🧬 David Li - Meliora Therapeutics - Part 3 | Developing a Blood-Based Lung Cancer Test | The Rifle-Shot Nature of Biotech | Software Vs. Biotech Product Market Fit | The Super Power all Startups Need

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Part 3 of 4. 

My guest for this week’s episode is David Li, CEO and co-founder of Meliora Therapeutics. Meliora's goal is to develop life-saving cancer therapies using cutting-edge science and machine learning. The company derives a comprehensive picture of how drugs interact with cancer biology by combining biofunctional readouts from numerous modalities using advanced machine learning and other computational techniques. 

Before Meliora, David served as Chief Business Officer at Everest Detection, an early detection liquid biopsy startup, and was head of commercial operations at Benchling, a life sciences software platform company which has achieved a $6 billion valuation and has attracted over $500 million in funding from firms such as Altimeter Capital, Tiger Global, Lone Pine Capital, Benchmark, Sequoia, Excel, Lux, and numerous others. David began his career in Goldman Sachs Healthcare Investment Banking Group and KKR's Private Equity Group, where he advised and invested in transactions worth over $10 billion in enterprise value. David's multifaceted experiences in the financial and life science sectors give him a wide range of experiences that founders can learn from.

Please enjoy my conversation with David Li.

Timestamps:

00:28 Intro

01:54 Episode Starts. Starting at Everest Detection and developing a early detection blood-based lung cancer test

05:04 Learning to work with scientists and experiencing a non-iterative business cadence that is more like a rifle shot

07:19 How David approaches projects where you do not have as much room for error or experimentation

10:01 Difference in how software and life science companies think about product market fit

14:30 Using parallel experiments to optimize your learnings rather than just, swapping chairs on the titanic

16:19 The difference in mentality of raising money in a software company vs a biotech company and why money is a super power

18:34 How the size and scale of your business changes how you view your preclinical tests

19:08 Outro

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

Everest Detection https://everestdetection.com/ 

Meliora Therapeutics https://www.melioratherapeutics.com/

Marketing & Sales Strategies for Startups https://www.excedr.com/blog/marketing-sales-strategies-for-biotechs

Lab Equipment for Biochemistry Research https://www.excedr.com/blog/lab-equipment-list-for-biochemistry-research

Strategies for Better Cash Flow Management https://www.excedr.com/blog/cash-flow-management-strategies

How do Core Labs Support Life Science Research? https://www.excedr.com/blog/core-labs

Brian Slingerland https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-slingerland-a7a14b35/ 

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.