🧬 Choosing Conviction Over Convention in Biotech | David Li Rerelease (2/4)
August 6, 2026
In this part of the podcast, David Li reflects on leaving finance after realizing that an investing career would not give him the tangible impact he wanted. He explains what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
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“I think having that internal conviction is everything.”
“I think having that internal conviction is everything.”
In this part of the podcast, David Li reflects on leaving finance after realizing that an investing career would not give him the tangible impact he wanted. He explains what KKR taught him about business and patient needs, then describes the team-and-market test that led him to Benchling.
David also discusses the timing behind Benchling’s growth, the rise of new cell and gene therapy workflows, and the luck involved in joining a company at the right moment. He shares what it meant to build sales, marketing, customer success, and culture from the ground up.
He then looks back on the early-stage lessons that shaped his next move toward more directly patient-facing life science work, including the importance of conviction, strong teams, and seeing what winning looks like.
Key Topics Covered:
- Long-term career decision-making
- Patient impact in life sciences
- Evaluating early-stage teams and markets
- Benchling’s life science informatics platform
- Cell and gene therapy market timing
- Luck, conviction, and career risk
- Building early-stage teams
- Sales and go-to-market in biotech software
- Everest Detection and cancer early detection
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Find our guest, David Li, at these links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-li-9aa210b
Website: https://www.melioratherapeutics.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:
Website: https://flow.page/kyojin
Resources & Articles:
Benchling Online Lab Notebook: https://www.benchling.com/notebook
Benchling at MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2016/benchling-google-docs-life-sciences-managing-sharing-data-1207
Cell and Gene Therapy Report: https://www.iqvia.com/insights/the-iqvia-institute/reports-and-publications/reports/strengthening-pathways-for-cell-and-gene-therapies
AbbVie and Stemcentrx Acquisition: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrx
Everest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/
Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:
Goldman Sachs: https://www.goldmansachs.com/
KKR: https://www.kkr.com/
Benchling: https://www.benchling.com/
Stemcentrx: https://investors.abbvie.com/news-releases/news-release-details/abbvie-expand-oncology-presence-through-acquisition-stemcentrx
AbbVie: https://www.abbvie.com/
Everest Detection: https://everestdetection.com/
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:03 KKR, Recruiting, and Long-Term Career Thinking
03:03 Finding Patient Impact in Investing
03:57 The Personal Truth Behind a Career Switch
05:48 Choosing Early-Stage Entrepreneurship
06:33 The Team-and-Market Test
07:46 Digitizing the Lab’s Chaos
08:44 Benchling’s Market Timing
11:58 Luck, Networks, and the Right Wave
13:32 Conviction Behind the Leap
14:34 Learning Leadership at Benchling
15:54 Returning to Patient-Facing Life Sciences
18:24 From Benchling to Everest Detection
20:54 Wearing Every Early-Stage Hat
22:28 What Winning Feels Like
24:03 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.