This week, I'm pulling one of my favorite episodes out of the vault for you. We spoke with Mike Lorett a while ago, and he's the chief business officer over at Lab Central. Mike is just a delightful human and he builds amazing ecosystems for labs for startups. And we are going to enter a small series here where the next few episodes are going to be focused on things that startups really need. So this is obviously funding, it's lab space, it's access to mentorship and resources. And so we are going to break that down in the next few episodes because that's some of our most requested content. So whether you are starting up a company or not, it is great to know what these resources are so that as we are all interacting together, you can recommend them as people are telling you their problems. So without further ado, I'm going to dive into this fun episode with Mike. And I still smile when I think about this episode, so I know you'll love it. It was just so much fun. Welcome to the Building Biotechs podcast. Over the years, I've helped over 90 biotech, life sciences and venture capital firms strategize and hire thousands of employees to scale companies that impact human health. We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground up. I'm your host, Karina Klingman, I hope you enjoy the show. Mike, thanks so much for being on the show with us today. My pleasure, I'm really excited about it. We're so thrilled to have you. What did you want to be when you were seven? What are you now and how did you get there? I saw it at seven. I was going to be an architect, even though I don't think I knew quite what it was, but I had this fascination with buildings and design and maybe I was asking questions. And I think it was probably my mother who said, oh, you should be an architect and that sort of stuck in my brain. And so I think for a couple of years, I held on to that. And then probably when I got more savvy about what it takes to be an architect, I abandoned. And in that path, what I am now, I guess, is I am what I like to say is I'm sitting at the intersection of entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. And that's one side of it. And the other side of it is I do a lot of work on the people side of business and as do you. So we've had great conversations about how do you maximize the potential of individuals? How do you get people to be the best they can be? So that happens both in the organization at the individual level, as well as working with startups. So maybe it's an architect of a different type. I was going to say you're kind of an architect of building all the ecosystems. You, I'm going to have to break that down. I'm glad this is being recorded. How did you apply that to the biotech sector and how did you get there? So a couple of hops got me here. Actually, I switched on to that, that intersection that I spoke of about 10 years ago. And I joined a friend of mine who was running a global accelerator at the time called Mass Challenge. And that was not that is a not-for-profit that started in 2010. And my role there was really to think about how did the Boston ecosystem create and facilitate such an exchange and growth models for startups to really accelerate and get all the resources they need to go through their phases of growth. So once I learned the Mass Challenge model of the year or two, we needed to export that. We were getting a lot of interest around the world because it was a new type of accelerator. So for five years, I was spending time analyzing and dissecting and reverse engineering. What is it that we do in Boston? So well, and what can translate to other regions or cities in the US as well as globally? So that platform at Mass Challenge really gave me a good perspective on the key ingredients to an ecosystem, whether it's academia or risk capital or industry players or startups and media and mentors, and how do they come together? So that brought me to another ecosystem a little further south than Boston. I went to Brooklyn for a year. And it was like Mass Challenge on steroids in a way in that we, you know, we had great space at Mass Challenge. New Lab in Brooklyn has an 85,000 square foot facility, 90 foot ceilings, 150 startups, and there's doing crazy things with electric motorcycles and 3D printing and prototyping and hard tech. So it was just an evolution for me in terms of how things get done in the space itself. And so that was understanding of what's Brooklyn like, what's New York like, what are the strengths here? And then you start to look at comparatively, why would someone be in Brooklyn versus Boston? And more broadly speaking, why would someone, you know, accelerate in Austin, Texas versus Boston? So that brought me to COVID and actually, frankly, COVID brought me back home to Boston and through my Mass Challenge connections, got in touch with Johannes and Lab Central, which was an affiliation of Mass Challenge in the early days and really led it here in biotech, right when biotech landed on the rest of the planet with COVID. And so it's a really great place to go headfirst into biotech and see what I could do to apply those same principles that I was driving at both Mass Challenge and New Lab to see how it applies here. And how do we think about accelerating the bottle or leveraging the ecosystem here at Lab Central? Mike, can you break down from me a little bit of like what a typical day or a week looks like? I can't imagine how many things you're pulled into. And if you can't, that's fine. I'm just curious how you do all the things and what it looks like. Yeah. Well, I think the first thing I'd say is Lab Central is experiencing tremendous success right now, even though the market is and has been challenging. Since I got here and I mentioned COVID, so you sort of know the time step on that I joined in March, 2020. We're about 40 people. We're 90 people now. And we grew from three sites to six sites. And so we've been on a growth curve and I had more responsibilities back when I started because we were a leaner team. We've since hired into senior leadership roles with our people's strategy team. And then we can talk if you want more in depth about Lab Central Ignite, but that was born around when, you know, six months after I started, we pitched that to the board and that's been often been running and achieving amazing success. So I guess the short answer is my scope is narrowed a little bit. So I do own two parts of the organization. It's our partnerships. So we have a lot of great partners, both in pharma, if you think about Takeda and Bayer and J&J and Roche and others. And then we have a number of equipment partners, thermo Fisher, Waters, all these folks you know and work with as well. So I managed those relationships as well as what we call a resident success program. And that's something that we launched a couple of years ago, where beyond just the hardware and the labs themselves, there's a layer of programming and networking and opportunities where you look at last night, we had a VC showcase and we had 15 VCs in the room, listening to five pitches from our startup. So that was my day yet, by start from 24 hours ago, yesterday I was at another facility and our amazing team was delivering that VC showcase. I got up this morning. I think I did some performance reviews. Everyone's got to focus on the people. And so we're no different than that, really leading an heavily. So I had a couple of performance reviews today, wearing that leadership hat. And then we have an amazing marketing and branding communications team. So we just launched our new website. In fact, there's a little time in a year. I'm not sure how we led it here. It feels like serendipity. But if you look at a front page of our website, it says building biotechs better. And that's an extension of this podcast. So I don't know if we should be talking more about brand infringement there or brand additive value to a brand statement, but we're doing something here along the same lines. Additive value, thank you. So I spent a couple hours today thinking about how we're thinking about podcasts, how we're thinking about extending our brand into the community, because as you know, the landscape has gotten a little more competitive. So I generally split my day between marketing, branding, communications discussions along with resident success of partnership discussions, along with general leadership and growth of the firm to match the scale that I talked about in our doubling our headcount, and really expanding in great and new ways. That's fantastic. Thank you. What was something that sort of defined your passion for building biotechs, since we're on the subject of building biotech? So at the end of the day, what drives me across the whole 10 years is whenever you spend time with entrepreneurs, put their passion, their ideas, their savings into their venture, it becomes incredibly human. And I think the more I started to talk to founders and biotech, the more you realize that 95%, maybe even 100%, start these companies because of some personal relationship to the thing that they're tackling. So when you peel off the layers, it's either their mother had breast cancer or their son has a rare disease and is heading towards blindness if he doesn't do so. And so when you start to get to that level of detail, it's very different than someone coming up with the next grocery delivery service app that's maybe incrementally better than DoorDash. I mean, those are not discounting the value of improvements and innovations in tech space. However, it's always deeply human here. And when you're thinking about not just saving lives, but saving the human race, we all went through COVID together and biotech and the importance of dedicated, collaborative design, focus, attacking this pandemic was incredible to witness. And just to see people rally and pivot their businesses towards things, because we never close our door for one single day. And we had to stay open. We're an essential facility. And we had a dozen companies that were pivoting towards testing, vaccine, and other therapeutics that we're looking at, so are you treating COVID? So it was amazing just to be part of that. And I think that I fell into it, frankly, because I decided to do some work here before COVID hit. And I think my answer to your question is a little bit retrospective. I wasn't drawn to it as if it's my next thing. It was more that it was amplified once I got here and I once I really got talking to the founders and the scientists or in the labs every day and every weekend. And they're doing it for very personal reasons to the point where you usually end up and vary with very emotional stories. That's really, really inspiring. It really is a unique sector in that. I think biotech has so much mission, very mission driven. We hear that a lot. Mike, on that note, could you tell us about lab central Ignite and what that program's all about? Yeah, so lab central Ignite was actually born out of a business need that we had where if you think back to boom times where money was flowing and where valuations were a little higher than they should have been, but we had a problem with our resident community that was coming to us and saying we can't hire talent. And so we matched that business need and said we have to pivot and do something to help them hire. We probably should have been talking to you back then a little bit more directly about helping them, but we matched that with we'd already been on to something because we had a very strong attraction and a driving force towards as lab central being more focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. So we're already building these principles internally. And we had a pilot sort of Skunkworks group that we're out there talking to HBCUs, talking to nonprofits, talking to others who are looking at how can you get talent in the industry. So we had this convergence of two things. Business need where our residents couldn't hire. And then we saw an opportunity where we could provide access to this industry. So we merged this sort of research project that we put a couple people on and sat at a board offsite. And they said we will invest in this for next year, go develop hypothesis, test some things. So we did that in 2021. And we started to get traction and every big farmer was saying, well, I think we'd be interested in that. What are you doing? And we, it got so much traction that we hired an awesome executive director, Gretchen Craig Anderson in the fall of 2021. And she's just a blow on the doors off and has built a team of eight to 10 people last week. And 50 people at our biodiversity summit and awards dinner. And now we are that in magnetic force and we came in and there are people doing things in the ecosystem. But I think we just became a galvanizing force and said, we're on to that too. We need that too. And can you can you manage this program with us and for us? And so it's really doing amazing things on addressing racial and gender equity in the industry. That's fantastic. Yeah, it's a great mission, we're very supportive. When you're talking about all these different entities and these companies you're working with and these startups and all of these different people running these programs, how do you handle communication within lab central and lab central ignite to ensure seamless collaboration and innovation in your. So within our ecosystem, not necessarily within lab central? Yeah, like how do you disseminate information so that everyone's on the same page? Yeah. So I think while starting with internal team communications, I think we do. We always try to do a good job. We live by some guiding principles and poor values and one of them is transparency. And this year, we really lean into that and we started the year with a kick off in January. We are in person all team meeting and we talked about compensation transparent and we share salary ranges for our levels and we share bonus percentages for all leaders in the organization. So we really wanted to be open and that was the most visible, explicit way to be open as an organization is to put ourselves out there and say, "This is what we believe." And we think that everyone should know this information. And so we led with that and that is one of our core values. And so oftentimes we're sharing information with each other. We just had an all team meeting yesterday. We do them once a month, an all team virtual meeting once a month. And I was out there online sharing our update from our board meeting that we had just had the week before. It showed a few slides from the board meeting. So I think transparency is really the pillar for the center poll of sort of communications. We always aim for that. We have our missteps. We're like any organization. There's some confusion, someone doing something that didn't, someone wasn't informed about. We have meetings every Monday as a leadership team. As an exec team, we religiously sort of get together 10 o'clock every Monday, talk about things at the executive level and then we have a broader leadership team same day. So I feel like we are updating and discussing critical topics that come up each week. We're hyper focused on our occupancy of our sites, the value we're providing our residents, the things that are coming up for the team. We have an amazing DEIB committee and they'll raise issues for us to talk about. So I feel like we do a lot of talking in person, which I think is helpful. Sometimes we look around and there are a lot of meetings internally. But between our meetings, our all teams that I talked about, both virtually and in person, we've got this great little newsletter that our, some of our team produces every week called the orange zest, you know, lab sexual loves orange. So in the orange zest, there's some critical updates and what we call husk cherries, which is our little celebratory notes or of appreciation for someone who's done something well the prior week. So I think we're doing, the team might tell you differently. I think we're doing better than most organizations, certainly better than organizations that I've been a part of, but just the richness of internal communications. But underneath all of that, the trust and the belief that everyone has the most positive intent. So I think that's at the core along the transparency. I think that's great. I love the newsletter idea and happy like the call out. What about with the residents? How do you just want to get information to them? Yeah, you bet. So residents are heroes, they're the heroes in our story. And so we spend a lot of time with them. We have resident liaisons who have a assigned a certain number of residents per site. So we have in person check-ins quite frequently. We have a resident portal where we can communicate information digitally. We have a resident newsletter that goes out. We have oftentimes site based communications that go out. We have, there may be other terms for this. We have toilet times and that's basically having the printout in the restrooms for key information for the week. So we cover literally all bases here in terms of how we communicate the residents. This even actually, as soon as I wrap here in five minutes, right outside in the courtyard, we'll have about 250 people for a resident and lab central team, Happy Hour. We're calling it the end of summer Happy Hour. So we're big fans of, we know food attracts residents. So we do a lot of things where we're celebrating with them or just getting to, spending time with them. And then that's, I'm sure there are more things that we're doing. But I think between the digital, the print, the in-person communications. And then we do a ton of programming, as I mentioned. We'll have, once you'll learn Chalk Talks and I mentioned the BC showcase last evening. We had a CEO workshop this morning. So if you're like, we're always in front of them delivering value, delivering curriculum, delivering communications. I really think that's what's, like I'm selling labs central. I'm not talking authentically about communications in principle, but I feel like we're just doing so much in accelerating and helping our residents along their journey. Just a quick story about that orange zest. It's funny because that has bounced around over the, we had that before I came here three half years ago. And then there's two people who've owned it and I, and it got put on someone's lap on the marketing. And I just sat with her yesterday and she'd been doing it with two years. She's wonderful. And I said, you know, this is kind of a people strategy and culture thing. It's where we have so many things going on the marketing, are you ready to give that up? She said, absolutely not. I love it. So I think so. I've got one person who does that. And so, so she does Jules McCoy. She does a fair amount of internal communications along with that orange zest. And we have its responsibilities of a lot of our site team members. So you have one person doing the toilet times. We have another person cracking out newsletters. We have another person running the curriculum. So I think it's a percentage of time that if I added it all up, the percentage might make up a full-time role across the entire organization. I wouldn't say it's more than that, but I think we're streamlined with a ton of processes and mechanisms to get the word out. Yeah. I know that makes sense. Give everyone some ownership of a different part of the process. That's great. I love the toilet time. You do have a captive audience then. Well, I hope that the most memorable thing that comes out of this podcast, but I do appreciate sound bites or tips or tricks, but if it's Mike LeRette toilet times, am I in the tough time selling this podcast internally? Very easy time. So Mike, at the beginning, you sort of mentioned that part of your job was to understand the key elements that make a great ecosystem. Can you share some of that insight between working in Boston and then down in New York area in Brooklyn and then globally? What do you think are those key elements? Yeah. I think there are two levels of answers to this and I don't know if you've done work with MIT, but when I was at MassChallenge, we had a great collaboration with the MIT REAP program and so that's their regional entrepreneurship accelerator program. And so MIT has our own ecosystem model, which is great. It's nothing new under the sun, necessarily, but they just have a discrete framework and we use the same thing at MassChallenge. So fundamentally, there are really five or six things that have to be in line or you have to have strength in several of these for your ecosystem to really support entrepreneurs, startups, and whether it's biotech or others, but you have to have strong government support and that plays out differently in different regions and in different countries. If you have government support in the UK and London, it might not be as favorable as getting government support in Australia. And so understanding the perception of government support is not, as you get to say, all unique government supports, but government support is one. Universities, for sure, they're cranking out ideas and tech transfer and entrepreneurs and startups, so universities, you have to have a corporate industry play. So you have to, you know, people who would invest or buy these products or collaborate with the entrepreneurs. So industry in our world, of course, as I mentioned, farmers and equipment providers and a ton of service providers coming into the market with CDMOs and CROs, you have to have a density of entrepreneurs. And that really means you have to have like a liberal city and you have to have easy transportation as to cost a living as to be there. And then the risk capital, so it's great to sort of have everyone together. But if no one's pumping money in, whether it's VC or corporate venture or angel investors, so generally if you die, if there's an ecosystem diagnostic, you're looking at through those lenses and you're measuring how strong are we? And you won't survive if you don't have, you got to have all five or six depending on how you look at it. And I think the other pieces, I'd sort of neglected to mention there is a general population, whether you call it sort of media and influencers or mentors or coaches, but you can't do this in a vacuum. So you have to have clients or places to test your solution. So when you look at that, that's just sort of the academic approach to how do you build the framework or at least understand the framework to see how you can strengthen that. And then there are a lot of great ecosystems around the world, lots of great rankings and profiles that you can look at. The unofficial, I'm not going to get it like way when they think about if you were going to watch an ecosystem, we have found, I think this happened with, I know it happened with lab central, Apple had mass challenge, you need a celebrity entrepreneur. Like if we're saying, you know, if we're opening up somewhere, we've never, you've never been a second city somewhere, but you got to have someone who people look up to, who when they call you, you're going to pick up the phone. And for us, in both organizations, mass challenge, it was Desch Desch Desch Desch is an amazing successful entrepreneur, the kindest man you'll ever meet, very successful, very smart. And he's the guy that would make asks and you would do what he asked. And so the celebrity, the successful celebrity entrepreneur, not celebrity in the fame sense as much as like they're successful and people respect them. You have to have it in the light and government. And for this industry, in this where we're sitting right now, and the, you know, the pledge that developed Patrick made way back, you know, more than 10 years ago to invest a billion dollars in this industry was so prescient in terms of what he was starting at the time and what then fell afterwards. And if I was pressing into if it was just, you know, right timing, it was all the above, but he was also a big supporter of mass challenge. So as you're enlightened government and or champion in the government to say to take the risk and send betting on this. So you got to have that and you have to have corporate set or write the checks. And whether that's a Microsoft and the tech play or it's a J&J, you know, put up the first corporate money and Novartis put up early money as well here at lab central, you have to have an enlightened industry partner. So they realize, okay, this is legit. We not only have and for lab central, you may know, we got a nice fact grant from the MLSC Massachusetts Life Science Center, after which they said it was best investment they ever made. So government, you know, enlightened or enlightened sort of government officials are smart money. The celebrity or successful respected entrepreneur. And then the corporate players who will get on the bandwagon and call their peers and say you've got to get behind this. Could you touch on some of the obstacles that you faced while creating some of these collaborations within the biotech industry? Yeah. I think one of the key obstacles, particularly when you bring when you're talking with partners, you know, there's a two or three types of partners and some partners have been they know how to do this and they haven't, they have a good external innovation team and they realize that there's a bit of a long game here. And you have to invest to be a genuine member of the ecosystem before you start to reap the rewards. And those are usually the best partners because they'll then have a dedicated person to engage with us or at least an understanding how to engage if they can't dedicate a full time person. The challenge with sponsors that don't quite have that strategy and are measured more by what return will I get after 12 months, upload this amount of money to pilot some things and if it doesn't work, I'm going to bail. And for us, we say you have to look at this in a two or three year runway to reap the rewards in this industry or in any industry, but in this industry, you have to get that. I think the farmers and the equivalent riders get that and the service providers, but we still see it. We still see people looking for the business. Now we always have to defend our return on investment to all of our sponsors, but I think you're either get it. And so you come in with a long view or you don't get it, you're being measured and pressured to get a return on the money you're putting up before you can actually really, really reap the rewards. I think that's probably the number one. I think the second one is to, I think there's a misunderstanding where there are myths about entrepreneurs. And we sort of view them as these mythical creatures that they're special, they're unique and I don't know, they just want to take big risks and they just want to move fast all the time. And it's amazing when you put people in the same room and you demystify it. And I've done that a lot where we have, whether it's corporations and entrepreneurs in the same room, where we just have to break it down and break down those perceptions. And I think the sometimes partners want to go in and build relationships with the entrepreneurs that may take time. And the biggest joke is that we think corporates measure their time by calendars and entrepreneurs measure their time by a watch. And it's just a disconnect and so sometimes our entrepreneurs are like, I didn't get back to it for two weeks and where the partner is, I think, well, that's normal, two weeks is fast. They haven't even talked to my manager about this yet. So I think getting the expectations about how to interact with our founders, with our startups and really matching the pace of decision making. And a lot of times our founders, our entrepreneurs would rather get a fast no than a slow maybe. And I think coaching our partners to be able to do that is a difficult, that's a big challenge as well. So the last challenge is because I'm experiencing this, now that we're post COVID, now they're cranking out events all the time. I probably should have told you about our happy hour, you should be adjusted your day for today. But that'll be fall. I have no question that'll be fall, but I had a workshop this morning where I was expecting 13 people and five showed up. That's our challenge. That's not a challenge of the industry and the ecosystem. But right now it is hard to stand out with the competing needs of our resident companies. We want to deliver value. We're putting gold curriculum out there for them, but they're busy. And how do we get someone out of the lab to actually come and listen to this great presentation on path to IND and which is something that would benefit them. But I think really understanding the right engagement model so that we can continue to deliver value for our residents is paramount. And we can't complain that they're not coming because they got to work in their business. So that's a challenge for us to figure out is how do we strike the right cadence of meaningful events, recognizing their time, fun events and finding some blend in there. Hey, there. Just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the biotech career coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our career coach column that we write monthly in biospace, but we go a little more in-depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for biotech career coach on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts back to the show. How are many of your founders and the entrepreneurs handling the type market right now? We talked earlier about how BC Money was flowing a few years ago and it's a much different landscape now and that's really challenging. Yeah. So some of them have been hunkering down. Some have been really trying to spread out their spend and be really cash conservative. We're getting flexible on our side with them and their leases and really trying to accommodate them and get creative. They are also looking at alternative sources of funding. So we're out there linking them up with public funding grant funding resources so they can go after grants that they might not have been going after before. So we are out there scrambling to put in front of them the kind of resources that will help them in this environment. We're also putting together CEO roundtables that are specifically focused on how to think about financing right now and what are the, if anyone can predict like where, you know, what's the action? How do we do this? We're also giving them, sometimes they need some signs of optimism and we are seeing some great signs. It's being a cheerleader. It's catching them in the hallway and it's listening to their pitch and asking them to give the pitch. And so we, we're encouraging them from a healer perspective. We're giving them good insights from market perspective and we're giving them good resources from a funding perspective. That said, it's still challenging and I don't know what the turn of the year is going to bring. We see great signs and we see some optimism ahead but I think we're in it in the trenches with our starts trying to help them navigate it as well. Yeah, we're only putting out good vibes on this show about the economy turning around for all the. So it's going to be great, 2024 is our year. 2024 is our year. Yeah, I think, and you know, we've read wrapped up, I think, you know, we have this program called Golden Tickets. So we have, we're, it's a bit of an offset and I think we're very proud that last week we gave out eight Golden Tickets for our Ignite program. So we gave four to founders of color and four to women founders. And so it's just a great program to be able to offer $50,000 a year of bench space for a scientist and any little bit. I mean, the level of gratitude in the room by our sponsors who were able to build that relationship and offer this to some of the applicants and the finalists was amazing. And so we do that year round amongst our sponsor network. We offer about 26 to 30 Golden Tickets a year. And so that's a little bit of a differentiator for us in terms of that's in this particular market and need little, you know, that may seem like a couple of nickels to some. And for others, it's, it's immense value because it just gives them that extra runway that it didn't have. How can people find more about that program and how do people apply? That sounds like a fantastic program. Yeah. So there are a couple of different flavors. I mentioned the ones that we gave out last week and that was really with our Ignite program, specifically targeted towards underrepresented populations. And so that may have been or is broad reaching without the application everywhere. But the others are tend to be attached to pharma sponsors or other sponsors who are looking for a particular disease area, a particular target or particular range of things might be ecology might be others and others are more broad base. But every golden ticket is pushed out there to the ecosystem and amplified, of course, through our partners, social media channels and we push it ourselves. And so it's used pretty public. We try to get there as much as possible. We want as broad a population to be applying as possible, not just based here in Boston. We'll push this out, you know, nationally or globally and we'd love to get more applicants and more residents coming in from out of town. So we're, I like to think we're pretty good at getting worn out, but, you know, we had that meeting today that I mentioned, we're trying to get the word out more. How do we extend our reach? So thinking about what all of the different things that this ecosystem kind of supplies, if you are a brand new founder and you're coming into the lab central ecosystem, like what can you expect in terms of this board? The support that lab central provides, I think it's a bit like it can be overwhelming. It's a bit like a cruise ship buffet, to be honest with you. And I think it's, you know, you always give a little bit of caution, like, if you're going to only been on one cruise in my life, but you want to cruise, you can just eat for five days and get fat and not really be the healthiest journey. And it's similar to, I guess, the analogy is like, if I saw a CEO or founder at every one of our events, I'd be a little worried, but there is so much for them to take advantage of. First, a piece of advice is, sit down and make a blueprint, make a road. And let's have a measured path towards your growth. And then we actually do this. We sit down with them when they're onboarding to lab central, and we map out what are your science goals, what are your business goals, hear the resources that can match them, because we really want to provide a just in time on the journey. And you may know this, but we generally, the life cycle of a startup here at lab central is about 18 years. And so we knew we're cycling through, so we've got about 25 companies that are in and out of the sort of refreshed, so we're doing this a lot, we're helping people on the journey. We've had 26 repeat entrepreneurs go back through lab central again, they've gone through, they've scaled their business, they've exited, and they come back through again with their next venture. And so we do have some veterans, we have an amazing mentor program here as well. So I think the advice is, you know, there's a lot to take it. So we want you to focus on what you need to do next. We can help you get, you might not know what's next. It's the first time founders here, who've never started a business. So they'll join a cohort where we're doing a CEO round table with other founders. So we'll do a, let's call it a mastermind cohort, we'll bring in an outside content provider, and really kind of it's for first time founders, and how do we sort of go this together as a cohort. So I think they can expect number one to be operational, day one. So, you know, we can focus on the, we focus on the operations so that they can focus on their science. So table stakes, you can be operational, you can be in the lab, day one. And then beyond that, the layer above is that's the piece I'm talking about, which is the buffet, you can go to a chalk talk on a Tuesday, you can go to a VC showcase on a Wednesday, you can go to happy hour on a Thursday. And so being really purposeful about how you engage and how you work with us to map out your journey. And how about the transitioning out of lab central, so with that life cycle, the next step is to go have a bigger lab and now you're on your own, you know, what's that transition look like for your resident? Yeah. The transition out of lab central is always a fascinating one. Even though they've only been here 18 months, I think we spoil them a little bit. I'll give you an example. We have a purchasing platform and it's called the Stork. And just because we have that purchasing power, we can negotiate discounts. We can make it easy, sometimes startups don't have the Reddit to be able to make big purchases. And so we do that. I think people coming off that is like weaning them off of the system that they become so dependent on. So they're often asking, I say, can I still buy things through you? And so helping them negotiate or navigate that world of being on your own from, you know, how do you come off of that purchasing and how do you establish and get good banking relationships or other purchasing relationships, look at the look of the vendors you bought from. And we try to help from that perspective. We have great relationships with all of the real estate brokers in town. Oftentimes our residents are going straight from lab central 700 to lab central 610 or labs under 238. So our graduation spaces become a natural progression for a number of our startups. But we know we can't accommodate everybody. And we have other partners in town that are other lab sharing facilities that kind of accommodate them or back to the brokers and developers. We're often giving them that's the 10 fingers over the wall. And we maintain great relationships and we do alumni that working opportunities and come and talk about this. We'll bring in real estate experts and do a session with those who we know are six months out from leaving or 12 months out. And so we put that resource, the resources in front of them to really ease that transition out. And we maintain a lot of great relationships with our alumni as well. Go be proud of that. What are the signs that, you know, someone is ready to go, they're ready to leave the nest? Yeah. Well, the signs that people are ready to go, some of it's public, we know it was getting funded and how they're scaling and they frankly outgrow the space. You know, we know they have to grow their team from four to 20 by the end of the year. Probably we're not going to be able to accommodate the 20. And so we get the signals through the funding or the milestones that we know that they've achieved. I mentioned a little bit earlier that we have resident liaisons and our resident success program where they're constant touch points. And so we're aware of their needs as they come up. And so they'll come to us and ask us about resources or we've already mapped it out with them and talked about trends and the market and is it better to be in Kendall Square or in Watertown or over in the Seaport area and we'll walk them through the pros and cons of each. But we have so many touch points that we're usually aware of their needs. And there is a forcing mechanism there because the lease ends in two years. So, you know, there's a one year check in that we're already having that conversation on what's next after the second year. And in some cases, we do we have I mentioned the creativity in the environment we're in right now. In some cases, we're letting them stay a little longer because they're not there yet. And we're a safer place for them to be until they establish your footing in their next place. Mike, honestly, it sounds like the nicest place in the world that I want to come hang out at lab central all the time. It sounds really fun and really nice. I haven't even talked to you about the parties that we throw up. So this is, you know, we're talking a lot about the science and the operations. But I had to fill out my size, my clothing size for Halloween costumes already for this year. That was my next question, actually, because you do throw epic parties. And when your team goes to parties that are around the city, they're always in style. And so I want to hear about your costumes and your culture of just fun and it sounds amazing. Yeah. So I'll thank you. It is, I can take credit for participating in them in the past three and a half years, but this was day zero. When lab central started, I look at the pictures from a long time ago. And it was, I think, you know, if you think about Johannes and Maggie and others who are here in the early days, they just instituted this level of we're going to be different. And you've been to our sites, you know, our use of color, we're bold and everything that we do are the classes, or we have glass walls in our labs. And we're really trying to live this to kind of like we've got to be different, we've got to be bold. And that was the model from the beginning. And being bold means, you know, being vulnerable and being silly. And so we would throw holiday parties back in the day where people would dress up as all sorts of characters. And so I can show you pictures, but the few that I've been in, we treat Halloween pretty seriously. We do holiday parties. I have to, I apologize if you haven't been to one yet because I've known you for, you know, a year or two now, and we've got to get you in constant, but we did a holiday party last February on the heels of our partnership summit, where was the game show seat so everyone's showing up in prices, right costumes or the whammy from game shows from a long time ago. So anyway, we have a lot of fun together. And I think we have to be careful. I'll say this is my disclaimer. We do like to have a lot of fun and it is fun to be here. It's also balanced by being very, very serious. And I think this year we've often had to call back to question, like, is it a party year, you know, and there are two sides to that. We need to get through this. And so we have to be human, we have to be fun, but you can take partying too much. And I think we just always have to strike a good balance. And so with everything we're doing now, we're just doing a gut shot, like does this feel right to, to be our normal selves instead of crank it up a notch and be that place that we're always known for the arguments? Yes. That's true to our colors, orange, if you'd say, well, actually, that's one of our parties we do internally is nothing wrong with orange. That's a, it's our version of an internal Yankee swap. But so yeah, so yes, we have to love to have a lot of fun. And at times we just do have to, like with anything, like where have we tipped over the line too much and what are we, how can we celebrate in time when people aren't really able to move to celebrate because they, you know, they're, they're having funding challenges. And so we're always trying to strike a good balance. Relentlessly heal it. Yeah. And I think it's tough to, you know, you've got funding challenges and prior to that you had COVID where people really couldn't blow off steam and be all together and having fun. So I think everyone from this weird recalibration about like, how much is too much on full sides of the work hard, play hard equation. Yeah. It's good. You can't, you have to, you're lots of research about how having fun increases productivity increases your, decreases your stress levels. So I think we default to the science on the need to have fun, the need to be human, the need to express joy and be silly, but there's a balance here we get. I cannot believe how fast our time is going and we need to get you to a happy hour. Oh, that's, that's going up there. That's the reason we're ending is we're going up, but I get it. So we talked about how did you get where you are and I'm curious what's next for you. How do you see the rest of your career evolving and it's probably going to change because nothing's linear. Yeah. Thank you. That's a great book and question, I think for me being in this industry the past three and a half years has been amazing. We've already talked about that. I see the potential for other applications of biology and I'm not a scientist. So what I mean by that is I'm seeing amazing things happen and food technology, food innovation and climate and ocean sustainability and some really fascinating things are happening here in Boston and other places. And so my team knows that I have a passion for that and I think the extent that we can bring that into the lab central facilities we're all going to be excited about that. And so that's one area is I think there's an extension of biology or extension of science towards these new areas we really see the power of innovation in other areas to tackle food security and the planet. That's one area. I did mention also that I have a master's degree in counseling and I think for me there's something that is a human connection that's always a draw for me. And so I talked about having delivered a couple of performance reviews today and sort of in the day in the life and that's I really enjoy that. I enjoy trying to figure out how to get people to be the best versions of themselves, get them to unlock their barriers to really be high performers. And so whether that's coaching or consulting or just bringing into my leadership role of an organization, I think we all know this. Results and excellence all comes through people. And so I think it would be some combination of, I don't know if it would be a combination of climate tech or food tech and the people to mention, but certainly those are my two vectors of growth for sure. Well, Mike, I always ask everyone, what is your favorite book? It can be fiction, nonfiction, science, business, not science, not business, anything you like. But what is one book that if you can tell everybody that they should read it, what it be? I don't, I don't know if I should show this, I don't want to flat. Here's my 48 titles on audio, audio books, I've become a junkie. I really, there's so many books in here that I feel like I'm consuming too much to talk about the cruise ship, like I've just been stuffing myself with these awesome books. So there's so many, but I think the one that I often reference when I'm delivering workshops or talking about changing and improving, I just change clear as atomic habits. And I really think that change is made at the micro habit level and what you're doing when you wake up in the morning, what you're doing during the day and not thinking about this big thing that you're trying to do or to be. And there's a lot of great anecdotes and tricks in there. From the practical sense and the theoretical sense, I've really, I've enjoyed that book and I've referenced that probably the most out of all of them, but there's 47 other titles that we could talk about if you had more time. Honestly, I love this question so much that I might just start a whole separate podcast, just asking people about their favorite books because we get, we'll stay. There's maybe a co-host with the two of you on that one because I'll be all over that. We get invited to a fun lab central party, then you can definitely be a co-host. I'm taking your hand, maybe there's a combination of that, maybe it's a party podcast book club. That is one of my all-time favorite books. I love that. Have you checked out James Claire's podcast? I listen to one or two, I think. I have not, not beyond that. It's really good and it's like little doses of all of that wisdom that you just get fed every week. It's great. Awesome. I'm going to add that to my list. I have, I do more of the audio. I've got two and a half hours of commuting every day, so between, you know, round trips. So I've got, I can read a book a week, but I, that's what I've been mostly in the book category, but I think I have to flip over and start tuning in to podcasts more. Well, definitely this one. You should definitely check it. I've got five that I can listen to already and I can't wait to, I hear this is great when coming up in November. I think so. Yeah. That's kind of money. Well, Mike, where can people find you if they want to get in touch? So email MLorette@labcentral.org and it's probably the best way for now, trying to think of other channels. What's another channel? LinkedIn. LinkedIn? What? I'm about to learn LinkedIn. I'm Mike LaRette. Michael LaRette. Yeah, we'll link it down in our show notes so that our folks can click through and also the lab central social media and your website, your new website that says building biotechs on it. Building biotechs better. So there's a great additive. I love it. Mike, this has had an absolute pleasure. It is so great catching up with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah. Thank you. So much fun for me. You're two of the best. I really enjoyed the conversation and look forward to having you at a lab central party soon. Thank you. Building biotechs is brought to you by Recruitomics Consulting. You can find building biotechs in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and join our mailing list for a weekly dose of biotech news and a podcast overview and if you need to install a recruitment engine that saves time and money for your growing company, reach out for a free strategy session. I'm always happy to share my expertise and show you techniques to simplify your hiring process and maximize returns. On behalf of the team here at Recruitomics Consulting, thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]
