes
in biotech and he offered me a cautionary tale
which is from our perspective from the 45th floor
of people who are going to be financing that
last three rounds right before IPO or that acquisition.
We see your activity as a distraction because
for us we're running the core numbers on your
primary program and is that particular asset
going to make money and of sufficient multiples
on our investment in order to justify the investment.
And so it can look like and feel like you're
doing a lot. But if you're ignoring your primary
business and it's proper feeding and care, we
are going to see that we can see it because we
see it all the time. So he literally offered
me a top down view as a cautionary reminder that
the external validation and there are a lot of
It's like founder culture or hustle culture is
very external, right? I'm doing so much, and
I'm in this city, and I'm that city. But in the
end, you're running a business. And you're not
just running one business. You're running multiple
potential businesses backwards and forwards,
because it could be a number of different things.
And my job as the CEO is to understand every
business this possibly could be. and then to
build both forwards and backwards simultaneously
to what those strategic options are. So as long
as you can always come back to the center, am
I moving the right ball down the right field
at the right pace? Then that's the guidepost.
But you do have to check back in with yourself
because you can end up spending two quarters
on the big world tour and get a lot of press.
But if that press doesn't translate into moving
the core, the core business down the field or
the primary program or whatever it is that you're
actually supposed to be doing at that time, it
can actually just be a distraction. What is the
path to exit for swaza? Yeah, so there are a
couple of different strategic option so that
it's all situational based on where we find ourselves
at different inflection points. So our primary
assets was a one, which is the nanofluid breathing
aid. We're accelerating that into phase two clinical.
Studies within the next eighteen months. And
pending on early readout of those phase two studies
there are a couple of options one is to already
strategically partner with the big pharma to
bring that asset to market to is to also or to
seek. Then. funding from the public markets to
then support later clinical trials, which is
sort of a classic biotech playbook. But this
was pre -COVID playbook. So you and your audience
may have heard of Merck's recent acquisition
of Verona Therapeutics and for their first in
class COPD drug. And Verona was one of these
companies that had very good early phase two
readout. They went public on the NASDAQ in 2017,
raised $80 million, did their full clinical trials,
and actually got the drug already approved in
2024 by the FDA. And it was after that point
that Merck went in and then acquired them for
$10 billion. So many multiples over what Merck
might have had to pay if they had come in earlier.
Big pharmas, the cost of capital for them is
much smaller. They can afford to completely come
into a de -risked asset and acquire it later.
They have the cash to do that. But that's sort
of a classic. strategic option for a company
like Swaza. So it really depends on the gates
where you cross. What we are hoping for is nice
early phase two readout. What we would like to
be able to do is leverage that into much larger
capitalization to be able to then fuel not only
that asset, but we have a number of other programs
because we have technology for wound healing,
for example, to suffuse wounds and burns with
oxygen, replicating the benefits of hyperbaric
oxygen therapy treatment without the hyperbaric
oxygen chambers. You can imagine that this can
be very useful for patients with diabetic ulcers,
for which there actually aren't any topical specifically
approved for that. Actually, you think of the
current leading drugs for they actually indicate
in the labeling that it's not really intended
for use where there's poor vascularization, for
example, which kind of defeats the point. That's
an area of unmet need that we'd like to address.
But we also have other advanced delivery technologies
which are very promising that we want to advance.
For example, being able to leverage the colon.
for advanced drug delivery for a number of different
indications to be able to bypass the liver. And
then also, we have very advanced sublingual technologies,
which we can load various peptides and molecules
on. Again, minimally invasive, noninvasive, bypassing
the GI tract and the liver. So inhalation route
of drug delivery, also extremely promising for
a number of things. So we have a number of really
exciting projects that we are developing and
pushing forward. And we want our first asset
to be the Vanguard to be able to expand all of
those technologies. For the physicians listening,
I think we inherently recognize that ventilation
is kind of the worst way to deliver oxygen. But
we also then say, well, When we think of something
like Swaza, you know, nanotherapeutics delivering
oxygen to the alveoli, it sounds like science
fiction. Talk to me about, yeah, just talk to
me a bit more about the technology, about the
delivery method, and then is the goal to then
replace? ventilators and intubation and how do
you kind of think about the initial clinical
use case and then what's the blue ocean or blue
sky scenario? Yeah, in essence what we've developed
with SWASA is a topical breathing egg that comprises
liquid nanoparticles that can enable dynamic
gas exchange at the surface. of the lung. So
we're actually addressing the physical barriers,
the key universal features of lung injuries.
So you have fluid buildup, protein buildup, and
oftentimes scar tissue at the surface, which
are a physical block from oxygen coming in and
carbon dioxide leaving. And so what we've done
with this technology is actually leverage technology
that was actually developed in the 1960s by the
US Navy, where they were really interested in
media that you could breathe instead of air for
deep sea submarine. So the concept of liquid
breathing has been long known in literature,
but has been very limited in practice because,
well, as mammals, land mammals, we don't want
to drown in fluid in order to breathe. And so
this idea of replacing air with fluid one to
one was the governing paradigm for the use of
these materials. Our insight and where we turn
this around was to say, well, what if we didn't
actually replace the air with the fluid? But
what if we use the fluid and encapsulate it in
such a way where we can use it as a gas shuttle?
And that's what we've done with Swaza. So this
may be a silly question, but do we still need
to inspire and expire? Do we still need the diaphragm
moving up and down for this technology to work?
Yes. And so it's working with how we breathe
with our negative pressure diaphragmatic breathing.
So the idea is when someone is under a certain
amount of respiratory distress, if we can Use
the diaphragmatic breathing, which actually provides
the mechanical force necessary to power the particle,
so to speak, to stir them in the alveoli. Then
we can enable the diffusion of gas through those
liquid and fibrotic barriers, and then sustain
the person on their own breathing. while their
clinicians are addressing the underlying cause
of the inflammation or the sepsis or whatever
is actually causing the injury. So this is addressing
the gas exchange part. And it has to do with
actually the material's very strong affinity
for carbon dioxide is actually the driver for
it. But under the atmospheric and physiological
conditions that you would find in a human lung,
what you would be doing is actually delivering
oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide and exhaling
it. Where this technology is actually very exciting
for us as well is that because it sequesters
carbon dioxide in a situation where you have
a hypercapnia or something like a COPD exacerbation,
and this is when we're thinking blue sky, which
is that could be very, very useful. in dealing
with those specific conditions and helping provide
relief for those patients. But it was designed
to be a breathing aid that could be used in austere
environments. It's nebulized with simple jet
nebulizers. Or basically, we actually have a
device that's simple compressed air device, solar
powered, battery powered, that if you were out
in an area where you didn't have much infrastructure
clinically, you could still apply this material.
Now, I think the obvious use case is healthcare,
but it seems like you've come across other use
cases like defense and maybe travel or deep sea
diving or altitude sickness. How do you think
about go to market for a solution such as this,
which could have potentially different use cases?
Yeah, I think those are what we're exploring
now. And actually, our work with NATO and the
US Department of Defense is very synergistic
in that, in being able to explore, for example,
uses for high altitude or dive injury, but then
also more broadly in the recovery of human performance
to be able to repair lung tissue, for example,
after extreme exertions, or to be able to sustain,
for example, VO2 max under extreme conditions.
But just for the average person, for example,
Many of us, I'm probably one of the people included,
are at risk for being pretty hypoxemic on planes.
Our blood oxygen just drops, for example. And
for certain people with certain conditions, that
can be very risky. For people over 65 who are
very much at risk of ischemic heart disease,
if you can imagine having this be portable with
you in your undergoing an event to try to protect
the heart tissue quickly while you get to the
hospital or while you get to your clinician can
mean the difference between that first heart
attack and a second fatal one, for example. And
so we, big picture, we envision this being something
in the back of every ambulance and actually being
carried by people who are at particular risk,
sort of an EpiPen for oxygen, so to speak. That's
sort of the big picture. And then if all the
safety data, which we are confident actually
can be supported by further study and validated,
align, it's something that we would like to see
broadly available to people for those uses. How
do you think about intuition when building and
selling in this industry? And maybe give us an
example where you encountered something while
building which challenged your intuition. And
how did you kind of, so for me, I used to be
a very intuitive person in terms of who to hire.
And I've kind of been wrong so many times. So
I think vibe hiring does not work, and you need
a structured process. So I think it's hard to
kind of know when to trust your intuition and
when not to. Whereas maybe the easy or the lazy
way is to always trust my intuition, because
then I don't have to do the structured diligence
on the back end of things. Yeah, so how do you
think about intuition? And then like, yeah, just
give me maybe an example where something happened
and then you were like, oh, like intuitively
this didn't make sense to me. Yeah. I mean, in
a kind of scientific environment where there
are a lot of unknowns, you often have to experiment
your way forward. But I like what you said about
intuition and just caused me to think, well,
what do we really mean about intuition? And intuition
is essentially a heuristic based on our informed
choices and experiences. And so sometimes intuition
can be a reflection of cognitive biases, which
may not be helpful. And so I'll give you an example.
I very early on in establishing the company as
the investor, I did not have the plan of actually
leading the company. What I did was I put in
some initial capital, syndicated some investors
from the Valley to come in early. And then I
set about trying to hire the right CEO. And this
was at the time, like late 2021, the public markets
were already starting to tank a bit. And this
was the very beginning of biotech winter. the
early science had already been happening. So
when I was calling sort of my Boston crew, Harvard
Medical School crew, empty PhDs who had all the
right kind of credentials done by a pharma startup
before, they said, hey, Nikki, we really love
this technology. We think it's great. We want
to support you whenever we can. We do not want
to have to raise money in this environment. So
if you want us on board to do that, we'll help
you. But we don't want to do that. And I said,
well, that's the job. Right? And then so I thought,
and at that point, what my intuition had told
me was, well, look, Nikki, you need to get someone
who fits a certain demographic profile, a certain
pedigree, a certain look, a certain type, just
fill in the blank of whatever cardboard cutout
you think should be that founder to be able to
raise money. And that's your job is to find that.
And that, quote, intuition meant I wasn't that
face. I wasn't that cardboard cut out. But somehow
I thought that from behind a curtain, I was going
to plan the roadmap, drive the roadmap, resource
it with the right people, resource it with the
right team. And yet somehow this other entity
out there, this person who is supposed to be
that right CEO was going to raise a bunch of
money for the company. That turned out to be
a massive mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Given your experience,
like for me, you would be the cardboard cutter
and the person to raise money for anything, including
SSA. Well, my intuition was informed by certain
quote facts, such as only 2 % to 3 % of venture
capital goes to women founded companies, much
less minority women founded companies. And then
we're also, we were still in the wake or the
shadow of an Elizabeth home. And I'm dealing
with a technology that, as you said yourself,
sounds like science fiction, right? It takes
some explaining, but it's very scientifically
sound. But when it's category changing. So all
of those things, quote, had informed my intuition
in 2021. But they were all wrong on a lot of
different levels as well. I thought I was being
prudent, but really, it was just reinforcing
these biases. And the funny thing is, I did something
that I would have never advised a mentee of mine
to do, which would be to recede into the background,
thinking that this other strategy would make
the company win. And that wasn't correct. Do
you think entrepreneurship is innate? Were you
always an entrepreneur, say, when you were in
middle school in your teenage years, or do you
think it can be learned? I would say I was always
creative, slightly iconoclastic and moved outside
the strictures and the structures of what was
around me to create things, but I would have
never labeled myself as an entrepreneur. And
I've asked that same question, Rashad, are there
people born to be this? I think it's along a
spectrum. There are some people that you know
that they could never work for anybody else,
that they have to strike out on their own. But
I think our current environment actually demands
us all to be entrepreneurs. We don't have the
stability of institutions and. Cultural and even
work norms that we had even 30 years ago. So
everybody now has to think in terms of the the
entrepreneur and i don't want to say that rightly
but i think is humans we actually are highly
adaptable. We solve problems we do that every
day. I say, moms are the best entrepreneurs,
right? Like if you want something done, ask a
busy mom, for example, because they've got to
manage building up human beings what could be
more complicated or complex than that. So I think
I see those skills and capabilities in people
every day. And I think the environment that we
live in now demand more of that. And I think
it's a human thing to create. And it's a human
thing to build. I think we are made to be creators.
We've just formed that way. We're designed that
way. And so in as much as entrepreneurism is
an expression of that, I think we all are naturally
entrepreneurs, whether we call ourselves that
or not. What do you think is the path to changing
the statistic that only 2 % to 3 % of venture
capital flows to women? And even substantially,
I'm assuming a small minority of that flows to
minority women. I wish I had a really good answer
to that question. I think It's just a matter
of normalizing the effort. I tend to find that
separating out women founders hasn't been as
effective for women founders as we think it might
be, like having women only funds, for example.
They tend to be under a different kind of microscope.
and actually tend to be more risk averse, right?
Because they have to, you know, they have to
win. They have to get returns. There's also always
that stigma if you're in this. So I'm a minority
in India. And then I was a minority when I moved
to Canada when I was 16. I was one of four brown
people in my high school. Although I used to
think of myself a minority. I don't think I am
anymore. If you look at the CEOs of a lot of
public companies. I think intuitively I agree
that if there is a class of humans that is oppressed,
and I agree, women and women minorities are,
they need to be uplifted so they're no longer
oppressed. That makes sense to me. I don't know
anyone who would argue against that. I don't
personally know. I'm sure there are people who
would argue against that. how to do it is more
difficult and I can only speak from personal
experience just seeing a lot more brown male
CEOs. I don't feel oppressed anymore and I'm
not a minority anymore, right? And there was
no category that I know of for that specific
race and gender for venture funding. I think
you bring up a very interesting point is having
these categories does it kind of make people
who belong to those categories more insecure
that I got this funding or I got this job because
of my demographics, but not because of my aptitude?
So we would love for you to kind of maybe dig
a little bit deeper and like, does it mean that
we just don't do it externally and internally,
you know, we still uplift people? who need to
be uplifted. Yeah. I think it's both. I think
you want to reach down and support talent where
you find it, and then also recognize where some
of those barriers and challenges might be. I
was challenged recently by very profound work
by my colleague, Siri Chalaxi, who is a researcher
at the Harvard Kennedy School. And she just came
out with a book called Make Work Fair. And it's
really fascinating work. They were particularly
looking at gender discrepancies, for example,
in corporate leadership and latter. And they
found that these very kind of data -driven interventions
really worked to level things out. And it wasn't
really about categorizing people and separating
them into specific programs, et cetera. But it
was really just creating practices just even
by the way that you screen resumes and write
job descriptions to not privilege any particular
group, but actually make it make it more fair.
And these resulted in very good outcomes for
everybody involved in the organizations that
they studied. And so I think there is one thing,
as we are all building companies and organizations,
we should be mindful about the policies and structures
and who we hire. I have a number of other female
CEO colleagues in biotech who are also aware
of these issues. But then we talk about, for
example, hiring. And then they'll, for example,
pick a candidate over a really great candidate,
maybe a more qualified candidate who was like
a mom. But she couldn't start right at that time
they wanted her to because she needed to factor
in the school start times. And I thought, guys,
why are we Why are we doing this? Right? Like,
it's our job to think about, are we perpetuating
things that actually are then holding back really
great talent? Because we have these ideas that
somehow our organizations would be better benefited
by by some what what what difference does it
make if you change that higher by like, six,
eight weeks. And you got this really great person.
But you're discounting her off the bat because
you didn't want to take into account this one
consideration. So we have to be very mindful
of that. And human beings, they have babies.
For example, just think on a very basic level.
In most cultures around the world, the majority
of that work or thinking around that falls to
moms. Well, as companies, as leaders, have we
factored that in? Are we ruling out talent by
not being able to be flexible to ramp these really
talented people? It's not even about their gender.
They're talented. ramp them back into the workforce
properly so that we can benefit from that talent
and we create value out of that. This is not
charity. This is good business. So I've thought
about these questions for a while. And I think
it's in building organizations too. When you're
in charge of the policy and you're in charge
of the hiring, not vibe hiring because we vibe
with people who are like us. And when I think
about our company how very different the people
that were brought together are we share very
similar values underneath but as people we are
radically different and if it was on vibes it
would not have happened and um but if it was
on purpose if it's on creation of value like
if we but these are the exact people that we
need On board to create this thing and build
it forward but it's definitely not on vibes and
it's definitely not on similarities and we tend
to over rotate towards. Would i be like buddies
with that this person the thing is you grow into
that relationship. We're built for connection
and you tend to find people that you spend more
time with somehow you would have never been friends
with them maybe just walking across the street
and meeting them but. But in a shared mission
together, you're a brand of brothers. You're
a band of brothers and sisters. And because you
have the shared purpose. So yeah, I think being
aware of our tendency towards vibe anything,
right? And then stepping back and saying, hey,
what if I thought about this in a more holistic
way or in a bigger picture way to reflect my
values in what I think is important? um, societally
within my, the confines of my own company is,
is a, was a place to start. I think this is a
great place to end. Thanks so much for joining
us today, Nikki. Rashad, it's been a real pleasure.
Thanks for having me.