"We are going to change the world" is such a startup cliche now that when you actually do meet someone who is changing the world, it stops you in your tracks. Meet Marty Keiser, the Founder and CEO of IV Bioholdings.
IV Bioholdings is on a quest to radically improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Listen as I try to keep up with Marty as he shares their bold innovations that are radically improving patients ability to detect diseases like cancer earlier and potentially save lives. This was a very personal interview as many of you know my mom is currently battling Stage 2 Breast Cancer.
We talk about the catalyst for his career switch from finance to biotech, how he balances work and family life and how we all should get tested early and often for cancer.
You can listen to the full episode here. Below are some of our favorite quotes:
On what IV Bioholdings does:
0:54 All that means is very targeted, very specific solutions for patient health, for earlier detection, for easier diagnosis, for more precise treatment of disease. And we're not really just looking at one particular sort of fail point in the care continuum. We're trying to innovate and solve for problems across that entire spectrum of care from detection all the way through to treatment.
On the baffling data that drove his work:
1:59 And to put that into context, whether you're looking at diagnostics or therapeutics, things could take anywhere from 7 to 10 years to develop. They could cost in the hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars. And the failure rate in diagnostics is just under 80%. In therapeutics, it's a little over 90%. And so I looked at that and everybody in the bio and the health industry can rattle off those numbers and those statistics pretty readily. Everybody's aware of it, but to me, it just seemed a little crazy that we were accepting it as the best that we can do in this age of innovation that we live in, where technology has sort of inserted itself into every aspect of our lives and made things faster and cheaper and better in almost every single sector and area. It just hasn't happened in health care. And so that baffled me.
On how the math can help detect disease:
6:15 There's all sorts of things floating around in our body that in our case, we've identified very specific and novel RNA molecules. And the way that they come together mathematically, the way they integrate mathematically, to say, yes, you have a disease or no, you don't, and to do it in a very consistent and reliable way across the different stages of disease. And that's based on your body's biological response to the presence or absence of the disease. So when cancer takes root, these certain biomarkers get overexpressed or underexpressed in really specific and unique ways. And when you identify that and mathematically capture that, you can say with a great degree of confidence whether somebody has a disease or not
On the historical high cost of R&D:
13:53 And so just rethinking a lot of the business model, rethinking the way that we use data and technology where we utilize it in the R&D process. You know, all those things came together to strip out a lot of that time and a lot of that cost and a lot of that risk in the very beginning.
On getting back into science:
16:41 Biology for dummies. I'm not kidding it's where it started. Yeah, I failed high school biology actually. I didn't understand what was on the other side of it. For me, I always had to understand why was I learning what I was learning? What is on the other side? What's the benefit to me or to somebody else? And that never really came through in my education. I sort of had to come to that conclusion on my own. I think at my core, I have a genuine love for people. I just love people. I love to find the best in people. I want to help where I can. In me that's the passion that fuels a lot of this curiosity. And then once that curiosities piqued, you want to learn more and more and more and you start becoming a sponge. You soak it all up really quickly. So that's sort of how it happened for me. It kind of came out of the blue.
On his driving force, his wife:
17:52 I'm married to my high school sweetheart. I've known her. I fell in love with her at the first day of school in the sixth grade, so eleven years old. And then we started dating junior year of high school, been together almost 20 years and haven't had any breaks. It's just been an amazing thing in my life. But had it not been for that relationship and had it not been for the depth of that relationship and the trust that we have in each other, I probably would not be doing what I'm doing because at one point my wife approached me with the blank or get off the pot conversation and was like, Listen, man, you're obsessed with this. This is your passion. You've got some really great ideas. At some point you either need to just make the jump and bet on yourself, or you need to just bury it and never talk about it ever again
21:28 I think having that relationship, having somebody that will call you out, that will put you in check, but in the most constructive and supportive and loving way possible, where you know that they wouldn't be doing that if they didn't love you and believe in you. And I've had moments where I'll be staying back and I'll be working and my wife and kids will go leave three days ahead of me so I can stay back and finish up work and they'll go to visit family or whatnot. And I feel empty. I don't feel like I have the same sort of pep in my step as I do when I've got them around. So to me, that's central to entrepreneurial success. You've got to have a great companion that you can count on.
On startup life:
19:21 The world of startup is a massive roller coaster ride, and just when you think you had it figured out, there's a twist or there's a turn. At a certain point, you have to get comfortable with the fact that there's no way you'll ever plan for everything that could go wrong. And you just have to make that bet that what you plan to go right will outweigh what is inevitably going to go wrong.
25:25 There are certain people that shoot you down, but you figure it out pretty early. There are people who get it and there are people who don't. And I think the faster you can recognize who gets it and who doesn't and, commit time and energy to the ones who get it and just quickly cut out the ones who don't. Just from fundraising and business building, not just cut them out of your life, obviously, the faster you can figure that out, the easier it becomes. That's number one.
28:41 The number one reason why startups fail, other than maybe a close second of insolvency and lack of funding or lack of cash flow is that they're not solving a big enough problem. And so the risk is actually not solving big problems, which is sort of counterintuitive to what people think. You think the bigger the problem, the bigger the risk. But it's not the case.
On cancer detection:
45:32 So taking the guesswork out of it, taking the fear factor out of it, making it easier, safer, more convenient, and just getting people excited of the fact that stage one is the cure. So, you know, get these tests and get screened when they're available before you have symptoms because most cancer, by the time you have symptoms, it's already progressed. So if you feel generally healthy, you should have the confidence that it will come back. Okay. And if it doesn't, that'll come back early enough where your survival is really high and you don't have a whole lot to worry about. That's honestly a big part of our goal. Just getting people comfortable with the fact that over time, our technologies, our types of tests will be detecting more cancers for sure, because of this. And so on the surface, it might look like cancer is increasing, but it's not. It was always there. We're just catching more and hopefully catching it earlier and you know, where the survival rates are higher. So hopefully you see this sort of inverse curve of rising cancer prevalence or cases, but lower fatality rates and higher survival.
Interview with Marty Keiser, Founder and CEO of IV Bioholdings