Summary – Two months before his next round of federal funding, Ross Youngs got a call.
The program was shut down. No more money. Good luck.
He had 35 people on the project. He laid off 33 of them.
Then he called a PhD student whose research he was still funding and asked what he was missing.
“Ross, you have no idea what you don’t know.”
“I know that,” Ross told him. “Tell me what I wish I knew.”
That answer turned an algae-harvesting energy project into Biosortia, a drug discovery company.
Ross had already won once. Univenture made the Inc. 500 five years running, and he was named the SBA’s national Business Person of the Year in 1998. When he moved into biotech, several people told him not to even think about it.
“Had I been wise, I might have listened.”
That’s the conversation.

Episode 15 of In the Inquiry is live.

— Terry Seymour
Founder, ClearSignal™
clearsignalsession.com