1 00:00:08,420 --> 00:00:14,510 So first of all, what are the essential features of being an entrepreneur? 2 00:00:17,850 --> 00:00:22,170 Well, first and foremost, it's about having a great idea. 3 00:00:22,890 --> 00:00:32,770 Make no mistake, it is about ideas. But the definition of a great idea varies widely according to who you ask. 4 00:00:33,850 --> 00:00:38,050 I don't personally think it is essential for a great idea to be novel. 5 00:00:39,040 --> 00:00:43,390 You will actually see a lot of very successful businesses having been set up 6 00:00:43,900 --> 00:00:48,550 out of ideas that have already been out there for quite a long period of time. 7 00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:53,560 But I fundamentally believe that a great idea has to be unique. 8 00:00:54,370 --> 00:01:01,000 There has to be something about it that no one has really thought about before. 9 00:01:03,540 --> 00:01:08,000 It would be wonderful if this great idea could also be protectable. 10 00:01:08,010 --> 00:01:13,110 Although we will come back to the issue of intellectual property a little bit later within the talk. 11 00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:18,540 It is essential that the idea be transformative. 12 00:01:19,260 --> 00:01:25,140 In other words, that it takes the status quo and completely turns it on its head. 13 00:01:28,610 --> 00:01:36,530 There is no point in it being transformative if no one can afford it and if absolutely no one is willing to pay money for it. 14 00:01:37,670 --> 00:01:47,000 So as you saw, Augur, Knox is about essentially recreating around an organ, an environment which encounters within the human body. 15 00:01:47,390 --> 00:01:51,800 Well, what's novel about that? Surely someone else before you, Constantine, thought of this. 16 00:01:53,030 --> 00:01:56,630 Yes, it was a mad Frenchman to the middle of 19th century. 17 00:01:57,260 --> 00:02:02,690 And in his first attempt, he managed all of 26 minutes before both the organ and the patient died. 18 00:02:03,980 --> 00:02:07,820 So there was a key technological development, which I won't describe here, 19 00:02:08,210 --> 00:02:17,510 which suddenly made it possible when all previous attempts had never been able to do this for longer than 4 to 6 hours to make it happen for 24, 20 00:02:17,990 --> 00:02:21,860 72 and hours and possibly a week. 21 00:02:23,430 --> 00:02:26,940 And that key development was actually understanding born out of science, 22 00:02:26,940 --> 00:02:34,710 understanding how an organ regulates its own blood supply, and then finding an engineering way of recreating it. 23 00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:48,510 But even that wasn't enough to start a business, because even though it is undeniably unique and as a patented idea, protectable. 24 00:02:50,260 --> 00:02:53,350 We needed to check that it could be transformative. 25 00:02:54,680 --> 00:02:58,640 And after a great many science experiments in the lab. 26 00:03:00,170 --> 00:03:06,590 What actually convinced us to go after creating a business was the realisation that with this 27 00:03:06,590 --> 00:03:12,890 technology you would be able to transplant organs which cannot currently be transplanted. 28 00:03:14,030 --> 00:03:20,210 In other words, it wasn't the beauty of the technology, how elegant it was, how scientifically exciting it was. 29 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:31,160 It was the fact that it could address a very, very real need without requiring any significant change in current legislative or donation practice. 30 00:03:33,180 --> 00:03:35,610 Broadly speaking, in certain territories, 31 00:03:35,610 --> 00:03:42,629 almost half the organs that could potentially be donated are ultimately not retrieved and transplanted in those organs, 32 00:03:42,630 --> 00:03:48,900 which we discovered this technology could potentially uniquely recover and enable transplant of. 33 00:03:52,010 --> 00:03:57,410 The second entrepreneurial feature, in my view, is a passion about translation. 34 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:02,670 And it's actually not about concepts. 35 00:04:02,750 --> 00:04:10,040 It's about products. And that's one of the very difficult transitions for scientists to make. 36 00:04:11,030 --> 00:04:14,750 We all very easily fall in love with the elegance of our own science. 37 00:04:16,150 --> 00:04:20,800 But this is what it looked like when we started organics. 38 00:04:21,190 --> 00:04:30,760 What you're seeing here is a machine that is probably about the size of three upright pianos back to back, not exactly transportable, 39 00:04:31,210 --> 00:04:39,610 about 1005 hundred variables, about as many knobs and one person in the middle who is solely capable of operating it. 40 00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:44,980 I will show you the development of this device for very practical steps, 41 00:04:45,640 --> 00:04:55,840 but I will tell you that the most challenging effort in this entire approach and in this entire adventure has been the creation of these buttons. 42 00:04:56,680 --> 00:05:03,940 How do you take a machine out of the lab and make it NHS proof so that even a surgeon can't mess it up? 43 00:05:05,980 --> 00:05:13,120 And really it was about taking a very complex device and giving it three buttons. 44 00:05:13,780 --> 00:05:16,840 Play. Pause. Eject. 45 00:05:19,780 --> 00:05:25,420 Not many people can say that their entire contents of of their brain can be accessed through a single button. 46 00:05:25,750 --> 00:05:32,290 I can. The third feature can you handle uncertainty? 47 00:05:34,380 --> 00:05:38,400 Typically within an academic environment, we have uncertainty, 48 00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:44,460 but nowhere near the level that you're going to experience within a business environment. 49 00:05:45,540 --> 00:05:54,869 Uncertainty is present in every single step of the process from whether the 50 00:05:54,870 --> 00:05:59,549 idea is worth translating to the terms under which you're about to translate. 51 00:05:59,550 --> 00:06:07,560 The idea to actually starting the business and making sure that there is enough funding to get you to the next significant milestone. 52 00:06:07,830 --> 00:06:19,110 Every single step of the way. The second very important facet of uncertainty is that it needs to be controlled. 53 00:06:19,140 --> 00:06:24,660 Uncertainty? No one quite dives completely into the unknown. 54 00:06:26,100 --> 00:06:31,589 You should not ever, ever attempt to start a business in an area if you do not understand, 55 00:06:31,590 --> 00:06:39,210 even if you're seeing people around you doing it left and right. Probably what has happened by the time it is a trend, it is already too late. 56 00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:43,500 And I will come back to what I mean by that on the next slide. 57 00:06:45,060 --> 00:06:49,530 And also it is important to realise that there is risk. 58 00:06:49,650 --> 00:07:00,180 You need to be comfortable with risk. You can spend five, ten, 15 years of your life developing something which a miracle cure, 59 00:07:00,630 --> 00:07:09,060 a competitive product, a change in circumstances, financial or otherwise wipe overnight. 60 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:18,920 And you need to be the kind of person who can take it on the chin, fall over and and be straight back at work the next day working on something else. 61 00:07:23,180 --> 00:07:30,830 The next one is very specifically about youth, and there's a term which investors love to use. 62 00:07:31,190 --> 00:07:35,180 Investors will tell you that they very rarely invest in ideas. 63 00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:46,010 They invest in people. And someone at the dinner last week went as far as to tell me that they don't care about the ideas. 64 00:07:47,210 --> 00:07:57,990 Which actually shocked me. They said, no, we can actually see someone who's going to make a successful business from who they are as a person, 65 00:07:58,350 --> 00:08:03,420 how they respond, how they react, and how they talk about what they're about to do. 66 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:14,070 And so the first thing about being investable is be extremely good at what you do, particularly coming from a place in Oxford. 67 00:08:14,310 --> 00:08:21,770 There is no alternative to quality and quality. You have to be at the absolute top of your game and you have to be able to challenge 68 00:08:22,010 --> 00:08:26,960 and be challenged on every single aspect of your proposed business proposition. 69 00:08:28,010 --> 00:08:32,870 And in an academic context, that means not only being good according to your own criteria, 70 00:08:33,290 --> 00:08:42,470 but actually being perceived as a leader by your peers, by your professional societies, through your publications, through your lectures. 71 00:08:43,040 --> 00:08:50,300 These are all things that investors and potential downstream events will be looking at as far as you're concerned. 72 00:08:52,010 --> 00:08:53,870 The second thing is reputation. 73 00:08:55,570 --> 00:09:03,370 You have to be prepared on day one, but you might in a good situation once and in a bad situation, have to do this again. 74 00:09:05,040 --> 00:09:13,470 So you actually absolutely must preserve your integrity and reputation throughout the process. 75 00:09:14,790 --> 00:09:17,340 And all these things break down to these four points. 76 00:09:18,060 --> 00:09:25,110 Are you credible as an inventor and a founder in the specific area that you're trying to address? 77 00:09:26,360 --> 00:09:36,680 Are you able to inspire others and make them see that your crazy big idea is actually a different way of seeing things that has tremendous potential. 78 00:09:38,730 --> 00:09:41,850 Are you trustworthy? Absolutely. 79 00:09:41,850 --> 00:09:50,520 No one I know will invest significant sums of money in someone who does not know how to manage the finances of a company. 80 00:09:51,810 --> 00:09:57,090 And this last one is perhaps the most important. Are you able to multitask? 81 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:04,920 One of the things that is fantastic about doing this, I think that's fantastic about being an academic, is how multifaceted the job is. 82 00:10:05,220 --> 00:10:08,880 You get to teach. You get to do research. You get to write grants. 83 00:10:09,210 --> 00:10:14,280 You get to travel. The world almost every single day uses a different skill set. 84 00:10:15,210 --> 00:10:19,680 Well, that skill sets isn't even a small subset of the breadth of skill set. 85 00:10:19,680 --> 00:10:24,260 You'll need to be your business. You have to be able. 86 00:10:25,170 --> 00:10:28,410 To talk money, talk science. 87 00:10:29,490 --> 00:10:33,070 Be. Inspirational to your team. 88 00:10:34,160 --> 00:10:43,160 Reassuring to your board, you'll have to be able to understand legal aspects, tax aspects, valuation aspects, 89 00:10:43,160 --> 00:10:51,560 financial aspects, things which by and large, as a community of academics, we are not well-trained and well equipped to do. 90 00:10:52,580 --> 00:10:56,000 And the bottom line is you can't delegate those things. 91 00:10:56,120 --> 00:11:00,260 You can get help, you can get advice, but you cannot delegate them. 92 00:11:00,380 --> 00:11:04,910 You have to be prepared to dive in and learn what needs to be learned. 93 00:11:07,180 --> 00:11:11,860 And the final thing is, are you able to assemble a good team? 94 00:11:15,950 --> 00:11:20,480 In every small company. If you need more than two pizzas to feed them, that team is too big. 95 00:11:21,140 --> 00:11:22,880 And that's actually a very wise quote. 96 00:11:23,410 --> 00:11:29,030 Organics went through its first five years, never putting in an order of more than two pizzas at midnight on a Friday. 97 00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:42,700 That is actual fact. So. Having said that, because you can only afford a small number of people and because you will be taking forward a very, 98 00:11:42,700 --> 00:11:46,780 very series of mission critical things in the early days of starting a company, 99 00:11:47,470 --> 00:11:52,480 you have to think very carefully about identifying and covering skillset gaps. 100 00:11:53,980 --> 00:12:01,510 What is it that you're good at and very honestly acknowledge what it is that you are not good at. 101 00:12:03,720 --> 00:12:06,900 Inventors very rarely make good CEOs. 102 00:12:07,200 --> 00:12:14,400 I know the very highly publicised large companies have a few examples that go against that suggestion. 103 00:12:15,350 --> 00:12:22,940 But in my experience, you actually need three facets almost independently represented in your founding team. 104 00:12:23,540 --> 00:12:28,340 You need the technology which in this room probably you will be representing and leading. 105 00:12:29,030 --> 00:12:33,109 You need someone who can take that technology and formulate it into a business 106 00:12:33,110 --> 00:12:39,620 proposition that is actually going to be sustainable and offer a return on investment. 107 00:12:40,580 --> 00:12:46,310 And you also need someone who understands the particular market that you're about to go into. 108 00:12:50,420 --> 00:13:01,730 And in the case of Morgan Oakes, these were the people the three founders were Peter Friend, who's the chair of Transplantation in Oxford. 109 00:13:02,330 --> 00:13:07,520 So pretty good thing to have on board for a company that is going to focus on transplantation. 110 00:13:08,580 --> 00:13:15,450 You cannot hope to penetrate a market and a new world without the champion who is within it. 111 00:13:15,600 --> 00:13:19,080 200%. That wasn't me. That was Peter. 112 00:13:19,110 --> 00:13:24,600 He was the one performing the transplants. He was the one who was the president of the British Transplantation Society. 113 00:13:24,930 --> 00:13:29,910 He was the one who knew every single liver transplant surgeon in North America and Europe. 114 00:13:34,330 --> 00:13:40,150 And you need an excellent CEO. And these three people on the edge of the picture were the original founders of organics. 115 00:13:41,890 --> 00:13:46,770 Now, finding a CEO twice has been the most difficult thing I've had to do. 116 00:13:46,810 --> 00:13:54,150 And as you'll realise for the second one, I didn't look too far for that very reason, I should say innovation was a tremendous help. 117 00:13:54,160 --> 00:14:04,030 When we started forming organics, I personally interviewed 47 CEO candidates before choosing Les Russell, 118 00:14:05,530 --> 00:14:10,840 and the reason is that this is actually a very rare breed of individual. 119 00:14:11,650 --> 00:14:18,219 What you want is someone who has operated within a small business before because it's a completely different thing to have 120 00:14:18,220 --> 00:14:24,580 to operate in a team of three and to be working within a company like GSK where you can delegate to an army of people. 121 00:14:24,580 --> 00:14:28,270 It's just a completely different mindset you need. 122 00:14:28,270 --> 00:14:34,330 We needed someone who had previously worked with the sort of product and the sort of complexities that we're looking to do. 123 00:14:34,810 --> 00:14:42,100 And Les had actually worked for Baxter in developing their blood products, so he was ideally placed for a product that was going to be using blood, 124 00:14:42,730 --> 00:14:49,300 but he had also created and led to spin out companies previously in the medtech area. 125 00:14:53,240 --> 00:15:00,190 The third. So this was the first full time employee of the company, Peter and myself being full time academics. 126 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:06,850 The next very important person was actually the ISS project manager who helped to spin it out 127 00:15:07,420 --> 00:15:12,790 and who fell in love with the story so much that he decided he wanted to do nothing but that. 128 00:15:13,450 --> 00:15:18,270 And that was Colin Storey, who we decided to appoint as operations director. 129 00:15:18,280 --> 00:15:22,930 When you're building a complex device with thousands of parts that need to be assembled, 130 00:15:23,320 --> 00:15:32,320 you need to make sure that someone has got a clear handle on the production process and the person with academic duties will not be able to do it. 131 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:38,990 And the final thing that is quite specific to the type of business that organics is, 132 00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:43,640 is one of the biggest thresholds you have to cross in medtech is regulatory. 133 00:15:44,700 --> 00:15:50,189 You are not allowed to do anything from a first man trial to first sales unless you're able 134 00:15:50,190 --> 00:15:55,590 to satisfy the regulator of the safety and in certain territories efficacy of your device. 135 00:15:56,250 --> 00:16:02,550 And so the next key appointment was Tony Day was the regulatory affairs and Quality Systems person. 136 00:16:05,350 --> 00:16:07,000 Now moving away from the slide. 137 00:16:07,330 --> 00:16:15,010 The one thing I've learned also is that you never, ever, ever go into business with someone you would not be willing to volunteer your kidney for. 138 00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:21,709 Now, in my case, it's pretty handy because this man is the chair of kidney transplantation. 139 00:16:21,710 --> 00:16:25,850 So that's a very dangerous promise to make. But I mean it. 140 00:16:27,500 --> 00:16:35,730 To this very day. These are people I trust. These are people I spend a lot of time with and I have three boys. 141 00:16:35,760 --> 00:16:39,150 The youngest is called Peter and he's the reason. 142 00:16:40,620 --> 00:16:50,400 It is a massive commitment. It's almost as great as a marriage and you should not engage into it lightly. 143 00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:53,460 Know the people. Trust them. Bond with them.