The Value of Humility and Growth in Challenging Environments

Part 1 of 3.

My guest for this week’s episode is Maneesh Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of Mirvie, a life science company that predicts pregnancy complications before they happen by revealing the underlying biology of pregnancy health. Mirvie is dedicated to shaping the future of pregnancy health through simple, personalized blood tests. Before Mirvie, Maneesh was a founder, CEO, or executive of five successful start-ups, which include Parallele Bioscience, Auriphex Bioscience, Ion Torrent, Butterfly Network, and Cirina.

All of the businesses successfully exited or commercialized to the likes of Affymetrix, Illumina, Life Technologies, the FDA, and GRAIL, respectively. Join us as we sit down with Maneesh to talk about how his fundamental curiosity and perseverance have been a mainstay across his career.

Maneesh also discusses how he views entrepreneurship as a way to improve lives and make positive societal impacts. Lastly, we cover his time during undergrad and graduate school, how it led to spinning out ParAllele BioScience, and the many lessons its merger with Affymetrix provided. Please enjoy my conversation with Maneesh.

Find Our Guest, Maneesh Jain, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maneesh-jain-2509388/
https://www.mirvie.com/

Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee
https://www.excedr.com

Social & Website
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@excedr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/excedr_inc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExcedrInc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/excedr
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@excedr
Podcast Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:20 Episode start, Maneesh’s fundamental curiosity and thirst for knowledge, the value of perseverance
04:43 Entrepreneurship as a way to improve people’s lives and make a societal impact, time at CalTech
07:02 Undergraduate lab experience, turning knowledge into practical applications, mentors
09:36 Graduate school at Stanford, taking big open-ended problems and breaking them down
12:17 Moving to a field that is going to have its “Magic Decade”, transitioning to life sciences
15:00 Benefits of being a “clean slate”, working at the Stanford Genome Technology Center
17:24 Finding a project to spin-out, ParAllele BioScience and finding co-founders
22:28 The importance of showing basic scalability, going through the merger with Affymetrix
26:30 Learning about product differentiation, understanding technology and market life cycles
29:50 Outro

Enriched Notes:
Topics Mentioned:
Entrepreneurship https://www.excedr.com/category/entrepreneurship
Lean Business Plan https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-write-lean-business-plan
Reducing Startup Costs & Expenses https://www.excedr.com/blog/startup-costs-and-expenses
CalTech https://www.caltech.edu/
SURF https://www.nist.gov/surf
Biotech Accelerators https://www.excedr.com/resources/biotech-accelerators
Accelerator vs. Incubator https://www.excedr.com/resources/accelerator-vs-incubator
Human Genome Project https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project
Stanford Genome Technology Center https://med.stanford.edu/sgtc.html
Computational Biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_biology
ParAllele Bioscience https://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Article/2005/06/01/Affymetrix-acquires-ParAllele-BioScience
Tech Transfer https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-tech-transfer
Spinning Out of Academia https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-spin-out-of-academia-and-into-a-startup
Do You Need a Co-founder https://www.excedr.com/resources/do-you-need-a-co-founder-for-your-startup
Error Bars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_bar
Affymetrix https://www.linkedin.com/company/affymetrix/
Illumina https://www.illumina.com/

People Mentioned:
Amnon Rariv https://www.linkedin.com/in/amnon-yariv-12a75766/
Ron Davis https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-davis-56a34852/ 

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.