What’s the Buzz?! The Importance of Community to Startups in the Life Sciences

Michelle Ottey, PhD, Managing Director, CIC Labs + Innovation Campus Philadelphia, and Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz Networks, sat down to buzz about the importance of community to startups and early growth stage companies as well as the City of Brotherly Love.

December 7, 2023

BioBuzz has been connecting the life science workforce since 2009. We’ve built an expansive community in the Mid-Atlantic with a national readership that spans from Massachusettes to Florida, and New York to California. For our next chapter, we’re building a proprietary talent logistics model to help employers source and hire life science talent. Learn more.

Layering on top of our community of tens of thousands of life science professionals and employers, BioBuzz is looking to disrupt the $3.8 US life sciences staffing market with the Talent Lab.

Using the latest technologies, BioBuzz wants to solve today’s greatest challenges in hiring and career development and:

• Search, match, and hire talent on demand (full-time, contract, project & gig, consulting, and fractional executives).
• Close the skills/opportunity gap and diversify the talent pool.
• Strike an equilibrium between hiring supply and demand.
• Build community intelligence in and around biohubs, building a stronger regional ecosystem.

Michelle Ottey, Managing Director, CIC Labs + Innovation Campus Philadelphia, and Chris Frew, CEO, BioBuzz Networks, dig in more. Watch the video below to catch up on their conversation or keep scrolling for the full transcript.

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Chris: Good morning, everybody. And if you’re in Philadelphia, happy first snow day is Michelle was just sharing with me. Chris Frew, founder of BioBuzz. I’m really excited today to start the day off with Michelle Ottey, who is the managing director for CIC Philadelphia. Welcome.

Michelle: Thank you. That’s me. Michelle Ottey, Managing Director here at CIC Labs and Innovation Campus in Philly. I’ve been here for two years now, coming up on my anniversary in January.

Chris: Oh, that’s exciting. Do you have a traditional anniversary gift or anything you do to celebrate employees anniversaries or no?

Michelle: No, no, we usually acknowledge it and just sort of like, you know, celebrate them being here and it’s, it’s just a nice acknowledgment of the time.

Chris: There’s a celebration going on up there at CIC I feel like almost every week.

Michelle: Yeah, yeah, we’ll just repurpose something.

Chris: Well, it’s kind of, part of what we’re here to talk with you about today is the importance of community. Right? So especially, in your world, it’s the importance of community and startups for entrepreneurs in the life science ecosystem.

I’ve always believed celebrating, like the success and celebrating, you know, the people around you, especially for startups, because it’s not easy, is an important part of building community. So I guess that’s something I’ve always recognized that you guys do really well up there. I’m looking forward to really diving into all that with you.

Before we jump into that maybe let’s just tell everybody a little bit about you. So we start with a little like personal Michelle, here’s who I am world. And then we can start off with that and then kind of get into more of the community talk.

Michelle: Yeah, it actually all ties in very organically. So, great, let’s do that.

It’s so funny whenever I have to do these type of things or do questionnaires or anything, I always pester my wife to help me for the adjectives that you would describe your personality or whatever. And, you know, it’s always so interesting to think about how other people perceive you versus how you perceive yourself.

And one of the things yesterday that I was going through were like three adjectives to describe your personality. And I was like, well, silly because I’m silly. And authentic, you know, I definitely value authenticity both in myself and in other people.

But then we were coming off and she’s naming things like “believes in fairies,” “loves unicorns.” I was like no, no, we have to think about it from a professional perspective. I love science.

You know, science. Fairies.

Chris: Like magic, but real. Right?

Michelle: Science is magic. That’s real. That Bill Nye always used to say that. Yeah. But that sort of ties into my journey. I’ve always been somebody that loved science from a very early age.

My mom was a nurse and I was the kid that was like playing school with her actual microbiology textbook. Like I just loved science. So I studied science. When I went to college, I went to Rosemont College out here on the main line and outside of Philly. And then didn’t know what I wanted to do. So, I went to grad school to get a doctorate in genetics because that’s what one does when you don’t know what you want to do.

Right? But I knew that I loved science. Genetics. I loved science. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I thought about med school. I thought about teaching all of those things. Never really imagined myself doing research, but that was the sort of traditional path that the people that were advising me were used to.

After seven long years, I finished my doctorate at Jefferson, and then went on to do a postdoc at UPenn. When I was in grad school, I was working on the fit tumor suppressor gene, which is aberrant in a lot of cancers. Mostly in lung cancers. And basically my thesis was proving everything it didn’t do; everything it wasn’t involved in. So no great discoveries there.

And then when I went to Penn to do my postdoc, I was working on MOB1 dbf2 cancer pathways. Again, cell biology, genetics. I was looking at yeast. I was looking at kinetic cores and spindle proteins. So I spent a lot of time in a dark room taking pictures of budding yeast. Glamorous, I know.

Chris: A lot different than today.

Michelle: Yeah, was not really feeling it. And, you know, basically started thinking like, well, what else could I do?

I was first gen to college in my family. I didn’t have people in my life that had sort of gone through this pathway. And so I’m going to say I was graciously stumbling along, looking for opportunities.

Fairfax Cryobank had opened a location here in Philadelphia and the person they had hired to lead it was leaving. And so I sort of talked myself into that job. They weren’t looking for somebody with my background or that level of education, but it was something interesting and different.

Fairfax is one of the largest sperm banks, cryobanks in the country.

So not what I studied, but everything that I had studied was very transferable. So they brought me in, I started running the Philadelphia site and I stayed with Fairfax for 15 years.

I loved it. It was really cool work to do both with cryopreservation, fertility preservation.

I did a lot of community building where I would go out and do family building seminars for different populations here in Philly. I did a lot of LGBTQIA family building. I did a trans health conference.

Over time I got the high complexity clinical lab director certification so that I could be the lab director and did that for a couple of years, was the director of operations. And it was really a very fulfilling job that allowed me to use my science background, but also reach out into the community to try to build those relationships and help people along in their journeys.

And then CIC came to me. They had established themselves here in Philadelphia, we are a coworking, private office, shared lab, and private lab facility here in Philly.

They wanted to bring somebody in who had a lot of lab experience. I had because we were at the cryobank, we were at one point clea certified. I had that experience. I’ve worked at the FDA, I had a lot of compliance and operations. So just brought in all of that experience to the community.

I started in January of 2021. Fun to transition jobs in the middle of a pandemic, you know,

Chris: Yeah, coworking space in the middle of the pandemic, that’s great.

Michelle: Yeah, good times. Meeting everyone with masks on and nobody wants to be in person, you know? So it’s been an interesting two years, but it’s allowed me to have a bit of a broader outreach within the Philadelphia community, and I was able to bring a lot of my community-building experience into the facility here. And so that’s how I got here.

Chris: I love it. I mean, I’m a recruiter by training or by career or however you want to call that. And I have a 10-year-old who’s into Marvel. So I love everyone’s origin story, like where you got your super powers from, like, playing with your mom’s microbook.

The origin story is so fascinating to me. Where that spark comes from. Yeah. Now your journey starts to mold your education with your personality, right? And, that’s kind of, you know, somehow it always happens for people sometimes right away, sometimes in 20 years. I love hearing, you know, that journey take place.

So, it sounds like at the Cryobank, it kind of was that opportunity where it blended the things that you’re really passionate about for the first time, like the science and the magic behind science and the magic being the possibility that science can do for people.

Michelle: Absolutely. And, you know, the bench work that I did in grad school and in postdoc, it’s so fascinating and interesting, but it just wasn’t the right fit for my personality and I have so much admiration for people who can really dedicate themselves to that. It’s like, you know, there’s a resilience that you have to have to be successful in bench work.

Also because you have to fail a lot, right? Like you just keep going and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is a pinprick. Whereas at the Cryobank, like I was doing something today and then in a year, somebody got a baby. There’s much more light at the end of the tunnel, you know?

So it was a learning experience and you’re totally right. It allowed me to sort of talk to non-scientists. and non-physicians about the science of cryopregnation and yeah, it was, like the perfect opportunity and blend.

Chris: And then it brought you here to CIC. So you know, one of the things we’re here to talk about today is really the importance of community.

And, you know, as you’ve got to know us, you know BioBuzz started as a platform built on community. We’ve been community led and we’re even leaning more into that in the new year; we’ve always felt how important, especially in this industry, which is capital intensive, which takes years to develop and which requires a lot of different specialists.

I compare it unfairly to like creating a candy crush app, right?

You can do that in a hackathon over the weekend and have a company up and running. In our industry, you know, what you mentioned, the determination and the diligence and the staying power, like those things, that’s why you need a village.

Yeah, especially at the startup phase where you are failing a lot and there’s so many unknowns.

So talk to me about CIC. You mentioned there’s shared labs, you can have your individual labs, coworking, you do a ton of events. You do a lot to foster and also bring people outside in to the CIC community. Tell me a little bit about what community means at CIC and why it’s an important part of your model.

Michelle: Yeah, you know, CIC, we exist in several different markets. Founded in Cambridge in Kendall Square, we have two buildings there, one in Boston. We’re here in Philly. We’re in St. Louis, Providence, Tokyo, Warsaw, Rotterdam.

And in each of these locations, it really is like a perfect storm, right? You want to have the intellect, the workforce, the capital, the innovation, the ideas, You really need all of those things to be part of a really robust ecosystem. So here in Philly, we are right in the middle of all the meds and eds; we’ve got all of the med schools, all of the institutions, universities around us, and there’s a ton of cell and gene therapy research happening here.

So that lends to a lot of spin-outs from the universities, a lot of startups and scale-ups. We basically see ourselves as sort of shepherds in that process, right? We want to help the people who have commercializable ideas come from the university, come from wherever they are right now, establish themselves in a space, and give them what they need.

We want to remove obstacles, remove barriers so that they have what they need to then take things to the next level to be able to scale up and build their company. And by being here, they’re sort of coming in and just sort of plugging themselves into a pre-built community. A lot of times startups can underestimate the importance of community and company culture.

You know, when it’s just work, it’s hard because there’s a lack of support. There’s a lack of community. There’s a lack of feeling like you’re part of something bigger. Obviously not in all startups. Some startups do this beautifully. But you know, coming in, sometimes people say with CIC, you come for the space and stay for the culture.

And I sort of love that because yes, you’re coming for this beautiful, intentional, thoughtfully designed space and these great facilities and incredible access to equipment, but what you’re getting is so much more. You have all that access. You can literally come in with a cell line, go to the Thermo Fisher supply center, get your media, go into the shared tissue culture room, and start splitting your cells to multiply them.

And that can be day one. You know, you don’t need to come in with anything else because we’ve got it all for you. But then at the end of the day or, at the beginning of the day, you know, it’s nice because we have a wake up with CIC and you’re not just by yourself. You’ve got your company, but then you’ve got others around you.

And when you’re a startup, maybe you’re two people, maybe you’re one person. And it’s nice to have that built-in support system and people who are going through a similar journey that you’re going through. And so there’s that shared experience and camaraderie that develops. And so we do everything from things like Wake Up with CIC, come have breakfast, network, chat, be casual. Lunch on the terrace when it’s not snowing or, um, a happy hour, social things like that.

Or we do more professional development type programming. Yesterday, for example, we had a journal club. That was led by our assistant director of lab ops. He chose an article very relevant to many of our companies about car T cells and led a journal club over lunch with a bunch of the client companies.

And it was just an opportunity for them to get out of the lab, get out of the office, socialize a little bit. Talk science with other scientists, but more social way. So things like that.

Or every Thursday night we partner with the Science Center to assist with Venture Cafe. This Thursday is the 5th anniversary and they’re celebrating, you know, 5 years of innovative networking community events and programming. And that’s something where we’ll be a part of that program. It’s going to be in the third floor cafe space here at CIC. And it’s again, another opportunity to connect outside of yourself, outside of your company.

Chris: Yeah. You mentioned a lot of times startups underestimate the power of that community.

Michelle: I think it’s because as a startup you get so focused on like, the problems are hard and you’re so focused. But what I’ve heard is they become easier when you realize everyone else is going through them as well. And they become easier when you forget sometimes when you’re sitting there having a coffee in the shared space. And, you know, if you’re a biologist or molecular biologist and you start talking to a biochemist and suddenly you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know that was happening.” Then boom, you got an idea that kind of solves the problem. But those intentional collisions that happen, there’s, you know, going back to magic.

Chris: There’s a lot of magic in that, that helps. You know, one of my mentors says success at a startup is a game of inches. It’s like a bunch of little things along the way. And when you have the community around you, sometimes it’s easier to get through those little milestones. Yeah, we’re all about serendipity here.

Michelle: Love that idea. Like those moments of collision. And I always talk about this anecdote. Like I had just started and I didn’t realize the power of the community at that time. Like I was excited about it. But my office when I first started was right off the sixth floor kitchen and anybody who’s been in our space knows that the sixth floor kitchen is like the most beautiful.

Great views of the city, wonderful seating, and I went out to get a coffee and I saw somebody from one of the labs sitting there and she was really frustrated, you know, just sort of eating her lunch and somebody from another lab came out. And they obviously had known each other, they worked next door to each other for a couple of months at that point. She’s like, “what’s going on?”

You know, “what’s happening?” And she was having trouble. She could not get this to work. Like, it just ran multiple times. The controls weren’t working. Something was off and they sat and they were troubleshooting this assay together. And like, that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. You know, like, eventually, I do believe she would have figured it out.

But that conversation led to her then successfully running that PCR the next day and being able to move her project forward. You know, she got the results that she needed and that sort of serendipitous conversation allowed her to do that. Much more quickly than if she were sitting on her own somewhere eating lunch, not having that conversation.

So I do think there’s real value in that, but there’s also that camaraderie and that feeling of not being alone that really helps and can motivate people. And look, I’m a scientist by training. I’m going to say this. We are a quirky introverted bunch of people. Usually there are some people that are very extroverted, very into the like chatting and socializing.

But generally not so much. We’re very thoughtful about our programming for the scientists cause we know how to get them out of the lab, but having this built-in structure helps to foster that and helps to get people out of the lab to socialize a little bit more.

Chris: Yeah, that’s a great point.

It’s, you know, the intentionality of it all. From the design and from the spaces that are created, you can really tell that CIC from the business perspective is in the business of creating those collisions and creating purposeful collisions.

Even like you said, the resources that you provide like the vending machines.

I know you’ve got some different vendors that support your companies, but they all know, as a vendor, they all know and understand they’re startup and supporting startups is different than supporting Spark Therapeutics down the street, right?

It’s a different type of service. And I think as a startup too, I bet that brings a level of comfort knowing that they’re negotiating vendor contracts or that that saves time. I mean, so it’s not just the intentional collisions with the people around you, but all the different elements that you need to kind of get your idea moving forward.

I feel like, again, you all are very intentional about making sure those all kind of come together.

Michelle: Yeah, I think that plays into the idea of us trying to remove barriers and help like set up for success. The sponsor relationships that we have are really important, Thermo Fisher, Genovics, Millipore, all of them.

We have our little sponsor wall where we have the plaques up and all of our sponsors, including BioBuzz, get to come in and do office hours and set themselves up in one of our spaces so that there are moments where you can make those connections that are going to help your business and it’s been mutually beneficial for the sponsor companies and CIC and the client companies because, you know, the relationships and discounts and equipment knowledge that we have set up here, that travels, even when our clients graduate.

And that’s our goal, right? We want them to scale up with us and then outgrow us. Go, you know, build your own space in the ecosystem and keep Philly growing and being great.

When the companies do that, they’re taking that relationship with the sponsor companies with them. And oftentimes they’re purchasing the equipment that they used here at CIC, right? Because we’re also a superstitious bunch. If that machine worked for me, I’m gonna stick with that machine.

And so there is that very intentional, we are constantly evaluating the needs of our startups because we want to make sure that we have the equipment that they need, the supplies and the supply center that they need. And it’s actually another fun way to build that community of having these sponsor office hours, of having you all come in, sit in the kitchen, or be in one of the spaces, having donuts or something, because you always have to have some kind of treat or giveaway.

And building that community. You all at BioBuzz, you featured Manny from one of our client companies, Carisma and his journey with his startup, Pristinology, which he’s an incredible community member. So outgoing, so authentic, such a great ambassador for the industry and for Philadelphia and for CIC.

It was so great to see him recognized in his journey and celebrated. We try to do that as well. We have a monthly newsletter where we celebrate the anniversaries of our client companies where we recognize somebody gets an approval or moves into a clinical trial. We’re celebrating that.

So the newsletter in our portal and different things that we have set up are other ways that we want to support the community and make it feel more like a community than just you’re in the space, right?

Chris: Yeah, so I traveled around a lot of different incubators and accelerators and research parks and one of the things that I’ve have come to start saying and believing is really true is there’s a difference between tenants and a community.

Yeah. I’ll go somewhere and I won’t name names, but I’ll go somewhere and they’re like, “Oh yeah, we have a community here of so many companies,” which nobody’s walking around, the central space isn’t really functional, no events are planned for the next week or two.

And, you know, I was wondering, well, you have tenants, but not a community. And I think there’s a big difference, especially for the startup phase. When you think about a community of startups versus a building that hosts, that houses startups.

Michelle: Yeah. Well, and you know, I’m so lucky.

I have a great Assistant Director of Programs and Partnerships, Hope Foy and Drea Chunko. The two of them do such a beautiful job sort of curating the programming for our community. And It’s not just the social aspect that they’re looking at. They’re really assessing the needs.

You know, that last year we had, or this year sorry, we had some real interest from some of the startups in like the basics of human resources. Like, when do I need a human resource consultant or when do I need to hire for that? And so they planned a wonderful program on that and also then moved on to the next thing of like bookkeeping and different source type educational programs to sort of meet the needs of the startup community.

And that also helps them to feel supported. Not that we’re just giving them space and social programming, but we’re actually giving them opportunities to learn new skills or build on skills that are necessary to be successful. You can do all of the proof of concept work you want in the lab and have a great product.

If you don’t know how to market that, or you don’t know how to pitch that, you’re not going to get anywhere. I know we’re focused on the life sciences because that’s the majority of our clients here and, well, BioBuzz is focused on, but we are industry agnostic, so we have everything from cosmetics companies to lawyers to nonprofits in our space and Hope and Drea do a really good job with Sarajane Blair, their director, to really curate programs that are applicable across industries as well.

Chris: Yeah, I do agree with you. I think that’s so important. I mean, it can’t be all just happy hours and, you know, ping pong, right? That’s not how you create culture, right? It’s got to be relevant to your community. And, you know, I’ve studied community management for a long time, and the best community managers listen, and they watch, and they hear, and the programming kind of follows the needs of their constituents.

So I’m curious also if we could continue to grow this concept beyond CIC a little bit, because CIC is part of a greater Philadelphia community, I would say I think Philadelphia is doing a really good job of building community in general. And tell me a little bit about how you see the work that you do that plays into the bigger picture of what’s happening in Philadelphia right now.

Michelle: Yeah, I think the literal way that we plug into it is by being a part of the pipeline, right? Like people are feeding into our space and our community here at CIC and then we’re feeding into the greater ecosystem. And so there’s a lot of cross-referring happening and a lot of relationship building.

We are partnered with Wexford Science & Technology and the Science Center very closely since, I mean, we all share the building. But we’re also plugged in with Pennovation and BioLabs and B+Labs and the Chamber of Commerce and Select Philadelphia and Visit Philadelphia and, you know, all of these organizations.

We also go to a lot of the meetings that are happening in and around the region with Life Sciences PA, Life Science Cares; having those relationships and building them within the community is really important for the staff here because not just. Not just for the business part of it for filling the space and supporting the businesses, but also just to really know what’s going on within the city.

A good example right now is there’s a really important conversation happening about workforce development, because in order to be a really robust ecosystem, you have to not just have jobs for the people with masters and PhDs, you have to have for everyone. And so workforce development is incredibly important right now in Philadelphia because, especially with Spark building their manufacturing facility right down the street, there are going to be a lot of jobs available for individuals who, you know, don’t have to have a master’s or PhD to contribute to a really significant and life-changing product.

There’s a great conversation led by Rebecca Grant at the city in the commercialization office about workforce development. And there’s going to be the fourth in a series of meetings held down at Quorum here, which is part of the Science Senter space where she has gathered all of the important players in workforce development, people from research, Wistar, and different organizations in the city as well as council persons who are invested in this because they recognize that in order for us to be successful, we have to invest in this.

Those are the type of conversations that may not have a yield immediately but are going to lead to really important decisions and collaborations that are going to help support the ecosystem. So being a part of that, being a part of those conversations, and potentially being a part of that system of education is really important.

Chris: Yeah, that’s great. I’m always impressed how, you know, BioLabs and you all and Pennovation, like there’s, the cooperation, I would call it. Some other markets that I’ve been to that cooperation is a lot more you know, but similarly to a lot of the companies in the area that I’ve met, there is a lot of community and there is a sense of something greater, which I also think is an important part of community; being part of something that’s a little bit greater.

I just want to kind of mention that there is this, you know, when you do plug into the greater Philadelphia community or the CIC community, it’s kind of like a portal. You join CIC and you’re joining a portal to something even bigger.

Michelle: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I’m gonna use that.

Chris: There might not be unicorns on the other side of that portal, unfortunately. Sorry, Michelle.

Michelle: No, Chris, there are always unicorns.

Chris: My daughter thinks the same thing. It’s funny, every morning when she goes to school, she gives me some of her magic for the day. So she’s kind of like you, she lives around this idea of magic and it’s real. I tell her every day how much it helps me.

Michelle: Well, there’s a line in the Little Princess movie that magic has to be believed to be real. And so I think your daughter’s right. And I think that she deserves a little unicorn.

Chris: I love it. I love it. Well, I believe it. And I believe there’s some magic happening up at CIC thanks to the work of you and your team. Every time I come, I really see it, see it in the companies that I meet and the people that I meet. Kudos to you all for the job you’re doing. And I see it rolling out into the community

The workforce development. I’m so glad you mentioned that. It’s such an important part. You know, community again is made up of everybody. And if everybody isn’t taken care of in the community, then it’s not truly, you know, fostered.

And I know one of the big things we’re rolling out in the new year is a new product. We’re calling the Talent Lab and, workforce development is going to be a big part of it.

You know, we’re building a talent marketplace, just kind of like an inverse of a job board where we emphasize people in talent and create profiles and better connect them with employers and better connect them with training programs. And our whole vision is we want to be the roads and pipes for talent to find their way to the right job that kind of meets their passion.

And so, again, I know Philly was part of the Tech Hub initiatives. Workforce development is a big part of that. So we’re excited to marry our media events and kind of storytelling community with now the ability to kind of directly connect people with the next step in their career.

Michelle: That’s really exciting. I love that vision and I’m already thinking about ways that I can partner with you on that.

Chris: Wonderful. We’re excited. We’re doing focus groups now. You know Cat’s got me, you know, keeps moving me forward. I’ll tell you, I’ve got to love her, she knows how to do that. And it’s great.

And again, it goes back to team. We’ve got a great team at BioBuzz that does all really believe in our mission and community. Cat’s such a big part of that. Kind of like you at CIC, you need somebody that’s going to be driving things forward.

Yeah. Making the magic happen. We all have those people that are like the motivated, you know, idea generators.

Michelle: I love it. I love that.

Chris: Well, this was really an exciting conversation, Michelle. Thank you for taking your morning here to chat with me. Hopefully the snow continues to come down and give you just an awesome day in the city there.

We’ll continue to cover the work you’re doing as always. Keep up the good work and keep the magic happen for those startups because they’re creating jobs and saving lives. And all have to start somewhere.

Michelle: That’s right. Thank you so much, Chris. This was fun.

Chris: Wonderful. Thanks, Michelle. Well, enjoy the rest of your day and we will definitely see each other soon.