Strategy, Funding, OKRs, Roadmaps, and Product Management for a High-Growth Start-Up

Guiding a radical invention from ideation to global scale & impact

Emulate, Inc. was founded in 2015 as a spin-out from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. Their purpose is to democratize and commercialize the radical human-centric Organs-on-Chips technology, to replace the 100 million animals used in scientific research each year.

To disrupt how scientific research is conducted would be an enormous challenge, requiring an aggressive strategy, significant funding, and roadmaps backed-up by the operational ability to execute in a creative but systematic fashion. Lewis served as the in-house Chief Strategy Officer on Emulate’s executive leadership team, to conceptualize and guide the organization from inception to global impact.

Lewis led development of the funding strategy & pitch deck for Series-B ($45MM) and Series-C ($36MM) investment rounds. Emulate was able to raise strategic funding from a diverse syndicate of investors who were aligned with the long-term vision of the organization and technology.

The Series-B funding positioned Emulate to accelerate its R&D efforts, expedite the launch of its products and expand strategic relationships with industry and academic partners in order to evolve the company towards profitability. Series-B round investors included private philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, VC firms NanoDimension, OS Fund and Atel Ventures, and global healthcare provider Laboratory Corporation of America® Holdings (LabCorp®).

The $36 million Series C financing round was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Founders Fund is a leading Bay Area venture capital firm whose partners have founded and funded companies including PayPal, Facebook and SpaceX. The funding also included additional new and existing investors. Funds from this financing round were raised to directly impact Emulate’s expansion of its suite of products within its Human Emulation System, broadening functionality and enhancing commercial efforts, so that researchers in the pharmaceutical industry can use Organs-on-Chips technology across the entire drug discovery and development process.

“The dependence of drug development on animal models for safety and efficacy testing has hit a wall. As therapeutic approaches become ever more precise and complex, the limitations of legacy animal models increasingly prevent accurate predictions of drug responses in humans. This crisis has simultaneously put patients at risk of unpredictable side effects while inhibiting the approval of novel life-saving therapies. Emulate’s platform uses human cells to recapitulate human physiology, enabling the development of safer, more efficacious drugs. We believe its adoption by drug developers is a scientific, commercial, and moral imperative.”

—Aaron VanDevender, Chief Scientist & Principal, Founders Fund

Lewis created a strategic plan giving the organization a pathway to follow. This included a framework with a 5-year strategic vision and 1-year operational plans, all guided through clear OKRs aligning the company-wide goals to functional teams and individuals. The plans were created with input from all stakeholders, with reporting mechanisms, and constant adaptation to meet changing needs.

The strategy and plans included all key components for success, including purpose & vision, market research & competitive analysis, financial modeling and TAM/SOM/SAM, organizational design, platform & product development roadmaps, commercial go-to-market strategies, brand and customer strategies, and frameworks for execution and phased growth. Please note due to the confidential nature of the plans, details of the contents can not be shared here.

However, strategy is useless without the ability to execute and see innovation implemented. Lewis blended strategic planning with daily operational execution. His role oversaw various organizational functions to guide the company from an initial R&D concept to a commercially available product portfolio. Lewis worked hands-on to lead multidisciplinary teams through agile project management across the areas of Product Management, Product Design, Brand Development and Communications.