Under Promise, Over Deliver

0:04Welcome to Running Through Walls.

0:30Andrew Gottesdiener, and our good friend, Michael Henderson, CEO of Apogee. Michael was actually on the podcast back in 2023 when Apogee was just getting started. A lot has happened since then. Michael, welcome back. Great to be back. Long time listener, second time caller. Let's get started. So when I went back and listened to our first combo to get ready for this one, I realized two things. First, Andrew had absolutely no idea how to pronounce Apogee. Well, I guess as the person who named it, I might have had a clue, but that's okay. We can move past that. And second, I had forgotten just how early this thing was.

1:07You had, what, 10 employees? And we hadn't put a drug in patients yet. I think it was still preclinical. Now, or yet since yesterday, you had 300 employees. You've generated all this clinical data and you just sold the company to AbbVie for almost$11 billion. That's pretty crazy. So before we get into any of it, does this feel as crazy to you as it does to us? When I first heard the story of Apogee, the first kid was born at the time. We since had our second daughter, had an atopic derm. And hearing this story, I was like, oh, this makes sense. This is kind of obvious. Someone should do this. So then it became a clear, okay, I know that patients will love this.

1:50It just became an execution game. right can we build the company can we execute can we stay ahead of would be competitors and can we bring the team together to just go as quickly as possible and it has been four years of breakneck speed it's very surreal now to take a step back and almost take a breath now on the heels of this acquisition and see all that we have achieved and i honestly just don't think it's hit me yet It was a crazy ride and an amazing outcome, but it wasn't all easy by any stretch. Last time you were here, kind of at the beginning of your journey, you know, we asked you what you thought the hardest part of being a CEO was.

2:28And you mentioned that it was letting go of people in the organization. now that you've been through kind of so much more with the company and grown it and scaled it and worked in different market environments, put drugs into the clinic, raise capital, etc. You know, maybe you could answer the same question for us. Like what is the hardest part of the job? Yeah, I mean, I think it still does come down to when you have to let people go for whatever reason. And being the CEO of a public company, every day you wake up not knowing what's going to land on your desk just knowing that some zany problem that couldn't get solved otherwise is going to land there and you're going to need to figure it out and lean on everyone around you to get to the best solution.

3:13You know, it was not a straight linear up into the right path. You know, there were ups and downs and trials and tribulations and we're fortunate to overcome them. But, you know, still the hardest part is when you get to the team, when you go to an all hands and you see people around the table and recognize that they have placed their trust in the company. They have, you know, really kind of placed their family's future in the hands of the company and the strategy. You know, that is just a, you know, it's a heavy responsibility. And when, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out with anyone, right?

3:49Like you can't help but feel, feel that weight of that responsibility. So I think it is still the hardest piece because, right, you convince convince people to come and give it their all. And we're very lucky that it worked out very well at Apogee. But still, you know, when things don't work out, nothing is harder than that. Two years ago, we would hear the same thing from investors over and over. Pharma will never buy Apogee. And I'm sure you heard that as well. What do you think people missed in that? Because obviously, you know, Avi was interested and, you know, we always believed that someone would be.

4:24But what do you think others missed that pharma saw? You know, I kind of used to joke about how, right, like nobody thought Netflix was going to be a thing either because it was just like too obvious. Like, you know, Blockbuster would live forever sort of a thing. I think that there's a swath of biotech investors that if it's not a novel target, if it's not some element of, you know, heavy risk, then they question, is it quote unquote innovative? Right. Is it going to be attractive? to patients, to physicians, to pharma, right? Does it have to be a new target? And I think clearly no. Like what we did is we took a known target and we made a fully optimized antibody.

5:07We added around the pipeline to have best in class model and combo potentials. And we ended up with something that every physician that we spoke with loved it. And every patient that we spoke with loved it. The idea to go from an every two to four week injection paradigm to every three to six months It's just a no-brainer. For some people, though, it was too obvious, quote-unquote, to be innovative. But I think some of the best advances in medicine in the world are those ideas which people thought, oh, is it really like that? Is that risky enough to be innovative? That seems like if it was so easy, somebody else would have done it already.

5:45But those are often the best things for patients. And those lead to better outcomes, better adherence. They grow the market. And I think that as we put out more and more data and we got later and later, it became harder for people to ignore what we had. And at the end of the day, for people that thought that we would never get acquired, I just kind of point to the scoreboard. Did it ever bother you? No, I think all of us, there's this kind of underdog mentality that fuels the fire. So for me, it was always, you know, for the team, any sort of doubt, any sort of people have a feeling that we want to get acquired.

6:24That's me like that's not data driven. That's emotion driven. And if people have their driven by their emotions, they're not going to make the best data driven decisions. And we could win by just executing and putting out great data and advancing it forward. Well, I think I feel like one of the things I really admire about what you guys built and did was that it never really mattered. Like this is a great outcome, obviously. And I think your new partner in AbbVie can do amazing things with this molecule and it's in great hands. But maybe you could just talk a little bit about how you position the company for success regardless, because these things are inherently unpredictable.

7:06Like the rest of the world could have been right. Like there may not have been someone to step in and buy the company and take it over. But you guys always, I think, were thinking one step ahead on this front on how to build the organization for the long term if no one came along. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you did that and what some of the most important decisions you made were to kind of set the company up for that long term success regardless. Yeah, well, luckily we had a very good board that gave us guidance along the way. Thank you, Andrew. and 2026 was a pretty big year for you know Apogee in a number of ways and you know my belief and you know our approach was companies get bought and not sold so you know our approach all in the way was we need to build this and plan to take it all the way as someone comes along at some point with a lower cost of capital with that you know kind of fully built out commercial infrastructure and made it an attractive valuation for shareholders, then of course we would listen.

8:11Our goal was to get this to as many patients as possible. And ABI, we think, can do that worldwide across all the indications. But that can never be a base case. So 2026, we put out a number of pieces of data, proved out the dosing potential, found our optimized dose, and did, to our knowledge, the first ever concurrent synthetic royalty financing financing alongside a data release with Blackstone. And that was up to$1.3 billion in total consideration on top of$1.3 billion on the balance sheet. And that gave us the ability to tell anyone, investors, physicians, interested strategic parties, look, we have the runway to get this approved and to launch this for ourselves.

8:55We can take this all the way. We can't go into every expansion indication, you know, go as hard in combo development and do all the things that a partner like Abbey will now be able to do. But we have a clear independent path. And I think that's where you want to be if someone is going to come and, you know, approach you. That's how you get maximal returns for shareholders and ensure that you're setting the company up for success because you never know. We had so many narratives about us over the last couple of years since we've been public. Was there ever a time where you're like, oh, you know, maybe the market's right.

9:33Maybe we're wrong, like questioning yourself? You know, I think always you need to look at the data. And what was always funny, though, is we would hear kind of naysayer investors naysay, but then we'd have an equally vocal and strong set of long-minded investors that would be vocally proponents of us. And that would be, you know, in our corner saying, I don't know what everyone else is missing. This is great. And they would be supporting us. And alongside that, any physician that we spoke with and patients who are the eventual end customers always love the profile, right? There was never a doc that said, you know, my patients love injections.

10:20We're going to get them more injections per year. Like to them, it was always just such an obvious value proposition if we could play the thesis out. So knowing that patients and physicians wanted this, and we were lucky to have a very strong group of longer term investors that were in the company and supported us throughout, even when the stock was down. I think that always helped us to keep a line of sight to this is an incredible pipeline, and it can zig and zag in terms of the stock price. But if we deliver the data, we know this will be meaningful. The conjunctivitis story for you guys, I think, was kind of a good example of this.

10:56When you guys put out your phase 2A data, the first efficacy data we ever put out, the conjunctivitis rate, I think, was a little bit higher than what had historically been seen with, let's say, Dupixent specifically and Lebrichizumab in their phase 3 trials. there were examples of it being higher in other studies and all these reasons to feel comfortable and and i think we as as a company felt really good about it spoke to a lot of dermatologists who felt really good about it but it was an issue for investors and so how do you how do you navigate that do you just say well you know we're right dermatologists are ultimately going to be on our side and investors will come around do you think about how to placate those investors with more data to kind of prove your point?

11:39Are you defensive about it? It's a complicated situation. Maybe talk through how you thought about navigating that. Yeah, being defensive never works with investors. I feel like that's like a smoke signal. No, I think we kind of went back to fundamentals. And what we said is, listen, here's the data that we're looking at. Here is what we are hearing from physicians. And none of those raises as a concern, right? It was a clear this is in line with other therapies. There is now ascertainment bias. Here are all the rates you can compare us to others. And we're going to continue to move forward. And we'll put out additional studies that will be larger.

12:20And we think that this will be just well within the noise of what's expected with this class of therapies. And I think as we continue to just be data-driven in our responses and give people the time and the space to go and do the work by talking to docs, by looking at other studies and contextualizing, you know what, like this actually is just within the range of what's been seen. Then we had a lot of investors that would come back and say, I think that everyone's overreacted to this. And then that happened enough. And there were then docs on panels and investor conferences that they would be a bit, you know, more kind of aggressive.

13:03And their response with investors being like, look, like this really doesn't matter. Like, please stop asking me about this thing I don't care about. Eventually, everything's always just a pendulum. So when it swings really hard one way, you just know it's going to, at some point, if data's on your side, swing back towards the correct side of the equation. So we were fortunate to have a good amount of capital. We didn't need to raise money. So we let them do their work. And then at some point, people started to call and say, you know like would you be interested in raising some capital because i think that everyone's got this wrong and you get enough of those calls and that helps to catalyze the financing in the fall of 25 that showed the data was on our side and just kind of keeping keeping data front and center and saying look like let's not be emotional about this here's what we're hearing here's everything that we know you know don't disbelieve us you'll go and do the wrong work.

13:59I feel like people figure it out. A lot of biotechs have smart people, good science, and plenty of capital. And if you can't say the people, is there something else that Apogee had that just helped you accomplish this amount of success? We were fortunate that it's a big story, right? A lot of biotech stories are, everyone gets into biotech because they want to make a difference for patients. I think that what was, you know, unique about this effort versus others that I've been a part of is so many people had employees, etc. You know, they had personal connections to the diseases that we're going after.

14:34These are just incredibly common, prevalent diseases. And I think that really helped us to galvanize and just have desire to move quicker than others, to stay ahead, and to, you know, refuse to stop it good enough for the patients that we were seeking to serve. and I think keeping the patients front and center, everybody works to do that, of course, but so many of us had people in our lives that we could think of and count on and supporting us that made a big difference. Yeah, I do think you guys did a really great job from the beginning of mapping out kind of the whole development path all the way to BLA from like day one and where every single timeline could be optimized because once you guys started having success, like a lot more competitors came into the fray pretty quickly.

15:25And, you know, any bump in the road puts kind of an outcome like this at risk. And so as I just reflect on it, I think all of that work that was done years ago, right before this ever went into a patient, just mapping out what is the optimal path here and then really nailing it, thankfully, every step of the way, super important. So I agree with Andrew. the question actually I wanted to ask you next, it's probably more appropriate me than Andrew, given he's younger than you. But I mean, you're now, I guess, what, 37? Yeah, 37. You founded a company in medical school, you helped contribute at BridgeBio.

16:04And now you've taken Apigee from basically nothing to an almost$11 billion outcome. Does having this much success this early mess with your perspective at all? uh you know feeling very fortunate all along the way um grew up in the middle of kind of nowhere Oklahoma and I remember when I was thinking about college uh it was college was kind of a scary thing because no one in my family had gone and I was talking to my grade school principal who was also the deputy sheriff for the county because that's what you do in Oklahoma and and he said well if you go and you graduate then you'll have to spend the rest of your life convincing people that you're an idiot.

16:47And I thought that was a great kind of perspective, actually. If you go and you try to do hard things and you surround yourself with smarter people than you and you learn from them and you set yourself up to be in the right place at the right time and you just work hard and you take the perspectives of really smart people and channel them into whatever effort you're going after, you can find success. And I've been very fortunate in that. I found that early in my career and in life, but I'm just petrified by now. What if I'm not successful in the next thing? So I think it is just a mentality thing.

17:25Yeah. It's interesting that you said college and not when you were saying I was going off to Harvard, but I assume that's what the principal was referring to. We all got to go somewhere. Well, I just wanted to follow up real quickly on that. The one thing also that Andrew and I both have talked about for years is just what a phenomenal team you assembled. You know, we've been working with Carl for a long time, but as well as just everyone else on the exec team. Is there any best practice to like putting together an all-star team like that or for other entrepreneurs that are now listening and maybe some steps or any guidance of how you were able to do that?

18:07You know, I think a lot of it is we, from the beginning, took pains to lay out our values. We call it the core values, caring, original, resilient, and eagerness. And we really looked in the interview process and then just in everyone that we brought into the company and over time to enforce those values. And if you didn't have those values, then you just weren't the right fit. You know, you can have amazing resumes, but if you, weren't going to be egoless, if you weren't going to be willing to do whatever it takes to roll up your sleeve and just really dive into the details and work incredibly hard, then great.

18:44You just would not have it for us, but could be successful in another company. And huge credit to the exec team for hiring so many great people under them as well, that it really did feel like a uniquely special place where everyone was just operating at the best of their ability and their caliber. raising each other up. So it's hard to kind of capture that exactly what led to it, but it was real. Let's go into the AbbVie story a little bit here. Maybe first, like, take us through the moment when you kind of first had the thought or realization that this could be real. Like, what happened? And how'd you feel about it?

19:28Just take us through it. Yeah, I'm not even sure I've had it yet, honestly, in that moment, right? Everything has happened very quickly. No, I think, you know, from the very beginning of like being at dermatology conferences and, you know, talking to docs, you know, hey, we're going to do a quarterly, you know, maybe less frequent biologic for atopic derm, but oh, like Skyrizi. Skyrizi, of course, is, you know, AbbVie's product in plaque psoriasis and other indications, dose every three months. I think that in the back of our minds, there was always like a clear potential fit with them because like, they're such a powerhouse in immunology and, you know, we'd go to the different conferences and we'd see them and, you know, we'd go to all the conferences.

20:13We'd have a much smaller booth right next to their booth. And I think as we just continued to develop the programs and, you know, have more and more conversations with them over time, it just became clear that this is serious. Like this isn't a keep in touch. This is a, this could be a meaningful addition to their portfolio. And we both kind of see it. So as we delivered the maintenance data and then, you know, really the phase two B data and we're embarking on phase three, right. We always kind of had a hunch that given how much potential there was for expansions and combinations that if they and deliver what we hoped it could, that we could be approached around that time.

20:56Because that's when someone with a lower cost of capital would come in and really blow out development and prepare for launch and take it to geographies that we could not. So we knew it was always a possibility, right? Not base case again. And when that data came, we got the call. Yeah, Andrew, we were at that first clinical symposium and it's nuts how many doctors ended the conversation saying that same thing, comparing us to SkyRizzy. So definitely great to see. And I know you have to be careful of what you could say and comment on, but maybe we'll talk about, you know, when you found out, who was the first person you told?

21:39Yeah, you know, as you told them, the proxy. And in line with proper corporate governance, of course, you know, called our chair, Mark McKenna, who has been in situations like this before as well, right? Having sold Prometheus in the past and kind of shared with him that, yep, this is happening. You know, we kind of talked about scenarios and put the company in their position, called in and spoke with him and then kind of laid out a plan. You know, there's so much back and forth in these things. And again, it's all detailed in the proxy, but how do you just stay calm throughout the whole process, you have to take a longer term vision.

22:19Do you have people you talk to, or did you have a plan, or did you kind of map out? I know you have a BD background. Did that help? Maybe just walk us through, because it is a week or two week long process getting to the finish line. I will say time kind of stands still in deals like these. So two weeks feels like two two months or more because, right, you're just, every minute it matters and people get activated. Banks, legal firms, boards, right? Everyone gets activated to kind of focus on this. The amount of data and analytics and kind of strategic thinking and discussions that happen are immense, as you'd want it to be.

23:01I think that the biggest thing in our favor that, you know, enabled us to, I think the optimal outcome was we're in a position where we had planned to need or needed to transact. We had a clear path forward. We had solved the financing side of the equation for some time, be it the royalty financing, the balance sheet. We had a team capable of taking off phase threes and a number of expansions planned. And we had a clear roadmap for how we would move forward. So for us, when these discussions got going, it was clear, we need to have the appropriate bar for value to know that we're doing the right thing for shareholders.

23:40And if we get there and we get confidence that they're going to move this forward to patients and do more than we could, then great. That's the right decision. And if we can't get confidence on those two things, then base case, that's fine. That's what we've been planning for. So I think just kind of keeping that base case in mind, knowing that, yes, it could be incredible in a lot of ways to transact, but it's not necessary. It is a great option if things line up. It was the North Star and I think helped us to not lose sight of that. We still had control on our destiny. Can you talk about the royalty transaction that you did alongside the Phase 2B data kind of right before the transaction happened?

24:26And just for other operators who are thinking about this, like what were the pros and cons? And how did it help the company to put this in place versus other maybe sources of capital you could have considered? Yeah. So, you know, the thesis of the case with the royalty transaction was all along the way, we had a financing overhead. it's a very fair like question how are you going to finance this these markets these development programs require immense amounts of capital how are you really going to do it well i'll just wait till your next race to come in versus invest in the company now so right like a fair thesis ultimately not the correct one um but you know a fair pushback so as we approach the phase two we did and thought about phase three, our thinking with discussions with royalty players and Blackstone Metas, where we were on this was, you know, we could really get rid of that thesis with a royalty construct that achieved three things.

25:25One, it needed to be concurrent with the data because good data means raise. So it couldn't be put it out, have people expect that we're going to raise, kind of be in limbo, like while we were working on this. So the concurrency piece was critical and to the best of our knowledge has not been done before, at least on this scale. Second, it had to be of a quantum that mattered. What does that mean? It needed to be an amount of capital that got us through approval and potentially even a bridge to profitability in the commercialization where our cost of capital would be much lower. Not many groups can do that given the amount that we needed.

26:07Blackstone, of course, could. And then third, the terms themselves had to be attractive. So they had to be attractive both in terms of cost of capital, but then in terms of not inserting any friction to future strategic processes, such as M &A, should they happen. Those are a number of things that kind of needed to go right. Like when I say things like this, Neymar Showing says, that's a lot of ifs, Michael. It's a lot of ifs. I'm like, yeah, but it's worth trying. And we were fortunate that we found a partner in my son that was willing to move on those timelines, mobilize with us, and pull off what I think will become, or I hope, a recipe for a lot of future biotechs because it worked well for us.

26:54And I think it worked well for them, too. For people who want to follow that recipe, like other companies, what's like the one big piece of advice you would give them to put them in a position to be able to consummate a similar type of transaction? Give yourselves plenty of time. Like, right, these transactions are incredibly complicated, right? Not just the economic kind of negotiation, like the data piece, but the legal piece. you can't decide a month before data that you're going to pursue something like this. You need to be thinking about and having conversations well in advance. What gave you confidence that someone could do it concomitantly?

27:33I remember when you brought it up, I was like, I don't think that's ever happened and I don't think anyone can move that fast. I'm sure I'm not the only one that said that. So was there something you saw or something that you figured out that others often don't see? I guess when I hear the I haven't seen that done before sort of line of thinking that's always just something that catches my ear you know it's I'm like well we don't do it that way because we've never done it that way or I've never seen that done before I'm always just curious but why like and in many cases there are very good reasons that I quickly find out oh okay like I just didn't know that like I was an idiot yeah yeah that can't be done got it good to know but just kind of the curiosity piece of, but could it?

28:23Why don't we have discussions? Why don't we try? And then we went and we spoke and we laid out what we would be looking for in a transaction. And, you know, I think as Blackstone said in one of the interviews we did, you know, people have asked us through this before and we've said no. But with Michael, we thought, you know, let's try it. Let's try it. This is a big market. this is a drug we want to, you know, exposure to, we will mobilize and attempt to do something here that hasn't been done because we clearly articulated from the beginning, you know, what it is we're trying to do and why and the timelines.

29:00So with enough planning, it could be done. Then it became both parties were willing to try. And then the day delivered and then everyone was excited to that all the work was not in vain, but had actually gotten us to a point where we could be very innovative together. I think that's what everyone's looking for, right? Like everyone can do the same thing again and again, again and again, but can you, can you do a bit better? Can you optimize it a bit more? Can you push that Pareto efficiency line of get a bit closer to it? Maybe one last question on the deal and how it impacted you and the company.

29:36I mean, obviously, you know, there's a lot to be really happy and excited about here, but I'm sure there's a component of this that's like bittersweet given everything you built and all the people and the relationships and the accomplishments and maybe you could just talk a little bit about that aspect of closing it and sort of moving on here yeah i mean it's you know bittersweet is a term that gets thrown around a lot it feels very much like graduation right it's been four years you know a lot of us kind of we have these incredible bonds and memories together and you know now it's going to be different.

30:10Like, you know, we're moving into a different place in life. You know, a lot of the team, you know, we're excited about this. Abby wants to retain, you know, a good chunk of the team. And, you know, it's excited as they've commented throughout, right, not just with the assets, but with the people. So I'm really excited that, you know, a very good amount of the team will continue to push this forward and be part of the Zoomy story in the pipeline. And, you know, I look forward to the Super Bowl commercials, World Cup commercials in the future, where I'll tell my kids, look, I was part of that. And they say now, which is like, change the channel, Daddy.

30:46I don't want to watch sports. I want to watch Peppa, which is a great show. But anything that you've had a lot of fun doing that you've given your all to, even if it is a great outcome, it can be sad to leave it behind and to transition into something new because new is unknown. And, you know, all I know is that the last four years were an incredible journey and a wonderful ride. And, you know, I don't know if I'll ever be able to find that again. I kind of doubt it, just given how much fun we had. But that's okay. Like, we set out here not to just have fun and to enjoy, you know, each other's company for as long as we could.

31:30But the point of the company is to get Zoomy in the pipeline to as many patients as possible across as many indications as possible. And we've now made a choice and a transition into AVI that will best enable that. Maybe we can start to zoom out a little bit and you can give some advice to some of the listeners here who maybe want to try to pursue a role like you've had at Apogee. If you could put yourself in your own shoes just a couple of years ago when you and a few folks joined the company and all we had was some NHP experiments ongoing and we had to decide how to raise capital and how to build a team.

32:13And what are the best pieces of advice? What are the things you would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight? Always a hard question. you know i think that you need to really enjoy what you're doing like you have to like wake up and go to sleep like thinking about how do i do better and the company in my role like how do i make this story better how do i position this company better how do i be relentless you need to be relentless because if you're not others will right others will catch up others will beat you It's like you have to really want to and like need to win. Otherwise, it's not going to be that much fun.

32:57It's going to be draining. Then you know what aspects you're good at. You should be honest about which aspects you're bad at. Like I know all the things. I know I'm bad at a lot of things. My wife and children tell me every day all the things that I could improve at when I welcome the feedback. It's sometimes constructive. but you got to surround yourself with people in your professional life that give you that same kind of unfettered feedback and then you've got to keep those people close and they're probably better at it than you are if they're noticing that you should improve so give them those responsibilities right as i tell anybody that i work with on the team it's figure out what gives your energy and then figure out what drains you and then whatever drains you if you can find someone that enjoys that and hire them and give that to them because they will do better at it than you and then then you'll have a lot more fun too well why don't we end with two last questions say a first time biotech ceo calls you tomorrow and you had to give them three rules what three roles would you give them?

34:07So one role, I'll give a shout out to Matt Kim, who early on, you know, before we were going out to pitch and before we're going to go public, said, Matt, I, I'm obviously like a young first time CEO. Everyone's going to root against me and just like wait for me to fall down because it's an easy bet. Like he's going to screw up. He doesn't know what he's doing. Like, what advice do you have? And he gave me the first one, which is under-promise and over-deliver. And, you know, I take that to be, you are the one that controls your timelines. You're the one that sets expectations. It'll be so easy to want to like promise a bit more, want to give a bit more, want to like set the bar a bit higher because every investor around you will be urging you to do that.

34:55Like they'll be wanting to see how you react and to try to get you to lean in a bit too much. Just don't do it. Just like set your bar, set your timelines and keep to it under promise over deliver. The second one is it is a very demanding job. You're going to be on the road a lot. Be thankful and gracious to your supporting family. And don't forget to say thank you and carve out the time for them because four years will go by quickly. And like your kids will grow up like your family will grow. carve out time and like pay attention to them you'll be very glad that you did and the third one is third one's tricky it's kind of nebulous but you've got to allow yourself you're going to screw up like you're going to make mistakes you're going to learn just when those happen nobody has any sympathy for a ceo it's your job the buck stops with you you you can't dwell on your mistakes you know it's a lonely job because you can't call them like complain to other ceos with confidential information.

36:02I'd be like, oh, can you guess what just happened? You'll have a board, you'll have your executive team, like you'll have people around you. But you've got to learn to, when you make mistakes, absorb it, learn from it and move on. Dwelling on it will not help. Well, I assume that's where having a supportive, top-notch board of directors is probably very helpful. Yes, thank you, Andrew. For all the late nights, all the phone calls, all the support. and Nimish thank you for all the challenges all right no one uh briefed me on what the second question Nimish had in mind was but uh I'm gonna give it a wing here what's next Michael like are you gonna you know hang up your cleats and uh and call it a day or you still have that hunger to do something again you know I got into medicine originally because you know the goal was to help people.

36:56And when you start to be able to push forward drugs and to know that they're going to have an impact, like that becomes addictive. Like it just is like that is, it's hard to find something that, you know, gives you that kind of fulfillment when you know that you helped to get a new drug approved that can impact so many people. Like that's cool. That's just, that's really fun. That's a very good way I think to spend the life. And 37, not getting younger, but I think I've still got a few things in me. Michael, that was awesome. We appreciate all the insight. Thanks for coming back and doing this with us.

37:31You know, the last four years, it was great, great working with you. And we want to thank everyone for listening to Running Through Walls. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to Running Through Walls, a Benrock podcast. Special thanks to Willie Wisely, who designed our theme music.

37:52Thank you.