THE HOUSE BRAZERYEN: 03JAN2023 🐉

Brazen New Year! 🎉

Gm Brazeryens. Missed you when we took a much needed break in December. 2023 looks great on you. 🫶🏽

[Welcome to Issue Number 21 of The House Brazeryen, where we break down the latest Brazen Bio, Brazen Capital, and STEM/startup-related news for you fortnightly, in roughly 5 minutes.]

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BRAZENVERSE 2023: (R)EVOLUTIONS

Ash T interviewing Shawn C on “The Dropouts” Podcast

by Shawn Carbonell, MD, PhD — I never told my neurosurgery Chairman this, but reading a line from his own book was the final straw for me quitting residency in 2009:

“In the end, it will be the science, not the scalpel, that wins the war against this vexing adversary [malignant brain tumors]”

—Keith Black, MD in Brain Surgeon

This was something I already knew deep down, of course, but didn’t have the nuts to truly do something about it until right then when it was staring at me from the page. I resigned a week later and thus began my misadventures as a new biotech startup founder… from the kitchen table of my Beverly Hills studio apartment on Doheny Ave.

BRAZEN BIO

The vision behind Brazen Bio was to build the resources I wish I had back then in 2009 when I was trying to launch my first biotech startup, OncoSynergy. Over the first 12 months, we wildly succeeded in building the resources I wish I had in 2009…

…and that is the problem.

In 2009, there really were no biotech incubators outside of San Francisco and Boston and there was no such thing as founder-led bio (let alone patient-led bio, e.g., Perlara and Vibe Bio). Now, virtually every major university (and many local governments) have biotech innovation organizations and communities (e.g., QB3, Nucleate, BC-LA, Bioscience LA, CBIT, Medicine X, LSUBIO and HUNDREDS more) and startup incubators/lab space abound. Today, Y Combinator is the largest bio/health seed investor in the world providing up to $500K to founding teams.They are in good company with the likes of IndieBio, SciFounders, TechStars, Petri, and others.

THE NUTS, PT. 2

Although no other program has a turn-key solution like ours (i.e., we offered housing, lab space, funding, and more), I began to realize—as I did for becoming a neurosurgeon—[for me] the juice was not worth the squeeze. The greatest impact for my time was elsewhere.

That all said, I’m glad we ran the experiment because we learned a lot and grew a lot. More importantly, this is fantastic news for today’s biotech founders who don’t have to stumble around in the dark as much as I did a decade ago. LOVE IT.

BRAZEN BREAKDOWN

So, what does this mean for Brazen Bio? In the macro, not a lot. Biotech is still broken as fuck: patients need new solutions faster and scientist-CEOs definitely still need help and funding. In the micro, it means we will be focusing our efforts where we can provide unique value including this cheeky lil newsletter and—of course—our smol venture fund, Brazen Capital.

We will also be doing more by way of content creation, #SciComm, and #BrazenCreators. Relatedly, you can catch my latest raw and vulnerable podcast interview with my medicine-dropout-turned-actor friend Ash T on “The Dropouts” on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We discuss everything from performing CPR on a 15 year old gangsta… to burning bridges to my first biotech startup… to leaving my 4,000 square foot Greenwich, CT penthouse apartment to live with 90 people in Venice Beach just before the pandemic.

[What could go wrong? 🏝]

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IRL ALPHA: BRAZEN CAPITAL AT JPM

Shawn and Monica will be in San Francisco next week during the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, the “Super Bowl of Biotech.” Granted, neither of us have ever actually been to the conference… all the action happens elsewhere around the Square.

BRAZEN BREAKDOWN

We’d love to throw down with founders & investors while we are in SF. We may even host a lil happy hour. Please let us know if you’d like to meet up: RIGHT HERE.

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✨PETRI BIO✨: MICROBIOME SURVEY

Petri Bio (BRZN01)—cofounded by Shu Li, PhD and Joel Schinaman, PhD—is developing probiotic products for metabolic health and wellness.

BRAZEN BREAKDOWN

Shu and Joe are conducting a survey to better understand user interest in engineered microbiome products. It will only take about 2 mins to complete and you could potentially get early access: CHECK IT OUT HERE!

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VC CORNER: HERE’S TO 2023!

Contributed by Scott Alpizar, PhD — Well, we made it. We survived the holidays, spent time with family and friends, and rang in the new year. So, what now? Well, get to work! [ed — to be clear Brazeryens aren’t proponents of hustle culture 😇]. Whether you’re building a biotech company, trying to break into VC, or just trying to learn something new, you’re on the right track—and this could be your year.

But what’s in store for 2023? It seems the cool thing to do these days is make predictions about the next year, so why not? Here are five predictions:

BRAZEN PREDICTIONS

1. Scientist/Founder-CEOs Will be More Empowered. People are starting to realize that the scientist-CEO is the way of the future. Obviously, Brazen Bio and Brazen Capital are working to make this the norm, but events like the Founder-Led Biotech Summit hosted by Tony Kulesa at Pillar VC are also helping take this to the next level. I know we’ll see more in 2023!

2. Spinning Out of Universities Will Get Easier. In the last newsletter I covered the model License Term Sheet that the NVCA released. I’m hoping this sets the standard across the board and is adopted by universities. Combine this with educated and empowered researchers leading these companies, and licensing can be less of a hurdle.  

3. We’ll Still See Tons of VC Investment in Biotech. The macroeconomic environment has everyone being careful with their money. This is even more so than when I wrote about it back in May, but I still stand by what I said! It may be harder to get, but money is there—VCs still see opportunity.

4. TechBio Will Continue Gaining Momentum. I’ll admit I didn’t really ‘get’ TechBio at first (they just flipped it?), but I’ve now seen that it is here to stay. AI/ML to drive drug discovery and delivery, automation, high-throughput technologies—it’s all helping speed up how fast biotech can work. I anticipate a lot of investment here as well.

5. Clinical Trials are Reformed. Okay, probably not completely—that would be quite a stretch. But I think we’ll see major steps taken given the calls for change recently, including just last month from the head of the FDA himself. I think we see more comfort with decentralization and digitization to finally get to the faster, more responsive, and more inclusive drug development that we all want.

I know most of these are just riding on the trends that have already been growing (hey I never said these were BOLD predictions), but I think if all of these becomes reality biotech will be in a great place. So, let’s make it happen!

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😋 BRAZEN SNAX

• 🦠 Lower all-cause mortality in highly vaccinated states DUH

• 🐼 The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck THE MOVIE??!?!?

• 💃🏽 Pitchbook’s 2022 Female Founders Year in Review

• 😫A portmanteau almost as annoying as the word portmanteau: inflammaging

• 🙏🏽 Get waitlisted for the YC Bio JPM Happy Hour next Tuesday (at capacity)

• 👀 Allow me to tell you about the massive evolutionary pressures on: the testes

• 🧠 The neuroscience of quiet quitting (something Shawn knows something about 💀)

• 🦑 Rapid adaptation to the surrounding environment by recoding RNA

• ⏰ TikTokCrak: this is cheese cultured from cows you definitely don’t want

🔪 CARVEOUT

When the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck chops it up with the author of 4-Hour Workweek you know it’s gonna be a BANGER. Tim Ferriss interviews Mark Manson on the latest episode of The Tim Ferriss Show.

🙏🏽 A DOSE OF GRATITUDE

We are grateful for the fine folks at BC-LA who have been strong supporters since our launch in 2021 and showed up big-time to volunteer at the Brazen Summit. Best wishes to Justin Overhulse, PhD who just defended and has passed the presidential reigns to Oskar Sundberg!

🙃 BRAZEN MEME

✍️ FEEDBACK

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COME👏🏽AT👏🏽US👏🏽BRO👏🏽