Q&A with Carlo Yuvienco, Director of the Ford Biotechnology Incubator, Ford Center for Life Science Innovation at The Rockefeller University
Where did you grow up, and what sparked your interest in entrepreneurship?
My family is from the Philippines, but I was born and raised in New York City. My father was a physician training at New York University, and when he completed his training, he brought his family here. As a sole practitioner urologist, he was also running a small business. Seeing him as an entrepreneur was inspirational for me. Most of my education was in Manhattan, from PS 6 to Wagner to Stuyvesant High School to Cooper Union and New York University, where I studied Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. I grew up with the hustle and bustle pace and entrepreneurial spirit of NYC. It’s not just a matter of entrepreneurship; in NYC, it’s more like breathing. Compared to other parts of the world, everyone in NYC is moving forward, all the time.
What compounded that entrepreneurial exposure was seeing my four older brothers and sisters pursue careers. While they were starting their higher education and professional lives, I was entering middle school and getting to go work for them and becoming aware of that world. It was the early 90s, and that pre- and post-dot-com bubble environment was intensely entrepreneurial.
What was your first job and how did that shape your path?
I really valued the importance of networking from early on. I got my first job through a connection—one of my lab partners at Cooper Union had worked for Pall Corporation on Long Island. The company founder’s wife had died young of hemophilia; at the time there was no good solution for filtering blood to make it safe for transfusions. That founder pivoted from industrial filter production to purification health products, becoming Pall Life Sciences. I worked for two years on a blood filtration crash program; it was a great experience. I saw that the leadership there had a PhD, and I was inspired to pursue the same.
At that time, NYU was partnered with Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 2008, NYU absorbed Polytechnic and launched a new engineering school, now called the Tandon School of Engineering. The rest is history. I began working with Professor Jin Montclare and her lab, and became one of her go-to people, as I had more life experience working on research operations.
I reconnected with entrepreneurship working on education tech and biotech ventures with Jin. We did I-Corps with the NYCRIN Node (now known as the New York I-Corps Hub) in 2013 for our ed tech startup. For the latter, we were exploring a protein-based drug delivery vehicle. With that venture, Brooklyn Biologics, we applied for an NSF PFI grant, and an accelerator program called E-Lab at the time, a NYC program supported by the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC). A few years later, when I had finished my PhD, I was thinking I was ready for a stable job, maybe at a biotech company. And then the EDC called me up—they asked me to work on the life sciences infrastructure plan—LifeSci NYC. The idea is that life sciences are not just worth supporting, but that with government intervention, life sciences can activate and catalyze industry growth here in New York City. It was novel for them to have a lab scientist in that role as well—back then EDC really didn’t hire PhDs unless they were economists. I wound up being there for six years, implementing the program as well.
Again, that was another piece that tied back to my entrepreneurial interests, but from another perspective. The program is doing well and now works closely with New York State to spur growth in life sciences. These things don’t happen overnight—they take decades. There’s so much competition for attention and resources in NYC as a hub for finance, insurance, real estate, marketing, tech, fintech, entertainment, food, hospitality…. you have dozens of industries in NYC. In that context, life sciences has done very well in terms of breaking through.
How did that bring you to your current role at Rockefeller University?
Again, it was all networks and network effects. I got to know the Rockefeller team while I was at the EDC. I learned about the idea of their investing in and repurposing space on campus to facilitate translational science. I understood that the leadership at Rockefeller wanted to create a focused and complementary community that would cover a range of stages of translational activity, from maturing and de-risking the science to the last mile of launching a startup. I got familiar with the project, and they saw me work at the EDC and how I managed several projects there.
I think I have a certain credibility with all the different hats I wear here. If a client at Rockefeller has a problem in the lab, I can advise on how to fix it. It’s a real benefit that I can roll up my sleeves and offer lab expertise.
I joined Rockefeller in this role about a year ago. We expect a 30 percent occupancy rate for the incubator when the second round of applicants are reviewed later this summer, which is on track with University forecasts. An advantage of being in New York and part of Rockefeller is that we expect to find enough companies ready to take advantage of what we have to offer.
What are you most excited about in your new role?
I’m excited to see how the PIs in the neighborhood coming from places like Weill Cornell Medicine and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center can take advantage of our phenomenal resources. I’m excited to see how this serves the local community. It’s not just about numbers and revenue—there’s an expectation of the quality of companies that come through here, graduate, move through, and exceed goals. They may fail but at least they are fulfilling commitments and reaching milestones.
I’m excited about the physical space itself. Rockefeller is an oasis, from the leafy campus to the great light and views of the water and city skyline. Our facility is the first of its kind on the Upper East Side. There’s also some great history—the Ford Center’s home on the fourth floor of The Rockefeller’s Bronk building was once the lab of Nobel laureate Ralph Steinman, whose groundbreaking work in the 1970s identified the dendritic cell [the cell type that is almost singularly responsible for commanding the efforts of all other immune cells]. It’s incredible to be operating in the footsteps of that kind of legacy.
What do you wish those new to entrepreneurship knew?
There’s nothing I ever wish they knew; in that I’m not complaining about any ignorance when they come in. But I do see people that don’t have connections to investors or know the ins and outs on that front, and that is hard to teach during a panel or workshop. You must be out there building your own relationships, so that’s less about knowledge and more about experience and investing the time. It takes a lot of effort. To the extent that someone is thinking about entrepreneurship when they are still fully in academia, they can make connections and learn from each other.. They can understand what networks they can build.
What do you do to relax?
I love hanging out with my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. I sing songs with her and play with her; we chase each other around. It’s pure joy. She keeps me sane. If I work late, I come home to “Hi Dada!” That’s it, the stress is gone.