Diversifying the Investment Ecosystem with Rowan Gardner

In this episode of Oxford+, host Susannah de Jager is joined by Rowan Gardner, co-founder of Precision Life. The topic of discussion delves into the importance of diversifying the investment ecosystem and encouraging more participation from female investors. They also discuss the future of healthcare and the pivotal role AI plays in it, including how AI is reshaping our approach to healthcare, particularly concerning chronic diseases and how we diagnose and treat them.

(0:12) Introduction
(1:10) From Oxford Molecular to Precision Life
(4:03) The Oxford and Cambridge investing landscapes
(15:56) The importance of heterogenous funding sources
(19:49) Fostering diversity and inclusion in investment
(28:18) The Mansion House Accord

About the guest:
Rowan Gardner is a seasoned entrepreneur and CEO with over 30 years of experience in health tech, digital health, deep tech, and biotech. She played a part in one of Oxford University's first spin-outs, Oxford Molecular Group, in 1989 and later listed it on the main London Stock Exchange in 1994. Rowan is a fervent advocate for Oxford and currently serves as the Chief Business and Investment Officer at Precision Life. This platform connects chronic disease patients with the drugs they'll respond to, using mechanistic patient stratification biomarkers.

Connect with Rowan on LinkedIn

About the host:
Susannah de Jager is a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in UK asset management. She has worked closely with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and government officials to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital.

Connect with Susannah on LinkedIn

Visit our website to learn more and subscribe to our newsletter - oxfordplus.co.uk
If you have a question for Susannah, please get in touch - oxfordplus.co.uk/contact

Oxford+ is hosted by Susannah de Jager, supported by Mischon de Reya and produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four in Oxford.

Creators & Guests

Host

Susannah de Jager

Founder & Host of Oxford+

Producer

Matt Eastland-Jones

Founder & Producer at Story Ninety-Four

Editor

Nick Short

Podcast Producer & Audio Technician at Story Ninety-Four

What is Oxford+?

Welcome to Oxford+, the podcast series that explores the myths and truths of the Oxford investing landscape hosted by Susannah de Jager. Since moving to Oxford, Susannah has collaborated with experts, entrepreneurs, and government to shape the conversation around domestic scale-up capital. Oxford+ aims to inform, inspire, and connect. We'll talk to Founders, investors, academics, politicians, and facilitators and explore how Oxford is open for business.

Welcome to Oxford+, the podcast series
that takes you deep into the myths and

truths of the Oxford investing landscape.

I'm your host, Susannah de
Jager and I've spent over 15

years in UK asset management.

My guest today is Rowan Gardner.

Rowan is a serial entrepreneur
and CEO with over 30 years of

experience in health tech, digital
health, deep tech, and biotech.

She has an unusual claim not only to have
been part of one of the university's first

spin outs, Oxford Molecular Group in 1989,
but also to have subsequently listed it

on the main London Stock Exchange in 1994.

Rowan is currently Chief Business
and Investment Officer at Precision

Life, a platform that links chronic
disease patients to the drugs they

will respond to via mechanistic
patient stratification biomarkers.

A huge advocate and advertisement for
Oxford, I am delighted to have Rowan here

to share her experience and her views.

Rowan, thank you so
much for joining today.

So slightly different to what I've done
with other people, but because you are

the guest with by far the most experience
of Oxford over a longer period of time

to date, I'd love to just hear a little
bit of a roll call of some of the things

you've been involved in and then we can
kind of go on from there because I think

it'll be interesting for people to hear.

Well, thank you for the opportunity,
Susannah and just reminding me that

I'm quite old these days but I guess my
adventure in Oxford started like many,

I read biochemistry at the university
and really because I was absolutely

fascinated by a picture of DNA I saw
as almost that early teenager being

dragged around the science museum.

You know, that really has been the
common thread, molecular thread through

my career and very early on, I joined
a company called Oxford Molecular and

some of the listeners will be familiar
with Oxford University's Innovation.

They have a slide, which is a time
series of all of Oxford's spin outs

and Oxford Molecular, I think, is
about number four and that was a great

adventure very early on in my career.

We listed on the main board of the
London Stock Exchange in 1995, we grew

by acquisition of many US companies and
really that was a trailblazer for some

of the Generative AI and high performance
computing applications around life

science data that Oxford is known for.

So we have Excientia, we have Genomics
PLC, Nanopore, all of those companies

coming from that thread and I had
a great experience with Oxford.

I did leave Oxford and go to the
other place for a period of time.

Surely not!

Sure, I did.

I did.

But you know, that's what experience
teaches you, I came back and

while I was based in Cambridge,
I ran an advisory business.

I was a co-founder of a very early sort
of cloud computing architecture business

called Sonomics, where we worked with
those people at CERN who are phenomenal,

in building an integration, architecture
for bringing together life science data

and had a ball and really discovered the
technology behind the current work venture

that I'm involved with, Precision Life
while we were in that entrepreneurial

environment and so Precision Life has
three founders, myself, Steve Gardner

and Gert Muller, who is a whip smart
mathematician based in Denmark and we

are doing amazing world leading work
pioneering our understanding of chronic

disease biology, which we believe will
make it much more efficient to both

discover new medicines but also develop
them and enable the pharmaceutical

industry to be much more effective in
how it invests capital to bring drugs to

market that serve unmet clinical need.

Wonderful, thank you!

That was a brilliant and efficient
whistle stop tour of your years of

experience and I wanted to just go
into something you touched on, being

in Cambridge and I'd love to understand
from your perspective having started

here gone to Cambridge now come back.

Do you observe differences?

Do you think they're more
similar than people make out?

What's your experience
taught you about it?

So I was thinking about that on the drive
over because it was an inevitable question

and I think what's slightly fascinating.

is when I was at university, we
always used to observe that Oxford

was a more multidimensional place.

It had the car industry and it had
the university and you know, we like

to observe that Cambridge was mostly
the university and you roll forward

the several decades further on and
when it comes to entrepreneurship

and innovation, Cambridge is
perhaps more heterogeneous...

Okay.

...it has a greater focus on repeat
entrepreneurs and because of that

it has a more heterogeneous funding
environment than perhaps Oxford,

and Oxford really has built its game
around world class, phenomenal new

ventures coming out of the university,
both high growth and social ventures.

But the track record of repeat
entrepreneurs in Oxford is not quite

as balanced as you see in Cambridge
and I think that's fascinating.

That's really interesting and I've
certainly heard that from other guests

already that there's less of that
recycling of talent but also that so

often what can help companies that are
in their infancy is having the recycling

of capital from those really great
success stories and so it's both elements

that perhaps have room for improvement.

You said something else about Oxford
that sort of caught my attention because

actually we had a guest Mark Preston who
comes from Formula One and was talking

about the really amazing motorsports
cluster, however his view was that

perhaps Oxford as a place the university
and indeed the industry have not made as

much of their proximity to one another
as they might have done and what a shame

that is because they could both benefit.

So I would be interested to know if
you see any ways from your experience

that could be improved upon?

So, he's right, you know, most of the big
problems that society is facing is going

to require all of the talents to solve
it and that involves bringing you know,

world class engineering, sensing, data
scientists, computational scientists,

the physical scientists, anybody from
the arts listening, we need you too.

I will always start from a place
of science and there's some real

lessons actually that I remember from
the conversations that I had with

Paolo Zanella, who was a co founder
of Sonomics with us, which was the

data integration business and Paolo
had led the computing lab at CERN.

So Paolo was the guy who found funding
when there wasn't any to give Tim Berners

Lee his computer to write the World Wide
Web on and you know, someone with that

kind of imagination and flair you might
imagine as being quite interesting and

we worked with a number of people in
that computing group and in the field

of very large physics, you have to have
collaboration because the requirement

for capital to fund big ideas, to do
the big experiments, means you have to

coordinate and there are endless lessons
in what happens when the particle physics

community organises to do that and so
you know, if you think back to the Large

Hadron Collider, not only did we have a
large hadron collider and a great piece

of particle physics, we found a hadron and
all the things that flowed from that, we

also got cloud computing, we got very fast
networks, we got the ability to do atom

perfect welding in order to build some of
the sensors, you got amazing innovation in

terms of tackling very low cost sensors.

There was endless innovation that
came from that big project because you

had to bring all of the capabilities
together to do it and in the biosciences

where I'm from, actually, much of
bioscience can be done by an individual

with a pipette and a bench and so
trying to find those organisational

principles and those questions that
allow us to move beyond our training

area are quite few and far between.

When they do happen, like the
Human Genome Project, you know,

they can be transformative.

But generally, the life sciences have
not had to do quite so much innovation

that requires bringing different
skills together and I think the

exception to that would be the genome
sequencing companies like Nanopore.

Really interesting, and going back
to something you said earlier about

precision life and what you're aiming
for and hoping which is you know, if

I paraphrase it correctly really that
you can help, you know, pharmaceutical

companies direct their R&D more
effectively by using AI and data

sets that will help them apply that.

It occurs to me that more and more and
this is as a layperson but more and

more R&D arms are being shut down and
that there seems to be an over reliance

upon startups in each area and before
we went live you were talking about

how much kind of research has gone in
which is brilliant to oncology but to

the detriment of other areas and do you
think that with more precise directing

from companies such as Precision Life
that there will be a change in that

trend and that people will effectively
have more confidence that their

investment in R&D will be yielding more?

Yes, so that's a...

I'm obviously going to say yes.

I'm co founder Precision Life.

Do I think it's going to change the world?

Yes.

Excellent!

Now, that question you asked is like an
onion, there's a lot of things to peel.

I know I'm bad at precision ironically.

That's fine and you know, that's actually
the challenge in healthcare, right?

So there are a lot of different
factors that, you know, the

pharmaceutical industry face in
bringing new medicines to market.

So if I sort of delve into the
origin story of Precision life a

little bit, I think it, it starts
to answer some of those questions.

So I mentioned the Human Genome Project,
and we were very fortunate, Steve and

myself, to be working at Oxford Molecular
in the very early days when Jim Watson,

the Nobel laureate, was writing the
grant to the NIH for the Human Genome

Project and I think, you know, if you'd
asked, most biologists in the early

90s, you know, what was the impact
going to be of the Human Genome Project?

Certainly, if you ask Jim Watson,
you know, he's a very reductionist

person, still sort of that central
dogma, you know, one gene makes one

protein, we know all that is rubbish.

But, you know, we'd sequence the genome,
we'd find all the genes, we'd find all

the bad genes that caused disease, we'd
wumpf up a drug, and hurrah, by now you

know, I would still look like I did at 30,
we'd all be living well and ageing well.

Of course, that isn't what happened
and that's because there are

different types of diseases out there.

So, you know, rare diseases tend
to be very single gene, you know,

driving the disease biology.

So one thing, we can find it, you know, if
we can find enough data to spot a pattern,

we have a very good chance of developing
medicines and certainly the human genome

has had a big impact on rare disease.

In oncology, one of the reasons that
so much money has gone into oncology is

because the cancer biologists have got
very good at characterising different

types of tumors and therefore we are
beginning to see cancer at very high

resolution and therefore we understand
the problem that we're trying to

solve in finding new medicines and
we have become very experienced as

an industry in making the case for
those medicines to be reimbursed and

so pharma can see a way of creating
value for shareholders and, you know,

oncology has driven a lot of investment
and healthcare outcomes for cancer

patients over the last couple of decades.

What we haven't seen is the human genome
impact chronic disease biology and that's

because chronic disease biology is much
more complex at its heart, it's a time

bound situation and that means that we
have in each of us a genetic capability

propensity to have certain risk factors
for disease and then we go out and live

our lives and make certain choices and,
you know, maybe don't do the exercise or

don't eat our five vegetables a day or
any of the other generalised advice that

we get and so that will create different
disease processes in us and the second

challenge for chronic disease is much
of the way that we diagnose it is really

being built on the clinician's experience
of what they can observe in a patient.

So we classify diseases on what we can
see in the clinic and not necessarily

according to their underlying biology.

So we've done an analysis of
Alzheimer's patients and yeah, we

can see six broad disease processes
that are contributing to Alzheimer's.

Only one of which is that amyloid tau
lipoprotein approach that the industry

has, you know, spent a lot of money
trying to find effective medicines

and I think there's about 139 failed
clinical trials in that space and if we

can find, match the patients who will
benefit from those medicines, they will

work really well for those patients.

But there are still five other disease
processes that will be present in other

patients who will still have unmet needs
and so what we're doing at Precision Life

is we have a very smart branch of maths
that is allowing us to stratify patients

and then see into those different patient
groups what's driving disease and that way

we can land whether there are effective
drugs out there to treat patients already,

perhaps repurposed medicines, or whether
we need to find new ones and it is

tremendously exciting what we're doing.

So...

It sounds very exciting, I mean, you
know, it's interesting how much more

discourse there is on this subject
of preventative medicine, how can

we get in front of chronic disease?

I've been reading the book Outlive by
Peter Attia which I'm sure has come

across your radar even if you probably
don't need to read it and it talks

about the four horsemen diseases that
we basically done nothing to move the

needle on because it's preventative
medicine or we've been pointing in

the wrong direction to your point.

To the point that we were discussing
around sort of R&D and funding and again

touching upon something you brought
up earlier about Cambridge having more

heterogeneous sources of funding, do you
think that's something that Oxford in

particular needs more of and if so how can
you see that it might make a difference

or is that a bit of a red herring?

So in some regards, Oxford
has a lot of funding.

So you know, OSE is a wonderful example
of a lot of funding being in one place.

They're doing a great job of
supporting the university spin outs.

They are syndicating
well, we're seeing exits.

So there's some real celebration, success
here and you know, we want that quantum of

capital to be successful in our ecosystem
and then alongside that, what you might

see in a more well developed balanced
ecosystem, you might also expect to see

a vibrant angel investment community,
you might want to see family offices,

you would want to see other investors in
the ecosystem funding the companies that

perhaps OSE don't see so much of, you
know, if we're going to retain and recycle

management and the fruits of wealth
creation amongst the entrepreneurial

community, you know, where are the
funds that those people are investing

in and how are they, looking to support
the next generation of entrepreneurs?

And that in Oxford is just a little
bit thin, to the point that some

of the venture funds probably would
lean more into London and yet their

partners are probably living very...

in Oxford or near to Oxford
and just a little example

of that was at the recent J.

P.

Morgan conference in San Francisco,
having flown all the way to San

Francisco, at one of the first drinks
parties, I was speaking to a partner of

a venture firm, phenomenally interesting
venture firm, very active in the UK and

sort of two or three minutes into the
conversation, it turns out he lives a

three minute cycle ride from our office.

So I flew all the way to San Francisco
to find that out, so shame on me and

that's one of the problems that You
know, that behavior is certainly driving

climate change in the wrong direction.

No and listen, it's amusing, David
Ford, who is an angel investor and who

you know in Oxford and Cambridge, said
exactly the same thing about the J.

P.

Morgan conference being where he can
meet people from Oxford and how ironic

that is and so I suppose I would
ask you the explicit question and

what would you want to see in Oxford
to make sure that doesn't happen?

Do we need a conference here
where we just say, stop it.

Everyone just come five
minutes down the road.

So I think part of it is we haven't
joined our ecosystem together very well.

So you know, we have OBN, which
is a life science network.

The O originally stood for Oxford,
they have a broader interest

than just Oxford these days,
they have a series of meetings.

We have the OION Angel Network
that has a series of meetings.

There is a lot going on in the university.

to encourage entrepreneurship.

But what there isn't is a lot of
quality crosstalk and it's the

crosstalk that is interesting to
the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem

They don't care where you come from.

They don't care what you represent.

And you will see, you know, ideas
happening in different pools that when

you put them together are, you know,
much more than the individual pieces.

So I think that's a bit that's missing
and I also think, you know, where you've

seen the Cambridge Angels have tremendous
leadership, Simon Thorpe did a lot of

support of the Angel Academy Group, which
was developing female angel investors

in London, we have Pam Garside as the
chair of Cambridge Angels, there is a

active and strong female angel community
in Cambridge, and you look at what Jenny

Tooth has been doing at the British
Angel Network, we don't have the same

participation in Oxford and that lack
of diversity makes us less competitive.

You know, if we are about solving big
problems, then diversity is part of

the ingredients that you want to bring,
because all of the work on diversity,

whether it's the hard problems, or it's
management, or it's funding, you know,

show that Diverse groups outperform,
you know, the kind of echo chamber

of largely white Oxford educated men.

Well, any group right?

You know, Matthew Syed covers this
beautifully in his book Rebel Ideas, when

he talks about just even one divergent
perspective makes the experience less

harmonious, but the outcomes better and I
think that's an important point you make

there and actually depressingly yesterday
in the press and you will have seen

this, that they are re categorising what
it means to be a sophisticated investor

and that because they're raising it from
100,000 to 170,000 you need to earn, it's

going to reduce the number of women that
qualify and I think it was from 320,000 to

70,000 and that the impact that therefore
has on female funded businesses who are

arguably proportionately, but you know,
get more funding from female angels, is

going to be very negative and we should
be doing lots of things, many of which

you've pointed out just now to try and
mitigate what's not an unreasonable

move in line with inflation, but will
have a disproportionate effect on female

founded, in this case, businesses.

And it reinforces so much inequity.

So women for the same job are quite
frequently paid below the median.

So, you know, there is a imbalance already
priced into those sorts of cutoffs that

are imposed by the treasury and also
you know, it flies in the face of the

experiences of more entrepreneurial
leaning communities around the world.

So I think it's problematic.

I also do have an observation that
the conversation comes down to women

investing in women and I think it is a
bigger picture than that, in that when

men and women come together and invest
together, everybody makes bigger returns.

So the story needs to be told from a
perspective of what's in it for men.

And indeed, you know, the pension funds
and everybody who's there creating long

term value, I'm obviously, you know,
returning to the theme of I'm old.

No, this is top of my list too!

Don't worry, Rowan.

But you know, the pension firms have so
much capital tied up and the ability to

make high quality decisions is in part
about bringing diverse perspectives to

bear on those decisions and I love the
point that you say, well, the process

of discussion may be, you know, more
argument based because there's a divergent

thought in the room and then I go back
to the origins of Oxford University and

the three R's of rhetoric, where, you
know, we used to debate actively and the

term scoring points off each other comes
from us having an elongated thumb that

we would kind of run over our opponent's
neck when we felt we'd landed a point very

well, so I think, those through Oxford...

I've never heard that!

The Oxford, kind of system are more than
qualified to hold their own and make

those points in a mixed environment.

It really feels, this conversation, it's
quite neatly sort of coming together

insofar as it does feel that there are
meaningful things that can be done.

That there needs to be, you know,
more bringing in of pharma, but

also industry, we spoke about the
cluster of motorsports around Oxford.

There needs to be more bringing together
of the existing excellent networks, they

shouldn't be standing on their own and
you know, if I captured it correctly,

it sounds like Oxford is probably crying
out for a female specific Angel Network

as well, to really encourage that thread
not to be too adversely affected by

these changes at the top and to make sure
that we counteract as much as we can.

And within the existing networks,
I'm a real fan of not recreating the

wheel, but I think there are some
good foundations that have been built

that we could add a lot of value to by
signaling very strongly that you are

welcome, you know, please turn up at
the, you know, at OION, participate.

But there are other angel networks in
Oxford and other family offices, and

the family offices I think are a very
important driver of this type of change.

So just after I founded Precision Life,
I went off and was a CEO of a hygiene

business in North Oxford for a period
of time and most of our capital was

raised from either female angels, but
also from family offices and the thing

about family offices is, you know,
you can't really have an effective

family without women being involved.

It's quite hard to produce the next
generation without us and so there is

a very strong interest in how you plan
for long term value creation and you

involve the entire family in some of those
decisions and the women can be significant

drivers of change in investment
policy and that's been fantastic

to see over the last two decades.

And actually, it is one of the few areas
in financial services that one sees

women over represented proportionately
is ESG, impact investing, that sort of

planning for the next generation and
I think you're right to draw it out in

family offices too because, as you say,
by their nature, there are women there and

quite often they do bring these different
perspectives on how to create value,

both in absolute terms, financially, but
also what does value mean if you are a

wealthy family and how can you make sure
you apply your money in meaningful ways.

Yes and I've seen so many advances
in the family office sector.

So, I can think of a Middle Eastern
family office, which, you know, had the

law changed in Saudi to enable the female
members of the family to make their own

investment decisions without references
to husbands, brothers, uncles and you

know, their priorities are perhaps
different to the men and it becomes a

balanced portfolio across the family as
a result and I've also had conversations

with younger generations of families
who perhaps have a greater interest in

some of the ESG matters, you know, come
to the table with that perspective and

ask for a proportion of the investments
that they will make in high growth

businesses, which are generally a very
small proportion of the total wealth,

you know, most of the wealth will go
into capital preservation activities,

but on the capital growth agenda to
see an allocation to ESG or to specific

themes that they have an interest in.

So that is a great driver of change
that we perhaps don't hear enough about.

There was one thing when we met that I
just wanted to go into and we touched

upon it but not in any detail, which is
the pension fund capital in the UK and

how because of the Mansion House Compact,
which I spoke to Alderman Nicholas

Lyons about, there is going to be this
influx of capital from currently DC

pensions aiming for 5 percent by 2030.

You brought up something really
interesting, which I would not have

observed from my seat, about the talent
that was coming into the UK, looking to

help advise those pension funds, who are
going to be in some cases, dipping a toe

for the first time into unlisted equities.

I'd love to hear a little bit more about
what you're seeing and whether you saw

anything more recently at JPM as well.

So, I think the Mansion House
Accord is very exciting.

So for all entrepreneurs who want to
see more capital flow into their areas,

I think we're all watching it with
great interest and of course, the fund

managers in the UK are also very excited.

to see additional LP potential in the UK.

I see it as potentially catalysing another
aspect of our investment ecosystem, which

is that funds around the world have always
come to London to raise money and they

have raised money in London from high net
worth families and they have tended to

return to their domestic environment to
invest there and it's one of the things

that we don't track when we say, well, you
know, we've got money coming in, inward

investment in the UK, it's quite often,
the money started in the UK, it went to

a West Coast fund manager, perhaps, or
an investment group in New York, and it's

come back into the UK to be invested.

It's not so much foreign investment
as boomerang investment, but what I'm

seeing with the Mansion House Accord
is more of the experienced big name

investors that have huge track records
in the US actually coming to the UK

and establishing funds in the UK and I
can't help but think that part of that

is because they are very alive to the
opportunity of what the Mansion House

Accord is and that means two things.

It means that there will be more funds
out there competing for the money

and that's generally a good thing,
and secondly, it also means that the

talent pool that we are developing in
our investor base is enriched by that

broader experience and I think that's
likely to be incredibly positive.

Wonderful.

Well that is a positive note on which
to leave this conversation, but is

there anything else, Rowan, that you
wanted to add to the conversation?

I think Susannah, just to thank
you for the focus on some of the

opportunities that we have in Oxford.

Of course, there are challenges, but
there is an incredible richness here

that could be always improved on how
we deliver solutions to the world.

So I wish you every success and thank
you very much for the opportunity.

Thank you, Rowan.

Thanks for listening to this
episode of Oxford+, presented

by me, Susannah de Jager.

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