How I Raised It with Maria Chatzou of Lifebit

Nathan Beckord: Hi. Welcome to another episode of ¨How I raised It¨ produced by Foundersuite.com. Today I have Maria Chatzou CEO of Lifebit coming to us from London. How’s your day going, Maria?

Maria Chatzou: Hello, Nathan, it’s going really great.

Nathan Beckord: Awesome. Maria is out in the field right now. And you’re in what neighborhood? You said Angel Street or Angel area?

Maria Chatzou: Angel area. The offices of Lifebit are just next to the Angel station. I was on my way to another meeting, as usual.

Nathan Beckord: I love it. This is real startup life. Let’s pack in a podcast while we’re walking from one meeting to another. That’s good. Tell us about Lifebit. What do you guys do?

Maria Chatzou: Lifebit is on the mission of building a full blown cognitive system, a software technology that will enable our clients, pharmaceutical industries, biotechnology companies or research and government organizations to streamline their analysis of genetic data and reach insights much faster and better. That’s what Lifebit is all about.

Nathan Beckord: So your customers would be governments or pharma labs, or who would be the customer in this?

Maria Chatzou: We have a big range of customers. As we like to say, everyone that analyzes or needs to analyze genetic data for whatever purposes that might be, ranging from research, clinical applications, drug discovery, research and development within pharmaceuticals, for wellness and lifestyle recommendations, or even for building better products that are for nutrition, wellness and lifestyle and even for cosmetics. The Lifebit technology is here to help them do a much better job on that, and also enable a big portion of these clients and individuals that would like to be able to analyze and understand genetic data, but they don’t necessarily know how or they have the technology in place that will enable them to do that in a timeframe that would actually make sense.

Nathan Beckord: Okay, interesting. Are you guys in the market now or is it still in development phase?

Maria Chatzou: No, we are the market as of a month and a half ago. We just launched our first product into the market. It’s called Deploit. It’s more of the, I would say, bioinformatics engineers, the data scientists that analyze the data. So the tool is more for them, rather than more end customers or more geneticists or more people that do not have that much data analytics and computational skills yet. It’s a BETA version. We are now at the stage where we are piloting the platform with different different companies, research organizations and governmental as well.

Nathan Beckord: Very interesting. Okay. And where did you come up with this idea? What were you doing before starting Lifebit?

Maria Chatzou: Both myself and my co-founder Pablo, we were computer scientists by training, then we did a Masters in bioinformatics and, Pablo was working for different startups and then as a consultant. I was working as a research engineer in some of the biggest research institutes. And then eventually, we decided that we will both start working as researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), a big international genomics research institute in Barcelona, and we also did a PhD there. We met during that period because we’re working in the same group. And a lot of the things that we did during our time there as PhDs, but also as researchers, had quite a lot of success, with not just the scientific community but also outside the scientific community with different companies and different organizations.

Because of that, we got the chance to interact with many people within research and academia, but also within industry. And very soon, we actually saw a huge need and everyone was trying to build custom software and hardware to somehow be able to handle and convert genetic data to actionable insights. To be able to analyze them and understand what they need and then get out of that actionable insights that inform them about how to develop better drugs, better therapies, better diagnostics, better products, I was saying before, give better wellness recommendations to people. We just saw that big gap and then we were like, we can do something about it. I mean, a lot of the work that we did while we were still researchers already solved part of that problem for a big bunch of people. Then we were like, well, all we have to do now is build the rest of the technology stack to make it completely automated.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah. Interesting. Very interesting. I was just reading I think somewhere recently about how they’re close to cracking the genome for wheat, which is a surprisingly complex code and I guess that it was pretty exciting because then you can build or modify wheat to withstand changing environments and climate changes to fight that. Is that kind of in the right vein? I mean, is that like an example of what your customers could be doing?

Maria Chatzou: Yeah. It’s so funny that you mentioned that because I’m sure my co-founder was in the project were they did the first reference genome for wheat. Probably a lot of his work is helping towards cracking the rest of the stuff needed for that.

Nathan Beckord: Very interesting. Yeah. Really amazing. Cool. Okay. Really, really good stuff. This is like pretty much mostly over my head, but I’m fascinated by it anyway. So let’s see. So talk about getting this company off the ground. Why did you start it in London? It sounds like you are both from Spain originally?

Maria Chatzou: My co-founder is Spanish from Barcelona, but I am Greek and by now I think I’m like very much European, having lived all over the place like Sweden and Germany for awhile, in London for awhile, and then Barcelona for the past five years.

Nathan Beckord: Okay. So what led you to England as your home for starting Lifebit?

Maria Chatzou: So what led us here? So within Europe, I would say UK is the country leading the genomics and personalized medicine revolution. And our clients are here. A lot of the most exciting projects are here, a lot of the talent and the big research projects are within the golden triangle being London, Cambridge and Oxford. So, that was one of the main reasons. The other reason was that Lifebit is actually my second startup. My first startup is called Innovation Forum and we co-founded with a couple of other people and that’s more of a non-for-profit organization, like a Linkedin for like entrepreneurial scientists, bringing together entrepreneurial scientists wanting to paid startups. And because of that, I mean we managed to grow Innovation Forum, it’s running in over three continents and we have over 200 people, most of them, of course, volunteers.

But I got quite a lot of experience and a lot of my support network because the headquarters of Innovation Forum are in Cambridge were actually in UK. So I knew a lot of people here. I think that was the second main reason. And the third is because we got accepted to Techstars London, who were our first investors and who as I say, transformed us. When we entered Techstars, our company was still a project, there was no company, there was a nice project. And when we exited Techstars, we had the proper startup and they were our first investors, they were here in London. And then the follow-up investment, our seed investment, was from a UK VC. So we had all of the reasons in the world to actually stay in London.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah, that makes sense. Talk about Techstars a little bit. So was that one of these vertical tracks that I see Techstars doing a lot of? Or was it their kind of general program?

Maria Chatzou: No, it was a general program. They really liked it. The first time I ever pitched the company was in the WomenWhoTech Startup Challenge 2017. And I was very lucky because one of the judges was Max Kelly, the former Managing Director of Techstars London. And it was funny because when I pitched there, he really loved my pitch. Again, I didn’t have anything, apart from the prior traction we had as researchers and the experience. But we didn’t have anything for the company, apart from a great vision about how we want to do things. And he really liked it because, we were pitching not yet another biotech company if that makes sense, but more of like a true technology company that was trying to build a tree infrastructure into technology applied in the biomedical world. So then he said you are a great fit for Techstars. And I also thought the same because as I said, that was looking to build a deep tech company but true technology company, therefore it was like a perfect match.

We were actually the first genomics company of Techstars. We still are, I think or now there are a couple of more. So it was, it was quite interesting as well for them.

Nathan Beckord: You completed that in 2017 and then you raised a seed round more recently. Did you start raising money right out of Techstars or did you need to wait for awhile?

Maria Chatzou: No, I actually just started raising money right after Techstars. It took me not that much. We announced the round quite late just because we wanted to be stuck for awhile, until we have a product for other reasons. But actually I just closed my seed round after two months of fundraising. We raised over $3,000,000. We raised about 2.25 million pounds. So there is a Techcrunch Press Release for that. It’s all now public information.

Nathan Beckord: Did you use TechStars Demo Day as the catalyst to kickoff real fundraising, and what’s it like raising in the UK? I haven’t actually had anyone else from the UK on this show yet, so I’d love to hear.

Maria Chatzou: The UK is a great place to fundraise. It depends on what sector you’re in and what it is exactly that you are pitching. There is a lot of money, especially in London. There are really high caliber investors. For me I will say it was quite exhausting, I guess like every fundraising round is. But, it was a pleasure to actually meet all of those investors. So I would say the experience was overall really, really good. To be honest, we had quite a lot of traction and interest from both US investor and other European investors and we had those terms sheets on the table that weren’t from UK investors. I personally decided that I wanted to go with Pentech and Connect, who are two big London VCs, because I wanted to actually work close to my investors. And then I decided to leave the other investors for consideration for the Series A.

Nathan Beckord: So talk about how you actually did it. Did you just identify all the big data and/or genomics investors in the UK and work through Techstars to reach out to them? Give us a little bit of the tactical.

Maria Chatzou: During techstars we met a lot of people. But then, did I spend some extra effort to identify the right ones for us? No, not at all. I followed the playbook of Techstars on how to fundraise and it was extremely successful. So I ran fundraising, within what I call the three phases of fundraising. Phase one was to raise awareness and just meet as many people as you can because you can try to filter investors. But eventually, it is more important to actually go and meet them and then you get a better feeling. So that’s what I did. And I had over 170 investor meetings in two months, which is crazy if you think about it.

Nathan Beckord: 170. One seven zero.

Maria Chatzou: Yes, yes. Over 170 investor meetings in two months. So the first stage was like anyone that wanted to meet with me, I will just accept the meeting. It didn’t matter to me if they had the money I wanted or the expertise. I would to talk to anyone. And I would basically use each one of my meetings to refine my message to understand different investors have different levels of understanding of the genomics market. That was equally helpful for me because I had to pitch at different levels. If anything, it was really beneficial. And the other thing that I think investors also appreciated was that, in all of those meetings, I used an approach of not going into the meeting saying ¨What can I get out of this?¨

But more, ¨I’m here to tell you what I’m doing and I’m here to really learn what you are trying to do, what you are trying to get out of potentially investing in Lifebit¨. And then I ran those meetings more of as a chat, and as ¨If you want me to educate, I’m more than happy to educate you¨. So a lot of the discussion wasn’t even about the problem, they were about ¨What do you think about that, what about this, explain to me that¨. And I would be more than happy to. I was like ¨Just tell me about the companies in your portfolio, have you invested in any big data company, an infrastructure company, in any biotech company? In those that you have invested, how did that go? How do you feel about that? What were the obstacles these companies had face?¨ That was extremely beneficial for me. But then, I ran this phase for awhile.

Nathan Beckord: Real quick, I want to get to phase two, but on the phase one, were you telling these folks in the raise awareness phase, were you telling them ¨We are fundraising¨ or ¨We’re going to be fundraising¨? Was it kind of like a warmup chat or was it we’re raising money?

Maria Chatzou: No, we’re raising money. That was after the Demo day. And even before the Demo day, of course I was meeting with whoever I wanted to meet. It was my clear message that I’m not fundraising, I’m just meeting you to just catch up and to get to know you. And when the Demo day happened, we were fundraising and then I kept meeting everyone again and again. I would always go super prepared with my pitch deck, all of the business model. But I would still run it as ¨We’re fundraising¨, and then I’ll run a process through that.

Nathan Beckord: Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Now phase two, what was that phase?

Maria Chatzou: Phase two is after you have met with everyone, understand which are the investors that are more likely to be a match. Because I think it’s a match, right? So it’s not just if they can invest or if they would invest, or if they are appropriate for investment. It’s also about how was the chemistry. Do you see getting into this marriage with the particular investment firm. The second phase was all about going to the next phase of meetings with investors that were ready to put term sheets on the table. And the second phase was all about drilling down with those investors, and tell them ¨Okay, you like us, we like you, what needs to happen for you to put the term sheets forward on the table¨. And then they would give me everything that they needed. Then we’ll run that process and we’ll have as many meetings as needed.

Nathan Beckord: Sorry to interrupt one more time. So from the 170 in the phase one, how many do you think you met with in phase two? How, how short was the list?

Maria Chatzou: The 170 was a total for all of my round. I had about a hundred initial meetings, and then all of the follow-ups were about 50 meetings in total with several investors. I have all of those numbers, I just don’t have them in front of me. But that was sort of the breakdown with the investors that were seriously considering putting a term sheet forward. And then, we only continued on the phase three with the investor that had put the term sheet fast forward.

Nathan Beckord: Sure. Great. Okay. So then you’re in phase three, you’ve got half a dozen term sheets or five or six?

Maria Chatzou: I had a couple of term sheets. I would rather not say.

Nathan Beckord: No, no, that’s fine, that’s fine.

Maria Chatzou: But we had a several sheets on the table, and then we decided to just move on. So, when we had the couple of terms sheets on the table, we still were going, we would have more, but then we decided to stop when we had the terms of that we really liked. Eventually, we couldn’t actually decide between Pentech and Connect because they were bringing very complimentary things to the table. Connect specializes on product and they have invested in some really incredible companies like City Mapper and Type Form and many others. And then Pentech, on the other hand, has a really great track record of biotech companies and true innovation and they have already companies that have IPOed on their portfolio and so on, so forth.

We went back to them and said “How do you feel about doing a collaboration? And they said that they would love that. We were like cool because that means we did not need to choose. And then, we just moved on with them. Phase three for me was all about closing the investment agreement and getting the money into the bank. And I know that a lot of people underestimate phase three where it is like, oh, we have the term sheets that we have agreed and that they will now get the investment agreement. But a lot of things can go wrong on that and a lot of things can delay that it can kill your company. So I was running that process with great persistence and follow through.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah. Talk about that a little bit and you don’t need to say what things could have gone wrong for you specifically, but what were some of the potential trouble areas or pitfalls that startups need to watch out for in that closing phase. Because I don’t think the closing is actually talked about enough. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about that.

Maria Chatzou: Yeah. I’m happy to discuss about where we had problems. So when we got the joint term sheet from both of our VCs was, as my chairman Paul called it, a term sheet made in heaven for entrepreneurs. It was really great. In my chairman is like 75 and he was like being a CEO of multi-billion companies and has invested. So basically, he has seen everything. So him saying that was like, “oh my God, that’s really great”. And it was making me very happy because I knew I had found the right type of investors that totally get what we’re doing, totally understand the challenges moving forward. Then when we actually came to the lawyers and the lawyers took that term sheet and then drafted a sort of investment agreement. Then the law firm who we were dealing with from the investor side decided that they actually wanted to totally different investment agreement that was basically just renegotiating everything that was on the term sheet to the worst benefit of us.

Maria Chatzou: And that was quite sad to see. Especially because the law firm is quite a famous law firm here in London, and a lot of investors are using them. For me, I have actually banned them. I’m really telling my next investors, if you’re using them then I’m not expecting any deal. And that is, for example, one of the most difficult things. I think, in general, lawyers can screw up a lot of things, even if you have negotiated things with your investors. And for us, it came to a point where it became a very frustration point where my investors were like, “Maria, how about we actually just remove the lawyers from the picture and we just start talking with each other and we agree on everything and we’ll just tell them to dress it and that’s it”. And I’m like, “how about we do that?”

Nathan Beckord: Were you in a no shop clause, where you could not pursue other term sheets, you were kind of locked up in this term sheet at this point? You know what I’m asking?

Maria Chatzou: No, definitely I wasn’t locked up. And to be honest, I seriously thought about it because I had investors calling me at the same time, where they were telling me just go out of this round, we can give you more money, or keep that investor and we can come it, and so on, so forth. Any temptation, especially when things are not that ideal, not because my investors were doing something bad, but because the lawyers had sort screwed up things. Um, and yeah. And I’m happy I didn’t do that. And there is a real danger, right, because when you are a first time entrepreneur for me, I’m a second time sort of, but I’ve never fundraised, so this was my first experience with that. And there was a true danger. If I didn’t have really great people mentoring me and advising me where they were like you don’t know and I didn’t know at that point. I knew my investor were like super cool and I already really liked them, but I never had worked with them. So I’m happy I didn’t walk out of the deal and I just made it happen.

Nathan Beckord: Awesome. Great. Any other tips on that closing period? How long did that take? What was the closing timeline?

Maria Chatzou: Really, really fast. But again I’m a very crazy person, so I know I’m complaining a lot, but to actually close the whole thing with the money being in the bank was maybe about a month.

Nathan Beckord: Yeah, that’s really fast.

Maria Chatzou: Yes.

Nathan Beckord: This is like, you know, one of these pretty almost perfect stories where you hear things go so fast and a few hiccups, but what do you think was the strength of your pitch? Why were you able to get it done so quickly? Was it just big data and genomics are hot sexy spaces or the techstars cache. What do you think was underlying this?

Maria Chatzou: I think it was the first phase of the awareness phase if you asked me. So don’t get me wrong. Definitely what matters always the most is what is your story? And what is the founder’s traction, right? Are the founders relevant or they’re pitching, right? Do they know what they are doing? Is the market really big? Is there huge potential for growth? All of those things matter. They are the first things that everyone will check? But once those things are okay, then it’s all about, it was the first phase that a lot of people underestimate. Where they think that in the first phase all they need to do is like look down to the 10 investors that they want and then just go and try to chase them desperately. And I did not do that.

Maria Chatzou: I was just speaking to everyone. And because I did that, investors started liking me. I never actually mailed not a single investor to ask for a meeting, and I had really many investors. I was introduced by other investors saying “I’m not investing in them because I say their seed round is too big or we are not investing in that, but we really liked them and I think you should talk to them”. And that is how I got all of my meetings and just because of that investors is are small group, right? So investors normally talk with each other. And on top people tend to think that all investors are competitive with each other. They really aren’t. They normally consult each other and they normally ask each other for diligence and expertise.

Maria Chatzou: And because at that point I had pretty much talked to every investor almost in London and Cambridge, not so much in Cambridge, but definitely in London. So everyone knew about me. And I think that really speeded up the time because then, investors put a very fast reference about us. And at the same time, we had the credibility of Techstars. I think that was number one. I would say in terms of number two, a lot of founders, what they do, their mistake is that they feel that fundraising is sort of like a job. It’s not a job, it’s literally a sprint. It’s a way of living. You need to say that for the next three months, four months, whatever it takes, I’m not doing anything else in my life. This is not my job, it’s literally my life. For me, it was my life.

Maria Chatzou: I was waking up in the morning and I had meetings. I was going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And then in evenings, I was preparing everything. I was refining my pitch, I was refining my messaging. I was preparing the extra documents. And then you keep going. That was my second tip to everyone. I don’t think of this as a thing to do, or a job to do, think of this as a way of living and there’s nothing else you are doing. And then the third thing that I could say is, get a back office person. Meaning that I had my COO, she was always there and basically I was telling her, “We need to mail this investor. I just exited from the meeting, this investor needs this and that. We need to get those documents going. We need to correct those errors on the business model. We need to refine these numbers. We need to get more information on that company and this investor. Or, we need to check those investors.” While I was running into meetings, she was doing all of the job for me. While I was in Ubers, walking, in buses, even in the subway, the underground, she would mail me stuff and we would catch up about all of the information that I needed. So then, I would be super prepared for my next meeting.

Nathan Beckord: I hope she’s still with you. Or did she get through the fundraising and was just like I’m done.

Maria Chatzou: No, she is. She is. So basically it was a way of living for both of us. And I would catch up with her. I would reach home, and sometimes I would even have meetings until like eight, 9:00 because I was speaking with US investors with different time zones. And we would catch up with her until like 11, 12, 1:00 and we would still work on documents because that was the time we had to work. But it depends, right? So again, like you said before, that this sounds like this story is so perfect and then everything moves so fast and you just had a few hiccups. And trust me for those stories to happen, there is so much work that has to happen behind the scenes that we had to do.

Nathan Beckord: It’s the duck metaphor, right? The duck is calmly gliding across the water, but underneath it’s paddling furiously. And then just going forward, are you already thinking about your next round? Will you be thinking about going to the US for the next round? Is this a business that’s going to take a lot of money? How are you thinking about fundraising?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, this is a business that will take a lot of money, unfortunately. I wish I could say no. A joke that I would always do with my investors when they were asking, “What’s your marketing stuff or what do you do?” And we do all of the buzzwords apart from blockchain, but we need money for that. Because we do big data, we do genomics, we do AI, we do high performance computing, cloud computing. We do all of those things. The big mission of Lifebit put very simply is the process of making sense of your genetic data. It is a two step process: the first is all about the biochemical process of getting the sample and extracting the DNA and just reading that DNA.

Maria Chatzou: And that, right now, is super automated. And it costs less than it costs you to buy an iphone, which is insane if you think about it, and it takes less than half a day to be done. And then you have your DNA read, all of it. But now the problem with that is that you can’t do anything because it’s fragments of DNA duplicated and just like random letters, like a magic sort of screen if you were to output it. Then, the second part of the process starts when you need to analyze all of this DNA and basically get the insights. And that process is not automated at all. It takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of pain to actually get anything meaningful out of that. Which is why genetic data are not being used for wide clinical application, and we’re not having personalized medicine.

Maria Chatzou: We’re not having everything that that genetic data could actually enable. All Lifebit is trying to do at the end of the day is built this technology that will make that process of going from raw data that comes from the sequencing machines, to the insights and the questions you want answered, fully automatically, and zero pain points and super fast. And to do that you need a lot of money, and really bright people to build insane technology. And that’s why we need money. I think for us the Series A round will come after a year or so. It will depend of course on the growth of the company as well. We’re already talking with really big Series A investor which we were anyhow in contact with during our seed round. But we will need money and most probably will go to get that money in the US.

Nathan Beckord: Do you think you’d have to open an office in the US or do you think you could raise from London in US investors?

Maria Chatzou: To be honest, I think we will need to have a presence in the US. But for us, it also makes sense because half of the genomics/genetics market is in the US. It’s actually the part of it that really is the fastest growing. So anyhow, we will make an office there as the growth phase of the company. It will have to be in the US and work more with the US market and with more of the clinical side of the US market, which right now we’re not targeting so much. Even now, we’re actually working with some clinics, but it’s more of the clinics that do more research and they are now experimenting with genetics, rather than, hospitals and completely diagnosis to patients.

Nathan Beckord: Do you feel like your UK investors have good relationships with American investors or are they kind of their own independent Brexit ecosystem? What do you think?

Maria Chatzou: I think I need to run a full phase one investment phase, so actually understand that a little bit better because I don’t have a full picture right now. But from my limited experience so far, I would say they have quite good relationships. Our VCs know a lot of VCs in the US. They work together. They back really good companies. At the end of the day, investors like working together when it is to go for something big that has a risk component to it. It’s good for them because they do risk investments. And there is no American investor that will say, “we wouldn’t invest in this company just because they are in the UK, or because they are in Europe, or because they have UK investors or anything like that. I think it’s on the contrary, they will just back up anything that’s really good.

Nathan Beckord: Last question. Anything we haven’t covered or any tips you would give your younger self going through or starting the fundraising process all over again? Or did you do it just right because you did it pretty successfully and quickly?

Maria Chatzou: I think I did it just right. Maybe my only advice to myself if I were to go back in time, would be to not stress that much and understand that this is a process that takes the time it will take. Eventually, yes, you can cut corners and you can hack different stuff, but eventually it is a process. And I think that would be my general advice to everyone. They need to just understand that they need the buckle up and go for it. It’s a process, you know, it will take the time it will take, and it is frustrating. And it’s a process that requires a lot of people management above all. A lot of people say, “it’s about the start, the technology, the mission and the vision.” Yes, it is definitely about that. And then a lot of people say, “it’s about the money and convincing that there is revenue.”

Maria Chatzou: It’s definitely also about that. But what more and above all, it’s about a people relationship. We raised that the amount of money as a pre-revenue company and pre-product company with almost nothing apart from like a lousy MVP that was barely working. At the end of the day, it’s like you’re trying to build a relationship and you’re trying ask people to trust you and to take a huge bet on you. I was presenting all of my vision and all of the huge potential and how we can become the next Google and Apple of the genomics revolution and of the biotech revolution. And then investors who were very high caliber, would ask: “Maria, we buy all of that, but tell me why you would be that one company and not someone else.” And my answer to that would be, “If I am honest, I don’t know if I’m going to be that company. But if I was to make a bet right now and if I was you, we are your best bet”. It’s true. I was being honest with them. Which is yet another big thing, be as honest as possible, investors can totally see through you. And that’s what I’m trying to tell them. Like I’m not gonna bullshit you like that. I can tell you that we will do the best that we can. We have a really solid plan. We know where we’re coming from and we definitely know where we’re going. No one knows the future. This is an emerging market. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong that no one could anticipate, even if you are God himself. But if you are to make a bet, we are your best bet. Which then, well do I really like you? Do I really want to make this bet with you? And this is where the most personal component comes to play. And if I were to advise founders I would say do not underestimate that and do not underestimate that, at the end of the day, it’s a people’s game. It’s really about building those relationships regardless of whether people are going to invest in you or not.

Nathan Beckord: Really cool. Alright Maria, this is great. If people want to learn more, it’s just lifebit.ai, is that correct?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, that’s correct. It’s easier than my name, right.

Nathan Beckord: Say Your last name one more time. I butchered it, I know.

Maria Chatzou: Chatzou.

Nathan Beckord: I’ll copy and paste that at the beginning, you know, kind of like overdub. This is awesome. Anything you want to plug or mention to listeners, open job recs? Anything special?

Maria Chatzou: Anything special? I guess maybe I can have an ask? My ask would be if people listening to this podcast, really love our vision and they are looking for jobs or they’re looking to interact, or they’re bioinformaticians looking for a cool platform to use for their company, then definitely we’re here to actually help you with that. We run now this pilot program and this partnership program and we’re really happy to talk to these people. So that would be my ask number one. And then my ask number two, which is a selfish ask, is if anyone needs help and it’s more advice, I’m here for them. Just mail me, it’s really easy, it’s maria@lifebit.ai. I hope I’m not going to get a thousand mails. But I’m happy to help founders, especially if they are first founders. So please, mail me if you need anything.

Nathan Beckord: Well that’s great. That’s really wonderful. Alright, thank you so much. This is really fun. Lots of good stuff in here and good luck. It sounds like, pretty exciting stuff. I’ll definitely follow you guys and we’ll catch you after your next round. How about that?

Maria Chatzou: Yes, that sounds great.

Nathan Beckord: Thanks for Maria.

Maria Chatzou: Thank you so much, Nate.

Nathan Beckord: Bye. Bye.