Armon Sharei: $400M for Biotech, an MIT PhD and the Roche Deal

Show notes.

🚀 Episode 8 of Deal Makers (& Fakers) - with Armon Sharei, Founder of Portal Bio and SQZ Biotech.

Biotech startup IPO success and raising $400M in venture capital is a dream for many founders, but what happens after you go public?

In this episode of Deal Makers (& Fakers), Niclas Schlopsna sits down with Armon Sharei, former founder of SQZ Biotech and current founder of Portal Bio, to discuss scaling cell therapy and the reality of the biotech industry.

Armon Sharei shares his journey from a PhD at MIT under Robert Langer to closing a massive deal with Roche and leading a publicly traded company.

Learn about the "Squeeze" technology, the biotech nuclear winter, and the death spiral that led him to start his second venture, Portal Bio.

How did Armon Sharei start his journey?

It began at MIT, where he developed a "cell-squeezing" technology that caught the attention of the scientific community and led him to launch:

SQZ Biotech with little more than "napkin maths" and a $100,000 initial investment from professors and family.

As he transitioned from a PhD student to a full-time CEO, he successfully navigated the venture capital landscape by leveraging the following:

• Early academic validation
• A prestigious partnership with Roche to secure a $5 million Series A.

This momentum eventually snowballed into raising over $400 million, including a massive IPO in 2020, proving that a targeted, platform-focused strategy can bridge the gap between complex deep-tech research and large-scale public market success.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• How to raise a Seed Round with no track record.
• The secret to closing a partnership with Big Pharma (Roche & Pfizer).
• Why the public market might be better than private equity for biotech.
• How to identify red flags in venture capital investors.

The future of cell therapy and global healthcare innovation.

If you’re a founder navigating the complexities of deep tech, big pharma partnerships, or the pressures of the public market, this episode reveals what it takes to build, lose, and rebuild a world-changing company.

👉 Who is Armon Sharei?

Armon is the founder of Portal Bio and the former CEO of SQZ Biotech. With a PhD from MIT, his work in cell therapy has been recognised as one of the "10 World Changing Ideas" by Scientific American. He is now focused on making cell therapy more accessible through his latest venture.