Founder Spotlight #37: Trevor Martin @ Mammoth Biosciences
BIOS: Nucleus of Life Science Innovation 🚀
JOBS
- BIOS Talent: Find Jobs @ Breakout TechBio Startups — Search Jobs 🚀
- Post Jobs: Add Your Startup to BIOS Talent — Post Now 🎉
- Students: Join Alix Ventures Fellowship — Join Now 🧬
- BIOS Contributor: Share Your Thought Leadership — Join Now🔬
CONTENT & COMMUNITY
- BIOS Daily: Join 25K+ Subscribers Following TechBio — Sign Up 🔥
- BIOS Insider: Premium TechBio Thought Leadership — Sign Up ✨
- BIOS Commons: World’s Largest #TechBio Community — Join Now 🎉
INVEST
- BIOS Angels: 1st TechBio Angel Investing Syndicate — Join Now 🌟
- Alix Limited: Invest in Breakout TechBio Startups — Learn More 🧠
By:
Alix Ventures: Supporting Early Stage Life Science Startups Engineering Biology to Drive Radical Advances in Human Health
Calling All Innovators — Click to Reach Out 🚀
Trevor Martin is Co-Founder & CEO @ Mammoth Biosciences which enables the next generation of CRISPR-based synthetic biology products across therapeutics and diagnostics, including a novel class of affordable, effective, and rapid CRISPR-enabled molecular diagnostics that allow individuals worldwide to better understand their health and a novel family of CRISPR Cas14 proteins that can enable in-vivo editing. Trevor earned his BA from Princeton University and his PhD in Biology from Stanford. His work has been featured in outlets including FiveThirtyEight and The Atlantic. He is the featured healthcare honoree on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, is on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list, and is a Malaria No More “10 to END” innovator.
Mammoth Biosciences is harnessing the diversity of life to power the next generation of CRISPR products. Through the discovery and engineering of novel CRISPR systems, the company is enabling the full potential of its platform to read and write the code of life. Mammoth aims to develop permanent genetic cures through best-in-class in vivo and ex vivo therapies and to democratize disease detection with on-demand diagnostics. By leveraging its internal research and development and exclusive licensing to Cas12, Cas13, Cas14, and Casɸ, Mammoth can provide enhanced diagnostics and genome editing for life science research, healthcare, agriculture, biodefense and more. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mammoth Biosciences is co-founded by CRISPR pioneer and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna and Trevor Martin, Janice Chen and Lucas Harrington. The firm is backed by top institutional investors including Redmile Group, Foresite Capital, Senator Investment Group, Sixth Street, Decheng, Mayfield, NFX and 8VC, along with leading individual investors including Brook Byers, Tim Cook and Jeff Huber.
Personal Spark
What prompted you to pursue a career in Life Sciences? Was there a specific moment in time or influence you can remember? What drives you to work in this space?
Transitioning from high school to university I was mostly attracted to physics among other sciences for its powerful ability to describe the fundamental rules of how the Universe works. When applying for college, I came across the ‘Integrated Science’ program set up by David Botstein at Princeton. Initially, I considered it as an opportunity to tick multiple boxes in the course requirements list in one go, but I soon realized the other values of the program. David had a unique perspective to learn from as an ex-professor at Stanford where he pioneered the area of microarray data analysis, and a current CSO at Calico Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary working on aging. He explicitly designed the program to introduce and attract undergraduates to the concepts of quantitative and computational biology. I quickly fell in love with the class and realized how ignorant I was of the similar modes of inquiry shared by modern biology and other quantitative disciplines such as math and physics. I was also excited by the immense potential for making an impact in the field, which was evident by the fast pace of research happening then.
How did you get your training, if any to be able to build your company?
One useful thing for running a company that Ph.D. prepares you for is dealing with uncertainty. Unlike in the rest of one’s education prior to graduate school, there are no textbooks for how to do your project — the main point of which is that no one has done it before. There are many books trying to tell how to create and grow a company, but every startup is different, and there is no way to ‘check your answers’ when you are making decisions about your business. Another thing I found valuable both during my graduate school and as an entrepreneur is mentorship. With the right mentors, for some decisions, you can get advice on whether they are going to work out or not. With good advisors, you can spend time making new mistakes and not old mistakes.
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 started graduate school in computational biology with Hunter Fraser at Stanford straight after finishing my undergraduate degree. I really enjoyed research and wasn’t thinking much about starting a company until the end of my Ph.D. Getting towards the end of grad school I became particularly interested in the field of synthetic biology — exciting discoveries were made almost monthly, and it was obviously an area of immense potential. When thinking about my next step, I realized the lack of translational impact in my academic work to date — work in computational biology back then felt quite distant from its applications beyond the lab. The intersection of my interest in synthetic biology and translational work naturally led me to ponder into the world of related technology.
Company Overview
What problem is your company solving? In technical language, what are the specifics of what your company does?
The foundation of the company is our CRISPR protein discovery pipeline, where we go from metagenomic data to new CRISPR systems using high-throughput screening and robotics to develop the world’s largest variety of CRISPR toolboxes. We then apply these novel tools to two areas of our internal products: human diagnostics, and human therapeutics. On the diagnostics side, our north star is enabling high-quality molecular information at any time and anywhere, especially in decentralized settings. Currently, we often face the trade-offs between precision and accessibility of technologies (think of PCR vs antigen tests for detecting COVID-19). What we are working on is the technology that could enable both of these properties.
On the therapeutics side, we’ve pioneered the field of ultra-small systems, such as Cas14 and CasΦ, which measure down to a third of the size of SpCas9. The extremely compact size of Cas14 and CasΦ allows easier entry into cells through viral delivery mechanisms. These tools have a large potential for delivery of in vivo therapies that can act as permanent treatments, and not just temporary cures, for human diseases.
We also have several partnerships spanning both the core areas of our internal expertise, but also extending our work to agriculture and biomanufacturing.
Why does your solution matter for the world when you get it right?
Overall, we want to build next-gen CRISPR products to develop permanent cures and make them accessible. We are determined to get these technologies to the patients as quickly as possible, which is what underlies our dual approach of developing internal assets and simultaneously engaging in partnerships with other biopharmaceutical companies.
Genesis
What is your company’s founding story? How did you meet your co-founders?
Being in the Bay Area, I was already immersed in the startup ecosystem and didn’t find them foreign. For this reason, it felt natural to reach out to Jennifer Doudna down the road as her seminal paper came out. Through Jenifer, I met her graduate students Janice Chen and Lucas Harrington who were also keen on spinning out their technology, and that’s how we started working together. When you are an academic founder, people often assume that the core tech of the company must come from your thesis. While this is certainly the case in the majority of the companies, it is evidently not a rule.
How did everything come together?
I founded a CRISPR company because of CRISPR’s programmability, which can be thought of as similar to software. The original excitement we had when starting Mammoth Biosciences was about exploring the plethora of Cas systems beyond the conventional Cas-9 tools which already demonstrated significant impact in the field of gene editing. Leveraging the diversity of CRISP systems we wanted to both improve the existing tools and bring new ones to the market. One of the first areas we dived into was the field of CRISPR-based diagnostics that we pioneered at Mammoth.
But in the background, we always knew that there was a huge potential for using CRISPR in therapeutics, which is what we’ve recently been focused on.
Timing is everything — how did you know the timing was right?
For me, it’s more about the people you work with than the timing, which can be harder to gauge. If you work with a team who you really respect and admire and feel prepared to go on a long journey with, the timing becomes secondary.
Accomplishments
What are some of the notable milestones your company has achieved thus far?
Recently, we established a partnership with Vertex Therapeutics on the validation of our therapeutics pipeline, which should accelerate product development to the clinic.
On the diagnostics side, our DETECTR CRISPR COVID-19 diagnostic tool received FDA Emergency Use Authorization and got awarded an NIH contract.
Throughout the last few years, we also grew a team of around 130 people and recruited many great managers to our C-suite as well as some excellent advisors. We are also supported by several long-term investors. It’s great to be surrounded by people who believe in our long-term mission of building the next-generation biotech company and are not focused only on the short-term goals. We recently closed a $195 million round of funding to continue pursuing our goals.
What are some of the biggest hurdles ahead?
The main challenge ahead is to prioritize the right indications across the diagnostics and therapeutics. This will be an inflection point for proving the value of our platform technology.
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?
Coming from the Bay area, I am a big believer in the entrepreneurial community spirit. Hopefully, when surrounded by ambitious entrepreneurs, people from academia can envision biotech venture creation as a real path for themselves to go on after graduate school. You don’t have to out-license your technology or stay away from managing it unless you want to. Similar to what happened in the tech industry in the 80s, these days more and more PhDs become comfortable with the ideas of growing their tech into their business, and, simultaneously, more VCs become supportive of such founders. This is an encouraging trend; don’t shut the door on yourself, and let others tell you ‘no’ rather than not try. Now is the best time it’s ever been to become a biotech founder, and I would encourage Ph.D. graduates to consider this path if they are passionate about it.
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?
It takes a team to make a difference. I believe that empathy, the ability to listen to others and recruit good people is the core of the job. Combined with the clear and well-communicated vision of what you want to achieve, these make key skills of a founder. It also helps to be able to communicate complex scientific concepts in a simplified and compelling manner, adjustable to your listeners. This could turn into a big competitive advantage for a founder.
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?
Learning by doing is the most powerful way but having engaged mentors from early on in developing the company will accelerate your growth. Having a sounding board that you trust is very critical.
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?
Don’t be scared of receiving a ‘no’ and take all the responses as opportunities to learn and revise your pitch. Take every opportunity to learn from the investor regardless of whether they invest or not. It will also make it easier emotionally to go through the process of fundraising. This can be a powerful mental model because most probably you will have to change most of your pitch.
Having a peer group of fellow founders to talk to about the challenges you share is also immensely helpful.
What advice for managing and hiring a great team can you share?
This is a big area for growth among scientific founders, as graduate training does not prepare one for managing others. Being humble is at the core of developing managerial skills. Why you don’t have to follow all the advice you receive, it is important to stay genuinely open and sincere to all the feedback you receive. As in science, it helps being data-driven over-emotional when considering how you can improve and help others.
For More on Mammoth Biosciences, checkout our behind the scenes episode on BIOS Builders…
📣 If you enjoyed this post please clap 👏 & comment 💬 to let us know
Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, and content sponsors.
Join BIOS Community 🎉
Become a member, continue the conversation, connect with like-minded Life Science innovators, access exclusive resources, & invite-only events…
Apply to Join — Membership Application
For More Interesting Content 💭
🧬 Podcast — Stream Full Episodes
🧪 YouTube — Watch Videos
🩺 Twitter — Explore Feed
🦠 LinkedIn — Read Posts
