Meet the Innovator: Kyle Palmer, CSO & COO at Opertech Bio
Pennovation Works is home to an exciting mix of startups, research initiatives, and innovative companies. In this Meet the Innovator series, we will be introducing you to a member of the Pennovation Works community through a Q&A spotlight.
This spotlight is with Kyle Palmer, Chief Science Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Opertech Bio. Opertech Bio offers its customers a pioneering approach to measuring taste, a multi-billion dollar market covering the food and beverage, flavor ingredients, pet food, and pharmaceutical industries. Opertech Bio is a member of the Pennovation Center, where they have had two private office spaces for their taste tests and lab work since February 2018.
What inspired you to start Opertech Bio and how long have you been operating?
When I went to grad school in the 80s, I was a psych major and was interested in physiological psychology. I was there for 3 years but the program wasn’t quite right for me. I decided to follow my future wife to Michigan where she was studying behavioral pharmacology and threw all my belongings in the back of a truck. Her grad advisor wanted to hire me as a lab tech. I said I’ll take it, happy to land a job right away but not realizing it was a catalyst for a life’s work in pharmacology.
Working in the behavioral pharmacology lab really hooked me on the idea of pharmacology -- many biological processes are directly controlled by interactions of chemicals with receptors, from the molecular level all the way to the behavior of organisms. What a powerful way to study functional biology! So I re-entered grad school, this time at Michigan to get my PhD in molecular pharmacology. That set me up for a career in the pharmaceutical industry, eventually creating connections that would lead to a position where I met Scott Horvitz, my future business partner. Together we created Opertech in October 2011.
What do you find to be most rewarding about your work? The most challenging?
Most rewarding: I get to go to town on my own interests. I get to follow what I find fascinating. I can chase down what I'm passionate about and investors trust me to follow that. I’ve never experienced that anywhere else.
Most challenging: The resources are not unlimited. I have to make do with a small work force and I have to be very deliberate about my equipment costs and lab expenditures -- the limitations of being a startup. But it does breed creativity and ingenuity.
What comes next for Opertech?
The taste testing world is hard to crack. Taste testing as it is practiced in most large companies relies on simple methodologies that fundamentally have not changed over the last hundred years. Our approach is vastly different, which means we have to spend a lot of time and effort introducing the principles underlying our technology to new clients before they sign on.
We have been using the technology as a service business, but now we are implementing a licensing model that allows companies to bring it in-house. That way they can familiarize themselves with the technology and discover its capacity and capabilities on their own.
What advice would you give someone starting a business today?
It’s tough at the start. Timing is everything. Be quick on your feet. You have to be alert to new opportunities on a daily basis and be ready to take a new direction. Learn to cope with anxiety -- you'll experience a lot of that!
How would people in your life describe you?
I would like to think and there’s evidence to support that they think of me as a responsible person with good judgement. Jovial. A little eccentric.
What does the Pennovation community mean to you?
It’s the most stimulating environment I’ve ever been in for my career. It reminds me of grad school because everywhere you go there's new ideas. There’s always new things to sample. The atmosphere. It’s vibrant. A lot of it has to do with the young folks that are extremely mature. Vision. Know-how. Extremely impressive.
The management is the best. Upbeat and positive and supportive. Anything I feel I need from them, they fall over themselves to help me. I’ve never had that before. The cross pollination of ideas. It’s easy to talk to people and everyone is engaged and curious. Not the average workplace.
LIGHTNING ROUND:
Go-to karaoke song: Keep it Comin’ Love by KC and the Sunshine Band
Favorite books: Moby Dick, The Demon Haunted World, On the Origin of Species
If you were a superhero, what powers would you have?
Spider-man powers if not The Hulk
What three items would you take with you on a deserted island?
A solar powered e-reader loaded to capacity, a classical guitar, and a really good pair of binoculars
What was your first job?
Bouncer at a bar south of Buffalo, NY called Mickey Rats
