David A. Ricks

And do you think that there's direct communication with these people to try to stop things? Or do you think there's an understanding that there's an incentive to do things that are beneficial for the industry because you're going to be leaving and entering into the private sector as soon as you get out of public office?

One of my first couple months in D.C., I was invited to a dinner with Dave Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly.

Um, he's in D.C. every week.

He's in D.C. all the time.

These CEOs are having dinner all the time with the mid-level White House staffers, all the time.

And they're just figuring out who's going to play ball.

Dave Ricks, the CEO of the largest pharmaceutical company, is in D.C. all the time having dinner with mid-level staffers.

You go to the Ned Club in D.C., the special club there.

Lilly had a genuinely collegial culture and still does.

But Dave Ricks, when he became CEO, he wanted to preserve that community and that feel while also giving the company a sharper edge to more effectively compete and improve innovate.

And the danger was that harmony could start suppressing productive tension, right? Because a culture like that could become inertia when behaviors you cherish begin protecting you from the behaviors you need, which are around challenging one another and having lively debate.

So that was what Dave was facing when he came into that role.

Yes, absolutely.

And that's basically what CEO David Ricks said.

So Lilly's actually raised their guidance by $10 billion since the beginning of this year.

But Ricks, you know, he kind of said that they're really in unprecedented territory right now.

That's going to be something to look out for this week.

Another piece, Elon Musk, and I know I mentioned them earlier, but he was quote tweeting Dave Rick, CEO of Eli Lilly, and he's like, Eli Lilly has some banger drugs coming out because of Dave Ricks' Confidence, who was calling out Venant Khosla.

I believe it's Sequoia? No, it's Khosla Ventures.

Yeah, sorry.

If I try to describe to people the importance of Toon Lab, the importance of the data center that they did for themselves, the setting up a location outside Stanford, out in Silicon Valley, to basically work with NVIDIA.

When you see NVIDIA and the CEO, Dave Ricks, on stage together and you listen, I mean, I spent a lot of time to just hear the plan, make sure that this was smart.

But if you have all that cash, I have believed for the last three years that unfinished IP... was incredibly valuable.

And what I mean by that is when a biotech company goes public, which was a massive part of, I mean, the COVID years and even before that, when they would go public, you have to have science behind that to raise the money that was necessary.

Now, interestingly, Vinod Khosla commented on that, on top of that, and he said, agree at 100%, but unlikely it will come from the big biotech companies.

And then Dave Ricks, the CEO of Lilly said, I'll take that bet.

And then Vanita Agarwala from A16Z said, I don't know, I wouldn't count big biotech out.

So anyway, the dialogue is reaching.

The company beating estimates and raising revenue guidance for the year as it continues to benefit from demand for its GLP-1 drugs.

Here's what CEO Dave Ricks had to say.

Today, globally, I guess we'd estimate maybe 3% of eligible patients access obesity care.

In the U.S., maybe 10%.