March 6, 2025 • 34 mins
Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel will go down in history for pioneering the Covid-19 vaccine. He sits down with Bob to recount the story of the pandemic from his perspective, from the moment he knew it would become an international disaster to the decision to throw out Moderna’s playbook and risk everything to help humanity. At the time, Moderna had never sold a product, requiring Stéphane to adapt to a new strategy, scale the business, and sustain seven day work weeks. All of this has set Moderna up for a strong future. In fact, Stéphane believes Moderna’s next decade will be so critical for the healthcare industry that its name will no longer be synonymous with the pandemic.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
If you are in a situation where you have you know,
once in a century pandemic and the economy is locked down.
Peoples are dying by the thousands, even though the tens
of thousands around the world kids cannot go to school anymore.
He becomes a human decision to decide to throw by
the window your business strategy and to do what you
think is the right thing for the world, even though
(00:28):
if you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I am Bob Pittman. Welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic. Our guest today has literally changed the world,
proving that the impossible can be done, and he's a
model of the CEO as someone in service to society.
Is Stefan Thenselve, CEO of Majoernal. He grew up in
France and always knew what he wanted to be a CEO,
(00:53):
loved science and business, still does and is equally skilled
in both. Greatly influenced by the Jesuits and bring that
sense of service to business and his mission. Although it
was almost a decade after its founding, Maderna popped on
the scene as a savior during the pandemic, doing what
the experts thought to be impossible, getting a vaccine developed
and available within a year. And by the way, infectious
(01:16):
disease vaccines weren't even on his original company plans. He
loves to ski, boat and eat. Well. He's French after all,
and he is a fascinating and nice guy. Stefan welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I thank
you for this very kind description.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Oh we have more to come, but before we jump
into that, I want to do you in sixty seconds. Ready,
good cats are dogs dogs early riser or night out,
very earlier Riser Paris or Boston, Paris for fund bust.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Some of our work skiing or sailing. That's a tough one.
Skiing and winter sitting in the summer coffee or tea tea.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Strange guy and never drinks coffee, sleep or exercise, boof
cook or eat out, eat outs, call or text, text
podcast or video podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Oh that's the right answer. Okay, it's about to get harder.
All time favorite musical artist Teto Swift, first job picking asparagus.
Smartest person you know, Stephen Hoogan, the President of Madonna.
Childhood hero Steve Jobs. Favorite movie the gombre, the most
important piece of advice you've ever had.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Listen to everybody, and finally, do you have a secret
talent connecting the dots?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Okay, let's get started. Probably one of the most disruptive
events in the world in the last hundred years was
the pandemic, and in a strange way, it was the
coming out party for Maderna, and from it comes one
of the business world's most impressive case studies. You were
employee number two in the first CEO of Maderna in
twenty eleven. It was a startup built around the promise
(02:53):
of Messenger RNA mRNA that it would change medicine. I've
seen you quoted as saying it had only a ten
percent chance of working, but if it did, the world
would change, and by during it would be something new
in biotech. You'd be a platform, much like the operating
system and the traditional tech world, a platform with RNA
as your operating system and broad applications writing on it.
(03:17):
You took a pay cut, left a major CEO job
just for the promise of Messenger RNA. You were making
progress building a new company and suddenly COVID nineteen appears.
Can you take us through what you did and how
it changed all your plans.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Sure, I spent all my career working in fictious disease,
and so I always have an eye to new virus emerging,
new bacteria emerging. And so between Christmas and New Year
twenty nineteen, as I was reading the World Street Journal,
I heard about new cases of pneumonia like symptoms to
(03:56):
people in China, and so I'll reached out to be
an IH, asking he this new thing in China, what
is it. After a few days, we realized it was
a virus. It was not through and it was not
a coronavirus like SARS or MERS. There was a new
one and so when they got the sequence online around
mid January, we decided to go and make a vaccine
(04:19):
to test it in a clinic. And initially we thought
this was just an outbreak, but we still wanted to
go to the clinic because I wanted to know how
fast could we go if when they got forbid there
was going to be a pandemic. And I thought we
could get into a clinic in sixty days from the
day the sequence is available of a virus genome. Today
(04:42):
we could inject the first human which was a huge
change versus what happened during SARS. It took the NIH
twenty months to get from sequence to first human doors,
and so that's why I wanted to do it. And then,
of course though January of twenty twenty, as the cases accumulated,
(05:04):
and I woke up one day at four o'clock in
the morning in sweats saying, GESEZ is going to be
a pandemic like nineteen eighteen. And so when he was
a few weeks convincing my board, covincing my team that
we had to pivot the company and really put our
best started toward trying to work on this vaccine for
(05:24):
what I thought was going to be a pandemic.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So I understand though that one of the problems is
no one would finance the vaccine. That the only way
it got done was the US government stepped then and
actually financed this.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You're correct, Moderana. I had never saw the product, We
had never commercialized the product, and so we had two
financial challenges as we pivoted to running after this virus.
One was how do you set up quickly very large
It ended up being thirty thousand people tested in the
(05:59):
face free clinical trial and this was, as you said,
funded by the US government, which backed up five companies,
which I think was one of the most brilliant strategy
I've seen in terms of getting things done for the
country and the world. But the other piece that the
government did not back up, that we still had to
(06:22):
do at incredible risk was to scale manufacturing. Because, as
you can understand, if we only finance the clinical study
and the vaccine works and we have no vaccine to
provide people, that would be a human tragedy. And so
we had to scale up manufacturing, not for ten million dozes,
but for a billion doze, And so we couldn't find
(06:46):
any foundation to help us. And so what we ended
up doing in May of twenty twenty is raised equity
on NASDAK as soon as we published positive phase and data,
and we raised one point three billion dollar and one
hundred percent of that capital was dedicated to scale up manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I mean, it sounds pretty tough. How hard was it
to pivot from not only were you going to do
this product, but you had really been set up and
built to be a platform and suddenly you're going into
the product business.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yes, if you go back and even you read the
public filing. When we went public in December twenty eighteen,
the S one we described a company that, as you said,
is a platform company to manage a money technology risk
and to manage barrows your risk, which is disease risk
which exists in the industry. We actually build a portfolio
(07:40):
of drugs. We had I think sixteen drug by the
time we went to public, and that portfolio of drugs
was to allow us to manage the unknown about where
was the money going to work or was it not
going to work? What this is was going to work for?
What is it was not going to work for? At
the time, no product ever approved using amount technology. And so,
(08:05):
as you can imagine, in January twenty twenty, when we
decide to pause or to slow down this portfolio approach
of those sixteen drugs, to literally bet the company on
one drug, that was a very complicated and heavy business decision.
We believed we had the technology that could work for vaccines.
(08:27):
We had done nine vaccine in human trials before the
pandemic hit. We had done quite a lot of work
on CHRONA viruses, cears, and mers. So we believed our
vaccine was going to work. And if you are in
a situation where you have in a once in a
century pandemic and the economy is locked down. Peoples are
dying by the thousands, if not the tens of thousands
(08:49):
around the world. Kids cannot go to school anymore. It
becomes a human decision to decide to throw by the
window your business strategy and to do what you think
is the right thing for the world, even though if
you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
So speaking of killing the company and just then reading
about that time, there were a lot of seasoned veterans
who were saying you were irresponsible to even claim you
could deliver a vaccine inside a year, which must have
put another level of pressure on you to realize that
you were pivoting the company. Yeah, there was hardly universal
(09:29):
views from outside that this was the right move.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I mean, if you had told me even in the
spring of twenty twenty that large companies like Sanofi was
going to have massive technical setback, that the products from
Astraseneka and Johnson and Johnson, while they were going to
get approved, they would end up having some safety concerns that.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Will led them to not being really used.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And this was going to be Moderna and Pfizer left
to really help fight this horrible pandem. I will hearely
not have believed you. And as you said, a lot
of people from those large companies, we're saying on TV
that I was irresponsible to even give a hope that
we could have vaccined by the end of the year.
(10:13):
That was actually a very hard time.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So let's talk about personal dimension for you as CEO
of the company, as a human being, the way that
the world was suddenly on your shoulders. How did you
cope with that stress? What did it do to you?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So it's interesting my wife would tell you this is
actually the type of moment when it's really hard but
also very clear of what has to be done, that
I'm at my best and I don't know why. I'm
able to abstract the outside noise and just to focus
on the work to be done. It was not the
time to think about do we go right or do
(10:45):
we go left. There's an enemy, it's the virus. Every day,
every hour matters because people are dying, and so it
just allowed me to be laser focused on the job
a task. The biggest challenge I think was more a
mental and physical challenge because we were working seven days
a week, which I'd never done before. I worked hard before,
(11:07):
but we were working full day Saturday's, full day Sundays
for a year, and so I remember starting to be
pretty exhausted, you know, by end of February, early in March,
and having a discussion with Steven, who is my partner
at the president of the company, and I'm like, hey,
how do we sustain this? Because he's a doctor, I'm not.
And it's like, you know, make sure you go to
(11:27):
bed at a reasonable time, do spot every day, eat healthy.
He knows I like wine, don't drink any wine. So
it was really about this discipline. And I remember because
at the time, you know, we were working from home,
you know, in the spring of twenty and twenty and
I remember dropping, you know, so tired in my bed
at night, getting up early in the morning, going for
a run too fresh up my mind and get some
(11:49):
oxygen and then go back into it. And this was
this thing where sometimes the teams were even joking, you know,
get on a zoom call at seven am and somebody
would make the but became the more like shock what
they is it today?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
Because we had no.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Idea, but it was an amazing time because the teams
internally went so beyond what is expected of them because
for everybody was very personal and everybody had family members dying.
Everybody was worry about their parents or all the family members,
the kids not going to school. So it was a
(12:24):
really incredible teamwork across not only the company, but companies
are being us and the government. That really makes me
really proud about what was achieved by this very large team.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Well, you know what is so impressive to me. You
know we talked on this show about leadership and management,
is that you were able to get your company to
rally around the course, you were able to sync that
up with the government that regulates you, in this case,
funding you as well. Did you do something special in
(12:57):
your leadership? Did you just think this is how I'm
going to get everybody rally around it. Was there some
special sauce you used there?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So a few think I think being very clear on
the goals because if you think about it and you
oversimplify it. I became a project manager for this very
big project which was getting a vaccin out, So being
very clear on what are the objectives, what a goal,
what other priorities? Communicating with people in real time. So
(13:25):
we spend a lot of time making sure that our
counterparties in the governments knew what we were doing, that
they were aligning what we were doing, communicating a lot
to industrial partners, suppliers making raw materials and so on,
because for everybody it was a kind of crazy experimental
experience in a sense. I mean, just imagine the face
(13:45):
of my supplier or CEO when I call them and
I say, hey, I need ten thousand times more product
than last year. Had an interesting conversay exactly, And so
I think it was a lot of communication and also
adapting the plan of pivoting on data, pivoting on challenges,
asking for help, being very transparent, and making sure everybody
(14:08):
in the ecosystem around all vaccine was always aware what
was going well, what was not going well, what did
we need help. I was never shy to ask for
help because the only objective was to get a safe,
effective vaccine out of the door.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
There was no overgold.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So I want to come back to moderna and some
of the lessons you've learned there, But first I want
to go back in time with you. You were born in
Marseille in France in the early seventies. You were a
child of the seventies and eighties. Can you paint a
picture of how you grew up and paint a picture
of those times.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
So I was very lucky in many ways.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I was born in Sappo, France, which for all of
you that have not been, is a beautiful part of
the world with a lot of history in a Marseille
was a Greek part as it's a very very old city.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
It's a very multicultural cities.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
You have people from all over the Mediterranean, people from
North Africa, from a Middle East, which is super cool
to grow up with friends from everywhere. I was, you know,
in a middle class family, but because you know in France,
school is split by the state through taxes, I had
access to good school. The quality of life was nice
(15:19):
because you'll go sailing. You always find a friend who
had access to a boat somewhere, even if it's a
small boat.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
You'll be able to go skiing. Even with school. A
great quality of life.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I was raised by the Jesuit, as you said in
your intro, which I only realized much later in life,
was a blessing because this sense of serving was just
put into my head and my heart since I was
a kid, and I didn't even feel it because he
was normal. You know, when you're a kid, you don't
think about things too much. You go with a movement,
you know, when you are in the school I was
(15:53):
at and on a Wednesday afternoon when you don't have class,
instead of going to do spot over things, you know,
let's tell you go you know, build a shelter of
your less or let's go help somebody. You just say
yes because everybody else is doing it with you. Hi,
the supernice childhood. It was non eventful, but I think
that quietness in my life helped build strength and foundations
(16:15):
for half the times.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
In addition to the jazzu, which it looks like. Another
great influence on you was an otel you had who
was a successful business person in tech companies in the US.
Was that influence?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yes, So I've been super lucky. My mom's brother moved
to the US, was in the tech world b to be.
But it was interesting because I would meet him like
once a year in the summer, and I had somebody
to talk about business and technology and yet a lot
of influence on my life.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I'll be asking him questions.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
You're like a kid asking a mental questions, and you
will be like, should I learn German or Spanish in school?
Because he was composor in France to the third language,
And you will answer me in this very brilliant style,
this is a wrong in your generation. You should learn
to speak Chinese or Japanese. Then that's altitude long Japanese.
(17:06):
And that allowed me to end up working in Japan
and as a twenty four year old, which was of
course an amazing experience. But I think having access to
somebody that was from a business world to allow me
to pick direction and to see her around the corner
and to do the right things when I had time
when I was younger, I think it was a big gift.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
More on math and magic right after this quick break.
Welcome back to math and magic. Let's hear more from
my conversation with Sefon gun Sell. You were great at
math and science. You had an early interesting computers. Clearly
you were on a track to do something in technology.
(17:51):
But talk a little bit about your education and why
you value a liberal arts education.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
As you asked me my secret power, of my secret gifts,
I think you might be connecting.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I think that things are connected.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
History plays a great role, as you know, for us
to understand today's world. But so where the world might
be going. Psychology plays a huge role in leading teams.
You know, of course science and biology. I like to
learn from different fields and had to basically build a
metal model or how the world works, and those different
(18:23):
experiences and those different educations I think make the metal
model that somebody can have more precise about the world.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
You've later got a master's and engineering in Paris and
another in Minnesota. What brought you to America for your
second masters?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So I always wanted to find a way to learn
in America, and I was lucky because the school I
was at in Paris gave you the opportunity to do
your last year outside France. But it was a very
simple system, which is you can apply anywhere you want
as long as it's one of the top three program
in the discipline what you apply. And so Minnesota has
(19:03):
an amazing chemical engineering program in grad school, which was
great for me to discover America through being in Minneapolis.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Had to be a lot of fun. In January that
was called and here's what's interesting about your story? Thought,
We've got this whole history of engineering, math, science and
then your first tech company job was in sales and marketing.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Why.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I think it's the contrariance in me. I wanted to
keep learning. As I think you mentioned the new introw Bob,
I always wanted to be CEO. I don't have a
big ego, so I would have been happy car Wis
being a se of a ten people company. I just
wanted to be in the general management role of connecting
the dots and so being tan as an engineer, I
(19:50):
thought it made sense for me to don't know about business,
and because sales you are close to the customers.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
I thought you was good.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I did to do and that's what I did and
have a counterexamp. Part of me being a contrariant is
after I left the business school instead of going to
a small company, because I graduated in spring of two thousand,
when of course we had that Pickle dot Com. Instead
of going to tech, I ended up going into a
large farmer company called Ili Lily, and I asked them
(20:18):
to go work in manufacturing over places, which even the
Lily recruiting team thought was a weird idea for our business.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Could grad you went through that, you got your MBA
harder NBA. By the way, did worked with Ili Lily
and somehow you wound up as a very young CEO
a Beyo Mario, which was a major company at the time.
Tell me a little bit about how this young, brand
new CEO figured out how to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It was interesting because when I got the role, as
you said, I I was young. I think I was
just thirty three, and so I was a bit panicked,
and so I obsessed about getting the best team I
could around me. So I literally the job and spend
the first two months on an airplane going around the
world to meet all as many people as I could,
(21:07):
asking everybody the same question if you're a CEO, the
three things you will change, and so I got very
constant feedback. I think it's another big lest soon for me,
which is ask people. Most humans beings will tell you
what they think. And I got very constant feedback. But
the strength of a company, the issues. I got a
good sense of who I wanted to keep on the
(21:27):
executive team, who I should not keep on exective team,
And so I always obsessed about getting the right team
around me because I had no chance to be successful
in that neural As a first time you're on CEO,
if I have already a great team around me, and
so that's what I focused.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
On, you know, and sort of reading about you and
studying you a little bit. In addition to listening hard,
there's thingmably two other things that you really focus on,
which is focus and scale. How did those three things
come together? And I hope my analysis is correct? Why
are they so important?
Speaker 5 (22:02):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
The focus, I believe is the only way you get
things done that are complicated and important. I think most
people get distracted by trying to do too many things
or too many things not good enough to have an impact.
The listening piece is about getting the data. I'm an engineer.
I believe in data.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
One of our motel at MODERNA is we period fearlessly
on new data. Sometimes you shock people. I'm able to
say we need to turn right and change our plan.
If it's telling you you need to change your plan,
then every hour you wait not changing the plan is
and now you're wasting That could hurt somebody given the
business line I mean, And so listening for me is
(22:46):
key to get the right data. The focus is key
to implement and execute on big important projects or task
and the skill is about impact, which is the great
thing about what we do making medicine is if we're
right and if we do our jobs well, by focusing
(23:08):
on the right things, we can help a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
How do you think about risk? How do you size them?
And how do you decide which ones to take?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So risk, in my opinion, has to be balanced with
upside or opportunity, which is taking a big risk for
something that's not going to change the world is foolish,
if not madness. A good example how I think about
risk is the decision to go to Moderna, to resign
(23:40):
from the CEO of your Maria to become employe number
two of this startup, which is just an idea with
no money. I think we're two million dollars to start with,
which is not a lot in biotech. And all my
friends tell me, don't do it. All my friends that
I talked to tell me don't do it. The risk
was very large. But for me, the obside was this technology.
(24:01):
If we could find a path to make safe, it
was going to change medicine forever, and so it was
going to change humanity forever. And the metal mode that
I had, I could take almost any risk because the
obside was so important for humanity, because the true inside
is I was going to potentially build a company that
would go bankrupt, But what is the risk of that
(24:23):
we just use the risk of not bringing to the
world the technology would save.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
A lot of our lives.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
You've talked a lot about teams, and clearly that's part
of your go to strategy. Any secrets about building a
good team and how to use them.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yes, so team is my number one go to think.
The most important things I learned about business school. It's
not about finance or other technical things which I learned
and I've forgotten a lot of it. It's about the
power of having smart people with as much of a
diggers background as you can, especially us from your way
(25:01):
of thinking, because you need to understand where the blind
spots are. We all have blind spots. I'm biased. I
believe everybody is biased, and we are the fruit of
our own life, of own experience. And so what I
really was impressed when I was in business school is
sometimes that will really a business case work on it.
(25:24):
I thought I would have cracked the case and I've
got to class the next day, and a lawyer or
a doctor or somebody from a part of the world
I don't know where come with a totally different analysis
and what I had and there is stronger. And so
I've seen time this time and time again, and this
has really helped me to think about how do you
(25:48):
build a team that, in my business is very mission driven,
because you can do great things if people are driven
about the career or about themselves. It has to be
about what we're trying to achieve, and that those people
have different skills and different insights or way to think
(26:10):
about the world. And you're also together you can get
a better sense for the facts so that you can
have a better chance to define the right problem to
work on.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So if you deal with your teams, you know something
that comes up when you have different people, different points
of view is the scent. What place does it have
in your management philosophy.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I think it's key going back to the world listen.
I think it's kids to listen.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
But at the end of the day, somebody has to
make a decision, and so I think the heart of
the decision, the more it's debated, the more you need
to give time to a decision. I'm very impatient type
of guy, but I think I have a good sense
and judgment of when it's a big decision and how
you need to debate it to really hear out the
(26:57):
best ideas and also opposition to the idea. But at
the end of the day, somebody needs to make a
call again, do we go right or left? Sometime, as
you know, making no decision is actually terrible, and I
think it's a role of a leader to listen, but
then to weigh with his or her model of the
(27:20):
world the risk and be upside, and to decide I'm
going to take that swing on that.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
You talked about this unusual moment during the pandemic. But
how do you think about in ordinary terms your work
life balance your work life inaeggration.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yes, so I'd like to say internalie, I don't believe
in work life balance because my life is not balanced.
The word I use, which is close to your integration world,
is harmony. I'm trying to have harmony between my work
and my life, and this in my experience requires iterations,
(27:55):
a lot of dialogue at home for example. Or you know,
when I realized if I don't do sports, I don't
sleep well and I'm not as good a person at work.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
And at home.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Then one day I realized I had to get up
early to work out in the morning because if I
worked out at night, I couldn't sleep well. But the
change when you get up at four in the morning
is you have to do bed early, which makes you
a very, very boring partner. And so we talked about
it with my wife and we discussed and agree that
was the right thing to do. It was important for
me to try to be home for dinner with the
(28:33):
kids when they were homes so we'll go to work early.
So I had to go to work out even earlier.
And it's the type of things that I think you
need to figure out the world system so it can
be sustainable, because the key is not to have a
strategy that works for a while, it has to work
for years.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So digitalization something that's a hot button for you. What
are companies missing and why and how is it critical
to every business?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So at the end of the day, what we all
do in most companies is we use data to make decisions.
And so the quality of the data, having access to
data in real time across the enterprise is what I
believe differentiates people over time. Because what's interesting about business
(29:19):
and time is that nobody can buy time, so it's
a pretty nice equalizer. And the other piece is that
knowledge increase exponentially with time, but the exponential thinking that
we see in tech, that we see in investments in
the financial world, this is not intuitive to people, and
so I think digitalization is really important because that's the
(29:42):
best way to get high quality data to make the
right decision. It allows you to go fast, which again,
given nobody can buy time, if you can go faster
than other people, your competitors regularly well as time compounds
be way ahead of the time. It allows you to scale.
(30:04):
Scaling with paper is impossible. You get actually these economies
of scale. I believe it's all about digitalization, and of
course AI is just gonna accelerate that even further.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Let's jump back to modern what's coming up next for
you for medicine and help.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Our next big mountain, which I think is going to
be even more impactful and what we did for COVID
is cancer. We have some very interesting clinical data in
skin cancer miranoma showing that compared to the best drug
available today to patients, we have two out of three
people which three us after the surgery, are still this
(30:46):
is free. Metastas is free compared to the best drug
available today. I think we find a way to individualize spreetmat.
Whereas if you and I get diagnosed by the same
doctor on the same day of skin cancer, modern I
will make a different medicine for you and for me.
(31:07):
We can't do that in around thirty days now from
start to finish, and we really customize the drug to
the genetics of your cancer for your immune system to
be able to go literally eat your cancer. And so
I think, and I told our team when we got
the data and we shut the data publicly and internally,
(31:27):
it's all our team out of town or that five
to ten years from now, most people will have forgotten
what we did during the pandemic, because I believe we
will be known as one of the company that made
the biggest dent on cancer in the industry.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So time. We usually end each episode of Math and
Magic with shout outs to the grades on both sides
of business, the analytical side and the creative side. But
in your case, I want to give you the shout
out what you and your team did at such a
critical time for the entire world truly all history and
we all owe you a great debt of gratitude, and
(32:05):
although you think people will have forgotten it, I suspect
you'll be in the history books forever. Congratulations of building
such an impressive company, and thanks for sharing your insights
with us.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Thank you so much for a kind of world's bovement.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Here are a few things I picked up from my
conversation with Stefan. One, taking care of yourself is essential
to taking care.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Of your company.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
As CEO, you need to be in the right mental
space to leave. Stefan was put to the ultimate test
during the pandemic, working seven days a week for months
on end, and he had to figure out how to
sustain it, for instance, by making time early in the
morning for exercise. We're not all racing to fight life
threatening diseases, but Stefan's story is a case study in
(32:52):
bringing your best self to work.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
Two.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Never lose sight of the mission. Stefan has a crystal
clear sense of purpose that keeps him driven. Whatever your
big picture goal may be, let it keep you focused
and guide your decisions big and small. It's also a
great way to assess the trade off of risk and reward.
Three remain open to learning, listening to diverse opinions, staying
up to date with changing data, and serving in multifaceted
(33:19):
roles all ways of educating yourself about your company and
your industry at large. And that's always going to be
an asset. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks
to Sydney Rosenblum for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent,
which is no small feat. The Math and Magic team
is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser. Our executive producers are
Ali Perry and Nikki Etour. Until next time.
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
If you are in a situation where you have you know,
once in a century pandemic and the economy is locked down.
Peoples are dying by the thousands, even though the tens
of thousands around the world kids cannot go to school anymore.
He becomes a human decision to decide to throw by
the window your business strategy and to do what you
think is the right thing for the world, even though
(00:28):
if you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I am Bob Pittman. Welcome to this episode of Math
and Magic. Our guest today has literally changed the world,
proving that the impossible can be done, and he's a
model of the CEO as someone in service to society.
Is Stefan Thenselve, CEO of Majoernal. He grew up in
France and always knew what he wanted to be a CEO,
(00:53):
loved science and business, still does and is equally skilled
in both. Greatly influenced by the Jesuits and bring that
sense of service to business and his mission. Although it
was almost a decade after its founding, Maderna popped on
the scene as a savior during the pandemic, doing what
the experts thought to be impossible, getting a vaccine developed
and available within a year. And by the way, infectious
(01:16):
disease vaccines weren't even on his original company plans. He
loves to ski, boat and eat. Well. He's French after all,
and he is a fascinating and nice guy. Stefan welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I thank
you for this very kind description.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Oh we have more to come, but before we jump
into that, I want to do you in sixty seconds. Ready,
good cats are dogs dogs early riser or night out,
very earlier Riser Paris or Boston, Paris for fund bust.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Some of our work skiing or sailing. That's a tough one.
Skiing and winter sitting in the summer coffee or tea tea.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Strange guy and never drinks coffee, sleep or exercise, boof
cook or eat out, eat outs, call or text, text
podcast or video podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Oh that's the right answer. Okay, it's about to get harder.
All time favorite musical artist Teto Swift, first job picking asparagus.
Smartest person you know, Stephen Hoogan, the President of Madonna.
Childhood hero Steve Jobs. Favorite movie the gombre, the most
important piece of advice you've ever had.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Listen to everybody, and finally, do you have a secret
talent connecting the dots?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Okay, let's get started. Probably one of the most disruptive
events in the world in the last hundred years was
the pandemic, and in a strange way, it was the
coming out party for Maderna, and from it comes one
of the business world's most impressive case studies. You were
employee number two in the first CEO of Maderna in
twenty eleven. It was a startup built around the promise
(02:53):
of Messenger RNA mRNA that it would change medicine. I've
seen you quoted as saying it had only a ten
percent chance of working, but if it did, the world
would change, and by during it would be something new
in biotech. You'd be a platform, much like the operating
system and the traditional tech world, a platform with RNA
as your operating system and broad applications writing on it.
(03:17):
You took a pay cut, left a major CEO job
just for the promise of Messenger RNA. You were making
progress building a new company and suddenly COVID nineteen appears.
Can you take us through what you did and how
it changed all your plans.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Sure, I spent all my career working in fictious disease,
and so I always have an eye to new virus emerging,
new bacteria emerging. And so between Christmas and New Year
twenty nineteen, as I was reading the World Street Journal,
I heard about new cases of pneumonia like symptoms to
(03:56):
people in China, and so I'll reached out to be
an IH, asking he this new thing in China, what
is it. After a few days, we realized it was
a virus. It was not through and it was not
a coronavirus like SARS or MERS. There was a new
one and so when they got the sequence online around
mid January, we decided to go and make a vaccine
(04:19):
to test it in a clinic. And initially we thought
this was just an outbreak, but we still wanted to
go to the clinic because I wanted to know how
fast could we go if when they got forbid there
was going to be a pandemic. And I thought we
could get into a clinic in sixty days from the
day the sequence is available of a virus genome. Today
(04:42):
we could inject the first human which was a huge
change versus what happened during SARS. It took the NIH
twenty months to get from sequence to first human doors,
and so that's why I wanted to do it. And then,
of course though January of twenty twenty, as the cases accumulated,
(05:04):
and I woke up one day at four o'clock in
the morning in sweats saying, GESEZ is going to be
a pandemic like nineteen eighteen. And so when he was
a few weeks convincing my board, covincing my team that
we had to pivot the company and really put our
best started toward trying to work on this vaccine for
(05:24):
what I thought was going to be a pandemic.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So I understand though that one of the problems is
no one would finance the vaccine. That the only way
it got done was the US government stepped then and
actually financed this.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
You're correct, Moderana. I had never saw the product, We
had never commercialized the product, and so we had two
financial challenges as we pivoted to running after this virus.
One was how do you set up quickly very large
It ended up being thirty thousand people tested in the
(05:59):
face free clinical trial and this was, as you said,
funded by the US government, which backed up five companies,
which I think was one of the most brilliant strategy
I've seen in terms of getting things done for the
country and the world. But the other piece that the
government did not back up, that we still had to
(06:22):
do at incredible risk was to scale manufacturing. Because, as
you can understand, if we only finance the clinical study
and the vaccine works and we have no vaccine to
provide people, that would be a human tragedy. And so
we had to scale up manufacturing, not for ten million dozes,
but for a billion doze, And so we couldn't find
(06:46):
any foundation to help us. And so what we ended
up doing in May of twenty twenty is raised equity
on NASDAK as soon as we published positive phase and data,
and we raised one point three billion dollar and one
hundred percent of that capital was dedicated to scale up manufacturing.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
I mean, it sounds pretty tough. How hard was it
to pivot from not only were you going to do
this product, but you had really been set up and
built to be a platform and suddenly you're going into
the product business.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yes, if you go back and even you read the
public filing. When we went public in December twenty eighteen,
the S one we described a company that, as you said,
is a platform company to manage a money technology risk
and to manage barrows your risk, which is disease risk
which exists in the industry. We actually build a portfolio
(07:40):
of drugs. We had I think sixteen drug by the
time we went to public, and that portfolio of drugs
was to allow us to manage the unknown about where
was the money going to work or was it not
going to work? What this is was going to work for?
What is it was not going to work for? At
the time, no product ever approved using amount technology. And so,
(08:05):
as you can imagine, in January twenty twenty, when we
decide to pause or to slow down this portfolio approach
of those sixteen drugs, to literally bet the company on
one drug, that was a very complicated and heavy business decision.
We believed we had the technology that could work for vaccines.
(08:27):
We had done nine vaccine in human trials before the
pandemic hit. We had done quite a lot of work
on CHRONA viruses, cears, and mers. So we believed our
vaccine was going to work. And if you are in
a situation where you have in a once in a
century pandemic and the economy is locked down. Peoples are
dying by the thousands, if not the tens of thousands
(08:49):
around the world. Kids cannot go to school anymore. It
becomes a human decision to decide to throw by the
window your business strategy and to do what you think
is the right thing for the world, even though if
you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
So speaking of killing the company and just then reading
about that time, there were a lot of seasoned veterans
who were saying you were irresponsible to even claim you
could deliver a vaccine inside a year, which must have
put another level of pressure on you to realize that
you were pivoting the company. Yeah, there was hardly universal
(09:29):
views from outside that this was the right move.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I mean, if you had told me even in the
spring of twenty twenty that large companies like Sanofi was
going to have massive technical setback, that the products from
Astraseneka and Johnson and Johnson, while they were going to
get approved, they would end up having some safety concerns that.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
Will led them to not being really used.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And this was going to be Moderna and Pfizer left
to really help fight this horrible pandem. I will hearely
not have believed you. And as you said, a lot
of people from those large companies, we're saying on TV
that I was irresponsible to even give a hope that
we could have vaccined by the end of the year.
(10:13):
That was actually a very hard time.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
So let's talk about personal dimension for you as CEO
of the company, as a human being, the way that
the world was suddenly on your shoulders. How did you
cope with that stress? What did it do to you?
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So it's interesting my wife would tell you this is
actually the type of moment when it's really hard but
also very clear of what has to be done, that
I'm at my best and I don't know why. I'm
able to abstract the outside noise and just to focus
on the work to be done. It was not the
time to think about do we go right or do
(10:45):
we go left. There's an enemy, it's the virus. Every day,
every hour matters because people are dying, and so it
just allowed me to be laser focused on the job
a task. The biggest challenge I think was more a
mental and physical challenge because we were working seven days
a week, which I'd never done before. I worked hard before,
(11:07):
but we were working full day Saturday's, full day Sundays
for a year, and so I remember starting to be
pretty exhausted, you know, by end of February, early in March,
and having a discussion with Steven, who is my partner
at the president of the company, and I'm like, hey,
how do we sustain this? Because he's a doctor, I'm not.
And it's like, you know, make sure you go to
(11:27):
bed at a reasonable time, do spot every day, eat healthy.
He knows I like wine, don't drink any wine. So
it was really about this discipline. And I remember because
at the time, you know, we were working from home,
you know, in the spring of twenty and twenty and
I remember dropping, you know, so tired in my bed
at night, getting up early in the morning, going for
a run too fresh up my mind and get some
(11:49):
oxygen and then go back into it. And this was
this thing where sometimes the teams were even joking, you know,
get on a zoom call at seven am and somebody
would make the but became the more like shock what
they is it today?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
Because we had no.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Idea, but it was an amazing time because the teams
internally went so beyond what is expected of them because
for everybody was very personal and everybody had family members dying.
Everybody was worry about their parents or all the family members,
the kids not going to school. So it was a
(12:24):
really incredible teamwork across not only the company, but companies
are being us and the government. That really makes me
really proud about what was achieved by this very large team.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Well, you know what is so impressive to me. You
know we talked on this show about leadership and management,
is that you were able to get your company to
rally around the course, you were able to sync that
up with the government that regulates you, in this case,
funding you as well. Did you do something special in
(12:57):
your leadership? Did you just think this is how I'm
going to get everybody rally around it. Was there some
special sauce you used there?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So a few think I think being very clear on
the goals because if you think about it and you
oversimplify it. I became a project manager for this very
big project which was getting a vaccin out, So being
very clear on what are the objectives, what a goal,
what other priorities? Communicating with people in real time. So
(13:25):
we spend a lot of time making sure that our
counterparties in the governments knew what we were doing, that
they were aligning what we were doing, communicating a lot
to industrial partners, suppliers making raw materials and so on,
because for everybody it was a kind of crazy experimental
experience in a sense. I mean, just imagine the face
(13:45):
of my supplier or CEO when I call them and
I say, hey, I need ten thousand times more product
than last year. Had an interesting conversay exactly, And so
I think it was a lot of communication and also
adapting the plan of pivoting on data, pivoting on challenges,
asking for help, being very transparent, and making sure everybody
(14:08):
in the ecosystem around all vaccine was always aware what
was going well, what was not going well, what did
we need help. I was never shy to ask for
help because the only objective was to get a safe,
effective vaccine out of the door.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
There was no overgold.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So I want to come back to moderna and some
of the lessons you've learned there, But first I want
to go back in time with you. You were born in
Marseille in France in the early seventies. You were a
child of the seventies and eighties. Can you paint a
picture of how you grew up and paint a picture
of those times.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
So I was very lucky in many ways.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I was born in Sappo, France, which for all of
you that have not been, is a beautiful part of
the world with a lot of history in a Marseille
was a Greek part as it's a very very old city.
Speaker 5 (14:56):
It's a very multicultural cities.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
You have people from all over the Mediterranean, people from
North Africa, from a Middle East, which is super cool
to grow up with friends from everywhere. I was, you know,
in a middle class family, but because you know in France,
school is split by the state through taxes, I had
access to good school. The quality of life was nice
(15:19):
because you'll go sailing. You always find a friend who
had access to a boat somewhere, even if it's a
small boat.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
You'll be able to go skiing. Even with school. A
great quality of life.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I was raised by the Jesuit, as you said in
your intro, which I only realized much later in life,
was a blessing because this sense of serving was just
put into my head and my heart since I was
a kid, and I didn't even feel it because he
was normal. You know, when you're a kid, you don't
think about things too much. You go with a movement,
you know, when you are in the school I was
(15:53):
at and on a Wednesday afternoon when you don't have class,
instead of going to do spot over things, you know,
let's tell you go you know, build a shelter of
your less or let's go help somebody. You just say
yes because everybody else is doing it with you. Hi,
the supernice childhood. It was non eventful, but I think
that quietness in my life helped build strength and foundations
(16:15):
for half the times.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
In addition to the jazzu, which it looks like. Another
great influence on you was an otel you had who
was a successful business person in tech companies in the US.
Was that influence?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yes, So I've been super lucky. My mom's brother moved
to the US, was in the tech world b to be.
But it was interesting because I would meet him like
once a year in the summer, and I had somebody
to talk about business and technology and yet a lot
of influence on my life.
Speaker 5 (16:45):
I'll be asking him questions.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
You're like a kid asking a mental questions, and you
will be like, should I learn German or Spanish in school?
Because he was composor in France to the third language,
And you will answer me in this very brilliant style,
this is a wrong in your generation. You should learn
to speak Chinese or Japanese. Then that's altitude long Japanese.
(17:06):
And that allowed me to end up working in Japan
and as a twenty four year old, which was of
course an amazing experience. But I think having access to
somebody that was from a business world to allow me
to pick direction and to see her around the corner
and to do the right things when I had time
when I was younger, I think it was a big gift.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
More on math and magic right after this quick break.
Welcome back to math and magic. Let's hear more from
my conversation with Sefon gun Sell. You were great at
math and science. You had an early interesting computers. Clearly
you were on a track to do something in technology.
(17:51):
But talk a little bit about your education and why
you value a liberal arts education.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
As you asked me my secret power, of my secret gifts,
I think you might be connecting.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
I think that things are connected.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
History plays a great role, as you know, for us
to understand today's world. But so where the world might
be going. Psychology plays a huge role in leading teams.
You know, of course science and biology. I like to
learn from different fields and had to basically build a
metal model or how the world works, and those different
(18:23):
experiences and those different educations I think make the metal
model that somebody can have more precise about the world.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
You've later got a master's and engineering in Paris and
another in Minnesota. What brought you to America for your
second masters?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So I always wanted to find a way to learn
in America, and I was lucky because the school I
was at in Paris gave you the opportunity to do
your last year outside France. But it was a very
simple system, which is you can apply anywhere you want
as long as it's one of the top three program
in the discipline what you apply. And so Minnesota has
(19:03):
an amazing chemical engineering program in grad school, which was
great for me to discover America through being in Minneapolis.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Had to be a lot of fun. In January that
was called and here's what's interesting about your story? Thought,
We've got this whole history of engineering, math, science and
then your first tech company job was in sales and marketing.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Why.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I think it's the contrariance in me. I wanted to
keep learning. As I think you mentioned the new introw Bob,
I always wanted to be CEO. I don't have a
big ego, so I would have been happy car Wis
being a se of a ten people company. I just
wanted to be in the general management role of connecting
the dots and so being tan as an engineer, I
(19:50):
thought it made sense for me to don't know about business,
and because sales you are close to the customers.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
I thought you was good.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I did to do and that's what I did and
have a counterexamp. Part of me being a contrariant is
after I left the business school instead of going to
a small company, because I graduated in spring of two thousand,
when of course we had that Pickle dot Com. Instead
of going to tech, I ended up going into a
large farmer company called Ili Lily, and I asked them
(20:18):
to go work in manufacturing over places, which even the
Lily recruiting team thought was a weird idea for our business.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Could grad you went through that, you got your MBA
harder NBA. By the way, did worked with Ili Lily
and somehow you wound up as a very young CEO
a Beyo Mario, which was a major company at the time.
Tell me a little bit about how this young, brand
new CEO figured out how to do it.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It was interesting because when I got the role, as
you said, I I was young. I think I was
just thirty three, and so I was a bit panicked,
and so I obsessed about getting the best team I
could around me. So I literally the job and spend
the first two months on an airplane going around the
world to meet all as many people as I could,
(21:07):
asking everybody the same question if you're a CEO, the
three things you will change, and so I got very
constant feedback. I think it's another big lest soon for me,
which is ask people. Most humans beings will tell you
what they think. And I got very constant feedback. But
the strength of a company, the issues. I got a
good sense of who I wanted to keep on the
(21:27):
executive team, who I should not keep on exective team,
And so I always obsessed about getting the right team
around me because I had no chance to be successful
in that neural As a first time you're on CEO,
if I have already a great team around me, and
so that's what I focused.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
On, you know, and sort of reading about you and
studying you a little bit. In addition to listening hard,
there's thingmably two other things that you really focus on,
which is focus and scale. How did those three things
come together? And I hope my analysis is correct? Why
are they so important?
Speaker 5 (22:02):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:03):
The focus, I believe is the only way you get
things done that are complicated and important. I think most
people get distracted by trying to do too many things
or too many things not good enough to have an impact.
The listening piece is about getting the data. I'm an engineer.
I believe in data.
Speaker 5 (22:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
One of our motel at MODERNA is we period fearlessly
on new data. Sometimes you shock people. I'm able to
say we need to turn right and change our plan.
If it's telling you you need to change your plan,
then every hour you wait not changing the plan is
and now you're wasting That could hurt somebody given the
business line I mean, And so listening for me is
(22:46):
key to get the right data. The focus is key
to implement and execute on big important projects or task
and the skill is about impact, which is the great
thing about what we do making medicine is if we're
right and if we do our jobs well, by focusing
(23:08):
on the right things, we can help a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
How do you think about risk? How do you size them?
And how do you decide which ones to take?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
So risk, in my opinion, has to be balanced with
upside or opportunity, which is taking a big risk for
something that's not going to change the world is foolish,
if not madness. A good example how I think about
risk is the decision to go to Moderna, to resign
(23:40):
from the CEO of your Maria to become employe number
two of this startup, which is just an idea with
no money. I think we're two million dollars to start with,
which is not a lot in biotech. And all my
friends tell me, don't do it. All my friends that
I talked to tell me don't do it. The risk
was very large. But for me, the obside was this technology.
(24:01):
If we could find a path to make safe, it
was going to change medicine forever, and so it was
going to change humanity forever. And the metal mode that
I had, I could take almost any risk because the
obside was so important for humanity, because the true inside
is I was going to potentially build a company that
would go bankrupt, But what is the risk of that
(24:23):
we just use the risk of not bringing to the
world the technology would save.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
A lot of our lives.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
You've talked a lot about teams, and clearly that's part
of your go to strategy. Any secrets about building a
good team and how to use them.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yes, so team is my number one go to think.
The most important things I learned about business school. It's
not about finance or other technical things which I learned
and I've forgotten a lot of it. It's about the
power of having smart people with as much of a
diggers background as you can, especially us from your way
(25:01):
of thinking, because you need to understand where the blind
spots are. We all have blind spots. I'm biased. I
believe everybody is biased, and we are the fruit of
our own life, of own experience. And so what I
really was impressed when I was in business school is
sometimes that will really a business case work on it.
(25:24):
I thought I would have cracked the case and I've
got to class the next day, and a lawyer or
a doctor or somebody from a part of the world
I don't know where come with a totally different analysis
and what I had and there is stronger. And so
I've seen time this time and time again, and this
has really helped me to think about how do you
(25:48):
build a team that, in my business is very mission driven,
because you can do great things if people are driven
about the career or about themselves. It has to be
about what we're trying to achieve, and that those people
have different skills and different insights or way to think
(26:10):
about the world. And you're also together you can get
a better sense for the facts so that you can
have a better chance to define the right problem to
work on.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
So if you deal with your teams, you know something
that comes up when you have different people, different points
of view is the scent. What place does it have
in your management philosophy.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
I think it's key going back to the world listen.
I think it's kids to listen.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
But at the end of the day, somebody has to
make a decision, and so I think the heart of
the decision, the more it's debated, the more you need
to give time to a decision. I'm very impatient type
of guy, but I think I have a good sense
and judgment of when it's a big decision and how
you need to debate it to really hear out the
(26:57):
best ideas and also opposition to the idea. But at
the end of the day, somebody needs to make a
call again, do we go right or left? Sometime, as
you know, making no decision is actually terrible, and I
think it's a role of a leader to listen, but
then to weigh with his or her model of the
(27:20):
world the risk and be upside, and to decide I'm
going to take that swing on that.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
You talked about this unusual moment during the pandemic. But
how do you think about in ordinary terms your work
life balance your work life inaeggration.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yes, so I'd like to say internalie, I don't believe
in work life balance because my life is not balanced.
The word I use, which is close to your integration world,
is harmony. I'm trying to have harmony between my work
and my life, and this in my experience requires iterations,
(27:55):
a lot of dialogue at home for example. Or you know,
when I realized if I don't do sports, I don't
sleep well and I'm not as good a person at work.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
And at home.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Then one day I realized I had to get up
early to work out in the morning because if I
worked out at night, I couldn't sleep well. But the
change when you get up at four in the morning
is you have to do bed early, which makes you
a very, very boring partner. And so we talked about
it with my wife and we discussed and agree that
was the right thing to do. It was important for
me to try to be home for dinner with the
(28:33):
kids when they were homes so we'll go to work early.
So I had to go to work out even earlier.
And it's the type of things that I think you
need to figure out the world system so it can
be sustainable, because the key is not to have a
strategy that works for a while, it has to work
for years.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So digitalization something that's a hot button for you. What
are companies missing and why and how is it critical
to every business?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So at the end of the day, what we all
do in most companies is we use data to make decisions.
And so the quality of the data, having access to
data in real time across the enterprise is what I
believe differentiates people over time. Because what's interesting about business
(29:19):
and time is that nobody can buy time, so it's
a pretty nice equalizer. And the other piece is that
knowledge increase exponentially with time, but the exponential thinking that
we see in tech, that we see in investments in
the financial world, this is not intuitive to people, and
so I think digitalization is really important because that's the
(29:42):
best way to get high quality data to make the
right decision. It allows you to go fast, which again,
given nobody can buy time, if you can go faster
than other people, your competitors regularly well as time compounds
be way ahead of the time. It allows you to scale.
(30:04):
Scaling with paper is impossible. You get actually these economies
of scale. I believe it's all about digitalization, and of
course AI is just gonna accelerate that even further.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
Let's jump back to modern what's coming up next for
you for medicine and help.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Our next big mountain, which I think is going to
be even more impactful and what we did for COVID
is cancer. We have some very interesting clinical data in
skin cancer miranoma showing that compared to the best drug
available today to patients, we have two out of three
people which three us after the surgery, are still this
(30:46):
is free. Metastas is free compared to the best drug
available today. I think we find a way to individualize spreetmat.
Whereas if you and I get diagnosed by the same
doctor on the same day of skin cancer, modern I
will make a different medicine for you and for me.
(31:07):
We can't do that in around thirty days now from
start to finish, and we really customize the drug to
the genetics of your cancer for your immune system to
be able to go literally eat your cancer. And so
I think, and I told our team when we got
the data and we shut the data publicly and internally,
(31:27):
it's all our team out of town or that five
to ten years from now, most people will have forgotten
what we did during the pandemic, because I believe we
will be known as one of the company that made
the biggest dent on cancer in the industry.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So time. We usually end each episode of Math and
Magic with shout outs to the grades on both sides
of business, the analytical side and the creative side. But
in your case, I want to give you the shout
out what you and your team did at such a
critical time for the entire world truly all history and
we all owe you a great debt of gratitude, and
(32:05):
although you think people will have forgotten it, I suspect
you'll be in the history books forever. Congratulations of building
such an impressive company, and thanks for sharing your insights
with us.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Thank you so much for a kind of world's bovement.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Here are a few things I picked up from my
conversation with Stefan. One, taking care of yourself is essential
to taking care.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Of your company.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
As CEO, you need to be in the right mental
space to leave. Stefan was put to the ultimate test
during the pandemic, working seven days a week for months
on end, and he had to figure out how to
sustain it, for instance, by making time early in the
morning for exercise. We're not all racing to fight life
threatening diseases, but Stefan's story is a case study in
(32:52):
bringing your best self to work.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
Two.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Never lose sight of the mission. Stefan has a crystal
clear sense of purpose that keeps him driven. Whatever your
big picture goal may be, let it keep you focused
and guide your decisions big and small. It's also a
great way to assess the trade off of risk and reward.
Three remain open to learning, listening to diverse opinions, staying
up to date with changing data, and serving in multifaceted
(33:19):
roles all ways of educating yourself about your company and
your industry at large. And that's always going to be
an asset. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks
to Sydney Rosenblum for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent,
which is no small feat. The Math and Magic team
is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser. Our executive producers are
Ali Perry and Nikki Etour. Until next time.
Host
Bob Pittman
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