Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 144 - Robert Jacks - CEO Sparrow Pharmaceuticals
Transcript
- 0:06Welcome back to another episode of the Bio Hub and Avetix
- 0:09podcast. Today I'm joined by Robert
- 0:12Jacks, CEO and President of Spyro Pharmaceuticals, a company
- 0:16developing novel medicines for cardio metabolic diseases.
- 0:20Robert spent more than 25 years building and leading biotech
- 0:23companies, raising over $300 million and guiding multiple
- 0:27successful exits along the way. In this conversation, we talk
- 0:30about his journey from founder to CEO.
- 0:33The story through behind Sparrow, what it takes to stay
- 0:36lean and focused, how they raise capital in today's market and
- 0:40his view on where the biotech industry is heading next.
- 0:43Pleasure to have you Robert. How are you?
- 0:46I'm good. Really appreciate you having me
- 0:47on. Thank you.
- 0:48Now, amazing to have you on honestly.
- 0:51So let's just start with you and your journey.
- 0:55Like I just said, early 25 years in biotech, multiple companies
- 0:59founded, over $300 million raised what what first drew you
- 1:04into biotech and then ultimately what what's now LED you towards
- 1:07Sparrow? So as you might imagine, I, you
- 1:09know, I get the question often, you know, what's the path to
- 1:13being a biotech CEO? And my answer is generally, I
- 1:16have no idea. But it's, there's, I think
- 1:19there's no one path. And I certainly didn't plan it
- 1:21from the beginning. I'm actually an engineer by
- 1:23training. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a
- 1:25clinician. And I was in engineering
- 1:28construction as a previous career.
- 1:30And generally I was looking for something that was very
- 1:34different than what I was in really.
- 1:37And I was looking for an industry that I thought was
- 1:39driven by innovation that I thought was really relevant,
- 1:42that that was going to have an impact in the future and where
- 1:46education, new ideas were welcome, which I felt was
- 1:50different than where I was. So I went to Business School and
- 1:53decided to go to work for Pfizer in pharmaceuticals.
- 1:57Amazing. Then it all LED from there,
- 1:58right? Yeah.
- 2:00So I mean, Pfizer was a fantastic place to start in this
- 2:04industry. Amazing people, obviously a lot
- 2:09of experts that know what they're doing.
- 2:11I was there for about 8 years and decided I'd, I'd had enough
- 2:16of the, of the big, big companies and decided to go from
- 2:21some of the biggest of the big, some of the smallest of the
- 2:23small and started working with small privately funded biotech
- 2:27companies. And the, when I did at Pfizer, I
- 2:32think really helped draw me into the industry and, and somewhat
- 2:35formed my path at Pfizer. I started in finance, but then I
- 2:38worked in new product development, which is really
- 2:42working with products in mid stage clinical development to
- 2:45help design the, the development plan to really generate the
- 2:48value and show the value and the differentiation of those of
- 2:51those products through the development plan.
- 2:53And then I last Bishop with Pfizer was doing business
- 2:56development in licensing M&A. So when I start to work for
- 3:00biotech, the first thing I did was start to work in sell side
- 3:03business development, help companies try and find
- 3:06partnerships or sell themselves. But then when you work for a
- 3:09small company, you very quickly can branch in other areas.
- 3:13And drawing on some of my experience in product
- 3:16development to commercial strategy, I started working with
- 3:19companies generally in that space and kind of mid stage
- 3:22clinical development helping them to develop those assets and
- 3:25generate those and generate the value.
- 3:27Amazing. How did you then come to Sparrow
- 3:32or what inspired you to join Sparrow?
- 3:35So I've worked for a number of companies as I said that to Bear
- 3:38Therapeutics, ECT, Biotech, some others and I Co founded a
- 3:43company called Symbiomics Therapeutics and then after that
- 3:47I run a company called Indelo Therapeutics.
- 3:49So I had experience with a lot of kind of mid stage clinical
- 3:54development stage budget companies.
- 3:56And what I found I was drawn to is not so much the earliest
- 4:00stage science where it's, it's really just a new concept and
- 4:06trying to to find a product and not so much either the
- 4:09commercialization stage growing revenues.
- 4:11That's not where my interest or expertise lie.
- 4:13It's really in that mid stage clinical development where
- 4:16you're, you can really show the value of the product by changing
- 4:20the development plan. And so that's kind of where I've
- 4:22always gravitated towards. In addition, I, I, I like
- 4:26products that I feel like are somewhat de risked.
- 4:29I'd rather take kind of risk on, on differentiation of profile
- 4:33than really kind of early stage risk.
- 4:36There's, there's compounds can fail for so many reasons in this
- 4:38industry. And so that's the type of
- 4:41company that that I I tend to be attracted to.
- 4:44And so after I left my last company, I was approached by
- 4:49some investors who are considering investing in Sparrow
- 4:51Pharmaceuticals and asked me if I take a look at the company.
- 4:55As we'll talk about, we have an asset that is very de risked.
- 4:59It's in Phase 2 development. It has the potential to have a
- 5:03very large impact I think in in helping patients.
- 5:07And so for me, it was kind of a perfect fit.
- 5:09Amazing. Yeah.
- 5:11And for those who might not know Sparrow, can you just give us a
- 5:15quick story who you are, what you're building and what what's
- 5:19the problem you're trying to solve?
- 5:21You know Sparrow it's been around since actually was formed
- 5:24in 2013 by our founder and he licensed an asset in 2018 from a
- 5:30large pharma company. As I mentioned, we have an asset
- 5:32that's been previously de risked and the history of the mechanism
- 5:35has has interesting story. I feel as though at the moment
- 5:39Sparrow is really coming full circle to some of the original
- 5:43promise of the mechanism of our drug and really is it an
- 5:46intersection of some interesting data we've generated and
- 5:49developments in the market? I think they're they're
- 5:51highlighting a really exciting opportunity for us.
- 5:54So what's that all mean? So our drug is called, it's an
- 5:57HSD one inhibitor, but it's a, it's a mechanism that works on
- 6:00regulation of intracellular levels of cortisol and other
- 6:02group corticoids. And these drugs were originally
- 6:04developed as intending to be drugs for metabolic diseases
- 6:07like diabetes because glucorticoids and cortisol are
- 6:11involved in a lot of metabolic pathways that regulate glucose
- 6:14and the like. And so the compounds, there were
- 6:16a number of them went to the clinic and they had some
- 6:19efficacy and they were shown to be safe and active.
- 6:21They weren't significantly differentiated from what was
- 6:24available in the marketplace. And so even though the compounds
- 6:27had a lot of promise and there were no significant big red
- 6:30flags, generally they were shelled for commercial reasons.
- 6:33And so Sparrow was really founded around the idea that
- 6:35this mechanism had a lot of promise and you could just find
- 6:38the right patient population 1 where the condition is really
- 6:41significantly impacted, driven by excess levels of cortisol for
- 6:44instance, that you could really have something.
- 6:47And so one of the first things Sparrow did was conduct a trial
- 6:51in inductions Cushing's syndrome, which is a rare
- 6:53disease of patients who have very severely elevated levels of
- 6:56cortisol. And so that was something we did
- 6:59in 2021 to 2024, ran phase two trial and in this rare disease
- 7:05and saw some I think really remarkable small numbers of
- 7:09patients, but some really transformative activity in
- 7:12patients who were very severely impacted by their disease.
- 7:15One example of a woman who's a nurse, but she had to stop
- 7:19working. She could barely stand up and
- 7:20get out of a chair and severe difficult to treat diabetes,
- 7:24hypertension. After being on our drug, she's
- 7:26back to hiking and jogging and says she's back to normal.
- 7:29She stopped taking all of her diabetes medications.
- 7:31I think just seeing kind of a remarkable transformation of an
- 7:34individual who was debilitated by their disease was incredibly
- 7:38inspiring. So those data, we actually
- 7:41presented some of those data this past summer.
- 7:43But at the same time, there was other work going on in the field
- 7:46which was really able to validate that there's a lot of
- 7:49people out there with difficult to treat metabolic disease like
- 7:52diabetes, where their disease is actually being driven by
- 7:55undiagnosed underlying elevated cortisol.
- 7:58And so that's something that has really been developing over and
- 8:01over years, maybe a couple of decades, but there's some data
- 8:04published last year. It really validated how to
- 8:05identify these patients and that you can really affect their
- 8:08disease if you have an agent that's targeting the action of
- 8:11cortisol. Well, as I've described, we have
- 8:13an agent we had just shown I think that our agent can be very
- 8:16effective and at least in you know small numbers of clinical
- 8:19trial in patients with disease driven by LA cortisol.
- 8:22So that's really come together. Now our focus is subsuming some
- 8:26of those other populations into a broader opportunity of people
- 8:30with treatment resistant cardio metabolic disease starting with
- 8:34treatment resistant type 2 diabetes that's really being
- 8:36driven by an underlying diagnosed high levels of
- 8:39cortisol. And so somewhat surprisingly
- 8:41people that's actually a really large population.
- 8:44There could be could be several million people in the United
- 8:46States alone who have disease that is treatment resistant,
- 8:50difficult to treat and they don't know that it's because
- 8:52they have elevated high levels of cortisol and we think we have
- 8:54an agent that to make a huge impact I.
- 8:56Think that's amazing. I mean that that's part of the
- 8:59reason I was really excited to get you on Robert like your your
- 9:01story, the impact you guys are having, the work you're doing,
- 9:05you know, really cool. I think what's also interesting
- 9:08about Spyro is is your single asset as well, which also brings
- 9:13focus, but also what brings focus without all those big
- 9:17decisions. How do you think about strategy
- 9:20and you've talked about de risking, but how do you think
- 9:22about the strategy and the risk in this kind of cell?
- 9:27It's a perennial issue that I've had to deal with working with
- 9:30companies who are largely built around products and assets
- 9:34rather than kind of technology platforms generating a lot of
- 9:36new candidates. So there's always a trade off.
- 9:39I mean, I think that the value of our company is going to be
- 9:41driven by our lead product flip you Triven.
- 9:44And we want our team focused on that going our resources focused
- 9:47on that. But the same time, if you think
- 9:49about certain financing pathways and future for the company could
- 9:53be, it could be helpful to have additional programs, additional
- 9:56assets to diversify risks to provide more regular updates on
- 10:01on data releases. And so that's something that I
- 10:04think I've always sought to balance in a company.
- 10:07One way to manage that. If you have a drug which was
- 10:10like ours, which is significantly de risked, you're
- 10:12not as worried about some kind of small probability event of
- 10:17some safety problem killing the the product is to look at
- 10:20potentially building a pipeline and a pill as they call it.
- 10:22In other words, So taking our asset, what can we do do beyond
- 10:27our initial focus today, which is treatments and diabetes
- 10:30elevated cortisol. Well, a lot of cardio metabolic
- 10:33morbidities can be driven by elevated cortisol.
- 10:36I mentioned people within dodges Cushing's syndrome, the rare
- 10:38disease, a very elevated cortisol.
- 10:40They not only have poor trouble controlling blood glucose, they
- 10:44also generally have trouble controlling blood pressure.
- 10:46They generally have trouble controlling their weight.
- 10:48They generally have trouble controlling their their blood
- 10:50lipids. They have sleep, mood, memory
- 10:53problems. There's a lot of sequelae of
- 10:57underlying metabolic dysfunction driven by high levels of
- 10:59cortisol. So we're now starting to think
- 11:01about where can we go next? Is there is there maybe a
- 11:04population of difficult to treat hypertension where they don't
- 11:08know again that they're they're having trouble controlling their
- 11:11disease because of elevated cortisol on and on down the
- 11:14line. So I think we're trying to to
- 11:16think about how to both build a pipeline traditional programs
- 11:20and keep our our focus on creating value and we think is
- 11:24really exciting lead asset. That makes sense that that
- 11:27you've also kept the team really intentionally lean as well.
- 11:31Why is that also being an important and what are the
- 11:35advantages of of operating that way?
- 11:38I have done that and I've traditionally done that.
- 11:40I think for a couple of reasons. Again, I think it's better to
- 11:43keep our resources focused on adding value to our asset.
- 11:47We don't need a cleaning office building and and the like.
- 11:50But it's also I think allows you when if you end up in difficult
- 11:54times, if you end up in lean times, you know, the markets
- 11:56have been difficult the last couple of years.
- 11:57We were out raising money. You were able to dial that back
- 12:01without having to actually let you know employees go, which is
- 12:04really, really difficult. So last year as we were going
- 12:07through fundraising, there was a period of time where we did have
- 12:10to significantly reduced our spend to extend our runway.
- 12:13And fortunately we were able to do that without laying off any
- 12:16employees, which was really, really exciting.
- 12:18So we could keep that talent, that core talent around the
- 12:20table and we're now able to leverage into our kind of new
- 12:24focused opportunity. Does that also change the kind
- 12:28of personalities that you have to hire into Sparrow, if you're
- 12:32thinking that way? Yeah, absolutely.
- 12:34That's a really good point. What I tell people, probably
- 12:37tired of hearing it, but what I tell people when I interviewed
- 12:40hire them is I don't hire people to come in and do what I ask
- 12:43them to do. I'd hire for you to come in and
- 12:46tell me what to do. And if you need to be someone
- 12:48who had a point in your career where you know what needs to be
- 12:52done, you can see what needs to be done.
- 12:53You can come in and help shape this company and and help drive
- 12:56us in the right direction. You also need people who are
- 13:00really doers and not just people who want to direct, you know,
- 13:04from the most senior person in the company down the most senior
- 13:06person in the company. People roll up their sleeves, do
- 13:09whatever needs to be done. One of, I remember one of our
- 13:11early team meetings, there was a, there was a discussion going
- 13:14on. And so you know, the lunch, I
- 13:17think it arrived in the lobby. So I went out and I went down
- 13:19and grabbed the lunch and I set up the lunch and I was putting
- 13:21on someone laughs and why is the CEO, you know, setting the table
- 13:24and, and putting out the lunch? I said, I don't know that that's
- 13:27what needed to be done. You guys were busy.
- 13:28So I just think that's, you know, how, how you have to
- 13:31operate in a, in a company like this.
- 13:33Yeah, I think that's pretty universal as well.
- 13:35I don't think that that boils down just to to biotech, but I
- 13:38think leading by example like that in in every kind of
- 13:41companies just like super important.
- 13:45I mean, my experience is, you know, largely in biotech, but
- 13:48certainly in a small environment like ours.
- 13:51You know, we only have 10 employees, but a previous
- 13:54company I worked for, we actually took a drug all the way
- 13:56from preclinical stage all the way through clinical
- 13:59development. I actually got an approved NDA
- 14:02from the FDA. I think we peaked around 12
- 14:04employees as a company. So yeah, so we just have senior
- 14:09people who know what they're doing, obviously have excellent
- 14:10partners, excellent consultants, excellent contractors.
- 14:14You know, I think that's similarly, we've always, we
- 14:16operate quite virtually, so we hire talent wherever they are,
- 14:20people to all be in the same location.
- 14:22But that also means that people have to be able to operate
- 14:25really independently because they get in the morning, they go
- 14:27to their Home Office or whatever their office is.
- 14:29They have to, they have to know what needs to be done and be
- 14:31getting it done. Yeah, really.
- 14:33By themselves. Yeah.
- 14:34How do you check people on that? Just results driven or?
- 14:40We are, that's exactly right. We're 100% results driven.
- 14:44You know, I, I, we don't, you know, I don't obviously don't
- 14:48have like time clocks, but we don't have, you know,
- 14:50requirement to be in the office to certain days or certain
- 14:52hours. Things I really like about a
- 14:55small company is there's no place to hide when you work at a
- 14:58big company, as I mentioned, lots of terrific people.
- 15:00But sometimes you find that there are people maybe that
- 15:03spend most of their time in meetings and you're not sure
- 15:05exactly, you know, at the end of the day, what they've produced
- 15:07themselves, that that doesn't fly in a company like Sparrow.
- 15:10It becomes apparent very, very quickly if you're not producing
- 15:14and you're not getting things done, unfortunately had to, you
- 15:17know, part ways with with some people because it's, you just
- 15:20can't afford to be carrying people who aren't really
- 15:23producing. And so, yeah, we, we, it's, it's
- 15:26purely results driven. I joke, you know, I don't mind.
- 15:29I don't care if you're on the beach taking, you know the call,
- 15:32the next call when my senior people was on the beach taking
- 15:35the call. So it took me literally, but
- 15:37that's OK because it really is about achieving our objectives
- 15:42really on a multi year frame, really with the financing cycle
- 15:46frame of achieving our objectives with the capital we
- 15:49have. You, you mentioned earlier as
- 15:52well, and it's no secret that that the market's been pretty
- 15:54tough lately, but you, you've just had a pretty successful
- 15:57fundraise. How did you approach raising
- 16:00that capital and getting investors behind behind the
- 16:03vision? Yeah.
- 16:04I think, you know, I like to say sometimes you have to be a
- 16:07little lucky and sometimes you have to be a little good.
- 16:09And I think we're, you know, we've been a little of both.
- 16:10And I talked about some of the really exciting data we
- 16:13generated in a not just Christian syndrome, we'd also
- 16:16generate some data in combination with steroid
- 16:18medicines, which act very similarly to to to cortisol.
- 16:21Then we were out last year talking to investors about
- 16:23continuing those programs. And then I mentioned to you
- 16:26another company Corecept announced some data really
- 16:29highlighting this very exciting opportunity that our drug seemed
- 16:32perfect for. And so we pivoted and very
- 16:35quickly found some really, really excellent investors.
- 16:38We're very excited about the syndicate we have to that really
- 16:42shot saw that vision and we're able to join.
- 16:43And I think I think the particular characteristics of
- 16:46the of of our company that appeal to them.
- 16:49I mentioned later stage more de risked.
- 16:51I think, you know, in more risk off environments, I think
- 16:55investors are looking more for de risk validated compounds,
- 16:59validated mechanisms, you know, Phase 2 proof of concept data,
- 17:03if you can get it. And then you know, from
- 17:05manufacturing perspective, from a non clinical perspective,
- 17:09compounds that have really, you know, been de risked.
- 17:11So a lot of those kind of things that can trip up a
- 17:13pharmaceutical program may be already been dealt with.
- 17:17And so I think in an environment where investors are looking to
- 17:20narrow their focus take make fewer bets that they're looking
- 17:24for things that are a little less risky and we we seem to fit
- 17:27that bill. So I think that worked out
- 17:28really well, kind of a de risk asset, but also a really big
- 17:31potential, a market opportunity, not just a non just kind of a
- 17:35niche opportunity, but a really big opportunity I think was
- 17:38attractive. I like the little story about
- 17:40corsets data and then pivoting. You make it sound like it was a
- 17:44was a simple decision to do that.
- 17:47Is is was that the case or? It it, you know, it looks like
- 17:51it in hindsight, it looks like it makes all kinds of sense when
- 17:55you're going through it. It does take some mental
- 17:57gymnastics because you've gotten yourself so focused on telling
- 18:01your story on on selling your story and why the plan you're
- 18:06presenting is the right plan. And then to be able to say,
- 18:10actually, you know, we want, we want to do something a little
- 18:13different. It takes, I think it takes more
- 18:15of a mental shift on the on the company side than it does on the
- 18:17investor side, who will say, OK, that, you know, sounds
- 18:19interesting and they're used to looking at different stores.
- 18:22But it does take a little bit of shifting on the company side to
- 18:25kind of get yourself out of that all in on one story and, and,
- 18:30and shift to another one. But this, you know, this was
- 18:32this is I think a nice opportunity because it doesn't,
- 18:35we're not abandoning. I think what we were doing
- 18:36before so far as I talked about this, you know, rare disease,
- 18:40we've gotten to be very close with the community.
- 18:42There's a strong advocacy organization and we've gotten to
- 18:45know some of the patients. And I think we really had would
- 18:49have been very, very difficult. We had no intention of
- 18:51abandoning that community for whom, you know, this new therapy
- 18:54could be really life changing for them as well.
- 18:56And fortunately, what we're able to do is really subsume that
- 18:58into, you know, this opportunity that if you have this rare
- 19:01disease, you likely have difficult to treat types of
- 19:04diabetes. You're welcome in our in our
- 19:06program as well, where some of the other programs have excluded
- 19:09some of those more severe rare disease patients.
- 19:12So I think that made it easier for us to feel like we're
- 19:14expanding the tent and we're not abandoning some of the things we
- 19:17were doing before. That makes sense.
- 19:19It was there an element of getting buy in across the whole
- 19:22company as well as far like yes, this is the right strategic
- 19:27decision. Yes, I mean, again, you know,
- 19:30people are so, so bought into what they're doing, but a low
- 19:35bank account is a motivating, it's probably a motivating
- 19:38factor as well. And so when you're, you know,
- 19:41you're you're having to ramp down your spend, you're looking
- 19:45at a limited runway, you're trying to raise money and you
- 19:48say this is what this is what people want to invest in.
- 19:52Then it's pretty quickly you get the team around saying, OK, you
- 19:55know, we can see this really exciting opportunity.
- 19:56And that's a little different than what we thought we were
- 19:59going to do. But you know, we're excited
- 20:00about that, that, that as well. But again, yeah, it does.
- 20:02It does take that little bit of a mental shift cause a company
- 20:05like Sparrow, I mean, it's not, it's not a job, right?
- 20:09It's next to our families. This is, this is our lives.
- 20:13And you're so, you're so all in that you feel a very, very
- 20:17personal mission with what we're doing.
- 20:21And so it does take some mental adjustment to to shift that, but
- 20:24I think people were able to see pretty quickly that this this
- 20:26could have a major impact. Well, honestly, Congrats on that
- 20:29fundraise because it hasn't been easy out there and it's well
- 20:32deserved. Thank you.
- 20:34Yeah, thank you. I think it has been a tough
- 20:37environment. I think maybe it's turning a
- 20:39little bit. Fortunately, we're not raising
- 20:41money right now. So I'm hearing this more second
- 20:43hand. I think, you know, Mark, people
- 20:45in the market will always say maybe hopefully the turns right
- 20:48around the corner. But in this case, you know, I
- 20:50like to say we certainly went through a few tough years
- 20:53following a few frothy years. You know, I'd say that the
- 20:56bigger the party sometimes the bigger the hangover.
- 20:57And there was a lot of froth in the market a few years ago in
- 21:01the maybe COVID days. And I think there are a lot of
- 21:03companies that raised a lot of money at high valuations, then
- 21:07maybe we're not sustainable. And so then a lot of those
- 21:10companies were not able to deliver their valuation.
- 21:13They weren't able to raise money.
- 21:14The valuation is too high. It's very painful then to have
- 21:16that adjustment. I think there had to be some
- 21:19consolidation. There were a number of companies
- 21:21that combined, there were a number of companies liquidated,
- 21:23a number of companies that downsized, prioritized their
- 21:26pipeline. That took several years and
- 21:29along with the markets where interest rates were higher, it
- 21:33just was, it was a very difficult environment.
- 21:35But I do feel as though maybe a lot of that has now worked its
- 21:38way through. Interest rates are starting to
- 21:41to come down, which sometimes it's not easy to see how that
- 21:44directly impacts, you know, private biotech market, but it
- 21:46does based upon the availability of capital.
- 21:48And so I feel as though there have been a few IP OS and that,
- 21:52you know, that kind of filters down into the private markets as
- 21:55well. So I do feel like maybe things
- 21:56are starting to turn and next year maybe it'll be a better
- 21:59year for biotech. Yeah, that's that.
- 22:01I mean, that's amazing to hear. And we talked about how the
- 22:04market's been changing a little bit.
- 22:06Last time we spoke, we're talking about the there's been
- 22:09fewer rounds, but there has been some massive rounds.
- 22:13When they do happen, what do you think that says about where the
- 22:16industry is heading as well? Yeah.
- 22:18I think that's really a flexion of what we were talking about,
- 22:21where these investors had money to, to, to invest.
- 22:26It's not they hadn't been able to raise funds.
- 22:28It's that they were just being very careful about deploying
- 22:30them because their current companies needed capital and
- 22:33they felt as though with the public markets as they were,
- 22:37that maybe it's more difficult to get those exits, it's more
- 22:40difficult to raise subsequent rounds.
- 22:42And so I think they were being a lot more selective.
- 22:45But in doing that, when you're investing in fewer companies,
- 22:47maybe later stage companies, more de risked, you end up
- 22:50making bigger bets as well, because obviously a company
- 22:53that's in Phase 2 might need a lot more capital to run a big
- 22:57clinical trial than a company that's, you know, still at the
- 22:59non clinical stage. And so I think that the market
- 23:01kind of lent itself to bigger bets, bigger investments and
- 23:05fewer de risk companies. And unfortunately, we fit that
- 23:08bill. Amazing.
- 23:09And this is the last question as well, Robert, and it's a
- 23:13question I ask each of my guests.
- 23:16If you could have dinner with any scientist or innovator, past
- 23:20or present, who would it be and why?
- 23:22Oh, boy. So yeah, I, I hope I don't get
- 23:28myself in a little bit of trouble here.
- 23:30I'm, I'm going to say I, I, I would love to, I'd love to have
- 23:33a conversation with Elon Musk. And I know he's a little
- 23:35controversial today and nothing to do with his current, you
- 23:37know, recent political engagement, But really, because
- 23:41a couple of weeks, first of all, I think he's one of the most
- 23:43fascinating people, you know, of our time, the things that he's
- 23:46done. But he's not just, he's not just
- 23:50a visionary, he's also a doer. And so to see that he has ideas,
- 23:55but then is able to actually make them happen.
- 23:57The things, you know, he, he somehow decided to start a
- 24:00rocket company And, and I can't imagine I wouldn't notice where
- 24:03to start, you know, had a rack company or some of the things
- 24:05he's doing with the boring company.
- 24:07And so I'd love to have a conversation with him.
- 24:10You know, he says some things that scare me.
- 24:11So I'd love to understand them better because I think he, he,
- 24:14he probably has reasons what he's saying when he talks about,
- 24:16you know, where our society is going, where humanity is going.
- 24:19And, but I think he's a fascinating individual and I
- 24:22think it'd be, I'd love to love to have a conversation with him.
- 24:25I yeah, it's controversial. He is.
- 24:28We don't have to band in the, the political side of what's
- 24:31happening with him at the moment.
- 24:32But I would completely agree. I think he's a fascinating guy.
- 24:35So much to learn from him. And like what you were saying
- 24:39earlier about, you know, you, you've got to take on multiple
- 24:42roles. He's an executor as well, like
- 24:43you say. I love that answer.
- 24:45Yeah, when that comes up. But absolute pleasure to have
- 24:49you on, Robert. Yeah, really thank you for the
- 24:51opportunity. I really appreciated the
- 24:53platform to talk about, you know, Sparrow, we're just, we're
- 24:56really excited what we're doing and we're just starting to try
- 24:58and get the message out there. You know, as I said, we think
- 25:01we're really at the kind of convergence of having this great
- 25:04data with things that evolved in the industry.
- 25:07But I don't think some of those developments are really well
- 25:09understood widely at the moment and the potential impact that we
- 25:12could have with our approach. So you know platforms like yours
- 25:16to try and start to get our message out.
- 25:18Very exciting and really appreciate it.
- 25:20Now, honestly, amazing to have you on.
- 25:21I think you you guys are doing some incredible work and it's
- 25:25good to to share with the listeners.
- 25:27Please everyone like and subscribe to the bio hub and
- 25:31honestly thanks again Robert it. Was a pleasure.