AI: Smart/Stupid

Nimish Shah sits down with Marino Garcia, CEO of Dianthus Therapeutics, to discuss how his 30+ year career in biotech has shaped his approach to leadership, the lessons he's learned since becoming CEO, the importance of building the right team, and his advice for the next generation of biotech leaders.

Venrock partners Andrew Gottesdiener and Nimish Shah sat down with Michael Henderson, CEO of Apogee Therapeutics, to talk about selling Apogee to AbbVie for nearly $11 billion, the hardest part of being a CEO, what it takes to build a great team and culture, Michael's three rules for first-time biotech CEOs, and more.

Siobhan Nolan Mangini and Bob Kocher sit down with Patrick Nelli, founder and CEO of Aligned Marketplace, to discuss how rebuilding how we access advanced primary care can improve outcomes, lower costs, and better serve employees. Patrick shares his path from Health Catalyst executive to healthcare founder, why employer-sponsored primary care is ready for transformation, and how Aligned is building a national marketplace for high-quality, accessible care.

The results of Venrock's 10th annual Healthcare Prognosis are in. This year's survey covers some of the biggest questions in healthcare, from AI in medical care and the future of GLP-1s to consumer peptides, IPOs, M&A, and what's ahead for healthcare policy. In this episode, Bryan Roberts, Bob Kocher, and Siobhan Nolan Mangini sit down to discuss the most interesting findings, share their perspectives on what surprised them, and offer a pulse check on where the industry may be headed next.

As Arca launches with $64 million in funding and more than $1 billion in assets under management, founder and CEO Rron Rexha joins Nick Beim to share his vision for AI-native wealth management built around human-first advice. Rron reflects on his journey from Kosovo to fintech, his year as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venrock, and why he believes the next era of wealth management will be more proactive, personalized, and accessible.

Metsera CEO Whit Bernard joins Venrock's Nimish Shah to discuss how the company's ultra-long acting GLP-1 program helped position it as a strategic standout in the obesity market. The conversation covers the bidding war between major pharma players, lessons in first-principles company building, and why the next decade of biotech could reward high-volume, accessible innovation. 

Nimish Shah sits down with Andy Robbins, CEO of Cogent Biosciences, for a candid conversation about building a targeted therapy company in oncology. Andy shares how Cogent made high-stakes decisions around bezuclastinib, why speed matters in biotech, and what it takes to build conviction years before clinical answers arrive. They also dig into what's overhyped, what's undervalued, and why the best biotech leaders stay humble, fast-moving, and relentlessly focused on patients.

SmithRx CEO and co-founder Jake Frenz joins Venrock's Siobhan Nolan Mangini to talk about the company's mission to fix the opaque and broken US drug ecosystem. SmithRx started by tearing down the existing misaligned model of PBMs with a per member model that is incentivized to deliver the lowest possible cost for patients. The two get into how his personal challenges with the US healthcare system and his grit and tenacity as a Marine have informed where SmithRx is today and why it's unrelenting in capitalizing on the tidal wave of enterprises and policymakers who are ready for a better drug solution. 

Bob Kocher speaks with Brad Stulberg, on the many lessons in his newly-published book The Way of Excellence, including why we find excellence on the side of the mountain, not at its peak. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of Arete, Brad argues that you find true success in pursuit itself: the bidirectional process where chasing a goal, whether writing a book, building a company, or competing in sport, shapes your character as much as you shape the outcome. They go deeper on the optimistic lessons from his book, including why joy is life's true renewable energy source.

Leading AI researcher and Professor at the Santa Fe Institute Melanie Mitchell joins Ethan Batraski for a conversation on how our current generation of AI is powerful, promising, and still badly in need of transparency about how it actually "thinks." She gives advice on how to redesign our benchmarks as true measures instead of targets, and how we can incorporate dynamic testing and deeper interpretability to close the gap between today's AI systems and true intelligence.