Hi, This is Shana, the CEO and founder of Fuel talent. One of the things I have loved most in my 25 year recruiting career has always been the stories that people tell stories of leadership, career choices, company ideas and team building. My inspiration for starting the wet fuels you podcast came from being curious about people's lives and wanting to help share their stories. What path brought them to this place? What decisions did they make that led to failures and successes, who influenced those decisions and what lessons were learned along the way? I hope you enjoy the what? Jules you podcast on today's What fuels You episode. I will be talking with Chad Robbins, the CEO and co founder of Adaptive Biotechnology's, which he founded with his brother Harlan in 2009. Since that time, Adaptive has received over 400 million and funding as it drives groundbreaking research and cancer and other immune mediated diseases.

Chad has been named on the 40 under 40 list and was a finalist for the instant young entrepreneur of the year. He's a husband, a father, an active board member and an overall ass kicking friend. So Welcome, Chad. Thank you for coming.

Thanks for

having me, Shawn. Yeah, I'm super psyched to do this. Um, okay, so we're gonna start with rapid fire, so hopefully you're on point. And you had your coffee ready? Sure. OK. Favorite podcast.

Long run by Luke Timmerman.

Favorite band. Grateful Dead. And you're going to say that Chicago or Seattle? Seattle. Make sure your Thai town friends don't hear this dream. Romantic getaway with Christie Mykonos. Oh, nice. You're planning that, right? Correct. Nice, uh, cuisine of choice. French French cuisine, Like French cuisine. So what a sauce.

Why, no CEO? You most admire Steve Jobs. I like that. Finally, what fuels you relationships? I would love that. Okay. So chatty. I know a lot of this already, but for people who are listening to the podcast, they may or may not know that you grew up in Chicago. Tell me about, um, the suburb. What? What is it most like in Seattle? Like, how would we What was your childhood like there?

Actually, where I grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, is quite similar to Mercer Island. Um, that Z ah suburb relatively affluent, relatively homogeneous, to be to be Frank. Um, and, ah, you know, it was a pretty safe environment. You know, you could ride your bikes around the street and get all days. Uh, yeah,

I guess it was seventies and eighties, remember? I'm a little younger. You remember? Um

uh um So I know I have the privilege of knowing, having known your dad, And I know your mom, and they have to me what seemed like quite the love story. So, um, what would it be like to be kind of fly on the wall in your family and you've got your brother Harlan. So what was that? A typical day in the house, Like the music on?

Um, my parents weren't actually big music lovers, but a typical day in the house. You know, my mom always made us breakfast. My dad actually would usually leave before we got up. And for specific reason on purpose, he would leave at five. AM so that he could always be home. He always got home for dinner. He always got home to ah, play ball in the street with us or to coach our teams. It was incredibly important Thio to hit to him to be very president, and he always put his family first. So that was the trade off that he made. You know, being a corporate lawyer is that he'd get up it forthe already being worked by five and then be home, Um, in time Thio to throw a ball around.

That's amazing. And there's all sorts of things that say that kind of time with the family and time together has a direct correlation with somebody's kind of stability and how they, um, and how they grow up. So that's amazing. Um, so you and Harlan, or how far apart in age

13 months

and who's older? Harlan is older. So you're the baby. Do you play a role meeting now you're the CEO. So what's the dynamic

there? You know, it's a dynamic that's obviously carried through from childhood. Um, and I think what's really interesting about us and why it works, is we bring very different skill sets to the table. We appreciate each other's skill sets. Um, you know, for the most part, we're both learning about each other's field, but it does lead to some interesting dynamics and meetings of 1st 1st of all, I think in any external meeting. Now I prefaced the meeting with saying, Just so you guys know where, brothers? Because we'll talk to each other in a certain way that first of all, no one talks to a CEO outside of a family relationship on in. Probably vice versa, too. It could

be. He's also like such a brilliant mind. He's probably goes the other way to where it's like, Who's pushing back on him. You, you know, you've got that personality that you can do that with him also and call him out. You can call each other out.

Yeah, we do. I think we call each other out. We tried, um, you know, not to call each other out in so much in areas of expertise, but, um, you know how messages are delivered is really important. Um, you know, I'm not on both fronts, but you know, I think he's in a different league in terms of innovation on and and his communication has improved so drastically since we started working together. He's he's clear, inconsistent,

and I told him, actually, other, damn it. It's a dangerous combination when you can not only innovate, but you can communicate those ideas. And so,

um, he does a great job of it. I mean, when he's talking, I feel like I'm understanding what he's saying. If I'm just reading about it from a four hammock, what? But when he does explain it and you do a great job of explaining, you mean we're gonna get to adaptive later. But I want to continue to learn a little bit more about you as a kid because I feel like we would probably have hung out and, you know, in elementary school, would people that went to school with you then, many of whom you're still friends with have said This is definitely the guy that's gonna be the CEO.

I think a lot of them would, I guess, growing up, I didn't want to be a baseball player. Fire manner. I wanted to be a CEO since the time I was like, 11 years old. You know, I read like Forbes and fortune, and I loved business. I loved all business and just trying to figure out how things work and how you made money and the different dynamics and different industries, and I still love that. I love kind of the range of, you know, I guess from the platform of adaptive, I've had the ability to have exposure to all these different industries and investment opportunity. And Borden.

It's just to me that you asked what feels me that's really I actually think that also helps me. And my role is adapted to be able to see you know, how people lead in different industries. Um and so that's that. Then I was

like that when you're about it. I mean, you are a curious person and you are a relationship builder, and it's genuine. So when you're asking about what people D'oh, you're not just making small talk, you're actually interested in leaning into how their businesses work. And, um, that's why I love this part. I mean, this podcast thing has been super fun for me because I think there's no just kind of clear path for people. And some people have known their whole lives that they wanted to be a CEO and others are like circumstances led them to that place. But who were the influences for you? Yeah,

early on. Yeah, my parents. I mean, but if you look at my dad, this this ability to connect with people and to actually be interested in what they're saying. And it's not. Not just like what you would consider the high level or important people, right? My dad was interested and develop relationships when his firm with the people in the mail room and the shoeshine guy and in the assistance and that was really special. And it also taught me great lessons on humanity, but also this just genuine interest. I don't even like the term networking for me, you know, I guess technically, I'm always not working, But I don't consider a networking.

I love it. I love I love people. I mean, I love hearing about what they're doing. I'm genuinely interested in what they're doing. Um, And to me, I think that's symbiotic. Synergistic. Whatever you want to call it with how I run my business,

how it wasn't biotech, it would be just another industry. But you'd be doing the Chad thing where you'd be building relationships and that serves you in any industry. Yeah.

Just to be clear, I mean, I call myself a mud. I mean, I backed into her lucked into where I am now is CEO of a biotech company, but that was not clearly the the design path for sure. I've been in real estate, investment banking, hedge funds, health care. I mean healthcare from us. Ah, you know, e health insurance perspective. So all these different things, it's not. It's not that I was destined to be a biotech C

right? And so I know that you went to Cornell for undergrad and tow warden to get your MBA, and so clearly Ah, you're right. And so was educational value.

Education was a huge value, and I e one of the big in closers in my levels. My mom, she's been a lifelong educator. Um, a matter of fact, has some very, very strong opinions on you know how schools should operate. She's been a ah, principal on director of general Studies for 25 years. But education was important in the home, and she as much as, um, you know, we went to great schools. She always took it upon herself That said that she was Ah, it's educator.

So we would write papers together. She was more on the kind of English side as opposed to the stem side. Um, but she was we would write papers together. She teach me how to read and write and critical thinking. Um and we just spent a lot of time together. Ah, and and going obviously going, going to the right schools, which today I think is sort of a dated notion. But that was important in our household.

Yeah, And so would people be surprised to see that where Harlan's path took him to Fred Hutch to become a scientist? And

you know, another thing about my parents to, um, money was never the driving force for what made a good or successful person. So my brother made some choices very early on to stay in academia when he could have gone to Wall Street to some of these big quant funds and make you know, a tremendous amount of money. And he was just really interested in finding out how he could change the world, which is actually one of the reasons that, you know, he was a theoretical physicist doing string theory,

and he thought, don't even know what that means. But it's a black hole of

Stephen hawking all that stuff, right? And the reality is, he didn't He didn't think he didn't think that there was real practical applications of that. So he switched over to this new field called computational biology and kind of early two thousands of bioinformatics where he thought he could have a bigger impact. You know, in my parents, you know, a certain point he started making money, some money in academia, but it was, you know, academic money. So there was never that this path everyone knew. My brother said genius, since he was a very young age. So I don't think it surprises anyone that he has had innovative ideas, discoveries ah, and intellectual property that I think will absolutely change how drugs are discovered and how clinicians treat patients. There's I don't think anyone would be surprised

by that, right? And did you guys get a public school? Private school growing

up, we went to public

school, and so was he able to Were you both able to stay challenged in public school? And would you do in your free

time? Yeah. We were challenged in different ways, right? You know, I was always We were always friends, but I was always a more social one. You know, I

had you moved into the other row because you were distracting your like like

our kids. I was always a social one. I was president, my class freshman class, and it's a really big school. Um, and I was the guy that was, you know, organizing our new where all the kind of social events were in two different teams and whatnot. We both played sports. He was probably a a more accomplished athlete. He was actually starting running back on a big high school football team. But he was also on the debate team, the math team and a bunch of, you

know what? Never ever

dot com and I did a lot. You know, I had a lot of extra curricular activities. A cz Well, um, but, you know, we're very, very different personalities in high school as

we are today. Yeah, and so you went to Cornell. And how did you choose Cornell? Because you probably had some options.

I chose Cornel. I applied early decision because the campus was beautiful and I was really into the outdoors and they had a in undergraduate kind of entrepreneurial program. Was actually

Did you study? Is that that that was

the degree actually. So Cornell was actually the business school was in the the AG school because of the state school. Um, but yeah, I was in, ah, agricultural resource and manager economics, which there was a ah entrepreneurship program in there, which you are senior year. We won the the school wide business plan competition and was super serious about it. Actually moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, after after my senior in college toe. Look at starting A A business. We were a little bit before our time, but it was Think about it is like a credit basis system for outdoor adventure luxury travel packages.

I don't think I've ever known this story.

Yeah, it's called American Beauty name of a Grateful Dead song. But we based on yeah, but based on how long you'd stay, you get a certain of my credits that you could allocate in the winter towards Helly skiing or ice climbing into the summer towards whitewater rafting or yoga. There was different categories of

how many points I love that idea. I think that would drive today.

It would. It's been done, you know, I think there are a lot of things out there that mere that. But we were a little bit ahead of her time. We're also way too. We were pretty ambitious. We needed meal, you know. We needed tens of millions of dollars. We had a piece of land picked out on the snake River that had a resort designation. We're looking at potentially buying a rafting company. And, you know, the partners I was doing with who? You know, you were great people, but it probably

wasn't the right pages, different pages. And so what did you stand for that time? Like, where were you involved in engaged? I mean, most college kids are kind of like Where's the next party and how do I get to the next day? But I know that you're engaged in kind of the world around you. Were you like that in college?

I was always interested in in the world around me, going back to growing up. My dad was a, um you know, trustee for the village of Wilmette. And ah, and both My parents were very involved in politics. My dad, probably more so than then my mom, but super interested in that super interested in and the fact that we were privileged and with privilege comes responsibility and that we always had a responsibility to, um t think about how we could How How How would you help those less fortunate? And I wouldn't say it. Just to be clear, I once I was super political in college, I was definitely, you know, pretty social. I was in involved in a fraternity. I I worked hard

enough hard enough to get into Wharton to

get Yeah, we're talked enough to get decent enough grades. And I was I was into the outdoors right in college. I

mean, I think those old pictures of you like you were, like, outdoorsy guy, like a guy. I like it. So did you have teachers that were kind of big influences on you either in high school or college?

Yeah. You know, I I did. Um You know, there was a series of teachers. Um, I would say probably more on the way English side then, particularly on the math side. That really kind of crystallized critical thinking how I write and communicate express myself, you know, teaching you how to think and not what to think on dso I can remember one teacher and in high school and one teacher in college that were super important. But another reason, you know, in picking begging Cornell when I went to the campus, it was just so, so beautiful in they had a great outdoor education program at the time, transitioning from kind of high school into college.

I was starting, starting to get in tow, hiking and rock climbing and stuff like that. It was in a place in the world that you could do that. I mean, I took ice climbing and kayaking for P and college stuff

like that. And then I could

be where, see? And then I spent 100 days in the wilderness like, Is part

of this not not one of those like, isolated situations?

Yeah, It was a group called National Tour Leadership School, So I spent.

That's pretty badass. Yeah, mostly. I thought I would go camping with you because I would feel safe, huh? David, go camping with these. Like a New Yorker. David captured the four seasons. Yeah, exactly.

But I do. Um um, And just to be clear about that, I don't know if that's a topic of conversation here, but I'll make it one, Um, my whole leadership style and, you know, to this day is based on the 100 days in the wilderness and

well, in what way? Like

what? Well, I s Oh, it was in group settings is ah, group of 12. But you break down into camp groups of three or four and in that camp group. So there's what we There was a thing called expedition behavior and expedition behavior. There's probably some lengthy explanation its butt at the end of day, It's just do your shit and be a good person. Do the right thing, right? So And if you didn't, it's super transparent. Where is kind of in the business world? And

I was gonna hide behind Can't rock climbing.

Yeah, let me give you a good example. So, like in the desert, when you when you get if we do, we did, Ah, 25 or 30 days section It was canyoneering. Ah, and you were kind of going through the desert. And when you do hike all day in this group of three for whatever 8 to 15 miles, you get to camp. When you got to camp, one person have the job of setting up the shelter. One person had the job of finding water, and one person had the job of cooking your meals,

right? They assign

it or you got to know you'd you'd switch off every day. So this is you, like your tent group, right? So if if if you did, if one of those people didn't do their job, you either one drink, you wouldn't eat or you won't sleep well, right? So it was pretty transparent. And just to be frank, I was one of those guys, you know, when I wanted to step up when I was interested in the project, I would go all out. But if I wasn't, I would totally,

you know, loaf it. But what I realize is I was mailing it in someone else's picking it up, and that's kind of not fair. S o. I have taken that, um I kind of took some of those lessons, you know, Post, post that Knowles experience to be like, just just do do what you gotta do.

Yeah, take accountability. I like that. You talked about doing investing banking, being in real estate industry, working in hedge funds. Um, tell me a little bit about those experiences and how those prepared you for being a CEO of ah scaling Well funded business are their cultures that you loved that You said I want to emulate this.

Let me cover the first part of your of your question. Um, I still think to this day that having that hard core technical investment banking experience is critical to what I do. And

by the way, what many people? D'oh, That's a great

thing for consulting or consulting or something where it's rigorous in a couple different ways. One is it's okay to, like, sleep under that, like Tito have. I mean, these millennials today, you know, don't get beaten up. We got being up and that was okay. That was shaping. And you know what part of it and part of it was? I never want to do this again, but I put in some time, right, But the second part of that is acquiring those technicals. Kills of income statement,

balance sheet, casual reconciliation, understanding, true finance understanding howto really put together a presentation and then deliver that presentation those things and yet it's concentrated and yet you're spending a lot of time and some of it you kind of B S B s time. But at the end of a lot of time is just kind of those foundational skills. Now, what I'll say is what differentiates Going forward is not the hard skills. It's a soft skills, and it's the ability took to connect to negotiate t manage to set culture. All of those things are much more important as you as you advance in your career,

right, Otherwise, you'd be

an analyst. Yeah, you be an analyst. But But to say that you know how to do that and to be able to think, talk the language and and to be ableto point out a fact check even one thing with with your team to be like, you know, he actually knows the shit I think is a happened Oh, yeah, yeah, it happens all the time in the language

and the looks on their game because they're like Chad actually knows.

Yeah, when I talked to bankers, I mean, having been a bank and we talked and Dustin beggars all the time, you there's a different level of credibility. If you're talking about acquisition and Compton Public company Compton, and this kind of cash on how business is valued, you just get another layer of credibility that you've got a been there, done that.

And how many of those people that were in your, um, your investor banking class kind of stayed that course?

Um very few, very few. It's really, really chuffed to come through the system and be a kind of a long, kind of a career

investment, the ones that are and stay married

and stay married. But I will say the ones that are the ones that are the career investment. I would say that same lesson applies. So I am fortunate to go dio a bunch of different summits. And converse is one interesting one is one of the kind of the best ones is the Golden Sachs Builders and Innovators Conference. And you see the top people Ah, Goldman Sachs there differentiated. And there in that room, I mean, they know the hard skills. But the people that are in that room are unbelievably charismatic people. And so it, I would have said, applies in every industry. It's the soft skills that went up differentiating overtime.

Yeah, well, that's great. I have none of those other skills. I'll have a job. You worry about you. That's good. Unbelievable. Leak. You good? Yeah, that helps. Um And so So you did the invest in banking thing, which I would say, Absolutely. I agree. Or consulting would be a great foundation for anyone.

And hopefully one of my kids will go that route because I used to place people in those jobs in New York. And not many of them were that happy because of the work you load. Um, but cash. They were smart. I mean, whole another level of, um, like what you said. I mean, it's a great foundation. You learned there because he weren't leading teams there, right?

Uh, no, I wasn't leading teams, but I had a couple incredible mentors there.

Um, that was that a formalized thing,

or just know it wasn't formalized. We were actually, I was a firm called Wasserstein Perella, which was kind of popularizing the eighties from the r. J R Nabisco takeover. There was a couple of great mentors. We were actually in the seven Cisco office doing high tech m and s. So we're looking at all the internet and search engines as kind of the Internet was getting off the ground in the mid 90. So it's a really exciting time Where this satellite office. So a lot of the rules from New York kind of didn't really apply. And And we had this kind of rising

star. We were the market hours.

Uh, I wasn't working. I was there. I'd get in probably, um, eight or nine. But we would stay till midnight or one or later every night, every night. Um, I remember. I just, um, fellow associate their name, Andrew Donner. We would one day we got, like, 10 o'clock and was still light out. Um, and we're like, what we D'oh.

So we started to talk about culture, which I know is You're passion, really. But we work for companies that are outside of your industry. Do you see a common thread among companies that you admire and the culture that they've set?

Yeah, I do. Um, Well, first of all, every culture's different and culture is I call I. I say cultures top down in bottom up. So first and foremost, you have to have ah, cultural leader. And that should be the CEO who sets a tone of what you want this company to be, how you want people to act. Um uh, feel why they're there, right? What the mission is and what the values are on don't mean And we actually do have corporate values

crucial. I mean, it sounds I know you're kind of like it's a cliche, but it's crucial because then you know what you're measuring against you're looking for when you're when you're hiring talent.

Yeah, um, and and And finally, culture grows. You know, I don't think there's gonna born. She owes that know how did you learn over time and actually learn about culture overtime? What works and does it work? How you how you want to lead, how you want to set culture. So when I say cultures top down in bottom up, I wantto gonna set a general of our overall tone and have this grand mission. Um, and people be there in our case because we actually wanted change medicine on and were working on something that will be an innovative company, not just in biotech, but we want to be an innovative company overall, and we want to be compared to the disruptive game changing cos kind of across the board.

To do that, you need to go higher for the right mindset and the right type of person, and you want to set set a tone, um, and great ideas. There's no monopoly on great ideas coming from the executive team. You wantto encourage that open debate. You want to encourage thoughts to come from different parts, the organization and that voices be heard and that you have a collaboration across different function of the business. We've instituted this emerging leaders program where we put together a cross functional teams off site, up up in my happy place on Katya and when we ah, it's for two things. One is we want to see how people work together and across the folks they normally work with on a day to day basis. And two, it's an opportunity for me to see who can communicate and present their ideas. Who is a merchant who is emerging, right? Um, and

before you started a dad, I'm totally interrupting you because I want to go back. I have never actually asked you this. Do you remember where you were when Harlan called to say I have this great idea.

I actually remember exactly where I was sitting. I was in my home office in Chicago. He called me and said, Hey, Chad, I had a pretty big discovery. I think it could change the world. Um, I've been talking about it in academic circles, and I've been, um, kind of mobbed with interest, I think in order for it Ah, impact patients, it has toe has to become a business. I have no idea how to do it. I'm calling you because you're the only person I know in business.

Several. Thanks. Lucky me. That's that's whoever's on. So he said, I figured out how to sequence T cell receptors and high throughput. Do you want to start a business? I'm so first of all, I was like, Yeah, I'm in. And then and then I was like, No, I have no idea what he's talking about. I had to let go to Wikipedia and started crash course. You know,

when you follow all the lengths and gosh, there's a lot of links in science, right? Yeah. So I'm doing a crash course on the immune system and immune system receptors and all this stuff, But I knew. Um, I'll tell you, I knew that he wasn't crying wolf. And it was a big discovery. First of all, as I mentioned this'll, probably like Now, Tini is 2009 when I got the call, so he just probably, you know,

I've been calling for 20 years being like, Come on, dude, you're really smart. How do we make money off you, right? I'm a total capitalist, Um, and I'm not ashamed of. And I've been asking my brother to discover something like he got something and he will be like, I have no interest in starting a business like

literally no

interest whatsoever, you know,

interested. Maybe Hadn't discovered something worth calling about.

That's certainly true. He hadn't. And I think that recognition that it needed to be a business and that Hey, I only know one guy because he'd been so disconnected from that world, right? You know, like his circles really didn't include people in the business world other than few of his friends. But he wasn't great. Eso as great a creeping up with relationships anyway, so he was really ingrained in that kind of academic circles. So no exposure So he calls me up and says he wants to start this business for, um, we actually coined this term. Called him, you know, sequencing, which is now, you know, it's popularized. But what we did was we used the advances in next generation sequencing hardware and to develop chemistry and inform attics on top of that to profile your immune system.

Um, you have to explain it like you're explaining it to Layla. My You're more like a little baby. Layla, my eight year old. Yeah, well, she spent most of us. She's got the e que, um, explain that and where it was then and where it is today and take me through that real quick.

Yeah. So, Layla, uh, so, first of all, your immune system's job is to scan anything foreign, um, and then react to it, Kill it, and remember it Essentially. So that's that's essentially you know what, What it does and it does. This tree is really neat mechanism where your d n a actually rearranges on the surface of these immune cells to form these receptors And think of these receptors is thes scanners, barcode scanners, and they look for a match which is a pathogen, something foreign that comes in your body at virus bacteria,

etcetera. And they're looking for this match. And when they find this match, you have kind of this reaction or this immune cascade. First they expand. They go through what's called a Colonial expansion, but meaning this one match makes many, many copies of itself. And then certain of these receptors go in and kill the bad thing, then they remember it. And so you've got this memory in your immune system. And so what we did essentially has had a set of chemistry, what you call primers that lay down on the genome. And from each one of these cells, we can pick out this genetic rearrangement, and we can do this in a quantitative fashion.

So we know how many copies of each different type of receptors are in any kind of sample that we take at any given time. So a sense we can profile, um, your immune system, intel kind of what's what's what's in your immune system at any one time and so we can apply this to many, many different areas. It's this guy, a really massive platform that applies to both how doctors treat patients that can inform their treatment decisions on a on a specific patient. Ah, and it can also assistant how Therapy's air developed in particular, were starting in cancer. But it's such a large area is because your immune system as involved in almost every disease state, whether it be cancer, infectious disease or autoimmune disorders, Um, and also what we call treatment modalities.

So how a patient gets treated, whether it be in cancer, like transplantation, cancer immunotherapy, vaccines, we can measure the response to those therapeutics and monitor that response

over time. So that's next level. I mean, incredible. And so when will you say, kind of like, Oh, we've arrived and I don't mean oh, we're gonna have some sort of acquisition or go public or something like that. But at what point? You're like we solved it. We're done like our job is done.

Sure well, the job. So, first of all, the job won't be done in the immune system because the immune system of flies, because it applies to so many different. I mean, the cancer itself is so many different diseases, even in autoimmune, there's so many different autoimmune disorders and even within a particular autoimmune disorder, pick Lupus. It's not very well understood. There's unlimited applications of the platform technology. But your question is, When will you? What will you do some big stuff, right? Like when? When? When will you actually help some people or help from drug companies discovered?

So you've got the other parts of the business to that I am curious about? Sure, and that lay less

curious about. So let's let's come back to Let's come back to some of the other parts. But so the first and foremost thing is we We recently got, um uh, clearance from the FDA on on our first diagnostic product called Clone O seek for measuring minimal residual disease in blood cancer. So what does that mean from a layman's perspective is that we can determine first response to therapy. Did did the drug work or not? Did it knocked down that cancer clone? And then, secondarily, is that cancer? Cohn coming back so we can tell a molecular level before clinical presentation. So before you walk into a doctor with all these symptoms, we could tell in kind of your molecular information, whether that cancer is coming back.

How can people access that?

It's already on the market Now. We're doing kind of our official commercial launch at the American side of Hematology. Ah, in in in December. Uhm and we are waiting on, uh, we're working through Medicare reimbursement. So getting paid for tests getting paid for tests on the diagnostics industry, it's challenging. It's huge.

It's huge. Yes. What do you like most looking forward to in this next 3 to 6 months in the business?

I'm anticipating that we'll be able to share more information on how our technology applies to therapeutics, in particular. Cancer. Um, it's something that we've been building and working on the platform technology for the last 3 to 4 years, and we've just rolled out, and I I anticipate that we will do this in partnership with some very established large biotech and farmer companies that focus on in these different areas. In particular in cancer. Um, is the technology itself. I've been talking about how we kind of sequence immune receptor, but then we've had some innovation that not only sequences a receptor, but we can also determine what pathogens those receptors are binding. Thio and again we can do that. Its scale. Um And so this is also the basis for our, um, landmark partnership with Microsoft

Partnership was super exciting. That's incredible. And so how are you spending your time today versus in 2009? And what do you losing sleep over

today? I spent a lot of time on. I'll call the broad category people. Yes, relationships, business, development, relations. But even within the company, I spend it on tryingto get the right talent in the right places. So recruiting, but also getting people to work together better, or providing

the resource is Do you like that part Jack? The managing of people? Are you more like the recruiting of people?

Both. I try to simplify a CEO's job in tow. Really? 33 categories. Um, money, people strategy, right. If you don't have money, you can't get the right people. If you don't have the right people, you doesn't matter what strategy you set. You need two people to effectuate the strategy, so it's very simple and it's taken me a while to get there. So what? I spend my time on on those three things in, probably in that order. First and foremost, my job is to make sure the company has capitalized and that we have.

You are well capitalized. 400 plus 1,000,000.

Yeah. You know, some of that went out for an acquisition, and we spend money. I mean, biotechs, a capital in tons of industries. So

enjoy that process. The fundraising. I love it. I mean, I great

at I mean people, you know, people

complain about about being

a burden. I

I love fun. Reason could talk. He also a great story to tell. And that's gonna be fun. You're not talking about selling boring. You're talking about changing the world, and you're good at it. And you're building relationships of people that are relatable. It checks every box I would

imagine for you. Yeah. And just to be clear, I mean, that's exactly right. And I've developed some amazing relationships with our investor. Biggest investor. I consider. Ah, thought partner. Yeah. I actually believed I was early on a guy named Brian Coffin from Viking Global. You know, we were We were closing up a serie C round. Um, and he came in and said, Hey,

guys, if this is what we think it is. You're gonna need more capital and went a lot bigger and has been an incredible ah, incredible thought partner and kind of backer of management, not unconditionally, but really think helping thing through problems we've had, Ah, a couple examples of that. So I like going out and talking and telling our story. Ah, and in meeting new people and understanding what they're investing in, that's the fun part

for me. You talked a little bit about a culture fit, which is a slippery slope lately that's been a big hot topic, and recruiting is to like, not, say culture fit. And I've been saying culture for, like 20 plus years because people talk about how that can lead to bias. So instead they say, talk about attributes. So are you clear Chad on what attributes someone should possess in order to be successful at adaptive?

Yeah, I think there's some common attributes um, such a Z ability to debate openly, um, and communicate your ideas. And and then today I mean I don't This might be too cool ogle, but it's just be cool. Like, be joking around my CFO CTO nose like a can. We have part of our core value. Like, you know, the are Don't be a shit bag, right? Because that's that should just be be be kind, be cool, you know,

help people out were collaborator. They tried to give credit as opposed to taking credit. But we also want you culture toe be organic into flourish up a lot of programs that have we provide resource is for but that of force that I probably wouldn't participate in or I never would have thought off, such as gonna lunchtime lectures where people present the research papers of the day. We've, like, really so Terek nerdy game nights where people play, you know, these board games that, you know, we have a lot of super smart people on DWI. Do you know, we also do kind of the traditional happy hours and we have a gym.

Guys do a little ride

together, weigh 129 people

raise this

year. Uh, I don't know, something like 80 $80,000

stepping up you to track of $100,000.

Well, that's when that's when you were partnered with us and before dropped out.

I'm not sure that my butt hurts on the bikes. Right. You were. I prefer to write a spin bike. Scared how, lady? Now send

up. Send a proxy.

Maybe I'll go that maybe I'll do it this year. Um, but no, I think you've done an incredible job of that, and you've got a lot of stability. You don't have a lot

of turnover. No, we don't. And we provide. Um, you know, we do cool stuff. I mean, way of, like a standup arcade game room. We we we have a ah, adapt if it which are branded Jim with showers and locker rooms and trainers.

That's actually a super cool Jim.

Yeah. I mean, I love it. I try to work out there. It's embarrassing because we have boot camp with a trainer, and you know my brother, and I'll do it, and, uh, it's always packed. It would be like 20 people. And I'm definitely on the tail end of the the fitness craze. They're holding up the rear when we go

outside and do the stairs. I don't buy that. I've seen you run stairs. I can't do that. And so you said that you spent a lot of time on strategy people and money. But if you're organizing your day, do you feel like you're good at, um, time management? Jimmy hacks I can flirt

from? Well, my time management is a lot better now because I have an unbelievable assistant who really helps me and keeps me in line. One thing that we didn't touch on that you know, it kind of goes in kind of this time management and and one of the things that I guess one of my strengths says I have, ah, the ability to a process, a lot of information simultaneously and synthesize it and also compartmentalized. You know, I could move kind of quickly from one thing to the other and then come back to the other thing without having it take over. Show if I go from one meetings or an extra one call the next. I can really focus on that call and then kind of come back to and pick up what

I was working on. That's a skill that that's a total skull, but do you have any tools or hacks that you can share for things that help you stay on task and say efficient?

In reality, I'm kind of old school. Yes, I'm addicted to my iPhone. Um, and some of it is just hours. I am. You know, my wife probably hates me for this attribute, but I I sleep like through very, very little, um, and checking my phone all night long, but because you're stressed, Interesting. So some of it's because of stress. And some some of it's because of excitement, right? It's not

a good

stress. Yeah, we have a lot of good stresses, but just, you know, it's a roller coaster. So a lot of it has just been cause of stress, and there's also usually much a good stress. And then there's just some some really tough challenges that we had to deal with, which I would call are just ugly, bad stress. But But the reality is, I'm old school in my time management is that I have a person now that can manage my time for me. Um, and and

you know, that's huge. And so where have you failed? Not necessarily an adaptive just in general, cause we all learned from our failures.

Um, uh, So this goes back to, you know, every

don't say I didn't get picked on the softball team third grade. You can lay down for this part. Uh

uh. You think the biggest failure goes back to what we're talking about is with people, um, not spending enough time in the vetting process to bring people on. You recognize pretty early on if someone isn't the right fit for your culture, and it's no easier said than done.

So I know you're all heart to mean your head guy, but you're a softie at the core. You're a teddy bear, and I'm sure it's very difficult for youto let someone go, even though it's like slowed a higher, faster fire is the right approach that's harder

to dio. Yeah, that's that. I think that's that's easier said than done, but it's 100% true. Um, and I think I think you get better at it

over time. I think that is fired.

I think that is probably the biggest, biggest mistakes and one of things. We've always had this conviction like conviction to our core that we truly have a platform business. And there aren't that many true platforms, and we've known it. Ah, and we've stuck to our guns. Um, and we've had some battles, battles with board and investors and, like, really to say. Well, okay, you guys need to focus on one, and I do believe in focus, but I believe that for us,

the focus is on kind of core technology. And then re sourcing the right applications in the right way with the right people, right capital, the right priorities, ations. And then you can prosecute your multiple opportunities to get at the same time if done right. You have to be smart about that. And we've we've been, um We have had tremendous conviction around it. I don't think I've ever I think I've made mistakes or failed in my ability to communicate that up until up until recently. So I think that's I don't know if you want to call it failure, but certainly learning lesson.

And so how do you decompress?

Exercise? Aah! Hike. Yeah, I spent time with Ah, my lovely wife, Christie. Who?

I love town.

Yes, you know, and she's been really a amazing kind of rock for may. I mean, with this much craziness, uh, and kind of the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur in this business. I mean, She's always had the attitude of unconditional belief in me and that things will work out and that is, you know, such a blessing to have. It's super appreciated by me. I think it's under appreciated in the world how important that is to have that kind of because it is it really

this, really? That's a trap.

It's a partnership. A partnership is a partnership. And, you know, for me that and our home it doesn't work for everyone. But the kind of that distinction and delineation of roles and duties kind of really works

well. She's a master at it, too. She's a master CEO of the home. And so what would you say is fueling you right now in your personal life, outside of adaptive and outside of Christy and the

girls? Right now I'm reading this book called What School Should Be, and I just We're just gonna move my youngest daughter to a new school. That's representative. A lot of the kind of values and tenants and teachings of those books. So I've just been, you know, recently become more involved in education and how people learn, you know, teaching you how to think not what to think and an experiential education and things of this nature. Ah, so I know that

that's been kind of I would love to learn what you're learning. Because I had an experience like that in middle school at a private school, had experiential learning, and I learned best like that. And it's always a question of like, Are we giving our kids the best possible learning experience? Not just Are you gonna get into a great school, but are you do have a thirst for knowledge and, you know, interest in knowledge.

Yeah. And And I think if you remember back, you had a memory. But if you asked everyone kind What what were the most impactful learning experiences? They're not going to say. Well, studying, you know that we're in civil war or whatever. They're gonna talk about an experience they have, Haven't

they acted out the Civil War? You know, they say that that those

memories for me and running, so you know, and then separately, I'm on. I'm on a few different boards. I'm

not Lawrence, that you're on

right now. The only non probably amount of lifesigns. Washington, which is a trade association for biotech and medical fields within the state of Washington. And I just joined the executive board of that. Um, I'm on the board of a ah ah company called Via which eyes SAS based company for horizontal infrastructure inspection and verification. So roadways, bridges and tunnels instead

of going out with paper and pencils is the hottest thing you've ever said. But yes, Georges Georges also another dollar.

Yeah, so, I mean, that's the point is on the surface of this business like sexy. But it's super interesting to me understanding what SAS models are. You know how infrastructure I mean, if you look at the infrastructure, roadways, bridges and tunnels, I mean, this is a massive, massive industry. Um, and then, ah, cofounder and ah, chair of ah company in the,

um, endovascular repair surgery for, ah, abdominal aortic aneurysms. Triple A kind of I'm big on this concept of convergence. Warren, you're combining disciplines from different industries to move a field forward. And so this combines kind of software three d printing and kind of traditional CAT scans into creating a device that is much better to repair an aorta in surgery and unfortunately moved next to Dr Starnes, who's gonna the foremost Ah kee, opinion leader in the world in this space and again, another great discovery, which I just helped commercialize. Just to be clear, I spend a portion of my time outside. Adaptive is like 99

percent. You're working a 10 right now and you're doubling down on this as you should be. And, um, the world will be better place because of it. So everyone is grateful. I'm speaking on behalf of everyone. So now you're in a position where you got this 400 million in funding adapters got all sorts of momentum, and it could change your life financially. Could put you in a position where you're raising your kids in a different situation, or maybe slightly similar to how you were raised. But I find it challenging Thio, especially in today's day and age, give the kids grit that you have. How do you do

that? No, it's a great question, but some of that grit you're born with, right? And it doesn't mean some of that is just, you know, it's innate inherent. Um, and then some of that, you know, you have got to keep the checks and balances. And so you know, the kids need Thio, eh? I want my kids to work like, Well, I worked growing

up. I mean, you know how much more challenging now? I feel I am sure our parents said that to their parent, right? But I find it challenging. Mike is like, uh, everything seems like a big right to dio and it's

not really right. But, you know, we always mentions before, but like we had this thing in my house with privilege comes responsibility. And, you know, if you want to do certain things, well, at least contribute. Earn some money like I mowed lawns. I was a waiter at a pizza place. Not a very good one. You

know, a particular get Kentucky Fried chicken

he should have saved. The operative probably did. Yeah, but no, it's hard. I do think it's Do you think it's hard, but it's the values that they see like you got to see how your parents treat people to like, you know, if my kids ever used a position of privilege to treat anyone different, I would. There's certain things that I would go absolutely ballistic about, um and so you know they see their parents treat people right. See, it's like the end of the Yeah, hopefully is the double bottom line will help the world, and we'll also do really well financially. As I mentioned,

I'm a capitalist. I want to make money. I want to make my investors money. But at the end of day, well, they also seem me working pretty hard.

And you're doing a great job for the people who are listening. They're incredible kids, but it's hard to keep them on that path and to keep them

driven. Absolutely. I mean, you know, again, I think a lot of that, Dr um for kids is, you know, self self motivation. Obviously, they need the right kind of too diligent in watering and care. But at the end of the day, you know, kids have a certain and eight abilities and scents and Dr that, you know, some have it, and some don't,

you know, and you can nurture it. But I don't think I don't think you're gonna give a kid drive change. Yeah, I don't think you're changing, so

Yeah. No, it's absolutely true. And so to final questions, if you had a free Saturday to yourself with no obligations for work or family. How would you personally spend your time?

First of all, you mentioned what fuels me earlier and I said people. So, yes, sometimes I like to decompress and have some alone time, but it doesn't even accept me to have a full

free day alone. But I, like ours were like off the rest of

us look like two hours into it out after I worked out or hike their ski, which I'd love to do, would be like calling now called No calling people to be like You want to ski with me or hike with me like it doesn't excite

me Thankful so I don't know what I mean by yourself literally. I just mean it's ah, it's an open canvas to create your day You Are you in a city?

Are you at a beach outside? Um, you know, and I guess I like I have great days walking around New York City. But when I think of kind of the times of unhappiness, happiest, it's somewhere when I'm like a super long hike. An amazing ski day. Um, something of that nature that that's

something physical and something outside

something physical in something outside. For sure

I like that. And so, um, the final thing is, what is the legacy, Chad, that you hope to leave your family and the planet?

Yes, but first and foremost, I hope people who can say I was a great husband, father and friend. Um And then secondly ah, that we truly had an impact on the world from what was created from, you know, ah, few people that we grew into something that had such a profound impact on how patients are managed and how drugs were discovered. That would be really, really

cool. That would be incredible. Um, I'm so grateful that you did this and I might make you do it again. This is super fun. And, um hey, thank you for listening to the wet fuels you podcast. Be sure to subscribe. Rate and review on iTunes. Google podcasts are Spotify and follow us on social media To keep up with the latest news and episodes, you can also contact us at podcast at fuel talent dot com to provide feedback, ask questions and share topics or guests you would like us to cover in the future. We hope you feel inspired by our guests and that we have helped fuel your day. Join us next time for another episode of what fuels you.