We’re online 🇫🇷 with Thomas Ybert, the co-founder of DNA Script, the leading biotech for DNA printing of oligos.
We talked about the commercialization of the first DNA printer. We also talked about company building at large and how to expand to the US successfully.
⭐️ ABOUT THE SPEAKER
At just 30 years old, Thomas Ybert co-founded DNA Script in 2014 in Paris. Previously he worked in R&D at Sanofi before joining Total in the New Energies Division where he contributed to the bio jet-fuel project in collaboration with Amyris. It was here he developed his passion for manufacturing synthetic DNA which moved him from the world of academic research to a startup.
🔗 LINKS MENTIONED
- From 3 nucleotides to being a cornerstone technology for precision medicine, my journey creating an Enzymatic DNA Synthesis technology and company: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-3-nucleotides-being-cornerstone-technology-precision-ybert-ykw3c?trackingId=HIpMVK4lTiOPcxcWeSsI4w%3D%3D&lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_search_srp_all%3BIW0XygKqT4Wbnq6s0mNP7Q%3D%3D
- DNA Script to Unveil Industry’s Most Versatile On-site, On-Demand DNA Printer at the World’s Largest Synthetic Biology Conference: https://www.biospace.com/dna-script-to-unveil-industry-s-most-versatile-on-site-on-demand-dna-printer-at-the-world-s-largest-synthetic-biology-conference
- DNA Script Appoints Marc Montserrat as CEO to Drive Long-Term Commercial Growth for Groundbreaking Enzymatic DNA Synthesis Platform: https://www.dnascript.com/press-releases/dna-script-appoints-marc-montserrat-as-ceo-to-drive-long-term-commercial-growth-for-groundbreaking-enzymatic-dna-synthesis-platform/
- Towards Longer, Purer Oligonucleotides Thanks to Enzymatic DNA Synthesis: https://www.synbiobeta.com/read/towards-longer-purer-oligonucleotides-thanks-to-enzymatic-dna-synthesis
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
Thomas Ybert: We are enabling the access of the longest, the more complex DNA pieces. So no experiment cannot be done, basically. Okay, wow. All of that is fueled by this innovative enzymatic DNA synthesis technology because we’re completely changing the paradigm on how DNA is made. By being inspired by nature, by how DNA is made into living organisms.
into sales with an enzyme and not with a chemical catalyst. I clearly wrote that the first two years were tough, but in fairness, every year I’ve been tough in a different way. And
Philip Hemme: I think one thing that I really liked in your stories as well is that you basically had always a starting base in Paris, but you rapidly expanded also in NSF and you rapidly had both and rapidly had US investors, rapidly had a team in the US.
Now most of your commercial is in the US, that’s also very hard to do. How was
Thomas Ybert: it? In our story, it was a very deliberate move. We knew from the get go that more than 50 percent of the market is in North America or US.
Philip Hemme: Bienvenue to a new episode. I’m your host, Philippe, and on this show, I’m interviewing the best Europeans in biotech to help you grow.
DNA oligos is an essential part of biotech. Now, it is possible to have a DNA printer in the lab to have a faster and better access to those oligos. The leading provider of such a DNA printer is DNA script, which is based in Paris and San Francisco. So I caught up with one of its founders, Tomas. I’ve known DNA script and its founder team since almost seven years before they raised the seed round.
We talked about the commercialization of the first DNA printer. We also talked about company building at large and how to be successful in the U. S. expansion. So here’s my conversation with Thomas and please hit the like follow button if you’re enjoying it. All right, welcome to the show Thomas.
Thomas Ybert: Thank you Philippe glad to be there.
Thank you for having me.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, it’s great. Actually, we’re just saying it’s the first time we really talk live. I mean, I know your co founders really well, but it’s, it’s a good opportunity.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, I’m pretty excited.
[00:02:06] One decade after the inception of DNA Printing
Philip Hemme: Cool. So I want to start with, with basically the decade since you started DNNscripted.
Congrats on the 10 years already. And congrats on the numbers I saw in the press release and you made a nice blog post that you raised basically 260 or 265 million euros. You had 150 patents, which is a lot of patents, and now you commercialize and you have 20 million euros of sales already. So yeah, I guess you must be like super proud of the.
Of the, of the achievements, like,
Thomas Ybert: right, Philippe, it, it, it has been a journey that started with, with the three co founders having a vision and, and an idea and, and a strong desire to build something. And I think that’s what I’m pretty proud about at, at DNScript is that we really built it from scratch, like unlike the usual startup story when it’s involving deep tech and, and, and, and science and so on.
It’s not a spinoff from a lab. It’s, it’s, we, we basically decided to create it and we did it. And so that part really make me proud because it’s, it’s, it’s very, very difficult to do that. You need to build a company while you’re. Inventing the technology, you’re building the science behind it. But you have also to, to, to bring that all together, having in mind that at the end of the day, you’re building a company, so it has to be generating revenue, it has to have some decent margin and, and be profitable.
Yes, it’s, it’s, it’s been, we probably we are, we, all the three co founders were first entrepreneur and including myself, obviously, and, and, and we probably didn’t start by the easy way, but that’s also what, what. It’s a bit of a definition of our self. So that, that, that makes sense in a way
Philip Hemme: it worked out well, though, maybe on the, on the, on the scratch, I, I, on the blog post, you mentioned that the first two years were really tough, like you’re trying to make experiments and you are struggling to get some results at the, at the beginning to make it work.
Can you go back to a bit expand on this, on this moments and like how you. Got your first proof of concept. And then, as you said, like, I think it’s really tricky, especially when you don’t spin out from institute, like how you managed to reach them to get the first financing and really get the, get everything going.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah. Yeah. I probably, I, I clearly wrote that, that the first two years were tough. But in fairness, every year I’ve been tough in two different way, no, but. Because it was tough, but it was also very simple. We needed to start somewhere, and where we needed to start was building the foundational technology and push the boundary of science.
And that was all the focus. So focus wise, it was pretty, pretty good and pretty easy. What was tough is that it was longer in the lab iterating on, on experiment, trying everything. And, and, and you know, how science is, is working. You, you it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not that predictable aspect. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, if, if you don’t have.
Like there is no crystal ball in, in what is going to happen or not. So sometimes you, you, you’re facing like failure after failure after failure when you’re looking for some particular resulting to your experiment and, and it could be tough emotionally and it could be tough To just stay very long hour at night or during the weekends while the, the result are, are, are keep coming negative.
But we, we went out of that phase and, and actually we went out into, into a really, really great way. It’s, it’s almost something that you will say I’m, I’m inventing, but. At some point, our, our, our goal was to be able to synthesize 10 nucleotides in a row, like to put those 10 nucleotides one after each other.
And, and we were stuck for a super long time at three or five ish, and we couldn’t go any longer. And it, it was a real struggle for the company. And I remember. I, I, I had a moment where I got back to my, to my lab notebook and I’m, I’m looking at the past page, which by the way is, is a good advice. Like you should always keep a well organized, well written notebook because it could, it could literally save your life.
So I was doing like regard, like looking at that past experiment and, and some results struck my eyes at that point. And I say, well, I probably, I’m, I’m, Oversighting on this particular mutant of our polymerase that we were using for the, for the for the technology. And, and I didn’t understand at that time why I decided to just forget about that mutant.
And, and at this moment I say, okay, we need to test that. And it was in December and my full family in law, they live in California. So, and, and that particular. Winter, I need to go to California to spend Christmas with her. So I, I told my, my team at that time, which was only two people with me at the lab, like, you look, you, you need to produce this mutant and to test it.
And, and so we, we are putting all that together and taking the plane and I’m, I’m like, okay, show me, like, send me the result when I’m touching down. I’m touching down on 24 December in, in SFO and, and I’m, I’m activating my data. I’m usually not doing that because I don’t want to pay the fee, but like this time I’m activating my data like crazy.
And they sent me this gel picture showing the 10 nucleotides, like super clean, super neat. And I was like, this is the best Christmas present. Naturally, it, it unlocks a lot of things because with, with that in hands. We were able to show it to one of our main investor, Illumina Venture, that really super understood the core of the technology and it accelerated our discussion with them about what would become a Series A fundraising that would be transformative for the company.
So it was, yeah, the two first were tough, but there has been some really, really good moments and the focus was great. The energy was great and, and so on. So tough, but tough in a good way. Okay.
Philip Hemme: Gives me goosebumps. Reminds me the, the, the early days of lab biotech as well. The first two years where rollercoasters, I think every entrepreneur, I mean, know any, would be entrepreneur who listens to the show is also, I think that’s one of the lessons, at least the first two years is of a co, of any company I would say is.
It’s, it’s intense and you have to at least stick to the two years and try to go past and even setbacks, setbacks go. I think you have a very good lessons there on the, maybe in you, you mentioned a lot of the science and the experiments. I’m curious also on the, on the finance side on how did you get. the financing to run these experiments.
You mentioned the CSA, but I think you had a seat already was, I think, Sophie Nova, if I’m correct.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, absolutely. Philippe. Well, even before that, and, and one of the, a bit difficult or complex aspect in the first two years was the very first chunk of money we got it from friends and family, and it was super small, it was 150, 000.
Euros at that time, and I had to, I was the only one on the payroll and I clearly had to adjust my compensation to be able not drain everything from the company at that time and keep it going through the experiment, paying the lab, the reagent, the different vendors and so on. So that, that’s how we started.
We really started out of our network of friend and family that we’re crazy enough for. Or generous enough, I should say, to give us this amount of money in order to really kickstart from nothing, like we had, we had, we had. 15 slide and our brain to, to, to start with. So we, we start with that money and, and we would not quickly, but we, we, we achieve a very like small especially from today’s point of view, but.
A small proof of concept, scientific proof of concept. And with that and, and, and more work on how to commercialize, how to bring this technology to the market and the vision of the company, we brought that to investor or including Sofinova and Kerma. That’s our two fantastic VCs in the, in the French European scene.
And in, in the sense of they are very innovative and, and, and look at disruptive technology and, and so on. And they were pretty interesting into, into doing that. So then we, we raise our CERI seed at the end of, of 2016, a bit before the end of 2016. And and with that money, we could really transition from what looked like a garage project into real company, like hiring our first employee, even if we kept it very small, like we’d probably grew from one full time employee that was me to, to 10 or 12.
So it’s very small, but still it was, it was, it was going into the, the, the, creating the company path.
Philip Hemme: You really made it from zero to one, basically. Actually, it reminds me that. That’s when I first met Sylvain and his co founder, he came to one of our events from La Biotech, which was at the Machine du Moulin Rouge, which is pretty funny.
And I still remember he told me the whole plan, everything, and he was, we’re closing a seed. I was like, yeah, okay. So it sounds great, but like I wasn’t sure it would, would work and everything, but it sounded great. And then I saw you closed it and then everything else, it was like, wow, well done, like, it was a very nice, very nice.
See you then.
[00:12:35] The problem DNA printing is solving
Philip Hemme: Yeah. And maybe you, you zooming out a bit on the, on the problem you are solving. I mean, the product is a DNA printer based on enzymes enzymes to, to, to make the oligos from what I understand you, you are, I mean, you’re, you’re one of the leaders for, for that globally. And from what I understand, also one of the problem you’re trying to solve is the, is the logistic aspect on the speed to get your oligos.
So you have the printer in the lab versus ordering them and getting it shipped, everything. Can you expand a bit on, on, yeah, on the, on the problems you’re, you’re solving?
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, sure. So what, what we’re already solving is, is for researcher in any, In any format, any field, but more especially in the, in the field of pharma therapeutics to get the DNA, the need to make things progress like access to DNA is in, in, in, in life science in my opinion.
A big bottleneck because you are using DNA to program or reprogram biological system and there is always a physical barrier in order for people that are designing, experiment, designing, DNA, even, even in directly or using software tool to get. this molecule into the experiment. And we are to solve that.
So yes, there is a logistic turnaround time speed aspect to it. There is a control aspect to it. And there is also quality of performance aspect to it. Like we are. With our enzymatic DNA synthesis, we call it EDS for short, we are enabling the access of, of the longest, the more complex DNA pieces. So no experiment cannot be done, basically.
So there is a logistic aspect or a material aspect to it, but there is also performance or unlocking of, of of sequence space and sound aspect to it as well. So we are, we are really, and, and all of that is fueled by this innovative enzymatic DNA synthesis technology, because we’re completely changing the paradigm on how DNA is made in By being inspired by nature, by how DNA is made into, into living organisms, into cells with, with, with an enzyme and not with with a chemical catalyst.
Because the chemical catalyst made sense when we discover the DNA molecule structure in the 50s, we wanted to understand how it was working, we wanted to replicate and, and chemistry was the strongest way and the most amenable way to do it. But, but we’ve made so much progress into enzyme engineering, polymerase engineering in general, and also other aspects that when we created the company, we, we, we did it with a strong vision that the, the chemical way of making DNA should be replaced by something that is way more powerful, but in the same time Super easy to implement because the enzyme is doing the very lifting work, not the operator or not, not, not the scientist or the engineer or the technician.
Philip Hemme: Because by, by preparing the call, I, I talked to a friend who was, who was a researcher at Harvard and he would, I told him, yeah, I think you guys are solving a logistics part of the logistics problem. He told me, yeah, but I mean, at Harvard, I just ordered my early go and the next morning they’re already here.
So why do I really need it like a printer? So, I mean, yeah, what do you, I guess, maybe that’s some of the objections you hear from time to time.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, yeah, and, and that depends exactly on your configuration and, and, and so on. When you just want an oligo and, and you’re in, into a great place like Halvard, yes, there is.
The logistic aspect is, is, is pretty slim to solve, although you can, you can like having it in, in, in six hour in full of your control with no information sharing is, is, is still valuable for some, some companies and, and some teams and, and, and some setups. But also like whenever you’re, you’re going away from the vanilla short oligos, the time increase the sequence space, like the, what, what service provider will reject because they, they, they seems it’s, it’s too complex for them also in, in like the sequence space narrows down.
So. The rejection increase, the rejection rate increase. And so at the end of the day you don’t have what you want or you don’t have it exactly when you need it. And, and, and so that’s, that’s an issue because it, it, it just prevent innovation, it just prevent people to focus on under the, the, the important aspect of their work, which is to, to make that project progress and, and to get the answer or to build something.
And, and, and, and just worrying about the tool to build your stuff is, is, is not a good way to go.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, I like that. Yeah. And on the, on the competition side, I mean, I looked up also a bit your, your competitors. I mean, one on the, on the, on DNA printing, I saw there’s, what is molecular assemblies or evotenics on the more chemistry or let’s say, I know twists, I know Emily from twists.
Like, how do you, I think, I mean I have a guess on how you differentiate, but yeah, how do you differentiate from, from all of them? Like, I mean, you mentioned some of it.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, the, the, the DNA market is really complex. You have, you have different products, you have different technology, you have different business model.
And so depending on who we are talking about or targeting, we, we, we compete into different ways. One, one point that we already touched, Philippe, is, is On the business model, we are one of the only company to offer a distributed solution. Like if you want to have a capacity to print your own, I mean, the DNA you need into your own project directly into your lab, we can provide that.
And with, with unprecedented performances unprecedented speed and unprecedented ease of, of, of implementation. Yeah, I will put the image.
Philip Hemme: So it’s really a DNA printer, like a. Big machines.
Thomas Ybert: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a sequential side, but instead of reading the DNA, it’s, it’s, it’s synthesizing the DNA and, and, and you have different kits format.
We have the 96, so you can print 96 sequence up to 120 nucleotide at directly in your lab. Or we have the 3 84 format as well. So you can print lots of DNA, it’s pretty fast. Like six hours if you want. Primers a bit. A bit longer if you want longer oligo longer yeah, oligos and so on.
So that’s, that’s one way we differentiate. Another way we differentiate is, is on, on the technology. As I say, we are really in the, in the forefront of innovation in term of DNA synthesis technology, and we’re using enzyme. There is a few company, you mentioned molecular assembly. There is other that. Are trying and following our path into developing enzymatic DNA synthesis technology.
We’re the only real commercial one, so we’ve scaled, we, we invented the technology, we developed it and then we scale it to commercial level. And, and, and we are also doing a lot of the synthesis inside our walls in order to make our customer benefit from the last advancement in, in our technology performances.
So we are able to print 600 nucleotide, all it goes into one row, just in order to, we, we Which is
Philip Hemme: impossible by chemistry.
Thomas Ybert: Possible by chemistry. No one, no one will take, will take those order. Same, same on the complexity side. If you want like, I don’t know, like an OBO polymer of repeat of a, for an mRNA molecule, like doing a poly, you can, you can order at us if you want.
351 a’s in a row. I don’t know why, but if you want that, we can, we can make it for you. And, and so in that sense, we can really unlock a lots of lots of different sequence space and complexity, complexity being used there as, as a general adjective, like lens is part of the complexity, repeats homopolymer is part of the complexity.
So, so, yeah, the way we are synthesizing DNA is, is, is differentiated for sure. And, and the way we are scaling the technology, the way we are approaching the technology is another differentiating factor, so. In that sense, we’re pretty unique. You, you, you won’t find a company that is doing enzymatic plus, distributed plus scale the technology and, and commercial, this new technology in one, in, in this type of way.
And, and, and, and we’re taking EDS and we’re putting that into lots of different format. Like we’re integrating our EDS technology to make gene directly, so not on the oligo, but assemble those oligo. into a fully in vitro approach. So you can, you can add directly genes that are gene fragment that you can use for developing sort of new therapeutic modalities, such as mRNA vaccines, such as cell and gene therapies and so on and so forth.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. Thank you.
[00:22:44] Reaching €20M sales
Philip Hemme: On the, actually on the commercialization, what’s What’s I, I saw the sales number, I mean, 20 million, you, you, I think you launched, what was it in May, 2023, you launched the printer. So it’s not that long, but the 20 million figure didn’t seem that high to me or like, what do you like?
Thomas Ybert: So we launched our, our, our, our syntax products in, in early 2023. So think about first January, January, 2023. Then this 20 million figure is a blend of, of lots of things. It’s, it’s from our product, from the different revenue we get from R& D contract and so on. So well, You say, you know, twist, Philippe, look at their number in the first year and so on.
They were around like three and then probably six the second year million revenue, which in, in the life science tool business is, is, it’s a pretty good number. Of course, everyone wants this number to be as high as possible, but I think we, we, we’ve done a decent job at, at commercializing something that is, is, is, is difficult, especially on.
Into this new economic environment where the interest rate since half 2022 has skyrocketing, which make a CapEx play because we’re selling a box, basically. We’re selling a system, an instrument. And kits and recurring revenue coming from kits. And that is since the interest rate are up to the roof, both CapEx play as a business model has been very, very difficult.
Look at even Illumina stock. I mean, those, these companies has, has been the, the. Like controlling the sequencing market for decades, and they’re still it’s still difficult for them. And, and so till for a small company like ours, it’s, it’s clear that it’s going to have an impact.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, yeah. Don’t I, I know it from, even from the podcast trying to get advertisers right now and advertising budget also, like, hard to get, yeah.
Let’s see how 2025, 2026, how it sounds like maybe it’s, it’s starting off again or getting better, but let’s see.
[00:25:09] Productizing a science breakthrough
Philip Hemme: Okay, no, I think that’s that’s good. And maybe on the, what, what’s one thing else, I mean, we talked about the beginning. We are talking about where is now. I’m curious also is in the between because, I mean, as you, as you mentioned, you, you, you went from ID from basically like rough technology that you productize.
And then you really go into commercialization. So it’s quite like some steps and quite difficult steps. Like maybe what were some of your like lessons on the, within the productization and preparing for, for commercialization.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s a good question Philippe in the sense that there, there is so many, so how, how to make it meaningful for the people that are listening well on, on, on the productification, if I start with, with this aspect it’s clear that a lot of people Warn us about that making a system, an instrument like a box to sell is, is, is paramount of difficulties because you need the box to work, but you need to work in the field, like in the end of your customer.
And that’s really tough because it’s, it’s a different environment that you’re not controlling. The user will behave into a way you’re not controlling. You have to, you have to think about all the failure mode and you have to make it like super extra robust and, and, and it’s like you use it. Yeah. Easy to use.
And we were listening to those advice and, and we were understanding them, but it’s only when you really are doing it that you, you, you, you take the full. Extend of this comment and and those advice. And it’s true that it’s very, very hard to build a box. It’s probably worth one of the lesson now is you should build the box and and and test it internally with with as as as far as possible with with internal customer like like naive people in your organization that will be able to use it.
And, and to find the, the, the failure more like to break it, like even a bit like the software company, when they release a new version, they probably ask a part of the company, like, try to hack it so we can, we can understand where, where are the blind spot and so on. And so that, that, that is critical in the past of making such complex system that needs to be as robust.
And that’s taking a long time and, and, and, and, and the trade off is you should, you should really think about like what are the, really the, the two or three feature you want to be on that box and forget about everything else. And, and you do that very, very well in terms of robustness. And only after that you start building on yeah.
We also did that work when it was in the middle of actually, we, we really started just before the COVID pandemic breakout. And so for us the, we, we use an external theorem in order to help us engineer the system because We, at the core of the company, we are people that are building a molecular biology technology.
We’re not making hardware or software or, or electronics or whatever. Plus we, we wanted to, to make this part not disruptive innovation. I mean, there is a lots of work and engineering and, and brain that was put into the syntax design and, and development. We were already innovated, innovating, sorry, on the, on the biochemistry side.
So we wanted to keep that as, as most of the shelf.
Philip Hemme: And you didn’t need to reinvent how to
Thomas Ybert: make a box like speak or manage what to, you know, it’s and, and, and doing that into the pandemic, just make this even harder with, with communication, with testing and so on, because we were, our, our, our partner is, is in us and, and, and, and just make that, Super hard.
So also one of the lessons to learn is that distance and time difference is, is, is, is, is a reality. And even if our communication channel and tools has improved tremendously it’s still difficult. And so if, if you have a, if you can find a partner that is close to you in the same time zone it will make your life easier for sure.
Philip Hemme: I like, I like that. And bouncing on what you said on, like, the difficulty, I mean, like, what, what comes to my mind as well is that you really need the firepower as well to make it work, especially the financing. And I guess this explains also the amount of money you raised because you need Like enough capacity people to, to execute and to, to solve these, all these challenges.
And I, I guess for some startups that don’t manage to raise enough and maybe try to do a too complex product, there’s just a misfit, maybe. How do you see it?
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, yeah, absolutely Philippe. In, in, so we, there is two, two aspects in, in our story. First, we. And, and I think every, every entrepreneurship story as, as a part of luck.
And, and this is where we got lucky. We were into a clearly upward trend in Dharma fundraising. We started the company in 2014 and we did our last fundraising at the end of 2021. And, and if you look at how many years, how many, how much money invested and so on, it was clearly a very good. Trend and, and we, we, we basically ride that, that wave and on that sense, we were lucky because we, if it would have been a different, at least fundraising story, if we were creating the company at a, at a different time.
But the thing where we, we, we created our own luck or we were fully in control is, is our funding strategy. And our funding strategy was quite simple. We are very, very into always fundraising mode. Like, like we do raise Series A way before plan. When we raised Series C, we had I don’t remember exactly, but probably a two years or two year and a half runway.
And actually within the first year, we raised Series A. And, and the reason is we were like always entertaining investor discussion and relationship and always trying to see about the, the, the, the the small signal in the in, in, in, in the investor side where we could engage into a fundraising conversation, even if it was not exactly the plan in terms of cash runway and so on.
And we did that, so is A, so is B, so is B and, and even so is C. And, and I think It, it, it really solved for what you say, Philip, about having the dry powder or to be able to do those complex and, and long and, and costly development.
Philip Hemme: That’s a good a good lesson for anyone fundraising.
[00:32:49] Thomas Ybert’s transition from CEO to CSO
Philip Hemme: On the, maybe on actually one, one thing on the blog post as well, you said you were transitioning now to, to CSO, so you’re a CEO for 10 years, now CSO, and there’s a new CEO coming in, Mark.
Can you, yeah, just talk briefly about the, the transition. Otherwise, and yeah, how you, how you feel about it.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, sure. Sure. Well I mean I, I’ve always had this 10 year horizon in front of my eyes. Like you can, you can ask Xavier and Silva actually every, every year or two years. So I, I reminded them about this.
10 year period of time. And, and it’s a bit silly, but for me it was important to, to keep in mind this horizon from a personal and professional standpoint. And, and, and so when basically I created the company in 2014 and in 20 24, the 10 year horizon were there. And I have anticipated about that.
And, and I, I, I sat with myself and, and we think about like, what is the next branch and. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, you get it. And, and, and, so I, I, It’s, it’s a bunch of, it’s a bunch of of reasons. Some of them are, are clearly personal. I have three kids now my, my middle son, Marius, is, is on the autistic spectrum, so he needs me and, and I need to be to be there for him.
So there is clearly some, some personal aspect, there is that, but there is more than that. And there is also some professional aspect where yeah, I think I, I could be more useful for the company in, in that role. I can also go back to stuff that I was not able to spend enough time in my opinion on, which is around the, the application, the, the, the market, the link between what the market wants and what the company capability can be done and so on.
And also because I, I, I had a, I had a. A sense and a feeling of accomplishing part of my mission. And that’s yes, of course, I’m, I’m, I’m the number one servant of the company. But at some point, I, I, I, the, the thing I want to do is, is important. As well, and it matters and, and, and the thing I wanted to do at that point was, was a bit different than the thing I, I, I used to do.
And so I, after 10 years, after bringing the company from where I created to where it is now, I think I, I, I’ve accomplished. Clearly part of the mission and I deserve to be able to think a bit about myself as well.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. I was about to ask, I mean, it sounds, sounds very, very good because I, I heard sometimes.
I mean, especially in the Silicon Valley of quite some in San Francisco, quite some stories where the, the founders are pushed out and you have kind of the investors pushing for professional management to come in, CEO and the whole like founders mod discussion comes out, came out recently and there’s, there’s quite some, like, In some cases, it didn’t work out well, but in some other case, it also worked out well.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s always tricky. It’s it’s difficult for, for lots of people. Like we, I have employee in the company that I recruited myself probably like nine or 10 years ago. And, and, and obviously for those people or anyone in the company, this is, this is This is a an important change and important information you like, no one knows the future with certainty.
So there is, yeah, there is a lot of complexity around that. And this is why I think part of my interim mission is to, to make sure it’s, it’s working well and, and, and, and going well, which, which, which, which it is. I mean, Mark has, has taken the job as, as as beginning of October and we’re making tremendous progress on.
On, on every aspect actually. So so yes, and, and picking up on your comment, Philippe, on, on the founder, CEO, and sometimes what investor wants and son, what I’m, what I’m hearing from, at least from my perspective is that there is. A good value in, in, in being a founder CEO versus a professional CEO in the eyes of, of, of some investor or year, at least in the, in the Silicon Valley.
Like I’m, I’m, I’m hearing really people that, that are looking for this very profile instead of just a professional CEO, which makes sense to me, like being a founder CEO. I understand how things could be different from from a professional CEO. But, but, but like sometime a company needs a professional CEO and, and it’s completely natural transition.
Like every company, like the big name that we know from the tech or from the deep tech there, most of the company are going through those changes. It’s, it’s just the natural cycle of life of, of companies.
Philip Hemme: It’s good. Could you, could you, I’m curious, could you expand a bit, especially in life sciences for like the, the difference it may have of having a founder CEO.
Versus a professional CEO coming in and in your views or in your experience with the transcript, what’s your, what’s your good feeling?
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, well, I, I will have to acquire more experience to really, really answer, I think the meaningfully this question, but. On the founder CEO side, what I can tell you that I mean, every one of us there is a reason why we are creating those company and taking the, the really high amount of risk, taking the super high burden, the difficulty we’ve took at the beginning of the show, all of that, there is a reason why we are doing that the reason is the vision.
The motivation, the patient and, and so on. And I’m not saying a professional CEO cannot have that, but it’s, it’s different. Like, like the story begins by an impulse and, and, and the funding, CEO or the funders are giving this impulse and, and that’s the, the, the difference. And sometime there is company that’s where they are they need that, that impulse or they need this type of approach instead of a very,
I don’t know, like very meticulous, very rational or whatever profile of, of more commercial CEO you, you, you can put behind that
Philip Hemme: like that.
[00:39:53] Early US expansion for DNA Script
Philip Hemme: And on the, I think one thing we, we didn’t, I mean, you mentioned the U S and what you said, you had a partner in the U S and you, and you, you mentioned, I mean, the, the partner to develop the, the box that’s going to listen to, I guess. And I think one thing that I really liked in your stories as well is that you, you basically had always a, I mean, kind of a starting base in, in Paris, but you rapidly expanded also in NSF and you rapidly had both and rapidly had U.
S. investors, rapidly had a team in the U. S. I think now most of your commercial I think is in the U. S. as well, if I, if I understood correctly, like how, how did that, but that’s also very hard to do. I mean, You mentioned time difference. I mean, nine hours is quite a lot. But how, like, yeah, how, how was it and how, how important was it for, for to contribute to success?
Thomas Ybert: Yes. So, so on, on, in, in our story, it was a very deliberate move for, for, for taking a certain number of bucks. We knew from the get go that more than 50 percent of the market. Was and still is in North America or U. S. So for us, it was very obvious that being seen as a local company would be a plus and would be important.
So I always had that in mind. One of the other reason was the talent pool especially for building the box, which I think is, is evolving right now. We have some very, very good people in Europe and, and even in France that could, could completely do, do, do the job that, that we’ve done in US. But at that time, maybe because a bit of a lack of, of of, of knowledge and, and a bit Being receptive to our American investor, we thought the talent put was very, very different and, and, and we wanted to benefit from, from a talent put that at least on paper or with what people told us was, was better in U S again, I think it’s, it’s, it’s not true.
It wasn’t probably true at that time and it’s clearly not true today, but at least it was one of the motivating factual on, on, on that. And, and, and being close to, to, to, to the money, to the investor, I, I mean, you probably have heard some, some, some story where our people in the Silicon Valley would invest only if it’s a less than 30 minute drive time to their office.
And, and I honestly don’t know if it’s true or not, but there is a part of truth in that. Like if you’re closer to those people, they are more likely to invest. You seems to be It’s more easy or they understand more like it’s, it’s, it’s a bit like a human things, a human thing. And so so, so that was a different reason.
That was very deliberate. Now it’s very hard. It, it costs a lot. And, and sometime we, we probably precipitate the, the, we went too fast into, into. Growing or, or creating some activities in us are and, and, and we are, if we had taken a bit more time to think, is it better to do it in us on that one learning is that like having the, the, the part of your company that is.
Developing the product close to the part of your company that is developing the core capacity, capabilities and the core technology is very important because you need those people to literally be in the same room in order to quickly iterate, quickly resolve, unforecasted issue and so on.
And, and, and sometime for us, it took more time. It’s, it’s like we were lost into the time zone or lost into, into translation. But because your, your
Philip Hemme: R& D, your, your molecular R& D was still in Paris. Basically the. The productization of box was in the U. S.
Thomas Ybert: You got it. You get it. And sometime it was just doing extra extra change to, to just pass this 6, 000 kilometer distance and nine hour time difference.
And, and, and it’s also sometime run into our benefit. Like, like clearly DNA script is like, it’s, it’s a 24 hour company. Like, like when, when the team in Paris and they are, they, the team in us basically I’ve, I started there and, and, and could. could go to your benefit. But in the, in the early productization phase, it’s really good to have the two functions, the two activities, sorry very close one to another in order to really be able to iterate super quickly and to solve the, the different challenges.
Philip Hemme: And I, I think she, I mean, maybe also on a bit more personal question, but I think you mentioned your, or your partner, your wife is, is is American. And are you, and you were already based or you had work experience in the valley, in SF? And then I think for Sylvain, if I remember correctly is, is, is a similar story as well.
So how, how did this play a role also to help choose SF or choose the U. S.? Like.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah. So on, on, on my case, my wife is French, but our parents, they are living in California, absolutely. And it’s true that before locating myself in U. S., I had a past experience actually 12 years ago where I was working for Total and I got exploited I got Work in, in, in us for the towel.
So in, in the Bay Area, so yes, the Bay Area was very familiar to me and to us because you mentioned Sylva as well. So yes, we, we knew that. It didn’t really matter in the decision of expanding the company in US. So it was not part of why we want to do that. It was more what I say earlier. But it’s right that it, it, it took a path into the decision of choosing the Bay Area alternative to other parts in the, in the U.
S. country. We, we actually, we are engineers, so we did a, a decision matrix with different like cities or area in the U. S. We had Boston, we had SF, we had San Diego, we had a bunch of them, and we scored them. And we, we really did this thing like, Like by the book, and unfortunately for us, Boston and Bay Area came exactly the same overall score.
So we were like, what are we doing? Like we were like error, like we didn’t know how to do. And so at some point we say like, we know the Bay Area, it’s familiar to us. Let’s, let’s add this extra criteria that will be will enable us to choose. Aware versus elsewhere. That’s at the end of the day, I think it, yeah, it, it, the, the, the time difference is bigger and so on, but but it has some advantages as well.
And so I, I, I, yeah, I don’t think it would’ve been very different one way or the other. We had to choose.
Philip Hemme: I think one thing also from a bigger picture, California, especially sf. What I remember, even Silva mentioned this, I asked, you know, why, why not Boston? I mean, quite a lot of European biotech, they go to Boston because you have six hour time difference versus nine.
And Boston obviously is a huge biotech hub. But one thing he mentioned was that, and I didn’t realize it, but that SF was really The hotbed for Life Science Tools quite a lot was BioRad was, I mean, was Twist, but many, many others. And also for syn, Bioo was bigger than Boston can be. I mean, syn bio beta is there, or at is a conference and, and, and a lot more.
And even Illumina I think is in San Diego, but it’s, it’s not too far. So I, I, I think, I mean, even for our listeners to, I didn’t realize that, yeah, tools were, were so much more important than, you know, Genentech
Thomas Ybert: is there. Like there is really a, a very important number of very innovative life science company, especially in tools as, as you’re saying Philippe yeah, it’s, it’s difficult to It’s those kinds of questions where you don’t have a parallel universe to understand what would be the difference, but I, I cannot tell, I mean, that’s why we were very, very, very, very challenged when the decision matrix came up with the same score, like, Oh, we need to decide on, on not rational basis.
So what are we going to do? Yeah. Flipping a coin was, was one option. Actually, there is some, some part of the company where we did that. But it’s another story, but you know, we, yes, we, we, we, we put into play some, some personal consideration or family or consideration and, and, and, and then SFBR, yeah, came, came first.
Philip Hemme: That’s
Thomas Ybert: good.
[00:49:22] Next steps for DNA Script
Philip Hemme: Maybe a last question before I finish with a quick fire, like just quick question, but one last question for you to finish is more on the, on the next steps let’s say for, for 2025 or, or beyond for, for DNA script, like. What’s, what’s in the, what’s in the pipe.
Thomas Ybert: Yeah. So I, I, I touch quickly based on that.
So we’re making really tremendous progress on our core technology and we want the market or our customer or future customer to benefit from that. So what, what we’re doing is we’re opening, like, instead of being really strict of you, you need to buy syntax to benefit from EDS, we were like. We’re going to open our, our self and our business model to like using our internally, our syntax and our production tool in order to being able to ship DNA like, like really special DNA, like super complex, super long or whatever the need, the people need.
Directly to the people. So we, we are, we are doing two things. We are lowering the barrier of of, of, of adoption and testing of all new technology. You don’t need to buy syntax and, and to, to put down this, this benefit from it. And, and we’re also really for us, we’re, we’re fast tracking the, the, the, the development of the technology because making 600 nucleo 600 nucleoid lens on Syntax is completely doable.
But as I say, like making it super robust super reliably will take some time and investment in the company while we are already making it into our lab and we are making tons of it. So just, just making our customer or future customer benefiting from, from the get go to that is, is something that we will focus in 2025.
[00:51:18] Quickfire
Philip Hemme: That’s nice. That’s good. Great. It’s a, it’s a great way to, to finish and to segue into the quickfire. So just, I will ask just quick questions, one sentence answer or sometimes yes and no. Okay. Some are more serious, some are less serious. To start with is a less serious one. Are you on Mac or PC? PC. You didn’t switch with the Apple headquarter not far, you didn’t switch.
Thomas Ybert: No, no, no. I’m, I’m and, and I’m with Google Pixel for phone. Only one phone. Only one, one laptop.
Philip Hemme: That’s a good one. You had said, I guess, a bit on the, on the 25, but what, what’s on top of your mind at the moment?
Thomas Ybert: Or right now? Top of mind on the, on the moment, generally speaking, is, is social networks.
I’m, I’m, I’m listening to lots of podcasts around social networks and, and what could be the effect on, on on our youth. I mean, being a father of three children is, is a concern.
Philip Hemme: Oh, okay. What’s your favorite biotech book?
Thomas Ybert: It’s tough. My favorite book of the moment is The Mum Test. It’s not a biotech book, but I would recommend it to everyone that is trying to make a product.
Philip Hemme: Okay. What was the name again? It’s The Mum Test. The Mum Test. Okay. I would check it out. One, one mistake you made in the past 12 months.
Thomas Ybert: Sometimes speaking on a topic where I should have not speak on, on this topic. I think I know it’s a bit more longer than you expect, Philippe, but that’s kind of one of the things when you’re an exec, including a CEO, you need to understand when it’s a good time to speak and more importantly, when it’s a good time not to speak.
Because sometimes it’s, it’s just not helping the other, not helping the topic and not giving a good image of you and, and could have consequences.
Philip Hemme: I like this. Is Paris the best biotech hub in Europe?
Thomas Ybert: Yeah, definitely.
Philip Hemme: One new habit you adopted recently?
Thomas Ybert: During summary of my days, like, like at the end of the day, yeah, it’s like, I’m, I’m, I’m forcing myself to say, okay, I had this meeting, what are the take home, even if it’s one on one meeting or, or, or stuff that I didn’t call for a report or whatever, and I’m doing this now.
And that’s tremendously helpful because I can go back to my notes. It’s like I’m, I’m capturing a bit of my mental state and idea at that time. And, and this is sometime, something I, I, I love that the technology could create at some point, like a mental image of, of what you were at that moment. So you can go back to it and, and this is a proxy.
It’s really not ideal, but this is a proxy of it. And it’s a new habit I’m doing.
Philip Hemme: I would love that, like a new link that captures your mental state. I think we can talk again.
Thomas Ybert: Tell me about that. Yeah, I love to that too.
Philip Hemme: I love to take notes as well, but yeah, it’s it’s another, a topic. How much do you sleep per night?
Thomas Ybert: A lot. I, I, I need to sleep a lot. I’m, I’m, I’m, if I’m going to bed at 8:00 PM I’m so happy, and then I need to wake up at four or five because that’s the way I’m, I’m operating, but I need this eight hour of sleep. Otherwise, I’m, I’m, I’m less performant. in my job or in my day to day life. That’s good.
Philip Hemme: Same for, same for me. One, one European biotech that stands out to you or stood out recently?
Thomas Ybert: It’s tough. Well it’s, it’s, It’s a bit more than a biotech, but the, the, the people I was referring to is NGA, NGA, they are based in I think near Bordeaux and they are an engineering company that basically could have done the syntax development and so on, and I think they are tremendously good.
And so we’ve done a small project with them. I know that some other biotech has, has done some project with them. And I think they are really good. And it’s very important for Europe and France to keep this type of talent pool in, in, in their industry.
Philip Hemme: Yeah, cool. And the final last question, one, who is one of your biotech, I suppose.
biotech heroes, if possible, someone in Europe.
Thomas Ybert: Well, I, I, my real biotech heroes is, is is Jeff Attlee from Illumina, but he’s not European for sure. I biotech, euro in Europe. Yeah. I don’t remember the name, but it’s, it’s the, the, the, the, the, the guy working in, in, in Symbio, in in I think it’s in Cambridge University.
I mean this, this. Is, is really putting the forefront of of the vision around what’s need to be done in the, in the new modality, such as mRNA, and so on. So I, I can go back to you with the name, Philippe, I hope UK is, is, is still part of Europe. Yeah. Yeah.
Philip Hemme: Cool. Cool. Yeah. And I mean, Illumina is such a crazy story.
And I guess for you guys, it’s such an inspiration. And I think there’s so many lessons you can learn from Illumina. It’s, it’s, it’s crazy.
Thomas Ybert: It is. And, and I think Jeff Rathle is, is is one of the best industrial and, and company leader. That, that actually go beyond just the field of life science, bio tour, life science at a Great.
[00:57:50] Thanks for listening
Philip Hemme: Great! It was an amazing conversation. We loved it. Thanks for, for taking the time and good luck with, with everything.
Thomas Ybert: Thanks for having me, Philippe. It was very, very pleasant on my side and thanks for your question.
Philip Hemme: Great.
I’m impressed by the success stories of Thomas and his team. I’m also impressed by his focus on the science and product while being super down to earth. If you’ve also enjoyed this episode, please hit the like, follow, or review button. Any of these actions would help a lot to give access to more people to the show.
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