Founder Spotlight #23: Clifford Reid @ Travera
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Clifford Reid is the founding CEO of Travera. Previously, Clifford was the founding Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Complete Genomics (NASDAQ: GNOM), a leading developer of whole human genome DNA sequencing technologies and services. Prior to Complete Genomics, he founded two enterprise software companies: Eloquent (NASDAQ: ELOQ), an internet video company, and Verity (NASDAQ: VRTY), an enterprise search engine company. Dr. Reid is on the Visiting Committee of the Biological Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a member of the MIT Corporation Development Committee, and an advisor to Warburg Pincus. He earned an S.B. in Physics from MIT, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Travera has developed a new technology for identifying effective cancer drugs and drug combinations for cancer patients. Our approach uses a new measurement device invented at MIT that weighs single cells with sub-picogram accuracy, enabling us to directly measure the response of cancer cells to cancer drugs for each individual patient.
Personal Spark
What prompted you to pursue a career in Life Sciences?
I am a physicist and mathematician by training, and I started my career as a software entrepreneur. Whenever I finished up with a startup, I’d go back to MIT to find the next great technology to bring into commercial practice. Usually, I headed to the Media Lab, but in 2002 found myself in the biology department, where I met Doug Lauffenburger, the founding head of the MIT Department of Biological Engineering. Doug introduced me to the revolution in biological engineering, which is the application of classical engineering tools and techniques to biological systems. The computer scientist in me fell in love with DNA, a digital encoding of biological information that could be read and understood using a combination of hardware, software, and biochemistry. Once I understood the potential of DNA sequencing I decided to switch from high tech to biotech and start a DNA sequencing company.
How did you get your training, if any to be able to build your company? Healthcare increasingly has interdisciplinary academic backgrounds, while other founders take the plunge and jump straight off the deep end. Which one are you & why?
I already knew how to start and run high-tech companies, having founded two of them, but biotech was completely new to me. When I started exploring DNA sequencing I quickly discovered two things. The first was that the biotech sector was woefully behind the high-tech sector in applying modern software technology. As I said to my high tech friends that I recruited into biotech, “You are going to find that your software tools are very sharp.” Things we took for granted in high tech (search technology, automated image processing, big data analysis, etc.) were revolutionary in biotech. The second thing I discovered was the painful difference between high-tech and biotech in the use of naming conventions. The naming conventions in high tech come from physics and math, and they are highly standardized and make sense. Naming conventions in biotech are a complete mess. To learn the jargon of biotech, I went back to school, via the internet, and completed the MIT OpenCourseware three-course sequence in molecular biology (7.03, 7.012, and 7.28). At the end of that, I was a bad biologist and a worse chemist, but I spoke the language of molecular biology and DNA.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background & career thus far? What were you doing before you started running a high-potential venture-backed startup?
I am a serial entrepreneur, having founded three public companies, two high-tech, and one biotech. I founded one of the first search engine companies (Verity), one of the first internet video companies (Eloquent), and one of the first whole human genome sequencing companies (Complete Genomics). Travera is my fourth startup (not yet public).
Anything else you’d like to share about your life, academic trajectory, etc.?
Between my BS in Physics from MIT and my Ph.D. in Applied Math from Stanford, I did a Harvard MBA. The business education enabled me to wear a lot of hats (finance, legal, HR, sales, marketing, product development, etc.) in each of my startups.
Company Overview
What problem is your company solving?
Travera is solving the problem of identifying effective cancer therapies for late-stage cancer patients who are out of effective therapeutic options.
How did you become motivated to tackle this particular problem?
One of the key promises of the DNA sequencing revolution was to enable the development of new cancer drugs that targeted the particular genetic mutations of each individual’s cancer and provided highly effective personalized treatments for each patient. While there have been a handful of dramatic successes (e.g. Gleevec), for the large majority of cancer patients that promise has not been fulfilled. Cancer is much more than a disease of the genome. It is more accurately a disease of the proteome, which is much more complicated than the genome, and as great as our DNA sequencing tools have become, our protein measurement tools are still rudimentary and crude. As biochemistry did not have the potential to crack the code of cancer any time soon, I moved on to a new technological approach with the potential of helping virtually all cancer patients.
Quite simply, what does your company do?
Travera tests the sensitivity of a cancer patient’s live cancer cells against a large panel of FDA-approved cancer drugs and determines which drugs are most likely to work for each individual patient — not by matching them to similar patients in a clinical trial, but by directly measuring the response of their cancer cells to cancer drugs.
Now in technical language, what are the specifics of what your company does?
We measure the mass response of cancer cells to cancer drugs. Recent research at MIT and DFCI discovered that the mass (weight) of cancer cells changes very slightly in response to effective cancer drugs (and it does not change in response to ineffective cancer drugs). This mass change is so small that it previously could not be measured, but a new measurement tool invented at MIT enables us to detect this tiny change. This mass response appears to be consistent across virtually all cancers and virtually all cancer drugs.
Why does your solution matter for the world when you get it right?
When we get it right we will reduce cancer from a death sentence to a chronic disease, much like what has been done with AIDS.
Genesis
What is your company’s founding story? How did everything come together?
I sit on the Visiting Committee of the MIT Department of Biological Engineering (BE), and I get to see the amazing work going on in the department. After leaving Complete Genomics I sat down with 26 professors in the BE department and reviewed their research, looking for something revolutionary to commercialize. Through this process, I met Scott Manalis, a professor in the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, and learned about his revolutionary work in measuring the mass of single cells.
How did you meet your co-founders?
My four MIT co-founders had worked together for 7+ years in the Manalis lab at MIT developing the core technology (the new measurement tool) and validating its ability to predict patients’ response to cancer drugs. They were a complete startup team, MIT-trained ready to go, an extraordinary asset for a startup company.
Was there a specific moment when you knew you should pursue this as a business idea?
In 2017 the MIT/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute team published their first clinical study in Nature Communications, where they showed their measurements matched the clinical response of nine out of nine multiple myeloma patients. Based on this small but convincing clinical study we launched the company in 2017.
Timing is everything — how did you know the timing was right?
ASAP. Advanced-stage cancer patients need effective therapies to continue their battles against cancer.
Accomplishments
What are some of the notable milestones your company has achieved thus far?
We have raised a $13M Series A (led by Khosla Ventures), launched clinical validation studies involving over 300 patients across blood cancers (Multiple Myeloma and Acute Myeloid Leukemia) and solid tumors (breast cancer and Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer), and applied for our CLIA license, which we expect to receive by the end of 2021.
What are some of the biggest hurdles ahead?
The next three major milestones are (1) clinical validation, which will occur when our ongoing clinical studies show that our predictive accuracy in identifying effective therapies for cancer patients is high, (2) Series B funding, which will be enabled by clinical validation, and will, in turn, enable commercial launch, and (3) initial commercial traction with major cancer centers around the US.
Pay It Forward
Throughout the journey, what have been some of your biggest takeaways thus far? What advice/words of wisdom would you share from your story for other founders?
Bad things happen to every startup. To overcome the inevitable bad things you need persistence (from you and your team), and you also need time (which means money). Raise more money than you think you need.
What are some of the must-haves for an early stage Life Sciences startup in your eyes?
Coming from high tech, my view of biotech is that it operates at a glacial pace, and time takes money. The most important thing a biotech CEO does is say “no” to the myriad of interesting side projects that inevitably arise during the product development process. Every dollar needs to be focused on the next milestone, which will enable raising the next round of financing. Everything else is a distraction.
What are some of the traits that make a great founder? What type of risk profile/archetype does someone need to have to be a founder in your opinion?
There are a lot of different profiles of successful entrepreneurs, but one common thread is how they handle adversity. They treat existential threats as business as usual: stay calm, be transparent and honest, generate and evaluate the available options, get everyone on the same page, and keep moving forward.
For folks coming out of academia, what advice would you share?
Get into a good learning situation. There are some helpful formal ways to do this (e.g. business training) but it mostly depends on the people around you. They need to know what you don’t know and be willing to teach you (and you need to be willing to learn).
Not everyone knows everything. Often founders have to learn either the science or the business side better. What advice would you give for someone picking up a new skill set such as this?
Do enough formal training to speak the language, then surround yourself with people from whom you can learn.
Can you demystify the process of what it was like to raise VC funding? What were the highlights & low lights? Any advice or words of wisdom for future founders?
One thing to keep in mind is that VCs have some well-known common characteristics (they all want great teams, big markets, clear milestones, strong competitive advantages, etc.) but they also have characteristics unique to their particular firm (bad memories of deals gone south, internal politics, fundraising pressures, etc.) that will make them more or less interested in your deal for reasons completely unknown to you. As a result, your strategy needs to be to kiss a lot of frogs.
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