10 Question Interview Series: David Kiewlich Shares What Makes BADASS Labs Live Up to its Name

BADASS Labs Founder and CEO, David Kiewlich, started out as a biotech entrepreneur himself in search of wet lab space. What he found was that the Bay Area biotech start up sector was being vastly underserved with the type of lab and office space necessary to thrive. Startups and early stage companies were forced to go into spaces that were suboptimal. Working in those environments put an incurable amount of strain on these companies. With BADASS Labs, David’s aim was to support startups to create a viable product so that they can go out and get the funding they need. And he did exactly that, and more, creating an environment that has produced a 91% success rate among his graduates, far surpassing the industry norm. Let David share what makes BADASS Labs live up to its name.

Q1: Why did you choose to enter the life science incubator business?
I have a long history in biotech, with a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology, 35 years doing Industrial Biotech work and 6 startups of my own. I felt it was far too hard to get things done when I was a founder and my worry that the historical success rate of biotech companies (2-5%) meant we were losing far too many revolutionary ideas, simply because we make it too hard on founders. 

I decided to build a system I couldn’t find anywhere else, so that these incredible ideas reach the marketplace and have an impact. 

Q2: Who is your typical client by type and stage of growth? 
We support a wide variety of clients. Typically, they start as a pre-seed/seed company and grow in our space until they reach series B funding or commercialization of their idea. 

The verticals are human health and planetary health:
• Human health: therapeutics (all types), diagnostics, med devices, etc. 
• Planetary health: clean energy, agricultural tech, bio-manufacturing, remediation, direct carbon capture, etc. 

We support both biological and non-biological startups. (Basically “science” based startups) 

Q3: What is the most atypical business your incubator was able to work with? 
Quite a few innovative options. Gen IV nuclear reactor development, using bacterial components for environmentally friendly sunscreens, soil microbes to find cancer drugs for “undruggable” targets, medical device using magnets to disrupt cancer, the list goes on and on. 

Q4: What criteria do you use to admit clients to your program? 
I personally vet every company before they join. Essentially, I want to ensure that what we have to offer aligns with the needs of the startup, both now and in the future. We have a 90% success rate, so I know we can support nearly everything to be successful, but if there is a misalignment with the startup needs and what we offer, I want to help the founders find something better. 

Q5: How many groups have graduated from your space?
6-year track record of 50 successful companies out of 55 total. 

Q6: How has demand changed from before the Pandemic to now?
Demand has really changed, mostly due to the substantial loss of Federal funds and the shifting priorities of Venture into much later stage companies. With funding harder to get, it is really critical that founders get strong support so that they can “do more with less”. 

Q7: How do you differentiate your incubator from your competition?
We are quite unique in what we offer, and the track record shows what that means for results. Physical space is exceptional with nearly $4M of equipment for the startups to use, without separate fees to make budgeting and expansion easy. We don’t incentivize the founders to “not use the space” by leveraging dozens of fees and other “gotchas”. Investors want rapid progress with large, comprehensive, and complete data sets. Everything we do encourages that. 

We do the “low value/high risk” tasks that prevent early founders from execution on the critical path for their companies. 

We run a full procurement service to ensure our clients get the lowest prices on anything they need, while freeing up huge amounts of time so they can focus. 

We do all the waste handling, lab operations, facility management, maintenance and calibration of our equipment, regulatory filings, regulatory inspections, just to name a few. We want them to execute quickly and effectively, so it is common for our clients to progress half the time as other incubators.

Q8: Do you require or take equity in the companies you admit?
No. This is a 501c3 non-profit. We never take equity, nor do we entangle your IP. Our client’s success is 100% theirs. We are unique in the incubator system in this way. 

Q9: Have you seen the effects of Artificial intelligence influence the life science sector?
Yes. AI has great promise but hasn’t had a track record of success yet. Part of the problem is that biology is not a completely understood system, so all of those “unknowns” challenge AI to “fill in the gaps” when trying to create models. This challenge is further amplified because the public domain resources of journal articles are filled with fraud and “paper mill” entries that are meaningless (roughly 25% of all published articles). AI doesn’t have context to know what is true and what isn’t, so it is trying to create a model, while being hindered with flso many flaws and unknowns that it is struggling.  We will get there, but it will be a while. 

Q10: What will the life science incubator business evolve into in the future?
Incubators will be important as long as empirical science is important. Very few companies have success relying on CRO’s (and similar) and the equipment and facilities are far too expensive for early startups to duplicate, so having access to incubators will be critical. 

I believe that the historical rate of 80% of new founders being first time founders will be with us for a very long time (likely forever). These entrepreneurs are amazing, but they lack experience, so the incubator is a “training” system as much as a “startup space”. 

One innovation that I expect is an increasing amount of automation, which could increase productivity. Right now, automated systems are very capable of repeating a set protocol but lack flexibility to do “optimization” or true discovery, where the protocol is not fixed as yet. AI could be quite helpful here, so we may see some exciting enhancements in the near future.