

Enveda
303 posts

@enveda
Engineering new drugs from nature with knowledge graphs, metabolomics, and ML
























For decades, drug discovery has shifted away from nature and toward biology-first approaches. @viswacolluru believes that shift was a catastrophic mistake. His company, Enveda (@enveda), has raised over $500 million to build a “search engine for nature’s chemistry.” In our conversation, we explore: • Why the pharmaceutical industry abandoned nature (and why that was a massive mistake) • How Enveda built a system to decode unknown molecules in nature • The deeply personal story of his mother’s battle with leukemia and how it shaped his life’s work • Why old ideas, from immunotherapy to natural products, often hold the most latent potential • How Enveda developed 18 drug candidates for about $1 million each instead of $10-15 million • Enveda’s three leading drug candidates targeting eczema, obesity, and ulcerative colitis • Why first-in-class medicines capture the vast majority of returns in pharma • What competitive table tennis taught him about building companies Thank you to the partners who make this possible @brexHQ: The intelligent finance platform: brex.com/mario @ahrefs Brand Radar: Find your brand in AI results: ahrefs.com/generalist @withpersona: Trusted identity verification for any use case: withpersona.com/generalist (00:00) Introduction to Viswa Colluru (07:06) Early pull toward technology (14:24) Studying Biotechnology (24:23) Innovation vs. novelty (32:05) Joining Recursion (40:42) What launched Enveda (49:53) Chemistry-first approach (52:17) Raising $225K and investing $55K personally (56:04) Initial studies and targets (1:18:27) Enveda’s long-term vision (1:21:31) Book recommendation

For decades, drug discovery has shifted away from nature and toward biology-first approaches. @viswacolluru believes that shift was a catastrophic mistake. His company, Enveda (@enveda), has raised over $500 million to build a “search engine for nature’s chemistry.” In our conversation, we explore: • Why the pharmaceutical industry abandoned nature (and why that was a massive mistake) • How Enveda built a system to decode unknown molecules in nature • The deeply personal story of his mother’s battle with leukemia and how it shaped his life’s work • Why old ideas, from immunotherapy to natural products, often hold the most latent potential • How Enveda developed 18 drug candidates for about $1 million each instead of $10-15 million • Enveda’s three leading drug candidates targeting eczema, obesity, and ulcerative colitis • Why first-in-class medicines capture the vast majority of returns in pharma • What competitive table tennis taught him about building companies Thank you to the partners who make this possible @brexHQ: The intelligent finance platform: brex.com/mario @ahrefs Brand Radar: Find your brand in AI results: ahrefs.com/generalist @withpersona: Trusted identity verification for any use case: withpersona.com/generalist (00:00) Introduction to Viswa Colluru (07:06) Early pull toward technology (14:24) Studying Biotechnology (24:23) Innovation vs. novelty (32:05) Joining Recursion (40:42) What launched Enveda (49:53) Chemistry-first approach (52:17) Raising $225K and investing $55K personally (56:04) Initial studies and targets (1:18:27) Enveda’s long-term vision (1:21:31) Book recommendation