Nello Mainolfi, Founder, President & CEO, Kymera: Pioneering Targeted Protein Degradation

Lots of questions, particularly around, let's say, culture and team building.

As you think about going from when you were working with Atlas, effectively a science project, to now creating a company, to now having a significant R&D organization, how has that informed how you think about culture and the types of people that you hire as you've made that shift from early stage now to having multiple programs in the clinic?

This is like the most important aspect of my job, I think, and actually is the one I spend probably more time on and the one I'm most paranoid about, which is I think the success of biotech companies have nothing to do with how smart people are, but have all to do with the culture that they build in their companies, because there is to smart people everywhere, especially in this region of the world.

And so you have to build a differentiated culture to do things that others are not doing.

And my philosophy is, as a CEO, you have to let people believe that they can do things that have never been done before.

to do things that have never been done before.

That is actually the biggest switch.

And in fact, we've done so many things at Chimera that have never been done before by people that have never done that before.

And I have so many people tell me, you know, I've been in big companies, small companies, but I've never done what we're doing here.

And the secret is the culture that you build in the company.

And my mission is that while the culture will evolve and has evolved, The core things will never change, and I always say that if they change, I fail, then I should leave.

The things that should never change is that you need to be able to be transparent, you need to be able to be always data-driven, you need to be able to give and receive feedback, you need to be able to be challenging each other, and that the success of the company is put above the individual success.

That is like in a nutshell, some of the things that for me are non-negotiable.

So as you continue to build and you hire people, it's not a natural thing to go there, especially as you grow and you hire people from larger organization.

But we make it very clear.

Our behaviors are consistent.

And I, when I see different behavior, I call it up, whether it's in a one-on-one or in a big meetings.

These companies are not for everybody.

So you have to kind of select the right phenotype.

to continue to do the special things that you want to do.

And in those situations, when you do have to call it out in whatever setting, have you found that most folks are able to course correct or that fundamentally it's not going to work out?

I'm a big believer that if you're passionate about discovering and developing drugs and you have a curious approach to science, you can do anything.

I think people that are not able to make sometimes their switch is more people that have lost the curiosity.

And then they're just trying to do a job.

And that's, you know, I think it's easily still an 80-20, 90-10.