The Biotech Startups Podcast

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Martin Brenner, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of iBio, tracing his career through Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Merck. From re-engaging demoralized scientists after layoffs to a Moderna encounter when the company was just eight people strong, Martin offers a rare insider view of what it actually takes to drive innovation from within Big Pharma.

Jon Chee sits down with Martin Brenner, CEO and CSO of iBio, an AI drug discovery company building immunotherapies for difficult-to-treat cancers. Before biotech leadership, Martin built one of pharma's most unconventional careers—electrical engineer in Stuttgart, vet medicine at LMU Munich, PhD embedded at Eli Lilly, youngest scientist to lead a 20-person team there. Part 1 covers his formative years: the family that shaped him, the vet clinic that changed his path, and the professor who lit the match.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital, a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. A veteran of four-plus M&A cycles as CEO of FlowJo and Phytonix, Mike walks through the mechanics founders most often get wrong: when to call in partnership favors, how shared customers become acquisition seeds, what IP and cap table hygiene should look like before a deal, and why a rigorous financial model is your most powerful negotiating tool.

In this episode, Jon Chee continues his conversation with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital, on his transition from academic scientist to BD leader. Mike unpacks what business development really means in life science, why chasing "the decision maker" is the wrong frame, and how to identify the technical and business champions who actually move deals inside large organizations.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital — a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. Before Thielsen, Mike was CEO of Phytonix (acquired by Thermo Fisher) and FlowJo (acquired by BD Life Sciences), and has taught at MIT Sloan. In Part 1, Mike traces his path from growing up with a chemical engineer father who gave him early exposure to business strategy, to studying biochemistry at Clemson, to working as a Red Bull Student Brand Manager — a role that shaped his enduring "care before you share" philosophy: meeting people where they are, not where it's convenient. He carried that mindset into grad school at UVA, where he joined Michael Brown's lab to study NK cells and innate immunity, fell in love with flow cytometry, and had his first (tearful) encounter with FlowJo.