🧬 Betting on Women's Health | Sabrina Johnson (1/4)

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"A calculated risk is not the same as being irresponsible or cutting corners."

In this episode, Jon Chee sits down with Sabrina Johnson, President and CEO of Daré Bioscience, a Nasdaq-listed biopharma advancing women's reproductive health. Daré's team of 25 executes the groomed trail approach — matching therapeutic gaps to FDA-approved actives — with a non-hormonal contraceptive in pivotal Phase 3 and $75M+ in non-dilutive funding from the Gates Foundation, NIH, and ARPA-H.

Key Topics Covered:

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Find our guest, Sabrina Johnson at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrina-johnson-27799829/ 

Website: https://darebioscience.com/ 

Find our host, Jon Chee, at these links:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee/ 

Learn more about Excedr:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/ 

Website: https://www.excedr.com 

Intro & Outro Songs Created by OkKyojin, Owned by Excedr:

Website: https://flow.page/kyojin 

Resources & Articles:

Non-Dilutive Capital for Biotech Startups: https://www.excedr.com/blog/the-benefits-of-non-dilutive-capital 

Marketing & Sales for Biotech Startups: https://www.excedr.com/blog/marketing-sales-strategies-for-biotechs 

Funding Research on Women's Health: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-024-00253-7 

History of Monoclonal Antibody Development: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4284445 

Daré Bioscience Pipeline: https://darebioscience.com/pipeline 

Companies, Universities, & People Mentioned:

Daré Bioscience: https://darebioscience.com 

Baxter Healthcare: https://www.baxter.com 

Clonetics / Lonza Bioscience: https://bioscience.lonza.com 

Tulane University: https://tulane.edu 

University College London: https://www.ucl.ac.uk 

Thunderbird School of Global Management: https://thunderbird.asu.edu 

Scott Cowen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Cowen 

Malcolm Lilly: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biochemical-engineering 

Peter Dunnill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dunnill 

 

00:00 Intro

06:29 Growing Up Between Rome and Phoenix

07:45 Entrepreneurship Beyond the Startup: Lessons from Her Parents

09:43 The Science Fiction Pitch That Changed Everything

12:05 Finding Tulane at a College Fair

14:33 New Orleans as a Classroom: Cross-Disciplinary Thinking

15:41 At the Dawn of Biologics: Junior Year Abroad at UCL

19:20 Landing the Dream Job at Baxter — and Discovering the Bench Wasn't for Her

24:55 Lunch Table Informational Interviews and the Case for an MBA

31:26 Everyone Said Start in Sales — But Not That Kind

34:42 Worst Rep in the Building: Six Months at Clonetics

37:16 The Authenticity Breakthrough

39:05 Outro

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.