What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Yash Sabharwal’s impressive career
• How nanotechnologies can help people get the medical treatment they need
• COVID-19’s impact on his work

Since COVID has impacted the world, the next few episodes will focus on the work and science done locally in Austin.

Yash Sabharwal began his career in Optics after one of his father’s friends suggested he check out the University of Rochester’s Optics program. After he graduated, he went on to attain his M.S. and Ph.D. in Optical Science from the University of Arizona. He knew he wanted to go into life sciences but didn’t want to be a doctor, so he took his background and went into medical imaging. He joined forces with his peers and began his first start-up, Advance Image Sciences. At the end of his journey with the company, he decided Optics wasn’t involved in his next steps. He and his wife moved to Austin when someone in his network asked him to help grow a startup with him in Austin. Yash became the COO of Xeris Pharmaceuticals for 6 years before he shifted to nanotechnologies and became the President & CEO of NanoMedical Systems.

NanoMedical Systems has been pioneering an embeddable, slow-release drug delivery system. The concept is the system is implanted into the patient and releases medication into the body at a constant rate for months at a time. Nanomedical believes this technology would be beneficial for those who suffer from opioid addiction because it removes the decision-making process involved with the treatment medications and the need to travel to clinics multiple times a week. In COVID times, it would be beneficial as it decreases the frequency of office visits needed which in part reduces possible exposure. Yash shared that “it’s a slow process… and it’s very exciting to think about what [they] can do with it once [it’s] an approved product.”

Yash shared that biosciences can be difficult to invest in due to the need for different equipment that is often very expensive. This becomes a problem when companies start receiving investments to do their work because they do not have the resources needed and outsourcing labwork is expensive and often inefficient. He said that the Austin Community College Bioscience Incubator is invaluable to companies like NanoMedical Systems and other Austin bioscience companies. It allows them to operate in a capital-efficient mode until they can fund their own resources.

To hear more from Yash about his career path, not being afraid to fail, and the value of the ACC Bioscience Incubator, tune into the sixth installment of Science in the Mall Y’all! If you like this episode be sure to subscribe and share this episode with friends and colleagues!

Science In the Mall, Y’all is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with the ACC Bioscience Incubator.

Host: Dan Dillard, founding_media

Guest: Yash Sabharwal

Transcript:

this is a founding media podcast if welcome to science in the mall y’all I’m your host Dan Dillard some people have direct paths to success others with their own stories Josh several wall is one of those people from working optics cancer research to now working in metal medical systems Josh has had a very indirect then medical systems is a company currently exploring how we can use nanotechnology to solve large problems let’s hear more about young and how having an affordable space like a sissy bioscience incubator allows for innovation to thrive so here’s one example of science happening in the mall your 

so yes I’m really curious one thing we’ve been talking about offline is your deduction and the impact that the work that you’re doing can you explain more yes so you know and not a medical we we one of our founding technologies of the company is a very specialized implants and then technology implant that allows you to deliver drugs at a constant rate for months at a time and it sort of takes the patient out of the decision process and so for drugs at a really critical to your treatment in terms of insurance you know and also not each of the drug gets diverted for uses that uses that are not appropriate I mean our technology can have can solve a lot of these problems and so one of the areas obviously where you know beef the feel and not just us but a lot of other groups field you know our our our technology has application is in the area of opioid addiction right so right now you have a you have a scenario where people who are addicted and start to seek treatment you know they have to go to clinics regularly yeah you know fairly frequently to get their medications as in some ways the medication they’re taking for treatment can itself be abuse right and so then because it can be abused the clinical community limits how much they’re going to give to you but this presents a real problem for people that are trying to get their lives back you know in in in order because if you have to say you know you have to keep a job if you have to go every few days the clinic and stand in line to get your get your medications right and and what if you don’t live nearby clinic you know so this is another example where the rural areas get left out because if you’re two hundred miles from the clinic well you know that’s just on a practical thing for you to do so you got to get your treatment especially right now during cope with unimaginable tougher it is so the coding crisis is absolutely exacerbated the problem I mean you know you were seeing you know even with all the money being thrown at the problem of the past couple years and twenty nineteen you still had a peak I believe in and the number of deaths due to overdose okay so that it’s not getting better right and now I think it’s twenty twenty you’re gonna see those numbers go even higher because of all the issues around social social isolation just the inability to get to your you know to the clinic to get your medication I mean this is driving all of the factors that lead to this problem to begin with and and so you know the the so the the the badge of our technology is on the application of our technology as well look if you can have an implant if you can fill it with three months worth of drugs and you can implanted under the person scanned and then they’re just getting their daily dose for three months there have to go anywhere they just get it and and it works and it keeps them stable well that’s a huge advantage for the patient for the clinical community for this for society as a whole right so efficient yes seems like a no brainer yes well conceptually yes obviously the getting there is is is always a challenge you know if if if it was that easy somebody would’ve done it by now but but that’s what you know we’re companies like ours that’s that’s how we innovate and and you know and and other agencies of recognized the import of what we’re doing because you know we received a three million dollar grant from the DOT a couple of years ago to advance this you know application with our technology so you know that’s the work that we’re doing right now it’s it’s a slow process but we’re making we’re making progress and and it’s it’s very exciting to think about alternately what we can do with this once this is an approved you know product in in that in the next you know few years 

so let’s talk about you know when I read all about all the stuff you’ve done I was just pretty much what okay where do I start because you’ve done a lot of things I mean CFO in one company C. O. another company you’ve done and I’m just I’m gonna let you start with the journey but I know it all started with optics so so when we go to the very beginning and tell me what was your passion around optics in cancer research as well yeah yeah so it’s interesting you know I started my college career electrical engineering and you know my freshman year was getting started and my dad just happened to mention that he was speaking to a friend of his and so you know I grew up in Rochester New York and that at the time was a big sort of optics center given Kodak was headquartered there and push along interests and so forth and so I think my dad was talking to a friend and he just told them I was heading into college and and this friend said what has he looked into optics you know it’s a great program there’s university of Rochester so my dad happened to mention that to me you know and I thought well it’s interesting let me take a look at that so I did and I found that I could take a initial class in the in the subject and so I decided to do that and turned out that the director of the institute said she teaching the introductory course at the university of Rochester and he brought a lot of passion to you know the subject and he spent a lot of time just talking about phenomena that we see every day you know why does the road shimmer when it’s hot you know on a sunny sunny day why do animals pupils are they by the different but a different shapes you know so on and so forth and I think I’ve always been drawn to a very visual types of activities and so I found myself really drawn Optus is very visual you know the the twins during World you can’t see the electrons that run around and wires but you shine a white light through a prism and you see the colors disperse and so the more time I spent kind of doing optics the more I thought this is really what I want to do I was also at the time conflict a little bit because I wanted to be in the life sciences space but I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor so what I started to do was to think about how I could utilize optics in the life sciences world because regional sciences was the have family that then and now I just think I feel like you know technology is one of the one those cannons education and technology applied to the biggest equalizers if you will in society in terms of giving people broad access to to a better life a better quality of life and so you know education was a big deal growing up for me because my parents are immigrants and you know for immigrants education is sort of your ticket to a better life yes and and then I felt like well with with the you know sort of the opportunities I’ve been given I wanted to utilize technology to you know you know to to to to develop products and solutions and go after problem solve problems that can help people and one of the easiest ways to do that is in the life sciences space I wasn’t as drawn to you know one of the big areas for optics is the defense industry so a lot of weaponry yeah Vance weaponry is is is based on optical technologies and you know all of my colleagues are in that space but I I kind of wanted to go in a different direction and and utilize it for for the for the for the medical problems that are out there 

so after graduating from university of Rochester I went to university of Arizona which is sort of the other main optics program in the United States to do my graduate work and they happen to have a sort of concentration in the life sciences supplications of those technologies the medical imaging and biomedical imaging and just generally strive to solve for C. N. N. solve issues related to how our bodies work and disease and so and you know it was a it was a great you know six years in the graduate program here I had some amazing professors to work with but ultimately what I found myself doing was being able to work on actually developing for tangible technologies for solving some some big issues and and the main project ended up on there was to develop a essentially a microscope that could go inside the body to come get cells and so right now you know if there’s a if there is a if the doctor suspects that you may have cancer or your tissue may be cancerous state they take tissue out right that’s the biopsy process they look at it at a microscopic microscope we were trying to develop a technology where they could first go in and look at the tissue right there to set aside a level whether it looks like it might be cancerous and then either you know take tissue or just proceed with removing it out or leave it alone right so I’m fascinating project and and you know in that time I met some other students that were also interested I’m 

I’m always an interest in entrepreneurship yep so it was always a goal of mine to start a company because I’d spent time as an intern in some very large corporations and realized that that wasn’t for me right I like to move at a much faster rate and not be sort of hamstrung by bureaucracy and and climbing a ladder into yeah right so I found some other students that were of a similar mindset and we coming out of graduate school we started a company together to see what we could do with the technologies of it all been working on in our graduate program you know I was young I was single I had nothing to lose yourself you know if I felt fat flat on my face I could just go get a job right now and not worry about it but I really wanted to do that and that started me on the entrepreneurship learning lesson yeah yeah yeah someone says someone once said to me that being entrepreneurs like a spiritual journey was that is that where you kind of look that or will the journalist for use yeah it is it is a journey I think and certainly as I talk to young folks today who are who are starting this process I try to communicate that you know this can’t be about how much money are you going to make because if you if you waited by the probability of of of success is actually the weighted average of of of of getting rich is sort of pretty low so so it has to be a passion it has to be something that you are you know what should with the problem you’re trying to solve has to be really meaningful to you is there some meaningful to you is I could be meaningful to other people right you’re trying to convince other people that this is something they need to support and and if you’re just going after sort of an incremental solution to something then that’s fine you know but if you’re really trying to solve some of the bigger problems you know I think there was a recent quote by you on must say that if you’re not feeling then you’re really not into it so so the spiritual journey is often about what do you do when things aren’t working you know when things are failing you know how do you sort of muster up the you know the energy to continue moving forward in in spite of all the question marks action question marks you had in this is really going to work I am I doing this and so on and so forth the belief in yourself this important question yeah and it’s funny because I think the PH the process was a good training for that you know the PhD is often in a technical field it’s often about doing something that’s never been done before so you are experiencing lots of setbacks and failures throughout the process and are finding you know you’re it’s your job to figure out how do you actually do this idea to make this work and so that was a great training that kind of for the entrepreneur world because you are doing that same that same sort of process walking through lot of challenges and and but the you know on the flip side you know when you’re successful it’s it’s just it’s a it’s a rush yeah yeah he believed call your shot the Buck stops here so this is the tourists all right the Buck stops here but the Buck stops here exactly what nobody else to blame is not working correctly is like reaching the top of the totem pole Miller okay who also held a little sooner 

but no that’s really interesting so tell me about the the companies in the journey and because you’ve done multiple things useful for once your mother yes so you know the first company was called out coincides we started working on so we re we were using what were the other partners their technologies that they had developed during the PhD program and we proceed to commercialize with that commercialize the first product with that technology and and and you know we were trying to essentially create a non contact temperature measurement system for manufacturing processes were things are very hot like steel manufacture things like that and and it was one of the classic pipits where we kind of are trying to do this and we really working toward getting a lot of traction and we were at a trade show and somebody said Hey did we thought about using this in the biological world because there’s a huge need to be able to do what you’re doing when you’re studying cell structure and cell function and so forth and we thought well that’s such a great idea and I think we can do that and so we pivoted we reworked this the the product and then you know started to market it and we started to gain traction and sell it was slow it was challenging you know and and you you you have this moment in time always with that with the start up where it’s it’s a sort of a do or die moment inside are you gonna are you gonna die are you gonna be ready to step up and just try to push through rain and so we kind of reach that point about four years into the company you know the three partners we all sat down and said okay you know because we had had some issues with the the product that we were selling there was some sort of technical setbacks that our customers are starting to report and so the sort of became again now what we do now so so we sat down and said okay what are we gonna do and ultimately boil down to the fact that we had all the media group we all agreed with each other that we would do this for five years no matter what right right that was you know we were committed to this for five years and so we reminded each other of that and so if you’re only in the is your forest area one more year right and so we just put our heads down kept going solve the problem you know one our customers confidence back and your five was the turn around you know and then three years later we ended up being acquired well so saying you know it was and so I spent a lot of time after that Sir reflecting on that eight year journey you know what we did right what we did wrong and but I also knew at the end of the journey that in why do optics anymore right you know and I think it’s because I always feel like in order to for personal growth you know you can have to reinvent yourself yep right and looking for life unfolds in front of you is 

what I’m what I’m finding yes for my own journey and then everyone I interviewed talked to others I was in financial planning and Alan media yeah right but it was something in financial planning that that taught me that I needed to go to media and then what it was was I was seen all those costs soar and parents into income business were in it and I saw this disparity and then I ask myself winds are rethinking the current mentality and doing things just because right why and then and then after twenty years of it not changing me waiting for it to change I find it said well nobody’s gonna do anything about it I am and so I started a media company in a rematch for numbers the good bad the ugly sure in stores because I wanted people of the public to identify with the creators yeah founders and look at the spiritual journey so it’s been four years now and I love it I’ve learned so much yeah and hearing stories like yours are really inspiring with and they also reaffirm the journey ones on so I hope the audience picks up on that that you can do something for a while yeah years I really love the part of your story where you’re like we said in four years and we have a commitment and one thing about you know I I believe everybody but special spinners you have to have integrity yes integrity to self because you have this believe in yourself and you have to have the integrity for that belief so if you made a commitment for five years and your for your for yeah I I love that that was the deciding factor yeah it was important you know and because you can if you can do a lot of analysis but ultimately it boils down to you know some some very simple things you know so 

yes there’s been a lot of time after you know it’s sort of four year sabbatical probably that I that I took in and you know all this sort of unfolded in between Arizona New Mexico at the time after I sold the company and you know I spent some time you know sort of traveling around and sort of thinking about what I wanted to do next I happen to meet a lovely lady and Arizona who was originally had come from Austin should go to school here and and so you know as things progressed with her she said well I want to go back to Austin and I said that sounds great because I yeah I have no strings here in Tucson and let’s go you know I know that that’s a great entrepreneur culture there and maybe I’ll find my next gig when they get to Austin so we arrived in late two thousand and nine in mid two thousand and ten I received a random call from a gentleman who was one of the co founders of zeros pharmaceuticals and he was looking for they were they were a nascent start up in the bay area he was looking to move the company out of California because he had been there for a long time and said I don’t want to do another start up in California so he was on a site search some expenses yeah regulations and the expense and and but also you know you’re a bit of a small I mean you’re a small fish in a big city the bay area right and and so he was site searching around the country you know he had gone to Arizona and happened to run into somebody who I knew and she said she had counseled him but don’t come to Arizona to to to start a biotech company the people they don’t really investors are really understand that run this year but go to Texas because at the time Texas was putting a lot of money out for to attract these types types of companies and said if you go to Texas go to Austin and call this guy gosh and so he called me and this is another one of those sort of life lessons is that things happen randomly and you just have to kind of be prepared when they happen to you know sort of seize the opportunity she called me and I said look I’ve only been here six months but I’ve been networking a lot so I’m if you want to come out I’m happy to you know kind of show you around here and did you see the folks and so he came out and we had a good two or three days and you know at that point I was very interested because this was in I had always been interested in the farming industry like understanding how it works and how do you get a product to market and it sort of fit and my sort of profiling activities where it’s still in life sciences and you know and it’s been very challenging business right and so I just decided that I I said listen I am I’d like to work with you on this and I can certainly I don’t have any experience in the farming industry but I certainly know how to be a bootstrap the company when there’s certain nothing there right so I think it’s really chaos and for the audience out there Lawtons you think they’re gonna go to college and learn everything they need for their career and that’s just the tip of the ice this is the sort of that just starting out so it it kind of gets gets you started and then you build your network and then life unfolds little front of you then you’ve got to be willing to say yes and take that chance you do and you know I 

I think of college education in general and there’s two aspects to it one aspect is the knowledge part right like the actual information that you’re learning you know when something happened what year was a war so on and so forth history or whatever what’s what’s the formula for this but the other aspect of it is the deeper part which is actually learning how to think right right how to deconstruct problems and then rebuild them you know and solve the bigger problem by the solution so little pieces range that is probably one of the most important I think learnings for me throughout my education is is alert as understanding how you do that crippling can critical thinking apart right so I yes so you know he said great because we don’t really need you for the pharma piece we have that side of it but I would love for you to bring your experience in terms of how do you you know start with nothing effectively and and go from there so you know I I join that team you know over six years we raised sixty million dollars you know and for those of you that don’t know that don’t haven’t been to the racing experience you know it is a lot of rejection you have some thick skin thick skin is right right you know but it it also speaks to a kind of resiliency you know where you a lot of people are telling you well yeah you know it’s great what you’re doing we don’t really see the value of it right right and so you know with Sirius the technology was a chemistry technology that the real promise of it was to take drugs that currently require refrigeration and you know where you have to make some at the time of use yeah and to make those sure it is ready to use products right so you know imagine said so in the diabetes world there is at the time there was only one approved medication for treating severe hypoglycemia this is where you crash in sugar and you you pass out you know where you go into a seizure right and so you need at that point you can’t eat anything you should be putting it in your mouth you need an injection of a hormone called glucagon which then brings your sugar back up right so the only part of the time was a kit where the look I was in a powder form can you had to the inject water into the bile mix it up drop back in and then injected well the assessment on a first come in lay person’s not going to do that right and they’re totally freaked out because it was on the line is is you know in a in a difficult situation they call nine one one right and the course the problem is is that this person needs the sugar right now but they’re still waiting thirty minutes to get their shit right so so the weather very initial applications technology was to create an EpiPen style product the just it’s ready to go you just pull the cap off and injects and it was amazing to hear how many people especially like emergency room doctors saying we don’t see the value while right I went when I went to just drink some orange juice or whatever you know and I mean I was just shocked right yet you talk to the patients in their world please oh my god this is amazing you know we would love to see this product on the market and and so you know it it’s an interesting lesson in in and thinking about you know all the naysayers and then you have to ask yourself well are they right or are we right right and that’s M. and that’s hard right the fight upstream you know like that but I think what I found was that as we were going down this path of developing this product to be would get random I’ll get a random email from your from people all the time saying I’m a parent of a type one diabetic and I hear that you are working on this yeah this is fantastic we’re rooting for you to be successful in this program right we would get nurses we would get people and I would circulate those emails around to the team at say this is why we’re doing this right and that would give you a lot of sort of you know energy to fight against the the naysayers if you will and the lesson that story is that today that product we started on is now an FDA approved products it is a it is available for people with diabetes to administer to their loved ones and then really do takes a lot of the stress away from having to handle that situation 

congratulations on seeing that all the way through and I’m sure there’s so many people noticeably thanks yeah it was and that was you know to me the biggest win you know not that the company went public or this or that is that the products on the market yeah that’s really what we wanted to change the world and because of that yeah that’s awesome until now you’re doing that too complex Nettleton yes yes so while I was at service I was responsible for managing the manufacturing development if you will so there’s you know there’s a clinical development and there’s a manufacturing site which people kind of sometimes forget about and you know as you’re developing a a product the FDA wants to know not only is it safe and efficacious but can you control the quality as you scale up the volume of manufacturing that’s a big deal right and and often can be even more challenging than the clinical side so we were in this phase of sort of scaling up as we were moving through our clinical trials and being to the farm industry I was asking our consultants so what tools do you use to manage all this information that we’re generating because I’m trying to make decisions about whether we’re going to make a five million dollar batch and I don’t have all the information in front of me that I need to help right and so I’m searching through reports and emailing people say where’s the status on this and what’s going on here right then they’re like nervous use Microsoft Office word excel and word and power point vizio I thought wow you know that’s that’s that’s that’s challenging so at the time I can do anything about it I was sort of having to use the tools that were at hand but when the new management team came in to to commercialize and then take the company public that was my opportunity to think about you know starting cherry circle software to basically create a structured software solution for the pharma industry to manage what is often six seven eight years worth of work right all the information that comes from that and I would be in a form that you can access it badly and and really use the data that you’re generating having it be buried and reports and documents that you can’t find so I reached out to a friend of mine he happened to be my neighbor first over on the east side and great guy right Shillington he long sort of pedigree and at a price level development but you know this is sort of another one of those lessons about entrepreneurship is that it’s like a marriage right who are we gonna do this with you need to have complete confidence that these people have integrity as well right and so you know Ryan is somebody I got to know first as a as a neighbor and then a friend and you know it’s just one of the he’s one of the nicest sweetest smartest nicest people I’ve ever met and and and so I asked him I said you know I call them to see what he doing these days and he said at doing anything particularly fun working for private equity and and so I said okay I said here’s here’s an idea I have right and I said I am really thing here is I want to start a software company with you because I think you’re a great person I think you’re very talented and I think together we can we can make some magic happen now so I reached out to him and explain what I want to do and he was like I’m in and so that launched you know that sort of that that that product type you know we raise some money you know software is a much lower Sir capital requirements associated with that than with pharma in general so so yeah 

so we’ve been on that journey for a couple of years together now and you know he’s developed he’s built a phenomenal solution it’s been really well received by industry especially in a time when you know they are very challenge with their search digital maturity if you will so you know they they have not come nearly as far along as other industries have and they’re starting to see some of the results of that in the sense that you know there’s a lot of drug shortages due to quality issues led to recalls I mean these are things that even though you know people think about the manufacturing side have direct impact on people’s lives you know cancer medications blood pressure medications things that are we use every day which are challenged because of manufacturing and quality issues and so you know yeah we just have a phenomenal team of people around this that are all over the world and so it’s an end you know this company is that we’re really focusing on culture right the other lessons of life and doing this entrepreneurship stuff is that it’s all about the people because no no program where you’re trying to solve a very difficult problem proceeds without setbacks right right and challenges so you just have to have people who are talented enough to solve the problems facing this nation so it’s all about the people you know and and so does have a a great team and and so you know while we were thinking about getting cherry circle started you know when I left here as I was approached by some investors in jurists would also invested in a medical and they said you know Hey we see you’re leaving the service would you be interested at least sort of taking a look at what’s going on and then a medical we think that the company has some great technology but we need some help on the commercialization side right so it’s okay you know I so I went and looked at the technology and I thought it was fantastic you know this this whole idea of being able to implant a small device that’s filled with drug that can give you your daily dose without you having to think about it in a very elegant and simple package was to me very compelling and you know the time the company was will be challenged financially and I thought what a shame it would be to lose this technology just because the company ran out of money right right and so you know and so I decided to kind of join and help and so we came and we got everything we structured we got some money raised and then we went and got a nice grant for the DOD to fund the to the first sort of so so you know I felt like a great applications technology would be for for treating opioid addiction okay right and turns out that the DOD has a huge problem with this internally both within serve at rand’s veteran population and with active duty personnel right I wanna stop researcher and I think I know a man who is of of a cannabis research on that but for audience can we dive into and the dental technology a little concerned with these are absolutely so the best way to describe this is think of an hourglass right an hour glass you have a reservoir at the top in a reservoir at the bottom and you have this pinch point in the middle right and the sand grains the reservoir at the top and the pinch point forces a constant stream of the sand greens fresh mount right so just take that analogy and shrink it way down into the nano scale and this sort of sand grains think of drug molecules and so instead of one pinch point you have like tens of thousands of points but I know in the in the chapel so it’s it’s a it’s a little chip that they make okay so like a semi Lucas you know computer chip right it’s the same manufacturing process except it’s not electrons around K. it’s just a has these very precise channels that have been etched into the chip the end there’s thousands of them and the drug molecules is kind of filter through like an hour glass okay and and so then the drug molecules just kind of stream out constantly and you think what’s the big deal well the big deal is that the industry has not been able to figure out how to deliver drugs constantly when you implant something so there’s a lot of implantable sin but the implantable is tend to kind of give you a big burst up front and that kind of it the the amount of release decays over time because she never actually get like a constant in the flat Kleinman lease rate well this technology actually gives you the flat line while and and so that’s what was so compelling about it right is it needs recharging or does it it’s a passive device yeah so now there are new generations that were also working on this one for example is a refillable version so you can plan it right now the device you plan if taken out after three or six or twelve months at a new one and but imagine being able to just refill it while it’s right in your body and then we ought to take it out of sight another prototype that’s been developed is one where you can change the amount that’s being released you know or turn it off turn it back on yes that’s where the real control kind of a device some of the stuff is kinda you know tron VS researchers cannot really but but you know this is this is the idea of and I guess it’s been sort of my lifelong journey of trying to not only develop new technologies but figure out a way to commercialize them so people can get the get the advantage of it 

there’s a lot of great ideas that get developed and protected the lab and they never see the market because people don’t really think about how to take the next ticket yet how to do that right really incredible yeah says you know we’re doing this of a podcast signs in the mall you’ll see city that I love this in in the idea really is is for a community to understand all the hard work that is the ACC’s doing this biosciences lab that is there and so I I want to come in from your frame of mind your house that helped how’s that how does that help entrepreneurs and and what your expenses because you mentioned earlier investing in bio sciences is much larger ask then in in software and part of that is the equipment I would imagine this that is because a lot of there’s a lot of straight ten double resources that have to go into developing and then testing you know everything that you’re doing yeah you know this is been a conversation that’s been going on in Austin the entire ten years I’ve been here you know when we started with zero S. we were part of the US technology incubator and now you have a lot more serving he bears but the time A. T. I didn’t have any lab space and so that was always one of the challenges and as we were starting to get money and grow at Sirius we needed a place to do our own work you can outsource for a while but outsourcing gets very expensive to see arose and CMO’s and so forth and and you know after white need to build your own work internally before you ship it out to somebody else to connect to come work with right and so you know there’s been lots of talk about building Sir dedicated you know lab based incubators and so forth and the challenge for us it has always been that this isn’t enough critical mass you know this is not Kendall square this is not you know south San Francisco mission bay we don’t have hundreds of companies you know getting funded you know at a time in in this area and so it’s been a challenge I think for people to figure out how do we how do we get the critical mass at the same time you can’t get the critical mass to you have the resources that you know so significant a problem yeah exactly so you know I think I think that what ACC did was it was it was really fantastic I think what they you know working with the E. T. F. and some of the other organizations around here you know getting money to at least start small right and and already they’re kinda pretty full right so but it is it’s invaluable for companies like ours because being able to virtualize like that in the local community is really important and valuable and and so probably you know a middle ground is some more investments to create some of this additional you know resource would be probably really fantastic but it is really invaluable and certainly makes it possible for us to operate in this very virtualized capital efficient mode until we can get the data get far enough along with that you get the investment to then you know really find your own resources at that point some sense 

yeah absolutely love your story in your journey and you know for those students are out there or people you know don’t be stupid but would you advice B. as far as as life opens up in front of them well you know couple things one talk to anybody who wants to talk to you right in time and I I think sometimes we get a little bit too insular resupply and have time to talk to that person nine I have found that sometimes the conversation that you expected to yield absolutely nothing changes your life right so take the time to take a meeting talk to somebody just get out there and and put yourself out in front of folks you know we have a young gentleman that works for us and then a medical his name’s Mitchell Greenberg and you know I met him a few years ago as part of so Austin technology incubator used to have a a summer entrepreneurship accelerator program called seal and and so you know the teams from universities would calm they have an idea they get matched up with a mentor and and then you spend the summer with them then try to figure out what they’re gonna start a company based on this idea and so I got matched up with Mitchell he had a he was working on on idea to a bandage that would have a blue light as part of it to help keep infection down mmhm and without expect run it was a good fit so you know I’m at Mitchell and it was a great summer you know working with him and you know I think he learned a lot from it but at the time I thought this young guy is really is really impressive you know I so he went back to do is MBA and master’s degree MBA masters in biomedical engineering at AM and when he came out you know I said listen come I I know you want to start your own thing I said to come work for me for a while you’ll you’ll get to do things that and at Medtronic rabbit you wanted to do for ten years hello so you’ll learn a ton and then you can go you know once we built that a medical you can go do whatever you want to do right so anyway he came on and he’s been he’s been phenomenal but I think the lesson there really is that if you’re out there this can opportunities just don’t happen you have to be out there and then when you’re out there you get connected with these kind of things and then you need to yes sometimes just have the courage to seize the opportunity you know I don’t know this is not a steady job aside a steady salary but if I’m young it doesn’t matter I’m gonna go for it I do comes in versus the times and talk about the things I’ve learned from entrepreneurism and one of things I tell students is your network the people around you even though you have fellow students and you know these days there’s all sons of ghosting in you don’t treat people respect change that change that respect people because you never know five years on the road of this person’s going to be your words could be at and we at the end of the day we’re nature system all of us depend on each other snow you know exactly so and the other thing that the try to tell specially young engineers is that look as sexy as technology isn’t as much as everybody’s you know getting you to focus on coding in A. I. and this and that so you don’t learn to think unless you know the communities right so take the time to study the arts and the humanities and and have an appreciation for it because you can’t be a good engineer if you can’t appreciate those things and you can’t communicate with other people so you know learn how to write learn how to read I have found that some of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had in terms of trying to solve a techno technological problem is remembering information related to come completely different subject and bringing that over to this to solve this problem it has happened to me time and time again and I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t had that broader exposure it’s a new ministry of you know you see these movies all time with the trans sold something of some some pretty left field another all this the cancers the other race it’s really happen it does happen 

yeah thank you so much for being on the show I really enjoyed this conversation you know you better and another art audience as will as well and the advice that you’re able to to give them thank you really appreciate the uptrend share my story and happy do it again in time sounds good thank you again to our guest Josh I’m still so fascinated by his journey to learn more about mental medical systems and Austin community college’s bioscience incubator a link is in the shop science in the mall y’all is created in partnership between family media and also community college bioscience incubator