Off the Path: Dan Widmaier
Dan Widmaier got his Ph.D. at UCSF in the lab of Chris Voigt. He is now CEO of Refactored Materials.
Dan’s Path
Dan was a graduate student in Chris Voigt’s lab. His desire to start a company built over time. In 2007, he took the Center for Bioentrepreneurship’s (CBE) Idea to IPO class with friend and collaborator Ethan Mirsky. They pitched a project to the class on mass-producing spider silk. The process helped them figure out the critical obstacles they would need to overcome to make the business work. Dan, Ethan, and collaborator David Breslauer took the class again in 2010. This time they went with a ready business plan with the goal of networking and getting a thorough critique of their plan. The trio won $25,000 in seed grant money from QB3 and CBE for having the most promising technology with strong commercial potential.
Dan graduated in May of this year and started working at his new company, Refactored Materials, the following Monday. It is housed in the QB3 Garage at UCSF, an incubation space for very small companies spun out from QB3 affiliated laboratories.
Dan’s Work
Refactored gets 10-20 spiders mailed to them from Florida every week. Why Florida? Because the Nevila elavipes, which flourishes there, is the best-studied orb-weaving spider andmodel organism. The spiders (all named Lady Gaga) hang out uncaged on the ceiling of Refactored’s office. The spiders are able to make six different kinds of silk, each with different mechanical properties. Dan and his partners are currently working to recreate the dragline silk, an all-protein fiber that is incredibly tough (many-fold more so than Kevlar). Applications run from textiles to ultra-lightweight high-durability composites for planes and cars. Dan and his partners are currently working on the problems of getting a water-soluble gel of protein to form into a water insoluble fiber and in getting a recombinant expression system that would allow for commercial scaling of fiber production.
Dan’s Advice
Taking Idea to IPO was essential for the formation of Dan’s company. He recommends that anyone thinking of starting a business take the class. He emphasizes the importance of thought exercises with as much detail as early as possible. “If it’s going to fail, you want to know A.S.A.P. so you can move on to something else.”
Dan also states how important it is to network. “Go to those event you don’t really want to go to.” His company has been helped tremendously by talking to people and presenters through Idea to IPO, around UCSF and QB3.
This article appeared in the November 11, 2010 issue of Synapse.