Interview: Trevor Martin

A Conversation with Trevor Martin, CEO and Co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences
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In this edition of M*A*S*H* (Marketing Advice for Startups in Healthcare), we sat down with Trevor Martin, PhD, the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences, a biotech company discovering and developing novel CRISPR systems that enable new therapies and broader possibilities for expanding biology.

Before founding Mammoth in 2017, Trevor earned his PhD at Stanford University, winning a fellowship from the NSF, and his undergraduate degree from Princeton University with honors for his senior thesis in quantitative biology.

As you’ve transitioned from an academic scientist to a business leader to a senior business leader, which resources and advice did you find most valuable?
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In general, finding really good mentors has been the most helpful to me. I was very fortunate to connect with people early on that founded companies and had been on the same journey. The key is to make new mistakes and not repeat old ones; bringing on mentors who have walked in your shoes helps in this respect.Of course, you want to read as much as you can and listen to podcasts, but at the end of the day, mentorship is most valuable. These mentors can come from a lot of different areas – even diligence calls. The important thing to look for is the excitement about what you're working on and whether they’ve been through similar things before.

Thinking back to 2018, what took center stage as the most critical consideration post-Series A?
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Bringing in the right hires is definitely the most crucial aspect of scaling. You can't handle everything on your own, so it's essential to have a capable team. Therefore, it’s key to consistently focus on bringing in exceptional individuals. This involves dedicating a substantial amount of time to the hiring process. This is particularly critical during the post-Series A phase of company growth.

How has your perspective changed over the years on the qualities a new hire needs to be an exceptional addition to Mammoth?
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Technical proficiency in a new hire is obviously essential, but equally important is that they’re low ego and strongly committed to our mission. It can be challenging to assess this. While we can review their past achievements and speak with references, a significant part of it involves gauging their motivations during conversations. We try to understand what drives them and why they're enthusiastic about this opportunity.

Certainly, being transparent about our expectations and the culture we aim to cultivate is important, and then seeing whether they resonate with it or not. To determine if we’re aligned, primarily, I inquire about their previous experiences working with others and what values they prioritize in those interactions.

What do you think is an underappreciated space in biology or medicine today?
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One thing that’s pretty exciting is that, as we at Mammoth continue to develop tools for engineering the genome, we could reach a point where we're actually better at engineering the genome than understanding what to engineer. Presently, our concentration is on addressing genetic diseases with well understood biology. However, in the long term, envisioning broader enhancements to human health with currently uncharacterized targets as our proficiency in genome modification improves is really exciting. Better understanding the genetic basis of diseases both rare and common could help unlock even more therapeutic areas and realize the full potential of our editing capabilities. Advice for graduate students thinking about jumping to startups?They should feel confident about making the leap. It's not essential for them to possess extensive training in business or similar fields. What truly matters is their passion for making an impact. Additionally, there exists a supportive community of individuals who genuinely want to see them succeed.In my own time, I mentor a lot of people that are considering starting their own ventures through angel investing and other avenues. I believe it's important to help people in making that transition, and hopefully, this aids in creating a lot of great companies that can have a significant impact. It’s been said many times that great startups can be and are formed during tough markets and I think more than anything this is because with the bar higher you really have to have passion and dedication for the mission you’re embarking on. A panel of biotech VCs at BIO collectively advocated for increased consolidation among startups centered around a single feature that didn’t warrant an entire company. Given your focus on building Mammoth around a portfolio of CRISPR applications from the beginning, what advice would you offer to startup founders finding themselves on the other side of this feedback from the panel?In general, I find myself particularly enthusiastic about platforms that have the potential to have multiple products and build on each other in a productive way so that your second or third drug has a higher probability of success than even your first.However, a kind of classic problem with platforms is that you can do everything, but then you have to choose what you want to do. For someone that does have a platform, you need to prove out why it matters. It’s cool that you have a platform, but you need to show that there's some specific differentiation advantage you have for both a very specific first few indications and beyond. It may not even matter too much if the specific targets change over time, especially when you're early on, but you need to show that you've thought through why your platform needs to exist in the world and what it’ll actually do differently for patients. At the end of the day, the patient doesn't really care what the technology is; they just want to make sure they have the best possible treatment options.There's plenty of examples of successful companies that don’t have a platform, but it's a different model. Some investors like one model over the other. Personally, I get much more excited by platforms where you can actually build a lasting biotech company, like Mammoth.As an angel investor, is there any advice that you share with founders that you mentor which surprises them?Perhaps one unexpected piece of advice is the realization that there’s a large community of people that want to help. There's a lot of support for first time founders and people that want to make that transition from academia to industry. I think that's one of the things that makes a place like Silicon Valley special. Additionally, there are many places you can be located, but being physically situated in a biotech hub with specific concentrations of talented individuals with prior experience doing what you want to do is valuable. I think it's particularly helpful to be in a hub early on when you're trying to figure everything out more and there are more iteration cycles.How has your storytelling around Mammoth’s mission changed over time?From the inception of Mammoth, our North Star has remained constant: to deliver on the promise of genetic medicine. As our company has matured, our approach to storytelling has naturally evolved.In the early days, we had to devote a significant portion of messaging to education about novel CRISPR technology – answering questions about what CRISPR is, how it works, and the benefits of systems beyond Cas9. Today, our primary audiences deeply understand CRISPR and our technologies. With the educational groundwork set, we’ve moved beyond explaining the science of CRISPR to highlighting how our technology will make a difference for patients.This storytelling evolution is reflective of our progress as a company. In our earlier stages, when our messaging focused on education, we spent more time on exploratory projects to determine where our technology could best support patients and therapeutic discovery. Today, through strategic collaborations and the continuous refinement of our technology, we have a concrete grasp of how we are positively impacting patients and have been able to funnel this into our messaging. ++Thank you to Trevor for sharing his perspectives and insight. You can follow him on Twitter and connect with him via LinkedIn.To learn how VSC Adrenaline combines strategic media relations and digital content marketing to empower startups to build credibility and awareness while adhering to regulatory and industry standards, visit us at vsc.co/adrenaline.