Putting the “Tech” in Biotech: An Unconventional Path to Building a Therapeutics Company, with Federico Paoletti, PhD

Oct 1, 2025

Federico Paoletti, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Exogene, offers insights into his unconventional journey from academia to biotech entrepreneurship. He discusses the importance of a market-first approach, leveraging AI in personalized immunotherapy, and effective non-dilutive funding strategies. Federico shares lessons from a challenging fundraising trip, emphasizing the need for a broader platform vision. He explores the significance of mentorship and creative hiring to build a lean team, while dispelling myths about AI's role in drug discovery.

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INSIGHT

AI-Enabled Personalized Immunotherapy Vision

Exogene combines generative AI with a proprietary high-throughput lab method to find T-cell receptor-based therapeutics at scale.
The long-term vision is personalized cocktails of immunotherapies to eliminate patient-specific tumors and enable potential cures.

ANECDOTE

Meeting A Co-Founder At Entrepreneur First

Federico joined Entrepreneur First after his PhD and met his co-founder Andrea, a computer scientist with no gene knowledge.
Together they sculpted Exogene's vision from scratch while learning across disciplines.

ADVICE

Market-First Validation For Biotech

Validate the market before building the tech by iterating quickly and getting customer feedback.
Let customer discovery shape your platform thesis rather than starting tech-first.

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Federico Paoletti, co-founder of Exogene, founded his biotech company immediately after finishing his PhD, which led to a steep learning curve and many valuable lessons he now shares with other founders. He and his co-founder learned to operate like a tech startup inside biotech: validate the market before the product, iterate fast, and let customer discovery shape the platform thesis. He shares how a tough SF fundraising trip reframed their pitch from an asset-only story to a bigger, platform-driven vision that fits the right investor audience. We dig into non-dilutive funding tactics, using a success-fee grant writer, building a lab-in-the-loop data flywheel without overhiring, and hiring senior talent creatively with part-time plus equity to reach milestones without burning runway. We also cover the founder mindset: asking “dumb” questions to accelerate learning, leveraging mentors who understand both tech and biotech, tracking macro signals to time raises, and pushing back on default VC expectations when they don’t serve the company’s stage.

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00:00 Founder arc and why market-first beats tech-first in biotech

06:30 The SF trip that reframed the story: asset vs. platform, and pitching the right investor

2:45 Building a non-dilutive funding stack: six UK grants, early platform revenue, friends-and-family as match

18:10 Success-fee grant writer playbook and how non-scientist reviewers evaluate

22:00 Hiring to milestones: part-time senior talent + equity, geo-distributed team to extend runway

27:30 Mentors who span tech and biotech, and the cadence that compounds

31:40 Founder mindset: ask “dumb” questions, iterate in public, push back on default VC expectations

36:20 Watching macro signals (e.g., NVDA) to time raises and plan runway