🧬 Care Before You Share: Sales, Science & the PhD Ultra-Marathon | Mike Stadnisky Rerelease (Part 1/3)
April 27, 2026
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital — a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. Before Thielsen, Mike was CEO of Phytonix (acquired by Thermo Fisher) and FlowJo (acquired by BD Life Sciences), and has taught at MIT Sloan. In Part 1, Mike traces his path from growing up with a chemical engineer father who gave him early exposure to business strategy, to studying biochemistry at Clemson, to working as a Red Bull Student Brand Manager — a role that shaped his enduring "care before you share" philosophy: meeting people where they are, not where it's convenient. He carried that mindset into grad school at UVA, where he joined Michael Brown's lab to study NK cells and innate immunity, fell in love with flow cytometry, and had his first (tearful) encounter with FlowJo.
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"I always joke — I got my MBA from my dad before I ever even considered what the heck I wanted to do with it."
In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Jon Chee sits down with Mike Stadnisky, Managing Director of Thielsen Capital — a seed-stage life science tools syndicate. Before Thielsen, Mike was CEO of Phytonix (acquired by Thermo Fisher) and FlowJo (acquired by BD Life Sciences), and has taught at MIT Sloan. In Part 1, Mike traces his path from growing up with a chemical engineer father who gave him early exposure to business strategy, to studying biochemistry at Clemson, to working as a Red Bull Student Brand Manager — a role that shaped his enduring "care before you share" philosophy: meeting people where they are, not where it's convenient. He carried that mindset into grad school at UVA, where he joined Michael Brown's lab to study NK cells and innate immunity, fell in love with flow cytometry, and had his first (tearful) encounter with FlowJo.
Key Topics Covered:
- Business at the Dinner Table: How his chemical engineer father gave him an early, unfiltered business education
- Red Bull Brand Manager: Lessons in authentic connection and meeting people in their "moment of need"
- Biochemistry at Clemson: How a high school biology-chemistry program and Gattaca locked in his life science path
- Choosing Brown's Lab at UVA: Why lab culture matters as much as the science, and how small labs mirror startups
- NK Cells & Flow Cytometry: His PhD research focus and the origin story of a tools obsession that defined his career
- The PhD as an Ultra-Marathon: Why sustainable effort beats sprinting, and how grad school stress-tests you for every business ahead
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Subscribe to the Podcast:
Find our guest, Mike Stadnisky at these links:
Website: https://www.thielsencapital.com/
Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/
Learn more about Excedr:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Website: https://www.excedr.com
Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:
What Is Flow Cytometry & How Do Flow Cytometers Work?: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-flow-cytometry-how-do-flow-cytometers-work
How to Break Into Biotech BD as a PhD Student: https://www.excedr.com/blog/how-to-break-into-biotech-bd-as-a-phd-student
How to Spin Out of Academia & Into a Startup: https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-spin-out-of-academia-and-into-a-startup
Why Some Biotech Startups Struggle to Scale: https://www.excedr.com/resources/why-some-biotech-startups-struggle-to-scale
Gattaca (1997): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
Hidden Talents of Natural Killers: NK Cells in Innate and Adaptive Immunity (EMBO Reports): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2759738/
How Experts Practice Better Than the Rest — Deliberate Practice & the 10,000 Hour Rule: https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-strategy
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
Companies & Universities:
Thielsen Capital: https://www.thielsencapital.com
FlowJo: https://www.flowjo.com
BD Life Sciences: https://www.bd.com
Thermo Fisher Scientific: https://www.thermofisher.com
Red Bull: https://www.redbull.com/us-en
Clemson University: https://www.clemson.edu
University of Virginia: https://www.virginia.edu
MIT Sloan School of Management: https://mitsloan.mit.edu
People:
Michael Brown, Ph.D. (Professor of Medicine – Nephrology, UVA; Principal Investigator, Brown Lab): https://med.virginia.edu/faculty/faculty-listing/mgb4n/
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:28 Growing Up at the Intersection of Business and Science
07:52 The Science Obsession: Chemistry Textbooks and Secret Knowledge
10:13 Biochemistry at Clemson: Earning the Hard Course
16:09 Becoming a Red Bull Student Brand Manager on Campus
18:31 Care Before You Share: Selling to Engineers at Midnight
24:46 Leaving Red Bull Behind: The Pull Back to the Lab
31:16 Michael Brown's Lab at UVA: NK Cells and Lab Culture
39:12 Falling in Love with Flow Cytometry and Crying Over FlowJo
41:31 The PhD as an Ultra-Marathon: Finding Your Sustainable Pace
48:45 The Lab as a Startup: Skin in the Game Science
49:55 Outro
The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.