Part 2 of 3.

My guest for this week’s episode is Alok Tayi, Founder of Vibe Bio, a life science company focused on funding & guiding high-potential drug programs through value inflection points. Vibe Bio’s core comprises a community of scientists, patients, and partners dedicated to helping biotechs find the promising treatments that patients deserve.

Prior to Vibe Bio, Alok started and ran several life science-focused software companies, including PreScouter, TetraScience, and the Life Sciences division at Egnyte. Join us as we sit down with Alok to talk about his transition into entrepreneurship from academia and how that experience led to PreScouter.

Alok also covers his experience navigating the tech transfer ecosystem and offers some key takeaways from his time as a serial founder. Alok also discusses founding TetraScience, his time at Egnyte hyperscaling its life sciences division during Covid, and tips for managing people during that rapid growth. Please enjoy my conversation with Alok Tayi.

Find Our Guest, Alok Tayi, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aloktayi/
https://www.vibebio.com

Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee
https://www.excedr.com

Social & Website
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@excedr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/excedr_inc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExcedrInc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/excedr
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@excedr
Podcast Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:50 Episode start, Alok’s transition into entrepreneurship, the origins of PreScouter
03:35 Learning the go-to-market aspect of building business, the importance of doing sales
06:14 Enterprise sales and its duality, PreScouter takeaways for founders, the power of a .edu email address
09:28 Navigating the tech transfer ecosystem, taking tech from one industry to an adjacent one
11:13 How TetraScience came about, efficiency and data capture for science,
16:17 Moving on to Egnyte, building out the life science business unit, scaling from 1 to 60 employees
18:22 Experience working through Covid, biotech’s rapid growth and building something large quickly
22:11 Managing personnel during hyperscaling, importance of keeping your people on the same page
25:40 Outro

Enriched Notes:
Topics Mentioned:
Entrepreneurship https://www.excedr.com/category/entrepreneurship
Marketing & Sales Strategies for Startups https://www.excedr.com/blog/marketing-sales-strategies-for-biotechs
Principal Investigator (PI) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator
PreScouter https://www.prescouter.com/home/
Enterprise Sales https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/enterprise-sales
Tech Transfer https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-tech-transfer
Spinning Out of Academia https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-spin-out-of-academia-and-into-a-startup
TetraScience https://www.tetrascience.com/
Machine Learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning
Egnyte https://www.egnyte.com/
Capital Outlay https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-capital-outlay
Bootstrapping & Scaling Your Startup https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-bootstrap-biotech-startup
Creating a Budget for Your Startup https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-create-budget-biotech-startup
What is CapEX https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-capex
Lattice Mismatch https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/lattice-mismatch


People Mentioned:
Vineet Jain https://www.linkedin.com/in/vineetkjain/
Rajesh Ram https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramrajesh/
Amrit Jassal https://www.linkedin.com/in/amritjassal/
Kris Lahiri https://www.linkedin.com/in/kris-lahiri-135bb2/
David Spitz https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidspitz/