Have a Noble Goal: Interview with Dietrich Stephan, Founder and CEO of NeuBase Therapeutics
I recently went one on one with Dietrich Stephan, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of NeuBase Therapeutics.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Dietrich: Have you ever received “The Call?” This is when you answer the phone and hear of a loved one—a child, a parent, or a husband—being diagnosed with a fatal disease. Your panic is driven because of an intuitive understanding that we don’t have solutions that work with high probability against all diseases in all patients. We remain at the whims of luck to a very large degree.
These feelings of panic and helplessness for those suffering from diseases have largely been the foundation of my work. I have a passion for bringing new technologies to market to significantly reduce suffering and death from disease. And because much of this work is groundbreaking, often first-in-class, it affords me the honor of working with extraordinary inventors to build industry-leading—and in a few cases, industry-creating—companies that can offer new game-changing products. These efforts and the resultant companies I have built have improved the lives of people around the world by providing new diagnostic technologies to identify the causes of diseases and new therapies to treat those diseases.
How did I get here? That is an important question. My passion for this work was born out of tragedy early in my life—“The Call.” As a result, I was instilled with a sense of how fragile life is and a keen awareness that physicians don’t have all the answers and are often not able to provide solutions for most diseases. It is an important question because this type of work involves ruggedizing very complex high-science technologies through constant problem-solving. It’s extremely capital-intensive, and it often takes years to develop a single new product. I view these formative events in my life as a continual North Star to allow me to remain focused on exactly why the work is of existential importance (hundreds of millions of people suffering and dying without hope) and to push through the intense demands and challenges of building a company that will deliver life-changing/life-saving products.
Another anchoring framework emerged early in my career, which has allowed me to engage with my passion in an organized manner: The data-driven realization that every disease is genetic. There are only four types of human diseases: rare single-gene diseases where a mutation in one gene causes the disease; cancers that are caused by genetic mutations of a single cell; complex genetic diseases that are caused by hardwired genetic risk factors that are then triggered by the environment; and infectious diseases that are caused by foreign genomes invading our bodies. Thus, a natural starting point emerged and I went to work at the National Human Genome Research Institute, which was the epicenter of decoding the blueprint of life.
People hear about the sequencing of the human genome and think it’s a great achievement, and they’re correct. But that was just the beginning. The next step was to sift through the genomes of people with and without thousands of different diseases to understand which genetic changes were responsible. This required massive investments, and I’m proud that my group was among the highest throughput genome scanning sites in the world in the years after the genome sequence was delivered. We identified the genetic basis of many different rare and common diseases, published in the best scientific journals, and were profiled repeatedly in the media (twice covered on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for these contributions, etc.), but most importantly, we contributed all that information into the public domain.
Next, the challenge was to provide genetic testing to individuals suffering from a wide variety of diseases so they and their doctors could understand the root causes of their conditions and inform the right treatment at the right time. A key challenge was that there was no robust infrastructure on the global stage to provide scalable molecular diagnostic testing with easily understood interpretations and treatment recommendations. The rail systems did not exist! I simply could not continue to generate information about what caused disease if we could not get it to those who needed the information. So, I set about to change this as the next step in empowering global health. I moved out to Silicon Valley, and together with top-tier investors, I founded several companies with my colleagues aimed at patching this gap. These efforts and their various offshoots have culminated in the rail system to allow individuals anywhere in the world who suffer from a genetic disease including cancers to get access to a genetic test to achieve a precise molecular diagnosis. Finally, today, we can deliver information about the precise cause of a disease to an individual who is suffering so they can have an answer to what is ailing them, prevent passing that disease on to their children, and seek targeted therapies for their disease. Information is power!
Today, I’m working toward the final step to achieving my life’s goal. We are pushing the boundaries of development by targeting genetic disease where it starts—in the DNA. All diseases are genetic, which means they are grounded in our DNA—the human genome. Most diseases do not have functional cures or even effective treatments; this is especially true in rare diseases. Of the approximately 10,000 individually rare diseases that collectively affect 10% of the global population, 95% have no effective therapy whatsoever. The reason is quite simple: The human genome evolved into the famous double helix structure to protect the delicate information within against insults. Thus, we have not been able to create medicines that can directly drug the genome—they simply bounce off. As a result, medicines are developed against downstream targets (such as RNA, proteins, and cells). This is akin to the old adage of searching for one’s lost keys under the streetlamp rather than where the keys were lost.
One of my goals is to demystify the science behind the seemingly miraculous and to unveil how we believe our technology in the area of genetic research and precision medicine is going to fundamentally change the way healthcare treats and potentially cures disease by getting to the root cause—by “drugging the genome” to halt the manifestation of a disease-causing gene.
My team at NeuBase has invented a novel synthetic genetic medicine that can scan through the 6-billion-letter human genome and engage with exquisite selectivity with the mutant gene of interest. Thereafter, the compounds have been shown to have the ability to modulate that gene to either increase, decrease, or change the gene’s output to address the causal mechanism behind disease. Our compounds are modular in that they include three components that can be “snapped” together to address genes of interest. This approach holds promise to accelerate drug development timelines, reduce costs, and ultimately democratize medicines for those who are in need. We are at the beginning of this phase of the journey and are seeing the leading indicators that we are on the right track. This goal—to provide tangible solutions to eradicate many, if not most, diseases—is within our grasp.
While these are important advances and I am proud of this good work, over the course of my life, I have had more failures than successes. But along the way, I’ve had the pleasure of creating successes and meeting people who have stuck with me. Failure is inevitable for all of us at one time or another. One needs to stop and understand that failure and learn from it and not make it again. I pride myself on trying to learn from my failures and having a go-forward plan that doesn’t include that particular failure again (although new failures will surely occur!).
An example of that is a company that I co-founded, which was among the first—and in my opinion, the most rigorous—direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. The idea was simple: Take a cheap swab, send it to us, and we would sift through your genome to provide a report on your hardwired risk factors for common complex genetic disease. This would allow you to avoid environmental triggers of certain diseases and allow you to get on the right medicine without adverse effects. And that company was funded by some titans of Silicon Valley. Extremely smart people. And we built the most beautiful, scalable genetics platform to give people options to live a better life. However, the healthcare landscape is complex, and we weren't able to crack the reimbursement model. And because of that, the company was eventually sold too early, and it didn’t see the impact all of us had hoped for.
And yet you never know what silver lining may be possible. I was in a brainstorm meeting—just shooting the breeze—with our Chief Operating Officer. And over the course of a casual conversation, we came up with a variant on the model—one that was focused on rare monogenic diseases and democratizing genetic testing in a different manner. He and others on the leadership team would go on to spin out a company that would become one of the dominant genetic testing companies in the world. And so, while that first incarnation of the model wasn’t quite right, it eventually led to something incredible. The takeaway for me is clear—you’ve got to keep going and work through issues that may even push the boundaries on individual companies in order to achieve the objective.
There have been many more challenges and resultant learnings that we don’t have time to discuss in this format, but they include some simple rules:
You can’t bring 100% to work unless your foundation at home is solid, and you can’t be truly excellent unless you are having fun.
Great teams can achieve great things, but poor teams cannot, and it’s the CEO’s job to build great teams.
Patients can’t go home at 5 pm and forget, and while it is difficult to build something the world has never seen before, it’s important to be relentless.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Dietrich: The first step is maintaining an eye on ways to maximize the broadest possible impact as you begin the path forward. It sounds obvious, but it isn’t.
The second step—be organized and thoughtful about putting one foot in front of the other toward the target (always the target!), which is one of the key parts of building a successful business.
The third step is to really nail the way you tell the story of the value your company offers the world. That takes skill, so master the art of telling your value story.
Fourth and finally—be evidence-based as you track toward your goal. So many new companies hit trouble when they embellish or misrepresent. Don’t make that mistake; play it straight down the middle.
And a word for those in the biotech space in particular: Deeply understand your technology platform that is the basis for the business, with the expertise to do so. Founder/CEOs are uniquely poised to do this, and be wary of handing the reins over to a generalist management team, as they won’t often be able to make the right decisions based on the nuances of the technology. You have to imagine the potential of the technology you could bring to the marketplace. You have to be able to imagine what void or gap you’re filling in the marketplace and go build that dominant company.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Dietrich: There are two key qualities. I believe in order for a leader to be effective, they need to be an expert in the substance of what their company is doing both on a technical and a business level. Equally important, they must also focus on leading as opposed to managing. Leadership isn’t about micromanaging; it’s about blazing a trail into the unknown that others want to follow. Make sure you demonstrate that you care about your people and that you have conviction for the mission as a whole—and do so in a way that motivates people to want to follow you.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Dietrich: Have the humility to understand that one can always grow and improve. No one knows everything and no one can do it alone. Reach out to people who have done it before. Ask for advice and surround yourself with people who have gone down this road so you can tap into their expertise.
Have confidence in what you’re building even as you recognize that you will encounter things you’ve never encountered before. There’s no shame in that. On the contrary, welcome it with an adventurous spirit.
Adam: What are the keys to building a winning organizational culture?
Dietrich: My friend Mark Fuller wrote an article called “Business as War.” The whole premise of the article was about why soldiers who are on the battlefield stick together and keep fighting in the face of imminent death. Why wouldn’t they just run? Mark cogently argues that it wasn’t for the love of family or love of country. Those are abstract things on the battlefield. It’s because of the people who are in the trenches next to you, who have linked arms with you, or small unit cohesion. Soldiers are literally fighting for each other, as a team. There are similarities in the way you should think about business teams as well; there’s something really special in that. It’s what I try to cultivate in my own companies. We are there for each other fighting for something special.
This is the first key—it is an explicit acknowledgment that a company is a collection of people. And unless those people are motivated and aligned with your company’s vision, you’re not going to get to your destination. Having the right team in place is most important. Having the best product or the best technology won’t matter if you don’t have the right team in place to build it. So, create a culture that binds them to a common goal and point them all in that same direction. Each person is on their own critical path to building value and they’re interlinked with other people. Bring your people along to co-own what you’re trying to build—and empower them to solve the daily mechanics and make sure they know they are valued. And invest in their growth! I have taken to hiring a full-time executive coach (she isn’t available, btw!) who is available to every person in the organization, for any purpose, at any time. It is a small price to pay to make sure that every person is maximizing their own path to professional growth and that we solve interpersonal issues correctly.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Dietrich: I have a strong point of view on this from my experience running boards and companies. You pick leaders thoughtfully, rigorously, carefully. I use the term “leader” explicitly—I don’t hire managers. Put them through their paces to get the opportunity. But once you pick them, you empower them. Your job isn’t to steer their ship for them. It’s to help clear the icebergs out of the way—especially in biotech, where there are huge ups and downs. You need to be a stabilizing force.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Dietrich:
Have a noble goal—it’s simple but powerful. A noble goal means the difference between any job and a mission for which to fight.
Anyone trying to achieve a noble goal will have people who will try to tear them down and question them; your job is to keep moving forward in a world that wants to tear down change agents.
You can’t do it alone. You need a team of people you want to go to war with and who complement you.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Dietrich: Henri Tremere, ex-CEO of Genzyme, whom I consider one of the godfathers of biotech and someone I had immense respect for, once told me, “Just keep going.” It harkens back to the Winston Churchill quote: “If you’re going through hell, just keep going.” It’s beautiful in its simplicity because we often think it’s easier to give up when times get hard. Remember that simple rule, and you’ll be prepared for any headwinds that come your way.
Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.
Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.