Latest / Making Medicine / The Three Pillars of Bio & Med Tech Investing and Industry Impact of DEI

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The Three Pillars of Bio & Med Tech Investing and Industry Impact of DEI · Making Medicine

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You're listening to Making Medicine Stories from the Early Stage Life Sciences Ecosystem, a
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podcast that explores the people and deals that have led to the medicines, devices,
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and technologies that keep us healthy. Let's get into the show. Hello,
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this is Ashland, today's host of the Making Medicine podcast. We are
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thrilled to have Christine Brandon, Managing director of our tex Ventures HC, with
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us today to talk about her journey in industry, her perspectives on future investment
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trends, and experience leading one of the few female led investment funds in the
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healthcare industry. With over fifteen years of life science industry experience, Christine was
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an obvious choice to lead the fund and a fit for our investor focused podcast
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to start off. Like many vcs, you have a unique transition into the
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industry. Would you mind kind of starting off on sharing your journey in the
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venture capital Absolutely happy too. So. Originally I thought I was going to
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have my own lab and be a full time scientist. I got a PhD
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in neuroscience. I then did a postdoctoral fellowship, also in neuroscience, and
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it was at that point that I realized I probably didn't want to have my
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own lab and focus solely on the research, and went into initially consulting in
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a small boutique healthcare consulting firm that was sort of my pseudo MBA, if
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you will. That was my immersion into the business side of research and science
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and biotech and pharma. And from there I went into business development. I
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was at a couple of different small biotech companies in business development, really looking
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to partner with big pharma companies to either do research partnerships or licensed particular programs
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that the companies had. I spent bizarrely two years in marketing and on the
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commercial side. I was inside North Carolina. I had a company that just
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closed and didn't get it seriously financing, which was a learning experience in itself,
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and I didn't want to move, and so I found this great group
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it's now the company is now called Valiant, and I spent two years there
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in marketing initially it's strategic planning, and then as a product manager. So
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it was really nice to be able to kind of see that side of the
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world to the commercial side. After a couple of years, I wanted to
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get back closer to the research again. Went into another biotech company, spent
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about three years there, then went to Big Pharma in business development. Spent
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five years in Big Pharma in business development, and then decided I want to
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go back to biotech. Became chief business officer at a biotech company and was
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there for about three and a half years, and then amazingly had the opportunity
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to go into venture capital. One of my former bosses was a managing director
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at Novardas Venture Fund and called me up one day and said that they had
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a role there and would I be interested in applying, And thankfully I did
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get the role. So I spent about three and a half years at Nevardas
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Venture Fund, and then how did the opportunity to go to us Mark's venture
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fund MRL Ventures Fund. I was there for four years before joining for a
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Tech Ventures HC, which I will now call VVHC because it's too much as
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a mouthful. I love that and I love love VBHC. Thank you for
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sharing your breadth of knowledge and I really think it it's really exemplifies that not
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one, there's many end prupments into the industry, but also and as an
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investor, you're able to pull from a lot of different experiences than to inform
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your investment decisions, and so so thank you for sharing that. I know
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that now, as I mentioned, you're leading one of the few female led
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investment funds in the healthcare industry, alongside Laurie who as well. Would you
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mind telling us a little bit more about Vertex Ventures VVHC as you refer to
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it and in your popal Absolutely so. One of the first clarifying things that
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I will say is we aren't associated with the pharmaceutical company Vertex Pharmaceuticals. This
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is actually a group that's funded right now by a single limited partner or LP
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called Tamask and about well, I guess a couple of decades ago. Now
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Tamasak put money into what they named Vertex Holdings, and then under Vertex Holdings
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is a whole family of Vertex Ventures companies, all investing in various different things.
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Either geographically, there's like a Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia, Vertex Ventures China,
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Israel, and then in twenty fourteen they created the Healthcare Group, which
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is Vertex Venture's HC. So the name is sort of historical, and it's
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not until we've gotten into the healthcare side of things where confusion arose. So
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We were originally established in San Francisco, and that's where as you As you
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mentioned my partner Glory, who is located I joined five months ago partly because
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they really wanted to build a Boston office. I'm located in Boston, mass
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so that was exciting for me. The other part that really attracted me to
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the company was the fact that there are diverse investors. So they we put
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about two thirds of investing into biotech therapeutic companies, and about a third of
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our investing goes into medtech. Mostly for US that has been med device medical
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devices companies, but we're looking at some digital health companies now and other things
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in that bucket, so we're it's nice that we're diversified. We get to
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look at a lot of different things within healthcare, and we have freem and
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flexibility to do that. Lorie and I both basically set the strategy of what
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we're going to be looking at and where we want to focus our time and
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energy. For biotech investing, we invest early, so usually preclinical to early
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clinical companies, which is Series a's series vs. Mettech. We do the
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opposite. We invest later, so we invest in those companies that are in
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their pivotal FDA clinical trial or even commercial and generating revenue. Thank you for
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sharing that. I think that really gives the audience a good perspective on kind
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of the diverse thread that you guys are able to invest in. And I
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think that you guys are doing incredible work, especially as it is related to
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the you know, sell Therapy started anecology platform technologies and as well as the
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devices and digital help as you mentioned, and so I know that you had
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just mentioned that it's with biotech you guys invest in earlier stage of metechs.
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A little bit later on, what's your typical approach to investing UM and what
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are some things that you look for when you're working with some startups. Yeah,
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so sort of my philosophy, it's not particularly insightful or brilliant or anything,
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but my philosophy has been to look at this investing as kind of UM
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when I look at any company and there's there's three pillars that I need to
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examine and that I hope are part of supporting that company. First is the
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science. Of course, we generally look at innovative new science, new platforms,
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new targets, and the science is of course necessary. But isn't sufficient
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to make a good investment. There's really two other key pillars. One is
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the management team, which is really at least as important, if not sometimes
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more important than the science. Really having those those people who understand drug development,
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understand culture, how to build a team, and how to pivot.
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Because science is science, we start out with hypotheses, we test those hypotheses,
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and sometimes they're not correct and we have to change what we're going to
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be doing and how we do things as the company goes forward. So management
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critical. And then the third pillar is finance, and that's really how much
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money is the company raising for this financing? How many milestones do they get
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to, how much validation of the science do they get to during that financing?
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And then who are the other groups that are a part of that financing?
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Wanting to understand of what kind of syndicate do you have? Do you
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have institutional investors like for text ventures you see, do you have corporate investors
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like my prior funds, mr LV and Nevada's venture fund? So what's the
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group around the table? What is that board going to look like? So
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that's kind of how I take a look at these investments is through those three
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pillars, and you can't check every box. We certainly invest, for example,
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in first time CEOs, but generally speaking, those CEOs have come from
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the industry. They have been CFOs or CSOs or CBOs before, so they
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understand, you know, the industry, they understand board dynamics, they've probably
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hired people before, things like that. The other things that we look for
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is really just for us and for our portfolio. We want to continue to
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make sure that we're diversified. So we have a lot of oncology investments right
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now and as you as you noted, and some self therapy invest smiths um.
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So we're putting a little bit more energy and looking at things in the
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neuroscience space or in gene editing, um or inflammation, just to really make
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sure that we're investing in more than just one therapeutic area. Thank you for
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that. And I think that is really kind of important to understand. One
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of three polos. I think is our ound very very well to kind of
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help us, as you know, myself as a non scientist, but also
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our audience to be able. I'm goin to understand how you guys are able
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to put out your portfolios, but especially when trying to keep that diverse portfolio
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and really the usefulness in that as well. And I know that that's something
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that we had incubated. Really try to convey to Washington the importance of a
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diverse portfolio for investors, UM, just because as to your point, you
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don't know what that that novel science will return to the discovery. Sometimes the
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science doesn't work out. And being able to have those diverse investments really enable
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you guys to ask some um, really finance a lot of some novel,
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uh, A novel of mentions. UM. Let's take to that end.
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UM. I would love to uh kind of pivot to to some trends that
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you're seeing in the industry. UM. And I know we're halfway through twenty
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twenty two and UM are also in the middle of you know, there's some
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inflationary UM aspects to to consider. UM. So I'd love to just turn
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it over to you for some friends that you're seeing. UM if how inflation
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is infecting your ass investments UM and UH, yeah, A yeah, absolutely,
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UM. We you know inflation effects everything. UM. But really what
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we have seen was a twenty twenty and twenty twenty one kind of an insane
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amount of investment in the industry and really dramatic numbers of companies that went public
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with an initial public offering, and now we're on the public markets, including
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a lot of those companies that were still in the preclinical stage still hadn't yet
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started to test their drugs in people, which is a very early and risky
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part of the development of any drug. So, you know, I think
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what we're seeing right now is a reset really of the markets, and that
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reset I don't even know what it is exactly today, but you know,
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banting me about people have been banting about kind of the markets are sixty percent
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down, seventy percent down as you look at the bio tech indices, which
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is pretty amazingly significant. So there are a lot of institutional investors who have
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both public and private portfolios, so that definitely has a knock on effect.
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When part of your portfolio is struggling and not at the returns that you want
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them to be, that makes you a lot more cautious around where you're going
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to be putting your cash on the private sectors. So we are sort of
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seeing that knock on effect. And twenty twenty one, we saw a lot
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of groups that were not traditionally investing in private biotech come in to private biotech
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and come in early. We saw, you know, public investors who invest
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in public biotech only all of a sudden started coming into private biotech. We
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saw generalist investors who didn't really invest in biotech before come in to investing in
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biotech and early series as series bs again in this preclinical time frame. So,
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you know, I think what we're seeing now is a little bit more
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of that reset back to what it was like in twenty sixteen twenty seventeen,
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where we had a healthy investment in biotech, but we were more reasonable about
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the amounts of money that we were putting in at any one time, and
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more reasonable about the valuations of those companies as we put the money in,
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and then that helps those companies grow a little bit more, you know,
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grow kind of walk before you run growth instead of here's one hundred million dollars
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higher fifty fifty people do seven projects at once, and we didn't know whether
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or not those platforms were actually working. So I think it's we're getting back
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to a little bit of normal. Hopefully this is where we reside and that
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it doesn't continue to impact dramatically, but if you look at historical other downturns
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that happened in the biotech area, this is what we generally have seen.
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We see kind of the IPO window kind of shut, especially to preclinical companies,
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and that window can stay closed, you know, two to sometimes three
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or four years, So we hope it's on the two year side of things.
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I think a good company with great science in with some clinical data will
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will be able to go publicum. I just think it's those early companies that
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are having to rethink how are they going to fund their company to the right
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moment to be able to get the right data to be able to access the
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public markets if that's what they want to do. With the IPO market being
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closed, now, we're also going to start to see I think it's been
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happening a little bit, but not quite quite as much as I'd hoped already,
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But we're going to see pharma company is doing a lot more acquisitions.
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They have a lot of cash on their balance sheets, especially those groups that
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have money coming from various COVID therapeutics that were developed. So I think that
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we'll start to see them acquiring more companies. You know, if you look
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at any pharmaceutical company, fifty percent of their current products on the market came
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from biotech, came from the outside, not we're not necessarily generated in house.
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So there's always a need for good science, great products that can be
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acquired by pharmaceutical companies, but they're they're not going to acquire our company for
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crazy valuation unless they have to. So with the public markets closing, valuations
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are starting to come down, and I think we're going to start to see
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a lot more of pharma being patient and waiting for the right company at the
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right valuation and then doing many more acquisitions to to continue to feed their pipeline.
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So you know, I think I hope that this UM, this knock
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on effect from inflation and from you know, other things, have UM sort
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of hit the bottom at this point, and that we're going to start to
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see kind of maybe maintaining that and then hopefully in a couple of years see
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see them rise again of being able to go public. Absolutely, yeah,
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thank you for that. I think that that was that was really helpful and
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UM kind of framing it as a reset UM of course, UM having having
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the boom of the past few years is definite, really UM, we're seeing
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that kind of slow as well, but UM, we're also seeing an uptick
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and right a lot more checks and balances, UM, kind of on the
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investor side. But then also I loved I loved your point on UM there
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there might be a lot more acquisitions and for some entrepreneurs that that it would
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is a really productive goal that that they're after, and so it kind of
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speaks to a lot of our UM. We oftentimes referred to the early stage
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ecosystem as a as a relay race and so being on a hand off the
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baton and and and for folks that are are getting acquired UM, I think
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that is still a very beneficial aspect for entrepreneurs as well. UM, So
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thank you for that. I UM want to stick on the trends, if
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that is all right, And I know that we had the pleasure of connecting
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at the um LSx World conference last month. It was it was great to
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see you in person. Hopefully things will continue in person. UM. But
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we did see a theme of increasing investment in femtech throughout the conference and also
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increasing diversity within the investor space but also within the industry as a whole.
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UM. So UM, I first and foremost as as a young woman myself,
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UM, within the industry. It's great to see the pivot towards UM,
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the prioritization in this space. But I'd love to ask you about your
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personal experience, UM in your fifteen years UM as a both a woman in
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the space and an an investor, how the industry has changed and where you
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think absolutely, UM, you know it's a very UM. It's a focus
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for me. It's a passion for me. It's been kind of amazing to
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see see change happen UM, But we're definitely not there yet. I still
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am generally speaking, the only woman on a board. UM. There might
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be one other woman. UM. I have a great board though that's all
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women, which is fabulous, But that's the only one I've had in the
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in the eight years of doing venture capital M So, I think we are
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seeing movement. I think we are seeing more women come into the industry and
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more women getting into more senior rules, including partners, including general partners.
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We have a long way to go, not just on gender diversity, but
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on diversity in I think it's we pay a lot of lip service to this.
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The industry as a whole, venture capitalists as a whole. I think
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it's you know, people, I think most people understand that being diversified is
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better. There's lots of data to suggest that's true. You know, if
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you have different points of view, if you have different life experience, you
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will come to better decisions, which generally and the output means your company is
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doing better. There's no easy fixed to this, you know, there's no
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one button we can press, and so I think people get sort of deer
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in the headlights a little bit, you know, they kind of feel there's
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nothing I can really do, so I'm just going to continue to do what
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I do today. So I think we really need to a talk about it
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more and really think about what are what are the things that we can put
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into place that can help us be better at diversity, equity and inclusion.
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So it's called d E and I for a reason. It's not just about
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hiring diverse people but then not paying them the same, not promoting them the
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same, not giving them the same mentorship, or not having them feel included
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in the company. You're just going to have turnover, right, You're going
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to bring those people in and you've been able to check some box, but
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you can't keep them because you're you're not actually looking at the whole gamut,
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right. You know, you have to be able to bring them in.
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You have to make them have an environment that's inclusive, and you have to
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be treating everybody equitably. So I think that every house has a lot to
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do to really look at themselves and see how they can be supporting diversity with
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an inclusion in its entirety. I think there are small things that people don't
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even think about that if we could start talking about, it would be impactful.
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One example, if you look at job descriptions and how job descriptions are
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written. If you have a job description that says required these ten things we
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require you have those ten things, and then you know, here's these five
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things we hope you have. If you look at who applies to that,
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it's generally not women. Women look at that and say, I only have
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nine. I don't have ten. I can't apply they want ten. Men
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not to point a finger, but generally white man look at that and say,
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I have one of those. So I'm in a pot, right,
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And you know that's you know, a validated, scientifically validated something that happens.
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Right. You know, this is data that people have the sociology,
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as sociologists especially have looked at and have determined that you know, these are
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kind of the way that our culture is. This is how we respond to
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those kinds of things. So just look at your job description and say,
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what are the three things that I really hope that I really want this person
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to have to be able to come in at this level. And then here
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are the other things that it'd be great if you had them, and you'd
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be amazed at how many more diverse candidates apply to those jobs. A lot
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of the pushback that I hear is, well, we put that job description
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out and we just didn't get any good women applicants or diverse applicants. And
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you know, so that's the first question I always ask is, well how
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is your job description written? And the second is well did you go did
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you use your network to find that person? Because if you're fishing in the
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white woman pollen, the white man pond, you're going to find white men.
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In the white men pond, you're gonna find white women and the white
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women bond, Right, you have to start fishing in other ponds if you're
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going to be able to find diverse candidates. So there are sort of I
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think things that we need to bring to people's attention that I don't think they
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realize they're doing this sort of unconscious bias, but are very actionable. Right,
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just write the job description differently. You'll be amazed. Go to a
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recruiter who's have diverse people recruiting and are recruiting from diverse places. So I
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think there are little things that people can do, and I think those little
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things will have a big enough impact that they'll start to see the reward of
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doing that that they then can't say, well, I just I don't get
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those applications, So how can I hire a woman they don't apply? I
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want the best person for this job. I shouldn't discriminate against anybody, and
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I agree with that, But if you're only pick you know, you're only
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ninety nine percent of your applications coming from that one population, then you're not
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doing it right. So I think we need to be better about talking about
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these things and talking about what are the even the small things people can start
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to do to be able to have much more diversity. You know, venture
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capital is definitely looking more at itself. Part of that is limited partners are
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starting to require that venture capital have diverse management, diverse partners, but also
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investing in in diverse management teams, and so the pressure is on, which
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I think will help a lot. So we we can you know, whoever
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controls the money has a has a bit of a lever So those limited partners
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who are going to be putting money into your fund or saying you as a
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fund, have to be more diverse and you have to start investing in more
25:47
diversity, which I think is a great trend. And then those venture capital
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companies, because they have that now as a mandate, can also go to
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their portfolio companies and say, you know, d E and I has to
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be for your um for your company and demand that as part of the goals
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and how they get evaluated at the end of the year. So I think
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through those methodologies we're getting better, but I still think it's something that we
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have to do a lot more work on. I really like how you laid
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that out, especially with you know, landscape as an industry, so seeing
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hopefully some long term change with you know, the LPs require and diverse management
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and kind of divers investment partners, but then also more of the tangible aspect
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as well. The fact that for job descriptions, UM, you know who
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are recruiting from geographically on top of you know, gender, um, racial,
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geographic diversity is all incredibly important just to bring different perspectives on which can
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better inform your investment and have a have a less of a group think that
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companies. So I think, I think all those UM points where we're really
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sounded, especially the business case too. And I know that and just in
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for an investor's perspective, being able to have more diverse experiences can help inform
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with what will be more helpful within the R and D and in investing.
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So I appreciate UM kind of all all lenses that you that you responded to
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that in and I think that they're UM in my perspective at least, there's
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still a long way to go as well, UM, and I'm glad to
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see some strides, but definitely UM kind of the overarching theme I think needs
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to be intentionality of whether or not it's you know, in the short term
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or long term of of of kind of having that um our own responsibility for
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each person organizations, but then also as an industry as well. UM.
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And so so thank you for for UH answering that and really kind of spearheading
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a lot of this work. I know that UM, it's it's I think
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this is all super fascinating and couldn't couldn't bring more with everything that was just
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said UM and today UM even with the female lad venture capital funds and they
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make just make up just under ten percent of all DC firms UM, and
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so it kind of underscores the importance as well for women in the industry.
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UM. And so I wanted to dig in UM lastly on kind of your
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your efforts and your commitment to UM giving back and mentoring within the industry.
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Would you mind telling us a little bit more about your work mentoring the next
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generation of women, the season in the industry, and why this isn't Yeah.
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Absolutely, And it kind of fallows on with the last topic about women
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in venture as well. And and I've realized one of the things that I
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didn't actually talk about what we could talk about now because I think it fits
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in well too, is UM investing in women's health. Right, we don't
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see a lot of women's health companies biotech companies, you know, as you
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were mentioning, I think there is more going on these days in femtech than
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there has been in the past, but it certainly is an area that UM,
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we need to understand. Why why aren't there more innovative companies in this
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space? Why aren't we talking about more of the diseases beyond breast cancer no
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variant cancer, the diseases that that affect women right and demetriosis, placestical variant
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syndrome. There's significant patients out there that we're not really focused on, and
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I think we need to UM really start to understand what is blocking, what's
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what What are the the things that are really UM difficult forgetting. Is it
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is a lack of innovation? I doubt it, right, So what is
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it about? If there's innovation, why aren't we forming more companies there?
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UM? Why aren't we putting more investment there? And part of that too
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is UM you know, needing needing more women leaders and a mentorship is I
30:07
think a significant UM part of what we need to do to help continue to
30:12
bring diversity into this industry. And you know, some of the things that
30:19
I have done in the past or I'm doing now are UM working with groups
30:26
that like Venture Forward has a VC university, and in that VC university.
30:33
They bring sort of younger first sometimes even first time folks in that are thinking
30:38
about coming into venture capital. And this is generally speaking women. UM,
30:45
and we can ment you know, we can sign up as mentors and then
30:48
you get randomly assigned to somebody to be their mentor for a period of time
30:52
to really kind of walk them through what is what is my job? How
30:56
did I get here? What are paths that they could potentially um yet here
31:00
on? And UM, you know, answer their questions and be supportive of
31:06
them. And part of mentoring is not teaching. It's not I'm not I'm
31:14
not here to lecture or to teach. This is to impart the knowledge that
31:22
I've gained over these years so that somebody doesn't have to reinvent that wheel.
31:26
But also I learn from everybody that I talk to. They have different varied
31:30
backgrounds and they can help me as I think about, UM doing my job,
31:36
you know, just life right. It's it's an amazing opportunity to get
31:38
to meet a lot of different folks. UM, and it's really important I
31:45
think that you mentor not just through um external ways, like like Venture Forward,
31:52
there was a thing that happened in Boston last year, maybe a year
31:56
before called We Rise Together. Um, there's a couple of other you know,
32:00
Harvard has Harvard Graduate School has reaches out every so often for mentors.
32:07
There are a lot of different programs being in Massachusetts. We have Mass Bio
32:12
and they have an initiative that I think is in its third or maybe fourth
32:16
year now called Mass next Gen in which they provide grants and then mentorship to
32:24
women CEO run biotech companies or tech companies, you know, mentech or biotech
32:30
companies. And I've been part of that for a number of years and really,
32:34
you know, the money is nice, but it's not gigantic amounts of
32:37
money. It's more than mentorship. And all of those things are important,
32:43
and I love doing all of those things, but we also have to really
32:45
be thinking about what are we doing internally, How are we mentoring the next
32:50
generation? Internally? We all have and venture capital funds, we all have
32:54
junior folks, associates, senior associates, principles, vice presidents. What are
33:00
we doing to help them beyond sort of showing them the ropes of how to
33:04
get the job done. How are we helping them grow within the community.
33:09
And this is a community that's really based on your network. The way that
33:15
you generally speaking find new companies to invest in is through your network. You're
33:21
talking to somebody at a board dinner and they mentioned, oh, my portfolio
33:24
is raising. Oh okay, great, I'd love to see it, you
33:27
know, or you know that portfolio company you're interested in that space, You
33:31
know that board member. You call them up and say, hey, you
33:35
know like to hear about this company. Are they raising soon? So really,
33:38
this is a very it's a small community, and it's a community that
33:44
really works together to exchange good information about various different opportunities that are out there.
33:52
So how are you helping your junior folks get that network? Are you
33:58
putting them on boards as observers? Are you giving them opportunities to speak?
34:05
You know, we get asked to be on a lot of panels, right,
34:07
so you know you should be thinking about when they're ready to get onto
34:14
a panel, then give it to them, right, you know, you
34:15
have that opportunity. You get a lot of these requests and you can't do
34:19
them all. So allow you know, your junior folks to also have that
34:24
opportunity to get up there and sit on a panel and be at LSx and
34:28
on a panel, and you know, do those kinds of things. So
34:30
I think it's important that we think about mentoring, not just joining different groups
34:37
to be able to provide that mentorship externally, but what are we doing internally
34:40
to mentor and are we doing enough? And all of that is around people
34:50
that are either in the industry now or graduate students or postdocs that are coming
34:54
into the industry, so you know, pretty senior adults that we're mentoring.
35:00
I think also importantly, if we want to really get more diversity into this
35:07
industry, we have to think about going earlier, right, you have to
35:08
think about high school, middle school, grade school. Right. How do
35:13
we bring the excitement of finding that piece of data out? You know?
35:22
That was one of the things that I love about being a postdoc and a
35:27
graduate student was I would do an experiment and I would see the data and
35:31
I would sort of in the back of my head be like, I'm the
35:34
only person who knows this piece of information right now, and there's something very
35:38
cool about that. How do you bring that passion and that excitement around what
35:45
does it mean to go into the health sciences, what does it mean for
35:51
these other roles that they may not hear about. You know that we hear
35:53
about doctors and nurses, especially lately with the pandemic. But what does it
35:59
mean to be a research scientist? Does it mean to be a biology teacher?
36:01
What does it? You know? Why? Why is that exciting?
36:06
Uh? And so I think we need to think about and I've used we
36:10
a lot, but I do think as an industry, we have to start
36:14
figuring out how how are we going to bring this information? And there are
36:21
some mechanisms that are already in place that that are helpful. My sister happens
36:27
to be a high school biology teacher, so I ask her a lot of
36:30
what do I do? How do I do this? You know? What
36:32
are the avenues by which UM she utilizes in her you know, day to
36:38
day UM. So you know, I think we have to come together a
36:42
little bit. UM. A lot of the venture capital groups just got together
36:46
by themselves UM to start thinking about diversity in general and UM mentoring and you
36:57
know, how do we bring people in There's it's a UM a group that
37:00
was just a self starter. And so you know, I think those UM,
37:05
those things you can you know, if you can start those small small
37:08
fires, sometimes they can actually burn pretty brightly over time. I just feel
37:17
a responsibility to be as active as I can in this space, to do
37:27
mentorship, to think about diversity, to think about how to bring excitement and
37:35
attention to the space so that people can understand what it is that we really
37:40
do UM. And so you know, as you can tell, I'm a
37:44
little bit passionate about this area, and I think I probably rambled a little
37:47
bit in there, so I'm happy to take any clarifying questions from from my
37:54
ramble. I absolutely loved it and it shows it. One just shows your
38:01
your passion m one for kind of giving back within the industry the mentorship,
38:07
but then also, UM, you're totally right the kind of going earliers K
38:14
twelve, really gaining that interest and attraction to UM this community, everyone within
38:22
the interconnected community. It seems like common sense, but folks that aren't aware
38:27
of it and don't have the same access to it, definitely getting in front
38:31
of them and figuring out how to UM. I love what you said that
38:35
UM kind of having that little tipit of information that nobody else in the world
38:37
knows, Like knowledge is power, and being able to UM kind of incorporate
38:44
that into into the youth. I think I think will be will definitely be
38:47
a helpful, helpful next step UM and then also UM another point of VIERSUM
38:54
just that kind of interconnectedness of the um BC, but also just early stage
39:01
community. That's that's something that that I've seen over the past four years and
39:06
just working with the um just a lot of vcs across the network, and
39:10
I think that having that mentorship is really critical for for a lot of these
39:15
folks that are that are coming into it, because you guys are all really
39:20
working together to UM kind of whether or not you're going investments together or maybe
39:27
a certain a certain company isn't it fit for you guys, and you pass
39:31
it along. So just really being able to kind of UM lift lift up
39:35
young folks as well give them opportunities given speaking opportunities, exposure opportunities, sitting
39:40
on boards everything that you've raised UM. So I thank you for for outlining
39:45
a lot of it, because I think that that is it's critical for especially
39:51
really esteemed folks as yourself, really kind of understanding and and and spearheading the
39:57
initiative to help not only the next generation but the also in pleasing diversity within
40:01
the industry as well, So it's people like you. There's a long way
40:05
to go, but but but we're thrilled about about about getting there. So
40:08
um, I just wanted to thank you, not to Brennan and the entire
40:13
team at for Text Ventures, just for all the great work that you guys
40:16
do and for joining me today, and thanks to our audience for listening and
40:22
sharing feedback more from Incubate at www dot Incubate Coalition dot org. I'm sure
40:28
if there's so much more for us to talk about, so I'd know that
40:30
we'd love to have Chris Christine, we'd love to have you back. And
40:34
a special thanks to Olivia Lucani and John Stanford and making today's podcast. Keep
40:38
innovating everybody you've been listening to making Medicine. To ensure that you never miss
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