Liran Belenzon is the Co-Founder and CEO of BenchSci.

BenchSci's mission is to exponentially increase the speed and quality of life-saving R&D to improve patients' health.

They do this by applying cutting-edge AI to understand how disease biology works at scale throughout the drug discovery pipeline to solve the number one reason why drug discovery projects fail — getting the biology wrong.

ASCEND, their disease biology GenAI platform, understands the entire history of biomedical experiments to create a scalable AI assistant for preclinical organizations.

Takeaways

• The genesis story of BenchSci.
• Thoughts on commercialization and how to do it well.
• How Liran has scaled with the company as a leader and founder.
• Step changes in headcount.
• How BenchSci navigates in-person, remote and hybrid work.
• Liran's contrarian thoughts on raising money and how he has raised $200M+.
• Why you should only do investor updates for investors and not potential investors.
• How AI has changed over the last 8+ years of BenchSci's journey.
• Building a network as an immigrant founder.
• Scaling product offerings.
• Working and selling into big pharma and research teams.
• Hiring for BenchSci's unique intersection of AI and bio.

Chapters

00:00 The Genesis of BenchSci

03:12 Navigating the Drug Discovery Landscape

05:47 Commercialization Challenges and Strategies

08:59 Scaling as a Founder

11:59 Remote Work Dynamics

14:51 Mastering the Fundraising Process

19:52 The Evolution of AI in Drug Discovery

23:12 Understanding the Drug Discovery Process

25:54 Building Trust with Researchers

28:50 Overcoming Networking Challenges

32:14 Scaling Product Offerings

35:01 Hiring for a Unique Intersection

36:57 Personal Reflections and Future Outlook

Keywords

BenchSci, drug discovery, AI, commercialization, startup, scaling, fundraising, remote work, biology, technology