Ali Tehrani: Walking The Path Of An Entrepreneur

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By Shawn Lawrence

An entrepreneur is not a nine-to-five person collecting a paycheck every week or two.

To do what they do takes a lot of work and dedication. Similar to a scientist, the path they walk isn’t often traveled. More importantly by their nature, they don’t just dream up ideas; they follow through to make them happen.

In the truest sense, Ali Tehrani is an entrepreneur. As president, CEO and co-founder of Zymeworks, a private Canadian computational biotechnology company, Tehrani has steered the company to its share of successes and achievements in a very short period of time. At just 36 years of age, he is surprisingly young to be in his position. Tehrani founded Zymeworks in the fall of 2003, in partnership with Anthony Fejes and with help from Haig Farris, Nick Bedord and Andew S. Wright, and he had it incorporated by the spring of 2004. At the time of founding the company he was only a graduate student.

Five years later, Zymeworks has developed a strong reputation as a company specializing in computer modeling technologies for enzyme engineering.

Likewise, its proprietary technology, The Zymeworks Computer Assisted Design (ZymeCAD™) molecular simulation platform has drawn the attention of major players in both the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

“Computational biotechnology is a trend that is drawing a lot of attention in our industry,” states Tehrani. “It’s basically the marriage between traditional biotech R&D, i.e. wet lab experimentation with high performance computing to tackle tougher problems.”

Specifically the device creates a highly detailed computational modeling environment for accurate and predictive semi-rational protein engineering.

“We’re using molecular modeling to understand complex molecular interactions and this understanding and knowledge allows us to more efficiently and in a much more targeted fashion design the kind of therapeutics and products that the market needs from a consumer and healthcare standpoint,” he explains.

Likewise, the company’s core focus is developing a pipeline of enabling enzymes that has applications for the chemical industry and for protein therapeutics for the pharmaceutical industry. The company has a twofold approach to accomplishing its goals. Specifically through internal research and development, and then partnering with established companies in these fields.

“Our interest in the protein therapeutic pipeline is to look at opportunities where we can either improve existing protein therapeutics or revive the ones that have failed. Our goal is to reset the IP clock and give these therapeutics a second go at clinical trials. As such, we’re out there partnering with companies that have specific protein engineering and design needs, that can benefit from our cutting edge technology to accelerate their R&D.

Basically just about every company in the chemical and the pharmaceutical world has some protein engineering need where they’re trying to use an enzyme or trying to customize an antibody or some protein therapeutic. Our platform allows them to do so, accelerating their R&D, taking away the time and the resource intensity that is often associated to do the same thing through traditional biotech research & development,” he said.

To date Zymeworks has partnered itself with SGI to make collaborative advancements in high performance scientific computing and research into parallel algorithms for molecular modeling. The company is also working with DSM to evaluate the application of its computational biotechnology tools in the context of discovering promising new enzymes for use in DSM’s biocatalytical processes.

“Our partnership with DSM is one I’m very proud of, as it’s one of the largest chemical companies in the world,” states Tehrani. “They need our technology to go beyond the roadblocks that they face using their traditional science and wet lab experimentation.”

The inherit nature of the business, i.e. computational biotechnology, has also helped to attract prospective partners to the company and Tehrani expects to see more deal of this nature on the horizon for Zymeworks.

“Our cost requirements compared to most biotechnology companies is much lower, while we still maintain the same potential as other biotech companies,” he adds.

Moreover, staying ahead of the curve, ahead of what everyone else is doing is another company priority.

“We constantly look at our business opportunities finding not only what’s relevant today but what’s also interesting tomorrow. We were one of the first to start talking about the idea of industrial biotechnology to protect the environment, pitching the idea that you can use biocatalysts instead of chemical catalysts and today just about everybody is talking about Cleantech and Green technology,” he said.

One of the companies key strengths is its relationships with top professors at UBC and SFU. Tehrani says these relationships have helped him and his team to really understand the research and scientific goals when it comes to protein engineering and optimization.

“That’s the best lesson I’ve learned for success, locate the right people and put them into the right place. In this way, we try to collaborate and work with academia as much as possible to ensure we remain on the cutting edge of the science and it’s a two-way street, they get the benefit from our technology and we get to benefit from their expertise and together make sure our science is reviewed and not headed for some blind alley that could be problematic down the road.”

He explains the idea to start a company like Zymeworks essentially originated from his involvement as a co-founder in another of his successful entrepreneurial efforts, The Student Biotechnology Network, located in British Columbia.

“When I came to grad school and started my graduate studies at UBC, one of the key realizations that came to me very early on was that while I was working amongst some of the best scientists in the world and going tête-à-tête with them in doing the science, there was something different between me an my peers. They were in love with science, where I was more in love with the idea of making science more applicable to the needs of today and the needs of the market,” remembers Tehrani.

Tehrani and two of his peers began having serious discussion around this and other facts, specifically, that while he’d been trained by some of the best scientists in the world and in some of the best scientific techniques, he’d been given no real world experience about how things worked beyond the bench and what his options were after graduation.

“I felt my options were limited, continuing down the academic route or joining a pharmaceutical company. Neither was very appealing to me and I felt there had to be something behind door number three, some other possibility,” he said.

From this decision Tehrani set in motion The Student Biotechnology Network to act as a bridge between academia and industry, where students could explore their options, learn from market experts and mentors, and connect with the right people. As the director of the Student Biotechnology Network, Tehrani arranged a lecture series, which exposed students to the entire spectrum of the biotechnology workforce on a weekly basis. The concept was very simple and it snowballed.

“The more I got into it and the more success it had, the more I realized that my passion was building a team, planting a seed in the ground, and watching that seed grow, watering it, allowing it to flourish and turn into something substantial,” he said.

It was through the Student Biotechnology Network that Tehrani was able to interact with several key people and started to get the idea of actually going into business for himself. One of the people he met was Haig Farris, and with Farris’s help he was able to convince a group of Angel Investors to by into the idea behind Zymeworks. Tehrani credits Farris’s knowledge, expertise, contacts and advise for helping to put his business plan together.

“Farris is known in the Vancouver circle as one of the fathers of venture capitalism. He was a founder of Ventures West and he essentially became my mentor in every sense of the word. He helped me find the right group of individuals willing to take chances, which in turn lead to additional funding from government grants and other sources to get the company off the ground,” he said.

Tehrani has taken these lessons and overseen Zymeworks development every step of the way. Whether it involved employing the key hires, raising the necessary funds, establishing the board of directors, giving the company its direction or keeping it focused with its mandate, he has created an external position for the company, making the company and technology visible on a larger stage.

“You learn as management that your role is to remove roadblocks from in front of your team. The best management is one that is never seen, that provides no interference with the work that needs to be done.

Watching from the sidelines, while making sure the mandates of the company are met, that all employees have what they require and that they are given the space and the room to do their job. We’ve got 20 employees, nine of whom have PhD’s, we’ve recruited top scientists from all around the world, we have people from Europe, we have people from India, we have people from Canada, and I would say it’s a good mix of extremely intelligent people, all extremely driven.”

He can be equally as proud of where his other creation has gone. Today, membership for The Student Biotechnology Networks has eclipsed 1,500, and is made up of undergraduate, graduate and post-doctorate students whose backgrounds stretch beyond traditional science. Taking a page out of the student biotechnology network Tehrani remains active as a voice on a national stage working with BIOTECanda on their industrial and environment committees.

“I’ve come to see that the world of biotechnology is more than your own immediate objectives or even your own business, you have to go out there and for the greater good of both your business and the entire industry, offer your time and volunteer yourself to help the industry grow.”

Beyond that he also wishes to pass on his experiences as a reference point for others who also want to do something similar.

“I want to be able to help them in the ways I was helped, help them achieve their dreams and accomplish the same things I did, if not better. It doesn’t take a special kind of person, but to be an entrepreneur requires a clear understanding of what you want, and what are you willing to sacrifice for it. I think we all want that feeling that we’ve done something special. The ones that ultimately get it are the ones that see the bigger picture. More importantly every entrepreneur needs to be good at selling, especially if you have a breakthrough technology. You can be sitting on the best and brightest idea but if you don’t go out there and let people know, no-one will find you.”

Good advice from a man that has walked the path.