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John Houston: President and CEO of Arvinas · BioBoss

• 0:05
  John Houston: When I was making the decision about what I wanted to do next, I really wanted to be in a place where I could see if I could build something.
• 0:12
  John Simboli: That's the voice of John Houston President and chief executive officer of Arvinas and BioCT entrepreneur of the year.
• 0:20
  John Simboli: Listen in now to hear my conversation with John Houston and his vision for Arvinas.
• 0:26
  John Simboli: I'm John Simboli.
• 0:27
  John Simboli: You're listening to BioBoss.
• 0:30
  John Simboli: Today I'm speaking with John Houston, president and CEO at Arvinas.
• 0:34
  John Simboli: John, how'd you find yourself here at Arvinas?
• 0:37
  John Houston: Well, it's an interesting story.
• 0:39
  John Houston: Well, for me anyway.
• 0:41
  John Houston: I spent 18, 19 years at Bristol Myers Squibb, mainly based in Connecticut.
• 0:45
  John Houston: A large staff and based at other BMS sites.
• 0:50
  John Houston: And it got to the point where the company had made the decision to start to move, certainly, the Wallingford site in Connecticut to Boston and to staff into New Jersey.
• 1:00
  John Houston: And I was very focused in helping that happen and making sure the staff were getting good roles and good positions in these other sites.
• 1:08
  John Houston: But then I had the decision to make, do I want to move?
• 1:12
  John Houston: And I decided I didn't.
• 1:13
  John Houston: I really thought, I like living in Connecticut.
• 1:15
  John Houston: I want to stay in Connecticut.
• 1:16
  John Houston: So I took some time off to enjoy myself, which I did.
• 1:20
  John Houston: And I started looking around at what other opportunities might be.
• 1:23
  John Houston: And Luckily, met Tim Shannon and Craig Crews and they told me about this wonderful opportunity at Arvinas, ostensibly to be the chief scientific officer.
• 1:34
  John Houston: And so I listened to the story about the company, what they're trying to achieve, the platform, met the scientists.
• 1:43
  John Houston: And at the end of that thought, my goodness, what a great opportunity.
• 1:46
  John Houston: And so, that's why I joined Arvinas.
• 1:49
  John Houston: I thought, fantastic location for me, brilliant science, great technology and a wonderful leadership team.
• 1:57
  John Simboli: So when you look back at that, how you feel about your decision,
• 2:02
  John Houston: It's one of these things where you end up seeing something very obvious.
• 2:05
  John Houston: I wish I'd done it earlier.
• 2:07
  John Houston: But if I'd done it earlier, I may have not got this particular opportunity.
• 2:12
  John Houston: So I'm glad I did it.
• 2:14
  John Houston: It's worked out, obviously, in the last, just under two years, remarkably well, both myself and the company has done very well.
• 2:21
  John Houston: So it was, as it turns out, it was a really great decision for myself.
• 2:24
  John Simboli: Can you remember when you were eight or nine?
• 2:26
  John Simboli: Can you remember what you told your mom and dad what you wanted to be when you grew up?
• 2:28
  John Houston: Oh yeah.
• 2:30
  John Houston: I was absolutely determined to be an astronaut.
• 2:34
  John Houston: At that time, it was around the time of the Apollo missions.
• 2:41
  John Houston: We hadn't quite landed on the moon, but we were just about to do it, I was a bit a bit younger for that, but when the first landing on the moon occurred, and I was living in Scotland, obviously, and my dad stayed up to let me watch it on TV.
• 2:55
  John Houston: It was black and white and all the crackly noise that was coming from the microphones and I was absolutely determined, I'm definitely going to be an astronaut.
• 3:03
  John Houston: Of course that lasted for about a year.
• 3:06
  John Houston: And then I thought, no, I'll probably end up being a soccer player.
• 3:09
  John Houston: That was probably more manageable.
• 3:13
  John Houston: But actually what I found is I have a real passion for understanding the science.
• 3:16
  John Houston: And so, understanding astronomy and the stars, I was really feeling very inquisitive about the world and I think that led me into science.
• 3:25
  John Houston: So I enjoyed science at high school and clearly that's what I wanted to be when I moved into the university.
• 3:33
  John Houston: But the kernel for that was all the moon landing and the astronauts and it grabbed everybody's attention when the kids between nine and 13 at that time.
• 3:44
  John Houston: That tells you what your journey's like.
• 3:46
  John Simboli: Me too.
• 3:49
  John Simboli: Two things I heard from that were"I'm was fascinated by science" and then the other part I heard, I thought about the soccer part because my son is a soccer player.
• 3:58
  John Simboli: Soccer is about teamwork, largely.
• 4:00
  John Simboli: There's other sports that emphasize individual skills more, but is there something about teamwork and something about science that made this all come together?
• 4:11
  John Houston: It's a really interesting question because science and scientists don't naturally lend themselves to teams.
• 4:19
  John Houston: When I first got into science and, and was doing my PhD and doing post-docs over in Scotland, it's very individual.
• 4:26
  John Houston: You're in the lab, there's other people in the lab.
• 4:28
  John Houston: You usually have a lead professor who's driving the grants, that's their interest and you're doing some aspect of that work.
• 4:37
  John Houston: There wasn't much, at least in my experience, in the way of teamwork.
• 4:40
  John Houston: You did your work, you worked with your supervisor to get things that may be published.
• 4:46
  John Houston: So my first several years, both in PhD and post-doc, I didn't get a sense of team.
• 4:50
  John Houston: I got a sense of individuality, driving your own science, making sure you publish and beating the competition.
• 4:57
  John Houston: But my first sense of science and the team was when I joined Glaxo, then in London.
• 5:01
  John Houston: And then immediately it was in the scientific lab where you were part of a team, you had a function, but you were connected to other parts of that process.
• 5:08
  John Houston: And as I grew up as a scientist within the Glaxo environment, you realized you were part of a bigger R&D process and the whole process only works because it was a team.
• 5:18
  John Houston: So yeah, I like that aspect.
• 5:19
  John Houston: I like the fact that to make medicines you have to have some people that come together and know what part of their process needs to work to hand over to the next part.
• 5:30
  John Houston: But yeah, initially scientists aren't naturally designed to be in teams.
• 5:35
  John Houston: The design is very individual thinkers and the science is very individualized.
• 5:39
  John Houston: But then you get a context, like a big pharma company and you have to be part of a team.
• 5:44
  John Simboli: So I imagine that's a learning process to some degree.
• 5:49
  John Simboli: I mean, leaders are naturally born, I understand that, too.
• 5:52
  John Simboli: But can you say anything about what you learned about how to manage and lead?
• 5:58
  John Simboli: What did you learn about yourself, what did you learn about what worked, what didn't work?
• 6:01
  John Houston: I was lucky when I joined Glaxo.
• 6:03
  John Houston: Relatively quickly I was given some kind of supervisory experience.
• 6:08
  John Houston: And I did like it.
• 6:08
  John Houston: I like working with people and I like giving advice.
• 6:11
  John Houston: What I found is that giving advice can be a double-edged sword.
• 6:15
  John Houston: So there's giving advice and there's telling people things.
• 6:19
  John Houston: And I learned pretty quickly that people don't really respond to being told stuff.
• 6:23
  John Houston: They like being in a dialogue and having things explained.
• 6:26
  John Houston: And so I think I learned pretty quickly as a supervisor, is that getting people engaged, getting people excited about the work and also listening to their ideas is that's basically the way to manage your team.
• 6:36
  John Houston: And I've tried to do that all through my career.
• 6:39
  John Houston: I've always tried to surround myself with people who are either smarter than me or know things better than me and what I add to them is some kind of environment where they can perform really well.
• 6:50
  John Houston: And for me that's always been a win-win.
• 6:51
  John Houston: If you get a team that likes working together and you've got some of the smart scientists working together and you allow them to get headroom and a lot of credit for what they're doing, they win.
• 7:03
  John Houston: I win because I've just created that for them.
• 7:06
  John Houston: So I've tried to do that in every environment and, but the first lessons I got were those first supervisory experiences where I was trying to explain and tell people and you can see, hmm, I know that already.
• 7:15
  John Houston: Why are you telling me?
• 7:17
  John Houston: And so I learned that really rapidly.
• 7:20
  John Houston: Listen to the staff that you have, the people you're going to be supervising, create the right environment for them to be successful.
• 7:27
  John Simboli: What were you hoping you could achieve here that you might not be able to achieve at another company.
• 7:32
  John Simboli: You had, I'm sure, lots of opportunities to think about during that interregnum between.
• 7:36
  John Simboli: .
• 7:36
  John Simboli: .
• 7:40
  John Houston: When I was making the decision about what I wanted to do next, I really wanted to be in a place where I could see if I could build something.
• 7:48
  John Houston: And the opportunity here at Arvinas was clearly there to build something.
• 7:52
  John Houston: There was a platform technology that was unique.
• 7:56
  John Houston: There was the ability to create medicines in a number of different disease areas and there was the opportunity to build a team.
• 8:01
  John Houston: So all of those tick the box for me in terms of the things I wanted to do next.
• 8:06
  John Houston: I also wanted to get away from, and this is not trying to be negative about big pharma because you know, I've enjoyed the 28 to 30 years I was there.
• 8:16
  John Houston: But I wanted to get away from some of the kind of the overlay of governance, the overlay of elongated decision making, into an environment where decision making can occur in a day or less.
• 8:30
  John Houston: I wanted to get into a situation where people were not permission seeking, but saying, look what I did.
• 8:36
  John Houston: And I have to say from the first day I was here, that's what was happening.
• 8:39
  John Houston: People were coming to say, hey, look, I did this yesterday.
• 8:42
  John Houston: Whereas in other settings, people say"Can I do that?" And worse than that, they may say, can I do that over a period of months to get to a governance meeting where you say you probably could, but could you come back next month and tell me more?
• 8:54
  John Houston: So when, when that gets multiplied up across a number of the programs, you can see why, in the the very big companies, there's a stasis in trying to get decision making.
• 9:04
  John Houston: In these smaller companies, it happens really quickly.
• 9:07
  John Houston: And so I want to make sure that in this environment I never overly, that type of governance and that inhibitory kind of effect of saying you gotta tell me first what you're doing.
• 9:18
  John Houston: People here, they come up with ideas, they work on them, they come with the data and say, look at that.
• 9:24
  John Houston: And that's fantastic.
• 9:25
  John Houston: It's very invigorating.
• 9:27
  John Simboli: What's it like being a chief science officer and also being a CEO?
• 9:32
  John Houston: Yeah, two for the price of one, I think.
• 9:37
  John Houston: I think I was clear when I joined I was very happy to do the CSO part because that was right in my wheelhouse.
• 9:44
  John Houston: I knew exactly what that would feel like.
• 9:46
  John Houston: Sure it would be in a smaller setting, but it was clearly good.
• 9:51
  John Houston: I knew exactly what an R&D process would look like.
• 9:53
  John Houston: I knew what projects I had to do and you had to deal with the scientists.
• 9:57
  John Houston: but then, after, I was asked, do you want to also be the CEO?
• 10:00
  John Houston: And it took me a while to think about that because my real first instinct was, well my, my biggest benefit is driving the R&D process.
• 10:06
  John Houston: But I'd already been intrigued by the fact that dealing with investors, talking to banks, telling the story externally, I was enjoying.
• 10:17
  John Houston: And I was getting told that's a large part of what doing the CEO piece is and you're already leading in the majority of the group.
• 10:23
  John Houston: So why don't you go for it as long as you keep doing the CSO part.
• 10:27
  John Houston: And so that's why I agreed to do it.
• 10:28
  John Houston: And I became the CEO and continued to do the CSO work and it's been a perfect amalgam for me of two activities and accountabilities that I enjoy.
• 10:38
  John Houston: So I can do this new thing for me, which is dealing with the external world, getting people excited about the company, taking it through major transition points, like getting, you know, CAC done, going through an IPO, at the same time being grounded in the science.
• 10:54
  John Houston: So it's, for me, it's so far, it's been a spectacularly enjoyable.
• 10:58
  John Simboli: You must, every now and then, pinch yourself and say this is great.
• 11:01
  John Houston: I do.
• 11:02
  John Houston: You know, things can change, because it is the world of R&D.
• 11:06
  John Houston: But so far it's just been been great.
• 11:08
  John Simboli: Let's talk a little bit about the company.
• 11:10
  John Simboli: So I wrote this question, what's new at Arvinas.
• 11:13
  John Simboli: And I know that's kind of a long answer.
• 11:15
  John Houston: There's a lot of new things this year.
• 11:17
  John Houston: This year has been spectacular.
• 11:20
  John Houston: I mean, you started the year announcing a deal with Pfizer, which was very exciting.
• 11:25
  John Houston: A target-based deal, they give us targets.
• 11:27
  John Houston: And it's a very good interaction with Pfizer.
• 11:31
  John Houston: But then we rapidly also moved into our C-round to raise more capital so we could invest in a pipeline, which we did successfully.
• 11:40
  John Houston: Then at the end of March this year, we raised 55 million, brought on board some new investors.
• 11:47
  John Houston: And then the view was the R&D pipeline is moving forward very effectively, the market looks quite good.
• 11:53
  John Houston: Why don't we, from a position of strength, go out and maybe do an IPO.
• 11:58
  John Houston: And so we did a lot of analysis on that, you know, talk to investors externally and testing the water meetings.
• 12:06
  John Houston: And the feedback we got was, yeah, even though your preclinical, this is an exciting new modality.
• 12:11
  John Houston: It's really worth pushing for the IPO and bringing in the capital that allows you to advance the company rapidly.
• 12:18
  John Houston: So then we spent several months in a fairly intensive process talking to investors or potential investors culminating in the kind of the two week road show which I'd heard so much about prior to joining of the company.
• 12:33
  John Houston: And then this really successful IPO last month.
• 12:37
  John Houston: And that's put us in a position of financial strength.
• 12:40
  John Houston: We can move our pipeline, our two major assets, forward through into the clinic.
• 12:44
  John Houston: We can move the rest of the pipeline forward, expand the platform.
• 12:49
  John Houston: So it's given us a real forward trajectory and a line of sight of where the next three years is going to be for the company.
• 12:56
  John Houston: So it's been an exciting year.
• 12:58
  John Houston: And, in the process, we've doubled in size.
• 13:01
  John Houston: We've expanded in this building into two more floors, over 40 people.
• 13:09
  John Houston: So it's been a great year.
• 13:11
  John Simboli: When you tell that story, it must be fun to just get up each day and say, I have another opportunity to tell this story.
• 13:17
  John Simboli: There must be times when you say they got it and there must be times when you hear them back after you have the presentation and say, they didn't quite get what I was going for.
• 13:25
  John Simboli: Can you tell me a little bit about when you're saying it, this is what they're getting and you're happy about that when you're saying it and they're not hearing it?
• 13:32
  John Houston: Well, I've also got the confusion of my Scottish accent, so I never know if it's the story of the company or just my, my accent.
• 13:38
  John Houston: But, I think most of the people get the story, they understand the concept, but you know, the story of our technology is not simple.
• 13:47
  John Houston: I mean, what Craig Crews had been doing is studying protein homeostasis for many years and really understanding how the cell naturally turns over proteins, how it monitors dysfunctional proteins, how those proteins are tagged by the ubiquitin ligase system and drag the proteins off to the proteasome, which is, basically, the garbage disposal unit of the cell.
• 14:12
  John Houston: Proteins are then broken down into peptides, amino acids.
• 14:14
  John Houston: Those are flushed back into the cell for new protein synthesis.
• 14:17
  John Houston: That's the natural way the cell maintains a healthy protein balance in the cell.
• 14:22
  John Houston: Craig observed all of that and wanted to hijack it.
• 14:25
  John Houston: He's, saying, I wonder if I can bring that whole machinery into close proximity to a protein I want to degrade, I want to get rid of.
• 14:34
  John Houston: And so he came up with these small molecules called protacs, proteolysis targeting chimeras, One end of the molecule brings in this ligase machinery, the natural machinery of degradation.
• 14:46
  John Houston: The other end of the molecule targets a protein you want to degrade.
• 14:49
  John Houston: And sure enough when those proteins are brought into close proximity to the ligase machinery, they're tagged and they run off to the proteasome and are degraded.
• 14:58
  John Houston: It's just a wonderful technology and now our lead programs for androgen receptor and estrogen receptor are moving forward.
• 15:05
  John Houston: They're still in the preclinical stage, but hopefully all things being well, we'll be in the clinic with them as some point next year.
• 15:10
  John Houston: So it's been a fabulous technology.
• 15:12
  John Houston: As we explain the technology.
• 15:14
  John Houston: some people do get it immediately and they say this is fabulous.
• 15:17
  John Houston: Others, it takes a little bit more time to explain it, but eventually we get there.
• 15:21
  John Houston: I think it's a compelling story and a compelling platform.
• 15:24
  John Simboli: Is there anything you can say about the kind of people that you're finding succeed at this kind of culture you've built?
• 15:29
  John Houston: Oh yeah, definitely.
• 15:30
  John Houston: So when I'm looking for people here, first of all, you want high quality scientists, you want really good scientists.
• 15:39
  John Houston: So people who understand their area, whether it be a development or formulation, you name it, really good experts.
• 15:45
  John Houston: And we're lucky in this Connecticut base, actually having a lot of really superb scientists available.
• 15:50
  John Houston: The next thing I want is people who are just incredibly inquisitive.
• 15:55
  John Houston: People who are inquisitive, they'll do the work, but they're also thinking of the connections.
• 15:59
  John Houston: And in a small biotech setting, you want people to make those lateral connections all the time, to be so inquisitive about the work that they can add value above and beyond just the basic science.
• 16:10
  John Houston: And we have a number incredibly inquisitive scientists here.
• 16:13
  John Houston: They drive the platform in different directions, they ask questions that really probe the science.
• 16:21
  John Houston: So yeah, top quality science, but a real inquisitive nature.
• 16:26
  John Houston: And of course, if they have the obvious ability to work in a team, then you've got the kind of the perfect collection of skills that you need to have a good scientist and a good forward-looking team.
• 16:38
  John Simboli: So if that team you build develops the way you hope it will, have, the company develop as you hope it will, what good can you do?
• 16:47
  John Simboli: What, what do you allow yourself to say?
• 16:48
  John Simboli: Ah, if a all works out work on we've got to help some people?
• 16:51
  John Houston: Oh, I mean absolutely.
• 16:52
  John Houston: I think all the people who move into science and certainly to the pharmaceutical area of science or biotech, they're all driven by a passion to get medicines to get to patients.
• 17:03
  John Houston: And usually you find that where you talk to people and say, well why are you in this part of science?
• 17:09
  John Houston: And they'll talk about a family member or a friend who has a specific disease.
• 17:15
  John Houston: And they'll say that's why I'm doing this work.
• 17:17
  John Houston: And we've just gone through breast cancer awareness month and it's this whole building was full of people wearing pink shirts, and charitable events related to the breast cancer charities.
• 17:27
  John Houston: But a lot of people talking about friends and family members that had breast cancer and every door had a pink sheet with a name of somebody that had been suffering or fighting breast cancer.
• 17:37
  John Houston: That's what drives people's passion and I think we've got a lot of really passionate scientists here.
• 17:43
  John Houston: And that's really what you hope for, you're eventually going to get a medicine that gets to patients with unmet needs and you can help change their lives.
• 17:53
  John Houston: And that drives people every day forward.
• 17:55
  John Houston: And this particular community are closer to that chance because you're going to be able to discover and develop in a very integrated way.
• 18:05
  John Houston: Again, the big pharma setting you do get opportunities to do that, but there's usually another big team takes your asset, goes there, then another team takes it, it goes over there.
• 18:13
  John Houston: In this smaller setting you can actually track it much, much farther.
• 18:16
  John Houston: So that connection to the patient is much, much stronger.
• 18:21
  John Simboli: Let's segue over to the environment that Arvinas is a part of.
• 18:27
  John Simboli: So how did you make that decision, and how did the company, in general, make the decision to be here in New Haven?
• 18:34
  John Houston: Yeah, I think, you know, I obviously wasn't at Arvinas when they made the decision.
• 18:38
  John Houston: The company was formed in 2013, Professor Craig Crews, Yale professor, came up with this great idea, this great concept of protein degradation.
• 18:48
  John Houston: He loves being in Connecticut and he loves Yale.
• 18:52
  John Houston: This was the second company that he formed.
• 18:56
  John Houston: His first company was actually formed and was, was set up in San Francisco and I think he learned a lesson for himself, which is he wanted to be in much closer proximity to the company he set up.
• 19:06
  John Houston: So he was determined to have a company set up, it would be, you know, very, very close proximity to him and we can't get much closer.
• 19:13
  John Houston: He's only five minutes up the road, so he's, he's in here every week.
• 19:17
  John Houston: And Tim Shannon, with Canaan, the VC firm, they are Connecticut based as well.
• 19:24
  John Houston: So it was a very good local Connecticut focus, both from Yale, Craig Crews, and Canaan.
• 19:32
  John Houston: And then they started recruiting in scientists that were based in Connecticut.
• 19:38
  John Houston: You know, either good or bad, some big pharma companies have made decisions to either leave the state or downsize.
• 19:44
  John Houston: And we've had the benefit of being able to attract scientists and leaders into the organization that we're getting at a stage of our evolution that we wouldn't expect to get then.
• 19:55
  John Houston: We'd expect those people to stay in the big pharma companies and have fabulous careers the way they normally do.
• 19:59
  John Houston: But they decided, well, my company's leaving, but I'm not leaving the state, I love living here.
• 20:04
  John Houston: And we've been able to bring them into Arvinas, which has really accelerated our progress.
• 20:09
  John Houston: I think it was a great decision, obviously, that Craig and the team made to set the company up in New Haven and we haven't seen a downside to it at all.
• 20:17
  John Simboli: How about personally?
• 20:18
  John Simboli: When you had that time in between, you were deciding where you want him to go, what you want to do, how did you decide that you wanted to be in Connecticut rather than say Cambridge or San Francisco?
• 20:28
  John Houston: So I've been living here for over 20 years, which I still find amazing.
• 20:33
  John Houston: Because when I first came over from, from Britain, I thought, yeah, I'm going to, this will be great working in America for a couple of years.
• 20:38
  John Houston: And then you look by anything.
• 20:39
  John Houston: Wow.
• 20:39
  John Houston: That was 20 years ago.
• 20:41
  John Houston: But I've loved working here and the opportunity that working in America gives you.
• 20:46
  John Houston: But you know, looking at the decision making of it being in Connecticut and why I would stay here, I love the environment in Connecticut.
• 20:59
  John Houston: I love living here.
• 21:01
  John Houston: If you want the big city access, you've got New York and Boston right on your doorstep.
• 21:06
  John Houston: If you want to be in the countryside, you've got Vermont, you've got New Hampshire.
• 21:10
  John Houston: If you want to be on the shoreline, you've got Connecticut, you've got Rhode Island.
• 21:12
  John Houston: It's just a perfect combination of different small states.
• 21:16
  John Houston: And some of them are hidden gems, you know, which is great for me.
• 21:19
  John Houston: You know, if nobody wants to go to places on holiday, that's fine.
• 21:22
  John Houston: But it's a fabulous place to live, to bring up a family, and, and part of my drive is to be able to make sure there's a great scientific community that stays here.
• 21:33
  John Houston: As an executive at Bristol Myers Squibb, when the company decided to move out of Connecticut, I made the decision I would stay, but I also was very excited when I joined this company to be able to attract quite a number of BMS scientists who didn't also want to leave the state.
• 21:49
  John Houston: And so we have a large number of ex-BMS scientists.
• 21:51
  John Houston: We have a significant number of ex-Alexion scientists.
• 21:53
  John Houston: We have Pfizer scientists, we have Boehringer Ingelheim scientists, we have Bayer scientists.
• 21:59
  John Houston: So we've, when you look at the record and the histories of the staff we have is a little echo of the history of big pharma in Connecticut and we hope we'll be able to use the experiences of those great scientists to build the scientific community here in New Haven and in Connecticut.
• 22:17
  John Simboli: In terms of that community, just staying in touch, I know you probably don't have a lot of time as a CEO, but what organizations do you touch and communicate with?
• 22:27
  John Simboli: I'm thinking of BioCT as an example?
• 22:30
  John Simboli: What organizations do you find help you to tell your story and help you to find out what's going on?
• 22:36
  John Houston: So BioCT is one of the good ones.
• 22:39
  John Houston: They are very focused on the scientific community within Connecticut, obviously the biotech community in a significant way.
• 22:45
  John Houston: I've been lucky to be part of that board for several years and I think they do a great job explaining the story of Connecticut and New Haven.
• 22:54
  John Houston: I think we can do more.
• 22:55
  John Houston: I think the story about Connecticut science and the biotech community is not as well known as it should be.
• 23:03
  John Houston: You could argue, well, you're dominated by the fact you've got Cambridge, Massachusetts right there and you've got a burgeoning New York biotech community, as well.
• 23:14
  John Houston: But the science that's taking place here in Connecticut is exceptional.
• 23:19
  John Houston: And the ability to build on that backbone, I think, is exceptionally strong and I'd like to see more of that happening.
• 23:28
  John Houston: So BioCT is really driving that as an organization.
• 23:32
  John Houston: And we need more of that kind of communication about the strengths
• 23:36
  John Simboli: You're familiar with the Connecticut Economic Resource Center.
• 23:39
  John Houston: We clearly we get a lot of support.
• 23:41
  John Houston: We have had a lot of support from the Connecticut State and Connecticut Innovations.
• 23:48
  John Houston: And so as the company was setting off and a lot of support from the state.
• 23:53
  John Houston: I like the fact that the state is very supportive overall with with biotech.
• 23:58
  John Houston: And so we keep in touch with the state organizations quite regularly.
• 24:04
  John Simboli: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to being here, rather than being in New York or San Francisco?
• 24:10
  John Houston: I have to be honest, I didn't notice any real reaction from all the investors.
• 24:16
  John Houston: We talked about whether we were placed here or somewhere else.
• 24:20
  John Houston: We did get asked, every so often, do you have plans to move to Cambridge or whatever?
• 24:24
  John Houston: And we just said, no, we're doing great.
• 24:27
  John Houston: But it didn't change anything in terms of the range of the depth of investors that wanted to invest in our company.
• 24:33
  John Houston: And it wasn't the location that was driving their interest.
• 24:36
  John Houston: It's the science and the people and they said that over and over.
• 24:39
  John Houston: Good science with good people.
• 24:41
  John Houston: that's an investment choice to make.
• 24:43
  John Houston: And if it's in New Haven, fine.
• 24:45
  John Houston: So we haven't found that detrimental.
• 24:47
  John Houston: We have not had any issue getting access to really interested investors.
• 24:52
  John Houston: And that's clearly shown through our IPO, which was very successful.
• 24:56
  John Houston: I think this location is great because of the environment we talked about, and there's some great scientists here as well.
• 25:03
  John Houston: I just want to be able to build on it over the next few years.
• 25:06
  John Simboli: I'll just finish up here and say thank you, John for talking with me today.
• 25:09
  John Simboli: I look forward to coming back and hearing what's new next time.
• 25:11
  John Houston: Thank you.
• 25:12
  John Houston: Thanks for the time.