Try freezing a wart off the toe of a screaming, kicking child. No fun for the kid—or the doctor. Waldman, a Connecticut-based dermatologist, cofounded Veradermics to develop a treatment to remove the wart (and the drama). His first product, currently in Phase 2 clinical trials, uses a microneedle patch—basically a high-tech Band-Aid—to treat the growth with immunotherapy that kills the underlying virus. Armed with $38 million in funding, Waldman is now targeting hair loss, eczema and other skin problems. Veradermics is on track to have five new treatments in medical trials by the end of 2024. Says Waldman: “It’s pretty crazy when these things go from a whiteboard and translate into the clinic.”
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TechTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Reid, thank you so much for being here today.
00:05 - Really excited to be here, thank you for having me.
00:07 - Of course, so let's dive in.
00:10 Talk to me about exactly what your company does.
00:12 - Yeah, so Veridermix is a medical dermatology company,
00:16 and really the origin of the company was the idea
00:18 that there are more than 3,000 skin conditions,
00:22 many of which have no FDA-approved treatment,
00:25 have had minimal innovation in decades,
00:27 and there's minimal innovation on the horizon.
00:29 And so we set out with the mindset
00:30 that we could leverage our end-user knowledge
00:33 as physicians to identify treatments
00:35 that address real therapeutic challenges
00:37 within dermatology.
00:38 - What was your founding story?
00:41 - So the founding story is probably sillier than anything,
00:44 which is that I was at an American Academy
00:47 of Dermatology meeting, and I got nominated
00:51 to attend this pre-meeting for advancing innovation
00:54 in dermatology, which is an organization
00:56 that promotes physician entrepreneurs and innovators.
01:00 At the conference, I heard about a variety of events,
01:03 and one of them was an event that they no longer do,
01:05 unfortunately, called Hacking Dermatology.
01:07 And I met my co-founder there,
01:09 and the origin of the company was that basically
01:12 we're having breakfast, he says to me,
01:15 "What if we could administer an immune stimulant
01:17 "with what is essentially a Band-Aid?"
01:19 That's a great idea, croissant falls out of my mouth,
01:22 and yeah, now it's four years later, we have five products.
01:25 The lead products are for pattern hair loss,
01:27 also known as androgenetic alopecia,
01:29 and then for common wart.
01:30 - Tell me about your funding journey.
01:34 Was it hard to convince investors to take a chance on you,
01:38 and how much have you raised so far?
01:39 - So we've raised nearly $40 million,
01:41 and I think we've been incredibly fortunate
01:43 in that identifying many of our critical investors
01:46 has occurred very serendipitously,
01:49 not necessarily through these intentional approaches
01:52 that we all employ to raise capital,
01:54 but just during day-to-day interactions.
01:56 And the original roughly $2 million we raised
01:59 all came from physicians.
02:00 So more than 25 physicians, they said,
02:02 "Hey, we recognize that warts are a problem,
02:05 "we recognize that these other
02:06 "dermatologic conditions need treatment,
02:08 "and they believed in the team and investing in us."
02:11 And that support then translated
02:13 into more of a traditional venture round.
02:14 I think people saw that we weren't paying our KOLs,
02:17 they were investing in us,
02:19 and that was really an exciting and different journey
02:21 for most of the investors.
02:23 We were then fortunate to get the backing
02:25 of Dr. Vlad Korich, who is the CEO of Biohaven,
02:29 and John Childs, who's the managing director
02:31 of JW Childs Associates.
02:32 - Now, a little bit of a fun one for you.
02:37 If you could travel back in time,
02:40 and if you could tell yourself one piece of advice
02:42 the day before you started your company,
02:44 what would you say?
02:45 - Ooh, that is a good question.
02:47 I think that the answer to that is likely
02:49 not everybody gives good advice.
02:51 We have some tremendous thought partners
02:52 that got to work with some of the leading minds
02:55 in the industry, people who have been very generous
02:57 with their time to help in my growth,
03:00 to mentor me and to mentor the company.
03:02 But it is interesting, because as you move
03:04 through each phase of the company,
03:06 the thought leaders or the thought partners
03:08 that you need are very, very different.
03:10 And I don't think I appreciated how someone
03:12 who is really savvy at the seed stage
03:15 may not necessarily understand the series B
03:18 or crossover stage, and they may not necessarily
03:20 understand what does it take to take a company public.
03:22 And having the right people at the right time
03:24 to assist you is just critical.
03:26 - Is there one business rule that you operate by
03:31 no matter what?
03:32 - I approach all our interactions as though
03:36 the other person has a piece of information
03:38 that I don't know that I need to get.
03:40 And there are lots of times where I think
03:42 it's easier to tell people, tell people, tell people,
03:45 and not ask.
03:46 And everyone in the room is sitting there,
03:47 they know something you don't know,
03:49 or they're thinking something,
03:50 they're all thinking the same thing
03:51 when you walk out of the room.
03:52 And so I try to approach everything
03:54 with a lot of questions.
03:55 I think my team would say that every interaction
03:57 with me is 20 questions, but I found that
04:00 to be super effective.
04:01 I feel like I've learned a lot,
04:03 and I feel like I often walk out of a room
04:06 with a very different outcome than I anticipated.
04:09 - And one last question for you, Reid.
04:11 What would you like your legacy to be?
04:14 - That's a very difficult question.
04:16 And, you know, I think at the end of the day,
04:20 most of what we are doing is about building product,
04:25 and it's about building something that has actual value
04:28 to the people who use it.
04:30 And I would hope that those products
04:32 would become synonymous with the conditions,
04:34 and would really take away these therapeutic challenges
04:37 that we're trying to address.
04:38 (upbeat music)
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04:44 (upbeat music)
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