Not only is this week's guest the TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Battlefield winner, but Nabiha Saklayen is also democratizing access to life-saving cell therapies by using—you guessed it—lasers. Nabiha is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino which is a company developing the tech to automate stem cell production that will lower the cost of cell therapies and increase the yield of viable cells. In this episode, Nabiha tells Jordan and Darrell how she built a start-up beginning with the tech and finding a business fit, her evolving leadership style, and why this work is crucial to the biomedical field.
Not only is this week's guest the TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Battlefield winner, but Nabiha Saklayen is also democratizing access to life-saving cell therapies by using—you guessed it—lasers. Nabiha is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino which is a company developing the tech to automate stem cell production that will lower the cost of cell therapies and increase the yield of viable cells. In this episode, Nabiha tells Jordan and Darrell how she built a start-up beginning with the tech and finding a business fit, her evolving leadership style, and why this work is crucial to the biomedical field.
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Darrell Etherington 0:01
Hey, I'm Darrell Welcome to found TechCrunch's show where we talk to a different founder every week about how to male build a company. Yes. Journey. Do you think that's accurate? Sure.
Jordan Crook 0:13
You have less hesitation. Normally the founders build their company. Let the hesitation then Darrell just spoke those words. But yeah, how to build a company? Yeah, that's right. And that, of course, is my faithful co hosts and also the stem cells to my cherished cells.
Stem cells to your tired old dying cells. Yeah, Jordan Crook here. Glad to be here, injecting the youth and vitality into found every week.
Darrell Etherington 0:45
So my intro signals, who we have on this week
is Nabiha Saklayen, from Cellino which is on a mission to democratize cell therapy. Cell Therapy is not a new technology. It's been around, but it's been extremely costly. And it's not really accessible to most people, because it usually involves building custom cells from scratch. And it's kind of like, if you had an artist in the building you like a custom shoe. Like it's like, it's very time consuming. It's a one off thing. It's like the highest paid person in the room has to go and do some things right? Pretty manual. Yeah, navigate through these cells. And like only a few of them are any good and have like hundreds or 1000s. Yeah, then they got to discard the rest. Which is waste. Terrible is not want not Yeah, but Selena has figured out a better way. They have a machine that they say can create bespoke cell therapies specific for the individual in a lab a lot more quickly, much lower cost with way better yields very exciting technology they've been working on for years because it's like a sci fi I think is we've gotten maybe on this show so far. We talked about like metal tires. So that was kind of sci fi but lasers and AI to develop custom cell therapies. Yes, very, you know, yeah. 3020. Yeah. Nabiha's expertise is an optics isn't lasers and physics, like Jerry mentioned there. And then she's teamed up with cellular biologist to kind of develop this new way of doing things. It's one of these really cool startups that comes out of academia and the research side of academic pursuits in higher learning. So super cool, super cutting edge. And also the winner. I'd be remiss if I didn't say the winner of disrupt Battlefield 2021. So they were a while ago, so yeah, wild card. Yeah, they're a wild card. So they they went into the startup alley got selected as a wild card to go pitch. They didn't get like the same four months or whatever of trainings and practices and preparation is all the other Battlefield companies. They just like kind of had to go for it with it out. And they did and went to the finals and then ended up winning. Yeah, that's an interesting, True Underdog Story. A lot of words.
But yes.
Jordan Crook 3:01
I mean, you whip out deck and your presentation, your incredible demo is I don't know what other meaning could be interpreted from that.
Darrell Etherington 3:11
That's sure there's only the one possible. Good point. All right. So let's go ahead and let Naveen explain in detail. solino. And how she got there and how they did it, how they won. Disrupt which is the highest honor anyone can ever see. Yeah. I Navia how's it going?
Nabiha Saklayen 3:33
Hi, Darryl. It's great. Good to see you.
Darrell Etherington 3:36
Yes, you too. So congratulations are in order. I don't know when listeners will be hearing this. But it's fresh right now that you've won startup battlefield TechCrunch, his own startup Battlefield, something we know a little bit about, right, Jordan?
Jordan Crook 3:50
I'm familiar with the concept.
Darrell Etherington 3:54
But I'm very exciting. We I watched the whole thing, watch presentation. super impressive. Also impressive, because you're the wild card company, which our listeners might not know. But that means we kind of were a late entry into the process didn't have as much time to prep as some of the other teams at all. I mean, that's an understatement, for sure. How does it feel now to do I mean, was it exciting for you? I hope so. But was it exciting? I don't want to presume.
Nabiha Saklayen 4:24
Absolutely thrilled, I don't know if you saw that announcement video where I'm so shocked when they announced the game. And I'm sort of looking in all directions. And I'm just like what is happening? So that was absolutely my feeling in the moment because we were a wild card entry. We were invited just a few days before everything started. And then over the weekend, of course, the TechCrunch team was fantastic. They said, hey, the live demo is a very important piece. So what can you do with your team that can show the system and say wow, that's really hard because we have an automated process running right now to make stem cells. And I said the big guys To ask my team to try to demo something given that they're in the middle of running a three month process that's been pre scheduled. But I still ended up calling our senior automation engineer Eric, on the weekend, I said, Hey, there's this amazing opportunity, we should try to do something. What do you think? Can you make it happen? And he said, Yeah, I can make it happen. So that was phenomenal. I didn't even know we could do something like that. And Eric was so impressive and got the demo together very quickly. And yeah, we were excited, we were humbled, it definitely was the TechCrunch Disrupt win, for me really symbolized how hard my team has been working for the past two years to get this automated system built. And we really got to celebrate this incredible accomplishment to have a system running to make human specific personalized stem cells in a fully automated way. So I dedicated the wind to them, because the demo was so so excited, and really got everyone's attention.
Jordan Crook 5:59
It's always cool to know that your team when you're like, No, it's actually pre built and scheduled and doing its own thing and we don't touch it at all and then being like, oh, no, they're totally capable of that must be a nice feeling to know that you can rely on your team in a pinch. But I loved what you're saying about the reaction video because I remember I was in the studio at the time. And we we had the runner up announced and they put the logo up before they cut to the runner up reaction. And I remember sitting there with our production team and being like hey, can we swap that around next time like when you announce the winner like go straight to the winner? Like I want to see the reaction exactly in the moment. And they did it and it was the look on your face was priceless. I thought it was it was a really fun moment. Yeah. Favorite me to around the office for sure. So yeah, that's great. And I just want to tell you also, just because you are working on stem cells, which is like a you know, noble cause and stuff, but like my work is to decide not to decide but predict who wins the battlefield and I just want you to call I called it the second you finished presenting.
Darrell Etherington 7:13
So Jordan, I have to just
Jordan Crook 7:16
Yes, I also am an overachiever. One could say I too am saving
Darrell Etherington 7:24
Oh no. go that far.
Jordan Crook 7:26
But I did call it I felt it in my bones. Yeah, you're gonna when
Darrell Etherington 7:29
I was also going to ask you to explain Selena but you actually got in there at the end of the thing. But do you wanna give kind of a more fulsome kind of like elevator pitch about Selena just for our audience, in case they're not familiar and didn't watch disrupt which they should definitely go back and watch this. I think there's a way they can do that return? Totally. Yeah.
Jordan Crook 7:47
Yeah, that's a way to do that.
Nabiha Saklayen 7:49
Absolutely. Yes, happy to. So Cellino is on a mission to democratize and industrialize access to cell therapies. cell therapies are super powerful, because there's a whole new wave of medicines being developed where we can actually make new human cells and transplant them into a patient to cure them of diseases like Parkinson's, diabetes, blindness, and Cellino is building the world's first automated manufacturing platform to generate these human tissues that scale with no human intervention. It's an AI driven platform. And we also use our core technologies based on lasers, because I'm a laser physicist by training. It's really fun. It's a multidisciplinary approach across laser physics, machine learning and stem cell biology. And we're working together to change how manufacturing happens in the biotech industry.
Jordan Crook 8:37
I think one of the keys for me when you were explaining it was you were talking about how that process works today, right? Which is like 10%, I think is what you said of stem cells that are grown are useful, right? Or like valid are able to go on to the next step. And that human doctors, like people who have spent $250,000 to go to school are out there trying to scrape them in into beakers or whatever. And that can also harm them. So it's super manual, super slow, and you get very little out of yield rate is terrible. Yeah. And then I think in your pitcher, like our yield rate is like 80%, or something like, correct me if I'm wrong, but like, that was the moment where I was like, oh, like, this is gonna be a game changer?
Nabiha Saklayen 9:16
Absolutely. Yes, in the world's best institutions and companies, the yield ends up being 10 to 20%. In the hands of these highly trained scientists, like you mentioned, Jordan, and Cellino's his goal is to get the yield to as high as possible, we've set a target of 80% and above, and that will be amazing because when you do a fully automated process, that high yield in a closed system, we do have our approach is up is designed to be a closed system. That's when you get these massive cost reductions. So you go from your hundreds of 1000s of dollars in manufacturing costs to 10s of 1000s. And then in the future, it'll get even cheaper as reagents get cheaper and DNA sequencing gets cheaper, those kinds of things. Yes, so very important. problem. And we feel very grateful that we get to work with some of the best experts in the world who are developing these treatments for patients. And that's very important because it's not just an idea. We're not living in the zone of oh, we have a cool idea. Let's see what happened. But we're actually working with the world's leading experts to see what are their challenges? And how can we solve the abusing our technology? Yeah. So
Darrell Etherington 10:20
like, to me, it feels like he, when you're talking about you're talking about bespoke treatment, right? You're talking about treatment tailored to an individual which sounds it's amazing to me that you're able to make that scalable. When I think about other things that are like, like, even on demand t shirt printing, this is a horrible analogy, but I feel I have to make it because it's so dramatic. But like, Yeah, before you would, you would make T shirts and like book because it was like it's impossible. And like only recently, we've developed kind of technologies that are like, well, you know, we can do one off printings and make it still kind of reasonably cost effective for the individual and decent enough quality. Like that's a thing that's happened, I think, within our recent lifetimes. So to imagine that you can do the same thing for stem cell treatments for individuals seems just mind boggling. But I would love to hear like this must have started in the academy. Right? So what when was the idea phase? And how did that kind of come together? If you can walk us through that?
Nabiha Saklayen 11:12
Yep, absolutely. So the stem cell industry has been a very active space for about 20 years. And one of the biggest discoveries in this space was awarded the Nobel Prize is the discovery that we can make stem cells for everybody, for all adults. So you can start with blood cells, you can start with skin cells, hair cells, any cells in the body and reprogram them to turn them into their original stem cell state. Very cool, because
Darrell Etherington 11:40
I remember because like when you first hear about it, I remember hearing as a sort of casual consumer of this the news, right? Like you better preserve them from your amniotic fluid or whatever, like when you're and then have them stored so that you can use them later on. And that seemed to be that was like the only way to get them. This development is like no, that's not or was that just a false popular culture kind of representation? No, that was okay.
Nabiha Saklayen 12:03
No, I think that was absolutely. So there are some really nice cells in the right when children are born that are really high quality. So if you wanted to make even the stem cells that we work on induced pluripotent stem cells, those original cells are a really good starting material. So yes, for our future generation, I think it would be really cool to have some type of cord blood banking, were right at birth, those cells are collected shipped off and turned into induced pluripotent stem cells banked so that that person has a lifelong bank of stem cells that are really high quality so that anytime they need new skin or new eye cells, new hair cells, they can be generated from that original bank.
Darrell Etherington 12:44
So that's still valid. Okay, good. Cuz that's me. Jordans. startup idea. Oh, cool.
Jordan Crook 12:49
Yeah. Well, we're launching on Tuesday. We also are working with some of the world's greatest experts, including shot and Maggie our producers on the podcast.
Nabiha Saklayen 13:00
Yeah. So Cellino, Cellino would be happy to manufacture all the cells for
Jordan Crook 13:05
Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 13:08
That's an MOU. I think that's what we call that. But,
Nabiha Saklayen 13:14
yeah, Darrell, to go back to your original question, I think is very important. So yes, and stem cell biology is hard. It is not easy. It's quite amazing how a baby forms in a womb, when you think about it, it's starting from one fertilized cell, and then magically over nine months, knows how to execute the code to become this entire human being perfectly. So for the past 20 years, biologists have been working exceptionally hard to figure out what are those codes? How do we execute some of those codes to make eyes cells and hair cells and all of those things. And what's really exciting about where we are today is we have a very strong reasonable understanding of how the biology works, we can replicate, we can reproduce it to a certain degree. But getting precision in the process is really hard. And the analogy I like to use is cell culture can sometimes feel a lot like cooking. So you take some chemicals, you put it in a pot, you stir it, see what happens tasted may or may not work. Sometimes recipes go wrong, because you messed up some of those ingredients, you go back, you try it again, you get better over time. And what's nice about what Cellino does is we bring super precision to the process. You know, with lasers, lasers have single cell precision. So you can target one cell, you can also target them at different time points, you could do that at every second, every minute, every hour, 15 times an hour, whatever you want. So the movement that's Leno's bring to the table. And there are other companies who are also bringing different types of precision, but we really focus on lasers is hey, let's take a process that is a lot more random and make it single cell precision and also be able to control those time elements. So that's how you maximize your yield. So when you have
Darrell Etherington 14:58
that realization, like How'd you get that have that realization that this was a way that you could do it? Your training wasn't in cellular biology? Right. But you you knew the laser part. Yeah, the optics part.
Nabiha Saklayen 15:09
Correct. Yeah. So my story, I've been a diehard physics fan for as long as I can remember, there was this little girl obsessed with space and time travel, those kinds of things. And my mom's a teacher. She's been a teacher for almost 30 years now. So she fully supported all of my creative ideas. And I just always knew I had to be a physicist. I'm going to be a physicist. And I had an interesting upbringing. So I traveled the world growing up. So I was born in Saudi Arabia, I grew up in Germany, went to high school in Sri Lanka. And in high school, I picked physics as my universal language. Like I wanted that to be the language through which I wanted to process the world. Because it it didn't change with every move. I like that. And it was challenging. I like that part too. And then I moved to the US to go to college still wanted to be a physicist. And in before grad school, I moved to Boston, I went to Harvard that summer was a tough summer because I lost my grandma to diabetes. And I realized that doctors don't have all the tools that they should have to save patients, which was shocking to me anyway, anyways, med when I got to Harvard, I decided, okay, I could pursue my intellectual curiosity. If I did that I would have become a string theorist or particle physicists. Those were the things that really satisfied me intellectually, but real world applications are hard to come by may not happen for the next several centuries, we don't know. So I decided, okay, I want to live at the interface of physics and biology and develop tools to help biologists do better biology. That was my thesis, when I started the PhD, ended up joining a laser physics lab and nano fabrication lab and started working in this multidisciplinary space to invent new methods of engineering cells with lasers and nanomaterials, which was a really fun experience. You know, you when you think of a PhD timeline, there's so many things to do, and things take forever. So I personally never imagined that I would get to real world applications in my PhD timeframe. But it did happen. The last year, I'd done all the simulations, I've done all the nanofabrication, I was starting to test things out with the laser and started working with biologists. So I knocked on a lot of doors. The Harvard Stem Cell Institute is across the street from the physics department. That was my first introduction to stem cells. And my mind was blown. I just couldn't believe there's this one cell type that has the code in it to become every cell type in our body. That was magical. And I also learned from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute team, that it's really hard to engineer these cells, they suggested Why don't we try to engineer them with lasers, we'll see what happens. And it worked. That was the surprising part. And when it worked, everybody started talking about you need to do something with this, you need to do a startup. And I told them, I don't know what that means. I've never thought of doing a startup. And they said, No, you really need to consider it because this level of precision is so important for biology could really have a meaningful impact. So that's how the startup idea came into being.
Darrell Etherington 17:59
That's an amazing path. Especially imagine that when you were talking about you know, your intellectual curiosity was in this different direction. I think it's important to emphasize how different that direction is for maybe an audience that is not familiar, right? Like you alluded to it, but the one is very abstract, very theoretical, like, like you said, like, it's almost not an impossibility, but it's very unlikely that you're going to see the practical application of what your work is in your lifetime, right. Or even in multiple lifetimes. So especially go from theory. Yes. Yeah. So to go from a lot about that from Darrell favorite show Big Bang Theory. out a year. No, I hate that show. There's not for this podcast. But yeah, like that decision must have been very difficult for you. There's so different it's such different worlds. It's hard to imagine making that choice. I'm trying to think of an equivalent Jordan for like,
Jordan Crook 18:51
yeah, like someone who didn't know Harvard and physics. Yeah, I think it would be like the equivalent of pursuing skateboarding your entire life and really loving being a skateboarder and then deciding to do, like make dog beds for
Darrell Etherington 19:12
why wildly different, right? Yeah. So how did you wrestle with that? You mentioned you had your personal experience in that cemented, like, Oh, you want to do some real good in the world now, but was it difficult for you to make that choice?
Nabiha Saklayen 19:24
Of course, yes. You know, it's when you become a physicist, you don't do it because you think you'll be rich or famous or anything you do it because you're pursuing intellectual curiosity. It's challenging, it's stimulating you like to do lots of math and work by yourself. But you know, when when I thought about it and getting accepted to such a prestigious PhD program was a very important in my life and my career and I was like, wow, this is incredible. And then really coming to terms with what do I want to do in the world? What do I want my legacy to be and at that point, it was very much oh, I want to help develop tools for by ologists that was my motivation. And in that moment, it wasn't that tough of a decision. And you know, just a little bit more about my upbringing, I did spend my high school years in a civil war. So that makes you very practical about your your privileges. And I knew, yes, I am in a position of privilege, I could do many other things. But I do want to support experts who are trying to make human health better, because you know, my family stuff suffered from lots of diseases that don't seem to have cures. And if there's anything I could do to build a better tool or technology or some type of measurement technique, great, that would feel good to me. Yes, it was hard, I do miss that aspect of not being able to live in my world of intellectual curiosity. But the work I do now is so rewarding. From a human health impact standpoint, from everything we do is so innovative, I had never really engaged with the machine learning AI space until we started the company and we fully embraced it. Now, we are absolutely a software driven company where everybody across the board is learning how to code, including many of our incredible biologists so that they can use all the automation software. It's pretty amazing. And then of course, to be able to work with this team. It's the joy of a lifetime. So yeah,
Jordan Crook 21:14
can we talk about day one, right? So you made your decision was tough decision, but also like not even really a decision. You're like, I have to do this. And then you decide, okay, I'm gonna go make a startup and do that. What? What were the first few steps like, right, like, where did you go first realize, okay, I need co founders or I need to incorporate or let's start talking to investors. Like, where did you actually start?
Nabiha Saklayen 21:38
Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So with me, I wanted to rely on some of my core principles of how I like to live in the world, which is I love to work with teams. That's just been how I've always liked to work. So I said, Okay, I need to build a team. If I'm going to do this startup thing. I know very little about startups. And the first person I asked was Marina Madrid, who used to be my lab mate at the time. She's an applied physics and we'd work together. So well, for four years, I knew we have this amazing team dynamic. So I found her in the lab and sat her down and said, Hey, everybody's saying, I should do a start up. Would you do it with me? And thankfully, she was so enthusiastic. She said, Yes, let's do it. What do we have to lose? You know, if it doesn't work out, you can go get a job in industry. I'll go into teaching Marina is an excellent teacher. So okay, great. So that gave me a lot of conference, I had one amazing person that wanted to try it out with me that I knew I had a strong working relationship with. And then the other piece, I started tapping into this amazing Boston ecosystem, which is such a strong network and started asking everybody I knew, hey, I'm trying to build a startup in this space. What advice do you have for me? I'm trying to find advisors who have experienced building instrumentation or working with stem cells, whatever it might be at all these categories of advisors I wanted to engage with. And just a few weeks after that, somebody connected me to Mateos Wagner saying, hey, Mateus is super experienced in the instrumentation space. He's built multiple companies. He's been CEO before he'd be a great mentor. It's a fantastic so I went to this coffee date with Mateus. And it was an instant connection. So in the second meeting, he said, we both said, Let's do this, let's build the company together. So that was awesome. I do see in my story, how it's very important to share your intentions with the universe and be proactive that was very proactive about, hey, I need to work with people who I have a good working relationship with. And people have done this before. And because we've had Mateus on our team from the beginning, we've definitely made some really smart choices about how we use our capital, how we find product market fit all of those things. And it's really cool to see the past three years of existence where we've been building the prototypes and finding our product market fit building the core team and now we're getting ready for our scale up. It's been
Jordan Crook 23:54
awesome. What was the hardest part like this is gonna sound a bit weird, but something gives me this feeling that like the actual tech isn't so much of a challenge for you, right? Like, you just seem like superduper smart. It sounds like your team knows what's going on. And you're like, Okay, problem solution. We got that part but like running a business is like a whole different thing. Right that like you didn't study you're studying physics and biology and lasers, and you know, those the technical terms. And so what to you is the hardest part about turning ultimately, what is science and research into a business? Like what was the biggest challenge of the business side of things.
Nabiha Saklayen 24:34
The biggest challenge to me was figuring out what the business should be around this very broad platform. What are the applications there, but 100 Different things we could do. There are 100 different business models we could pursue. And I started this massive customer discovery process or that first summer after Mateus, and Marina had joined the team, you know, we were starting to work together. I interviewed hundreds of people that summer To understand what are the possibilities to educate myself, but really, the switch that flipped in my brain was I'm going from scientist, inventor to business person, I have to figure out how we're going to make money. What are people willing to pay for? And can we actually deliver on their expectation? So looking at a lot of adjacent technologies, what were the company trajectories there? Were they selling devices? Were they doing a service model? Were they doing a therapeutics model? What were the pros and cons. So we ended up exploring all of those options very thoroughly. And then making choices about okay, this is we're definitely not taking this track. It's not an attractive business, in terms of what the revenue model looks like, or the margins look like, Oh, this is more attractive, oh, this is too hard. That was a very challenging Jordan. But also super interesting. And I would say, that strategic piece of my job is the piece of my job that I love. And it's absolutely intellectually stimulating every day to make these decisions in an industry that's just starting to exist. So you're building the business model in an industry that's just taking off. And it's really cool.
Jordan Crook 26:11
I love that methodology of like, we could do 100 things with this technology. I mean, there are a lot of startups that start from the opposite direction, right? Like, we want to do this one exact thing. And we're just going to build for that you like had something built, essentially, decide how to use it. And I love the idea of putting like, it makes me think of when I wanted to paint my wall red, put all the paint chips up. And just slowly every day, I would pull a couple down, you know, until this one left. And that's the one yes, I think that's really interesting. Yep,
Nabiha Saklayen 26:41
absolutely. And those other ideas that those other paint chips that we didn't end up painting the wall with are still around, and very cool. So there are a lot of interesting applications in the plant cell space and the microbiome space, which we're not working on at all right now. But they're still there in the background.
Jordan Crook 27:01
Yeah, one day.
Darrell Etherington 27:02
I mean, do you have this, you could start one business of focus. Or you could sort of do the thing where you kind of like, maybe remain in the academy, but then like, have a hand in the founding of multiple businesses, right? I mean, that's another model we've seen people take to you, like, you evaluate all these options, and you sort of thought like, this is what I want to do for the business and also for personal motivation. Like is that's kind of how you made your decision.
Nabiha Saklayen 27:28
Yes, absolutely. Staying in academia was not an option for me. I think academia is too archaic and too slow and too rigid. And not Oh,
Jordan Crook 27:39
yeah, what's wrong? Right under the bus, Harvard Damn. But like, wait, what were you gonna do with string theory, then? Isn't there only one option?
Nabiha Saklayen 27:47
Exactly. Right. So that challenge I think a lot of us face because we love science, we want to be in science. But being an academia is really hard. getting jobs is so hard. And you look at so many of my brilliant friends who have published in Nature science, first author, but they're not translating into academic position. So there's a lot of systemic challenges in academia that are beyond what I can resolve, and I'm very happy with where I am in industry, most of my friends are working in industry are also feeling really good. I do have some friends who are doing exceptionally well in academia, but most of them did multiple years of postdocs. Yeah. And didn't end up with a position, you know, and all that everyone is underpaid. It's very depressing.
Darrell Etherington 28:30
Yeah. To try to get your research funded to it's like, yeah, the hamster wheel never stopped. Love
Jordan Crook 28:36
that. You can solve stem cell problems, but like the archaism of academia is beyond what you could solve. Right? Like, that's the bigger that's the bigger more unflappable challenge, right? Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 28:50
It's so ensconced, right. It's like talking about inertia problems. It just has all this detritus of years of tradition and institutional Yeah, inertia, and it's just builds up and up and builds up on top of each other. Like the layers, you know, nothing's kind of like undoing it. And you just keep adding to it. I mean, I have my own unpleasant experiences.
Jordan Crook 29:10
Yeah, you just like you just like, ran a feather over and constantly. So he could go on just wait, get him started on Canada, and we're dying.
Darrell Etherington 29:20
I was in creative arts and nobody wants that. So. Yeah, I mean, the other interesting thing to me about your personal story about is like, like, like you I grew up and I just liked being off kind of alone and doing this this work and like really enjoyed being by yourself. But then you also mentioned you really like teams, personally, on that side, like aside from the business like is the interpersonal has that been a challenge for you? Or it sounds like you liked collaborative work, but you also like the opportunity to go solo and get into your own thoughts. So how has that been for you?
Nabiha Saklayen 29:52
That's a great question. So I do love working teams, and we do a great job. It's lino it, making sure we're communicating well We have a lot of efforts on that site, I do have a head of Transformative Leadership and her entire job is to help the team communicate and engage across disciplines. So those parts of my jobs were already the piece that I think is hardest for me, because I think naturally I'm more of an introvert but I can be very extroverted when necessary. And my parents are very extroverted. So I think that's pretty, you know, we grew up performing music with my parents, but all the media aspects of my job and the external command, the attention that comes with it, are personally very challenging for me. But of course, I understand they're really good for the company, they're really good to draw talent towards us and meet great partners, but I struggle with that piece, for sure.
Darrell Etherington 30:44
And sure enough, I mean, we're on this, it's, it's a very tiring thing to do. Even if you're very much enjoying it. When we do these podcasts. I love doing these podcasts, but they take a lot out of me. It's basically like my day I see it and I'm like, okay, there it is, the whole morning is gonna be lead up to that. And then afterwards, it's gonna be kind of like decompress from that, right? I think I'm lucky like, I'm naturally an introverted person, and I can be extroverted and really enjoy it on occasion. But it's not my natural tendency.
Jordan Crook 31:14
I think most people think I'm an extrovert, but in reality, I need like a lot of fuel time introverted, Lee and I also think, just in general, we're also good at multitasking, because that's what like our careers and whether it's in school or in the workplace have asked us to be good at multitasking. So like, when you're not doing something like this, you're slacking with, like 40 Different people across 40 projects, you know, and so to like, come into an focused environment like this. Yeah, exactly is like, Whoa, it's so it's so draining, you're used to giving like little bits to a lot of people at all the time. Yeah. Naveen,
Darrell Etherington 31:49
do you have a dashboard up right now set like at the automated process? Like oh, no, it's going to have to monitor it that closely or no, no. Are you able to kind of sit back and be like, team's got it? teams got it handled?
Nabiha Saklayen 32:00
Yeah, teams got it. They give me very regular updates on when we're on schedule. And we're ahead of schedule when we're behind. And we try to adjust to make sure we're always on track. No, I don't really don't believe in micromanaging. So definitely rely on my team to keep me updated on when they need help to figure through things and they do a great job. So
Darrell Etherington 32:21
I think you've done like a TED talk of so cut to right. So you've done like presentations, your job is meeting to the battlefield stuff. So is that you mentioned like you have leadership coaching in house right leadership guidance in house, which I think is awesome to do. And I've seen that at other companies, too. I think it really, really helps with cultural issues, and just making sure the company stays in the right direction. But what else do you do to kind of cultivate that part of the job and of your personality? Because, as you mentioned, it is very important. And I think there's a lot of founders who would like to learn how to grow that part, how to nurture that part of their personalities, right?
Nabiha Saklayen 32:55
Yeah, absolutely. And for me, it's always practicing self awareness and self reflection, I sometimes tell my team that just to put into context, of course, the company is growing at a very rapid pace. And we have a lot more things, we have to do more partners that we're working with, etc, the team is growing. But my personal growth has been the steepest out of anybody at this company, because I went from being a lab scientist, to, you know, a CEO and founder of a small startup and now a scaling startup. So my day to day has changed dramatically from where I was spending more time spending with the team. And now I still spend all that time with the team, but then also have to take care of our Investor Relations, external relations, and so many other things that I wish I had more time to do. So it's always an assessment, and we're getting into the next phase of the company, what do I need to do to be effective in my job, and there are different priorities that emerge. And I'm doing a very honest assessment of where I think my skill sets are and where I need to improve my toolset and working with my executive coach. I work with Nancy Stubbs to build those pieces out. And a lot of it is about time management, efficient decision making. In general, I'm a very warm and understanding person, I can usually see everybody's perspective and really empathize with where they're coming from. But you know, to move quickly, we're going to have to make decisions and not everybody's going to be happy about that. And I have to get more and more comfortable with that to manage my time. Well, so obviously, there are many examples of entrepreneurs who have a certain style of operation and this is how they operate in the world and they're extremely successful. And maybe they're very unpleasant to work with or having a sanction for being a slave driver. I think there are many, we could point to a lot of examples. You're very famous people. I definitely operate in the mode of I want to treat people well. I want to make sure my team is happy, they're productive, they're balanced. They already work very long hours. Even though I never asked them to, so what can I do to support them to take wellness breaks, take care of their emotional, mental, physical well being, because those are all the things I need to do my job well. So that's where I'm coming at it from. It's very interesting because biotech classically, is a very hierarchical industry. So there are a lot of layers and levels. And at Felino, were starting to get amazing talent joining us for very large companies, established companies, but the founders feel very strongly that we should feel very intimate. We don't want to have that many levels, because the best ideas can come from anywhere in the company want those ideas to come out. So we pursue a very horizontal and flat structure, which works really well for us. But there's a lot of conversations we are continually having with everybody across the team, why we believe that and how do we make it work? I said a lot of things there. Darrell, if I didn't answer,
Darrell Etherington 35:55
no, no.
Jordan Crook 35:58
You didn't revisit that? Oh, go ahead. Sure. Well, I'd love to revisit that in the future, the the pursuit of a flat company, right and a flat structure, because it's, I think something that is almost maybe not necessary, but it really is important early on. And when you have a small team, there's something that really Bond's the team together, and I think creates a lot more productivity. And at a certain point, I believe it becomes somewhat untenable, right? Because that many people in a room, it's just cacophony. So I'll be interested to see, you know, you're smart. Maybe you figured it out at 1000. person, company? I don't know. Yeah, anybody would, it would be you.
Darrell Etherington 36:34
It's tough to scale. But I mean, it's also like, it's one of those things where it's tough early on, even cuz you mentioned bringing on legacy people, right? So if you bring on people from more established organizations, and they're very EUSA hierarchy is gonna be difficult from the other side, because you're kind of like, okay, we need to integrate you in this culture, and like, you want this you seek this structure, and you seek the stratification, and it's not gonna be there, and it's gonna be uncomfortable and difficult for you. Right? That's an interesting debate that we should do a whole special series on that because I know we should. Shopify also espoused like a very flat organization and continues to as an organization, we're like, whatever it is 4000 employees globally. Right. But does it have one? Well, good question.
Jordan Crook 37:11
Well, and that's the good thing about the flat structure to like, even at a big company is like some of the bullshit that comes up with all that stratification like these established, particularly in bio, right, and like health, that stratification also creates like this layer of bolt that goes all the way down, right? Where it like starts with something that's highly vetted at the top, and then gets like, re vetted over and over again, as it trickles down to more and more employees. And by the time that, like, the fourth layer has received that information, they're like, What is this bullshit? isn't even a real human speak, right? This is so corporate, and I'm sure some of those people that are coming over from those established places to you guys are like, Oh, it's so nice for someone to like, talk and just for that to be the truth and what they were saying from the heart. But then also, I want to be the boss of someone right now, please. You know, so it's like, it's hard.
Nabiha Saklayen 38:03
Well, you know, I think what we're making a priority to have very honest conversations about how we like to operate as a company, what's worked so well, for us, as far as I understand, it's impossible for me to have 50 direct reports going for, that's just not going to happen. I understand that. But as long as we have a shared understanding of how we make decisions, and just because you're a flat organization doesn't mean it's a democracy, necessarily. So there will be different topics that different people get the final say on. So that's how we're thinking about it. But absolutely a work in progress. I'd love to have more conversation with you. I'd love to learn to see how other companies have done it because I haven't seen anything. So far. That's been the ideal solution. And you know, and now with remote work, that's another layer of complexity that's being added to everybody's lives. Like, how do we balance that? How do we work effectively across different time zones? How do we make it feel intimate if you're never going to be at the office together?
Darrell Etherington 39:01
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, they're all challenges that have no real like, great answers at the moment, but definitely stuff people are trying to figure out. I mean, from our TechCrunch perspective, we rely a lot on our few in person events that happen, you know, and that's been a challenge during COVID. But I think that's one of the things that's really solidified our team dynamics, right because we've always worked remote but then if you have those check ins like it really helps you feel feel like like washes your city. Yeah, exactly. Like it resets, like relationships and challenges and yeah, frustrations. Yeah. Anyways, we're not good at this though, because we don't see.
Jordan Crook 39:38
Anything you need to know about lasers
Darrell Etherington 39:40
make people happy within the organization that externally people are like, Well, what about production numbers? And we're like, No, I mean, we just want people to feel good. Have a good day feel
Jordan Crook 39:49
good. It'll be okay. Probably we think we're pretty sure it'll be okay. And sometimes they don't even feel good so don't really don't
Darrell Etherington 39:59
like Oh, that'd be I mean, I think we're just out of time. But it's been amazing chatting with you. And again, congratulations, well deserved win for TechCrunch Disrupt. We're so excited to see solino grow and continue to innovate, be sure to let us know, anytime you got, you got news, and you guys have a new coming up.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai