"Recognize your weaknesses, build with strengths."
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine, where we bring you exclusive interviews with remarkable individuals who are making a significant impact in their respective fields. In this edition, we are thrilled to introduce you to Ryan Davies, a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of CancerVAX, a pioneering biotech company dedicated to revolutionizing cancer treatment.
In our candid conversation with Ryan Davies, he takes us on a journey through his entrepreneurial experiences and his unwavering commitment to finding innovative solutions to one of the most pressing challenges in healthcare today: cancer. With a track record of building and selling successful companies, Ryan’s entrepreneurial spirit has led him to the forefront of the battle against this devastating disease.
At CancerVAX, Ryan and his team are working tirelessly to develop groundbreaking treatments, including a program aimed at combating Ewing sarcoma, a childhood cancer with alarmingly high mortality rates. Additionally, they are working on a Universal Cancer Vaccine that has the potential to transform the way we approach cancer therapy, offering a less invasive alternative to traditional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.
Join us as we explore Ryan Davies’ inspiring journey, the incredible work being done at CancerVAX, and his insights into the future of cancer treatment. This interview is a testament to the power of determination and innovation in the fight against cancer.
Check out more interviews with entrepreneurs here.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Ryan Davies: Thank you for having me, it’s great to be here with you. A little about me and a little about my company. I guess it’s safe to say that I’m a serial entrepreneur. I started my first company a couple of years after college. It was scary, exhilarating, tested my intellectual capacities, was a ton of work, but we ended up raising a bunch of venture capital and eventually sold the company.
I was in my mid-twenties and felt on top of the world. I thought to myself, wow, this is easy. I think I’ll do it again. Although the second company eventually sold too, it was much more difficult, and the exit was nothing like the first. But I kept going. Remember how I said that I felt on top of the world? Well, a few companies later, I felt like the world had kicked the crap out of me.
My career track has taught me so many valuable lessons and provided so many amazing opportunities. But, I’ve learned far more from my failures than I have from my successes. The failures have helped inform future decisions, strategy, risk, etc.
My company. I’m the CEO of a super cool biotech company called CancerVAX. We are looking for new ways to treat and fight cancer. We are really fortunate to be working with a team of talented PhD’s and MD’s at UCLA to develop these new cancer treatments. Currently, we have two programs.
The first is for a children’s cancer called Ewing sarcoma. This horrible disease targets bones and soft tissue primarily in children. According to the American Cancer Society, Ewing sarcoma has a 70% mortality rate.
There is no good treatment for it today and it affects over 200,000 children every year in the U.S. I was at UCLA on August 24 meeting with our team and one of them, Dr. Noah Federman, one of the top pediatric oncology doctors at UCLA, commented that if a child gets Ewing sarcoma and is treated successfully, sometimes the cancer returns.
When this happens, Dr. Federman said that based on his experience, there is a 100% mortality rate. I am the father of 8 children and knowing these statistics makes me feel sick. Something needs to be done to help these children who are suffering, and we are hopeful that we can pull this off.
Our second program is called a Universal Cancer Vaccine. We believe that our body’s immune system, if functioning properly, should be able to fight cancer. The trouble is that cancer tumors develop using the body’s own tissues, cells, vascular system, etc. therefore , the immune system doesn’t usually recognize these tumors as bad.
So, we are working to identify unique markers that cancer cells have but healthy cells don’t. Once we understand these markers, we can deliver an antigen (which we’re also working on) that will essentially inform the body’s immune system to detect, mark and kill these cancer cells that express these specific markers.
This is really a platform, in that once we have the first treatment dialed in, we’ll be able to use the basic structure and tweak it a bit to do the same thing with other cancers. This would allow a new kind of cancer treatment that is far less invasive than the treatments available to us today (chemotherapy, radiation and surgery).
In the past year, what is the greatest business achievement you’d like to celebrate with your team? Please share the details of that success.
Ryan Davies: In the past year or so, we’ve raised over $2.3 million to kick this effort off. We’ve structured and signed two Sponsored Research Agreements with UCLA. We’ve filed for 3 patents. We’ve been approved by the SEC to raise another $10 million through a Reg A offering. Each of these are huge accomplishments. However, I think the biggest is this.
A little over a year ago, we sat at a restaurant on the UCLA campus with 5 brilliant physician scientists and started throwing ideas at them. Mainly around the Universal Cancer Vaccine, we were already working on the Ewing sarcoma program.
I sat with this UCLA team again on August 24 and we discussed the status of the project. I was blown away. In just over a year, we’ve taken a “back of the napkin idea” for a new cancer treatment, and now have a pretty good understanding of how to manufacture antigens specific to AML, how to deliver it into these cancer cells, utilizing the body’s own immune system.
It’s not uncommon for this to take 3-4 years. Our team did it in 1. I’m incredibly proud of them and feel privileged to rub shoulders with such amazing people.
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Ryan Davies: I think the best advice I wish I received early on was to learn how to honestly and objectively identify my weaknesses and surround myself with people whose strengths are my weaknesses.
I eventually figured this out, but I probably would have less gray hair today had I figured that out earlier. I think it’s human nature to feed our ego. Admitting weakness contradicts that. True vulnerability, I’m learning, is to know yourself, be yourself, and find others who like you for you. This can be applied to business relationships and personal relationships alike.
Here is a two-fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Ryan Davies: My favorite author is Malcolm Gladwell. The first book of his I read was “Tipping Point,” that really focused on unique approaches to positioning a business to allow people to see the business (or its product) in different ways. Then I read “Outliers”, then I read “Blink”, then I read “David and Goliath”. I found tremendous value in all of these books, but I think “David and Goliath” was the book that influenced me the most.
I found so many parallels to myself and this crazy, probably apocryphal biblical story. But I also found it to be a profound book on how to disrupt, how to think outside the box, how to leverage another’s success and turn it into a weakness, allowing your ideas to be seen.
I grew up in a very orthodox religious family, maybe that was some of the allure. Also, I have dyslexia. I was always smart enough to listen carefully and memorize things, but I really didn’t learn to read until I was about 11 years old. This created a bunch of insecurities and fears. But once I figured out how to manage the dyslexia, once I learned that cracking open a book meant opening a new world of knowledge, imagination, and inspiration, I wanted to read.
I’ve become a voracious reader, but I have to continually practice. I read slowly, but my comprehension is quite good, maybe because I had to really pay attention to move through school when I was a young boy.
Also, starting a business as a 23-year-old kid, sitting in board rooms of major venture capital firms like Bain Capital, Accel Partners, KKR, Blackrock, Sequoia, etc., I felt like a “David” having to constantly confront “Goliaths”. So, the book spoke to me on a very personal level, but the business lessons, case studies, ideas, etc. it offers really inspired me.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Ryan Davies: I see a few challenges. The past three years have been super crazy. Some have taken advantage of it. Many have suffered because of it. As I mentioned earlier, I’m the father of 8 kids. One just graduated from college, three others are still in school.
I see that many in this younger generation see success, want it, but don’t really understand the story behind a successful company. They don’t see the battle scars from the journey. That story needs to be communicated to help better prepare this next generation. Also, I think many kids come out of college completely unprepared for the real world.
I haven’t given much thought into how to remedy this, but it is a clear problem. The challenge I see is recruiting and training the next-generation workforce. It takes major adaptation from both old guys like me and from this next generation, like my kids (five of whom are in their twenties).
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Ryan Davies: I did not coin this phrase, I just don’t remember who to credit it to, but – I feel that being the CEO is one of the loneliest places in the world. Okay, another quick analogy. I’m a big baseball fan and it’s been said that the pitcher has the loneliest position in all of sports. Every next move starts with the pitcher.
There are some similarities with running a business. I’ll often introduce myself as the company’s janitor. Meaning, you have to be prepared to do everything. However, you are responsible for: setting the vision, building the team, raising the capital, executing the vision, and managing people. Don’t get me wrong, there are some cool parts too, but it is a lonely, challenging job. But I love doing it.
An example is with the first company I started. It was a software company. We raised a few million dollars. We had a kick-ass prototype that worked. We were building a strong board. We started to get noticed. Things were happening. One day, my first investor and board member said, “Ryan, if you want this company to be successful, you need to eventually replace yourself.
Not because I don’t believe in you or see your talents, but because you’re entering a new arena and as a 23-24 year old kid, you don’t understand how to do what needs to be done to take this to the next level”. That was a real gut punch. But, I took his advice. I remained a member of the board, I remained in a VP role running two divisions of the company but hired my replacement. And…..it worked.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Ryan Davies: This is a fun question. I think I may be inventing a new superpower here, but if I had the ability to think 2-3 steps ahead of everyone I worked with, especially my competition, that would be a riot. This superpower would constantly give me a bit of an edge and hopefully allow me to conquer the space I’m working in at the time.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Ryan Davies for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Ryan Davies or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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