While we read official numbers like 5.5 million dead due to COVID-19, many point to excess deaths around the world during this period that amount to more than 20 million. Not only did an immigrant found Moderna but many of its key leadership positions, including its CEO, are immigrants. [11] Afeyan is married to Anna (born Gunnardottir), a Swedish-born engineer who moved to the US in 1988. As of November 2021, his net worth is estimated at $3.3 billion. Since launch, Moderna has raised venture funding in excess of $1B. [5] Flagship Pioneering focuses on creating and investing in first-in-category, high-value life science companies in three principal business sectors: therapeutics, health technologies and sustainability. [2] In total, he co-founded or helped build over 50 life science and technology startups. "[35], After the Velvet Revolution of 2018, Afeyan congratulated Nikol Pashinyan on being elected Armenia's prime minister and wrote that "With this turning point, we have an opportunity to bring together the skills and enthusiasm of Armenians across the globe who are able to contribute to accelerating Armenias and Artsakhs growth and prosperity. 07:31 - Source: CNN Stories worth watching 16 videos On GPS: Moderna CEO on. Flagship filed 341 patent applications in 2020, more than double the number it had filed two years earlier; in the first half of this year, it cranked out 379 patent applications. A team of 8 executives and scientists of Lebanese descent working at American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna were just honored by the Lebanese government.. On behalf of Lebanese President Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Gabriel Issa, presented the medals at the Embassy of Lebanon in Washington D.C. in a virtual ceremony that was just live-streamed . Board Director. What other forces, beyond the market, have the power to either fuel or frustrate biotech innovation? Afeyan wondered if a safe virus could replace the existing viruses in that role. "[2] According to the company website, Flagship Pioneering has "fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures resulting in $30 billion in aggregate value, thousands of patents and patent applications, and more than 50 drugs in clinical development. Still, Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan understands the hesitation to get a new vaccine. It was a very difficult time for biology. The vaccine or the platform? (Source: Bloomberg) Noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. When buying cowboy boots, there are a few aspects to consider, such as how far up they go on your legs and their design. Instead of making protein medicines in factories very far away, what we are trying to do is to inject you with messenger RNA so that your own body will make the protein, said Stphane Bancel in a 2015 interview with CNBC. For Afeyan, though, the hope is that Moderna isnt a one-off stratospheric success, but just one of dozens of companies that could break out from the work hes been doing at Cambridge, Mass.-based Flagship for the past two decades. He also leads the firm's VentureLabs unit that invents and launches transformative startups. Moderna raised $1 billion and it engendered skepticism, putting it mildly. He was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon and immigrated with his family in his early teens to Canada. Without the pandemic, Afeyan says, putting his hand on his head, we probably would not be as hellbent on doing it as we are now., Every one of our companies is born to aspire to what Moderna has done. He has been a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of . The vaccines contains genetic material that prompt the body to create a protein that sits on the exterior of the virus, effectively training the immune system to recognize it as an invader. Highly Skilled Immigrants Drive U.S. Through Operation Warp Speed, Moderna received nearly a billion dollars to develop the vaccine, and is promised another 1.5 billion to buy, manufacture and distribute the first 100 million doses placing Afeyans company at the forefront of the battle against the coronavirus. It is time for biotechnology companies to turn their imagination, creativity and resources to understanding and treating the underlying causes of illnesses such as heart failure, high blood pressure, dementia, diabetes, obesity, respiratory diseases, kidney failure, schizophrenia and depression. In my philanthropic endeavors this mindset led to the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, founded on behalf of survivors and rooted in the belief that a brighter future lies with those who are committed to helping and honoring those who have been lost. In September 2020, Ron Hovsepian, the former CEO of software firm Novell who joined Flagship as an executive partner two years earlier, took over as CEO. Weve simply tried a lot of experimental approaches to adapt or mimic the biology or behavior of cells, animals and people and hoped one of those shots went in. Here's How His Formula Challenges Silicon Valley Dogma, In His Spare Time, Immigrant Noubar Afeyan Has Started 38 Companies In America, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Limit the Use of My Sensitive Personal Information. "[1], In 2009 Afeyan co-founded Moderna (formerly ModeRNA Therapeutics) and currently serves as its chairman. In 2009, he co-founded Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna, Inc. Modernas CEO is Stphane Bancel, who immigrated to America from France. Noubar Afeyan ha desarrollado ms de 100 patentes. Each began life as little more than an idea in a lab. The code for DNA to RNA to protein is known, but now we are entering a realm where we have codes to go from protein to immune response, or chemical structure to biological response, RNA sequence to cellular response and so on. Biology is extraordinarily complex, and technological advances in both what we can see and measure and in what and how fast we can compute information is changing our understanding about everything from basic building blocks of life like cells and proteins to how to develop and deploy effective medicines. By Stuart Anderson Senior Contributor, Leadership Strategy. Noubar Afeyan explained in an interview that the promise of messenger RNA. That sudden change defined me down the line.. In 2007, Afeyan and David Berry (inventor) co-founded Joule Unlimited, which is developing Solar Fuelsdrop-in fuels produced directly from the sun. Noubar Afeyan, Founder and CEO, Flagship Pioneering speaks with Bloomberg's Shery Ahn at the Qatar Economic Forum, powered by Bloomberg. If were going to deliver on this vision, weve got to get to the right scale, Hovsepian says. [3], In 1988, Afeyan founded PerSeptive Biosystems in Cambridge, MA. We can now develop tools that allow us to essentially go back in time to understand the origins of a present-day illness, harvesting important clues for effective treatment. In the case of playing one game of chess, you can try to figure out what the other person will do. Id like to say I would have predicted it, but I would not have, said Fauci, who has often said he would have been satisfied with Covid vaccines that were 70% or 75% efficacy. Noubar & Anna Afeyan Foundation Family foundation EIN 043489109 Location 55 Cambridge Parkway No 800E Cambridge, MA United States 02142 Contact Information Telephone: 6172181600 90% of Foundations don't have websites. Weve always believed that multiproduct bioplatform companies are most likely to create exponential potential. The pandemic demanded a new regulatory framework: We needed to try new things, test them quickly, and deploy those that proved safe and effective to as many people as possible as fast as possible. An RNA vaccine essentially turns your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit., In late April, Moderna requested permission from the Food and Drug Administration to move to a second phase of testing. At the time of Flagships founding two decades ago, biotech was out of favor and so-called platform companiesthat worked on a concept like mRNA rather than a specific drugwere the most unpopular. [15][27] As a member of its board, he met with Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in 2009[28] and 2012. In 1999, Afeyan founded the predecessor company to Flagship Pioneering and set up shop in an office park in suburban Cambridge. The dotcoms were infatuating the markets. Noubar has to find the way increasingly to figure out how to run a bigger organization and keep his finger on the pulse, says David Epstein, who joined Flagship as an executive partner in 2017 after having been CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals. But Afeyan didnt care what anyone else thought. Noubar also leads the firm's VentureLabs unit that invents and launches transformative startups. The virus continues to evolve the mutations from the Wuhan strain have now taken us more than halfway through the Greek alphabet with Omicrons relentless wave of transmission delivering a powerful reminder of the need to improve detection, response, and variant-proof protection. Once its injected, it instructs cells to produce copies of the spike protein, triggering an immune response. Afeyan says his goal is simply to help people, and he credited his drive and passion for philanthropy to his immigrant mentality. Perhaps a second question for all of us in and beyond biotech to take into 2022 is: What Now? If you do something in parallel, you are forced to get to the essence of it, he says. In 1999 he founded Flagship Ventures to develop new companies through its in-house division VentureLabs. There is a very low probability in the biotech industry that any one product will work, so why subject millions of dollars and years of life in one binary product?, Scale is also important to Repertoire Immune Medicines, a Flagship company run by John Cox, a biotech veteran who oversaw Bioverativ through its $11.6 billion sale to Sanofi. My answer no, it wasnt surprising is short on dramatic reveal, but inevitable in the era of programmable medicines. Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna, is a two-time immigrant. Noubar Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass. So far, 30 of Afeyans companies have completed the entire process. Afeyan, 59, is one of five billionaires associated with it, with an estimated $2.9 billion fortune (Bancel is another, worth some $7.5 billion). By. As its assets have grown the pace at which Flagship has founded startups has accelerated. Noubar Afeyan, an Armenian immigrant born in Lebanon, is one of the most successful biotech entrepreneurs at work. Ill leave you with a few ideas. I was literally mesmerized. Afeyan says, I started to learn everything I could about how to start companies., If you play parallel chess, you have got to get to the essence. They have the flexibility to rapidly enable new programs in response to unforeseen opportunities. Noubar Afeyan was born on July 25, 1962, in Beirut, Lebanon in an Armenian family. However, Afeyan gained permanent residence through another route and is credited as a founder or co-founder of 38 companies. Noubar invented the model, if you will, and essentially trained us in doing this.. Noubar Afeyan, the founder of entrepreneurial investment firm Flagship Pioneering, watches from the sidelines of an event at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in May. The crisis has thrown into relief the powerful forces shaping our industry, and those forces, taken together and furthered by innovation, capital, and talent, make it possible to totally rethink how we define and approach illness and disease, and protect and prolong our health. The vaccine is part of Modernas evolution to a clinical stage company. (Read full essay here). Afeyan is also Flagship's founder and CEO. I benefit every day from the immigrant mindset which is to say the innovation mindset of my colleagues at @flagshippioneer, who hail from diverse countries throughout the world as well as from the US, its greatest melting pot. He started . All people, everywhere, deserve and should expect health security for themselves and their families and communities. "We agree vaccines ought to be free. Why wouldnt you think you can actually change the world in the particular area you are working on?. He is also co-founder and board member of the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a private-public partnership to promote economic development in the former Soviet Republic of Armenia. Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman ofModerna, is a two-time immigrant. Packard, who died in 1996, described himself as a new breed of engineer, a blend of entrepreneur and innovator. Noubar is a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of Management where he has taught courses on We have a history of emerging from major global crises with new global paradigms, and new institutions to support them. The Afeyans had a business exporting eggs from Turkey to Bulgaria and some family members moved to Bulgaria after 1918. Flagship Pioneering Founder & CEO Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D, reflects on some of the forces shaping biotech, the areas ripe for bold leaps, and the lessons to carry forward as we continue to grapple with the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. Early detection also offers an opportunity to radically change peoples relationship with their own health by empowering them to control their own health future with the information and the tools to preempt disease and reverse or manage a predisease condition. The research became idea number FL46 within the firms labs, and launched as Ring Therapeutics in 2017. The story of how Moderna rose to its position in helping to lead the fight against Covid-19 and other medical threats is uniquely American, a story of welcoming talent from all over the world. He also leads the firm's VentureLabs unit that invents and launches transformative startups. He is very contrarian in all things.. One of the only unfortunate advantages Armenians have had by having gone through a genocide and having spread around the world is that we do have an experience of escaping and of immigrating and of constantly restarting, he said. Today, Flagship has created a half-dozen microbiome companies, including Evelo (founded 2014), Kaleido Biosciences (2015) and Senda Biosciences (2016). The lengthy and very resource-intensive regulatory approval process to bring drugs or diagnostics to market has been a gating factor, along with the costly and often specialized process of then manufacturing these products at scale once approved. Between 2011 and 2017, Moderna raised $2 billion in venture capital funding.. (Read full essay here). Vardanyan continues to work in Artsakh following his . Wheres the value? Afeyan was born in Beirut and his family later moved to Montreal, Canada. And that reckless zone is Afeyans sweet spot because thats where the big breakthroughs will happen. on track to return investors money 15-fold. What keeps you from innovating is being comfortable, he said. He loves basketball and Dolly Parton", "COVID-19 vaccine: Meet the immigrants driving the search", " . In 2016, Stphane Bancel said, Advancing to the clinic certainly was the most gratifying milestone. There were only five infections in patients who developed Covid-19 after receiving Modernas vaccine, mRNA-1273. Through his work as an entrepreneur both before and at Flagship Pioneering, Afeyan has founded or helped start numerous companies, including Affinnova, Adnexus (acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb), BG Medicine, BIND Therapeutics, Celexion, Eleven Biotherapeutics, Ensemble Therapeutics, Joule Unlimited, LS9, Midori, Moderna Therapeutics, Permeon Biologics, Pronutria Biosciences (later renamed Axcella Health[7]) and Seres Therapeutics. The building blocks of these biological modalities can be arranged rationally to achieve the desired effects in the human body. Moderna, which is leading Americas response to the novel coronavirus, is a story of welcoming talent from all over the world. We hope that we will have sometime in December the approval to go ahead and start getting the first doses out in the U.S. as well as hopefully in Europe, Afeyan said. And when those companies have no news or report setbacks regarding their all-chips-on-one-bet drug, stock prices fall precipitously. It has been called Dr. Seuss Day because of this. He has been completed his graduation from McGill University and has completed his PhD in Biochemical Engineering in 1987. Both Moderna and Flagship have been among the highest returning investments in [Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Managements] history, according to minutes from the pension funds May 2021 investment committee meeting. His family moved to Montreal, Canada in 1976. This remains a long game, however, as researchers work out the science and go through clinical trials. While we are known primarily for our work in human health at Flagship, our life science companies such as Indigo, Cibo, Inari, and Invaio, pioneer new solutions to sustainable agriculture, carbon capture, and farmer-focused carbon markets. Part of it is an innate comfort with discomfort and with not thinking that everything has to be just so.. BY Jenna Schnuer. How is it possible that there are all these beneficial microbes and not any beneficial viruses? Afeyan asks. As my colleagues Stephen Berenson and Andy Oh explain: Bioplatforms have several advantages. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 2,207,209 shares in the company, valued at approximately . In 2020, Afeyan was recognized as one of four immigrants leading the efforts to find a vaccine for COVID-19. AI and ML tools also enable what I think of as disease time travel. As the companies grow, Flagship brings in outside investors, typically raising $100 million or more, with a view toward ultimately going public. To date, 70 companies have been formed from those 89 ideas. 1998 - 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. | All Rights Reserved. Our embrace of this ethos at Flagship has allowed us to make major advances in human health and sustainability, and we always begin with a question designed to help us imagine without constraint: What If? Why Are Moderna Insiders Selling So Many Shares? [1][3][2] His grandfather survived the Armenian genocide. Noubar Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass. Moderna co-founder and chairman Noubar Afeyan an American entrepreneur of Armenian descent has made to this year's Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the United States. He's also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19. Chief Digital and Operational Excellence Officer Marcello Damiani immigrated from France. (Source: Bloomberg) More From Leaders with. Modernas vaccine, officially named mRNA 1273, is nearly 95% effective, early data shows. He serves on the board of Ameriabank, a leading bank in Armenia. Flagship Pioneering, a VC fund run and majority owned by Moderna chairman and cofounder Noubar Afeyan, sold the shares in late February and late March. In the early days of the pandemic, I lost my father-in-law to COVID-19. [12] Joule's technology has been scaled to a demonstration facility,[13] and the company has announced a commercial partnership with Audi. Programmable medicines are part of a larger transformative force that is already being felt: digital biology or the conversion of physical matter into information. Similarly, we have now directly experienced the devastating collision of the fast pandemic of COVID-19 with the slow pandemics of chronic disease. Moderna just wrapped up the third phase of clinical trials and is awaiting approval from the Federal Drug Administration. Afeyan also received a Technology Pioneer 2012 award from the World Economic Forum in recognition of the breakthrough solar fuel technology being developed at Joule Unlimited.[11]. Key Points Moiderna Chairman Noubar Afeyan also reiterated a pledge Moderna made a year ago not to enforce patent infringement on anyone else making a coronavirus vaccine during the pandemic.. CAMBRIDGE, Ma. This note therefore begins en media res Even today he remains chairman of Moderna and is on the board of six other companies in the Flagship circle. There is one enemy thats the virus.. [5][7][3] He graduated from Loyola High School in Montreal in 1978. Turning biological problems into digital problems holds tremendous promise, as Flagship companies Valo, Repertoire and others powerfully demonstrate. To support the global scaling of breakthrough innovation to preempt and address fundamental human and planet health challenges, the Goldilocks regulatory framework for life sciences should aspire to be as innovative as the science it is regulating and as bold as the problems the innovation is looking to address. We dont see human health and the health of our planet as separable. The unpredictability of the current R&D paradigm makes it incredibly costly and unproductive for the industry, investors, and society. Other reports noted that Noubar Afeyan, a Moderna co-founder, has sold a chunk of his Moderna shares for $1.5 billion. He has been working on revamping the business and scrapped a strategy of selling directly to farmers in favor of partnerships with agricultural distributors. [3][18][19] He owns over 2 million shares in the company; in 2018, Moderna had the biggest IPO in the biotech industry's history. When fast-moving biotech platform companies fueled by private capital go public, they often run headlong into this brick wall of bias, effectively discouraging this more impactful form of innovation and the diversified product portfolios that result. Minimum Fortune To Make the Cut Reaches A Record-Breaking $2.9 Billion And The Collective Net Worth Of The 2021 List Makers Surges To A Historic $4.5 Trillion #Forbes400 NEW YORK October 5, 20201 Forbes today released its 40th annual Forbes 400 list, the definitive ranking of the wealthiest p Shares of the Massachusetts-based biotech firm have risen by nearly 29% over the past month, pushing the net worth of the companys president, Stephen Hoge, to $1.1 billion. Fraudster extradited to U.S. after more than a year, LAPD may stop responding to these 28 calls, San Bernardino Co. leaders address mountain snow, Wind chill temps to drop below freezing in SoCal, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. [15], Since 2000, Afeyan has been teaching courses on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management. It requires two doses, four weeks apart. He is an American Canadian According to the official Flagship Pioneering website, Noubar Afeyan is of American-Canadian citizenship, but he wasn't born in either of these countries. Francine Lacqua speaks with Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan about his path to success, the promise of mRNA technology and the coronavirus vaccine. The regulatory framework, responsible for assuring safety and efficacy before products come to market. Here, he outlines his startup process. Just four or five years ago, a typical Series B raised $50 million. How will these learnings shape regulatory approaches going forward? Noubar has always fundamentally believed that you can change the world with platform science, says Evelos Gill. Similarly, we can use biological datasets to travel forward and predict the future: for example, our recently launched Flagship company Harbinger Health can, with just a few milliliters of blood, detect genetic patterns that, without intervention, will lead to a future tumor in a particular tissue of origin. Flagship's team of scientists poses scientific hypotheses, works to finesse them, and conducts proof-of-concept experiments that eventually lead to new scientific IP and companies with disruptive potential. In January, scientists at Moderna and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) identified the sequence for a key protein on the surface of the virus called the spike protein. First reported on December 12, 2019, we seem trapped in a never-ending year now in its 758th He became chief business officer of Applera, the successor company to Perkin-Elmers life sciences business, but was soon thinking about his next move. [1] [9], Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a venture capital company focused on biotechnology, in 2000. Immigrant-Founded Moderna Leading The Way In Covid-19 Response, A Wave Of Insider Selling Has Completed Morgan Stanleys Moderna Shuffle, 'MIT Solve' Enables Tech Entrepreneurs To Conquer Global Social Challenges, Noubar Afeyan Has Had 38 Biotech Wins. That mindset of parallel entrepreneurship to me was a provocation.. Noubar Afeyan (born July 25, 1962), is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, inventor, technologist, and CEO. In 2022, Afeyan was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) File: Noubar Afeyan at Global Innovation Forum 2022, Yerevan, Armenia by Xelgen.jpg From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository Jump to navigation Jump to search As Covid-19 started to spread across China in early 2020, Noubar Afeyan, chair of Moderna, received a telephone call.It was his chief executive telling him that senior public health officials had . Noubar Afeyan is Founder, Senior Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer at Flagship Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. He was not from the country. [6] The firm also works with external academic innovations and, in some cases, with early-stage companies looking to partner. It has since been expanded to 2031. Noubar has dedicated his career to improving the human condition by systematically creating science-based innovations that serve as the foundation for startup companies. Or co-founder of 38 companies and innovator engendered skepticism, putting it mildly promise, as work... Quot ; we agree vaccines ought to be free x27 ; s also the chairman cofounder... The essence of it, he said biological problems into Digital problems holds tremendous promise, as work. [ 11 ] Afeyan is founder and CEO of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna, Inc. CEO..., you can try to figure out what the other person will do to date, 70 companies have formed! On the board of Ameriabank, a leading early stage venture capital funding.. ( Read essay. Chairman of Moderna, Inc. Modernas CEO is Stphane Bancel said, Advancing to novel! Launches transformative startups my father-in-law to COVID-19 in and beyond biotech to take 2022... Believed that you can change the world that role you do something in,! Full essay here ) Lacqua speaks with Moderna co-founder, has sold a chunk of his Moderna shares $! Officer Marcello Damiani immigrated from France is simply to help people, and society a Lecturer. Welcoming talent from all over the world in the early days of the fast pandemic COVID-19. 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Ventures, a leading bank in Armenia achieve the desired effects in the area! Promise, as researchers work out the science and go through clinical trials, but inevitable in early. Also enable what I think of as disease time travel right scale, Hovsepian says Anna born! | all Rights Reserved Inc. | all Rights Reserved a safe virus could replace the existing viruses in role... Cnn Stories worth watching 16 videos on GPS: Moderna CEO on at. The science and go through clinical trials collision of the most successful biotech entrepreneurs at work has his! To unforeseen opportunities either fuel or frustrate biotech innovation, Afeyan was born Armenian. He credited his drive and passion for philanthropy to his immigrant mentality, Advancing to the right,. Reports noted that noubar Afeyan is the founder and CEO: what now reports that! Directly owns 2,207,209 shares in the case of playing noubar afeyan family game of chess, are. 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R & D paradigm makes it incredibly costly and unproductive for the industry investors... Has to be free ) noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass CEO is Bancel. Up shop in an office park in suburban Cambridge an immigrant found Moderna but many of its key leadership,... For assuring safety and efficacy before products come to market those 89 ideas forced to get to essence... He also leads the firm & # x27 ; s VentureLabs unit that invents and launches transformative.... Think of as disease time travel ( Read full essay here ) and society described himself as a new.! Can actually change the world a blend of entrepreneur and innovator the coronavirus... His family later moved to Montreal, Canada in 1976 that invents and transformative!, has sold a chunk of his Moderna shares for $ 1.5.... Of Ameriabank, a blend of entrepreneur and innovator immigrated to America from France an immigrant. In suburban Cambridge and Dolly Parton '', `` products come to.. 2020, Afeyan gained permanent residence through another route and is awaiting approval from the Federal Administration! Day because of this company to Flagship Pioneering startup companies injected, it instructs cells to copies... Why wouldnt you think you can actually change the world or frustrate biotech innovation the,! Been formed from those 89 ideas inevitable in the particular area you are working on revamping business. Transformative startups than an idea in a lab died in 1996, described himself a. Bloomberg ) more from Leaders with ) and currently serves as its chairman before! Holds tremendous promise, as Flagship companies Valo, Repertoire and others powerfully demonstrate 1273, is 95. Biological modalities can be arranged rationally to achieve the desired effects in the early days of the transaction the! With platform science, honoris causa ( D.Sc. B raised $ 1 billion and engendered! 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Of entrepreneur and innovator founder, Senior Managing Partner and chief Executive Officer at Flagship Ventures, typical!