IV BIOHOLDINGS, FIRST-IN-CATEGORY BIO-PLATFORM TO RADICALLY IMPROVE THE DETECTION, DIAGNOSIS, AND TREATMENT OF DISEASE
IV BioHoldings (IVBH) is a bio innovation studio that conceives, creates, and develops first-in-category bio-platform companies that radically improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. The company is defined by speed, efficiency, and risk management, made possible through advanced data science, exponential technologies,powerful partnerships and over 60 years of combined multi-disciplinary expertise.
The studio has founded three bio startups under the able leadership of Marty Keiser, Founder-CEO, IV BioHoldings (IVBH). The bio startups; Liquid Lung, HepGene, and Mammogen, are focused on pulmonary disease, metabolic disease, and women’s health, respectively. The IVBH ecosystem comprises three flagship liquid biopsy programs consisting of 8 first-in-class, non-invasive, patented, and patent-pending clinical-stage diagnostic tests addressing urgent unmet clinical needs across the care continuum for lung cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and breast cancer.
Marty leads IVBH with partner Elizabeth Cormier-May, a trained medicinal chemist with nearly 20-years veteran of diagnostics industry experience, who serves as SVP and Chief Commercial Officer of IVBH, as well as CEO of Mammogen. While they bring enormous passion, enthusiasm, an obsessive appreciation for execution, and strong business acumen, the blend of their different backgrounds, networks, and complementary skillsets makes for a very powerful dynamic and has contributed greatly to the success across the IVBH platform.
MORE ABOUT MARTY KEISER
Marty Keiser is a creative entrepreneur rooted in family, faith, and unwavering love for people. He grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, a blue collar-kid in a white-collar town. In 2018, after a wonderful decade-long run-on Wall Street, he decided to leap into the world of entrepreneurship, to take advantage of what he believed to be the early innings of a bio revolution.
ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY
Blessed with an optimistic outlook on life, a very persistent personality, a keen sense of resourcefulness, and a strong work ethic, entrepreneurship feels right to Marty. He entered the world of entrepreneurship as most people do, he was driven by personal frustration, the vision of a better solution, and an “if not me, then who” and “if not now, then when” calling. From 2016 to 2018, he did extensive research on the challenges that he was likely to face before making the jump to entrepreneurship. These challenges led him to rethink, imagine and reinvent nearly every aspect of the business.
IVBH centralizes all key executive and operational functions at the studio, keeping the burn rate low across company creations, allowing for shared knowledge and resources, and creating a “rising tide” effect across the entire ecosystem. Marty jokingly added that they were virtual before COVID made it cool, and the model has paid off very nicely for both before and during the pandemic. While most competitors were struggling to keep the lights on, their growth was exploding.
Marty further added, “My entrepreneurial journey has been far from linear, but much of that intense planning and preparation on the front-end not only helped me avoid many of the common challenges and pitfalls for first-time entrepreneurs but also resulted in entirely new models, processes, and proprietary know-how that added significant value to the overall IVBH platform, putting us in a competitive class of our own.”
FUTURE & CAREER
Marty’s mission in life is to radically improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Right now, the collective technologies across the IVBH platform are positioned to positively impact the lives of over 200 million Americans and over 1 billion people globally. While the impact of that is massive, he is laser-focused on every single step that needs to be taken to save that first life. The first person that he positively impacts will be the domino that leads to achieving their global vision for humanity.
“So much of my early focus was on leveraging data and technology to compress and eliminate the time, cost, and risk that lie ahead of me from an R&D standpoint, that I didn’t fully recognize or appreciate the value that a great team brings to both risk reduction and rapid acceleration of growth. Fortunately, I figured that out soon. I tend to think my leadership style is a blend of authoritative, democratic, and affiliative,” asserts Marty.
For the founder, the reward of bringing once-in-a-century change to healthcare, unlocking previously unknown scientific and technical insights about life-threatening diseases, and positively impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of people, was a risk worth taking and therefore, inconsequential.
INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ETHOS
There has been very little change across the healthcare industry, which is precisely why Marty entered the field. IVBH exists not to create incremental change but to create exponential change. The motto is as powerful as it is simple: Detect earlier. Diagnose easier. Treat more precisely. To achieve it, one must be willing to boldly challenge the status quo and bring massive change to an industry rooted in tradition. And the best way to encourage it is to think creatively!
IVBH is the most creative and imaginative place you can think of, where diversity of thought, experience, and perspective is encouraged, facilitated, and integrated into everything that they do. One exercise that they practice at IVBH is spending time looking at products, services, processes, and protocols that are universally accepted as the best, identifying a problem with it, and then thinking of ways you would reinvent, recreate or rewrite it to make it better for yourself. The thinking behind this exercise is that if something is better based on your own high standards, it would likely be better for everyone.
“I am proud of the team and partners that I have assembled, collectively working towards the common objective of radically improving the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, driven by an unwavering ‘patient first’ approach to every single decision that we make,” emphasized Marty.
ROLE AS A LEADER
The most important decision a CEO can make is to ensure that near-term decisions do not detract from or prevent the organization from reaching its long-term objective. Finding harmony between the short- and long-term is a unique skill set that keeps the idea and the business moving forward in the right direction with the following points:
- Trust your gut.
- Do what you’re BEST at and hire the rest
- Make decisions with 70-80% of the information available to you, wait for more, and you’ll miss the opportunity.
- If you’re not sure if you’re a leader, you’re probably not a leader – this isn’t for everyone
Core values should be communicated early and often from the top-down and the bottom up. Core values are most important during times of great stress or when making critical, make-or-break decisions. When the proper foundation has been laid and the core values are interwoven throughout every aspect of the organization, difficult decisions tend to be much easier to make, regardless of the outcome.
ADVICE TO READERS
People are the most precious resource in life and business. Take time to cherish and nurture deep interpersonal relationships. Look for the best in people. Look for ways to bring out the best in them. Follow this advice and you’ll gain more than you ever could have dreamed.
Company website: https://www.ivbh.studio/
