“Would Someone Else Have Done it Anyway?” The TrialSpark Story
When Ben Liu was a computational biology doctoral candidate, he was on a mission: To use his knowledge and expertise to create drugs that would save lives and change the world. After presenting several drug candidates to pharmaceutical companies in hopes of receiving funding for clinical trials, he realized that the pharmaceutical companies that had the resources to save lives were not as excited about testing drugs as he was. It was not that these companies did not care, it was that the system was set up to work against the patients. There was a bottleneck effect: The amount of funding available for clinical trials did not meet the demand of the number of drug candidates out there. So Ben founded TrialSpark.
TrialSpark’s mission is to reduce the cost and time of clinical trials, pick the best drug candidates, and match the right drug trials to the right patients. TrialSpark uses an “Airbnb” model. They identify doctors to run pharmaceutical studies in their own practice and allow them to share in the profits. This model makes it easier for more people to break into conducting this life-saving research and also meets patients right where they are in their own doctors’ offices. When comparing his work creating drug candidates with the possible impact of TrialSpark, Ben realized that his talents would be better served focusing on the latter. He asked himself, “Are you working on something that somebody else would’ve done anyway?” This question encouraged him to lean into TrialSpark full-time after completing his PhD, because he realized that his marginal impact on the world would be higher in his company than in his lab.
Ben’s story is a story that we are seeing more and more of: A young person stumbles across an issue they are passionate about and they use their creativity to do something about it. People love hearing these stories, and for good reason. They love hearing them because they champion the idea that any person can create a platform for themselves and make a difference. However, often when these stories are told, they skip a huge section. They start with the impetus and end with the success, and they don’t stop to talk about what happens in the middle. That is what this article is about. As young entrepreneurs, it is imperative to pay attention to the middle of a story. There is a lot to be learned about the mistakes, innovations, and failures that come with being an entrepreneur.
Recently, I was fortunate to have heard Ben and some of his colleagues talk at an event sponsored by TigerTables, a subteam of the Princeton University Entrepreneurship Club. Students gathered to hear from Ben and to ask him questions spanning across all dimensions of the company, from its purpose to his perspective. Ben’s most prominent piece of advice for all of the future entrepreneurs in the room was simple yet powerful: “Work on the most ambitious interpretation of the problem you are trying to solve.” Ben made it clear that ambition is a core value of his company.
Furthermore, it was incredible to see how conscious Ben was in creating his culture when he was first building the company (another great example of conscious culture-building is Zipline). Ben remarked that at the start, he was doing everything from advertising to buying toilet paper. There was a culture that was embraced of rolling up your sleeves and putting in the work for everyone, regardless of the hierarchy.
As the company grew, the need for the culture to have a place for everyone in it grew as well. Ben explained that the stakes are higher when hiring the first employees of the company. “The first 50 or 100 people are arguably going to be the inertia of the culture of your company,” Ben said. He believes that none of the values they established would have been possible without the input and influence of the first core group of employees. Ben also shared a very interesting perspective about how to hire the right people. “You should always look for people that are better than you,” he explained. When he is hiring, he asks himself, “What is this person better at than me?” Even though there may be an official hierarchy on paper, TrialSpark does not equate a positional hierarchy with a hierarchy of intelligence. Ben thinks that a company can only be successful if it plays off the strengths of all of those involved, and this strategy works.
It is evident that Ben lives his words out by the colleagues that came along for the talk, Zach, Natalia (Princeton ’18), and Jeff (Princeton ’16). Each of these individuals introduced themselves and their backgrounds and it was clear that the brains of the operation extend far beyond Ben. In fact, just talking to the other colleagues left the impression of collective brilliance in the TrialSpark team.
Ben went on to explain that the first people that he hired helped him develop another cultural element of his company, his unorthodox approach to goal-setting. Ben has a philosophy of neither exclusively long-term nor exclusively short-term goals, but a mix of the two. He told the audience to “Think about a long term problem, then identify the smallest first step to solve that problem.” Initially, TrialSpark was laser-focused on recruiting more patients for traditional clinical trials, which blinded them from pursuing the bigger, long-term goal of making a completely new-and-improved clinical trial model. It can be a big jump to say “We’re going to switch goals right now,” but there’s a balance to be struck, and that balance is incredibly important for the livelihood of a company.
It has been incredibly striking for me look to the middle instead of just the bookends of success. There is a lot to be learned from Ben and his culture-setting philosophy of TrialSpark. Young entrepreneurs often feel pressure to look like they “have it together,” or to be the smartest person in the room when it comes to their business. Looking at Ben shows us that we don’t have to always be the smartest person, even if we are at the head of the table. In fact, we should be actively looking for people that are smarter than us to join our team. Only then can the most ambitious goals and the most stable values be pursued. Ben’s realizations are not easily found at the beginning or the end of his journey, but in the middle. Let’s lean into the middle and learn from him.
Special thanks to TigerTables for hosting TrialSpark’s talk! TigerTables has talks every month featuring a variety of entrepreneurial people.
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Have suggestions for who we should talk to next? Are you an entrepreneur who wants to be featured? Contact us here: nsapkota@princeton.edu.
