Cultivating Baltimore’s Biotech Ecosystem With Blackbird Laboratories

During our “What’s the Buzz?!” series, BioBuzz Network’s CEO, Chris Frew, sat down with BlackBird Laboratories’ CEO, Matt Tremblay to discuss the ever-growing BioHealth Capital Region. The conversation focused on Baltimore’s unique value propositions, BlackBird’s ambitious goals for emerging biotech companies, and strategies for entrepreneurial development, talent retention, and company relocation.

From Southern California to Baltimore: How BlackBird Came to Be 

Matt shared his journey to Baltimore, which began in the Southern California biotech ecosystem. An opportunity arose for a founding grant from the Stephen & Renee Bisciotti Foundation, established by the owners of the Baltimore Ravens. This grant enabled the creation of Blackbird Laboratories, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the gap between pioneering academic science and industry. Blackbird provides capital, program management, and strategic scientific and business support from its team of life sciences professionals.

Named as a tribute to the Baltimore Ravens, Blackbird works closely with faculty members and tech transfer offices at institutions like Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, and the Lieber Institute. The organization awards grants to researchers and prepares them for investment and eventual commercialization.

Big Goals for the Maryland Ecosystem

Blackbird aims to leverage Maryland’s unique assets: world-class institutions, high research and development spending, and robust federal funding. Over the next 10 years, Blackbird’s goals include supporting the creation of 50 new biotech companies and attracting $2 billion in venture capital funding to the Baltimore ecosystem. This effort involves evolving their model to meet ecosystem needs, with a strong focus on infrastructure development and investment recruitment.

“We don't want to just move the dollars around that are already in Maryland. We want to bring dollars to import,” Matt explained. “Some of the more mature ecosystems are quite saturated and [are] struggling to find good investments.”

Matt and his team are committed to addressing roadblocks and evolving the life sciences ecosystem, whether through non-dilutive funding or infrastructure building. “Drug discovery is difficult,” Matt acknowledged, “but it's really that philosophy that we bring and the commitment over that longer time horizon, and that I think will make a difference.”

For Matt, building the ecosystem means developing infrastructure and strengthening the broader environment to retain talent. This includes keeping graduates from top institutions in the region and minimizing the relocation of talent due to mergers and acquisitions.

Collaboration and Investment Driving Innovation

Both Matt and Chris highlighted the importance of collaboration in these efforts. Events, workshops, and shared knowledge, both within the region and from hubs like Boston and San Francisco, are vital to fostering innovation. Sharing success stories and outcomes can boost opportunities for collective learning and progress.

Blackbird has collaboration agreements with both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. For instance, they support programs like Dr. Sasha Krupnick’s research at UMB on novel cancer antigens, which aim to improve efficacy in tumors resistant to standard treatments.

In addition to these initiatives, Blackbird BioVentures, a venture within Blackbird Laboratories, invests in seed and Series A stage companies, primarily focusing on therapeutics. These investments range from $1M to $5M and are non-exclusive. Over the past year, Blackbird BioVentures has made six equity investments in the Baltimore-Maryland area, including participation in Clasp Therapeutics’ $150M Series A. These investments help Blackbird stay connected to local innovation and ensure that companies & the larger community scores big.

Through strategic collaboration and targeted investment, Blackbird is positioning itself as a cornerstone of the Baltimore biotech scene and is ready to meet industry challenges and bring these companies into the end zone.

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Transcript:

Chris Frew [00:00:04]:

Hello everybody, it's Chris Frew here, CEO of BioBuzz Networks, welcoming you to another edition of what's the Buzz? Where we highlight the work and the impact that local ecosystem builders are doing to foster highly engaged and successful ecosystems. And today I'm very pleased to have the pleasure of joining Matt Tremblay, who is CEO of Blackbird Laboratories and Managing Director of Blackbird BioVentures. Matt, welcome.

Matt Tremblay [00:00:35]:

Great, thanks, Chris. Real pleasure to be here.

Chris Frew [00:00:38]:

Yeah, excited to have you, Matt. So for anybody who hasn't joined us on one of these before, this is again just a casual conversation opportunity to really talk about what's happening in your local ecosystem. As you know, many of you have trusted BioBuzz for the past 15 years as your go to source for connecting not only around information, but around talent within the ecosystem. Today we're operating in Maryland, Philadelphia and North Carolina and we're excited to continue to expand. Our vision is to have a connected network of ecosystems all over the country and the world to help more ecosystems thrive and connect with the resources that they need. So, today we are talking about how to create a more cultivated biotech ecosystem in Baltimore. And Matt, that is what you specialize in. So excited to have you here to talk a little bit about that. Maybe do you mind starting off just giving a little bit of a personal introduction, a little of your journey that brought you here.

Matt Tremblay [00:01:39]:

That's great, Chris, I'd be happy to do that. So I'm a scientist by training. I have a degree in chemistry and I actually grew up in the northeast, not in Baltimore, but we'll come back to that. I do call Baltimore my home now. I spent about 15 years in the San Diego Southern California biotech ecosystem and there we did, we did a variety of things that were looking to catalyze the interface between where academic research that tends to be funded by federal grants and tends to culminate in high impact publications. Where does that meet up with the industrial development of in particular new medicines, but also other life saving technologies to diagnose and treat and prevent diseases? I did that at the Scripps Research Institute and we created an interesting business model for trying to accelerate really the innovative findings from the research labs into a place in the biotech market where they could have the capital and the focus that they need to have a chance to impact patients. I did that for 15 years. I was contacted by, and I now consider this very fortuitous, contacted by the owners of the Baltimore Ravens. I was not a football fan at the time. The Chargers for Those who follow this had left us high and dry in San Diego with no football team. So I was ready to adopt not only a new football loyalty, but also to come to Baltimore and start what has become a really exciting adventure over the past two years. If I may, Chris, I'll just dive into describing what the beginning of that journey has been. We have been fortunate to have resources from the owners of the Baltimore Ravens, the Bisciotti family, really, in two different ways. And I think these are two ways to really think about how to drive an emerging ecosystem. First and foremost, the family made a philanthropic gift to create Blackboard Laboratories as a nonprofit that's focused on working together with faculty members and tech transfer offices at universities. And we have a focused collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, Lieber Institute and other institutions in Baltimore to use that philanthropic money as grants to essentially help the researchers to perfect those data sets and get them ready to put in front of investors, which we view as the crucial rate limiting step for creating new companies. At the same time, we created Blackbird BioVentures with the thought that we didn't simply want to give grants to research projects and throw them over the fence to the investors. We wanted to be able to vote with our own two feet and say if we support a technology and we support an ecosystem, we're also going to show up when that technology has matured from being a project in the lab to being a company that needs investors to provide capital to provide insights to on the board and support the growth of that company. And so in doing that, we created those two entities and we've been at it for about a year and a half. I managed to convince not only my family to move to Baltimore, and they're all loving it, but a couple of my colleagues from Scripps joined me as well, and we've recruited a team of 12 from amongst some of the brightest folks in Baltimore. Biology and sort of chemistry interface.

Chris Frew [00:05:34]:

That's great. I appreciate that foundation. You know, I, we hear this a lot too. And this is part of why we do these programs, Matt, is we hear, hey, I hear, I hear about Blackbird is in Baltimore. Are they investing? What are they investing in that? Like, so I think what I really wanted to do today is really make sure we can unmask, you know, any questions people have about what you and your team do so that the ecosystem knows exactly how to engage, when to engage, where to engage with your team. So that's really, it's a good foundation to start from, I guess. Secondly too, I guess the question just based on your introduction, are you now a football fan after, you know, the Bisciotti family brings you in the bottle. I'm sure you're going to a couple games.

Matt Tremblay [00:06:21]:

I'm going to every game. I've got my 8 year old son who I consider my, my, my brain backup. He's got a much more agile mind for memorizing sports statistics than I do. And so two of us are inseparable on Sundays and occasionally Thursdays and Mondays.

Chris Frew [00:06:39]:

That's great. That's awesome. So let's, let's talk a little bit about what you're working on day to day, Matt, and like, you know, really how you are working on de-risking this early stage capital. So let's start with some of, some of the kind of blocking and tackling and then I'd love to go into more of the ecosystem building that you're doing. So I guess you have two arms, the Blackbird Labs. What's the secret sauce there? Like, how is that, you know, how is your team really doing? What's the secret sauce to how you're, you know, engaging PIs and pulling technology out through that and kind of what's the kind of your target volume or your bandwidth?

Matt Tremblay [00:07:24]:

Yeah, no great questions. Well, I mean first I like to disclaim that, you know, we've been doing this for 18 months. I don't know if everybody loves the taste of the secret sauce or not. So I can say that I think we have one particular strategy and I think it has been designed based on what has worked for me in the past in other roles, but also designed to complement what else I see going well in the ecosystem. For example, I think JHTV @ Johns Hopkins and UM Ventures at University of Maryland, I think they're bringing incredible value to the ecosystem and the work that they do. And we work closely with them and try to, you know, come up with, you know, where are the ways that we can add value and synergize with what's already going on. So with that said, you know, specifically we have eight projects right now that we're incubating. That's not the perfect word for it, but that's what we call it, incubating. These projects, they're collaborations, they're grant funded, but they're with the team of 12 that we have now, mostly scientists. We're meeting with the folks at universities on a weekly basis on most of these projects to really co design the key experiments to ensure that not only the interesting science which will appeal to the scientific community but the robust data that will appeal to investors who are going to be asked to put their dollars at work to advance these products toward market. And I think those two data sets end up being a little bit different in a lot of ways. What gets scientists excited when you're reviewing science or nature paper, or what gets investors excited when they're thinking about writing a check for a seed grant, seed financing, That's, I think probably the biggest part of our role is to educate and to help bring to reality those experiments which will get investors to the table, get them excited and get them to write checks for companies based in Baltimore. Why eight projects instead of 50? It's a matter of wanting to have a high quality and high touch interface. And we have a team of 12 and that's sort of what we think. We can handle probably 8 to 10 projects at any given time. We're targeting projects that can move from the university lab to the investor pitch deck and hopefully get funded and break off on their own within 12 to 18 months. So although 8 to 10 at a given time may not seem like a lot, this is an iterative process. And so over years, and believe me, we are committed to doing this for the next decade and beyond. This is a long term time horizon commitment. We think that that is a good volume where we can provide quality and also reach a lot of people.

Chris Frew [00:10:32]:

So if I could maybe try to build a visual for this for some of our audience. So in essence, with your expertise and the team you brought to the table, understanding the investment landscape, you're able to go in and identify good science and almost work backwards. Like work, you know, work backwards from a commercialization investment goal and help that clinician or help that PI and help take that technology through the, to the milestones to make it commercializable. Is that kind of a good way to describe it, Chris?

Matt Tremblay [00:11:07]:

I think that's exactly the way to think about it. We are people who say if you want to be successful, you need to envision your success. So we try to say, what does success look like for this project? What is that pitch deck that the investor says yes to? What does it actually have in it and how do we reverse engineer that and work backwards from that and get all of those elements together. The reason why, again, it's a very bespoke and focused approach. Each one of these is different. Some projects are missing certain elements, some others need to build maybe on the business plan. Others could be toxicology data, it could be efficacy data. There's a lot of different things we try to identify where they are – I don't like to call them gaps –, but where are the areas that could be fortified further with investment to just get investors really excited? And it's not about just finding anybody who will write a check. Where are the investors who understand this complicated world of advancing biotech companies toward successful product launches? And so if you can get 10 investors excited and have three competitive proposals, these are all the things that I think have driven the robustness of ecosystems like Boston, San Francisco. And so, yeah, that's a little bit.

Chris Frew [00:12:35]:

Of our journey and trust too. Right. So I think it's establishing trust in an ecosystem that good technology is going to come out time and time again versus sporadically. So you're doing a lot to engage with that academic environment. I think you just had a Hopkins Innovation Summit recently, I saw. That's right.

Matt Tremblay [00:12:57]:

Yeah. Last Thursday we had a pilot. It was the first time we've done this and it was led and just absolutely beautifully managed by Johns Hopkins. But Blackbird did sponsor the event and helped with some of the programming, and we had a great turnout from some events. So the goal will be to expand that next year to be even more encompassing.

Chris Frew [00:13:19]:

Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, I saw some of that online. I mean, there's been a lot of. I mean, I think getting the community together, and that's something that's been at the heart of BioBuzz all the time, is like, if you can't create the collisions and the awareness, then you're going to stifle the progress of an ecosystem. So programs like that, I'm sure one make sure that everybody across the ecosystem at Hopkins knows the role that Blackbird can play and helps you get visibility as well into some of those projects. But it's not just Hopkins either. I saw just this week you have a new partnership with UM Ventures and a new asset or a new project that you're working on as well. Can you talk about that as well?

Matt Tremblay [00:14:01]:

That's right, yeah. No, we've, you know, we've pretty much since day one, we've had what we call a broad master collaboration agreement with both Hopkins and University of Maryland. And that's just been a really exciting journey to be on with those folks looking at all the exciting technology that's happening in both places. We did announce this week a program that we have with Dr. Sasha Krupnick at UMB looking at some novel cancer antigens. And it's in an area that I think there's a huge unmet need and a lot of the companies that have taken molecules into the clinic over the last few years, have borne out this hypothesis that you can use Bi-specific T-cell engagers to really drive efficacy in tumors that have been historically refractory to conventional treatment. So we're really excited about that. We have a great partnership with the UM Ventures team and the, and the UMB leadership, you know, throughout, throughout the organization. So we're really excited to announce that. 

Chris Frew [00:15:15]:

A lot of exciting things happen for MLK and Wexford Connect labs coming online. There's, just across the ecosystem, a lot of things that are exciting happening here in Baltimore. Let me take a step forward. Could you help our audience understand your Blackbird BioVentures? What's your kind of investment strategy there? What companies are you looking at and is it exclusive to your portfolio, Blackbird Laboratories portfolio, or are you also looking for additional opportunities in the market?

Matt Tremblay [00:15:50]:

Yeah, I'm glad you asked me that. The short answer is no, it's not exclusive to Blackbird Laboratories. And really, you know, both of these instruments are meant to be, you know, what we have at our heart is to enfranchise and sort of foster the growth of the Baltimore life sciences ecosystem. We think that these, you know, Blackbird Laboratories and Blackbird BioVentures are two really important and timely tools to do that with now. And their scope may evolve over time. So with that kind of grounding statement, I'll tell you where we are today with Blackbird BioVentures. Blackbird BioVentures is investing in seed and series A stage companies. We have a focus on therapeutics that may expand over time as well. Again, these are certain decisions you make to try to ensure that you have the ability to show the models working in the early days. And that's what myself and my team have experience with. And where we think we can make good decisions is in therapeutics. So we are looking at therapeutics companies. We will always take a look at adjacent technologies, devices, diagnostics, but we don't invest heavily in those areas right now. We will not lead investment rounds. We're backed by a family office that, as I said, we're getting into this from the perspective of wanting to support Baltimore and the ecosystem here. But we haven't been doing institutional investing in life sciences for 30 years like some firms. And so we don't lead investment rounds for companies with our grants. I just want to contrast that with on the grant side, we are willing to take that first step, and that's part of the thesis is we want to make sure that no life changing Technology left behind, but what we look for as those technologies become companies. We want to have an institutional investor that's on Fund 5 or Fund 6, and they've got a long track record of good decision making, good due diligence processes. We want to get the thumbs up from them as well to invest in those companies. And so likewise, that relates to our own portfolio. Likewise, if we're looking at companies and we've made. Chris, we've made six equity investments in the greater Baltimore, Maryland ecosystem in the past 12 months. And those are all companies that were not incubated by us. They're just investments that we reviewed and decided to join those rounds. But in all those cases, we were not the lead investor. We're investing between 1 and $5 million. Typically, again, these are all things that are subject to change. But I can describe what we've done to date across those six investments. And they have ranged from us being a significant proportion of a seed financing all the way up to us being, you know, numerically a less significant portion of a large Series A financing where the goal there is to help anchor that company. I'll take Clasp Therapeutics as an example. Johns Hopkins spin out company was sort of born in Baltimore, moved out to the Rockville area to expand. And we want to stay close to that story. We want to make sure that they continue to thrive, you know, in Maryland, still connected by a short commute to the. All the great science happening in Baltimore. And so we made an investment in that Series a, which was $150 million Series A last year. Hey, you're back. I think I lost you there for a moment.

Chris Frew [00:19:40]:

Yeah, I lost you. We lost you right when you were talking about class moving to Rockville.

Matt Tremblay [00:19:44]:

Okay, wonderful. So you didn't miss much. So I just wound up by saying that, you know, Clasp as an example, company born in Baltimore, moved to Rockville area, and we invested in that $150 million Series A as a way to stay close to an exciting regional story, help make sure that they have the connectivity they need to the Baltimore stakeholders. And so that's, that's another example of what we can do.

Chris Frew [00:20:11]:

That's great. Well, so let's, let's, talk. Let's turn this and talk a little bit more about Baltimore. I mean, so I'm a Baltimore guy. BioBuzz was started in Baltimore, actually. We started working very closely with Johns Hopkins. We did a lot of work with the Hopkins biotech network. So, you know, our roots are here. We want to see Baltimore win. You know, we've got a lot of momentum that was, you know, built around a lot of things that are happening between the tech hubs. And with you all coming to town and a lot of investment coming out of the universities. When can you talk to us about kind of how you are executing with a Baltimore focus? You know, it's no secret that a lot of we've had some highly successful companies come out of Baltimore. We've also had a lot of companies get pulled out of Baltimore. So I think, you know, there's a couple things on my mind is one is the, you know, creation of the commercialization and then there's the retention of commercialization. So I mean, you know, could you talk about some of the things, you know, you are doing with and what your focus is? I know I've heard rumors of an incubator or accelerator and I've heard some other rumors but like, how are you really influencing that?

Matt Tremblay [00:21:27]:

Yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean, you know, the way I would get into that is to say, you know, we view it as a longer term project to kind of raise the entrepreneurial quotient of the, in particular the trainees that are coming out of these institutions. Give you an example. I participate in an annual workshop for postdocs and PhD students and some junior faculty that come from all over the country to Bethesda to participate in this workshop about how to commercialize your technology. And even without looking at the name tags, I can tell the difference between the types of questions that I get from students who just happen to have gone to school in the San Francisco Bay area or the Boston metropolitan area or almost anywhere else in the country. And I know you cover a lot of these different ecosystems. And so you know that there's just a certain level of osmosis of information that happens in a couple of rarefied ecosystems that we need to build up over time in Baltimore and in other ecosystems. So I think, you know, there's no magic solution for how to do that. I think that involves just doing the work and letting people see examples of how, how even failed companies can teach people a lot of examples. A lot of the folks that I encounter have been in three biotechs that failed and they learned a lot from that and they're very sophisticated on the basis of that. So that's one thing I think events and workshops and other things are very important as well. To the point about things leaving Baltimore. I mean, I think if you, if you start a company in Baltimore and it gets well capitalized by venture capital and it's successful and it ends up attracting an M and A exit. That's a huge win for Baltimore. And I think we need to do our best to publicize that outcome and to educate people, maybe, you know, including government stakeholders. That, that is the natural cadence, particularly in biotech, but in other startup industries as well. And I view it as an opportunity for Baltimore to maybe engage that acquiring entity. To say here would be the pluses of keeping this site in Baltimore, but a lot of times it just doesn't make sense for the parent company. So I think we have to be maybe a little bit less critical of the cases where an acquired entity ends up shutting down operations in Baltimore. I think the benefit there is you've now got that positive experience. You've got all those people released back into the workforce who are now that much more sophisticated. How do we engage those people that made that happen? How do we, you know, I do some fishing here and there, catch and release. I mean, how do we make sure that they stay in Baltimore?

Chris Frew [00:24:35]:

That's a great point. I mean, you know, you're going to have, I like to call, I call it creative destruction. Right? You're going to have creative destruction where companies are acquired, an M and A. But what I would point to is it's a lot more beneficial if there are other places to absorb that talent.

Matt Tremblay [00:24:56]:

That's right.

Chris Frew [00:24:57]:

If we can increase the volume of companies through a lot of the work you're doing and some of, if we increase the volume of other early stage, growing stage companies, then I think that positive absorption can be very beneficial. As a recruiter who recruits for a lot of Baltimore companies, you know, I think the challenge we faced historically is that we don't, we don't have that capacity to absorb. And so like you said, it's not always a negative when a company leaves, but it's more of a positive if the rest of the ecosystem is built up around it.

Matt Tremblay [00:25:30]:

That's right. That's right. And I think you're completely right that, you know, the more additional places you have where these folks can then disseminate to and be productive with their time and not be allured to, you know, move, relocate to wherever the parent company is, I think that's really important. And you know, I think once we start to get some headway there, and I think there already is headway in a lot of places, I don't want to sell short a lot of the huge progress that's been made, it can really be a feed forward loop, which is, which is what we're getting at. So I feel good about that. I mean, the other point to make on retention, which has been very resonant for us, Hopkins and University of Maryland train some of the most talented, sought after people, both in their PhD programs and their MD programs, not to mention other areas. But if we're talking life sciences, you can look around at the C suites and other places and you're going to find Hopkins MDs and PhDs just all over the place and University of Maryland trainees as well. And that's exciting. A lot of those people have left Baltimore, but what I'm excited about is, you know, we've hired three or four recent graduates from those institutions onto the blackbird team. These folks want to stay in Baltimore. It's actually not a sales pitch for somebody who spent the last five years in Baltimore, especially as a young person in their 20s, taking advantage of all the great restaurants and sports and all the stuff that's happening here. People want to stay. They've started their lives here as young adults and all they need is a job that's commensurate with their training to stay in Baltimore. So that was the thing that surprised me because as somebody who was recruited and relocated to Baltimore, and it took a lot of convincing, particularly to my wife, to do that, we love it here. Now it's actually easy. You have the ability to just create your own early career talent pipeline because you're sitting right next to the fountain of it.

Chris Frew [00:27:41]:

So it's Charm City, right, Matt?

Matt Tremblay [00:27:44]:

It's Charm City. It grows.

Chris Frew [00:27:46]:

Yeah, it's, it's great. So, you know, I fully 100% back that statement. And one of the things that we're bullish on as well, and part of why we're building out our platform, we're building out a, a talent marketplace into the BioBuzz ecosystem is we want to provide access to executive talent from Boston and San Francisco and everywhere else because, you know, sometimes that executive talent doesn't need to relocate to Baltimore. So if we can really continue to nurture that kind of mid and emerging talent, our goal at BioBuzz is to provide access to the executive and senior talent and with greater ease so that again, those companies don't feel like they have to leave. And secondly, part of our hypothesis is hopefully investors won't feel like they have to pull them out if they have better access to that commercial executive leadership.

Matt Tremblay [00:28:43]:

I think you're spot on, Chris. I mean, CEOs, depending on what scale the company's at, CEOs are working from their living rooms on planes all the time. Anyway, I think there's, there's no need to view the Boston ecosystem in particular as off limits. It's a 45 minute flight. I think that's a way to actually, let's learn what we can from those folks. I mean, we spend a lot of time not only with executives, but with investment firms from Boston. These folks know how to build great companies and they're actually willing to do that in Baltimore. And that's to your question earlier about Blackbird BioVentures. A big part of the reason that we created Blackbird BioVentures was so we could hang in there and continue to be part of the companies as they grew, to learn the lessons from professional company builders who've done this successfully in other ecosystems, but also to make sure that the company retains its roots in Baltimore. So that's great.

Chris Frew [00:29:41]:

If I could build on this multi ecosystem element. I've often said that Maryland has more of a constellation ecosystem. You know, it's like you step back and you see this really nice kind of star cluster, you know, but you know, between Baltimore and Montgomery county and Frederick. What are your thoughts? And as you've gotten to know the ecosystem the past year and a half, you know, how do you see that we, you know, are the, are those, are those kind of clusters, star clusters connected enough and what do you think there is that we can do to, to better foster this kind of mega cluster type of model?

Matt Tremblay [00:30:20]:

Yeah, I mean, great question. And you're going to, you're going to force me to break out some nerdy physical analogies here. So thank you for.

Chris Frew [00:30:28]:

I'm an ecosystem nerd, so you can. I'm ready for it.

Matt Tremblay [00:30:33]:

Yeah. I mean, I think that's a huge thing that we've learned in the last year is that, you know, you know, Baltimore is really the seat of high science in the Maryland area. But I do think that the industrial workforce has its roots in the NIH and probably other related entities. And the governor talks about really high, maybe the highest percentage of PhD trained citizens in the state of Maryland, et cetera. I think that enfranchising that bridge between the, what I'll call the scientific community in Baltimore and the life science industrial community, which does have a presence in Baltimore, but I think has a, at least, you know, by the numbers, a more concentrated presence in sort of the I270 corridor, Gaithersburg, you know, Frederick, Rockville, Bethesda, et cetera, as you mentioned, I've been, I drive out there, you Know, a couple of times a week for events to meet people. I think that keeping that, you know, making that feel like it's doable. It takes an hour to get from one place to another place in Boston all the time. And you're probably only going 10 miles. So, you know, people are doing this and I think we can do it here. That is, you know, one reason why we're bullish on certain parts of the city in Baltimore to establish operations is because we think it's important to have connectivity to that i270 corridor as well. You know, make it really commutable to the airport.

Chris Frew [00:32:09]:

Yeah. Well, BioBuzz has been headquartered in the City Garage Science and Tech park for two and a half, almost three years now. And I tell people all the time, this is the gateway to Baltimore. Gateway to Baltimore Life Sciences. And I love it. I have people that come to Baltimore and I tell them all the time, stop off, I'll buy you a free coffee or a nitro coffee here and then take an Uber into the Bio park and don't have to worry about parking. Don't have. And it's going to cost you the same amount. But that access is such a key thing and that's why we love it here. I mean, we love the location. And when I get to go to Hopkins or Maryland, I'm there in no time. But I live in Howard County, so this isn't a 16 to 18 minute commute to Medigone traffic and it's easy way to access the city.

Matt Tremblay [00:32:54]:

That's great, Chris. I couldn't agree more. We're going to be spending a lot of time at City Garage ourselves in the future and I love the idea of Ubering or, you know, I was just out. Not to get on a tangent, I was just out in Dallas and you know, they have a shuttle that runs between their Dallas, what they call Pegasus park and UT Southwestern. And it's a very interesting analogous situation to what we have. And so I think there could be other resources we could engage to just make it feel so very exciting about that.

Chris Frew [00:33:28]:

Yeah, I love that. That's great. Well, we're. I know we're a little over our 30 minutes. It's been a really exciting conversation. I do have to ask, you know, just as we think about kind of, you know, a year and a half is kind of like a drop in the bucket to where? To what? Any life science company needs to grow. I love for you to kind of help us take us forward a little bit. Matt, what's success look like in 10 years? Like, what's, you know, what's a decade of Blackbird in Baltimore look like?

Matt Tremblay [00:34:01]:

Yeah, it's a good question. It's a tough question to answer because as I say, we're, we want to intentionally evolve our model to deal with whatever challenges are in front of us. You know, nominally we've thrown out some targets for 10 years. We'd like to support the creation of 50 new biotech companies. We'd like that to be underscored by $2 billion of venture capital invested in those companies and be able to show that a lot of that has been leveraged from outside of Baltimore. Because I think that's an important fact that isn't always studied, that we don't want to just move the dollars around that are already in Maryland. We want to bring dollars to import. And I think you can make the argument that some of the more mature ecosystems are quite saturated. They're struggling to find good investments. People don't want to live there. High cost of living. So those are our two big numerical targets. But at a more philosophical level, I think we want to be able to say that Blackbird has made a difference in building up the ecosystem. And that may involve a pivot or two in terms of where we're spending the most of our time. And we're prepared to do that. And you know, I think that's whether it's focusing more time on that very early stage, first dollar in through a non dilutive grant. That's where we're focused now. That's what we view as the rate limiting step. It could be that infrastructure becomes limiting and we decide to spend more time there. It could be that investment recruitment for follow on rounds becomes more. I'm just making it up now and it becomes rate limiting. We want to pivot and be a supporter of whatever that bottleneck step is. And it could be that as the ecosystem evolves, the bottleneck moves further and further downstream. And we want to be there working on the hard problem because I think that's sort of what we signed up for.

Chris Frew [00:36:00]:

That would be a good 10 years. But to your point, commitment is something that you can't underestimate for the success of an ecosystem. Reinvestment, commitment, stability. I know that's what investors look for. If you're starting a company somewhere, you're looking for organizations like yourselves that are committed and have roots in the city. Just the commitment alone, I think, is a factor that can't be underweight.

Matt Tremblay [00:36:28]:

Yeah, that's right. And just to bring it home to the Ravens. And you asked me about being a football fan. Not only have I become a football fan, but I've become. I've subscribed to a lot of the philosophy that underlies, you know, building a great football team. And I think there's an interesting parallel there with biotech that, you know, at any given time we're working on a given project, we may have a company succeed or fail. Just like there's a game every Sunday, and things happen, plays happen. What I've learned from spending a little bit of time with the Ravens, folks, is, you know, these. The fundamental strengths and the robustness, these are things that are built over decades of philosophy in the way things are managed and what you invest in. And so I think. I'd like to think that some of that is rubbed off and that we're taking a similar approach to Blackbird to say, yes, there's a game happening right now. We're investing in this company. It may be a binary outcome. Drug discovery is difficult, but it's really that philosophy that we bring and the commitment over that longer time horizon, and that I think will make a difference.

Chris Frew [00:37:37]:

That's a great, very great point. And you can tell that through your organization. I mean, I was reading on your side, you don't just envision it, you engineer it. And I think that holds true. You go to the Ravens games with your son, and I think it's the same thing again, a lot of stuff that I look at in business, I relate to family and the same thing with kids. You can't, you know, you can't build it. You can't raise a good kid overnight. It's foundational elements that go into how you parent that. You know, all of a sudden they turn 24, and you're like, oh, you were listening. Same thing with the ecosystem. The same thing is sometimes generational. Right. But it takes. It takes that commitment to culture, commitment to, you know, doing the right things. And again, commitment just to being there and investing in the right. The right philosophy. Well, hey, we really appreciate this time, Matt. This is a really exciting call. I'm sure I could talk to you probably for another half an hour or more. A couple quick. Just personal. Like, quick, rapid fire here at the end for you. Speaking of Ravens, favorite Ravens player for you and your son.

Matt Tremblay [00:38:46]:

Oh, that's a controversial topic. I'm gonna go. Derrick Henry. This week.

Chris Frew [00:38:53]:

This week. Yeah. I was gonna say, is it controversial between you and your son or just in general?

Matt Tremblay [00:38:57]:

We. We try to support everybody. I've Got my Lamar jersey that I wear all the time, but, yeah, Derrick Henry. Really? Last week.

Chris Frew [00:39:07]:

So exciting. Exciting to watch him last week, that's for sure. It's fall pumpkin spice. Love it or hate it, I could.

Matt Tremblay [00:39:16]:

Pass on the pumpkin spice. I could pass on it.

Chris Frew [00:39:19]:

Me too. Me too. Lastly, not many people might get this, but I was watching some other podcasts of yours, and you and I share kind of a nerdy passion for megalithic structures. So Goblecki Tepe, Darren Kuyu, or great pyramids, which one brings the most mystery to you?

Matt Tremblay [00:39:39]:

I'm definitely going Gobekli Tepe, because, you know, it's. You find something under the ground, you have no idea what it could have been. And it's just fun to watch the imagination run wild thinking about what people were up to thousands of years ago. So I hope in a thousand years, somebody's wondering what you and I were up to, Chris, when we were having this podcast. What problems are we trying to solve with things that we've done?

Chris Frew [00:40:06]:

So, yeah, that would be a good legacy to build. I think you and I need to start working with some stone, because I don't know how else they'll remember we're doing, but other than the fact that a lot more people are alive and healthy because of the work that you all do. So that. That's a legacy that is probably megalithic in itself.

Matt Tremblay [00:40:25]:

I love it.

Chris Frew [00:40:26]:

All right, Matt. Well, hey, thank you for your time today. To everyone tuning in, thank you for joining us as always. BioBuzz’s “What's the Buzz?!” is our opportunity to showcase ecosystem builders like Matt who are committed to building our ecosystem and helping to get more products to patients, the ones that we do it all for. So, Matt, thank you so much for your time.

Matt Tremblay [00:40:45]:

Thanks, Chris. It was wonderful. Have a great weekend. All right.

Chris Frew [00:40:48]:

Wonderful.