The Biotech Startups Podcast

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we continue founder, CEO, and president of Siren Biotechnology, Nicole Paulk's journey from small-town farm kid to pioneering gene therapy scientist. Nicole recounts how a Craigslist ad landed her in the lab of one of the most celebrated stem cell scientists in the country, Markus Grompe — blissfully unaware of his fame, she spent months calling him "Marky Mark," planting whoopee cushions under his chair, and filling donut holes with Sriracha, only to discover he was the stem cell adviser to the President of the United States. She reflects on her PhD years as the "golden, pure, best days" of her scientific life, then contrasts that with the culture shock of Stanford's relentless postdoc hustle, a world of constant CV-optimization and pressure to pursue academia at all costs. Nicole shares how landing a coveted K01 grant gave her the credentials to walk through any university door she wanted, eventually bringing her to UCSF just nine months before COVID would turn everything upside down.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, we sit down with Nicole Paulk, founder, CEO, and president of SIREN Biotechnology, a company pioneering universal AAV immunogene therapy to fight solid tumor cancers. Nicole takes us back to her roots — a scrappy, off-the-grid upbringing in the Pacific Northwest where a lumberjack dad raised her like a son and sports were everything, until recurring shoulder injuries ended her collegiate volleyball career at 18 and triggered her first identity crisis. She walks us through the hustle that followed; swim lessons, kickboxing classes, deli shifts, and crabbing in Puget Sound just to survive, and how she stumbled into science not out of passion, but out of a need for a paycheck at a small ag school. A summer treating patients in Kenya and Tanzania convinced her that clinical medicine wasn't her path, and one offhand comment from her chemistry professor set the entire trajectory of her scientific career in motion.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, Richard Yu reflects on how processing grief after losing his co-founder, Gustavo Pesce, brought clarity and renewed focus — stripping away the inessential and driving him forward at Abalone Bio. He unpacks the strategic thinking behind the pipeline, from developing CB2 agonist antibodies that reverse fibrosis and reduce neuropathy, to deciding which programs to partner versus develop internally based on value inflection points. Richard also reflects on hitting his 400th VC rejection, why the West Coast's frontier mentality fuels entrepreneurial resilience, how the rise of China's biotech ecosystem is pushing US startups toward novel targets as a competitive moat, and how AI has transformed once-impossible problems — from protein folding to natural language — into solved challenges that are fundamentally reshaping drug discovery.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Richard Yu, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, reflects on building a company around a bold scientific vision — and the personal moments that shaped his leadership along the way. He unpacks the core insight behind Abalone Bio's yeast-based screening platform: that conventional antibody discovery optimizes for binding over function, like grabbing scissors by the blades. Richard also opens up about the devastating loss of co-founder Gustavo Pesce in a 2021 skiing accident, how the team and investors rallied with unwavering support, and how that crisis ultimately sharpened his sense of purpose and focus. From weathering hundreds of investor rejections to landing partnerships with Pfizer and Sichuan Pharma, Richard offers an honest look at running a biotech startup with a platform-driven, portfolio-management mindset.

In this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast, Richard Yu, co-founder and CEO of Abalone Bio, reflects on building a company around a bold scientific vision — and the personal moments that shaped his leadership along the way. He unpacks the core insight behind Abalone Bio's yeast-based screening platform: that conventional antibody discovery optimizes for binding over function, like grabbing scissors by the blades. Richard also opens up about the devastating loss of co-founder Gustavo Martinez in a 2021 skiing accident, how the team and investors rallied with unwavering support, and how that crisis ultimately sharpened his sense of purpose and focus. From weathering hundreds of investor rejections to landing partnerships with Pfizer and Shichuan Pharma, Richard offers an honest look at running a biotech startup with a platform-driven, portfolio-management mindset.