From Faculty to Founder: Building Startups from Academia

In this episode, recorded live at an 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. You can also find a transcript of the episode—and the top 5 takeaways from this conversation—on our website, a16z.com.

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.