Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 181 - Pete Smith - Co-Founder, CEO & President of Remix Therapeutics

Transcript

Episode 181 - Pete Smith - Co-Founder, CEO & President of Remix Therapeutics · The BioHub - by Avetix

• 0:06
  So welcome back to another episode of the Bio Hub, the
• 0:08
  Avetic podcast. Today we're delighted to welcome
• 0:11
  on Pete Smith, who's the Co founder, president and CEO of
• 0:15
  Remix Therapeutics, a company at the forefront of a really
• 0:18
  exciting and rapidly evolving area of biology in RNA
• 0:22
  processing and modulation. Remix are a clinical stage
• 0:26
  biotech developing novel small molecule therapies designed to
• 0:30
  reprogram RNA processing and address disease, disease drivers
• 0:34
  at their origin. So join us today as we'll
• 0:37
  discuss the inspiration in founding Remix Remixes pipeline
• 0:41
  and their lead program, as well as Pete's transition from the
• 0:44
  bench scientist to CEO. So Pete, thanks so much for
• 0:48
  coming on. How are you?
• 0:49
  Doing good. Tom, thanks very much for the
• 0:51
  invitation. Big fan of the podcast, so great
• 0:53
  to finally be on it with you. Yeah, amazing.
• 0:56
  It's a it's a pleasure to have you on as well.
• 0:58
  So let's just start off with a little bit about your journey
• 1:02
  through the field and how you got to where you are today.
• 1:04
  So you've worked in a number of different areas of drug
• 1:06
  discovery and also immerse yourself within the RNA biology
• 1:10
  section for your career as well. Can you just talk us through
• 1:14
  your journey through the field and what was it about this
• 1:17
  particular area in RNA that kept pulling you deeper?
• 1:20
  Yeah. And I'm happy to.
• 1:22
  And yes, I've worked on a number of different kind of modalities
• 1:25
  or therapeutic approaches, mostly in the space of cancer
• 1:29
  treatment. Started out with antifolate anti
• 1:32
  metabolites during my PhD and then as I progressed through,
• 1:36
  you know, a number of different mechanisms, kinase inhibitors,
• 1:39
  protein degradation. And I've always kind of been
• 1:44
  attracted to more complicated science where things haven't
• 1:48
  been fully figured out yet in many ways.
• 1:52
  And during my time as Chief scientific Officer at H3
• 1:56
  Biomedicine, we spent a lot of time working on RNA splicing as
• 2:00
  it relates to cancer and the mechanisms driving mutations in
• 2:05
  certain malignancies and how that was deregulating splicing
• 2:09
  and therapeutic mechanisms you could think about to exploit
• 2:13
  vulnerabilities. Very complicated and new space
• 2:18
  for cancer in terms of thinking about therapeutics.
• 2:22
  And you know, just really loved the complexity of the science
• 2:26
  and so realised that there was a lot of potential in this new
• 2:30
  area. A lot of new tools were coming
• 2:32
  on board and high throughput sequencing mechanisms, screening
• 2:37
  technologies that could be built, structural biology, and
• 2:40
  it just felt like a time where you could move into this space
• 2:44
  in a very deliberate manner to think about new small molecules
• 2:48
  that could interfere with disease mechanisms.
• 2:51
  Amazing. And just talk us through that
• 2:53
  moment when you made the leap to set up Remix Therapeutics.
• 2:57
  Was there a particular gap in the therapeutic landscape that
• 3:01
  no one was addressing at the time and you thought that, yeah,
• 3:03
  there was maybe a gap in the market that you guys could go
• 3:05
  and address? Like just talk us through that
• 3:07
  moment for when you transition from your previous role into
• 3:10
  into founding Remix. Yeah.
• 3:12
  So I moved to an Atlas venture as an entrepreneur in residence
• 3:16
  and that's a great environment to think about different ideas,
• 3:20
  novel approaches for building companies essentially.
• 3:23
  And one of the ideas that we were gravitating towards is
• 3:28
  other mechanisms upstream of protein expression that you
• 3:32
  could exploit to change disease driver activity.
• 3:36
  And so we were thinking about the RNA space and inspired by
• 3:42
  molecules like Rizdiplan that had already made a big impact in
• 3:46
  spinal muscular atrophy that was modulating how exons were used.
• 3:51
  And thought maybe there's an opportunity here to do this in a
• 3:54
  very systematic way, to look for mechanisms that could interfere
• 3:58
  with RNA processing, to come up with new approaches to prevent
• 4:04
  the activity of disease drivers and really cut them off at their
• 4:08
  source at the RNA level. And so, you know, with that
• 4:13
  context, we explored the space, we thought about a platform that
• 4:18
  you could build that leveraged 3 areas, data science and
• 4:22
  screening and chemistry and structural biology.
• 4:26
  And, you know, set out to do some initial kind of probe
• 4:29
  experiments. This the, you know, for this
• 4:31
  type of company in the Atlas space, they will seed some money
• 4:35
  into it to see can you build some traction around the idea.
• 4:39
  And you know, fortunately I was able to recruit a really
• 4:43
  talented founding team, a group of scientists that worked
• 4:47
  together before. And so that allowed us to
• 4:49
  generate some pretty exciting data early on that made us think
• 4:52
  we could be on to something impactful here.
• 4:55
  And so it was really the collaboration with the Atlas
• 4:57
  Group, focusing on these novel targets that you might be able
• 5:02
  to address that hadn't yet been addressed, and the people that
• 5:05
  we brought together that really catalysed the early, early days
• 5:10
  of the company. Yeah, for sure.
• 5:13
  And just talk us through like entrepreneurship, Is that
• 5:16
  something that you've always thought you'd end up doing at
• 5:19
  some point in your career? I think there's probably a lot
• 5:22
  of scientists out there that probably have big ideas but
• 5:25
  never really turn them into companies.
• 5:27
  What really gave you the conviction or the urgency that
• 5:30
  you needed to build Remix rather than wait for the field to to
• 5:34
  catch up? Yeah, an interesting question.
• 5:37
  You know, I think fortunately, I was presented with a few
• 5:40
  different opportunities at that time of, you know, going into
• 5:43
  larger companies that were already established with teams
• 5:47
  in place or the opportunity Atlas to build something new
• 5:52
  from scratch. And, you know, both of them have
• 5:54
  the challenges, of course. And I just thought, you know, if
• 5:58
  I can put my fingerprints on this from the very beginning and
• 6:01
  shape the company from the beginning, rather than going
• 6:04
  into a company and trying to move it in a different
• 6:07
  direction. It just felt more exciting to me
• 6:10
  to to do that and then the ability to focus on this new
• 6:14
  area of biology and do it in the way that, you know, myself and
• 6:19
  the founding team thought was the right way to go about it.
• 6:22
  It just felt like the right thing to do at the time.
• 6:25
  You know, the support of the investors was key.
• 6:29
  The support of the founding team that we brought together was
• 6:33
  key. And then working with them to,
• 6:35
  you know, lay out the vision and and build it just felt like a
• 6:39
  natural thing to do in the end. Yeah.
• 6:42
  What what was some of the challenges that you had in the
• 6:44
  early days of building Remix? I can imagine like any early
• 6:48
  company, there's always an element of risk.
• 6:49
  But just talking through some of the challenges, but maybe from
• 6:52
  like funding or maybe there was some the tech was unproven or
• 6:56
  you mentioned that you had a great team that you already
• 6:59
  pulled together, but what what was some of the challenges that
• 7:01
  you found in the earlier days? Yeah.
• 7:04
  You know, when you're when you're starting some something
• 7:06
  from scratch, you have nothing in place, right.
• 7:08
  We essentially had computers in office and nothing else.
• 7:13
  And so we had to find lab space, which is, you know, fairly
• 7:16
  straightforward to do in the Cambridge area in these
• 7:19
  incubator labs. We had to use CR OS across the
• 7:23
  world to get the science going quickly and that, you know, this
• 7:29
  being a novel area of biology that that at least that we felt
• 7:33
  it's really plotting out. OK.
• 7:35
  What are the key experiments that we need to get done and to
• 7:39
  understand? Is there a is there a there
• 7:42
  there? And, you know, being disciplined
• 7:45
  around that when you do have funding is it can be a challenge
• 7:48
  for scientists who want to go in different directions and try a
• 7:52
  number of different things. But really challenge to stay
• 7:55
  focused on the key experiments that could allow us to really
• 7:58
  appreciate that the technology was there and able to be
• 8:03
  deployed, you know, and then layer on top of that, a few
• 8:07
  months after we started the company, the pandemic hit.
• 8:09
  And so everybody had to deal with those challenges, right?
• 8:12
  It just added an extra layer of complexity that we we work
• 8:16
  through as everybody else did. But it, you know, it wasn't, it
• 8:19
  wasn't very helpful in terms of company building.
• 8:23
  Just to dive into the pipeline a little bit more, so the lead
• 8:26
  program, R.E.M. 422, what specifically drove the decision
• 8:32
  to pursue that target or disease area 1st and just talk us
• 8:36
  through that program is obviously now in clinical
• 8:39
  development as well. Can you just talk us through
• 8:41
  what some of the initial results are showing and what some of the
• 8:44
  initial data is, is is showing about about this program?
• 8:48
  Yeah, sure. And so, you know, as we mapped
• 8:51
  out the vision for the company, one of the things that was
• 8:55
  pretty compelling to us is this is a disease area agnostic
• 8:59
  platform. So we're focusing on oncology
• 9:02
  right now. But at the beginning we looked
• 9:04
  at immunology targets, we looked at neurodegeneration targets, we
• 9:08
  looked at other, you know, rare genetic disease targets because
• 9:12
  we thought the the breadth of the opportunity, it was so
• 9:15
  broad. And so it's really a question at
• 9:18
  that time of, OK, which are the most compelling targets that we
• 9:21
  think we could develop the fastest and get into the clinic
• 9:25
  the fastest and prove that the technology could work.
• 9:29
  The the challenge of that is there's so many options in front
• 9:33
  of you, It's like, how do you pick?
• 9:34
  And So what we event eventually ended up doing is building a
• 9:39
  multiplexed high throughput screening assay that allowed us
• 9:42
  to screen hundreds of these different targets at the same
• 9:45
  time and kind of made the decision, well, let's put the
• 9:48
  chemical library together, screen all of these great
• 9:51
  targets that we can see and understand where the
• 9:54
  tractability for the early targets could lie.
• 9:58
  You know, we did have some knowledge around some of the
• 10:02
  targets that could be modulated with some early chemistry.
• 10:06
  And so we had I'd say 3 or 4 oncology targets that emerged to
• 10:10
  the top and two or three neurodegeneration targets that
• 10:15
  emerged to the top where we had clearly active chemical matter.
• 10:20
  We ultimately prioritized the MIB program.
• 10:24
  MIB is a transcription factor, an oncogenic transcription
• 10:27
  factor and prioritise that based on the fact that we could see a
• 10:31
  path towards making a drug and there was diseases of high unmet
• 10:36
  need and this is a target that hadn't been drugged before.
• 10:39
  And so we really pushed hard on, on that program.
• 10:43
  And in a couple of indications where we could see clear
• 10:47
  potential, one of them in is adenoid cystic carcinoma.
• 10:51
  This is a solid tumor that develops typically in the
• 10:55
  salivary glands, can develop in other tissues, but it's
• 10:57
  typically a head and neck cancer and there's no approved
• 11:00
  therapies for it. So many drugs have been tried,
• 11:03
  none have worked. And the signature genetic lesion
• 11:07
  in that disease is a fusion or translocation of the MIP gene.
• 11:11
  And so this is a classic somatically acquired cancer
• 11:15
  driver lesion and there's presidents in cancer.
• 11:17
  If you can hit one of these translocations, you will have
• 11:20
  clinical activity. So we felt as much as possible
• 11:24
  for a novel target, the biology was de risked in that disease.
• 11:28
  Of course, we had to prove it. We got some great preclinical
• 11:32
  data. We could see tumour aggressions
• 11:34
  in preclinical models, patient derives, xenograph models and we
• 11:39
  felt like it was key to build a molecule that could induce
• 11:43
  regressions because that made it look like these other fusion
• 11:46
  programs like ALK inhibitors or ENTRAC or RET inhibitors that
• 11:51
  have been very successful. And so we spent time engineering
• 11:55
  the right molecule to get tumour aggressions at well tolerated
• 11:58
  doses. And once we felt like we had the
• 12:00
  right molecule, we we took it into patients and we've seen
• 12:04
  some really remarkable clinical activity with R.E.M. 42 in
• 12:10
  adenoid cystic carcinoma that we disclosed last year.
• 12:15
  Many patients are seeing tumour shrinkage.
• 12:18
  We have a overall response rate of greater than 40% and the drug
• 12:22
  is very well tolerated. And so that's, you know, for us
• 12:26
  as the team that's like phenomenal, makes us feel really
• 12:29
  proud of what we've been able to do and how we're able to help
• 12:33
  these patients and give them promise really for the first
• 12:35
  time that there could be a drug that can help treat the cancer
• 12:39
  that they have. Yeah, amazing.
• 12:41
  Sounds exciting and like for you guys, I never like to use the
• 12:44
  word competitors because I think ultimately what you guys are
• 12:47
  doing is for the patients. But like if you look around
• 12:49
  across the industry and the space, like who are the
• 12:52
  companies that and again not competitors, but who are the
• 12:54
  companies I guess you are up against or is this quite an
• 12:57
  uncharted field, the direction you guys are taking?
• 13:00
  Yeah, just curious, who, who are those companies in this space?
• 13:03
  Yeah. You know, there's AI think
• 13:05
  there's a number of different approaches here to going after
• 13:08
  RNA biology and there's companies that have tried kind
• 13:13
  of finding molecules that interact with RNA directly.
• 13:17
  There's companies that are trying to prevent transcription
• 13:21
  or translation and then there's companies that are trying to
• 13:26
  interfere with RNA processing. And I think all of these
• 13:29
  approaches have the merit. And I think the fact that we've
• 13:34
  seen success with drugs like Rizdiplan that was discovered by
• 13:39
  PTC Therapeutics and developed and optimized by Roche, you have
• 13:44
  those kind of companies that are playing in this space.
• 13:47
  But that level of kind of clinical validation that you can
• 13:50
  do RNA processing and in a disease that and bring benefit
• 13:55
  to patients, I think is really just added to the interest in
• 13:59
  understanding RNA in small molecules.
• 14:02
  And I think now that we've published the data in with
• 14:05
  R.E.M. 42 targeting maybe an adenoid cystic carcinoma.
• 14:09
  We've seen increased uptake from a number of different companies
• 14:12
  who are trying to capitalize on what looks like a new frontier
• 14:17
  that could lead to multiple different therapeutic
• 14:19
  approaches. Yeah, for sure.
• 14:21
  And yet you mentioned there's a lot of companies that are
• 14:24
  emerging in this space with different technologies.
• 14:26
  What would you say the key differentiator or core
• 14:29
  differentiator is that makes Remix I guess different than
• 14:33
  some of the other companies that are out there?
• 14:36
  Yeah. I mean, I think other companies
• 14:39
  have tried, as best as we can tell, a more phenotypic approach
• 14:44
  to drug discovery and not there's nothing wrong with that,
• 14:46
  it works. It's just I think there's a
• 14:48
  level of challenge and deconvolution that can make it a
• 14:52
  little bit more challenging. We took a different approach of
• 14:56
  trying to be very systematic around using data science to
• 15:00
  identify the targets and druggable binding sites we used.
• 15:05
  We built this screening technology.
• 15:07
  We've got multiple different screening technologies now, but
• 15:10
  we felt like that was differentiating as well.
• 15:13
  And then a proprietary chemical library because the typical
• 15:16
  libraries that you could get screened at CR OS really more
• 15:21
  enriched for protein targeting molecules rather than RNA or RNA
• 15:26
  protein complex molecules. So we built our own library and
• 15:31
  it's really combining the data science, the chemistry and
• 15:34
  screening these targets that I think is allowing us to do this
• 15:38
  very systematically and deliberately.
• 15:42
  And I think a final differentiator is we're
• 15:44
  structurally enabled, which we believe we're the only company
• 15:48
  that is structurally enabled. And it's giving us tremendous
• 15:51
  insights into how to design the right molecules, how to
• 15:55
  understand structure, activity, relationships.
• 15:58
  You know, being able to visualise these compounds bound
• 16:02
  in their state is really remarkable what we're able to
• 16:05
  see. And that's giving us, I think,
• 16:07
  an advantage to do this drug, drug discovery in a in a fast
• 16:12
  way. Yeah, amazing.
• 16:14
  As you look ahead, like what does success look like for remix
• 16:18
  in the next few years? Is it mainly about getting,
• 16:20
  getting an approval or demonstrating platform breadth,
• 16:24
  partnerships or something deeper?
• 16:27
  And maybe like what, what are the next milestones that you
• 16:29
  guys are excited about as well, maybe in the next few years as
• 16:33
  well? Yeah.
• 16:34
  I mean it's honestly it's components of all of those
• 16:37
  things. I would say we are laser focused
• 16:39
  on getting R.E.M. 422 through clinical trials and hopefully to
• 16:45
  an approval to help these patients with adenoid cystic
• 16:48
  carcinoma. So that's you know success for
• 16:52
  us is the first molecule coming from the platform getting
• 16:55
  approved would be a remarkable accomplishment.
• 16:58
  And so that's a key focus for the company.
• 17:01
  Next is can the molecule be active in other cancers and we
• 17:05
  have an ongoing study in AMLMDS. There are additional MIP driven
• 17:10
  cancers that we could look to explore the molecule in.
• 17:14
  So that's really the main focus for the company right now.
• 17:18
  But it is also building a pipeline.
• 17:21
  We want to have a sustainable pipeline of targets and the next
• 17:25
  one that we have is incredibly exciting target never addressed
• 17:29
  before, huge potential and we've seen some great preclinical data
• 17:34
  with it. And so getting that into the
• 17:37
  clinic as well, you know, proving that that can work is
• 17:41
  also of high importance to us. And then we've got partnerships
• 17:45
  already that are very important to us working in different
• 17:49
  therapeutic areas. So that allows us to explore the
• 17:53
  platform in different therapeutic areas where we don't
• 17:56
  have the key expertise in house. And so those partnerships we we
• 17:59
  have a great relationship with the companies that have the deep
• 18:03
  expertise and the disease. We have the deep expertise and
• 18:07
  the drug discovery and so moving their programs forward as well
• 18:10
  as of key importance to us. Yeah, amazing.
• 18:14
  And like, if you just reflect on your, your personal journey as
• 18:17
  well, you made a rare transition from been a hands on bench
• 18:21
  scientist to lead in a rapidly growing biotech.
• 18:24
  I always find from someone that does recruitment and I speak to
• 18:27
  a lot of CE OS, like I always find typically you'd see maybe
• 18:30
  ex chief business officers or chief commercial officers or
• 18:34
  chief operating officers, maybe not as many ex CS OS or CM OS
• 18:38
  that make it to, to being ACEO. What was the single hardest
• 18:43
  mindset mindset shift that you had to make from becoming a
• 18:47
  scientist to to being, I guess, the CEO?
• 18:50
  Yeah, I think, you know, in some ways a tough transition because
• 18:55
  when you start a company and there's like 5 people, you're in
• 18:58
  every conversation and it's all science all of the time.
• 19:01
  Really. Hiring A-Team around me that
• 19:04
  allowed me to step away from that was people that I could
• 19:09
  trust to run the science was really important.
• 19:13
  But it took me time to get comfortable with not being in
• 19:16
  the room all the time when the science is being discussed and
• 19:20
  understanding the kind of implications of the the
• 19:23
  experiments and what the next experiment was.
• 19:26
  And so I had to really try and embrace not being the deepest
• 19:31
  into the science of the company, but really a leader that
• 19:36
  facilitates others to do that in a meaningful way.
• 19:40
  And I don't say I get it right all the time.
• 19:42
  It's hard when you're a scientist to step away, at least
• 19:45
  for me. But something that I've worked
• 19:48
  hard at doing and having a great team around me, we have a great
• 19:52
  CSO, we've got a a great chemistry group, great biology
• 19:56
  group has allowed me to do that with much more ease than I think
• 20:01
  it would have. And then as the as the company
• 20:03
  has grown and you build. A clinical group now, it pulls
• 20:07
  me in different directions as well, right?
• 20:10
  And so I think that's really the tough transition.
• 20:12
  Not being in all of the conversations when the latest
• 20:15
  science has come out and getting excited about that was something
• 20:19
  that I do miss. Yeah.
• 20:21
  I was going to ask if that was a difficult thing initially to
• 20:25
  take your science hat off. But like other areas of the
• 20:27
  business, like how did you find maybe stepping into fundraising
• 20:30
  business development? I would assume as as a scientist
• 20:34
  you've probably had involvement in that maybe from a due
• 20:36
  diligence perspective, but was it easy something that you
• 20:39
  picked up quite naturally like going out and speaking to
• 20:42
  investors and and farmer or again, was that something that
• 20:45
  maybe took a little bit more time to pick up?
• 20:48
  Yeah, I think you know, it, it took time to pick up, but again,
• 20:51
  I had great people around me on the on the investor side, you
• 20:54
  know, Atlas helped a lot early on in terms of connecting with
• 20:58
  investors and thinking about how to position the science to new
• 21:04
  investors to get them excited. So you know the continually
• 21:07
  learning how to do that. But they were a great resource
• 21:11
  to enable me to do that on the business development side.
• 21:15
  You know, I, I was the leader of the company from the beginning
• 21:18
  and I would do that. But it was only when I hired our
• 21:22
  chief business officer and chief operating officer that I saw,
• 21:25
  oh, this is how business development really works and
• 21:28
  this is how it's done. And so that was a great person
• 21:32
  to add to the team. Heather Wasserman, who's just
• 21:35
  been a phenomenal partner to me. And so, you know, it's allowed
• 21:40
  me to get into that space, get knowledgeable about it, but not
• 21:43
  knowledgeable about it, but not have to have the deep expertise
• 21:46
  to run it myself because we have a great person that can do it
• 21:49
  for us. Yeah, for sure.
• 21:52
  Just talk us through the culture that you've you've built at
• 21:56
  Remix. You mentioned you had some
• 21:57
  founded members that have worked previously together, which I
• 22:01
  assume was very helpful. But just talk us through like
• 22:03
  the culture that you've built and and want to continue
• 22:06
  building as the company grows. And what aspects of remixes
• 22:09
  culture do you consider non negotiable?
• 22:13
  And like I said, even as the business becomes more, becomes
• 22:17
  larger, becomes more complex. Yeah, that's this.
• 22:20
  You know, this is something that we thought about from the
• 22:22
  beginning of trying to be very deliberate around the culture
• 22:25
  that we want and allowing good science to drive the decisions
• 22:31
  that we make and being very transparent with sharing data,
• 22:37
  sharing ideas or sharing information about the company.
• 22:41
  And so I think that's led to a lot of trust in the organization
• 22:45
  that we're as transparent as we can be.
• 22:49
  But we also have always talked about the fact that the culture
• 22:52
  needs to continually evolve. We don't want to fix the
• 22:56
  culture. I don't we try not to hire for
• 22:59
  culture fit. We try to hire for people that
• 23:02
  will fit but will help us evolve the culture of the company.
• 23:06
  And I try to talk to each new hire and say, look, we have, I
• 23:11
  think we have a good culture. We're not perfect.
• 23:12
  We make mistakes. We've, you know, we have our
• 23:17
  challenges like every other company, but we really want to
• 23:20
  build a culture that's based on, you know, good science with good
• 23:24
  people making good decisions there the non negotiables for
• 23:28
  us. But when you join remix, I want
• 23:30
  you to bring your new ideas around what we're doing around
• 23:34
  how the culture could be, and we'll listen to you and embrace
• 23:37
  the ideas that that we like so that we can continue to evolve
• 23:42
  what remix is today and what it will be in the future.
• 23:46
  It's really important to me that we companies change over time.
• 23:52
  You know, you need different people at different stages of an
• 23:54
  organization and being aware of that and making sure we think
• 23:58
  through carefully how we want to evolve, you know, the culture
• 24:02
  and the company is something that I find very important for
• 24:04
  us to keep talking about. Yeah, for sure.
• 24:08
  And this is a question that we always finish with as well.
• 24:12
  And I know I wanted to give you a bit of a heads up, but if you
• 24:14
  were to sit down and have dinner with any three people from past
• 24:18
  or present, who would you invite and why?
• 24:21
  Doesn't necessarily need to be people from biotech, although it
• 24:25
  it can be if you like, it can be literally anyone.
• 24:27
  But yeah, three people you'd like to have for dinner and and
• 24:29
  why? Yeah, I appreciate the the heads
• 24:31
  up on this question because I find these ones typically quite
• 24:35
  tricky, but I do have three people from different
• 24:40
  backgrounds and you know what you'll see from the remix
• 24:43
  website is big fan of music and big fan of Liverpool Football
• 24:48
  Club. And so the first person would be
• 24:50
  Jurgen Klopp, who was the recent manager of Liverpool, was with
• 24:55
  the club for nine years maybe and really rebuilt the club into
• 25:01
  a world class team through a clear vision, clear philosophy
• 25:07
  and a great leader of people. And he got teams to consistently
• 25:12
  over perform and achieve great things and continually do that
• 25:16
  over and over. You know, very socially minded
• 25:19
  person as well, spoke up around the pandemic.
• 25:22
  So just looks to be an incredibly inspiring and
• 25:25
  successful leader and just a fun guy as well.
• 25:29
  He looks like he likes to have a good time.
• 25:30
  He likes to have a beer. So that would be a fun thing to
• 25:33
  do. So then it would, you know, next
• 25:37
  probably John Lennon, you know, big fan of The Beatles from
• 25:42
  there, from Liverpool, where I grew up.
• 25:45
  I went to school across from Strawberry Fields.
• 25:48
  And so I've always enjoyed listening to The Beatles and
• 25:51
  seeing how their music evolved over time and how they changed
• 25:55
  over the period of time. And he was somebody that he
• 25:58
  wasn't just a musician, right? He pushed boundaries socially,
• 26:03
  artistically, and looked at things in a very different way.
• 26:06
  So I think it'd be interesting to get to know him and then, you
• 26:11
  know, on the science side, a number of different people.
• 26:13
  But I've read books around the discovery of this, you know,
• 26:18
  DNA, the structure of DNA and the role that Watson and Crick
• 26:22
  played in that amazing area of discoveries, but the
• 26:27
  underappreciated role of Rosalind Franklin, right?
• 26:31
  And the X-rays that she had that really were key in that
• 26:36
  discovery. And she didn't get the
• 26:38
  recognition at the time, wasn't treated well.
• 26:42
  And so, you know, I'd love to talk to her about the scientific
• 26:46
  river rigger and not getting credit for the discoveries that
• 26:50
  she made. Because I find in science we
• 26:54
  often try to pin discoveries on a single scientist and say they
• 26:58
  discovered X. And in some cases that's right.
• 27:01
  But these days science is a team based thing and it's not down to
• 27:04
  one single person. There are many people in these
• 27:08
  discoveries that should get the credit that they deserve.
• 27:12
  And so I think she'd be a great person to get to know as well.
• 27:16
  Yeah, look, three amazing answers there.
• 27:19
  Even as a Manchester City fan, I can appreciate Jurgen Klopp and
• 27:22
  what an an amazing leader he is for all of the reasons that you
• 27:25
  mentioned. But yeah, look, thanks for
• 27:28
  coming on and helping us out with this, Pete.
• 27:29
  It was a pleasure to hear a little bit more about about your
• 27:32
  story. Remixes remixes, pipeline and
• 27:36
  what's next for you guys as well.
• 27:37
  So it sounds super exciting what you're building.
• 27:40
  So thanks again for coming on and helping us out with this.
• 27:42
  It was a it was a pleasure to catch up.
• 27:44
  It's. Great.
• 27:45
  Lot of fun. Thanks, Tom.