I am very pleased to be joined today by Lori Oaks, co-founder and managing partner of Captivate Bio.
Lori, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
I'd like to begin by understanding more about your journey from a biology student to co-founding a startup amid a pandemic.
Of course. It's a long story but I'll try to be brief. So honestly, back then, as a biology student, you were earmarked for graduate school or medical school, but at the time I had found a job working in a natural chemistry lab of a local biotech company.
And local for me was Worcester, Mass. That team was involved in isolating an extract from the coleus tree. Our scientists had found that this naturally occurring agent that would boost the immune response to vaccines.
Because the company was getting ready to scale up and commercialize the product I had the opportunity to work with so many departments, including production, helping them transition the isolation process of the extract, quality control, establishing the SLPs purchasing, and even sales and marketing.
As I worked with the teams, I realized that I really wanted to get more involved with people and be on the business side. So I took a position with their sales and marketing team. And as I was eagerly learning the world of customer service, tech support, inventory management, and South American distribution, the company ran into financial issues.
So I found a sales and marketing position with a distribution company that was importing cosmetic ingredients, food chemicals, and biochemical reagents from all over the world and selling them to companies like Revlon, Kraft, and Sigma.
The team at the time wanted to get more involved in the clinical lab space so they added diagnostic testing products for special hematology inside of genetic labs, and essentially handed me something called the hospital blue book, which in a nutshell, it was a published phone directory of all of the U.S. hospitals that listed all kinds of info, hospitals certifications, registrations, but most importantly, for an inside salesperson like myself, it had all of their departments, the names of the respect of managers and the phone numbers. So this was a valuable tool.
We started doing quite well and just as the labs were adopting the products, the manufacturer decided to move the products to a new startup that was more diagnostic test focused. Given my relationship with the customers, they asked me to transition with them.
So now I'm at this new company. I'm learning more skills in commercial operations, business development, shipping, and logistics, not only nationally, but globally. We developed great relationships with our clinical customers. They really appreciated the high-quality products, quick delivery, and excellent customer service.
We were one of the few companies where they felt they could call somebody - a human being actually answered the phone.
We eventually expanded our product range and added molecular diagnostic kits for screening leukemia that were being manufactured in France.
A short time later, this manufacturer wanted to establish a U.S. subsidiary. So along with the products, I transitioned to their new site. Again, the company was beyond successful and eventually sold.
Just when I thought I was back to square one, my path led me to the stem cell culture universe, and we found ourselves again, establishing a U.S.-based site for an ex-U.S. company.
It was full circle for me here because on the scientific side, I had started my career working in a lab with a product that helped boost immune responses. And now here I was working with researchers, who are using our own cells to not only boost immune response but actually develop patient therapies and disease solutions.
It was full circle for me here because on the scientific side, I had started my career working in a lab with a product that helped boost immune responses. And now here I was working with researchers, who are using our own cells to not only boost immune response but actually develop patient therapies and disease solutions.
The company gained much success in the U.S. marketplace and just as the pandemic hit, they sold. As we transitioned the products and the team to the buyers and with my 50th birthday looming, I knew it was time for me to do something on my own.
Tanya and I had built great relationships with customers, deep supplier relationships over the years and most importantly, we really wanted to make sure that our researchers would be able to continue their work without disruption. So we established Captivate Bio and here we are.
It does sound like you were just as curious about business as you were as a student. And I think that's a common denominator in sciences, an insatiable curiosity.
Yeah, I've always loved science and what do you do with science if you're not going to medical school or graduate school? So it's been so wonderful to enjoy the science from the business side of things.
Now, something you said earlier piqued my interest because prior to ZAGENO, I worked at MilliporeSigma you referenced Sigma and a blue book. Now from Sigma, I'm familiar with the red book; was the blue book, a hospital-related book?
It was called the hospital blue book and it was at least five inches in depth of information of every hospital within the United States. It listed what type of JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) certification it had, who were the board members, what type of funding they received, were they for profit, not profit, which insurances they accepted…? But in it, they had really valuable information for an inside salesperson like myself, for example, who the purchasing director was, who was the lab manager?
So, without traveling or attending trade shows, it gave me the opportunity to be able to call on those individuals and make my way to the right person, which back then was either the cytogenetics lab director or the special hematology manager.
That's fascinating. So I want to bring it to current day because I read in your company description that you pride yourself as a woman-led scientific provider.
Can you explain what that means to you, your organization and what it means to your partners and to your customers?
Honestly, who doesn't want to be Wonder Woman? At the core of her world are people and we have that same philosophy. Here at the core of Captivate Bio are our people, our customers, our scientific researchers who are also heroes of our world. They're working to develop therapies, designing testing solutions, and honestly, just trying to make the world a better place.
And let's face it, our suppliers, they're also our heroes. They're delivering innovative goods with high quality and hopefully in a timely manner. And again, just as we know our customers and our partners, we wanted everyone to know who we are and who is behind the Captivate Bio.
...at the core of Captivate Bio are our people, our customers, our scientific researchers who are also heroes of our world. They're working to develop therapies, designing testing solutions, and honestly, just trying to make the world a better place. And let's face it, our suppliers, they're also our heroes. They're delivering innovative goods with high quality and hopefully in a timely manner.
I love that. Just being associated with that idea is a win-win.
Now you've had a very busy 2021 so far. I want to recap some of that with you now. In January, you launched a portfolio of cell culture tools to address COVID and other diseases as well as to reduce supply chain delays in cell culture media manufacturing, and I'd love to learn more about this particular announcement.
Absolutely. Over the last six years, I served as general manager for an international cell culture media company, here in the U.S. They specialized in manufacturing, cell culture, media for general research cytogenetics, and the stem cell marketplace.
We were used to shipping the cell culture media all over the world while primarily importing the material here in the U.S. When the pandemic hit and the demand for the critical media formulations in transport media increased, we pivoted pulled our team and U.S. network of partners and manufacturers together to help address the supply issues.
Specifically with the sourcing and manufacturing of the transport media and we even obtain some of the various ingredients needed to make the COVID virus collection kits right here in the U.S. We saw and heard, unfortunately, of lots of media being imported into the U.S., getting stuck or lost upon import.
And so while the big manufacturers were busy ramping up. We were able to help by supplementing many of the smaller labs with bulk media manufacturing. We launched Captivate Bio with the idea of filling the gaps in U.S. manufacturing. We wanted to really address procurement challenges, any project planning and movement of product when the bigger companies were unable to deliver. Providing customers with another reliable option for procuring the materials they needed.
Yes, we're very sensitive to the dysfunction that exists between the manufacturer or the supplier and the lab -these longstanding problems that it sounds like you're trying to help your community overcome, which is fabulous
Now in April, you announced an agreement with Denovo matrix. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, which essentially means that captivate bio has become the North American distributor of its products for cell manufacturing.
Can you elaborate on this news?
Absolutely. We're very excited and you absolutely pronounced the name correctly, it's a Denovo Matrix and they're out of Dresden, Germany. Part of our mission, here at Captivate Bio, is to not only assist researchers with high-quality products, but also for those companies looking to enter the U.S. market, we offer commercialization, distribution, and logistics support.
We began talking with the Denovo Matrix after learning about their technology. And with our background and commercializing stem cell reagents, it just made sense for us to look at working together. Their bio-matrices are a really nice addition to our growing product portfolio for the stem cell and food space.
As our stem cell customers move from research into the therapeutic space and even emerging industries like cellular agriculture, having access to these new technologies that are innovative, animal-free, chemically defined, and clinically relevant are really critical to speeding up the research and discovery process.
We want to make sure our customers in North America get easy and fast access to this newer technology.
Congratulations on that partnership.
Let's stay on the subject to distribution because I'd like to get to know a little bit more about your go-to-market approach. Does Captivate Bio rely on marketing? Do you have a direct Salesforce? Are you using distribution channels or is it a combination of these approaches?
Great question. I don't want to give away all of our secrets, but what I can tell you is that outside of our marketing efforts and technical sales team, we really put a lot of effort into a combination of factors, including social, digital marketing, and online marketplaces, such as ZAGENO.
This helps build awareness of our family of products. As a smaller company, we've learned to really rely on digital communities and online strategies to expand our reach. However, with the world just figuring out the secret and power of digital marketing the way we do business, I believe has changed forever.
As a smaller company, we've learned to really rely on digital communities and online strategies to expand our reach. However, with the world just figuring out the secret and power of digital marketing the way we do business, I believe has changed forever.
The online conversations, unfortunately, just got crowded. The pandemic has sped up our adoption of machine learning, virtual learning, and the way we consume content. For smaller organizations it's really going to get tougher in keeping up their content with the bigger companies like Thermo, Corning and Irvine Scientific.
I will say though, that answering this question later in the year might result in a different answer as we'll have had a little bit more time to adapt our strategies.
You definitely seem like a very agile business that's constantly changing. So we could probably have this conversation quarterly and get new answers to practically every question I've asked.
We talked earlier about the blue book and the red book, and there were obviously these pre-internet approaches to how customers found suppliers, how suppliers found customers.
But do you feel there have been major disruptions in terms of how customers engage with suppliers and vice versa?
That's an interesting question. The pandemic has had a direct impact, which trickles down to all of us as suppliers and manufacturers because product consumption rates are severely impacted. What we are experiencing is that there are still customer segments that are not in the lab 100% yet. Many labs in the U.S. are still rotating scientists in and, or limiting their time in the lab. So it's making it difficult to find new customers and it's making it difficult to work with scientists on a consistent basis.
Everyone has a different schedule or their research is on hold, or other projects become prioritized because of their relationship to what's happening in the universe today. So it's been tricky to manage it all. Another thing we found is that customers are, in light of the pandemic, they obtained bulk products. So they have a lot of the product from last year that we've helped them manage. But unfortunately, some of that product is coming up for expiration. So as we get closer to reopening and scientists are back in the lab, 100%, there may be a new problem with them having all of this expired product on their shelves, which will naturally drive demand.
And with everyone ramping back up, and if this is happening all at the same time, We're gonna start to see manufacturer backorders or even product delivery delays. More recently the challenge that we're hearing is that plastics have become an issue.
You have your clinical labs who are having a problem, obtaining simple pipette tips. That's a real problem because no pipette tips means no testing and patients not getting their results. We've heard others are concerned because while they're currently stocked, their reorders of plastic bottles and or bags are on backorder or manufacturers are really doing their best to deliver to everybody so they're shorting orders. If these problems continue, then unfortunately we're going to see disruptions, industry-wide.
That's very consistent with what we see in our data set and perhaps it's indicative of challenges to come.
I was hoping I could pivot slightly to something we touched on a bit earlier. Now you've placed a bet on having products available in a marketplace model - the ZAGENO marketplace, as an additional customer touchpoint.
And I wonder is the rationale behind this to put Captivate in a position to compete with better-known brands who may be having availability issues? So you're going to get that look in from customers who need those high-quality products in a particular time frame.
...we're not afraid to try new programs or tactics or test new digital channels...I think that's our true secret. We want to be where our customers are.
Yes for sure.
We're trying to get out to the universe as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And our team here at Captivate Bio has always sought the latest and greatest when it comes to e-business online marketing and sales strategies. Even in our previous roles we've had extensive experience in building and managing eCommerce and inventory online, and we're not afraid to try new programs or tactics or test new digital channels.
I think that's our true secret - we want to be where our customers are.
The added benefit is that we're able to make decisions, move fast and change as a smaller organization. Partnering and having our products listed within the respected channels or online marketplaces that our customers regularly use has always been at the top of our priority list.
That's really interesting and clearly, we're pleased to have your product SKUs available to our customers in the marketplace. Now, as we wrap up, I want to know what we can expect from Captivate for the remainder of this year and into 2022.
It's not a shortlist, that’s for sure.
First and foremost, our customers can expect the team at Captivate Bio too. Offer and continue unparalleled customer service with transparency and speedy communication all of the time. I really feel that just needs to be said.
Researchers are first for us. Their success is our success.
Researchers are first for us. Their success is our success.
Strategically, we've got a very busy year coming up. We've just recently signed distribution agreements with a few international suppliers. We'll be announcing them later this month. These relationships will allow us to support the cytogenetic community. With cell culture, media, and reagents for their clinical analysis.
In addition, we're going to be expanding our platelet lysate portfolio for our cell therapy customers. If you've noticed, we've also just launched a new portfolio of small molecules for natural killer cells. And if that's not enough, we're in the midst of bulk manufacturing, key general media formulations for stem cell research like DMEM and RPMI, and all those fun things.
Hopefully, once we get through all that, towards the second half of the year, we're really looking to test the market with a new bioprocessing cell culture media that will be applicable for human pluripotent and mesenchymal stem cells. That's currently in development.
Honestly, we have a lot going on. We are super motivated and we really feel that the sky's the limit here.
Lori, let me say, it's been wonderful to learn about Captivate Bio, to learn about your personal journey and the very brave decision made by you and your co-founder to start-up amidst this once-in-a-century pandemic - let's hope it's a once in a century pandemic!
It's really an incredible story.
Thank you again for sharing it with us today.
You're so welcome, thank you for inviting me. You never know what will be happening at Captivate Bio, but we'll make sure that it's interesting and fun.
