SirT6

Kill, marry, fuck, do business with: Mark, Kevin, Daymond, Robert?

Awesome!

In my opinion Robert should come out of the closet.

He did kill it on Dancing with the Stars...

I love the irreverence you seem to approach life with. Are you hiring?

Agree 100%. I have a PhD and an MBA. My PhD is a thousand times the more valuable degree.

That said, an MBA is a nice accessory degree and has certainly helped me both financially and intellectually. My advice for people considering an MBA: don't let it interfere with getting your PhD (there are way more MBAs out there than PhDs), don't pay for it yourself (I got mine on a scholarship, many companies offer to pay for it for you, some schools have joint MBA/PhD programs, and finally, have a clear vision for why you want an MBA (I used mine to get my foot in the door with some venture capital groups).

Hi, and thanks for the AMA! A few questions:

• A belief I encounter a lot is that medications are just band aid approaches to when it comes to obesity and heart disease, how do you feel about the idea that money would be better spent in nutrition and physical fitness programs to create long term health benefits as opposed to being reliant on medication?

• There is a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry in trying to target fatty liver diseases. Is there one (or more) approach that looks especially promising to you?

• Indira: what is your favorite body weight workout that you can do just about anywhere? For me, I love burpees as a way to get a bit of exercise in when I’m traveling or unable to make it to the gym.

Thanks!

On paper it might sound nice to be “patient owned”. But the more I think about it, the more dubious I am of the concept. A couple of concerns:

• Additional economic stress: patients are already facing financial stress (cost of meds, missed work etc.). Asking them to finance expensive and risky clinical trials seems like a big ask. Especially if the average patient doesn’t have any experience in drug development, trial design or interacting worth regulatory agencies. Most drugs fail in clinical trials. It almost seems unkind to prey upon current patients to be investors.

• Focus: patients already have a lot of things going on. Asking a company to be owned (and run? Not sure how your model fully works) by patients is a big ask.

• Investment liquidity: how liquid are these investments? Can investments be transferred to non-patients?

Or is this really more of a charity, where donations find development of a drug that you hope to distribute cheaply (if approved)?

Thanks!