The Biotech Startups Podcast 🧬 The Bank Heist Model: How to Build Your Startup Team | Sergey Jakimov (2/4)
Nov 13, 2025
42:39
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Episode Description:
"Building a deep tech company or building anything, pretty much, like being a founder in anything, it's like planning a bank robbery. It's like putting together a crew where, you know, you need a driver, you need someone to pick locks, you need someone to not sell, and you need someone who has the intellectual capacity to come up with a plan."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Sergey Jakimov, Managing Partner at LongeVC, shares his journey from uncertain graduate student in Budapest to serial deep tech founder. He discusses launching his first startup at age 22 in the conservative oil and gas industry with zero experience, pioneering drug-eluting coatings for orthopedic implants, and building Lungesys—a clinical data platform that revolutionized trial patient recruitment and helped establish the world's largest biobank.
Sergey challenges the "dropout culture" narrative while defending both formal education and learning by doing. He reveals why the least specialized person often makes the best founder and shares surprising truths about big pharma, including that only 14% of first-in-class cancer drugs are developed internally.
Key topics covered:
- The "Bank Heist Model" of Team Building: Why founders should assemble specialists rather than be experts in everything
- Three Startup Journey: From CFD engineering to medical devices to clinical data platforms
- Education vs. Experience Debate: Defending formal education while emphasizing learning by doing
- Clinical Trial Innovation: Streamlining patient recruitment and building the world's largest biobank
- Big Pharma Reality Check: Debunking misconceptions about how the pharmaceutical industry operates
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Find our guest, Sergey Jakimov, at these links:
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:
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modeling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_Fluid_Dynamics
Drug-Eluting Coatings for Medical Implants: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8070023/
Magnetron Sputtering Technology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/magnetron-sputtering
Clinical Trial Patient Recruitment Challenges: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-022-00070-5
Companies, Universities, & People mentioned:
Longenesis https://longenesis.com/
McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/
AstraZeneca: https://www.astrazeneca.com/
LongeVC: https://longevc.com/
Garri Zmudze https://www.linkedin.com/in/garri-zmudze-982a48138/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:52 Student Life in Budapest
03:03 The "What's Next?" Uncertainty
08:39 First Company: CFD Modeling and Oil & Gas at 22
12:54 Second Company: Medical Devices and Drug-Eluting Coatings
17:07 The Bank Heist Model of Assembling Teams
20:25 The Value of Education vs. Dropout Culture
25:46 Hard Skills and Breaking Paradigms
28:41 Teaching IP and Venture Capital
29:52 Third Company: Clinical Data and Lungesys
38:10 Selling to Big Pharma
41:14 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.