Raising Health

From Faculty to Founder: Building Startups from Academia

Vineeta Agarwala, Michelle Arkin, Natalia Jura, Olivia Webb, and Jimmie Ye

Posted June 20, 2023

In this episode, taken from a live a16z event, Bio + Health general partner Vineeta Agarwala moderates a panel of UCSF faculty founders, including Michelle Arkin, Jimmie Ye, and Natalia Jura (full bios below). Together, they discuss fundraising, the decision to stay in or leave academia after founding a company, and their tips for managing the IP process.

Michelle Arkin is a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and a co-director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center at UCSF. Professor Arkin is also a cofounder of both Elgin Therapeutics and Ambagon Therapeutics.

Jimmie Ye is an associate professor of medicine at the Institute for Human Genetics at UCSF and an affiliate investigator at Gladstone Institutes. He is also the cofounder of Dropprint Genomics and Survey Genomics.

Natalia Jura is a professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Pharmacology and an investigator at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at UCSF. Professor Jura is also an associate director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute. She is a cofounder of Rezo Therapeutics.

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Biology and the state of healthcare are undergoing radical shifts.
Raising Health delves into dialogues with scientists, technologists, founders, builders, leaders, and visionaries as they explore how AI, engineering, and technology elevate health to new heights and create a system of enduring health for all.

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