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You Might Also Like: Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman
Introducing Stéphane Bancel: “The upside was changing humanity forever.” from Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman. Follow the show: Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel will go down in history for pioneering the Covid-19 vaccine. He sits down with Bob to recount the story of the pandemic from his perspective, from the moment he knew it would become an international disaster to the decision to throw out Moderna’s playbook and risk everything to help humanity. At the time, Moderna had never sold a product, requiring Stéphane to adapt to a new strategy, scale the business, and sustain seven day work weeks. All of this has set Moderna up for a strong future. In fact, Stéphane believes Moderna’s next decade will be so critical for the healthcare industry that its name will no longer be synonymous with the pandemic. See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...
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- [00:00]
Narrator
AI is rewriting the business playbook with productivity boosts and faster decision making coming to every industry. If you're not thinking about AI, you can bet your competition is. This is not where you want to drop the ball, but AI requires a lot of compute power, and with most cloud platforms, the cost for your AI workloads can spiral. That is, unless you're running on oci. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure this was the cloud built for AI, a blazing, fast, enterprise grade platform for your infrastructure, database, apps and all your AI workloads. OCI costs 50% less than other major hyperscalers for compute, 70% less for storage and 80% less for networking. Thousands of businesses have already scored with oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters and Suno AI. Now the ball's in your court.
- [00:45]
Bob Pittman
Right now, Oracle can cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI.
- [00:50]
Stephane Bancel
Minimum financial commitment and other terms apply.
- [00:52]
Bob Pittman
Offer ends March 31st.
- [00:54]
Stephane Bancel
See if your company qualifies for this.
- [00:55]
Bob Pittman
Special offer@oracle.com strategic that's oracle.com strategic My.
- [01:00]
Child
Dad works in B2B marketing, but I never really knew what that meant. Then one day my dad came by my school for Career Day and told everyone in my class he was a big roaz man. Then he just kept saying things like the bigger the roaz the better. Over and over. My friends still laugh at me to this day. I think it means calculating a return on ad spend. One thing's for sure, I'll be known as the Roazman's kid for the rest of my days. Why couldn't you just be a fireman or a lawyer? Why? You ruined my life dad.
- [01:35]
LinkedIn Advertiser
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- [02:00]
Stephane Bancel
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?
- [02:03]
Ryan Seacrest
Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted?
- [02:08]
Stephane Bancel
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.
- [02:11]
Ryan Seacrest
Discover is accepted at 99% of places.
- [02:13]
LinkedIn Advertiser
That take credit cards nationwide.
- [02:15]
Ryan Seacrest
And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover.
- [02:23]
LinkedIn Advertiser
Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the.
- [02:26]
Ryan Seacrest
February 2024 Nielsen report. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It's stock up savings time now through March 25th. Spring in for storewide deals and earn four times a point. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible beverage items like Red Bull and sparkling ice or breakfast favorites like Kellogg's Pop Tarts, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Kellogg's Eggo waffles, plus many more. Then clip the offer in our app for automatic event long savings stack up those rewards to save even more restrictions apply. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [02:58]
Narrator
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [03:04]
Stephane Bancel
If you are in a situation where you have in a once in a century pandemic and the economy is locked down, people are dying by the thousands, if not the tens of thousands around the world. Kids cannot go to school anymore. It becomes a human decision to decide to throw by the window your business strategy and to do what you think is the right thing for the world. Even though if you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
- [03:29]
Bob Pittman
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to this episode of Math and Magic. Our guest today has literally changed the world, proving that the impossible can be done. And he's a model of the CEO as someone in service to society. He's Stephane Van Zell, CEO of Moderna. He grew up in France and always knew what he wanted to be a CEO. Loved science and business, still does, and is equally skilled in both. Greatly influenced by the Jesuits and brings that sense of service to business and its mission. Although it was almost a decade after its founding, Moderna popped on the scene as a savior during the pandemic, doing what the experts thought to be impossible, getting a vaccine developed and available within a year. And by the way, infectious disease vaccines weren't even on his original company plans. He loves to ski, boat and eat well. He's French after all, and he is a fascinating and nice guy. Stefan, welcome.
- [04:24]
Stephane Bancel
Well, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for this very kind description.
- [04:28]
Bob Pittman
Oh, we have more to come. But before we jump into that, I want to do you in 60 seconds. Ready?
- [04:35]
Stephane Bancel
Good.
- [04:35]
Bob Pittman
Cats or dogs?
- [04:36]
Stephane Bancel
Dogs.
- [04:37]
Bob Pittman
Early riser or night owl?
- [04:39]
Stephane Bancel
Very early riser.
- [04:40]
Bob Pittman
Paris or Boston?
- [04:41]
Stephane Bancel
Paris. For fan. Boston or for work.
- [04:43]
Bob Pittman
Skiing or sailing?
- [04:45]
Stephane Bancel
That's a tough one. Skiing in the windsail setting in the summer.
- [04:48]
Bob Pittman
Coffee or tea?
- [04:50]
Stephane Bancel
Tea. Spanish guy. Never drinks coffee, sleep or exercise. Boof.
- [04:55]
Bob Pittman
Cook or eat out?
- [04:56]
Stephane Bancel
Eat out.
- [04:57]
Bob Pittman
Call or Text, text, podcast or video?
- [05:01]
Stephane Bancel
Podcast.
- [05:02]
Bob Pittman
Oh, that's the right answer. Okay, it's about to get harder. All time. Favorite musical artist, Taylor Swift.
- [05:07]
Stephane Bancel
First job picking asparagus.
- [05:10]
Bob Pittman
Smartest person you know.
- [05:12]
Stephane Bancel
Stephen Hogg. The president of Modela. Childhood hero, Steve Jobs. Favorite movie, Le Grand Bleu.
- [05:20]
Bob Pittman
Most important piece of advice you've ever had.
- [05:22]
Stephane Bancel
Listen to everybody.
- [05:24]
Bob Pittman
And finally, do you have a secret talent?
- [05:27]
Stephane Bancel
Connecting the dots?
- [05:29]
Bob Pittman
Okay, let's get started. Probably one of the most disruptive events in the world in the last hundred years was the pandemic. And in a strange way, it was the coming out party for Moderna. And from it comes one of the business world's most impressive case studies. You were employee number two and. And the first CEO of Moderna in 2011. It was a startup built around the promise of messenger RNA MRNA, that it would change medicine. I've seen you quoted as saying it had only a 10% chance of working, but if it did, the world would change and Moderna would be something new in biotech. You'd be a platform much like the operating system in the traditional tech world. A platform with RNA as your operating system and broad applications riding on it. You took a pay cut, left a major CEO job just for the promise of messenger rna. You were making progress building a new company, and suddenly COVID 19 appears. Can you take us through what you did and how it changed all your plans?
- [06:30]
Stephane Bancel
Sure. I spent all my career working in infectious disease, and so I always have an eye to new virus emerging, new bacteria emerging. And so between Christmas and New Year 2019, as I was reading the Wall Street Journal, I heard about new cases of pneumonia, like symptoms to people in China. And so I reached out to the nih, asking, hey, this new thing in China, what is it? Then after a few days, we realized it was a virus. It was not flu, and it was not a coronavirus like SARS or mers. It was a new one. And so when they got the sequence online around mid January, we decided to go and make a vaccine, to test it in a clinic. And initially we thought this was just an outbreak, but we still wanted to go to the clinic because I wanted to know how fast could we go if one day, God forbid, there was going to be a pandemic. And I thought we could get into the clinic in 60 days, from the day the sequence is available of the virus genome to the day we could inject the first human, which was a huge change versus what happened during SARS. It took the NIH 20 months to get from sequence to first human dose. And so that's why I wanted to do it. And then of course, through January of 2020, as the cases accumulated, and I woke up one day at 4:00 in the morning in sweats, saying, jeez, it's going to be a pandemic like 1918. And so then it was a few weeks convincing my board, convincing my team, that we had to pivot the company and really put our best talent towards trying to work on this vaccine for what I thought was going to be.
- [08:23]
Bob Pittman
So I understand, though, that one of the problems is no one would finance the vaccine, that the only way it got done was the US government stepped in and actually financed this.
- [08:35]
Stephane Bancel
You're correct. Moderna had never sold a product, we had never commercialized a product. And so we had two financial challenges as we pivoted to running after this virus. One was, how do you set up quickly very large. It ended up being 30,000 people tested in the phase 3 clinical trial. And this was, as you said, funded by the US government, which backed up five companies, which I think was one of the most brilliant strategy I've seen in terms of getting things done for the country and the world. But the other piece that the government did not back up, that we still had to do at incredible risk, was to scale manufacturing. Because as you can understand, if we only finance the clinical study and the vaccine works and we have no vaccine to provide people, that would be a human tragedy. And so we had to scale up manufacturing not for 10 million doses, but for a billion dollars. And so we couldn't find any foundation to help us. And so what we ended up doing in May of 2020 is raise equity on NASDAQ. As soon as we published positive phase one data and we raised $1.3 billion and 100% of that capital was dedicated to scale up manufacturing.
- [10:05]
Bob Pittman
I mean, it sounds pretty tough. How hard was it to pivot from. Not only were you going to do this product, but you had really been set up and built to be a platform and suddenly you're going into the product business.
- [10:15]
Stephane Bancel
Yes. If you go back and even you read the public filing, when we went public in December 2018, the S1, we described a company that, as you said, is a platform company to manage MRNA technology risk and to manage biology risk, which is disease risk, which exists in our industry, we actually built a portfolio of drugs. We had, I think 16 drug by the time we went public. And that portfolio of drugs was to allow us to manage the unknown about where was MRNA going to work where was it not going to work? What disease was going to work for? What disease was not going to work for? At the time, no product ever approved using MRNA technology. And so, as you can imagine, in January 2020, when we decide to pause or to slow down this portfolio approach of those 16 drugs, to literally bet the company on one drug, that was a very complicated and heavy business decision. We believed we had the technology that could work for vaccines. We had done nine vaccine in human trials before the pandemic hit. We had done quite a lot of work on coronaviruses, SARS and mers. So we believed our vaccine was going to work. And if you are in a situation where you have a once in a century pandemic and the economy is locked down, people are dying by the thousands, if not the tens of thousands around the world, kids cannot go to school anymore. It becomes a human decision to decide to throw by the window your business strategy and to do what you think is the right thing for the world, even though if you're wrong, you might actually kill the company.
- [12:03]
Bob Pittman
So speaking of killing the company, just in reading about that time, there were a lot of seasoned veterans who were saying you were irresponsible to even claim you could deliver a vaccine inside a year, which must have put another level of pressure on you to realize that you were pivoting the company. Yet there was hardly universal views from outside that this was the right move.
- [12:28]
Stephane Bancel
That's correct. I mean, if you had told me even in the spring of 2020 that large companies like Sanofi was going to have massive technical setback, that the products from AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson, while they were going to get approved, they would end up having some safety concerns that will lead them to not being really used. And this was going to be Moderna and Pfizer left to really help fight this horrible pandemic, I will surely not have believed you. And as you said, a lot of people from those large companies were saying on TV that I was irresponsible to even give a hope that we could have a vaccine by the end of the year. That was actually a very hard time.
- [13:11]
Bob Pittman
So let's talk about the personal dimension. For you, as CEO of the company, as a human being, the weight of the world was suddenly on your shoulders. How did you cope with that stress? What did it do to you?
- [13:22]
Stephane Bancel
So it's interesting my wife would tell you, this is actually the type of moment when it's really hard, but also very clear what has to be done that I'm at My best, and I don't know why I'm able to obstruct the outside noise and just to focus on the work to be done. It was not a time to think about, do we go right or do we go left? There's an enemy, it's the virus. Every day, every hour matters because people are dying. And so it just allowed me to be laser focused on the job at task. The biggest challenge, I think, was more a mental and physical challenge because we were working seven days a week, which I'd never done before. I worked hard before, but we were working full day Saturdays, full day Sundays for a year. And so I remember starting to be pretty exhausted, you know, by end of February, early March, and having a discussion with Steven, who is my partner, the president of a company, and I'm like, hey, how do we sustain this? Because he's a doctor, I'm not. And he's like, you know, make sure you go to bed at a reasonable time, do sport every day, eat healthy. He knows I like wine, don't drink any wine. So it was really about this discipline. And I remember because at the time, you know, we were working from home, you know, in the spring of 2020, and I remember dropping, you know, so tired in my bed at night, getting up early in the morning, going for a run to fresh up my mind and get some oxygen and then go back into it. And this was this thing where sometimes the teams were even joking, you know, get on a zoom call at 7am and somebody would make the. What became the Monala joke. What day is it today? Because we had no idea. But it was also an amazing time because the teams internally went so beyond what is expected of them because for everybody, it was very personal. Everybody had family members dying. Everybody was worried about their parents, all their family members, the kids not going to school. And so it was a really incredible teamwork across not only the company, but companies helping us and the government. That really makes me really proud about what was achieved by this very large team.
- [15:33]
Bob Pittman
Well, you know what is so impressive to me, we talk on this show about leadership and management, is that you were able to get your company to rally around the cause. You were able to sync that up with the government that regulates you and in this case, funding you as well. Did you do something special in your leadership? Did you think, this is how I'm going to get everybody to rally around it? Was there some special sauce you used there?
- [16:01]
Stephane Bancel
So a few things, I think, being very clear on the goals, because if you think about it, and you oversimplify it. I became a project manager for this very big project which was getting a vaccine out. So being very clear on what are the objectives, what are the goals, what are the priorities. Communicating with people in real time. So we spend a lot of time making sure that our counterparties in the governments knew what we were doing, that they were aligned with what we were doing, communicating a lot to our industrial partners, suppliers, making raw materials and so on. Because for everybody, it was a kind of crazy experiment or experience in a sense. I mean, just imagine the face of my supplier CEO when I call them and I say, hey, I need 10,000 times more product than last year.
- [16:51]
Bob Pittman
Had to be an interesting conversation.
- [16:52]
Stephane Bancel
Exactly. And so I think it was a lot of communication and also adapting the plan of pivoting on data, pivoting on challenges, asking for help, being very transparent, and making sure everybody in the ecosystem around our vaccine was always aware what was going well, what was not going well, why did we need help. I was never shy to ask for help because the only objective was to get a safe, effective vaccine out the door. There was no overhaul.
- [17:22]
Bob Pittman
So I want to come back to Moderna and some of the lessons you've learned there. But first I want to go back in time with you. You were born in Marseille in France in the early 70s. You were a child of the 70s and 80s. Can you paint a picture of how you grew up and paint a picture of those times?
- [17:40]
Stephane Bancel
So I was very lucky in many ways. I was born in south of France, which for those of you that have not been, is a beautiful part of the world with a lot of history. Marseille was a Greek port. It's a very, very old city. It's a very multicultural city. You have people from all over the Mediterranean, you have people from North Africa, from the Middle east, which is super cool to grow up with friends from everywhere. I was, you know, in a middle class family, but because, you know, in France, school is paid by the state through taxes. I had access to good school. The quality of life was nice because you'll go sailing. You always find a friend who had access to a boat somewhere. Even if it's a small boat, you'll be able to go skiing even with school, a great quality of life. I was raised by the Jesuit, as you said in your intro, which I only realized much later in life was a blessing because this sense of serving was just put into my head and my heart since I was a kid. And I didn't even feel it because it was normal. You know, when You're a kid, you don't think about things too much. You go with a movement. You know when you are in the school I was at and on a Wednesday afternoon when you don't have class, instead of going to do sport over things, they tell you, hey, let's go, you know, build a shelter for the or let's go help somebody. You just say yes because everybody else is doing it with you. I had a super nice childhood. It was non eventful but I think that quietness in my life helped build strength and foundations for harder times.
- [19:14]
Bob Pittman
In addition to the Jesuits, it looks like another great influence on you was an uncle you had who was a successful business person in tech companies in the us. What was that influence?
- [19:24]
Stephane Bancel
Yes. So I've been super lucky. My mom's brother moved to the US, was in the tech world B2B. But it was interesting because I would meet him like once a year in the summer and I had somebody to talk about business and technology and he had a lot of influence on my life. I'd be asking him questions like a kid asking a mentor questions and he would be like, should I learn German or Spanish in school? Because he was compulsory in France towards the third language. And he will answer me in this very brilliant style. It's the wrong question. In your generation you should learn to speak Chinese or Japanese. Then I started to learn Japanese and that allowed me to end up working in Japan and as a 24 year old, which was of course an amazing experience. But I think having access to somebody that was from a business world to allow me to pick direction and to see around the corner and to do the right things when I had time when I was young I think was a big gift.
- [20:25]
Bob Pittman
More on math and magic right after this quick break.
- [20:32]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. It's stock up savings time now through March 25th. Spring in for store wide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible cleaning items from all and cottonell and dinner essentials from Daisy, Skippy, Hellman's and Barilla plus many more. Then clip the offer in our app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more restrictions applied. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [21:00]
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- [22:09]
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- [22:14]
Bob Pittman
Happy anniversary.
- [22:16]
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- [23:07]
Child
My dad works in B2B marketing, but I never really knew what that meant. Then one day my dad came by my school for Career day and told everyone in my class he was a big Roaz man. Then he just kept saying things like the bigger the Roaz, the better over and over. My friends still laugh at me to this day. I think it means calculating a return on ad spend. One thing's for sure, I'll be known as the Roaz man's kid for the rest of my days. Why couldn't you just be a fireman or a lawyer? Why? You ruined my life, dad.
- [23:42]
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- [24:08]
Bob Pittman
Welcome back to Math and Magic. Let's hear more from my conversation with Stephane Bancel. You were great at math and science. You had an early interest in computers. Clearly you were on a track to do something in technology. But talk a little bit about your education and why you value a liberal arts education.
- [24:28]
Stephane Bancel
As you asked me my secret power of my secret gifts, I think he might be connecting the dots. I think that things are connected. History plays a great role as you know, for us to understand today's world, but also where the world might be going. Psychology plays a huge role in leading teams, of course, science, biology. I like to learn from different fields and I have to basically build a mental model of how the world works and those different experiences and those different educations, I think make the mental model that somebody can have more precise about the world.
- [25:05]
Bob Pittman
You later got a master's in engineering in Paris and another in Minnesota. What brought you to America for your second master's?
- [25:13]
Stephane Bancel
I always wanted to find a way to land in America and I was lucky because the school I was at in Paris gave you the opportunity to do your last year outside France. But it was a very simple system which is you can apply anywhere you want as long as it's one of the top three program in the discipline where you apply. And so Minnesota has an amazing chemical engineering program in grad school which was great for me. To discover America through being in Minneapolis.
- [25:43]
Bob Pittman
Had to be a lot of fun in January.
- [25:45]
Stephane Bancel
That was cold.
- [25:47]
Bob Pittman
And here's what's interesting about your story though. We've got this whole history of engineering, math, science and then your first tech company job was in sales and marketing. Why?
- [25:59]
Stephane Bancel
I think it's the contrarian in me. I wanted to keep learning. As I think you mentioned in your intro, Bob, I always wanted to be CEO. I don't have a big ego. So I would have been happy career wise being a CEO of a 10 people company. I just wanted to be in the general management role of connecting the dots. And so being trained as an engineer, I thought it made sense for me to learn more about business. And because sales you are close to the customers I thought it was a good idea to do. And that's what I did. Another counter example of me being a contrarian is after I left business school instead of going to a small company because I graduated in spring of 2000, when of course the NASDAQ peakwoovy.com instead of going to tech, I ended up going into a large pharma company called Eli Lilly. And I asked them to go work in manufacturing over places which even the Lilly recruiting team thought was a weird idea for a business school grad.
- [26:58]
Bob Pittman
You went through that, you got your mba, Harvard mba. By the way, you did work at Eli Lilly and somehow you wound up as a very young CEO, a Bay o Mario, which was a major company at the time. Tell me a little bit about how this young brand new CEO figured out how to do it.
- [27:18]
Stephane Bancel
It was interesting because when I got the role, as you said, I was, I was young. I think I was just turned 33 and so I was a bit panicked. And so I obsessed about getting the best team I could around me. So I literally got the job and spent the first two months on an airplane going around the world to meet as many people as I could asking everybody the same question. If you're a CEO, first of the three things you will change. And so I got very consistent feedback. I think it's another big lesson for me, which is ask people. Most human beings will tell you what they think. And I got very constant feedback about the strength of the company, the issues. I got a good sense of who I wanted to keep on the executive team, who I should not keep on executive team. And so I always obsess about getting the right team around me because I had no chance to be successful in that new role as a first time young CEO if I didn't have really a great team around me. And so that's what I focused on.
- [28:16]
Bob Pittman
In sort of reading about you and studying you a little bit. In addition to listening hard, there seem to be two other things that you really focus on, which is focus and scale. How do those three things come together? And I hope my analysis is correct. Why are they so important?
- [28:34]
Stephane Bancel
I mean, focus, I believe is the only way you get things done that are complicated and important. I think most people get distracted by trying to do too many things or too many things not good enough to have an impact. The listening piece is about getting the data. I'm an engineer, I believe in data. You know, one of our motto at Moderna is we pivot fearlessly on new data. Sometimes you Will shock people. I'm able to say we need to turn right and change our plan. If it's telling you you need to change your plan, then every hour you wait, not changing the plan, is an hour you're wasting. That could hurt somebody, given the business line I'm in. And so listening for me is key to get the right data. The focus is key to implement and execute on big, important projects or tasks. And the scale is about impact, which is the great thing about what we do making medicine is if we're right and if we do our jobs well by focusing on the right things, we can help a lot of people.
- [29:43]
Bob Pittman
How do you think about risk? How do you size them? And how do you decide which ones to take?
- [29:49]
Stephane Bancel
So risk, in my opinion, has to be balanced with upside or opportunity, which is taking a big risk for something that's not going to change the world is foolish, if not madness. A good example of how I think about risk is the decision to go to Moderna and to resign from the CEO of Biemerieux to become employee number two of this startup, which is just an ID with no money. I think we had $2 million to start with, which is not a lot in biotech. And all my friends told me, don't do it. All my friends that I talked to told me, don't do it. The risk was very large, but for me, the upside was this technology. If we could find a path to make safe, it was going to change medicine forever. And so it was going to change humanity forever. And the mental model I had, I could take almost any risk because the upside was so important for humanity. Because the true downside is I was going to potentially build a company that will go bankrupt. But what is the risk of that versus the risk of not bringing to the world a technology who could save a lot of lives?
- [31:01]
Bob Pittman
You've talked a lot about teams and clearly that's part of your go to strategy. Any secrets about building a good team and how to use them?
- [31:12]
Stephane Bancel
Yes. So team is my number one go to thing. One of the most important things I learned at about business school is not about finance or other technical things, which I learned and I've forgotten a lot of it. It's about the power of having smart people with as much of a diverse background as you can, especially diverse from your way of thinking, because you need to understand where the blind spots are. We all have blind spots. I'm biased. I believe everybody is biased. And we are the fruit of our own life, of our own experience. And so what I really was impressed when I was in business school is sometimes I will read a business case, work on it. I thought I would have cracked the case. And I go to class the next day and a lawyer or a doctor or somebody from a part of the world I don't know well, come with a totally different analysis than the one I had and theirs is stronger. And so I've seen this time and time again and this has really helped me to think about how do you build a team that in my business is very mission driven because you cannot do great things if people are driven about their career or about themselves. It has to be about what are we trying to achieve and that those people have different skills and different insights or way to think about the world. And you also together you can get a better sense for the facts so that you can have a better chance to define the right problem to work on.
- [32:53]
Bob Pittman
So as you deal with your teams, you know something that comes up when you have different people, different points of view is dissent. What place does it have in your management philosophy?
- [33:04]
Stephane Bancel
I think it's key going back to the word listen. I think it's kids who listen. But at the end of the day, somebody has to make a decision. And so I think the harder the decision, the more it's debated, the more you need to give time to a decision. I'm very impatient type of guy, but I think I have a good sense and judgment of when it's a big decision and how you need to debate it to really hear the best ideas and also opposition to the idea. But at the end of the day, somebody needs to make a call again. Do we go right or left? Sometimes, as you know, making no decision is actually terrible. And I think it's the role of a leader to listen, but then to weigh with his or her model of the world the risk and the upside and to decide how we're going to take that swing or not.
- [33:57]
Bob Pittman
You talked about this unusual moment during the pandemic, but how do you think about in ordinary terms your work life balance or work life integration?
- [34:07]
Stephane Bancel
Yes. So as like to say internally, I don't believe in work life balance because my life is not balanced. The word I use, which is close to you, integration, world is harmony. I'm trying to have harmony between my work and my life. And this in my experience requires iterations, a lot of dialogue. At home, for example, when I realized if I don't do sports, I don't sleep well and I'm not as good a person at work and at home, Then one day I realized I had to get up really early to work out in the morning because if I worked out at night, I couldn't sleep well. But the challenge when you get up at 4 in the morning is you have to go to bed early, which makes you a very, very boring partner. And so we talked about it with my wife and we discussed and agreed that was the right thing to do. It was important for me to try to be home for dinner with the kids when they were home. So I would go to work early, so I had to go to workout even earlier. And it's the type of things that I think you need to figure out the whole system so it can be sustainable. Because the key is not to have a strategy that works for a while, it has to work for years.
- [35:21]
Bob Pittman
So digitization, something that's a hot button for you. What are companies missing and why and how is it critical to every business?
- [35:30]
Stephane Bancel
So at the end of the day, what we all do in most companies is we use data to make decision. And so the quality of the data, having access to data in real time across the enterprise is what I believe differentiates people over time. Because what's interesting about business and time is that nobody can buy time. So it's a pretty nice equalizer. And the other piece is that knowledge increase exponentially with time. But the exponential thinking that we see in tech, that we see in investments in the financial world, this is not intuitive to people. And so I think digitalization is really important because that's the best way to get high quality data to make the right decision. It allows you to go fast, which again, given nobody can buy time, if you can go faster than other people, your competitors regularly, well, as time compounds, you're going to be way ahead over time. It allows you to scale. Scaling with paper is impossible. You get actually these economies of scale. I believe it's all about digitalization. And of course AI is just going to accelerate that even further.
- [36:48]
Bob Pittman
Let's jump back to Moderna. What's coming up next for you? For medicine and health, our next big.
- [36:55]
Stephane Bancel
Mountain, which I think is going to be even more impactful than what we did for Covid, is cancer. We have some very interesting clinical data in skin cancer, melanoma, showing that compared to the best drug available today to patients, we have two out of three people which three years after their surgery are still disease free, metastasis free, compared to the best drug available today. I think we found a way to individualize treatment. Whereas if you and I get diagnosed by the same doctor on the same day of skin cancer, Moderna will make a different medicine for you and for me. We can do that in around 30 days now from start to finish. And we really customize the the drug to the genetics of your cancer for your immune system to be able to go literally eat your cancer. And so I think, and I told our team when we got the data and we shared the data publicly and internally, I told our team at the town hall that five to 10 years from now, most people will have forgotten what we did during the pandemic because I believe we will be known as one of the company that made the biggest dent on cancer in the industry.
- [38:15]
Bob Pittman
Stephan we usually end each episode of Math and Magic with shout outs to the greats on both sides of business, the analytical side and the creative side. But in your case, I want to give you the shout out. What you and your team did at such a critical time for the entire world truly altered history. And we all owe you a great debt of gratitude. And although you think people will have forgotten it, I suspect you'll be in the history books forever. Congratulations on building such an impressive company and thanks for sharing your insights with us.
- [38:47]
Stephane Bancel
Thank you so much for the kind words, Bob and thank you for having me.
- [38:56]
Bob Pittman
Here are a few things I picked up from my conversation with Stephan. 1. Taking care of yourself is essential to taking care of your company. As cell, as an eo, you need to be in the right mental space to lead. Stefan was put to the ultimate test during the pandemic, working seven days a week for months on end. And he had to figure out how to sustain it, for instance, by making time early in the morning for exercise. We're not all racing to fight life threatening diseases, but Stefan's story is a case study in bringing your best self to work. 2. Never lose sight of the mission. Stephan has a creepy, crystal clear sense of purpose that keeps him driven. Whatever your big picture goal may be, let it keep you focused and guide your decisions, big and small. It's also a great way to assess the trade off of risk and reward. 3. Remain open to learning. Listening to diverse opinions, staying up to date with changing data and serving in multifaceted roles are all ways of educating yourself about your company and your industry. And that's always going to be an asset. I'm Bob Pippman. Thanks for listening.
- [40:07]
Stephane Bancel
That's it for today's episode.
- [40:08]
Vanta Advertiser
Thanks so much for listening to Math.
- [40:10]
Narrator
And Magic, a production of Iheart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman.
- [40:16]
Stephane Bancel
Special thanks to Sydney Rosenblum for booking.
- [40:18]
Narrator
And wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
- [40:21]
Bob Pittman
The Math and Magic team is Jessica.
- [40:23]
Narrator
Crime Church and Baheed Fraser. Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etor. Until next time.
- [40:34]
Ryan Seacrest
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