Roy Maute — Podcast Appearances & Summaries

Featured On 1 Podcast

The Biotech Startups Podcast

4 episodes

All Appearances

4 episodes

🧬 Staying Focused During Biotech Funding Ups & Downs | Roy Maute (Part 4/4)

The Biotech Startups Podcast

Feb 26, 202638 minCofounder of Feast Therapeutics

AI Summary

→ WHAT IT COVERS Roy Maute, CEO of Feast Therapeutics, details cofounding the 34-person clinical-stage immunotherapy company in 2021 with Irving Weissman and Amira Barkal, pursuing CD24 as a macrophage checkpoint target, navigating post-COVID biotech funding cycles, and advancing PHST001 through monotherapy dose escalation trials. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Fundraising timing:** When raising a Series A at the tail end of a boom cycle, pitch a conservative, focused capital ask tied to specific milestones rather than a broad platform vision. Feast secured funding by requesting only what was needed to reach the next stage, avoiding the overextended pitches common six months earlier that later collapsed. - **Team size discipline:** Deliberately cap headcount to match capital efficiency — Feast reached clinical stage with only 34 people by outsourcing finance, legal, regulatory, and quality functions to consultants and external experts. Bring functions in-house incrementally as data milestones justify it, rather than building a full internal infrastructure ahead of clinical proof points. - **Clinical-stage organizational structure:** Separate scientific and clinical development teams create dangerous silos. Feast structures translational biologists to move between lab and clinic, taking observations from patient samples back into bench experiments. This bidirectional flow improves biomarker strategy and helps identify which combination therapies to prioritize in dose expansion cohorts. - **Partnership sequencing:** Pursue large pharma collaborations only after generating clinical activity data, not before. Feast engaged potential partners early to understand what data would trigger serious interest, then focused resources on generating exactly that data. For earlier pipeline programs lacking resources, consider platform-level collaborations with large companies to co-develop novel immune regulators as ADCs. - **Investor selection criteria:** Prioritize investors with large enough funds to follow on through every development stage, deep scientific orientation, and a long-term value creation mindset over those optimizing for the fastest acquisition or IPO exit. Misaligned investors focused on short-term inflection points create pressure that conflicts with decisions that maximize patient outcomes and program value. → NOTABLE MOMENT Roy spent over a year at Gilead post-acquisition without meeting a single colleague in person due to COVID lockdowns — conducting senior-level strategy calls while pushing his young son in a stroller — and credits that disconnection as a factor that accelerated his decision to leave and cofound Feast. 💼 SPONSORS [{"name": "Excedr", "url": "https://www.excedr.com/partners"}] 🏷️ Macrophage Checkpoint Immunotherapy, Biotech Fundraising Strategy, Clinical-Stage Company Building, CD24 Cancer Target, Biotech Startup Operations

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🧬 Trust Over Control: Building Teams Like the Best Scientists | Roy Maute (Part 3/4)

The Biotech Startups Podcast

Feb 23, 202635 minBiotech Founder

AI Summary

→ WHAT IT COVERS Roy Maute traces his path from co-founding Ab Initio Biotherapeutics — a 10-person yeast-display drug discovery startup with a Pfizer collaboration — through its acquisition by Ligand Pharmaceuticals, then joining 47 Inc before its $4.9 billion Gilead acquisition, extracting management and collaboration lessons across each transition. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Trust-based hiring over micromanagement:** Irving Weissman's lab model — recruit through trusted networks, then grant full autonomy — produces exceptional output from top scientists who only need space, equipment, and funding. When building a team, identify which hires are self-directed and remove supervisory friction entirely rather than applying uniform oversight to everyone. - **Goal-setting framing for teams:** Rather than sandbagging estimates to guarantee delivery, set the most aggressive realistic targets openly and track progress transparently together. This prevents the "say four months, mean two" dynamic that erodes ambition. Psychological safety around missing goals — not sandbagging — is the mechanism that makes honest, stretch-oriented goal-setting sustainable. - **Collaboration credibility through warm introductions:** The Pfizer collaboration at Ab Initio became possible only because Tim Springer, a respected scientist-entrepreneur, made the introduction. Cold outreach to large pharma rarely works at seed stage; instead, map your founding team's academic network for connectors who carry credibility with industry partners and can transfer that trust to your company. - **Startup speed as structural advantage:** Large organizations like Gilead struggle with option paralysis — abundant resources make prioritization harder, not easier. Early-stage startups with a single drug and target avoid this by default. Founders should treat narrow focus as a deliberate competitive asset, not a resource limitation, particularly during preclinical and early clinical development phases. - **Watch-one-do-one-teach-one for non-scientific skills:** Roy absorbed acquisition mechanics, clinical biomarker strategy, and large-pharma governance primarily by observation before executing. Deliberately position yourself inside processes — even without a formal role — to compress learning cycles. One acquisition observed closely provides more applicable knowledge than multiple secondhand accounts from advisors or reading. → NOTABLE MOMENT Roy discovered that Gilead's internal CD47 program, running with far greater resources and starting at roughly the same time as 47 Inc, was ultimately outpaced by the smaller company — not because of superior science, but because resource constraints forced faster, less perfectionist decision-making. 💼 SPONSORS [{"name": "Excedr", "url": "https://www.excedr.com/partners"}] 🏷️ Biotech Startups, Drug Discovery, Pharma Collaboration, Acquisition Strategy, Team Management

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🧬 Why Comfort Is the Enemy of Scientific Growth | Roy Maute (Part 2/4)

The Biotech Startups Podcast

Feb 19, 202631 minBiotech Entrepreneur/Scientist

AI Summary

→ WHAT IT COVERS Roy Maute, postdoctoral researcher turned biotech founder, details his PhD training under Ricardo Dalla Favera at Columbia studying B-cell lymphoma genetics, his postdoc in Irving Weissman's Stanford lab exploring CD47 macrophage immunotherapy, and how deliberately choosing demanding environments over comfortable ones accelerated his scientific and entrepreneurial development. → KEY INSIGHTS - **Lab selection strategy:** When choosing a PhD lab, prioritize training rigor over comfort. Maute selected Ricardo Dalla Favera's lab specifically because of its demanding reputation, despite many peers avoiding it. The result: six calendar years of PhD work that produced roughly twelve years of equivalent lab experience through extreme hours and exposure to senior researchers. - **Real-time scientific communication:** Dalla Favera required every lab member to present results weekly at Friday afternoon meetings, including failed experiments and missing controls, which the PI would call out directly. Maute now applies a scaled version of this at his company — pushing team members to share imperfect, in-progress data rather than waiting months to present polished results. - **Mentor contrast as a training tool:** Maute's two mentors operated at opposite extremes — Dalla Favera ran a regimented, high-accountability environment while Weissman's Stanford lab was largely hands-off with minimal structure. Experiencing both sequentially gave Maute a broader leadership toolkit than either environment alone could have provided. - **Translational science proximity:** Weissman's lab at Stanford developed a CD47-targeting drug, manufactured it, and ran clinical trials entirely within an academic setting — a rare occurrence. Maute advises early-career scientists to seek labs where drug development steps are visible, even peripherally, as observing that pipeline accelerates understanding of the industry transition. - **Startup timing within a postdoc:** Maute co-founded Evanistio Biotherapeutics roughly 18 months into his postdoc, cutting the training period short to avoid missing a window with collaborators skilled in structural biology and directed protein evolution. He used Stanford's existing infrastructure and incubator resources in South San Francisco to secure seed funding and lab space. → NOTABLE MOMENT Maute arrived at Weissman's Stanford lab for his postdoc interview to find no one expected him, his scheduled contact was absent, and staff were unsure who he was. The disorganization of one of science's most productive labs directly contradicted everything his previous training had conditioned him to expect. 💼 SPONSORS [{"name": "Excedr", "url": "https://www.excedr.com/partners"}] 🏷️ Biotech Founding, Cancer Immunotherapy, Scientific Training, Academic-to-Industry Transition, CD47 Macrophage Biology

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🧬 “Get the Info, Take the Shot”: The DIY Mindset Behind Success | Roy Maute (Part 1/4)

The Biotech Startups Podcast

Feb 16, 202629 minCEO and cofounder of Feast Therapeutics

AI Summary

→ WHAT IT COVERS Roy Maute, CEO and cofounder of Feast Therapeutics, traces his path from a creative, DIY-focused Dallas upbringing through UC Berkeley and Columbia University, revealing how non-scientific roots, serendipitous lab connections, and a sink-or-swim academic culture shaped his identity as a biotech founder. → KEY INSIGHTS - **DIY Mindset as Founder Training:** Growing up renovating dilapidated historic houses instilled a core operating principle: gather the information, get the supplies, and attempt the task yourself. Maute applies this directly to biotech founding — no challenge is categorically off-limits. The belief that you are capable of executing, not just delegating, drives action over paralysis. - **Lab Entry via Dormitory Networks:** Maute failed twice to secure a lab position through Berkeley's formal matching infrastructure. His breakthrough came through a dormmate's pre-med sister, whose departing PI needed a replacement. The actionable lesson: exhaust informal social networks before concluding opportunities don't exist, especially in early-career scientific environments where personal referrals outperform applications. - **Embrace Grunt Work as Technical Foundation:** Maute's first lab tasks included mixing 20-liter salt solutions and weaning mice — nothing resembling his scientific interests. He frames this as essential trade-guild learning: wet lab science is a physical craft, and foundational technique mastery only happens through repetitive hands-on execution, not classroom instruction or observation. - **Sink-or-Swim Environments Accelerate Self-Selection:** Berkeley's large lecture structure, designed to challenge students' commitment rather than support them, forced Maute to confirm his scientific direction early. Seeking out high-pressure academic environments — rather than supportive ones — produces faster clarity on whether a chosen path is genuine versus assumed, saving years of misaligned effort. - **Constraint-Driven School Selection Produces Unexpected Fit:** Maute chose Columbia's Genetics and Development department partly because his partner wanted New York City. Applying geographic or personal constraints to graduate program selection is not a compromise — it can surface strong-fit institutions that wouldn't appear on a purely merit-optimized list, as Columbia's neurological development strength aligned with his Berkeley lab background. → NOTABLE MOMENT Maute describes being physically trapped in New York City for four extra days during a blizzard on his Columbia interview visit — an unplanned extended exposure to the city that reinforced his decision to enroll, illustrating how logistical disruptions can function as unintentional but decisive evaluation periods. 💼 SPONSORS [{"name": "Excedr", "url": "https://www.excedr.com"}] 🏷️ Biotech Founding, Scientific Career Paths, Innate Immune Oncology, Graduate School Strategy, DIY Entrepreneurial Mindset

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