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"You don't always know at the time how something will be useful in the future, but if you keep following what fascinates you, those threads can re-synthesize into something powerful down the line."

We’re revisiting some of our previous episodes over the holidays this year. Our next re-release is this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, where computational immuno-engineer and serial entrepreneur Jake Glanville shares how growing up in a Mayan Tzʼutujil village in Guatemala during a civil war shaped his path into biotech. He reflects on living amid limited access to medicine, navigating personal health challenges like asthma, and witnessing how simple interventions such as deworming transformed entire communities, inspiring his commitment to developing therapeutics and vaccines.

Jake discusses the profound influence of his grandfather, a Rocketdyne engineer who worked on the engines that sent humans to the moon, and how that legacy lowered his sense of what is "impossible" in science. Watching his parents run a hotel and restaurant gave him an education in operations, resilience, and people management—skills that translated directly into building biotech companies. He also unpacks the negotiation lessons he absorbed from Mayan market culture, where the goal is sustainable, mutual value rather than one-time wins.

The episode follows Jake's transition to the United States after his father's autoimmune disease diagnosis, his strategic decision to attend UC Berkeley, and how his self-taught programming background fused with population genetics to create a passion for computational immunology.

Key topics covered:

Growing Up in Guatemala: How limited healthcare and infectious disease exposure motivated Jake's focus on medicine and immunology
Family Influences: The impact of a rocket engineer grandfather, entrepreneurial parents, and an artist mother on his scientific ambition
Entrepreneurial Mindset: Lessons in operations, problem-solving, and people management from running a restaurant in volatile conditions
Mayan Negotiation Principles: Market-born lessons in fair, relationship-focused deal-making and being "pushy smooth"
Berkeley and Computational Immunology: Combining molecular biology, population genetics, and programming to analyze immune diversity

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Subscribe to the Podcast:

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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2PSL162R2s0zOwU5913Zv4

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thebiotechstartupspodcast

Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/

Find Our Guest, Jacob Glanville, at these links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobglanville

https://www.centivax.com

Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee

Learn more about Excedr:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/

Website: https://www.excedr.com

Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:

Website: https://flow.page/kyojin

Resources & Articles:

Tzʼutujil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz%CA%BCutujil_people

Hidden Markov Models in Biology https://www.ebi.ac.uk/training/online/courses/pfam-creating-protein-families/what-are-profile-hidden-markov-models-hmms/

Guatemalan Civil War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War

Companies, Universities, & People mentioned:

University of California, Berkeley: https://www.berkeley.edu/

Pfizer: https://www.pfizer.com/

Rocketdyne: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne

Glenys Thomson https://www.linkedin.com/in/glenys-thomson-26961533/

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:29 Growing Up in Guatemala and Grandfather's Influence

05:16 Healthcare Challenges and Early Interest in Medicine

07:23 Learning from Parents' Restaurant Business

09:43 Artistic Training and Cross-Disciplinary Thinking

10:16 Mayan Culture and Negotiation Philosophy

11:07 The Hard Mode of Hospitality Business

12:52 Meeting People and Building Relationships

14:50 The Art of Negotiation and Leadership

16:49 Learning to Say No

17:29 Decision to Attend UC Berkeley

19:56 Discovering Computational Immunology

22:58 Outro

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.

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