Smash Notes
#4 Chad Robins
Chad Robins is the CEO of Adaptive Biotechnologies. His company, which he co-founded with his brother Harlan, has received over $400 million in funding as it drives ground-breaking research in cancer and other immune-mediated diseases. Chad simplifies his role as a CEO into three categories and breaks down this complex industry for everyone to understand…
People
Notes
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins is introduced as the CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Biotechnologies, the company he started with his brother Harlan in 2009. By the interview, Adaptive had raised more than 400 million dollars for research on cancer and other immune-mediated diseases. Robins had been named to a 40 under 40 list and was a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year. The host, Shawn, also describes him as a husband, a father, and an active board member. The conversation is about how that company grew out of Harlan's science and Chad's decision that the science had to be a business.
-
It facilitates groundbreaking research in cancer and other immune-mediated diseases.
-
Relationships.
-
Chad's mom always made breakfast and his dad would always leave by 5am so that he could be home in the evenings to spend time with his kids.
-
Yes. On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says a lot of the classmates he still knows would have called him the one who was going to be a CEO. He did not dream of being a baseball player or a firefighter. He wanted to be a CEO from about age 11. He read Forbes and Fortune, loved business, and liked working out how things function, how people make money, and how one industry differs from another. He says that curiosity is still what he likes. The host's question was whether elementary-school friends would have seen the CEO coming, and Robins's answer is that many of them would have.
-
His parents, especially his dad's ability to connect with people and what they had to say. His dad taught him great lessons on humanity as he networked with people of all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels.
-
It was of huge value. His mom was a lifelong educator and made it clear that education very important. She taught Chad and his brother a lot about reading, writing, and critical thinking.
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says his parents were clear from early on that money was never what made a person good or successful. The example he gives is his brother Harlan, who stayed in academia when he could have gone to Wall Street or a large quant fund and made a tremendous amount of money. Harlan wanted to find out how he could change the world. He was a theoretical physicist working on string theory, which Chad describes as a subject he himself could not follow. Success in that household was the work you chose, not the paycheck attached to it.
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says he applied to Cornell early decision because the campus was beautiful and he loved the outdoors. Cornell also had an undergraduate entrepreneurship program, which is what appealed to him as a course of study. He says that business training sat in the agriculture school, because of Cornell's state-college structure, and that his program was agricultural, resource, and managerial economics, with entrepreneurship inside it. The choice was the place and the outdoors, plus a degree that already treated starting something as part of the coursework.
-
Chad believes having the hardcore experiences of those fields were critical. It was rigorous in that you had to put in your time and that you had to acquire technical skills (income statements, balance sheets, etc.) and then develop presentation abilities as well.
-
Softskills - working with people, connecting, presenting, etc.
-
Company culture.
-
Every culture is different. It is top down and bottom up. CEOs set the feel for a company and company values help put words to priorities.
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says he and his brother Harlan coined the term immunosequencing for the work that became Adaptive Biotechnologies. They took advances in next-generation sequencing hardware and built chemistry and informatics on top, in order to profile a person's immune system. Harlan had been in academic science, with little contact with people who start companies, and he called Chad because the discovery needed to be a business. Chad describes himself as the one who asked how the science could become a company. The name is theirs. The method is sequencing used to read the immune system, not a general DNA test.
-
The immune system's job is to scan for anything foreign, react to it, kill it, and remember it. DNA actually rearrange on these cells and forms receptors, or scanners, which look for pathogens, viruses, bacterias, etc. Essentially, Adaptive Technologies can study immune systems based on profiling the receptors that form.
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says the platform profiles which immune receptors are in a sample and how many copies of each are there at that moment. Doctors can use the profile to inform treatment decisions for one patient. It can also guide how therapies are developed. Adaptive was starting in cancer, but he says the immune system is involved in infectious disease and autoimmune disorders as well. The same measurement can follow a response to transplantation, cancer immunotherapy, or vaccines, and can watch that response over time.
-
They were recently granted clearance from the FDA for their first diagnostic product, clonoSEQ, which measures immune system responses to therapies and whether the issue being treated (i.e. cancer) is coming back or not.
-
On What Fuels You, Chad Robins says clonoSEQ is already on the market. Adaptive Biotechnologies was taking it to its official commercial launch at the American Society of Hematology meeting in December, and was still working through Medicare reimbursement. He says getting a diagnostic test paid for is one of the hard problems in the industry. The test reads whether a drug knocked a cancer clone down, and whether that clone is returning at a molecular level, before a patient walks in with symptoms. Access at the time of the interview was through that launch, with Medicare payment still being settled.
-
Today he spends much of his time on people. With business development relationships, with recruiting for his company, and with providing his employees the resources needed to work better together.
-
Chad Robbins breaks the job down into 3 categories: money, people, and strategy. Without money, you can't get the right people and without the right people, you can't develop the best strategies possible.
-
Common attributes such as debating openly and communicating ideas as well as the ability to be kind. Help people out, work collaboratively, and give credit where credit is due.
-
Chad's assistant is incredibly helpful. One of his strengths is the ability to process a lot of information while synthesizing it and compartmentalizing it. Chad can move quickly from one thing to another without issues.
-
Exercising, hiking, and spending time with his wife.
-
He's currently reading the book "What School Should Be" and has become more involved in education, particularly his daughter's schooling. He finds importance in helping people with how to think instead of what to think.
Related notes
- How Does the Immune System Work
- What Did Success Mean in Michael Parenteau's Family?
- Does Being the CEO Change Your Life
- Where Can I Read Cindy Wu's Immune Cell Paper?
- What Was It Like for Remitly CEO Matt Oppenheimer to Grow Up Around Entrepreneurs?