Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders

How AI Is Transforming Biotech: Expert Talk With Karl Schmieder!

• Steve Swan • Episode 18

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Discover how AI is revolutionizing biotech in this engaging episode with Karl Schmieder, CEO and Founder of Messaginglab. Karl, who has a background in biochemistry and creative writing, brings a unique perspective, emphasizing the power of storytelling in biotech. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

In this episode, Karl discusses the importance of data standardization, the role of AI in analyzing Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR), and the growth of the biotech industry. Learn how networking and effective communication can bridge gaps between startups, investors, and the public.

The conversation spans data standardization, the need for structured datasets for efficient AI analysis, and the potential for AI to glean insights from Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR). 

Karl also illuminates the biotech industry's recent growth, noting the significance of networking and effective communication in bridging gaps between startups, investors, and the broader public. 

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Encouraging a culture of innovation and trust
  • The intersection of technology and practical application
  • The future of organ manufacturing and its impact

Links from this episode:

Watch now for insights on:

  • Innovation and trust in biotech
  • The practical application of technology
  • The future impact of organ manufacturing

This video is about How AI Is Transforming Biotech: Expert Talk With Karl Schmieder! But It also covers the following topics:

  • AI Data Analysis In Biotech
  • Karl Schmieder Biotech Insights
  • Role Of AI In Medical Records

Video Title: How AI Is Transforming Biotech: Expert Talk With Karl Schmieder!
  
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Karl Schmieder [00:00:00]:
When we counsel our clients, we'll often say, and I mean, we're very serious about this, you really have to think about the end user benefit. Like, no one cares about your technology. And I think that that's one of the big challenges that a lot of science founders, or it founders face, is like they're in love with their tech, and you can have the best tech in the world. But at the end of the day, only a certain percentage of people want to understand the technology. Most people want to know what's in it for them. I know that consumers don't really care. Investors want to know how you're going to make money for them. Partners want to know how the partnership is going to benefit them, and patients want to know how this medicine is going to make them better.

Steve Swan [00:00:44]:
Welcome to Biotech Bytes. I'm your host, Steve Swan, and this is a podcast where we chat with traditionally technology leaders within biotech. Today I'm joined by Karl Schmieder, CEO and founder of Messaginglab. Little bit of a different spin today, more on the communication side of things as opposed to focusing directly on the technology. Carl, thank you. Thanks for coming.

Karl Schmieder [00:01:08]:
Thanks, Steve. I really appreciate being here. And I think the one thing I would add is that I'm also the co host of another biotech podcast that's called grow everything, where we focus on, we say, mainstreaming biotech. And the reason we started that podcast is like you probably, we hear a lot of people talking about all the great things that are happening in the biotechnology industry, not just in biopharma. And we really want to expose more people to what that looks like. And so, you know, most people don't have any idea that biotech already touches their lives every day, whether or not they are, you know, sick. It's in food. It's.

Karl Schmieder [00:01:48]:
And, you know, it could be the sheets you're sleeping on. It could be the carpet in your car, all those things. Many of them have been impacted by biotechnology. So we're super excited to have that as one of the things that we do at messaging lab. And I'm super excited to be here with you on biotech bytes.

Steve Swan [00:02:07]:
Thank you. So why don't you give me a little bit of an introduction to how you got to where you are and why you're doing what you're doing?

Karl Schmieder [00:02:13]:
Yeah, like everyone, it's a bit of a long and convoluted story, but what I like to say is, look, I'm trained as a biochemist slash molecular biologist. I got a master's in that. Then I got a second master's in creative writing because I was terrible at the bench and I wanted to be a writer, but I'm a very pragmatic person. And so I supported myself as a writer by working in public relations, helping to do drug launches, and in the nineties and early two thousands, launched some really big blockbuster drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. Genuvia is probably the most well known. Risperdal has a storied history. That was one that we helped launch and then really realized that I really wanted to go out on my own and freelance for a while, went back into the agency world, left the agency world again, helped build two digital health startups, helping them raise money, set up sales, set up their communications, build their brands, and then after that experience, decided I wanted to come back into biotech, directly into biotech, and figure out where were the areas where people needed the most help. And what I noticed was that biotech had started to change and I started to see applications of biotech outside of biopharma.

Karl Schmieder [00:03:38]:
And that got me really excited because I think that when I first got interested in biotech as an undergrad, I really could imagine this world where biotech was impacting all facets of our lives. And so beyond the biopharma stuff, I mean, we're seeing it applied to the manufacturer of pretty much anything. That's why our podcast is called grow everything, with a very positive impact on sustainability, on lessening our need for fossil fuels, and also just rethinking the way we manufacture things. And so I end up writing a book about that, or co authoring a book with a guy named John Cumbers, who runs a conference called Symbio Beta. And John and I wrote this book called what's your bio strategy? Where we talk about the strategies that big business needs in order to apply biotechnology to their business. And along the way, we've as our business at messaging lab, what we do is we help a lot of startups get their story straight so they can reach out to investors, customers or partners and help them bridge the transition from just being a startup to growing. And then increasingly we're talking to big consumer products companies about how they biologize. So we're really in a very interesting place right now when it comes to what's happening in biotech.

Karl Schmieder [00:04:59]:
And I will say for your audience, you've got people who, from listening to your podcast, you talk to a lot of it leaders. And I'd like to say that biotech still hasn't had that chat. GPT moment we see applications of artificial intelligence across the enterprise and across biopharma, from drug design to clinical trials design. But we haven't had that moment where people are talking about biotech the same way we're talking about AI, but it's coming.

Steve Swan [00:05:31]:
So, and that, yeah, I agree. And all of my leaders agree. You know, the use cases, as they will also agree, are limited right now for AI. I think it's limited across the board. Right, but, so we're not alone. But the part that I was interested in, what you just mentioned is, you know, your messaging, your communication, your branding, personal marketing that these companies are going through. I'm thinking more of these individuals on their messaging, their branding and how they get there. Again, let's call it a story.

Steve Swan [00:06:01]:
Get their story across. You've been doing this for a long time within our industry. What sort of pieces of advice would you say you have for some of those folks from a personal perspective? Would you even, because a lot of them do talk about the AI and should they be, you know, should they be talking about the technology, should they be talking more about their industry and what they've done within each organization? What are your thoughts on that? I'm just kind of leaving it open ended. Your full.

Karl Schmieder [00:06:30]:
Yeah, there's an edited I have, I have a lot of thoughts. So, I mean, when we counsel our clients and we talk to them, we will often say, and I mean, we're very serious about this, you really have to think about the end user benefit. Like, no one cares about your technology. And I think that that's one of the big challenges that a lot of science founders, or it founders face is like they're in love with their tech. And you can have the best tech in the world, but at the end of the day, only a certain percentage of people want to understand the technology. Most people want to know what's in it for them. Like they really want to understand. How is it that you're going to benefit me, you know, whether you're an investor, a customer, a patient, a partner, I don't care about the technology.

Karl Schmieder [00:07:18]:
I mean, I do. I fall in love with all my companies and their technologies. I love the tech. It keeps me smart. It makes what I do a lot of fun. But I know that consumers don't really care. And investors want to know how you're going to make money for them. Partners want to know how the partnership is going to benefit them, and patients want to know how this medicine is going to make them better.

Karl Schmieder [00:07:41]:
So when we talk and when we counsel our clients on their storytelling for whatever the purpose that may be, whether it's for patients or raising money, we're always going to say, what's the end benefit? How are you going to make the benefit? So that's one thought on that idea. The other thought is, we do a lot of talking, and we have had a couple of podcasts that are specifically about networking. A lot of the people who we deal with are scientists or heavy technologists. And creating a network is not the easiest thing in the world to do if you're an introvert. I'm very introverted. I get my energy from being alone, but I'm also the kind of introvert that needs that 20% to 25% of my time to be around other people, because that also gives me energy. But if I had to do it all the time, I think I would just wither.

Steve Swan [00:08:36]:
I would, too. I would burn out.

Karl Schmieder [00:08:37]:
Yeah. So we've done a couple of podcast episodes where we specifically talk about networking, why it's important, how to ease yourself into it, different strategies for starting conversations with the people, books that people read. But then the other thing we do with our clients is we have two products that are really specifically about going to meetings. One is a go to conference strategy where we really help the team that's going to attend, hone their message, even role play with each other, so that they know how to interact with people. Give them tips on, if you're going to a big conference and you're shy, maybe go around to all the vendors and all the booths, because those people are trained to talk to you. They're salespeople, but that kind of warms you up, and then even really identifying who the people at the conference you should talk to. And when our clients go through that kind of process, what we have found is that they end up with more leads than they've ever had. We've had clients say to us, we've never approached a conference like this.

Karl Schmieder [00:09:37]:
You guys really set us up in a way that we never expected, and it's been a really successful program for us. So I think that going back to your original question, it's like there's different levels of storytelling. One is that what's the benefit? And then the other level of the storytelling is, how do you do it interpersonally?

Steve Swan [00:09:56]:
Right. Well, that's what you just said to me. Again, I like bottom line and stuff, you know, just to make it simple for my little brain, you almost did like a. That's almost like a go to market strategy for an individual marketing themselves.

Karl Schmieder [00:10:07]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:10:07]:
No, yeah.

Karl Schmieder [00:10:09]:
You know, there's go to market if.

Steve Swan [00:10:10]:
You had to bottom line it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty cool.

Karl Schmieder [00:10:15]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:10:15]:
You know, and a lot of. A lot of folks I talked to could really, I think, benefit from something like that because they're smart, smart folks. Right.

Karl Schmieder [00:10:22]:
I.

Steve Swan [00:10:22]:
They're just not used to doing that. They're not used to going out and doing their thing. I'll give you an example. Out of all my podcasts, I always talk to the CIO's afterwards and things like that. And two of the folks from the largest companies, I placed, Bob McGowan at Regeneron. He's their CIO. Right? And then there's another gentleman I did a podcast with named Shola from United therapeutics. I asked both of them, what sort of things do you think I could offer to the rest of the CIO's? He said, they both said the same thing.

Steve Swan [00:10:52]:
They said, little networking events don't make them big. Don't make them big, and don't have an agenda, like, don't have a conference table with breakout rooms or a conversation. Let us just mingle. We'll solve problems offline. And both of them said the same thing. I was like, huh? Okay. So I got a few of them together last month, sort of as a pilot, and they came away loving it. They were like, that was great.

Steve Swan [00:11:15]:
We went to a restaurant. We had dinner. You know, it wasn't. Didn't. Didn't cost much. Whatever. I'm doing another one, I'll do them each once a quarter, and I'll have, you know, a half a dozen or so. Somebody that's a CIO of a large company who lives in Tennessee was emailing me today, and I've known him for a while.

Steve Swan [00:11:29]:
He did one of my podcasts, and he said, I want to fly in for you next.

Karl Schmieder [00:11:32]:
Yeah. Why didn't you invite me? Wow.

Steve Swan [00:11:34]:
Yeah, exactly.

Karl Schmieder [00:11:35]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:11:36]:
I'm like, I didn't. I don't know. Listen, this whole podcast thing I started, and I didn't think these folks would want to pay attention to it, and they do want to pay attention to it, you know? So, question for you, and this may be something you've thought about, maybe something. This has been nagging at me since COVID right? So we go into Covid, right? And we, the biotech and pharmaceutical industry had a golden opportunity. We had a great opportunity going into that. So going into Covid, biotech, pharma comes to the. To the rescue. Right on the white horse.

Steve Swan [00:12:09]:
Gets everything rolling, the antibodies, the vaccines, and all that stuff. We come out of COVID and it's kind of the same old story. It's like, ah, we don't like these guys anymore. They're charging too much money. Did we blow an opportunity? And if we did, why did we do it?

Karl Schmieder [00:12:24]:
Man? That is a. I think that's a whole other.

Steve Swan [00:12:27]:
Is that a whole podcast?

Karl Schmieder [00:12:28]:
Yeah, that's a whole other podcast. And I'm not sure I have the answer to that.

Steve Swan [00:12:35]:
My brain's been trying to wrap around that since this has happened. I don't know, man.

Karl Schmieder [00:12:39]:
Yeah, I mean, look, here's what to me, when I think about what happened to the pandemic, the world scientists proved that they can come together very quickly to solve big problems. Yeah, I mean, exactly. We had the sequence of this virus within, you know, a couple weeks. You had 100 vaccine candidates in the pipeline within a year. And then we ended up. We were very lucky to end up with, let's just say, four to six vaccines that ended up working. And more impressive, we manufactured hundreds of millions of doses. Like, all of those things had never happened before.

Karl Schmieder [00:13:22]:
And I think it's a big testament to Operation Warp speed and the people who were behind it, and then also to the companies and all the scientists coming together. And I mean, all the scientists I knew and myself included, we were on different chat boards talking about how we could contribute. People really wanted to help as much as possible, and it just shows that people can come together and make a difference and solve really big, complicated problems. That message, I think, was lost after it was over, and a lot of it. You had the anti vaxxers, you still have the people who are like, you know, the whole thing was a sham. We all got these vaccines. I can talk to Bill Gates now through my arm, all that kind of, like, conspiracy stuff. And I think that there was a messaging story that was lost.

Karl Schmieder [00:14:15]:
The anti vaxxers had too much voice, and the conspiracy people also too much voice, and they continue to in different ways. There were probably many cases where the pharmaceutical industry shot itself in the foot and didn't really come together in terms of messaging. And what was interesting was going into the pandemic as it was starting. On the investment side, we had more $100 million funding rounds than we had ever had historically. The amount of money that was pouring into biopharma was historic. Never seen that before. And pharma as an industry was doing really well. But then we kind of went into this biotech winter that we're still just getting out of, from an investment point of view, on the industrial biotech side, you also saw this kind of exuberance that I think was very much related to the successes of the vaccine and the biomanufacturing, all those doses.

Karl Schmieder [00:15:15]:
But then you also have seen not that interest has dried up. The technology continues to expand very quickly, but the investment side is being much more hesitant right now. And biotech goes through these cycles. And I think on the biopharma side, we are coming out of that winter, we're seeing a lot more m and a activity. We're seeing some ipos. I pay a lot of attention to what happens on the financing side because it's fascinating. But I think there were some missed opportunities. And I think in general, the industry can do better when it comes to overall messaging.

Karl Schmieder [00:15:51]:
And I think that's very hard to coordinate. I mean, it's challenging, too, because the United States does pay for the world's pharmaceuticals. We are the innovation engine for the world, and a lot of that comes from taxpayer money and the government. And most people don't realize that investing in basic research across the board, whether it's biological research or flying people to the moon, that has true economic benefits like we used to in the fifties or sixties, spend 5% of our GDP on basic research. We're down to less than 1%. Guess who copied our model from the 1960s? China. China spends 5% of their GDP on basic research because they understand that that is a driver of the economy. And the economists just had a front cover story on the power of chinese science.

Karl Schmieder [00:16:42]:
Like, I don't know how true that is. I do run across scientific papers from China a fair amount, and I know that there's, like, you know, geopolitical conflicts going on between us, but we just don't invest in as much in science as we used to. So I don't know. That's like, my long convoluted answer. We had an opportunity. Did we blow it? Probably.

Steve Swan [00:17:01]:
It feels like it, right. Cause it feels like. Well, I mean, I guess what's exacerbating it is that, is that funding winter, right. That, that you say we're in right now, which I agree with. I mean, interest rates spiked up so fast, right. And it flushed out some of the vaporware.

Karl Schmieder [00:17:16]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:17:17]:
You know, I did chat with a gentleman who's, he's got an angel fund. He's also worked with VC and so on and so forth. He said that the opportunities are less. So the valuations have increased quite a bit. So there's still money chasing these opportunities out there, but the valuations have gone way up because there's less opportunities that are real opportunities. Right. You know, when you can, in your sleep, get 5% on Trevor treasuries, you know, before the pandemic came, you know, if you promised me two or 3%, I was probably pretty happy about that. Now you got to promise me low double digits.

Steve Swan [00:17:51]:
Right. And then we're. And then we're, you know, that's to start the conversation. Right?

Karl Schmieder [00:17:55]:
Yeah. Let me say this. The money's there. It's just moving a lot slower. I mean, we just had last week, flagship pioneering one of the big biotech investment funds they had invested in Moderna, who was like one of the stars of the pandemic. They just raised $3 billion. That's a really big investment fund. That's a lot of capital, and that's going to go into biopharma.

Karl Schmieder [00:18:17]:
So there's a lot of money out there. And I think what we hear across the board is investors is moving a lot more slowly, but there is a lot of money. And then on the kind of bioindustrial side, one of the places where we're seeing a lot of activity is on the biomanufacturing side, because there's this argument being made, and I've been hearing this for a couple of years, and I've heard both sides of it, is that we don't have enough biomanufacturing capacity to drive prices down so that the prices can compete with traditional chemicals. I don't know. And then the other side of that argument is we don't have enough strains engineered to fill the capacity that we have. I've heard both sides of that story for the past three years, but what I have seen more recently is a lot more interest in those biomanufacturing facilities being built. So, for example, this company out of Texas saw Eugen. They just raised, like, 200 something million dollars from the us government.

Karl Schmieder [00:19:18]:
It's the same kind of funding that Tesla got early on to build out the cars and their EV charging system. So that's a really positive signal for biomanufacturing. We just had a company from Australia called Cauldron. They have this continuous fermentation technology that enables you to drive the price down of commodity chemicals under $10, which is very compelling. And then we've also spoken to a company called synonym, which is also working on really building out that infrastructure and making it easy for people to understand whether there is a market and whether the market is big enough and whether you can bring the cost down low enough for you to go after producing something using biology. And just for what it's worth, we've been very lucky to work with a hair care company that we always say it's a biotech company disguised as a hair care company. They came out of the gate during the pandemic. For us, when we first met them, we were like, wait, what are you guys doing? We don't really understand.

Karl Schmieder [00:20:20]:
And we had a couple of conversations with them, and what they really wanted from us was to help them tell their science story. Usually people want to make their science easier for people to understand. What these guys wanted was to increase the amount of science that was going into their marketing. And so it was a little bit contrary to what we usually do, but we were really interested in them. And the companies called k 18 hair, they reached over $200 million in revenue within three years. They have a product that basically, if you're a hairstylist and you work with people who are getting chemical service, like getting your hair dyed, permed, straightened, their product basically turns your takes damaged hair and restores the strength and elasticity to it within four minutes. And that means that the stylist can go back and do the work on the hair. And they have had, like, a tremendous run, incredible marketing machine.

Karl Schmieder [00:21:16]:
We've learned a tremendous amount from them. And we've to go back to your point in terms of how do you tell the story? They have three tiers of storytelling. One tier is like the consumer that really doesn't know or doesn't care about the science. Then the next tier is the consumer or the stylist that really wants to get a little bit of information about the science. And then at the upper tier is the stylist, who really want to dig deep into the science. And so we give them a newsletter that has the primary resources, with some reason. Why does it matter to us at the company, these guys ended up getting bought by Unilever, which just shows that the big companies are really interested in these products that have new functionalities that are only available through biotech or biology, and that also have a following and that also have growth potential. There's a lot of interest in what's going on in the biotech space, you know?

Steve Swan [00:22:11]:
And I'm gonna circle all the way back to the manufacturing thing you were talking about a minute ago. I remember, boy, I'm gonna say 15, maybe it was even 20 years ago when large companies, they literally were giving away their factories for a dollar, you know? And now, now when I'm talking to these folks, these different CIO's, they're becoming CIO's of these CDM Os. And if the CDMOs aren't already owned by PE, they're being bought, they're being snapped up. And that's why, I guess, right, because of the, the need for, and I hadn't done the math on it, right. Because I wasn't plugged in the same way you're plugged in. So again, if they're not already owned, they're in process of being owned by PE firms.

Karl Schmieder [00:22:49]:
Yeah, we're definitely going through us as a country, we're definitely going through a biomanufacturer, just manufacturing renaissance. And it's really astounding to see it happen. And it's across the board and we know we need it because if you look at our infrastructure, our infrastructure is crumbling. You cant drive down a road with a pothole in it and you go to other places. I hate to say you go to Europe and you see that they continue to invest in their infrastructure and theres reasons for that. And I like to complain about Amtrak because when I go to Boston or if I go upstate New York, the experience is not like I took the train from Geneva to Paris a couple of hours, you know, lovely train ride. I mean, there's european trains that just put anything in. Shame.

Karl Schmieder [00:23:39]:
I haven't been on any of the chinese or the japanese ones. But we are seeing a lot of people going into manufacturing related businesses because there's a huge opportunity there and bio manufacturing is going to be a big part of it. And we're just seeing the very beginning of that. But I would love to circle back to some of the AI stuff that we're seeing, which I think could be very interesting to your audience.

Steve Swan [00:24:03]:
Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of the folks that I've spoken to. Right. You know, the technology leaders, that's kind of the number one when I ask them what they want to talk about, number one's AI, number two's security, which nobody can talk about because they can't talk about their own security. And then number three, some of the outsourced partners that they utilize. But AI has been, I think what I'm getting from the technology leaders is it's there. We know it's there. We're trying to use it. It's not ready for primetime, but we got to keep beating it up and we'll get there.

Steve Swan [00:24:40]:
Right. Most of them are calling the Wild west. Most of them are calling it the introduction of the Internet back in the early nineties. The frustration I'm hearing about is the CEO's COo's, CFO's are hearing about it on the golf course from their buddies and saying that, hey, we're using this, or somebody else is using it. Why aren't we? And I don't know that they're using it either, but we're getting there.

Karl Schmieder [00:25:03]:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunities. Like I said early on, we still haven't had the chat DPT moment for biotechnology. And I don't know who the guy is who said it, but I've been quoting him, and someone's going to have to tell me who it was. But there's this idea that the language of physics and electronics is mathematics, but biology is so complicated that we need AI to really understand biology. There's so many processes going on in a cell at any given time that you can't mathematically model that you need to have artificial intelligence to be able to do that. And to me, and that's only within a cell, that's not even talking about an organism. Like, as things get more complex, you have to think about the interactions between different cells, which is like another level of complexity. And so this idea of designing proteins or designing cells that operate at that, to do something very specific, requires that kind of artificial intelligence.

Karl Schmieder [00:26:12]:
And what's fascinating to me that could be also very interesting for your audience is the fact that the life sciences is probably one of the three biggest generators of data. I know finance is a huge one. I never remember what the third one is, because I think of the complexity of biology requires so much data. So as a result, we need more people and more tools to be able to interrogate that data. And we've been lucky to work with a couple of AI companies, AI for drug discovery companies, but we'd also work with companies that are focused on building those foundational workflows or making those workflows available to people, which, if you're not in the trenches, if you're not at the bench, you're not thinking about workflows, or you wouldn't be thinking about workflows unless you were at the bench. And so that gets super complicated as well. So you do need those tools to make sure that you're able to dig into biology at another level. And then we talk about foundational models for biotechnology.

Karl Schmieder [00:27:18]:
The industry is built on two organisms, yeast and E. Coli, and yet there's trillions of species of organisms out there, and some never make it into industrial applications. And some probably have the answers to questions that we're asking. And generative AI right now makes it relatively easy to produce proteins that you want to do something very specific. We're going to get to the point where that AI is able to create cells that can also do something that is fit for a purpose. To me, that's really what makes what we're doing so interesting. Right now, we're living in a fan. Just really fantastic, wonderful time.

Karl Schmieder [00:28:01]:
And yes, AI or biotech, winter be damned, it's really an interesting time to be working in biotechnology.

Steve Swan [00:28:08]:
So from a technology perspective, you know, all the folks I talked to are like, we're there. We're actually ahead of it with the technology, the fuel that drives that engine, the fuel for that motor, for that, for that technology motor is data, like you just said. And it's getting the data in the right form or the right shape for AI to digest it and figure it out, you know, so every single person I talk to again, I'll talk about, I asked Bob McGowan this, the CIO over Generon. At the end of our conversation, I asked him, what would be your advice, right, to somebody coming into a swamp, biotech now? And what would you, what do you know now that you wish you knew then? You know, six or seven years ago, he's like, get your data in shape. You know, we got 30 years worth of data we're getting through from this point forward, we're good. Now we got to go back and work through all the others. And everybody else got the same issue. They can go out and buy it, but then they're like, well, how do we trust that we still got to go through it? So I think we're all going to get our data in shape and then be able to really chug away on the AI.

Steve Swan [00:29:11]:
But lots of 70% of these projects are failing right now because they haven't addressed the data. First, the it folks being it folks are going out and building the awesome engine, the awesome motor, which is cool. That's what they're supposed to do. But then the data is not ready or the data is not fit or whatever. It's the wrong data, whatever the case may be, right. So that's sort of the Achilles heel for today, for 2024, you know?

Karl Schmieder [00:29:35]:
Yeah, I mean, you bring up a great point. Like we, we were lucky enough to, to work with and are very friendly with a company called Epigene Labs. And Epigene Labs is built on this idea that there's so much data available already, but it's not harmonized, and you can interrogate it with today's tools. And so if you're able to go back and look at that data, then, you know, and combine it with new data, I mean, you know, we are very much, I don't know, creatures of habit. We believe that what's new is better. That may not always be the case, or maybe it is the case, but that doesn't mean that what's old we can't learn from. And so that's one of Epigene's focus, is being able to harmonize data specifically for oncology, and combining that data with new data sources to be able to find better targets for cancer drugs. And I think that that kind of thing is needed across the board because that ability to take that old data and use it today, I think, is a big bottleneck.

Karl Schmieder [00:30:33]:
And I'm not surprised that people are saying that they all have to come up with tools for it because it's, you know, everybody had their own format. I mean, if you think about, you know, medical records or personal medical records, all that is probably in like, some not so great format. And I know that at one point, Apple had partnered with epic systems, and I'm curious if that ever turned into anything. What? You know, I want to see my medical word about it. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:31:01]:
One of my CIO's actually brought that point up. He said that he thinks that we can get more, you know, juice from the grape if we, if we attack the EMR and EHR data. You know, he said we could figure more out, we could see what's really going on, but we haven't done that. And that should be, that kind of data should be more standardized or more structured data that we can actually get through. And that's what AI is great at right now. You know, from a generative standpoint or from a, you know, inference standpoint. We're not there yet, right? We're getting there. Get there, yeah.

Karl Schmieder [00:31:35]:
One of the things I've heard recently that I thought was I was fascinated by is you've got these companies that specialize in gene synthesis and, you know, you and I could, you know, well, maybe it's not that easy. You could go, we could order DNA from one of these companies, you know, for our lab. It's not as easy as doing that because there are screening procedures in place and the government is putting more regulations in to just make sure people are not able to easily order things that they shouldn't be ordering, which we want. But these companies, the big DNA synthesis providers, one of their more recent offerings is called variant libraries. So basically they will sell you the sequence to a protein and they would just go down the sequence and maybe change the nucleotide out. So these are the letters of DNA. And I heard that people are using those kind of variant libraries to train algorithms so that they have more insight into the way proteins fold, even though we've had alpha fold and we've got all these kinds of new tools. But is this another way to get insight into this biological data? And I think we're going to see a lot more of that, people generating these very exciting data sets based on things like these variant libraries that are looking at a very specific protein or looking at a very specific process in the cell.

Steve Swan [00:32:56]:
Yeah, like you said, we will get to that. Right. One of my CIO's was telling me he ran a sort of a roundtable at a conference late December of last year, and there were, there were, I think, 1112 of them around the table. And hey, if you, if you have an active use case for AI, raise your hand one guy and you have one.

Karl Schmieder [00:33:15]:
Oh, wow.

Steve Swan [00:33:15]:
You know. Yeah. I mean, maybe that changed in the last seven months, right. But there wasn't much, you know, so they're still working on it. They're still getting there.

Karl Schmieder [00:33:25]:
Yeah. I mean, going back to the beginning of our conversation where you said you had this, you know, this roundtable dinner. I thought that was a brilliant, that's a brilliant thing to do. It's like, I like going to conferences and I like going to events, but I think the smaller ones, more intimate ones, where it's a dinner, ten people, and, you know, you putting it on puts you at the center of that. We've got a group of people that we get together with here in Brooklyn. We joke around and call it the, you know, Brooklyn biotech mob. And, you know, it's like we all know each other, we see each other at different events, but it's just nice for us to kind of get together and have these dinners and bring new people in that don't really know us, but we are, that are new to our community. And I think it's really helpful.

Karl Schmieder [00:34:08]:
I think it's a really good, intimate way for, like you said, for people to solve problems together.

Steve Swan [00:34:12]:
It is, yeah. And they just connect up later and solve those problems. I mean, it was a, I didn't want to make the group too big. Right. I never, I don't want it to ever get to ten, you know, six, seven at a time, so they can, because, you know, ten people, some person will get lost, you know, like you said, you're an introvert. If I get the opportunity to not talk, I'm going to not talk. You know, I'll sit there and do my thing, whatever my thing is. But if you got five, six folks, they're all going to interact.

Steve Swan [00:34:36]:
So it was, it was great. It was fun. And it's, you know, I've been doing this for 25 years, and that's a. The podcast came to this. I was, I was coming, the way the podcast was born was I was coming back from Munich with my wife. We were coming back from Oktoberfest last year, and I was like, why don't I help to give back to this community? I know so many of these it leaders, and every time I hang up the phone, you know, we have some great conversations, but the conversation's gone, right? Why don't I publish that and let others listen to it? And I thought I was only going to be doing one of these a month, and I was going to do nine, but by the end of January, I already had nine recorded. I was like, oops, I better up this a little bit, you know?

Karl Schmieder [00:35:15]:
So I think the podcast is a great tool. I mean, like I said, for us at grow everything, we're up to 85 or 86, hitting, getting up to 90 and trying to figure out what we're going to do for our hundredth. We're going to do a live recording, which will be our first live recording this year or this next week, where we're going to be in front of an audience in New York City, which I think is going to be an interesting opportunity. We're interviewing someone who she had originally worked on growing bricks. So again, this idea of how biotech is being applied to places you normally wouldn't think of. And then it turns out that there's, like, now three or four competitors who are out there doing the same kind of thing. And so we're going to interview her in front of an audience, and that should be a lot of fun. But we feel like it's a really great way to show people the innovation that's happening.

Karl Schmieder [00:36:14]:
The industry is still very young. This is supposed to be the century of biotechnology. A lot of the people we talk to are people we know. We talk to a lot of people who are solving problems around materials. A woman who has a conference called biofabricate that is focused on the fashion industry and materials industry, people who are creating new colors using biology, the construction people I mentioned. And then, you know, we also talk to people on the biomedical side. We've had a number of people talking about the microbiome as it applies to infants or animals, and even talking to people who are doing things like education programs for middle school kids, community college. How do you train? How do you retrain a workforce so that it can work in the biotech industry.

Karl Schmieder [00:37:04]:
And this year, our focus has been a lot on what are people doing in biomanufacturing, but also what's happening internationally. Because, like, one of the things I'm interested in is as biotech spreads and becomes more easy for people to use, I think the problems that are solved are going to be very local problems. And my oldest son, after his freshman year, he did an internship up at MDI in Maine, and they incubate Maine related or Maine only biotech companies and the problems they were solving were things that none of us here in the city, in New York City or in California, they're not problems that we would ever have thought of. And you could build these really nice businesses around solving a very local problem. So we're fascinated by how does this technology get put into these other places and what are the things that they're going to do. And then we've also talked to people who are using the blockchain, this idea of decentralized science. How do you change the funding mechanisms for science? How do you make publications more accessible to people? That's something we've had a number of people talk to us about. So that's like a whole other area that is very interesting and is developing very quickly.

Steve Swan [00:38:13]:
That's great. That's all good stuff. And I love, you know what every, I've spoken to you several times here, right. And looking at your background and looking what you do, you understand the industry, right? And you can help folks, companies and folks understand how to tell their story, how to be better communicators, how to, how to get it out there, how really, how to look in the mirror. How do you understand? How do you look? How do you sound? And is it getting to the core of what you're trying to get to? Because I run into that all day long, right? I'll look at a resume and I'll talk to somebody and I'll be like, what you're telling me is totally different than this. We got to get these to sync up a little bit. And that's just real, that's real foundation. You know, you're, yeah, you're, you're going up the ladder a little bit here or a lot up the ladder, you know? So that's all good stuff.

Steve Swan [00:38:58]:
That's great stuff. Good. Thank you very much.

Karl Schmieder [00:39:00]:
Yeah, so my, my pleasure.

Steve Swan [00:39:04]:
Yeah. So anything else you want to hit on as far as that's concerned? Because I always have one. I don't. You said you watch my podcast. If you watched them all the way through, you know what my last question is? If you haven't, that's fine, too. But I always have the same question for all my guests. Very last question. So you tell me if there's anything else you want to hit on before I ask you that last question.

Karl Schmieder [00:39:23]:
No, I think I covered all the things I'd want to cover because I think what hopefully comes through when people listen to this is that I'm very enthusiastic about what we're doing with biotechnology. I think the sky's the limit. We have a lot of opportunity in front of us. We need people to understand it so that they're not scared of it. Um, and, uh, you know, the story is a strategy. You know, that's, that's the, that's the, um, Ben Horowitz quote that we have on our website. Just to remind people that, you know, if you're, if you're not telling a good story and you're focused on your tech, that story isn't necessarily gonna land. Um, I hate to say I don't know what your last question is.

Karl Schmieder [00:40:05]:
I only listened to, like, the beginnings of, and got into a couple of, you know, the episodes of.

Steve Swan [00:40:10]:
Yeah. So, so, um, let me, let me ask you my final question here. The one that I ask everybody, all right? It's about live music. I like live music and I like to go see concerts and stuff. So what I like to ask folks is, um, their favorite band or their favorite concert that they've ever seen. And one guy went back to when he was twelve, another person went back just a few years, you know, and it's always interesting because it gives you a little color on who you're talking to, but it also helps you. It's just a different question. Gets you a little off topic.

Steve Swan [00:40:50]:
So do you even like live music?

Karl Schmieder [00:40:52]:
Yeah. So this is a long, it's also a long answer. I'm a huge live music guy. I grew up on the punk rock scene in Los Angeles in the early mid eighties. I've probably seen hundreds of live shows, and my whole motivation to move to New York City was so that I could go see bands without having to drive all over the place. I loved growing up north of LA and Ventura, but I hated all the driving. And somehow when I was in college, I came across, you know, New York rocker or Village Voice. And I started mapping out, well, where all the bands were that I wanted to see, and they were all in just a couple of neighborhoods.

Karl Schmieder [00:41:37]:
And that was my motivation to move to, you know, here to New York. So I've seen a lot of bands and a lot of shows, and it would be hard for me to say that was my favorite show or. But I will say I'm lucky enough to live a couple blocks away from a tiny bar that has a french name. It's called Bar Barbez. It's named after a subway stop in Paris. And they have a very eclectic kind of programming. I often feel like a lot of the bands that play there are people who all know each other and you're seeing the same people night after night. But I have really enjoyed going there, not only because it's really close by, but it's also a different kind of music.

Karl Schmieder [00:42:27]:
Different kinds of music. And I tend to listen to all kinds of music, but I wish I could just say, you know, I saw the cramps. That was my favorite concert ever. That's not the case.

Steve Swan [00:42:40]:
Okay. Okay.

Karl Schmieder [00:42:41]:
I probably have a lot more of those. You know, it's a whole other. A whole other conversation.

Steve Swan [00:42:48]:
It's a whole nother podcast for you.

Karl Schmieder [00:42:50]:
Yeah, I saw, you know, the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Boston. That was like a show that I remember very well. I saw the Pixies many times in.

Steve Swan [00:43:00]:
Denver, and I never saw them. I wish I had.

Karl Schmieder [00:43:03]:
Yeah, pixies and breeders in Denver when I lived there.

Steve Swan [00:43:09]:
Breeders were at sea here now last year, but that's not the same as when you saw them, you know.

Karl Schmieder [00:43:13]:
Yeah, that was like when I was in grad school, so. And then I did, you know, we were. We lived here when CBGB was closing. They had a Los Angeles punk showcase. And so all these bands that I already knew that I'd seen when I grew up all played there, like, you know, a couple weeks before they closed. So that was a lot of fun. I mean, those are just probably a few scratching the surface, but I have to think of what other really. What other shows, whether pieces of live music are really, you know, meant a lot to me.

Karl Schmieder [00:43:44]:
My wife and I went to go see Harry Connick Junior. That one stands out at Red Rocks in Colorado. It's a lot of fun.

Steve Swan [00:43:50]:
Never been there. I've been there, but without a show.

Karl Schmieder [00:43:53]:
Yeah. Beautiful place. It really is. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I would love to. I bet a lot of people, you know, they draw a blank like I do. Or some people just aren't into live music, which I find curious.

Steve Swan [00:44:08]:
There is a couple. Yeah. That said, yeah, I don't really like live music or whatever. A lot of Bruce Springsteen. Right. You know, but I got the. Who else did I get? I got, let's see, stiff finger once I got some Springsteen. I got.

Steve Swan [00:44:24]:
Oh, gosh. From rush one. Got a big rush fan. Yeah, I know. I was shocked at that, too. So there's been a bunch. Bunch of different ones. Michael Jackson was another one.

Karl Schmieder [00:44:34]:
What? Who? Jackson.

Steve Swan [00:44:35]:
Michael. Michael Jackson.

Karl Schmieder [00:44:37]:
Oh, Michael Jackson. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. That's such a good question. And it's like I have a. I have a long list because I'm a huge live music guy and I really like going to see live music. I love seeing DJ's, too.

Karl Schmieder [00:44:53]:
You know, that's a lot of fun. And I've seen a lot of also very experimental music, which is also, you know, for. I go through periods where I really enjoy that right now. I seem to be really enjoying. I feel like there's this something going on in Spain with, like, with whatever their drink in the water has some really interesting kind of underground bands coming out of Spain that I'm listening to a lot. And then there's this genre egg punk, which I've been listening a lot to. So there's a lot of fun stuff all the time.

Steve Swan [00:45:30]:
Yeah, well, that's, you know, the evolution of music. Right.

Karl Schmieder [00:45:34]:
Exactly.

Steve Swan [00:45:34]:
It's great. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. It's good stuff. Well, thank you. I was, like, throwing that out there. It does throw a lot of people off, but, you know, hey, that's what it's about sometimes, right? Getting a little bit out of your comfort zone and getting you to think about it and getting the audience to see a side of you that they didn't expect they were going to see.

Karl Schmieder [00:45:50]:
So, yeah, I think you got a warrant. You should have warned me. I could add a better answer.

Steve Swan [00:45:56]:
Yeah, well, you know, I. I don't. I don't like warning people on that one because I want to get a raw answer, you know, so, yeah, you know, and I got it. I got the raw answer. So that's all good, you know, so.

Karl Schmieder [00:46:06]:
Yeah, I think my answer is, you can see I like music a lot. I've seen a lot of live bands and I will go out of my way to see someone I like and go to see stuff. I don't know, because I think that's actually where it gets really interesting.

Steve Swan [00:46:20]:
Yeah, well, for me, music costs so much now to go see. To go see something. I don't know. I got to have a pretty good idea that I'm going to at least, you know, like it. Like, for example, last year at c here. Now, I mean, I already spent on the tickets. And Corey Wong, who you may or may or may not have ever heard of, I mean, he was awesome. He's out of Minneapolis.

Steve Swan [00:46:41]:
He doesn't sing at all. But it's just like jazzy, crazy music that was up there. And then there was another band, a reggae band that only covered. What the heck was the name of them? I forgot their name right now. If I saw it, I'd remember. Or I could come up with it. But they cover David Bowie, the Beatles, and Pink Floyd, you know, in reggae versions. Yeah, in reggae.

Steve Swan [00:47:01]:
I was like, this is awesome, you know, so you know every tune, right? So it's familiar that way. But it's reggae, you know, and, I don't know, it was. It was interesting, you know? So anyway, yeah, I think it's.

Karl Schmieder [00:47:12]:
I think there's something to be said for being willing to go see new bands. Like, I was in California, and there's a spanish band I was talking about spanish bands called Prison Affair that I really love right now. And I told my brother in law I wasn't going to be there when they were playing, but they're playing in Long Beach. I said, oh, you should go see prison affair. And he was going to go see porno for Pyros. And I said, you're making a huge mistake. I go, you're going to spend $100 east to go see porno for Pyros? And it's going to be a terrible show. Whereas you could just.

Karl Schmieder [00:47:44]:
And you have to go deep into LA from where they are in Orange county. You could just go to Long beach and go see prison affair. And he's like, yeah, I don't want to go see that kind of thing. It's just going to be, like, so different from when we were growing up. I'm like, but that's the joy of it, you know?

Steve Swan [00:47:58]:
That's the point. Yeah, yeah.

Karl Schmieder [00:47:59]:
And then he said that he. The porno for pyro shows was terrible, you know?

Steve Swan [00:48:05]:
So I wonder, is. Is Navarro still with them? I have no idea.

Karl Schmieder [00:48:09]:
That. I don't know.

Steve Swan [00:48:10]:
Yeah, I have no idea.

Karl Schmieder [00:48:12]:
So fun.

Steve Swan [00:48:13]:
All right, well, listen, great having you on. I appreciate it. You know, if our listeners want to, or viewers, however you want to phrase it here, want to catch up with you, they'll be able to do that on LinkedIn and look at your profile and then connect up with you for some communication or marketing tips for themselves or their organizations. So I. Yeah, please do.

Karl Schmieder [00:48:35]:
I'm very active on LinkedIn. It's, you know, Karl Schmieder, you can spelling is right here and or on the grow everything podcast. I think if you do grow everything, biotech is the way you find it on Spotify. But thank you so much, Steve, for having me. This was a lot of fun.

Steve Swan [00:48:51]:
It was, yeah. And it's, again, a little off center for me, but I think it was great. I think my audience needed, and I need it, too. So that was great. Thank you.

Karl Schmieder [00:48:59]:
Yeah. Thank you.