Starting with any relevant education, walk me through the twists and turns of your career to date? How did one opportunity lead to the next + what was the key takeaway/ experience in each role + how did this lead you to where you are now)
So, I've taken a somewhat different approach than I think most entrepreneurs have taken. I graduated from veterinary school in 1982, and I went on to do a small animal internship in California and then a surgical residency at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. From there, I accepted a faculty position at Texas A&M University, where I spent 26 years as a faculty member. So, I was a clinician. I actually did surgery, I taught surgery, and then I eventually got moved up into administrative positions. While I was on the faculty at A&M, I built a facility for the testing of human products. And I became very interested in the process of drug development and what I felt were doing right and maybe what we were doing wrong in terms of bringing new products to the market. I was eventually awarded an endowed professorship and was promoted to more advanced academic positions. However, what I found is that I was really promoted beyond my interest because in these more academic positions I got that were non-clinical, I found that I really wasn't directly helping animals anymore. And that has always been my passion. So it was the point where I decided, you know what, maybe I should take a different tact and start my own company and see if I can produce products that will benefit animals. So, very different, I think track to entrepreneurship. But one that's interesting because it gave me a clinical background and a research background and an academic background, which is a different combination than most people have.
What was the pivotal moment that put you on your current founder path?
This is going to be, I think, different from most founders in that, what really started me down this pathway is that I had, sadly had, a 13-year-old Labrador named Dan, who I dearly loved. We always referred to him as best dog ever, and he had osteoarthritis, but unfortunately, he did not tolerate the typical drugs that we prescribe for dogs with osteoarthritis, typically nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. So, I started looking for alternative medications. And at that time, the one that was just starting really to be talked about was the cannabinoid. CBD. And what I found when I started researching CBD is that I didn't like what I saw in the marketplace. People were making label claims that were untrue, meaning that they were saying that they had a certain amount of CBD in their product, but some of these products actually contained no CBD, they also would say how much THC they had, and many of them had lots more THC than they claimed on the label, which is a real problem because dogs are quite sensitive to THC. And then the other thing I found is that there were a lot of credible human companies, but what they had done is they had just slapped an animal label on their product without really giving much thought to how do we dose this in dogs, they’re used to people who are relatively uniform weight, and as a veterinarian, I'm used to seeing a two pound dog, one at one visit, and my next visit might be 140 pound dog. And so, we dose differently. And I think most of these companies just really hadn't thought about that. We started in that space about four years ago, and it's really was much slower to open up than we had hoped. The veterinary state licensing boards weren't giving any guidance to veterinarians on what they could and couldn't say, or what they could recommend other than some states actually made it illegal for veterinarians to even talk about it. So bottom line is we realized that if we were going to grow our company, we needed to introduce some other products and not just rely on CBD. After a great deal of research and collaboration with a friend of mine, Dr. Curtis Dewey, we came up with a unique product called CogniCaps, which is for cognitive dysfunction in dogs like Alzheimer's. And it's been a game changer for many dogs! And then about a year and a half ago, I was asked to look over data of a company that had a toxic plant that they wanted to commercialize. At first I was reluctant, but as I dug deeper into the science, and I realized that there was something really important and intriguing about this natural botanical. And so, I've been working with that company to commercialize several products. One is an anti-itch product for companion animals, and the other is an immune stimulant for the production animal space. So that's been really exciting!
Can you provide a quick summary of the technology/ area of innovation and its potential application?
So, I'm going to focus on this new botanical that we're bringing to market. So, I really think our anti-itch and immune stimulant is a game changer, both in the companion animal space and the production animal space. In the companion animal space, we have two products. We have a topical spray for acute flare-ups, and we have an ingestible for maintenance. And this works differently than most products because we work primarily at a nanomolar, even sub nanomolar level to strongly boost the innate immune system. So, we have really two parts to our immune system. We have this, what we call the innate immune system, which is kind of non-specific, but it's the first part of our immune system that will gear up when we see a pathogen. And then if the innate immune system does its job, it gives our adaptive immune system, which is a system that specifically kills and makes antibodies or certain cells that specifically kill a virus. But we work differently. We really upregulate the immune system. So, it's our own immune system that is now providing protection against these new pathogens. It's a different mechanism than say a vaccine.
What stage are you at?
We've just started, we still sell CBD, we sell our CogniCaps product, and we sell that domestically and internationally. But we've just started clinical trials in both the companion animal and livestock space for this botanical product. We hope to have our anti-itch product available for sale in the next three to four months. That clinical trial has just started, but the initial results are spectacular. In our livestock product, we are going to go through the registration process so that'll take longer to get that product out.
Discuss the biggest challenges of getting to this point? With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently if anything?
Boy! So, with hindsight, frankly, I would not have started with a product like CBD, that was at that point questionable. Because what it really took, now it is obviously that's changing, and in the US, there's now an attempt to move it from a drug that's regulated having no medical use to one that does have medical use, which will make it easier. That's all just starting to happen. But again, it took much longer than we thought it would take. So, I would not recommend that anybody start with a product where they're going to meet some regulatory issues or have the ability to sell in some states and in some species, but not in others. It's just too difficult for a startup company to do that. So, pick a product and pick an area where you're not going to be fighting regulatory issues.
The biggest issue is that there's just been a lack of guidance. It's really taken pet owners to push and say, I definitely want to give my dog this product. And that's why we started to see studies coming out showing safety, which I think, any of us who use the product, given it to our own animals, we understand there's a very wide margin of safety. But it's taken a long time I think for some of the associations, the state licensing boards and others to come to that same conclusion. So that was extremely difficult.
How have you approached funding?
We have primarily been self-funded. We did have one investor come in who was also a veterinarian that put some initial money and that really kept us going. But I would honestly say we have been very good stewards of the small amount of money that we've raised, and we really want to get through these studies before we dilute ourselves anymore because we're excited. We think we have a great product. So, we received the money from our initial investor, and then we did recently receive an award, that monetary award that was a non-dilutive award from the Flynn Foundation here in Phoenix. And that money is paying for a clinical trial. So, we've been able to kind of do this on the cheap which is good. I think it's what all companies should try to do if they can, initially. You're obviously as you grow, you're going to require investment at some point. It's just a matter of when you take that investment in.
Have there been any pivot points in the company’s lifetime? What triggered these? Has the value proposition changed?
I think the biggest pivot point for us was recognizing that we weren't going to be able to grow as rapidly in the CBD space, nor could we market it internationally easily. And so, our real pivot was to understand that there were plenty of other unmet medical niches where natural products could be an effective and affordable alternative to the synthetic products that were being pushed by big pharma. So, for example, our anti-itch product is a natural product. We think it's going to be substantially more affordable than the products that are on the market today. And that's really our goal is, we want to help as many animals as we can possibly help, which means that our products need to be effective, but they also need to be affordable. So that's a real key for us.
I think our goal and our vision has not changed. I think what we are figuring out is we're learning more about the natural product space and the regulatory issues around those and how to bring these products to market more rapidly. It's been a learning for us for sure. But I wouldn't say a big pivot. We're still very much a natural pet and livestock product company.
What has the been the greatest source of help/ guidance along the way?
I've had numerous mentors along the way. I don't think any of us start off knowing the tips and tricks that will help make our businesses successful. So, you either need to learn by making mistakes, which we've made plenty of, or you learn from others who may be made those mistakes, so you don't have to. Mentors are incredibly important. I won't name names, but I will just tell you, I think it's very important to find mentors because they're going to come out it with different ideas that you may not think about. And I do think they really, particularly if they're an experienced entrepreneur, they're really going to help you make this a more reasonable journey. And I think you'll get where you want to go a lot faster. And it can be scientific advisors, it can be business advisors, it can be people who are just willing to open up their network to you. I consider all of those to be advisors, but I would just say they're crucial to most of us, especially if you’re a startup.
Best advice you’d pass on to other founders?
Probably the biggest piece of advice that I could give to somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur and has not been one in the past is, be patient. If you go into this thinking that you're going to quickly make a killing, you're going to be disappointed. You need to recognize that it takes time to build a successful company. And I certainly don't have the answers, but my advice is descriptive. I'm not being prescriptive because I don't think there is a specific way to be successful, but my advice would be, be patient, go into it for the long term because it's going to take you longer than you think.
What do you think are broadly the biggest needs and opportunities in the Animal Health and Petcare markets?
I'm really excited about the natural product space. I think more and more pet parents and even livestock producers are looking for natural solutions that're affordable. And so, I think we're going to see more and more companies entering this space in the next few years. And some of them are going to be moving away from synthetics. We won't ever get away, totally away from synthetics. I'm not suggesting we even should, but I do think we'll start to see more natural products in the marketplace and natural products with some science behind them.
We are facing some potentially devastating diseases in livestock in the US and the UK is the same. We're all familiar with the fact that avian influenza is now infecting dairy cattle in the US and the risk there is that dairy cattle become infected and perhaps people become infected from that, and then it gets passed on to pigs. Now we've set up this opportunity for avian influenza to become even more infected by people. And when that happens, we’re going to have even bigger issues than we have right now with avian influenza. We know that African swine fever is in the Caribbean, it's on our doorstep. And we also know that vaccines for some of these diseases don't work effectively because these viruses mutate, they change, and then the vaccine needs to change. And that can be an expensive proposition. So I do think from a development perspective, we need to look at things that, as we mentioned earlier, we need to look at things that are not necessarily vaccines, but that maybe work in a different fashion or work synergistically with vaccines if we're going to be able to deal with some of these really important viral diseases that, like I said, are either already here or on our doorstep and will devastate the commercial livestock industry.
What’s going to have the single biggest impact on change in your area of the market?
I think it's going to be, so we're actively working on trying to get clearance to treat avian influenza. Our in vitro study suggests that we're highly effective against influenza. And again, since we're not a vaccine, since we work through by boosting the immune system, we should get all influenza viruses regardless of what type they are. And so that's very exciting. If we can get permission to do that testing, I think we can stop this outbreak in its tracks.
What do the next two years have in store for you?
The next two years are going to be filled with studies. I would say number one. Again, we're a supplement company, but we consider ourselves to be a supplement company backed by science. So we don't roll products out unless we have some science behind them. So definitely we'll be completing a number of studies both for our anti-itch product and also in the production animals. So that'll be the big one. As I mentioned, we are going through the process of determining how we get our product registered in the US and then internationally as well. So it's going to be busy really bringing these products to the marketplace. I think our anti-itch product, that study, as I said earlier, should be done in the next three to four months. So then it'll be a marketing push to get that product out.
