Metsera CEO Whit Bernard joins Venrock&#x27;s Nimish Shah to discuss how the company&#x27;s ultra-long acting GLP-1 program helped position it as a strategic standout in the obesity market. The conversation covers the bidding war between major pharma players, lessons in first-principles company building, and why the next decade of biotech could reward high-volume, accessible innovation.

Building a Differentiated Obesity Biotech

Running Through Walls

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Running Through Walls

## Participants

- **Nimish Shah** (Venrock)
- **Whit Bernard** (MetSera)
- **Whit Bernard** (MetSera)

## Transcript

Welcome to Running Through Walls, a Venrock podcast featuring conversations between investors and entrepreneurs. Each episode we offer a behind-the-scenes look at pivotal moments in time. Hi everyone, welcome back to Running Through Walls. I'm Nimish Shah, partner at Venrock. Today I'm joined by Whit Bernard, CEO of Mitzera.

Over the last few years, obesity has gone from being viewed as a niche therapeutic category to arguably the most important battleground in pharma. And MetSera emerges as one of the most talked about companies in the space incredibly quickly, culminating in a highly publicized bidding process involving some of the biggest companies in healthcare. Whit, thanks so much for joining us. Great to be here. So I'm going to start off with some rapid-fire questions we ask everyone. Favorite place in the world?

I'd say it's a tie between the Gulf of Naples and my porch in the Hudson Valley, although after last year I think I'm leaning more towards the porch. Early bird or night owl? Night owl, always. Dream job as a kid? Conducting the Berlin Philharmonic was definitely my dream job as a kid. Oh wow, that's a new one. I haven't heard of that. I was a music guy. Favorite interview question when you're hiring someone? I think actually the dream job as a kid is my favorite interview question.

And I think it's always a trick question because I'm always a bit suspicious if it has anything to do with the job I'm interviewing someone for. You know, it's fun to work with people who have interests beyond, you know, what they're doing every day. Got it. So if someone says like biotech, biostatistician, you're all of a sudden you're like, all right, that doesn't make sense to me as a kid. Yeah, exactly. My dream job is to lead clinical pharmacology for GLP-1 Petside United. All right. Well, thanks for sharing that. And I'm going to start with the obvious question.

When did you realize Mitzera had become strategically important enough that multiple pharma companies might actually fight over? You know, anybody who's building something entrepreneurial has to believe they're building something important. I think the whole team has to believe that. So on some level, we always had conviction that we were on to something here. I think the moment it really crystallized that we might be right was actually looking at the first human PK of Meta-097, the ultra long acting GLP-1.

You know, and the whole idea around which we built the company is that, you know, there was this kind of nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded, if you will, mindset around obesity, that it was getting very crowded, that the space was going to commoditize quickly. And we stepped back and looked at it and we said, well, there are a bunch of weekly injectables basically everywhere. Everybody's got a terzep...

Building a Differentiated Obesity Biotech

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

Building a Differentiated Obesity Biotech

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.