Maximizing the student-to-founder pipeline: An interview with Pillar VC

Pillar VC is a venture capital firm focused on supporting founders through seed- and early-stage funding. Founded in 2016, Pillar has focused on helping academic researchers translate their findings into groundbreaking new companies and has a portfolio across various sectors, including AI/ML and biotechnology.

As an official partner of Stanford Biotechnology Group, Pillar is committed to a close relationship with Stanford students who are interested in learning more about startups and venture capital in the biotechnology space.

I sat down with Tony Kulesa, Principal at Pillar who focuses on biotechnology investments specifically, to learn more about Pillar’s mission and philosophy. In addition, I asked Tony about how students can successfully transition into careers in both startups and venture capital. Below is a snapshot of our interview highlighting the key takeaways that Tony wanted to share with the Stanford community.

Logan: Can you introduce me to yourself and to Pillar?

Tony: I’m Tony, and I’m an investor at Pillar. I’ve been helping build our biotech practice over the past five years. We are a seed-stage venture fund. We want every great discovery that you guys are working on to become a great new startup. There are about 12,000 PhD students in the life sciences graduating each year, 86,000 active NIH grants, and a million papers published each year, but there are only about 200-300 seed-stage biotechs funded every year. So we’ve really tried to focus on how to increase the rate of turning great science into great companies.

Logan: How do you go about doing that?

Tony: First, we try to build a global community of biotech founders. Second, we try to open source all the knowledge and networks of how to get these companies started from how to build a team to how to license technology at a university and how to raise money. And third, we put our investor dollars to work by supporting as many founders as possible.

Logan: How do you get this information out to founders?

Tony: We have what we call the founder playlist, where literally every question you might have about how to get a biotech company started is answered. We find the answers and write them down from our own experience or from people we’ve interviewed such as founders or portfolio advisors. We also link to other people’s resources. You’ll find everything from IP landscaping to a compensation guide for what you should pay scientists. We also have a course that we run twice a year called Frequency, where we spend an intensive week with people trying to help them get started and build a thesis around whatever they’re working on.

Logan: What was your path into a career in VC?

Tony: I started off exploring the idea of how we could help founders get started out of academia, so I created this incubator called Petri in partnership with Pillar, and we ran into a huge amount of interest. During the pandemic, the walls between institutions seemed to drop, and it didn’t matter as much which institution you were from. There is great research everywhere, and the entrepreneurial culture spread viral across research universities. We decided we needed to be much larger than the incubator of Petri, so we decided to make it part of Pillar. Now, we dedicate about a third to 40% of our capital to support that effort.

Logan: What is it like to work in venture?

Tony: There are five aspects of a venture. First is finding investment opportunities. Second is picking which opportunities to invest in and doing diligence. Third is getting a deal done to invest in a company. Fourth is supporting the companies by sitting on the board or by helping them with recruiting, fundraising, and technical strategy. The last part is raising money ourselves for the fund.

Logan: What advice do you have for academics who want to become founders?

Tony: First, nothing beats having a true fundamental advance in science. However, I think people need to look outwards more. You don’t necessarily have to be the inventor. Often the people who make the invention might not be the right people to lead a company, and just because you aren’t the person who discovered that doesn’t mean you don’t have the technical background to understand its value and help transform it into something the world can benefit from. Second is to have a broader perspective on what’s important and what’s valuable. It’s important that if you’re working on a drug that you actually speak with patients or physicians who treat those patients. Third, it pays to have a great network of people. It is best to have a broader set of people with different skill sets and experiences and bring them together around the science or technology that you’re trying to commercialize.

Logan: What are some trends you see in the biotech space?

Tony: There is a quote by Sydney Brenner “Progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries and new ideas, probably in that order.” We are in an extremely data-rich era, but our ability to interpret that data has been fairly limited, and everyone is trying to understand what new therapeutics or products will come from this enhanced level of understanding. Also, there is a theory of recycling failure. Sometimes the world changes in a way that now supports those failures’ success. I wonder what kinds of gems are hidden in past failures now that we have new technologies.

Logan: What distinguishes Pillar from other VC firms?

Tony: I hope people remember that we are uniquely focused on this mission of increasing the number of successful companies that are started and turning every great discovery into a company. Our plan to do that involving a global community of founders, knowledge networks, and putting our dollars to work is what makes Pillar unique.

We would like to thank Tony for his time spent interviewing with us and for sharing his unique insights with the Stanford community. If you’d like to learn more about Pillar, you can visit their website here to learn more.