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German Startup Awards 2021 — Best Newcomer
I think Berlin is full of culture and it is the startup hub of Europe.Nina Patrick, GSA21 Newcomer of the Year
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Media Partnership
This interview is in media partnership with the German startup association (Bundesverband Deutscher Startups https://deutschestartups.org/). Their German Startup Awards (GSA21) honor each year outstanding female and male founders and investors in special categories. You can learn more about the winners in our interview and on our website:
The Founder
In this interview, we talk to Nina Patrick (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninapatrick/), CEO and Founder of MiProbes Biotechnology (https://www.miprobes.de/).
Nina graduated with a degree in pharmaceutical chemistry. She chose this major, despite her chemistry teacher advising her not to do it 😊. After her Ph.D. she went into business and became a Business Intelligence Analyst, later joining startups in the Bay Area, where she is from. In her first startup, she helped to train microorganisms to be sensors.
Nina eventually came to Berlin with an accelerator program and soon after decided to stay and co-found a company.
You can buy the MiProbes tests here: https://www.miprobes.shop/
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, July 12th, 2021 at 17.00 CET
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This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Transcript
[0:00] Startuprad.io.Your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startups.With News interviews and Live Events.Hello and welcome everybody this is Joe from Stella burrito do your startup podcast they need to block from Germany again with another winnerall the German startup Awards this time I talk to you NE and she’s the newcomer of the Year 2021 welcome and congratulations.Fixed oh thanks so much for having me.
[0:42] Totally my pleasure this recording is in media partnership with the German startup Association and the German startup Awardsum but before we get to your word which is actually the end of our interview let us start where you’ve been started becauseas everybody can see down here there’s a link to your LinkedIn profile and you attended the Lehigh Universitypharmaceutical chemistry how on Earth did he saydecide to study pharmaceutical chemistry it has nothing you come up with like like a lot of people oh what do you want to be I want to be an astronaut I want to be firefighter but I haven’t heard anybody who’s who saidI’ve want to be pharmaceutical chemist.I’m with you there that major was only offered by Lehigh for one year and it was the year that I,graduated with that title and then I don’t think there were any other students that wanted a Bachelors in pharmaceutical chemistry so they don’t actually offer it any longer and I think I’m the only person with that degree.
[1:55] And what what did you make to take this major weather was driving you their curiosity interest.Yeah a little bit of a Funny Story I really liked chemistry and in high school but I wasn’t wasn’t particularly good at it.
[2:18] Like I wasn’t the top of my class necessarily like I was getting A’s and B’s but I wasn’t the Superstarand but I wanted to continue on and I was looking for what sort of major I could have and I talked to my chemistry teacher in high school and said I want to major in chemistry what should I do and he was like you shouldn’tand so I think I left his office with a lot of rage and and said okay I’m going to go do it anyway.And then I was always interested in how drugs affect the body and I wanted to know more about how drugs workand so that’s what took me into like the pharmaceutical side of chemistry so I found just kind of regular chemistry a bit boring just some reactions going on but I wanted to be able to make those compounds and and so that’s what got me into the.And the pharmaceutical science major however when I went to grad school I thought I was going to stay in this Medicinal Chemistry fieldand started doing a lot of reactions in my first lab that I worked and in grad school and decided that I didn’t want to just buildthe drugs anymore I actually wanted to see how they affected the body and so I ended up getting my PhD andpharmaceutical science but with little bit more broad into pharmacology so really studying how drugs affect the body and I was I was working on.
[3:48] A specific compound that’s used for epilepsy but causes a lot of weight gain as a side effect and I was diving into why is this weight gain happening what’s going on in the body that’s being caused by this drug as a side effect.And found everybody’s curious that you found a cure for against wait games I wish that was the case that would have been.That would have made the headlines right.
[4:15] But no I we just found out some of the the Deep mechanisms of what was happening what was wrong with.Really the timing of whenpeople took this drug for for epilepsy most people take the drugs in the morning and in the morning that’s when your stress hormone cortisol is at its highest.Cortisol also helps you get your metabolism going and when you take this drug in the morning it really depletes that that hormone and so this could be a reason why.These people are gaining weight because their metabolism isn’t kick-started by by that hormone and soone potential option would be to try and take the drug at night when the when the cortisol is is at its lowest in your getting ready to go to sleep but anyway that was quite to Scientific for it is true,don’t worry totally fine for us and you created with a PhD insorry I have to read this drop Discovery and development and then you ended up,as a business intelligence analyst I actually would have expected something like with the lab in laboratory I did.How did this happen right so that role was.A role I had as a student while I was still finishing my PhD I was looking at.
[5:39] Different types of careers that you can go into after you have a PhD I’m very social very extroverts and not necessarily what you typically find in a lab.And and wonder,I started to explore was that I had a quite a few touch points with the technology transfer office at my my grad schooland this is the office that handles any intellectual property that’s created at the University but has some commercial potentialI want to transfer that out and by licensing the technology or having it purchased by a startup or a large company.And they were looking for for analysts and so I was hired there where I was just evaluating a lot of,technologies that were coming out of the university and seeing if they had commercial value and looking at Market size and potential,and I think that was where I first started to get a little bit of business experience so not just lab the whole time but starting to kind of bridge this and yeah I was there for I think almost nearly a year my last year in grad school.
[6:50] Hmm and then I want point you decided to go for startups I would assume in theBay Area I’m not familiar with the name but it sounds a little bit like sciency not necessarily biotech startups.Yes both are both are biotech startups so the first one was called Prospect bio.I was with them for around two and a half years.Yeah when I when I left grad school I wanted to move up to the Bay Area that’s where I was born always felt kind of a pull to go back there.And I wanted to get into the startup space because I had worked in the technology transfer office I started seeing there’s a lot of this technology that’s getting commercialized and these are,farming spinouts or they’re forming small businesses and I didn’t necessarily want to go into a large corporation straight away because I’d always worked in small teams and found Prospect bio I was hired as there,their first senior scientist really the first employee and.I was with them for around two and a half years and the technology we were building there was a.
[8:03] Basically genetically engineering microorganisms to act as sensors and we built a large library of 50,000 sensors that could detect different fragrances and flavorsthis was really interesting to Ginkgo bioworks and get-go bioworks ended up acquiring the the entire Library.So basically you trained a little bit clearer er-2to be like a drug dog exactly like the one sniffing for illegal drugs at the border patrol like that that’s a great way to put it.
[8:38] And how did you do it because because I do believe if you didn’t get them some food for rewards how can you actually train a microorganism yes so we.
[8:52] Genetically engineer them too.Act as a sensor to detect different fragrances and flavors so well in this in this scenario so fragrances are small or small molecules they enter in the cell.And then they would react with a piece of DNA that we had designed to activate in the presence of that small molecule and then create a fluorescent signal that you can then detect with the sensor so.It’s a bit of genetic engineering combining different types of DNA together in order to bring that Sig bring that signal from the compound into something that you can breed.So that means yeah you for example mate,bacteria that was clawing every time they smell chocolate yes but not chocolate.What had commercial applications because we already talked about a docks on the border patrol sniffing like I would assume anti-terrorismanti drug smuggling what else come to mind what else can he use this for ya so this what we built in particular was used tomonitor the production of these fragrance molecules so.
[10:18] In a biosynthetic approach to making these types of fragrances you engineer a bacteria or Yeast to produce this.Grapefruit scent molecule for example you’re making this in a fermenter.But you want to know what concentration that compound is at and so are bacteria that we engineered to be able to pick up that grapefruit molecule.Can be incubated alongside the production strain and it will glow.When that production strain has made a certain concentration of that chemical.
[10:59] Very very stupid idea but basically you could also like make bacteria that become green every time they smell Christmas trees exactly exactly something like this we’re we’re a bit Limited inmost of the fragrance molecules we used would have to.
[11:18] We would have to put it into a liquid and so unfortunately you can’t we never got to the point where you could spray the are necessarily and then the air is going to Glow because it smells the Christmas tree,but we did try to try to make sensors for some more volatile compound so that Freight like molecules that are in the air but it was a bit more difficult because you need toput them in the same space and bacteria like to grow in typically a liquid and so you also need to be able to put the fragrance molecule into the liquid.I see and then you changejobs and then there is a like an important step in your life because you said you’re returning from the bay area but then at one point you made like a really big step in geographically because you went from theBay Area to bowling why did he do that what was that yeah I get asked this all the time because most people.At least in Germany they say why did you leave the Bay Area we’re trying to go there and not the other way around.Yes quite yeah the earthquakes are exciting have you ever felt an earthquake.Actually I had one when I was visited during my studies in the US so I was basically a there as.
[12:46] As a graduating senior at Midwestern State income most tanks and before and after summer school I visited the East Coast and West Coast and I had a very small earthquake when I was in San Francisco but actually for me never experienced an earthquakeeven a very small one was more than sufficient for me yes yeah there I would say the first time you feel what it’s quite.It’s quite frightening but then you get that you get used to it and my roommates and I,I’m used to say that unless the frames are coming off the wall you don’t have anything to worry about I see I see.Actually so what was the driver behind it did he want to.Make it change or did you just have you been just so fascinated by Berlin or.What could motivate here to yeah yo.
[13:52] Boy did I miss a whale’s I was starting to think about starting my own business and.Because I’ve had basically just a scientific background my whole life and all of his Technical Training I was looking for different accelerator programs.Give me that extra education around the business side of starting a company.And my cousin had actually suggested looking into entrepreneur first.Which is a startup accelerator that helps you find a co-founder helps you vet your idea evaluate markets and and understand the business potential and and really get get started and.She worked for a company that had come out of one of kiev’s cohorts in the UK and so I was like okay I’ll check it out,they have three locations in Europe’s they have London Paris and Berlin and I liked Berlin.Because I had two friends that are had already lived here and told me very good things so I was like okay I least have two friends.And I think the city is just full of culture it’s the you know the startup Hub of Europe.And when I arrived I did feel like my,perspective from San Francisco and my kind of startup mentality was really well heard here and it also doesn’t doesn’t hurt that the cost of living is significantly less than San Francisco.
[15:21] Mmm I’m very sure about that and as so basically you ply you got accepted and,maybe this was a correction afterwards but my understanding is basically you came here in March and then in April that already started you come yes basically is that past yes.
[15:43] Okay okay okay no yeah no time wasted awesome and then you basically.Founded or co-founded my probes by a technology company and when we talked before the interview basically.
[16:03] Let’s take it let’s say that way you have to yes I think every good entrepreneur has has several iterations on their idea exactlyso what was the idea you started out with and what is the idea whoo What is what my probes is actually doing right now yeahsoWhat my purpose is doing now maybe I’ll start with that is we are doing we make a at home health tracking test so we make a urine test strip,and an Associated app that measures five different Health parametersand that allows you to do this test every week to monitor your health over time with the idea is to basically be the Fitbit for your urine so.Knowing your immunity Liver Health Kidney Health nutrition and hydration just from your urine every week.Simply use our strip take a photo upload it to our app and then we have a database of.What you’re all of the results you’ve ever had and then we can make suggestions on how to improve and optimize your health just by looking at your urine we met plenty of it so might as well put it to some good use.
[17:23] Previously my probes was focusing on at home testingfor food safety so basically taking a test strip and knowing if your milk has gone off or not.We’ve always wanted to be really.Bringing diagnostic tests into the home so that people can use them more frequently know more about what’s going on in their environment and their health and I feel that with.The covid pandemic everyone’s a lot more familiar with self-testing.And feels more comfortable in the space luckily now everybody is a bit of an amateur virologist so people know what a PCR test is they know what an antigen test is they know what an antibody test is all these things that I used to have to educatepeople about now everyone knows accuracy sensitivity specificity they do all of these terms and so now I feel is a really good time too.
[18:29] Basically give people a chance to test more things about their bodies because they’ve gotten used to it over the last year.
[18:37] And talking about testing your body’s what arewhat is something you can detect with with your strips what would be like early warnings what can you tell of the health of a body.
[18:54] Okay yeah so I mentioned we look for Liver Health and Kidney Health so.Typically if there is protein in your urine this can be a sign of liver dysfunction so this is something that we could pick up on earlya lot of times when you go to the doctor and if you have any problems like this it’s very reactive so really your.
[19:19] This problem has been persistent for quite some time it’s causing you some pain and there’s a reason that you’re now going to the doctor but with our strips we can monitor this so you know what healthy looks like to you and if that ever starts to deviate we can,basically flag that and you can go to the doctor much more proactively so we could even be in a space where it’s like a preventive medicine.Hmm and if your product already available for purchase what state are you guys in.Yes so we have launched the test strips about a month ago so this is a big step for us I can show you one here they look a little bit like this so it’s a testing card it hasthese 10 parameter pads at the bottom of the card you simply can collect your urine into a cup and dip this into the bottom for about one second.Take it out snap a photo and send it to us and they’re on our website my probes dot shop you could buy them,as early as right after this podcast and then we also have the web application where we give you the results and and recommendations.I’m at.
[20:29] And my understanding is that actually you then use an AI to actually recognize the picture and.What do you plant in the future will you stick with this card or are there like other plans in the pipeline.
[20:47] Yes so the first plan will be to expand the card offering so I mentioned right now we have these 10 parameters but we want to include more.Vitamins minerals and hormones that you can test from your urine and make specific card packages that are focused onneeds that our customers are having perhaps prenatal or elderly focused cards that look at specificand biomarkers for those for those groups and yes we have an AI that is able to detect the card andmeasure the density of the color change for each of the pads in order to give you the values so this all happens very very quickly,that sounds really fascinating and just out of curiosity when did you learn that you got the German startup awards for newcomer of the year and how did it feel.Ah I actually don’t know what was the day that the the start of awards or honors end of April I remember but I don’t remember exactly the,I guess the only thing that was a bits of bit surprising,well
many things are a bit surprising I found out I was nominated I think in December.
[22:11] I’m not a German speaker and the email was all in German and so I ignored it actually for a for about a week or twoand then I and then they picked me again and they’re like hey did you see this email you’ve been nominated for the award and I was like oh my god oh that’s meaning oh yeah here you goyeah yeah I was like oh that’s mean I definitely did not translate that one correctly so that was back in December and then.I knew that the award ceremony was going to be coming but we did the filming for the actual Awards before the rest of the public knew.
[22:48] Because of Corona and and we had to do this certain social distancing and so I knew a week before anyone else knew,which was a bit was also a little bit funny becauseI forgot that no one else knew and so I was like oh yeah I just won the award keeping it to myself and then a week later you know it goespublic and then all of the congratulations come in online and it was just I think I sort of missed that not having the live event because.I yeah I was very kind ofanti-climactic at the moment the German startup Association made a nice event where they gave the awards but you know you don’t have the group of people around you and then all of that kind of came in later when they when they announced it online.
[23:36] How did it actually feel I assume there have not been many people present at the award ceremony right,right that’s that’s exactly it there was only the other nominees for each category so the nominees for founder of the year and investor of the year and social impact.And so it was very small group and then the camera Crews more or less but it still felt very.
[24:10] It’s felt very surprising I just I didn’t think I was going to win at all and being able to be recognized bystartup community in a city where I have not lived here very long it felt very it felt very nice that I was being welcomed and kind of accepted into into the startup Community here and recognized for my efforts and so that was a really good feeling.What did your family say I think my mom cried they were so proudand that that goes a little bit too when I mentioned that we did the filming before the actual the actual broadcast so I didn’t tell anybody I had one and I told my parents are you have to watch the,the the online stream and then they called me all excited and she and my mom is like but you knew I don’t want she felt so she felt betrayed that I had told her but we weren’t allowed to tell anybody.Yeah hmm I see well.
[25:12] Only thing left for me to set up well two things left for me to say congratulations again thank you very much,secondly thank you was a pleasure having you here and best of luck for you and microbes.Thank you very much Joe it was great chatting with you this is a lot of fun pleasure was all mine thank you bye bye thank you bye.
[25:36] If you are a professional looking at the European startup scene Germany is a place you cannot miss fortunately.
[25:45] Music.
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