The Biotech Startups Podcast

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we dive into Roy Maute's journey from academic scientist to biotech entrepreneur, exploring the founding and acquisition of Ab Initio Biotherapeutics and his subsequent roles at Forty Seven Inc. and Gilead Sciences. Roy reflects on the lasting influence of Irv Weissman's hands-off, trust-driven lab culture at Stanford and how it shaped his philosophy on building teams.
Roy shares how he co-founded Ab Initio with colleagues from Chris Garcia's and Brian Kobilka's labs, navigating early-stage challenges like seed funding, a Pfizer collaboration, and managing a lean team of 10. He explains why the company ultimately chose acquisition over raising a major round, and how Ligand Pharmaceuticals' interest in their directed evolution technology brought that chapter to a successful close. Roy also discusses stepping into a biomarker strategy role at Forty Seven Inc., and what it was like to witness the company's $4.9 billion acquisition by Gilead — all as COVID lockdowns began.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we follow CEO and co-founder of Pheast Therapeutics, Roy Maute’s graduate school journey in Riccardo Dalla-Favera’s demanding Columbia lab, where he dives into genetic rearrangements in B-cell lymphoma and chooses intensity over comfort to accelerate his growth alongside clinician-scientists. He shares how brutal weekly Friday lab meetings, where imperfect work was publicly dissected, built his resilience and rigor, and what it was like to live through the shift from Sanger to high-throughput sequencing that reshaped cancer research. Roy also reflects on why he never wanted to become a professor and how a mentor’s advice led him to Irving Weissman’s famously hands-off Stanford lab—a stark contrast to his PhD environment, but equally formative for his scientific career.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Roy Maute's foundational years—from a curious kid in Dallas, Texas, to an aspiring scientist at UC Berkeley. Roy, CEO and co-founder of Pheast Therapeutics, takes us back to his childhood home where an architect father and artist mother fostered a DIY ethos through weekend home renovations and creative projects that taught him no task was off-limits. He shares how Golden Age science fiction novels from his grandfather and Jurassic Park sparked his fascination with genetic engineering, his transition from a small Dallas magnet school to Berkeley's "sink or swim" environment, and the serendipitous dorm-mate connection that landed him his first lab position mixing salt solutions and caring for mice. Roy reflects on the patient mentorship, California's natural beauty, and early glimpses of Silicon Valley's startup culture that shaped his path before heading to Columbia University for the rigorous training that would define his scientific career.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton shares how Bison Ventures is rethinking biotech investing through “TechBio,” backing revenue-generating platforms that validate product-market fit like software rather than relying solely on therapeutic risk. He lays out a practical framework for data platform founders—when to sell their technology versus build drugs—using examples like Eikon Therapeutics’ in-house super-resolution microscopy and Vivodyne’s ambition to become the “AWS of biology.” Caleb also reflects on how leading a turnaround at TuneIn made him more empathetic to founders and explains why, amid exuberance in physical world AI and tougher biotech markets, teams must identify their superpower and double down on it instead of trying to be everything at once.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we explore Partner at Bison Ventures, Caleb Appleton's journey from venture capital to operations and back again. Caleb shares his experience joining Innovation Endeavors during its spinout from Eric Schmidt's family office, where minimal structure forced him to rapidly master sourcing, diligence, and thesis-building—including a cold email that landed a multibillion-dollar investment in Eikon Therapeutics. Grappling with whether he could truly operate rather than just advise, Caleb left venture in 2020 to join TuneIn during a pandemic crisis, managing a $50 million turnaround after canceled sports leagues devastated subscriptions. He repositioned the company away from unsustainable NFL deals toward ad-supported radio and premium news content, achieving profitability while learning the immediate feedback loops and difficult pivots that operating demands. These hard-won lessons in execution and empathy for founders ultimately led him back to venture, joining Bison Ventures in 2023 as a more complete investor.