I'm currently CEO of a biotech company called TEGA Therapeutics. Just previous to that, I founded a company that I ran for 17 years called PharmaTech Laboratories which I just recently sold about 6 months ago. I think that in my case it's been a very circuitous path to doing what I do now which is start companies as a serial entrepreneur. And it takes a lot of different skills to be able to do that. Right out of college, I took a job in sales that I was unsure about in the life science space. But then I realized how incredibly valuable that experience was in building your own business. And the kind of grass roots of business, which is really sales and marketing. I went to law school and realize that the law is an incredible tool to have in your toolkit as an entrepreneur. And as a scientist and having done research at UCSD, I realized that the combination of the law and the science and the business, really placed me to do what I'm doing now. And I never realized that. And so, you get to the point where you're running your business and you realize I'm using all the skills that I developed over the circuitous career path that I've been on. One of the nice things that I used at the time was the career center. And they did a very good job of setting up meetings for you to interview at different places. And after a couple of weeks of doing that, the best job I could come up with, was a job that paid $18,000 a year, working as a new lab associate, over at Scripps. And I thought, there's gotta be something more than just that. Not that there's anything wrong with entry research at Scripps, but I wanted something more and and I was interviewing for another position and it fell through the interviewer didn't show up and I was wandering around with my suit and tie on as a senior at USD looking for another interview to do. Just to get the experience of interviewing and that was one of the nice things about the career center was that you could do that. And I happened upon this company called Millipore. And they had an open slot, and I filled my name in the slot, took the interview. And from there, it was a trip to Boston, and then another interview, and before I knew it, I had a job offer that was pretty good in a field that I had no idea I would ever be going in to. And it was really kind of jumping off and saying, let's try this for a year and see how it goes. And if I don't like it, I'll leave. And if I do like it, I'll stay for awhile. I ended up staying for a little while. But the thing about sales and marketing jobs is sometimes they have a ceiling, and you can go under management but that's not the same thing as running your own business which a lot of sales storage are exactly that running your own business. And I realize that I had reached my saline and I thought that one of the things that I was really interested in was law and intellectual property in particular. So I took some time, took the LSAT and next thing I knew I was in law school at the University of San Diego. A friend of mine called me and said, let's start a consulting company, and I had always thought the consulting company's were for people that didn't have a job. And I had a job. So he said, no, this is where it's at now, people start consulting companies because they're good at consulting. And it was an interesting time to be in your mid-20s and to hold yourself out as a consultant. But the thing that was amazing about that job was, once again, it gave me tools that I needed to be successful as an entrepreneur. And the most important thing I learned about that was, if you get smart people together, you really can do anything. And we did marketing plans, and business development, and PR, and investor relations, and at one point I was guiding a Japanese company around the country interviewing people for some marketing research that they needed to have done. And in the next month, I was in New York with a group of executives meeting with analysts on Wall Street, and it was just about figure it out and make it happen. And that was a really valuable lesson for me because I think a lot of people are fearful of being able to take on something that they haven't done before. And when in reality you really can't figure it out especially today with Internet and the ability to pull information off, and figure things out. So those are really valuable lessons. The consulting company was called Lucid Biostratagies and we merged it into a local company called Mentis. Which is a terrific design firm locally and they wanted us to be the strategic group on front end of the design group. And that was a great idea and I enjoyed that and for the first time, I was evolved with writing annual reports. And that was a great experience, as well. And it led me eventually to become more of a serial entrepreneur because I started getting calls from clients that said, hey, we're starting a new company and we like your skill set and we'd like you to join us. And from there, I started a biotech company called Diakron Pharmaceuticals. And then, started to joined a group of guys and started a company called Active.com. Which was a terrific company to join at the time, because it was in the late 90s and everybody was starting online companies, and we [COUGH] were a connect poster child because we went through their springboard program. We went to the financial forum and got our first financing from Enterprise Ventures, which was again a local VC and then we won the most innovative product award for Connect, so we really had kind of gone through that entire sequence of event, Connect activities and it was a lot of fun and the company's still around today. They have a couple thousand employees. At about 150 employees, I realized I wanted to start something else and that's when I started Pharmatek Laboratories. The consulting and then working with Mentis, I ended up straddling both the high-tech and biotech areas. And so, we were working with both Qualcomm but we're also working with Hybertech and Amylin Pharmaceuticals and other local biotech companies. And so, you just were comfortable with technology, period. It didn't matter if it was life sciences, or high tech, or telecom, or whatever, so. And it's really just about being confident enough to know that you can figure it out. So Connect is a local industry advocate. They really grew up at the University of California San Diego and then was spun out as its own group. It is designed to help folks' academic admissions connect with the business environment just outside off campus. And it's helpful in starting companies, taking technologies and translating them into commercial opportunities and supporting anybody that's starting new companies up in the area. One of the important things Connect does is that it helps provide a springboard platform for new businesses and helping them to position themselves, and then help them after that find the funding to be able to go to the next level. Yeah, I think your personal network is really important. But it can also be limiting. So it depends on the space that you're in. If you are a graphic designer and you hang out with graphic designers, you're network tends to be limited to that group of people. And so, if you're looking to get into another space, you really need to broaden that network and look for those opportunities, those institutions that exist in those other areas that you're interested in, and work to develop a network that includes folks in that area. And I mean, being in a strategic design firm means that you've got high tech and biotech companies and as well as retail companies coming to you for support. And so, you end up getting a lot of interesting businesses that come over the transom everyday. And the fun part about that is studying them and learning about them and I've wanted the most important things for me, and I think it should be for others as to be a life long learner. And if you're willing to pick up a new business or a new hobby or whatever it is and learn about it and you enjoy that, then you're going to be successful, and part of broadening your network is being open to learning about new technologies, learning about new industries. And meeting the people in those industries that really help you get there.
