Episode 1 - Tim Brownstone, Founder & CEO at KYMIRA

Stephen: 0:01

Welcome to season one of stethoscopes and rugby balls. The podcast series for med tech and sports tech innovators and entrepreneurs in which we hear from founders, leaders, investors and advisors who have been there, done it, and got the t-shirt. Learn from their stories, including their successes and failures and hear their top tips for those starting out on their entrepreneurial journey. I'm your host, Stephen Carter of The Intellectual Property Works, putting IP at the heart of your business. If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more from other guests, make sure you follow us and visit our website at stethoscopesandrugbyballs.uk. Well, hello and welcome. It's a great pleasure to have with me today, Tim Brownstone, who is founder and CEO of Kymira. Welcome, Tim. Good to see you. How are you today?

Tim: 0:52

Yeah, very well. Thank you.

Stephen: 0:53

Excellent. Well hopefully over the next 30 minutes or so what we want to do is delve into the Kymira story as it were, and hear how you got to where you are today. But for the benefit of the listeners, let's start maybe with a brief introduction, if you could tell the listeners a bit about kind of who you are, what your background is and what Kymira is as a business today, that'd be great.

Tim: 1:16

Sure. So I'm a biochemist by background and I kind of fell into entrepreneurship and business life almost by accident as a means to get a technology that I've been working on throughout my academic career, into market and into the hands of people, who it's really going to help. Then since that, Kymira as a business has really moved from originally that kind of motivation to get the one product out there and technology through, but actually into a broader smart textiles business where we're now innovating across a multiple broad portfolio of technologies and helping people all over the world.

Stephen: 1:57

Excellent. And clearly you have, so you have the kind of, the sport tech focus is one of the focusses of the business, but it's now quite a bit broader than that. I understand.

Tim: 2:06

Yeah. So the goal has always been, and from day one through to now a medical destination for any products or technologies that we're working on, but how we sort of get there is maybe slightly different to what people would traditionally see. And so the business was when I first set it up, it was largely set up with a question, could I use a non or lesser regulated market to validate, commercialize the technology and then reinvest any revenues into ongoing medical research. And that was exactly what we did with that first technology and it's what we've been repeating since with the new ones that we've developed and released. And so our two mainstay markets now are the sports market as you identified. And then the medical markets we service through, two brands Kymira Medical and Kymira Sport. And then kind of more in the background, we've also done things like a European space agency contract, we've sold into sort of defense and special forces. So there's quite interesting applications where the technology can go, but the mainstays for us are very much our sports brand and our medical applications.

Stephen: 3:21

Yeah. And I guess you have to have some kind of focus, otherwise you become too distracted by other things, but that's a really interesting model though, you know, which I guess, you know, a lot of smaller businesses could potentially learn from that rather than, you know, running head on into that very regulated medical market and find another space where you can kind of generate your revenue.

Tim: 3:43

Yeah. For me, it was very much a case of I didn't have the cash and I didn't really back myself in terms of being able to persuade someone to give me, you know, maybe five years worth of funding before I was ever gonna turn the sale. And so for me that, you know, certainly starting out that traditional model of medical innovation was a bit broken because you were entirely reliant on external funding sources to move forwards, and it was almost kind of out of necessity due to my maybe lack of understanding and actual business experience at the time of starting the business that I needed to be making money from day one. And I'll be honest and say the first three years of Kymira's sort of life, if I was to do things again, but retaining what I know now I could probably achieve in the first three months because, you know, things will be a lot more accelerated and more coordinated with the knowledge that I've got after having run the business for eight years versus, you know, never run a business prior to that. But ultimately, you know, that path of being customer funded for the first three or three and a half years, we took a little bit of friends and family funding thereafter, and then we didn't really raise anything at all significant beyond the friends and family until we got into about being about five years old. And so our sort of funding journey is very different to what a lot of my friends have done with their with their businesses.

Stephen: 5:23

Yeah- different but clearly successful. So maybe lessons to be learned there. I guess we mustn't forget as well. I mean, I think I first met you seven or eight years ago and you were a reasonably fresh graduate at that point, if m y r ecollection s erves me right and I mean, you've got to have the courage to start a business fresh out of university like that with not much more than a great idea. You know, that does take some courage

Tim: 5:55

To be honest, people say that, but to be quite Frank, I've got far more respect for, you know, people such as yourself who start a business when, you know, you have family and mortgage and et cetera, et cetera, the reality was for me at the time I had a horse whom I was reliant, but beyond that there wasn't anything that if it all went horribly wrong, then it wasn't really the end of the world because I hadn't really got any assets or anything that I was supporting. So I'm not saying there wasn't anything brave about it or whatever, but I actually have a lot more respect for people that, in my mind, have a lot more to lose when setting up, making a change in setting up their own business versus me as a fresh grad, you know, the reality was I didn't really have much to lose in the first place.

Stephen: 6:49

Interesting- maybe it's easier to be brave in those circumstances perhaps, but still brave in my eyes. So, going back to those k ind of early days. What were the biggest challenges that you faced, would you say, in kind of getting the business off the ground?

Tim: 7:05

So I say from day one, it was, it was all lack of experience. Lack of knowledge was probably the biggest thing. I was always very, and s till am very much a proponent of don't know everything, so surround myself with advisors and mentors and people whom did have experiences to share. But of course with that diversity of experience, you then have to learn quite quickly to filter because sometimes you have t wo trusted individuals advising completely polar suggestions, and you have to kind of learn to filter that advice and then apply it in terms of, you know, ultimately what feels right, y ou know i n the gut a lot of the time. And then, you know, as we've progressed as a business, I'd always been a proponent of, kind of teach me to fish rather than give me a fish, i.e. if you can introduce me to a client or you can teach me a new sales technique that might win n ew business, I would rather that than just being given a chunk of cash. But there does become sort of a bit of a pivotal moment where resource requirements do start to mount up. And so I'd say over the lifetime of the company and over the last eight years, we've definitely seen what the number one kind of barrier has been to changing over that time.

Stephen: 8:34

Okay, interesting. And you touched on people there, which seems to be a theme that's coming out in these discussions I'm having and surrounding yourself with the right people and the right team. I guess that must present its own challenges. And because as you just identified, the type of people you need around you and the people you need in your team evolves along with the evolution of the business. So what's been your approach to, you know, finding the right advisors, finding the right team members?

Tim: 9:10

I think the word you used there in terms of that it evolves is very, very poignant and something that certainly I don't think I'd grasped before I started building a team, and this applies for advisors as much as it does for employees, colleagues, but the business needs do evolve. They do change. And sometimes what an advisor or what an employee can give doesn't evolve at the same rate and the business outpaces that individual or vice versa, the needs of the employee might change. So in terms of finding people on the advisory side, to be honest, it's always been quite organic. We've met at particular events, whether that'd be networking or whether it just be sort of happenstance that something happens. And on the employee side, obviously we advertise, but we've been eight years through the business and really we've only just started using recruiters to broaden our search because we've been very fortunate that what we're doing is a cutting edge. From a research standpoint, it's been exciting and impactful from a actual what difference we're going to make with the products. And it's something different. So fortunately for us, we haven't ever really suffered from a shortage of people interested to work at Kymira. As that team has grown, of course, the responsibility shifts from it being me being the person that's hiring everyone into now, my team of leaders, they are hiring and building teams out around them. And, you know, I'm very open with them that one of the things that for me, defines a good leader is the ability to build a high quality team around them. And I always want them to hire someone that's better than them. Doesn't mean that they are going to lose their job to this individual but it means that as the team grows, the hires become more and more specialized and better and better at that particular area that they're working in. And that means that the quality of our team always goes up. And the second that I see someone, you know, with egos coming in or something is there and they're hiring almost defensively because they don't want that person to be better than them. You know, that that's the moment, that's a red flag for me to pull that person aside and say, you know, I think we need to have a chat about whatever this hire is we're making. It's not happened, so, you know, I'm very pleased that the team that we now have at sort of leadership level within the business, the they're all hiring with that sort of mantra in mind. But that's really key is that we should always be hiring up never level or down.

Stephen: 12:19

Yeah, that's a really good ethos I think. And you mentioned there sort of the transition between you making these decisions, and then you now having a team around you that are making the decisions, how did you find that transition having to kind of, I guess, let go of the reins to a degree.

Tim: 12:36

I don't know whether the team might give you a different answer, but I think I've taken to it quite well. And I think part of that has just come from, if I've done, certainly one thing wrong over the past eight years is I think I've had a tendency to hire too late rather than too soon in most cases, because I've had that quite common entrepreneurial opinion of, I don't get paid any extra for me to work until 2:00 AM. And therefore it doesn't cost the business anymore for me to just keep doing this task for an extra six months or something. And actually now that we have been hiring fairly aggressively, so during 2020, we doubled the size of the team from just over 10 people to about 20 at the end of it. And we're now hiring another five plus roles, and then there'll be another five roles thereafter, and actually seeing the difference that it's making with that rapid upskilling and increase of capacity within the team, because caveating, you know, I was happy that I put in the hours, but I wasn't happy that everyone else should be working those hours. It's sort of driving home the reality that, you know, probably should have hired a few people that we now have on the team maybe a couple of years earlier. But to answer your question, I almost was giving up responsibility out of necessity because I just couldn't keep, you know, I was maxed out and there just weren't enough hours in the day, so I was hand things off. But at the same time, I believe that because, you know, I'm hiring people better than me. Why hire them, if I'm just going to tell them what they have to do, and all they're doing is delivering a mandate that I'm setting, so our leadership meetings are very much a, you know, it's the team of us contributing ideas and it doesn't mean I'm not going to speak out if I think something's wrong or if I don't understand, or if it wasn't explaining. And I think in the last eight years, maybe I've kind of used a CEO veto once, maybe twice. But y ou k now, I really try and put my money where my mouth is and say, you know, you are better than me. So I've g ot head of marketing, for example, S arah, you're far better a t marketing and creative than I am so, you know, I will trust you and unless I really feel that something's wrong, then, you know, at very least we will go with your way, your idea, whatever, and we'll put it to the test and I would rather be proven wrong than being proven right is the reality.

Stephen: 15:39

Yeah. I think it's a healthy way to run a team.

Tim: 15:43

I would say one thing, which I don't know if it's the same for kind of all entrepreneurs or founders, but I think one thing that does still sort of separate me in it, it's less right now, partly I think, because I'm not as close to each, every single employee as I maybe was three, four years ago, but also just because we're more liquid as a business, I guess, is that the burden of responsibility for the team in terms of, you know, making sure that their salaries are all paid and that, you know, that their livelihoods depend on Kymira success. I think t hat that's probably one thing that founders will always kind of carry on their shoulders and in the instance when you're a sole founder, it sort of sits squarely on one set of shoulders as opposed to, you know, maybe two or three. So that, that is definitely one thing that growing the team sort of, y ou k now, if I was a different person that didn't care so much, maybe, y ou k now, may not be so effective t hat, u h, certainly times l ike the s taff, the pandemic, that was a very heavyweight that was felt.

Stephen: 16:57

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. So I guess, growing the team it relieves the pressure in some ways, but you've got that building pressure in terms of the responsibility you feel for the bigger team.

Tim: 17:09

Well, definitely as we grow as a business, it feels more of a business, and so it's almost whether it's just me, me evolving as a, as a leader or whether it's just the fact that as a, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not making all those hirers so I'm not quite as close to maybe some of the three, four levels down the hierarchy, perhaps. But you know, ultimately I want to make sure that we do right by all of our employees, as I do our investors and our customers. And you know, without the team, we are nothing. And so they are always kind of, I will say it's my one thing I will always make time for is if there's an issue and someone needs to talk to me, then they let me know and I will move heaven and earth, so to speak, i.e move my calendar around to free up some time to sit down with them and hear out what, whatever it is that they need to speak about. And I, I very much intend that that will be the same thing going forward as it has been over the last eight years.

Stephen: 18:18

One of the things you mentioned in that sort of last bit of discussion was how as a sole founder, you kind of got that responsibility is all on your shoulders. If you looking back, if you could go around the boy again and with the hindsight you now have, would you have sought out someone else to be a co-founder do you think, or is that just not the way that the journey would ever work for you

Tim: 18:49

Since Phil our CTO joined too, of course, you know, as well, which was in, unofficially, 2015, I think officially he started 2016, since Phil came on, he and I very much kind of worked almost as co-founders, and on the t echnicals of l ab side of the business Phil very much has been the epitome of the leader that I've been speaking to building out a f antastic a ll star team, continuing to inspire, and motivate and do a great job. And so the reality is if I was to do it all again, I would probably just try and link up with Phil earlier than I did. And you know, invite him to be a co-founder, you know, and he jokes that he's happy not to have the ultimate burden of responsibility that, you know, that I have, et cetera. But, you know, I would look for that because to be totally honest, especially in the earlier days, when there wasn't anyone else sort of at that equivalent level, it can be a very, very lonely time. And P hil f or t he, for the listeners who don't know Phil's b ack s tory, he and his previous business partner used to be across the corridor from me at the student incubator at University of Reading. And sometimes I would look on them as you know, with e nvy when, because when Phil was down, his partner Rich would be up and, you know, Rich would keep things moving forward. And then when Rich was down a nd Phil would be there in the office w orking the late nights to keep things driving f orward, and I'd sort of sit there sort of thinking, oh, I don't have a Phil or a Rich and t hat I just have to keep going on my own. It was, you know, it was an incredibly, incredibly lonely time.

Stephen: 20:44

Yeah, I understand that. So, as you know, I'm an IP expert. I don't feel I ought to let the whole 30 minutes go by without bringing up the topic if that's alright with you, so I guess without spilling any of your trade secrets, because honestly, I wouldn't advise that, can you give us kind of an overview of what your approach over the eight years has been to the IP side of things? So kind of recognizing what the IP is and how you've gone about protecting it. And the extent to which I guess you see it as an integral part of the journey.

Tim: 21:26

So I think probably one of the good lessons to share is probably on the first one that you shared with me, which is ultimately, if you can't afford to protect your IP, there's not much point in having it in the first place. So I've always kind of held that quite close to our heart. So we protect key enabling areas when it comes to patents at least that are going to give us freedom to operate, or they are a core technology that's fundamental to our solution. When it comes to sort of broader sets of IP trademarks, again it's key areas. So business name, key brand names with technologies that we've sought to protect and then, you know, being quite forward looking as far as we could be in terms of regions that we're looking to protect in, so that we're not just protecting in areas where we are looking to sell, but we're also considering where might we be looking to manufacture in the future. But also trying to also be quite cognizant that what we want to deliver as products, we want to be the best in market. And sometimes that may be that we are licensing or aggregating technologies that are part ours and maybe bringing in someone else's. And so we've also been very open across the businesses, sort of lifespan as it were to working with others, to make sure that our products are the best that they can be and that's the origin, although the business's name Kymira is a hybrid of technologies in our case, some of which, most of which, may be ours, others may be from partners that we work with.

Stephen: 23:21

Yes. I guess, not being selfish, focusing on that and we want to be the best and if being the best means, and often will do, I guess, partnering with other experts in related fields then that's the best way forward.

Tim: 23:35

Yeah. And, you know, so I can say as of today we have, four trademarks, a load more trade secrets, which are chemical formulations, algorithms, etc, and then, currently three UK patents and 4 international filings, which, a nd all of them are falling into those areas, which as I say, are either very core things to our specific solution or they're key enabling patents that are giving us a freedom to operate within a certain area like a production technique.

Stephen: 24:13

Yeah. And I think it's a sensible strategy, as you say good advice early on. But now I think it's right, because you see too many small businesses who just, I guess not fritter away, that's the wrong word, but, you know, spend a lot of money on seeking patent protection in particular, at the expense of spending that money on things that actually would move the business forward quicker, and make it more successful.

Tim: 24:40

I mean, it, it should probably also be noted, not that we've ever had a case to do it, but, you know, I've seen friends businesses where they have found that there is a infringement on one or multiple of their patents, and then they have gone to market and actually raised funds specifically to take legal proceedings to protect their IP. Which of course is an option that kind of makes it easier to afford to protect, going back to that first bit of advice. But the reality is that all of those businesses have been established mature scale-ups, none of them have been companies that haven't ever sold a product, and therefore they are an attractive investment irrespective of the IP, you know, pursuit that they're looking to go after. So it pains me a little bit when you watch shows like Dragon's den and you, you see someone who's spoken to putting their life savings into patenting o r products or technology that none of the investors are at all interested in getting behind. And you kind of w ish that they'd gone to market and actually had tested the fact that t heir, you know, their, their solution was going to sell before investing everything they had into i ts development. And it's protection.

Stephen: 26:05

Yeah. Which is another, it's another common theme, I guess they were here is that it's this kind of theme of you need to test the market. You need to be delivering something that the market actually wants, or at least once they see it, they really want it, and then too many businesses fail for that. And you mentioned litigation funding there, which is an interesting topic in itself, not one we'll delve into, but the other one just to throw in there is insurance as well. So you can insure your business against having to enforce its IP rights. But you know, I think you still need to be making sense of what decisions about what to protect and when to protect it. And it was pleasing to hear you mention trade secrets because that's kind of often I think, overlooked or misunderstood area of IP law. So, yeah, sort of following on a little bit from that. I mean, you've had, as you've mentioned kind of an interesting funding journey, taking that decision to basically build something quickly that generated commercial revenue that you could use to then fund some of the growth of the business. But you're at a stage now where you have been seeking external funding. Thinking about the discussions you've had with potential investors in that context, what have been the key things they've been looking for in your business? And I'm thinking here, I think sort of headlines, headline topics that o ur listeners can learn from in terms of, y ou k now, what is it that investors are looking for in a business that they're going to put some money into?

Tim: 27:38

So, I mean, we're, so at the stage where the people are still sort of, I say the heaviest weighting, and that doesn't necessarily mean, does the business already have the team in place to execute on what they're saying they want to do, but at very least it's a case of is the current team competent enough to be able to identify the weaknesses that they may have. And is there a strategy in place with my funds thinking as the investor to bring those people on board? So I'd say that's still the principle. And then beyond that, it really has varied depending on the region that the investor is based in. So a lot of UK financial investors, because we have a revenue stream, they want to probe the P&L, apply multiple to either the top line or the bottom line, and then get to a valuation, whereas maybe the US investors by way of an example, are less interested in terms of the revenue here and now, but they're more interested in terms of what's the market opportunity going forwards. Do you have the IP in place? And what's the stage of development and the maturity of the technologies that we're producing. So we've always been very lucky that as a business, we've taken funding to accelerate and pursue a new opportunity perhaps versus to keep the lights on. And, you know, because we have that revenue to sort of fall back on. So for us, it's been very different. We are closing out around right now, and this has been our first significant amount of funding t hat's coming in. And it's also, you know, we're at about 12 months out from the release of the new portfolio of products onto sort of the public market as it were. And you know, we can walk an investor through the entire journey from here t o release with regards to the regulatory approval, the product development, the going to s caled m anufacturing, et cetera. And of course not, everything is mapped out. So the, you know, to the final hour, a nd are a bit of redundancies and buffers that w e built into the project planning, but ultimately where we are now versus maybe when we first took some investments, so when I spoke to o ur first ever investment r ound so t hat our seed round in 2018 into 19 back then a lot of what we were talking about was very, very tangental. It was very, s orry, intangible in terms of, we didn't have fiscal p roduct that we could put on an investor and say, here's your cardiac rhythm, and we can map out your bio mechanical movements, for example, whereas now we can do that. So I'd say that a big difference in terms of then to now is just that what we're doing is that much more tangible. Versus where we were back in 2018, and that's, that is something important that because they can touch and feel a product, they can also then tie that in with the roadmap that we have and gain confidence that while the product isn't on market, yet, with regards to the new ones, they can see that we've delivered new products to market over the last eight years with our, the first part of our technology portfolio. And they can, it all builds into tying back to what I first said, the people side, building confidence that those of us in leadership positions within the business now have the ability to deliver on the plans we're saying, and none of us are naive enough to say, you know, we've done it before and we can do it again. But we are equally up for the challenging, capable of adapting ourselves to grow to that next level.

Stephen: 32:02

Yeah. So I guess it's about the whole story all hangs together and points in the same direction. So it gives the investor confidence that they're not throwing their money at something that's not going to go anywhere. And there's always a risk of things go. But

Tim: 32:20

Yeah, and I take the same approach. I've never done any big investments that I'd call me myself a micro investor, and I've always taken the same approach with companies that I've backed in that, ultimately it's not really the, it was not necessarily the products or the market that I'm taking a play on. It's the individuals that I'm kind of investing in and their ability that if it doesn't go exactly to plan, do I believe that they have the nuance view or sorry, the commercial acumen to adapt and maybe take a slight tangent and using the buzzwords pivot so that my money doesn't just go away. It actually, you know, it keeps growing in some form or another. And, you know, within my portfolio, some of the investments I've made, which were at the time in companies that on a revenue and head count perspective were bigger than Kymira's, Kymira is now outgrowing, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be necessarily a bad investment for me. It just means that it may take them a bit longer, or it means that, you know, maybe they're going to be acquired and I may get my cash back sooner than I expected. You know, and I don't think there's gonna be an investor out there that's got a hundred percent success rate. And the important thing for me is just that

Stephen: 33:48

If there is I want to meet them, if there is an investor out there with a hundred percent success rate, I definitely want to be talking to them. But, thanks Tim, because I'm conscious of time ticking on. But I really appreciate you giving your time today. And I think there were a lot of, lot of useful takeaways there that the listeners will benefit from. I just want to finish with, I've got two questions I wanted to finish off with. The first of which is if you, a nd you sort of touched on some of this probably already, but if you look back over the journey, you've come on, and talking now, and as I know you do, actually, because you support other entrepreneurs. I know in some of the other work you do, but if you're talking to a young entrepreneur now, and you have the opportunity to give them one piece of advice at the beginning of their journey, what would that one piece of advice be?

Tim: 34:36

Can I ask for a bit of qualifications? Is this someone who just wants to be an entrepreneur or is this someone that has an idea, and is

Stephen: 34:43

Someone who has an idea, let's say it's an idea in the kind of medical technology spaces in the tech space. So they've got an idea, they've got a vision to bring this idea to the world and what's the one piece of advice you'd give to them.

Tim: 35:00

So as corny as it might sound and, you know, without wanting to infringe on Nike's IP, it's along the lines of just do it. I've seen many entrepreneurs who have spent a year or two, almost desktop researching their idea and being an entrepreneur, and they've never actually started and then by the time they come to start, they've blown through whatever savings they had and they haven't actually, you know, they haven't got far down and that's not to say, just be blasé, throw caution to the wind. It's a case of you need to do as an entrepreneur. If you don't take a step forwards, then it's always it's going to hold you back. And that might be the classic, not wanting to tell anyone about your idea, because you're fearful that they're going to rip it off and steal it. That might be that, you know, you're just continually researching how to be a good leader and then never actually becoming a leader because all you're doing is thinking about it. So yeah, that's the fundamental for me. And then knowing that once you start, you then have the ability to ask questions as you go, and if you find the people around you, like I did, then you have that support network. Or indeed, if you're just a part of different entrepreneurship groups there's always going to be someone that can answer a question or point you in the direction of someone they might be able to help. But ultimately if you never start, then you never have the opportunity to find out what you need next.

Stephen: 36:43

Yes. So basically just do it, which is great advice, I think. And then finally, just one very last question, which is, would you rather fly on a magic carpet or own an invisibility cloak?

Tim: 36:58

Oh, interesting. I think I would probably go for the magic carpet.

Stephen: 37:04

Yeah, me too. Excellent. Thanks Tim. So now again, really appreciate your time. Thanks for being with us today. And we will make sure that people have your contact details when this goes out. So thank you again.

Tim: 37:18

Well, thank you for having me and I apologize for being a Muppet and spilling coffee down my chest.

Stephen: 37:24

Thank you for listening to this episode of stethoscopes and rugby balls. Don't forget to follow us so you don't miss future episodes and look out for season two coming early in 2022, I've been your host, Stephen Carter of the Intellectual Property Works. If you want to connect with me or our guests, you'll find contact details in the notes and on our website, stethoscopesandrugbyballs.uk. And remember there is a way to do it better, go find it! Until next time. Take care.