Founder Mode: Jen Herbach, Founder & CEO, Adventris Pharmaceuticals

0:00Carolyn, we have Jen Herbach here with us. She's the founder and CEO of Adventress from Winter23. Welcome, Jen. We can't wait to have you. But what we really want you to do is tell us about your company, because I'm going to go so far as to say this might be the most exciting thing, most exciting company we've been to. Very exciting. You set the bar really high. So I guess I really need to do a good job then. So we make cancer vaccines. When you think about cancer and what cancer is, cancer is ultimately a failure of your immune system. Because you actually, and what most people don't realize, is you actually get little microscopic cancers all the time.

0:41And we all get these all of the time. I'm glad I didn't know that. Gosh. And so normally, your immune system recognizes it and kills it. But when we think about cancer and deadly cancers, it's ultimately the failure of the immune system to recognize this uncontrolled cell as foreign. And the challenge is, and what we are basically solving, is how do we enable the immune system to recognize something that it failed to recognize? And so that's what we're doing. And so basically, we're developing cancer vaccines that enable us to educate the immune system to see something that it previously couldn't see.

1:20As I'm wearing glasses, we like to think about it as giving the immune system glasses to be able to see something that it couldn't see. And do you have to make vaccines very specific? Because I tend to think of the immune system as one thing, but it's probably extremely specialized. So does one vaccine cover a lot of territory or all the territory, or how does that work? So that's a great question. And actually, one of the really surprising things is actually there's a lot of overlap between cancers. So the first target we're going after is something called KRAS. And KRAS is a mutation that is basically a driver mutation.

1:56So this is something that happens when you have a healthy cell. It gets a mutation in KRAS, and then that basically turns it into the cancerous cell and leads to uncontrolled cell growth. And which cancers are these? And this is in about over 30 % of all cancers are caused by this mutation, and it's mainly in lung, colon, and pancreatic cancer. So we're going after KRAS, and we can enable the immune system to see KRAS. And basically, this enables us to go after these cancers. So we're first starting in actually the treatment of pancreatic cancer. And we're specifically going after patients who have localized disease, but we know with pancreatic cancer, it's incredibly deadly.

2:36And most of these patients, even though the disease is localized, will eventually relapse with metastatic incurable disease. And so what we can do is at that point in time, we can actually cure those patients of their disease. And that's what we're going after. But our long-term blue sky vision and what really drives all of us is we want to move into the prevention space. So we would start with our vaccine for KRAS and the idea that we could prevent about 30 % of all cancers. And these are some of the most deadly cancers. I'm already getting emotional. I have to admit. So side effects. The side effects are actually really minimal.

3:15So it's comparable to any other infectious disease vaccine you would have. So when you took your COVID vaccine, when you took your flu shot. Actually, the shingles vaccine is actually one of the more vaccines as they go has more side effects than is typical. Were you sick, Carolyn, when you got sick? I was sick for two days. Terrible. Terrible. But I would happily be that sick to prevent cancer. Or shingles. I've had shingles. You have. It's painful. It's awful. Yeah. But that's so exciting. Are you able to tell us sort of where you stand right now on the life cycle? Yeah. So where we are right now.

3:52So we're about to basically finalize kind of the product that we're going to be bringing into patients. And the plan is, are going to be submitting our application to the FDA to get the approval to go into patients and then would be dosing our first patients in early 2027. So really soon. This is an IND or something? It's an IND. Exactly. I'm impressed you know it. So yes, an investigational new drug application. And you can get those expedited if they have like really, can't you, if they're really beneficial to humanity, like you can fast track them or something? So that's, you're thinking more about approvals.

4:25So that's a fast for approvals. The INDs are actually like, they turn around them pretty quickly. They do. Yeah. It's more all the work that goes into the putting together the IND is actually the bigger package. And very quickly, what's your background? I did my undergrad in the sciences. thought I was going to go to medical school and actually thought I was going to be an oncologist. And ultimately, towards the end of college, decided that I personally just didn't want to emotionally deal with death on a daily basis. And I didn't think I could do that and just kind of step away from that. But I always knew that I wanted to work on cancer therapeutics.

5:01And that was kind of what my passion was. And so basically, since that, I ended up going back to grad school and then ultimately going to business school and have spent my entire career in the life sciences industry working on bringing novel oncology drugs to market. And actually what I've always wanted to do was co-found my own company and bring these to market. And what I actually wanted to do and who my co-founder is is my college roommate. And so we were lab mates and partners and worked in all the classes together. And he did go to medical school. I was just going to ask. Yeah, he did. He went to medical school and became an oncologist.

5:36And so we had always wanted to do this together. Oh, dream team. So this is extra exciting because when I was at YC, we weren't really funding life sciences companies. And I think you had a really good experience going through YC, right? Yes. I had an incredible experience. And I've recommended it to so many life sciences companies going in. Nice. And it was interesting because I think for us, coming in and when we were thinking about applying to YC is we felt like we knew life sciences. But we didn't know startups. We didn't really know how to found a company and how to build a company and how to tell our story.

6:13And I think for us, that's what was so beneficial about YC is we were able to really say, how do we tell our story? And also, I think one of the other things that was so helpful is how do we talk to investors? And it really changed the dynamic for us and kind of we felt put us in the driver's seat when we were talking to investors, which was huge. So it's great. This episode today is a shortened one. Carolyn and I have been talking to a lot of founders about founder mode because we've just come off the retreat. And I remember you were at last year's event when Brian Chesky gave his seminal talk, which sparked the whole idea of founder mode.

6:54Tell us your response to that. It was just so timely because it was incredible. It was just – it was so interesting to hear someone and you're thinking about Brian and Airbnb and you're like they can't be having some of the same problems. And then you realize you're like, wait, I'm in this smaller company and I'm having some of the exact same issues. Because I think one of the mistakes that I had originally made was thinking that I shouldn't be managing the science. Because it's like my background is more on the business side and I shouldn't be managing the day-to-day science in the lab. Okay.

7:29Okay. Because I was like, all right, the scientists should manage the science. Yes. And that had always been kind of like my rule of thumb. And we weren't making the progress that I felt like we should be making. We were going a lot slower than I felt like we should be going. And we were also having some personnel issues at the time. And I was just really struggling with what to do. And I was hearing him talk and I was like, wow, this is, wow. Like, no, I should be managing the science. I should be in the weeds. I should be in all the details. and the most amazing thing is like right after that talk I did get into the weeds and I did get into all the details I started micromanaging the team and like saying and and I think I remember like the first weekend they complained they're like why are you making me meet with you for a daily stand-up at the end of every day to tell you what I did I was like well because I want to make sure you did it yeah obviously then and then it was great because a couple weeks later like all the team members who weren't on board with that quit.

8:27Wow. How many people quit? We lost two people that way. Two people. Yeah, which was great. Were some of them pleased? Were some of them like, I'm glad to be telling you what I'm doing each day? One of them was totally fine with it. And he's been a really, and actually by kind of the other people leaving, he kind of was really able to flourish, which was worked out really well. And then we brought on some other people who are just really strong and on top of it and just kind of actually and then we're saying like do we need these stand-ups I was like yes we do because we really want to make sure we continue to hold the team accountable yeah and I will say like in all honesty now we have reduced the frequency like we don't meet every day like we don't meet three days a week just because the team is so much more productive yeah this is exactly Carolyn what Brian was talking about Like at the beginning, you really do have to get into the weeds and know everything.

9:21But then as you bring people up to speed to the way you want to lead things and do things, then you can pull back a little bit. Did your co-founder go to the retreat last year too? He did not. It was just me actually. So when you came back and you're like, this is what we're going to do, was he like, yes, I've been waiting. I needed like – I'm so happy. This is what we're doing. He was just more like as long as you're the one doing it, I'm fine with it. That's funny. I think, Carolyn, sometime we're going to have to figure out a new word besides micromanaging, though, because – Well, you'll remember when we were chatting with PG, I said maybe we need to rebrand micromanaging to make it not negative but actually a positive because it has had so many positive effects for so many founders to, like, quote, micromanage.

10:05Exactly. Or a new word that just means, hey, I want to understand what you're doing. Yeah. Because micromanaging sort of suggests I'm telling you exactly what to do at all times. Yeah. But there's also, I'm at the end of each day finding out exactly what you did. Partnering. Yeah, partnering. Accountability partner. Yeah, something like that. So that's great. That's great. You had immediate impact from this talk. Yeah. But I think that there's another example that you have where you had to go into full-on founder mode with your investor, I think. Yeah. So we definitely had an interesting experience.

10:39And I remember at the beginning with YC, and we were really fortunate. we had the most amazing partner, Serby, who is now at Colate. And I'm actually very fortunate to be a Colate customer. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's kind of come full circle. And I get to work from her office because it's just more social and fun. So it's been great. But one of the things I remember at the beginning, she was kind of saying when we were going through all this, is that, all right, everything's done on safes and you don't have any board members. And I remember one of our investors asking for a board seat, and she goes, you say no.

11:15I'm like, does it really matter? She goes, no, you say no. And my rule of thumb had always been like, okay, I trust her. I'm going to listen to her. And if she tells me what to do, it's probably right, and I'm going to listen to it. So that was kind of my approach with it. And I didn't really understand what it meant and the value of not having investors on your board. because so one of our investors, they were digging in and they had some questions about our scientific strategy and we didn't agree with them. We felt very strongly that we were taking the right approach scientifically. And I think at the end of the day, we know the science and we so much better than they do.

11:56There's just no way because their experience is in a different field and while they can offer insights, just no one's gonna know the science and our product the way that we do. So while we listened to them and we're like, okay, let's take your feedback, let's look at it. And we said, no, this is not the right approach. It's not the right approach from a both product perspective and it's also not the right approach from a scientific perspective. And so we basically said, no, we're not gonna follow this. We're not gonna listen to you. And we had the power to be able to do that. And that was just so huge.

12:29Because they weren't on the board. And because they weren't on the board. What was the fallout? like with the relationship and what happened next basically when you were like, no thanks, we're not going to do that. There was definitely some fallout because we were kind of going through an additional funding round at that time and they didn't end up coming in. But at the same time, for us, it was the right decision for the company. And the good thing is all of our other investors recognized us and I think respected us for standing up for what we believed in. And I think it was interesting. We've actually had kind of another similar situation, but slightly, you know, but different where we've been kind of going through and we had decided internally that, you know, while we had, when we had first started, we were really focusing on developing kind of the best targets to go after.

13:18We then realized we also wanted to have the best delivery platform on how to deliver this vaccine. And we had decided that we wanted to do it. And we kind of were going through with someone we had just brought on the team. And he goes, okay, now what do we need to do to bring it to the board? And we look at him, we're like, well, you just brought it to the board. The decision's made. And let's move forward. So it's just we've been able to move forward so quickly and so nimbly and really say at the end of the day, like for us, there are two things that really drive our decision making. What's best for patients?

13:48And what is the science? And what is the data telling us? And we can really follow those two things without having to kind of go through all these additional hurdles. And that's just been huge. That sounds incredible. You said that you were doing a funding round at the time. Do you now have a third board member? So because we continue to listen to YC's advice and we did a second seed round on safes, we did not. So no price round. No price round, no board members. So it's still just you guys? It's still just us. Wow, that's pretty powerful. Wow. Yeah, so we actually did bring in recently someone who was working with us as a consultant from the biotech industry and who has a ton of experience.

14:30And we brought him in as a board member recently. Like an independent. An independent, but it was our choice and not an investor board member and has just been a huge addition and a huge help to the team. So we were really excited to bring him on. But at the end of the day, it was our decision. And that's just been so huge. It's going to be interesting if you do raise like, and I'm sure you have to raise a lot of money because inhuman trials are absurdly expensive. Yeah. So like, I'm assuming you and your co-founder are sort of thinking about like, what, how are we going to play this? And like, how are we going to arrange this in a way that still we get the benefit of this amazing independence that you have?

15:09Yeah. And actually, that's been one of the things we've been kind of doing is I've started talking to other CEOs, especially even some who have been through Y Combinator and also in the life sciences industry to ask their advice of like, how have they been able to retain board control? And like, what have they done? And how have they thought about it? And kind of gotten a lot of advice that says, like, when you think about your next funding round, they had focused actually more as their number one priority was board control over valuation. So we're willing to take a less, slightly lower valuation to retain control, which I thought was really interesting.

15:41And I think having now seen the benefit of it. I'm very aligned with that approach. Yeah. Well, I hope to someday talk to you like more at length on a full episode of The Social Radars. Yeah, I'd love to. That would be great. Since this is our little founder mode series, we better wrap things up. Obviously, I wish you the best of luck going forward and I can't wait to hear more from Adventress. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks. Bye, Jen. Bye. Bye.

16:14We'll be right back.