Anat Binur, co-founder and CEO of Ukko, shares her thoughts with BioBoss host John Simboli about leadership in biopharma and how Ukko is working to improve the lives of people who suffer from food allergies.
Anat Binur, co-founder and CEO of Ukko, shares her thoughts with BioBoss host John Simboli about leadership in biopharma and how Ukko is working to improve the lives of people who suffer from food allergies.
Today, I'm speaking with Anat Binur,, co-founder and CEO of Ukko, a U.S. and Israeli company. Welcome to BioBoss. Anat,
Anat Binur:Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to have a chance to speak with you today.
John Simboli:What led you to your role as co-founder and CEO of Ukko?
Anat Binur:The theme is definitely kind of a deep motivation, to build something with a mission and to be involved in things that are really mission driven. So my career started off much more in the worlds of law and policy and academia. I'm actually a lawyer, originally started off as a lawyer. But after doing my PhD at MIT, I moved to Silicon Valley and worked in venture capital and VC for many years. So you know, entrepreneurs call it the other side of the table. And I loved it, I really loved it. And it was going to be for life. In many ways I loved the VC I was at, it's called Innovation Endeavors. And I was really connected. But sometimes I found myself kind of having two different experiences, either being really jealous of the team that was pitching me, because I wanted to walk out the door and go build the company that they're building with them, or a little frustrated, because it would be this incredible team with really amazing talent, kind of working on a marginal problem. And it was a bummer, because I said, go work, you know, sell something huge and meaningful, you have such talent. So when one of my really closest friends, who's an amazing scientist and entrepreneur, told me about something he was working on, which is really the origin of Ukko, I decided to transition to the other side of the table and start UIkko together with him. And that's how I got here.
John Simboli:One you had decided that that's the route you wanted to go. Was there something in particular about the science at Ukko, of all the companies you looked, all the ideas you considered, that made you think, yeah, I think this is the one I'm going to pursue?
Anat Binur:Even in VC, when you decide to make an investment, it's kind of a mixed . . . VCs often say it's, you know, both an art and a science and a mix of a lot of different factors. So for me, specifically, Ukko checked all the boxes of things I loved in companies that we would choose to invest in, which was a really big market opportunity and a very big meaningful problem. In this case, not really solving for allergies, in a whole unique human way, which we'll talk about, driven by deep tech. And what I saw is a really strong team, because of course, I knew my co-founder really well, and all the skills and talents that he was bringing, and how we balanced each other and that we could work really well together. So, it kind of fit everything that I would get excited about. And so I decided to transition and start it. And I have to say, very happily for me, my VC Innovation Endeavors remained really involved and supportive. So they invested in the company, they joined my board, and I think it's a unique story, being able to keep all my worlds together.
John Simboli:At that point, you've located the science and the mission that is of interest. You know it's your time, you're ready to make that transition. Did you consider the possibility, sometimes it's the case that a person goes out and hires the CEO to run that, but the other person is giving direction to it as the founder. Have you considered that? Or did you know that you should be the leader?
Anat Binur:Inherently, when Professor Yanay Ofran, who's my co-founder, and my friend, and I talked about the potential of starting Ukko, the role division between us was clear. He was involved in another company, as well. So he's a very active entrepreneur. And he was really bringing the science vision, although he's very business oriented and entrepreneurial, as well. But it was very clear for us that this is a great division and building on our skills and capabilities. So in this case, we're both very much co founders and co's in this company. But you know, it was clear that I was going to be the CEO and he is currently the chairman, although leading a lot of the science strategy and vision for the company. That's funny because I think in some respects, yes.
John Simboli:You were experienced enough through the several worlds that you were in, around biopharma and around On paper, if I mapped out what my experiences were and what venture capital, to have a pretty good idea what you're getting into. But nonetheless, I wanted to ask was what you imagined it would be like to be, not only the founder, but the you're told or experienced before, think of that It was the CEO, was what you imagined and what you experienced in the first a couple of weeks . . . how closely did those match? same but in other ways, totally not. Because when you're in it, it's a very different experience than thinking about it or looking at it and saying, Oh, of course, startups are a roller coaster and experiencing that shift of minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour in your day is very, very different. So I would say, it was not exactly what I expected. But such is life, you know. I think it's never as you expect. Parenthood is an example of this, you know, anything we do, almost, is like that. So definitely, entrepreneurship and building companies. And I would guess you would agree that there has to be almost an appetite for dealing with uncertainty to be an entrepreneur anyway, but especially to be an entrepreneur in a data-driven business, like the one that you're heading.
Anat Binur:I think you really have to work well in uncertainty, and also be very macro-optimistic and micro-pessimistic. So you have to be able to understand, sometimes, that you're really deep in a challenge and how do you solve it, but all the time, stay super visionary and optimistic. It's almost like the baseline approach to how I think entrepreneurs encounter problems and deal with our companies. And if you manage to balance those two really well, you always have to keep the optimism and see the potential, but stay very realistic and rooted in what the challenges are that you're facing right now.
John Simboli:A few years ago, I spoke in a BioBoss conversation with someone who said, you know, it's not so easy, John, to be a CEO, because there are some days I feel like I'm in the basement of a building with faulty plumbing, and wiring and things are falling down. It's my job to go out and catch them. And so thankfully, it's not every day, but are the things about the challenges, the difficulties, being willing to share them with colleagues and people, is there something about that that's useful for people to know, in terms of understanding what a CEO does? What were you hoping to achieve at Ukko that
Anat Binur:I think that it really is about the ability to create stillness within noise so that you can get clarity on priority. It's really hard. Because you know, at MIT, people always laugh that the freshman year is like drinking from a fire hose. So I think being a CEO of a startup, and for anyone, is like drinking from millions of fire hoses every minute of the day. Even if you're the most capable, on top and experienced, it's just the reality. And within that, knowing to create a certain focus or stillness, such that you actually can zoom out and ask, what is it that matters right now, is really hard. Now some people are just really good at doing this. Some people use things like meditation to learn to do this. I tend to be a very extroverted person; I like to speak. And it helps me to think through my problems. So for me, some things that have been helpful are anything from management coaches, to just really building a strong network around me of people that I can speak with. And of course, my team. A good leadership team that you can consult with or brainstorm with on certain problems and speak it out. Any of those things can help to make sure all the time that within all the noise, and all the things that go on every day between HR, and building an organization and the tech and then investors are non-stop fires and things that go wrong. Stop for a second, ask yourself, what is the top priority that I really need to solve for right now? And what can I delay? How do you create that stop? It's not so much the answer, but it's more even the ability to just create that quietness from it. could be done there, and perhaps not at another company? You know, I think Ukko is an example of how AI and protein design really can come together. When we saw the potential to solve allergy with this, we really knew that we had something in hand that would make it possible in a way that wasn't possible for many years before. And when I started looking at the allergy space, so we focus on protein-based allergy, starting with food allergy, I was, with my VC hat on, I was actually shocked at how underserved this space is because it's a huge market, huge problem. And yet, there were very limited solutions. I grew up in New York and in Israel. And I always say, I never had a kid in my class with food allergy. And now I'm almost never ever on a call, in the elevator with my neighbors, dinner with friends, you know, talking to people even regardless of Ukko, and the person who's with me has allergy in real life in some way or other, either in their close family or friends or something. And by the way, the data totally backs it up. There's been like a 50% rise in kids with food allergy over the past decade alone and 1 in 13 kids has an allergy. So some experts call it an epidemic. So the issue is that patients have faced very limited options, and this explains in a second why Ukko's approach is so unique and why we were so excited about it. Really, you can just avoid the food if you have an allergy and walk around with an EpiPen or you can go through some sub-optimal therapies. There's really only one approved food allergy therapeutic. It's called food allergy immunotherapy and they just expose you to really small growing amounts of the allergen itself to kind of teach your immune system. So lowest level of reaction such that, let's see, in a restaurant, if you get randomly exposed by mistake to peanut, you won't react. Super important, saves lives and the fact that it was approved and put out there, it's really shifted the field. But the challenge for both the existing immunotherapy and also for really many attempts in this field, is that the core idea in our field for a long time has been that the only way to treat you is with the allergen itself. The thing you're most allergic to. That means I'm always in that deadlock between the part of the protein that's actually triggering the allergy and the part of the protein that's maybe more therapeutic and can help shift your immune system. And so you get stuck in a trade-off between efficacy and safety. Because anytime I come near a patient, I may have a safety issue. So most solutions keep trying to circumvent the safety issue. And that means I can't pick the best route of administration. Dosages are limited. And there are a lot of other different challenges. And by the way, this has created huge issues for patient experiences, because that means treatment is often super long. So imagine you have a four or five year old and I have to take them every two weeks to clinic to be there for many hours and the kid reacts and then you have to go home and the limitations around not doing it, around exercise or running. Imagine your five year old and you have to control this, really, really hard for families. This is where Ukko comes in. And to tie back to this idea of AI and protein design. And this is when we knew we could do something that's really, really different. Because what we can do is go to a protein and design it for specific characteristics. So in our case, what we want to do is go to a protein and decouple, isolate the parts of the protein that are actually triggering the allergy, from the parts of the protein that are responsible for, let's call it, the therapeutic potential. And design it such that we get rid of the bad part, the part that's triggering allergy and maintain the part that actually has the potential to modulate your immune system or to be therapeutic. So at the end of our process, which is really long, we get a new version of the allergen itself, which we aim to be less, or almost non-allergenic. But yes, immunogenic. Has the potential to treat. So that means that, potentially, we can really reduce or maybe get rid of the safety challenge. And now we can rethink the way we treat allergy. Can actually modulate the immune system without triggering an allergic response. And now we can try new routes of administration and dosages and, hopefully, create something that's safer and more efficacious. So to tie it all back, when we realized we have this ability to use technology that wasn't around before and tie the dots and kind of new ways between AI and protein design. To do this was just a really unique opportunity to solve a huge problem.
John Simboli:I remember speaking with a founder on BioBoss, probably about two years ago, and he said, You know, John, the dumbest question I've ever gotten. I'm curious if you ever get, how frequently you get this question . . . The dumbest question I ever get is, Well, this sounds great. But if it's so different from everybody else, how come no one else ever thought of it? Do you ever get that?
Anat Binur:Of course. And you know, by the way VCs, when they look at investments, often the question that they ask is why now? Which is similar in some respects. So first, I should say, we always say at Ukko, if you're the only one working on the problem, there may be a problem. Because if it's a good approach, and a good idea, probably someone else is also working on it, which is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. So I wouldn't say no one's ever worked, definitely not, in what we're doing. I think for us, it's a few different things. It's, you know, putting the puzzle pieces in the new way together using technology that wasn't around before, which is often like the why now, and also looking at a problem from a new perspective. So just to give an example, Professor Ofran, who's been my co-founder for many years, kind of looked at the problem in reverse. He looked at could you engineer let's say, an antibody, to create much better targeting or connectivity between between proteins. And at Ukko, he kind of said, hey, what if I looked at the reverse and actually looked at the protein, the antigen itself and designed it for lack of recognition, non-binding? Which is a very different, kind of like reversing the way we tend, not everyone, we tend to look at drugs and therapeutics. So I would say the why now is a combination or why hasn't this been solved before, a combination of those things, like a new perspective, new technology, and a new way of putting the puzzle pieces together that maybe someone hadn't done in that exact way.
John Simboli:In my experience when when I tell people about working in biopharma, usually I find people outside our industry, usually I find that people focus on the pharma, rather than the bio part of it and they picture me working with folks in big glass skyscrapers with huge offices making, giving direction to people and sort of running as a captain of industry. But the scale biopharma, of course, can vary, can be small can be large, but what is it like to be in the CEO, founder role as far as what you do all day? Is your job to tell people what to do?
Anat Binur:It's interesting because . . . I'd say two things; I find that explaining to kids always distills something to its most basic level because go explain to a kid what is a CEO, when you also want it to be very value-based. No, I definitely don't think my role is to tell people what to do. I think my role is very much to coordinate and I find my role is all the time to keep the company focused on its top priorities and make sure that we're putting the best resources in the top right, and to keep assessing that as we go along. And of course, to make sure that the company has what it needs to grow and succeed. I will say on the surprise of the bio side, you know, I spent many years also in with software people, and people in the more tech side of things. So whenever people from that world come to visit, I think our company, Ukko, they're surprised by what it actually takes to put together a bio startup. Because for them, if you raise a few million dollars, that's an amazing runway, gets you forever. And oh, you can easily pivot and move the guys with a laptop. And of course, I'm taking it to the extreme. And then they walk into a bio lab. And it's astounding to see just the amount of machines and materials and efforts and scientists that it takes to really put this together.
John Simboli:Do you feel that you have a management style that describes, defines, suggests who you are as a as a leader?
Anat Binur:You know, I've thought about this a lot. I would say one of the things, and it's less about management status, but one of the things I've learned, especially with Ukko, as we've grown and really actually moved from stages of research to development, or preclinical about to go into Can you recall when you were a kid, whatever age that might be, clinics, is that as a CEO, you just have to constantly reassess and redefine your role and actually shift your management style. Because who you are, as a CEO, when you're small research organization completely changes, will change once you become the CEO of a more development organization. And when you're 10 people, or 30 people, or 50, or 100, or 1000, your role changes. And so I think the main thing I keep in mind all the time is really learning and all the time reassessing. What is it that my role needs to be right now in order to give the company what it needs? How do I really redefine it and make sure that I have clarity on the priorities and what will make me successful in the company successful at this stage. And I think sometimes the shift of gears for a CEO in this learning process happens, if you're not very aware of it, it may happen without you being aware of it until you're already in it. So I think the learning process for me has really been to assess, in advance, to really look forward a year and say, what are we going into right now? And what is that going to require for me, as far as shifting my role, my management team? How I think about the organization. 8, 9, 10, something like that. And you were probably picturing what it was, maybe your family thought you should do? And do you remember what it was that was firing your imagination, and does that have anything to do with what you're doing professionally? In the beginning years I definitely had the dreams of ballerina and soccer player. I kind of always walked that line. But from around I'd say 9 and 10 years old it was very clear. I always had this passion of impact. And actually, politics became a big thing for me since I was a little kid. And I had this real passion to get into that world. And later on I did some work in that world, as well. In the beginning, there's this connecting theme and everything I've chosen to do, which has always been mission driven. And from a young age, in some respects.
John Simboli:It sounds as if, for you, in your case that you really have been able to pull together many different things that interest you. And that must be satisfying.
Anat Binur:It is. And also you asked about management style before, I'll even connect it to that. I think it's satisfying, and it took me a while to understand that despite the fact that they feel very disparate or disconnected, like worlds of policy or academia or law and biotech CEO, how do you connect those dots. And I think that I've learned that actually, that makes you a much better manager and leader, you actually bring in really unique perspectives that allow you to be maybe more innovative or deal with a problem in a very different way, hire different kinds of people because you recognize things in their background resume that you know will make them "A" players even though they don't fit the perfect profile. So that kind of interdisciplinary life experience, I think really enriches the way we are as managers as well.
John Simboli:How do you answer the question when people ask, who is Ukko?
Anat Binur:People actually ask that a lot because they ask who is Ukko? Because Ukko is the name, yes, is actually a name of
John Simboli:It's almost invariable that there's a point a god from Finnish, from Finland mythology. He's the god of sky and thunder and agriculture. And so there's actually a who behind the name. And when we chose it, we wanted a name that wasn't overly bio and really kind of connected to aspects of what we were doing. We started off really focused on food, even food tech, there are aspects of Ruko that even work on food tech, so it connected and something that connected to a at which people miss-hear the presentation, and they say, Oh, personal story as well. So I grew up spending lots of time in Finland for different reasons and really love that country. So that's how we got to go. So who Zuko is actually a question. You know, the regarding the company itself beyond saying that we're computational protein design, biotech companies creating very innovative therapeutics for protein based allergy. When I think about how to explain what the company actually is, like, what explains who we are as a company, I think it's first of all very interdisciplinary and diverse on all levels. So first tech, because we're bringing very interdisciplinary set of technologies includes immunology, AI, protein, design, synthetic biology together in a really unique way to solve the problem. And our scientists are really driven by using this to I see you're an X company or a Y company. And then the CEOs job create a product that hopefully will save kids lives. But also team wise, we're really diverse team as far as people's backgrounds and life stories. And it's something that's very core to how we think about team makeup and building our organization. is to say, Well, it's actually not that, it's this. When people jump to something, and they want to put you in a category that you're not, is their a pattern, so far, what that category is, and how do you help them get on track?
Anat Binur:Not really, in the sense that again, food allergy is just something that people just connect with and understand and have some experience with. Oh, yes, my friend's kid went through immunotherapy at a hospital in New York or in Israel, or in Europe somewhere. So often, I find that people actually understand. If they do miscategorize, it'll be sometimes food tech, because that's very hot today, too. And so they get food, something, you know, Oh, peanut. And Ukko has other assets that are actually focused on the food world. So that's a category. And then of course, the minute that you say
John Simboli:Sometimes investors, in particular, may drugs, you see that some people just kind of categorize in this big bucket of just, oh, drugs and within that world there are just so many different categories and different approaches. So it really depends on that specific person's experience and understanding, but relatively speaking, being in a category that, as I said before, it's just so prevalent in everybody's existence today. And it's shifted the way we interact and think about food. It makes our explanation a little bit easier, because it really sparks them. ask the question, Well, is it primarily a platform company is it primarily a company focused on therapeutics? Of course, that's not mutually exclusive. But people want to sometimes form that distinction early on. Do you get that? And how do you answer that?
Anat Binur:Of course, and you know there's always a shifting framework. Sometimes everyone wants to invest in platform companies, and then everyone wants to invest in asset companies. So actually, one of the things I think that distinguishes Ukko is that we're both. So at the basis, we have a very, very strong computational protein design platform, however, with a very clearly defined robust pipeline of indications that have commercial validity and clinical need. So in our case, our pipeline is really any protein-based allergy. So while we're starting with peanut allergy, our approach will be relevant for all food allergens, environmental allergens like respiratory allergies, and even venom allergies, like wasp stings or bee stings. So it's a very unique, I think, this is me as an investor talking, this is what I also hear from investors who look at Ukko, that's unique,, where you have a really clear platform, very strong and proven, but with a really well defined long list of potential pipeline indications.
John Simboli:Anat, how does the Ukko pipeline express your vision for the company?
Anat Binur:Our vision, first of all, is to solve protein-based allergy. And because we have this combination of a very robust platform and a pipeline, we're starting with peanut allergy, but you can see how our pipeline just goes and expands into food allergies and environmental allergies and even venom allergies. But to go to even a higher level, if the idea here is really to use AI and protein design to change the characteristics of molecules, make them into smart molecules, so we can define and design certain characteristics into the molecules, you can imagine how this opens up the worlds for even more applications and drugs, in food and even beyond. So as an early-stage startup, I'd say we're very focused. We're not expanding to all these things, you have to stay very, very focused and get through your major inflection points. But the vision here is to go way beyond, in the long run, and the pipeline definitely conveys that clearly.
John Simboli:How would you describe a good partner for Ukko?
Anat Binur:It's a good question and really depends on how you think about partners. There's some obvious things for biopharma, for biotech, like pharma companies, CDMOs, and so on. But for us, patients. And everything that's around patients. So that means at the first layer, and most important layer, is patient organizations and the patients themselves. From the day we started Ukko, we attempt as much as we can, at such an early stage, it's not always easy to listen and get involved and connect to patient organizations so that we can really integrate the perspective and their viewpoint into what we do, and build the trust from early on. Because without that, then this won't work for anyone. And the point is to help patients, save lives and improve their life quality and their kids life quality. And the second kind of component of that is really hospitals and clinicians. We work with some of the best doctors in the whole world in food allergy, both on our advisory board, on our clinical advisory board and just clinicians that we partner with,. We have partnerships, I think now with over 18, hospitals all over the world, in Asia and Europe, in the US and in Israel. These are incredible partners that allow us to to get research done quickly and to move forward and to have access when we need to patient samples and to patients. And for biotech companies, this is so valuable in overcoming the timeline and capital constraints that our industry faces, and really allows us to develop the best possible scientific research we can around food allergy.
John Simboli:Several of the founders and CEOs I've spoken with talk about trying to find the balance point, which shifts over time, obviously, a balance point between solving the scientific puzzle and trying to imagine the good that they can do if they're successful. Because they don't want to get too far ahead of the game. They want to be data driven. And they don't want to make suppositions. Do you at this point, do you allow yourself to try to picture how lives would change if your therapies came to be?
Anat Binur:For sure. I would say on two different levels first, because I think for a company like Ukko, having that vision and mission is so critical in the way we drive our team. And, and manage our day to day. We actually, a few months ago, even brought a group of parents of food-allergic kids to just spend a few hours with the team talking about what their day-to-day life is like. Their fears, their concerns, their experiences with existing therapies—was off the record very closed, very intimate conversation. And it was amazing and really inspiring and important for both because I think for the families, it's gave a lot of hope, that this amazing group of scientists is working day and night to solve this. And for our team, it was very motivating. So one, imagining the future is a huge motivation for what we do. Second, I think it's really important for early stage startups to all the time think 10 steps ahead, and then reverse engineer. So we have to spend time thinking about what this product could actually look like. And sure, it'll change. It's an iterative process, because every step of the way, the way we understand what is possible for our product, and what will actually end up being, will depend on clinical trials and regulatory approvals, and lots of other things. But keeping that in mind all the time allows us to make sure that we are focused on the right priorities, that we are de-risking the right things that we're really taking into account, the right things, hopefully, of course, hopefully at the right time. So we actually really think a lot about what the potential is for all those reasons.
John Simboli:How did Ukko go about deciding to locate in Tel Aviv and to have offices in the United States? And what's it like to be working in those places, in addition to all the other places you may have worked?
Anat Binur:I'm originally from Israel, but I've spend most of my life in the U.S. So when we started, I was actually living in Palo Alto. And we built the company in the first two years when I was there. And it's really a U.S. company with an Israeli sub. But it was clear to us from the day we started that we wanted to build it in both countries because I think clearly the U.S. has a very strong ecosystem and investor base and pharma base for building a biotech company, but Israel is really unique in its ecosystem as well. It's known around the world as at the startup nation, and there's a very unique talent pool here which we have great access to because of Yanay's background and experiences, and my own, and it was very important for us to tie into that and and build something that would also be based in Israel. Israeli talent, for reasons that have to do with life here and education here and life experiences, makes the team here often really multidisciplinary, very entrepreneurial, very early on, even just post-academia have really strong capability in leading projects and working in teams and just great scientists. So that was the reason for both. And I should also say that, inherently, I think companies today should be built, from day one, with a global perspective and capabilities. So we were like, Hey, we can really leverage our life and our networks and how we think about the world to do this, from the day we built the company. It helps in how you look at problems, the resources you have to go and solve them, and your ability to expand when you're ready to really scale. So we were lucky in our ability to do that, from very early on.
John Simboli:When I was reading, trying to do research about your background and came across the reference to the MEET organization, I believe it's Middle East Education through Technology, it stood out to me because it seemed unusual in the sense of starting something. And I believe you're the founder of that as well. So is that germane? Do you want to talk about that, about why you started MEET and how ties in your professional work?
Anat Binur:You know, MEET's my other baby. I co-founded it with my brother, and one of our best friends and a few other close friends. I think now it's many, many years ago. And the goal is really focused on conflict in Israel and Palestine, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. And the vision here is to create a future network of young leaders on both sides that really have the capability skills and understanding of why it's so important to work together. And they have the actual network to do it. So it's a long- term program that goes through their high school years, Palo Alto High School, and also into their alumni years, where we teach them entrepreneurship, business, technology at a very high level. And also conflict resolution. And you know, the dynamics between the two groups. So they're in it for a very long time. And we do it together with incredible partners like MIT, Facebook, Google, many other tech companies that you know. And tying it back, it's really another example of the way you can use technology in very innovative ways to solve big problems in the world. Very much aligned with what's important to me, which is solving big, very big, this is definitely a big hard one, hard problem. To solve this, I think you can solve anything in the world. But this is something that's very, very near and dear to my heart and bringing it back into the buyer world, it's an example again, of how unique different backgrounds that may not be typical and what you would expect to find in a bio CEO, actually give you really cool perspectives and new networks that you can bring in that are an advantage in how you solve the problems in a biotech startup.
John Simboli:Thank you.
Anat Binur:I really enjoyed it. Thanks.