Founder’s Lessons: Pamela Contag, CEO of BioEclipse
Pamela shares insights on failure, finding a passion, scientific connections, asking questions, and being a female CEO
About
Welcome to the fifth installment of Tsingyuan Ventures’ Lessons from Founders series. Every week, we publish an in-depth founder interview, ranging from early-stage entrepreneurs to successful businesses. Our conversations cover their personal journeys, the lessons that shaped them, their visions for the future, and their failures. We also learn more about their companies and about the challenges they try to solve. These insights and lessons are applicable to any entrepreneur — current or future.
Read past interviews here.
BioEclipse Therapeutics
BioEclipse Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to delivering first-in-class, curative next generation immunotherapy to patients with cancer. BioEclipse is focusing on currently untreatable cancers where their unique dual biotherapy approach may be able to address needs of cancer patients by treating both the primary tumor and the immune system. BioEclipse is preparing to initiate phase 1 clinical trials with CRX-100, a patented, intravenously delivered, targeted immunotherapy against solid tumors. CRX-100 is being developed to deliver potentially curative treatment to patients over a broad range of tumor types, including some rare pediatric cancers. Learn more at bioeclipse.com.
Dr. Pamela Contag is an experienced senior executive for both public (President and CEO, Xenogen Corp., NASDAQ:XGEN), and private companies. She is currently the CEO of BioEclipse Therapeutics. Pamela was named in Goldman Sachs’ Top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2018 and ranked in the top 10 of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Women-Led Most Funded Life Science Companies of 2020. She was also appointed in 2011 by the White House to the Founding Board of the Startup America Partnership. Pamela received her M.S. and PhD from the University of Minnesota Medical School in Microbiology and Immunology and completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1993 at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She has written over 60 publications and has over 40 patents issued as inventor.
Why we invested in BioEclipse: Tsingyuan Ventures’ life science team is led by long-time oncology professor Dr. Biao He (who was a professor at UCSF for 18 years and is a successful entrepreneur in his own right). He saw that Bioeclipse is pursuing a disruptive approach that combines two known biotherapies: activated cytokine-induced killer cells (CIK) cells and an oncolytic virus. Dr. He recognized that this approach has tremendous potential to create far safer and more precisely targeted cancer treatment for both solid and liquid tumors. Dr. Contag, a serial entrepreneur, is also a big part of our investment: she combines the scientific and business chops to pull off this audacious vision. We believe their approach has the highest chance of success in this category.
Meet Pamela Contag
Interview edited for clarity and length.
“How do we make something that’s not a possibility today a possibility tomorrow?”
Pamela introduces herself
I’m Pamela Contag, CEO of BioEclipse Therapeutics. I’m a scientist by training in microbiology and immunology. This is my third venture-backed company. I’m doing BioEclipse because it’s a really interesting technology that hasn’t been taken to the clinic before. I’ve been working on this company since 2015, getting it through its IND and raising money so that we can put the technology in advanced solid tumors. I hope we can make a big difference in the lives of oncology patients.
What she believes that’s different
- In business and in science, I don’t like to work off other people’s assumptions. I want to establish my own assumptions. Where most businesses fail is in the failure to have the correct assumption. If that’s the ground layer of what I’m building, I personally have to understand and believe the assumptions for myself.
Where most businesses fail is in the failure to have the correct assumption.
2. As a corollary to the above: none of us are as smart as we think we are. Sometimes things that seem obvious are the wrong answer, or at least not the only answer. We should be very careful when trying to put a stake in the ground around “proving” a concept.
How she chooses people to work with
I’ve been working in companies now for about 25 years. And here’s what I know about people: if you expect the best out of them, they’ll either give you the best or they’ll leave. I hate firing people; I’d rather fix them.
I look for people who, even if they’re just looking for a job, look at that job and search for the thing about that job that they can have a passion about so that they love to come to work every day. You don’t have to tell passionate people to work hard.
I want people to be super curious and to love discovery. They ask: why did that happen? They don’t brush it off and think: it’s 5:30, I can leave this for another day. Even after they go home, they think about things in the background and ask hard questions. Why did it happen that way? Did I do the right experiment in order to make a conclusion about what I’m seeing? Curiosity is really just constant challenge and review.
I look for people who are thoughtful. They think hard about what they’re trying to accomplish. With people like that, even if everyone on a team doesn’t complement each other immediately in the beginning, soon they will complement each other.
How to find passion and what drives her
In graduate school, one of the professors gave me the hardest project he’d ever assigned. He gave me the worst, and the hardest. It was on maternal DNA in mitochondria. It was hard and it was also boring. It was terrible. But I made up my mind. That’s what happened, I’m going to make the best of it. I dove into the problem, and learned something from that experience. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, you can find what’s interesting about it and why it’s important. And once you realize why it’s important, then you can find a passion for it.
It doesn’t matter what the problem is, you can find what’s interesting about it and why it’s important. And once you realize why it’s important, then you can find a passion for it.
It was a hard lesson, but I got an A in that project. Everyone said they thought it was going to be the most boring project ever. But you can find something that’s really interesting in everything.
What helps me have a passion for something is seeing that it really solves an unmet need. I don’t want to do something that somebody else has already done. I don’t want to solve a problem that’s really been solved. A lot of people think about: better, faster, cheaper. I think about: how do we make something that’s not a possibility today a possibility tomorrow?
What helps me have a passion for something is seeing that it really solves an unmet need.
Her biggest challenges as CEO
You have to have excellent execution to meet the milestones, and to figure out who wants what you are making. But that’s all about people, not about technology. You can always pivot technology. You can always find a market. But you need to inspire people to throw themselves in wholeheartedly. You need to say, we should build that, do you want to build it with me? And bring people together to give their very best ideas so that the idea can become reality.
Her experience finding connections in science
During my PhD, I was working in a immunology lab, and I realized that I didn’t have the tools to approach immunology the way it ought to be approached at a molecular level. So I switched over to microbiology, where all the tools for gene cloning and transposon mutagenesis and sequencing were coming out. I moved over to a different lab where I could learn all of that.
My advisor talked about applying microbiology to making biofuels, because that was a huge environmental issue. The science of biofuels is almost equivalent to the science of antibiotics and drug therapies, because they’re both about regulation. What are the molecules that you can use to express a pathway in order to generate biofuels? What are the molecules that are interfering with pathways that cause disease?
At Stanford University, I discovered in-vivo biophotonic imaging, which allowed me to do both. So the first company was developing that technology, the second company was working on biofuels, and then the third one is converting all of that into working on a therapeutic. I learned the fundamental basis of science is important in all different applications.
Her views on failure
Personal failures are hard to talk about. As human beings, we have a tendency to say “lesson learned” and move on. One of my strengths is that I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other even through personal failures. I have a rearview mirror, but if I spend a lot of time looking at it then I won’t be moving forward. Forward motion is critical.
Personal failures are hard to talk about. As human beings, we have a tendency to say “lesson learned” and move on.
In my second company, I wanted to build a biorefinery. This was in 2008. My board felt that a woman should not want to “put steel in the ground.” They basically asked me: why would you want to build something? My answer was, everybody wants to build something. I’ve got the vision, and I’ll hire somebody who knows how to put steel in the ground. It has nothing to do with gender.
But one board member actually decided to do the job, and they swapped me out as CEO. The technology was actually my own technology. A joint venture later purchased the technology from the new CEO. They ended up just selling it. But by that time I had been out of the company for two years.
I always look back and think, should I have fought harder for my vision? Should I have fought harder? That was a huge failure for me.
Her best advice for founders
Founders have to have two things: personal awareness and flexibility. They can’t all be the CEO, they’re not all going to fit into the company. They might need to move on and do something else. But their allegiance should always be to the technology that they founded.
They should help the company in whatever role the investors want them to help in. If they think they can do more, they should speak up. If they think they can’t do what they’re being asked to do, or what they think they ought to do, they should speak up. To be a good founder, you need to have excellent communication. You’re translating your technology to the broader public.
If they think they can do more, they should speak up. If they think they can’t do what they’re being asked to do, or what they think they ought to do, they should speak up.
The other thing I would tell founders is: you can’t know everything. You can be smart, you can be personable. But everyone is going to fail somewhere along the line. You have to be honest with yourself and with other people when you’re in a bad situation. And when you’re in a great situation, you need to give credit to the people around you who are really great.
Everyone is going to fail somewhere along the line. You have to be honest with yourself and with other people when you’re in a bad situation. And when you’re in a great situation, you need to give credit to the people around you who are really great.
As CEO, I try to drop the “founder mentality.” Not that it’s bad, but sometimes it can hold you back if you think the company is your baby.
Her response to the COVID-19 pandemic
What is the time after COVID going to look like? What are the changes being instituted now that are actually better for people, for working environments, for our global environment? We’ve done the experiment. Can we learn from it? I hope COVID can help us shape the best of the future. We have the technical and intellectual horsepower to be fundamentally involved in the evolution of how our society looks. We need to pull that knowledge together more aggressively than we’d previously thought we could.
Views on social media
Having run a publicly traded company, I’m not a big social media fan. It’s easy for people to make a mistake, but there is a saying that “it’s hard to put your toothpaste back in the tube.” So you have to be careful about the things you say off the cuff, especially if you’re in charge of a company.
Media recommendations
I have two National Geographic recommendations. One is called the Blue Zone on the cover of National Geographic. The other one I’m reading is called The Moon and Beyond.
I really enjoy the books Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. They talk about the cognitive revolution. I love that you can recognize the people around you in the description of how humans have evolved.
My kids and I also really like cooking shows and cookbooks like “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat.
One question to listen to
One question that people ask and then don’t really listen to the answer to is: what are some of your important failures? It’s a hard question to ask and answer, but sometimes it’s good to vocalize the failures.
One question to ask
I’m from Minnesota in the Midwest. We have a reputation for being direct. One of the questions I like to ask is: why do you think that? What makes you think that? I’m trying to understand someone’s point of view and the source of their thought. Where did you hear that? Where’s the data for that? I think if more people could frankly discuss their answers and their positions, we would find that we have a lot more common ground than we think.
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Tsingyuan Ventures is a $100M seed-stage technology firm. We back technical founders across software, life sciences, and frontier technologies. Learn more about our origin story and our approach here.
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