The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – AI and M&A: Revolutionizing Business Growth with Ambrosia Ventures

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

AI and M&A: Revolutionizing Business Growth with Ambrosia Ventures Ambrosiaventures.co About the Guest(s): Issa Gilani is a distinguished principal consultant and founder of Ambrosia Ventures, a strategic consulting and M&A advisory firm concentrating on the life sciences sector. With over nine years of expertise in regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and management consulting, Issa has been at the helm of numerous high-impact projects for top pharmaceutical companies. His firm, Ambrosia Ventures, provides AI-powered tools to enhance market analysis, facilitating strategic mergers and acquisitions. Issa's passion for entrepreneurship is evident from his early beginnings in Detroit, where he cultivated his business acumen, leading him to forgo a medical career in favor of strategic consulting. Episode Summary: Welcome to another exhilarating episode of The Chris Voss Show, where we explore the intersection of strategic consulting, pharmaceutical innovation, and cutting-edge AI technology. Today, we are joined by the dynamic Issa Gilani, the visionary behind Ambrosia Ventures. With a compelling biography that spans regulatory affairs and transformative consultancy, Issa delves into his unique entrepreneurial journey from the streets of Detroit to the forefront of pharmaceutical consulting. This episode is an insightful journey into how AI is reshaping the mergers and acquisitions landscape, particularly in life sciences. Listeners will gain an enriched understanding of how Ambrosia Ventures employs AI to streamline M&A complexities and identify lucrative market opportunities. Issa shares how his firm is revolutionizing decision-making for startups and large enterprises with AI-powered insights, showcasing a toolkit capable of predicting company growth trajectories. Together with Chris Voss, the discussion unfurls the potential of AI in drug discovery landscapes, its role in regenerative medicine, and its future impact, promising listeners a rich dialogue steeped in innovation and strategic foresight. Key Takeaways: AI in M&A: Ambrosia Ventures uses AI to power a comprehensive M&A toolkit, revolutionizing how firms predict growth and streamline complex processes. Entrepreneurial Journey: Issa shares his transition from aspiring physician to strategic consultant, emphasizing the importance of aligning scientific innovations with business acumen. Pharmaceutical Landscape: Insight into how the competitive biopharmaceutical industry necessitates innovative solutions for clinical trial optimization and market analysis. Regenerative Medicine Focus: AI’s future role in drug discovery and regenerative medicine, aiming to extend life expectancy by repairing organs and body systems. Strategic Consultancy: Ambrosia Ventures' approach caters to both startups and established enterprises, helping them unlock new growth avenues with AI-enhanced strategies. Notable Quotes: "It takes a smart person to realize you have to dumb it down sometimes so everyone can understand what it's about." "We use AI to streamline the very complex and sometimes chaotic processes of mergers and acquisitions." "The smartest people, they, it takes a smart person to realize you have to dumb it down sometimes so everyone can understand what it's about." "AI is its own species and thinking about stuff that we probably never even thought about or considered, especially with our limited paradigm." "What drugs candidates could be from a single molecule targeting new molecules? It's very promising."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you,

but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law, because your mother-in-law is still not happy with you. You need to do some work. That's why you listen to the Chris Voss Show, because you can improve the quality of your life. You can prove how much money you make, and you can just overall be a better person. Maybe then she'll like you, or maybe not.

Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com. Of course, that's Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com. Of course, that's Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity. Chris Voss, facebook.com and all those crazy places we have on the internet. We have an amazing young man on the show today. We're going to be talking about his entrepreneurial journey and some of the things he's done in his life

and how he can kind of maybe give you some advice on how to be successful like him and some of the things that he's doing as well. Today we have Isa Kildani on the show with us today. He's the principal consultant and founder of Ambrosia Ventures, and we're going to get some insight into his life. He is the founder and principal consultant of Ambrosia Ventures, a strategic consulting and M&A advisory firm specializing in life sciences. Over nine years of experience in regulatory affairs and quality assurance and management consulting, he has led high-impact projects for top pharmaceutical companies and driven successful M&A integrations across diverse industries. At Abroja Ventures, he

focuses on helping companies navigate complex regulatory landscape, optimize clinical trials, and accelerate growth through strategic mergers and acquisitions. His firm also provides AI-powered tools for enhanced market analysis, decision-making, and empowering clients with real-time insights. Welcome to the show, Isa. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you, Chris, for having me on the show. Thank you for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your.coms or.co's. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah, so you can find us on our website, ambrosiaventures.co. There we go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do there,

in your words. Yeah, absolutely. So we honestly, we just take businesses to the next level. So we strategize and we figure out what is out there for other companies to go into different markets that they can probably investigate and venture into. And so why is it important? I mean, what does it serve when, you know, why do we need your services for some of the things that are trying to be accomplished in the world? Absolutely. So when a company is growing, they have to focus on two things. Operational, so the tactical things, day-to-day operations.

So that takes a large part of your own efficiency. And then, of course, to expand and grow, you have to think strategically. So long-term investments, basically. So thinking about what markets they can get into, what new products is out there. And that's where we kind of come in. We are able to look into local insights and give more global perspectives. So giving them an open eye view, basically, to say, hey, you should check out this market. This is a great opportunity for you to grow even further.

AI seems to be a thing that's going to change the world. So tell us a little bit about how your growth and journey, how you came up. Were you raised by entrepreneurs? How did you stumble into starting your own company, being a founder, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. So my journey is honestly pretty unique. not just saying just because it's me, but, you know, growing up, growing up, you know, kid from Detroit, parents of two immigrant parents, and I was just born a hustler. You know, this five, six years old, I was already coming up with business plan ideas, going door to door, coming up with ideas. So that kind of like blossomed, of course, when I got older, I was always fascinated with the sciences. So I was on the path to med school and went to grad school, was a researcher by trade. So I did a lot of

publications via Vanderbilt. And then that kind of transitioned into realizing I actually don't want to do medical school. I don't want to be a physician. This is not for me. So some could say that's a six-figure-digit investment or a debt, however you want to look at it. But that kind of opened the avenue and that kind of made me realize, you know, this is the opportunity for me to figure out exactly how I want to venture and what I want to grow to my new career. So I did a lot of project management. And then that kind of morphed into the idea of, oh, I like when people come to me for advice. You know, I had experience working startups, so I had this, I guess, innate ability to connect with the CEOs, the COOs, and then they would always ask me for my insight. So I always felt I was powerful because one, I'm dealing with top dogs, I guess, and I'm just a little guy.

And then two, I have a purpose, if you think about it that way, where I can actually make a difference in the company and in what they're pulling towards. And that resonated with me. So I did some investigating and realized, oh, there's a thing called consulting in life sciences. And then that transition for a few years doing that and i had the opportunity to start my own firm a year and a half now you guys you guys help i guess there's a lot of work that goes into clinical trials and medicine and stuff like that tell give us kind of a rundown on on why's important, helping close the timeline, helping people find markets for maybe stuff they're developing in the biopharmaceutical landscape. Yeah.

So the biopharmaceutical landscape is so competitive. I mean, every day, every month, there's a new company out there that's creating this new technology. And that sweeps up the market share. So that's where it gets really sticky when you have these other smaller startups that have great ideas, but they can't advance because one, investors aren't going to be interested just because it's so saturated. And two, what's your value purpose? What's your unique selling proposition? So that's where we come in and we can probably we normally help these ceos a lot of them are early stage so they're scientific founders super smart you know harvard mit grads that you know have tons and tons of publications but they don't have a they have a lack of business

sense so that's where we help them and we transition that the science and then the business aspect to let them understand like hey, Hey, you have great technology, but we have to make it make sense for people that don't understand science. Yeah. There's some people that I've seen times where people have made a product that's kind of too smart for itself and the, and the consumer doesn't really understand it. Like it's,

and somehow it's just, it's kind of a great product, but it's how it's presented poorly in marketing or something. And people are just like, I don't get get it i'm trying to think of something that's a product fit you know is it an example people have used over the years but you know i've seen great products sometimes that just never made it and they were just maybe either too complex or they tried to do too much or they they're just trying to be too smart. And you're just like, you've angled this or put this to such a small select group of niche people that there's probably not enough money in this to make it work

because you're targeting such a very small niche of people. That or, I don't know, in pharmaceuticals, you can just charge a lot for for pills so maybe you can offset it but you know in the in a super hyper competitive market unless you've got something that's extraordinary like when what was it the little blue pill viagra like when viagra came out you know no one else had it the copyright was still theirs so you know you had something that you had a corner on the market of, and so you could do what you want. But so what's going on in the pharmaceutical regulatory environment? Is it still taking forever to develop, you know, medicines and approvals and regulatory issues, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah. So that really hasn't gone away, but actually to your point before that, how you said that you're having a really smart idea that hasn't really doesn't really connect with people. That's probably the biggest issue to even in biopharma, biotech pharma, because, you know, the smartest people, they, it takes a smart person to realize you have to dumb it down sometimes. So everyone can understand what it is. Take a smart person to do that. That also comes into play when we're talking about the regulatory aspects to a lot of the

drugs that we're seeing on the market or technology that's going to be on the market. Because if you can't explain to regulatory people what this product, this asset does, what's the go-to-market strategy? Who is this going to affect? And they can't really explain it in simple terms sometimes layman's terms then they're gonna they're gonna i've seen it so many times where they just say yeah you know we're gonna reject it we don't we don't know what you're talking about so being able to communicate effectively what your product is now you you talk about ai as well and so you guys are stepping into

that field everybody's stepping into nowadays ai trying to figure out how to you know get the best results from it and have it maybe uncover things that we're blindsided by or we're blind we're blinded by in our in our eschatomas where we're we're just like we think we know everything and then ai is really good at for creative juices and being able to find stuff you're not looking for because I think it looks at stuff from a different angle than the rest of us do as humans. We're kind of limited in our humanity as to what we're focused on. No, absolutely. Yeah.

So how are you guys developing the AI for your company and helping utilize it for the solutions you're looking for for your clients? Yeah. One of the aspects we do is M&A, you know, us being in jumping in different pockets. So different ecosystems, different geographies, we're able to assess the needs on some of these clients or some of these companies, whether it's product valuation, whether it's finances or what's the leverage that they need. And of course, a long time, you just pick up more insights. And I was just at a talk actually a month and a half ago, giving a talk on AI and drug discovery and how impactful AI is being in that world.

And it kind of just dawned on me there that we as a community, I guess, don't really understand the full capabilities of AI. You know, it's a buzzword right now. It's a hot topic. Everyone wants to slap AI on there, but no one really understands, you know, it's not all just chat GPT or, you know, or a chat bot. So there's so many different applications and so many useful applications for AI. So that kind of got us thinking and that became where we started to develop our product that's going to be AI powered.

It's an AI powered M&A playbook toolkit. So this is, yeah, so it's fully ours and it's designed to streamline the very complex and sometimes chaotic processes of mergers and acquisitions. So what this does, it has about 162 million data points on all industries and over 50 metrics. So from revenue, EBITDA, you name it, financial scores, financial debt ratios. And what it does is that we created an algorithm that learns on those data points. And it provides a predictive analytics, meaning that it shows us what this company might look like two, three years down the line. So they can filter out, say they want to look for a small company that's in Europe that has over $5 million and making over $5 million in revenue. What does that look like? And it pops up a ranking score that tells

you these three companies in the next two years are probably your hotspots. Oh, wow. So you guys, so it's really good about hunting this data down, sharing it, and all that good stuff. Absolutely. But the hard part is, even though it's AI and you think that it's like a robot and it teaches you, you really have to hold its hand and tell you exactly this is what I want. So that's the hard part. Understanding that the data is data and it doesn't make much sense if you don't know how to utilize the data. You know, that's a really good, important thing. I think a lot of people think AI will solve all our problems. But you're right. If you don't know how to analyze, utilize and assess the data, it's not going to matter.

I love AI from the creative process it can use. But yeah, I mean, from a business aspect, I mean, Jesus, having a having, especially as a CEO, having a having a consultant that you can use for, you know, I would always ask my my employees for ideas. My vice president, I mean, my vice president was a creative, but he was good at doing the hard work and I was the creative. So we balanced each other well. But my biggest problem was, you know, I'd send him home with a yellow pad back in the day and I'd be like, hey, we've got to come up with some ideas. So I need you just to write down any and all ideas that you have about how we can fix, you know, whatever sort of crisis or whatever problem we're having in the business. So just bring me back ideas and we'll flush them out and work on them. You know, he'd bring me back an empty yellow pad.

And God, I mean, it would just make me mental because I'm an idea, you know, I can come up with 50 trillion ideas and then, and then, you know, try and vet through them. But, you know, it's, it's a bit arduous to do it on your own and it's helpful if you can have other people because, you know, I realized a long time ago being a ceo you know i've been a ceo since i was 18 that you don't have all the great ideas you are not the corner you know of all the great ideas maybe i don't know maybe someone like i don't know i mean most people catch it with a little bit of luck you know having ai i would have killed to have an ai advisor back in the day that i could creatively go to and be like what do you think of the what if we do things this way you know and at least have those juices of creation that i couldn't get

you know most people would my employees we tried to create a learning organization and you know i would ask them for ideas and they would just look at me like i'm afraid to say anything or i don't have any ideas. And, you know, you realize they're not paid for that either. So there's that. It's not like you could be like, you guys should be coming up with ideas. We're like, we just work the phones, Chris. What do you want from me, man?

But, you know, God, it's so nice to have that AI and being able to bounce ideas off it and see what's going on there. So you guys help everyone. Let's establish what an M&A is for people that might not know what that is. Yeah, absolutely. So say that you're a startup company, that you're starting to get leverage, you have a really good idea, good technology, you're gaining traction. You're at a stage now where do I go IPO or do I take the next step and have someone buy me out? So acquisition is where you find a acquisition

partner. So some of the times it's either a private equity firm or larger investment firm or just a bigger company that is strategically aligned. So say that you have a certain asset that they don't have, that they want to grow. That's where you connect the dots basically, and you get acquired by them. So that's probably the more popular exit strategies we're seeing right now. And of course, the typical mergers. So say you see a lot of those in law firms, consulting firms, where they have one partner at one firm, they want to collaborate or they want to merge together to form two or just from one. So now you have two names in the company name. Oh, lots of ideas and things that can go on with all this stuff.

And I imagine the pharmaceutical business is quite the interesting business to be in because there's, we need more drugs. I mean, we need more good drugs. I mean, wait, to be in because there's we need more drugs i mean we need more good drugs i mean wait take it wrong no matter what i say the more addicting stuff you know we need more drugs i mean we're all getting older with this giant baby boomer era and then me gen x you know we're all kind of we need more repair drugs let's put it that way as we get old we need more repair drugs. Let's put it that way. As we get old, we need more fixer uppers. What do you, is there any, is there any foreseeable things that you see in the future? Maybe with, I don't know, using AI to maybe fix cancer with drug companies or

Alzheimer's or different things that maybe AI may save us from? Yeah. So one of the more focused areas is regenerative medicine so how can we slow down the body from getting older you know so repairing like you just mentioned repairing organs repairing body systems to make the lasting life a little longer so that's one area that we're seeing a lot of focus in so that's a lot of pivot into the nutraceutical supplements and then we're seeing a lot of ai applications in drug discovery there's a comp there's a company called in silico medicine they actually have one of the first ever wholly designed ai drugs that's in clinical trials serious holy ai wow yeah exactly exactly so that's kind of a pivotal moment in the industry because that's never been done before.

You know, usually you go through all of the clinical trial periods and it takes five, seven years. Took it 18 months. Oh, wow. So that's 18 months. Incredible. So we're seeing that where there's other companies like Dovetail Partners. They are helping target drug candidates through AI so that you're able to identify what drug candidates could be from a single molecule and able to target new molecules and new drug candidates and new drug targets. So it's really starting to pick up steam still in the very like it's Stone Age still. Don't get me wrong. You know, there's so much to learn from AI. What else we can do to it? But yeah, yeah, it's stone age still don't get me wrong you know there's so much to learn from ai what else we can do to it but yeah yeah it's very promising yeah if we can get drugs you know we had we had one gentleman the show has been on twice and he wrote a book basically aligning it

with ai as being its own species and so he used he used i can't remember what it was but basically it was it was the design of species one of these species books and design of human species and other animals but basically ai is its own species and one of the things that one of the limits that humans have is we're pretty much we're pretty much our paradigm is born to breed and have kids and take care of those children and raise them and that's pretty much our number one born to breed and have kids and take care of those children and raise them. And that's pretty much our number one paradigm in life. I mean, everything mostly a man does is to breed and take care of his family. All the cars we buy, the way we dress, the way we care of ourselves, all that sort of stuff, that's our main focus.

But he brought up a really interesting point to me ai is not concerned about that ai isn't concerned about getting late on friday night they're not it's not concerned about buying a car to impress the girl or make the wife happy or you know whatever the hell it is ai is going to be thinking about stuff that we probably never even thought about or considered especially based on our limited paradigm of of who are. It's not going to be sitting around going, should I go to Burger King or should I go to McDonald's? It's going to be like, what's the grand sum total of whatever? See, I can't even. I'm so stupid.

I'm still just trying to get laid on Friday night. Again, there's tomorrow. When you really think about what we all do in life, we all just are pretty much just trying to get it on. And, you know, take care of our children and raise them. And, you know, we're built to breed for the universe. The universe is like, hey, we need some propagation of your species. And if not, we're going to just blast you off the earth

and no one will ever hear of you again though you go the way of the dodo but it's gonna have this broad range where you know it's not concerned about anything and of course speed you know it doesn't sleep you know i mean there's a lot of shit that i could probably do in life if i could skip eight hours of sleep but if i don't people get murdered and the judge says i can't do that anymore no more murdering he said anyway so i don't know if you have any thoughts on that and and kind of the future that's going to come from ai yeah i mean it's only going to get more i guess locked in you know like it's always going to keep learning and learning and evolving and learning

from its own mistakes and correcting itself. That's like the craziest part. It's just it corrects itself. And then it just keeps going. And that's that's like almost like Terminator type level. You know, it's like, whoa, OK, which is really cool. It's writing its own code, though. I was just watching.

I think it was 60 minutes and they had I think it was the Google guy that got fired from Google. Yeah. And he was like, the problem is when it starts writing its own code and then just doing whatever it wants with that code. And, like, we're just, it can cut us out of the loop with the code. And you just basically write its own code. And then I think at that level, you're a Terminator. Yeah. At that point, you know, you can just walk in tall grass and just call think at that level you're a terminator so yeah yeah at that point you

know you just walk in tall grass and just call it a day you know you've been he had a nice run yeah good will last yeah i've seen i've seen enough you know you yeah a robot write its own code democracy is about to end here in two weeks november 5th 2024 2024. You know, we might as well just kind of wrap the whole thing at that point. Humanity, democracy, just call it a day. We had a good run, folks. It was nice. But, you know, I mean, technically, what his thesis was about, it was the origin of species that he wrote this book on, where he basically took the origin of species book, and he-aligned it and showed how AI is a new species.

And basically, if you think about it, we're no longer top dog, or we won't be top dog anymore. The species that will be above us will be AI. And I don't know. I love my AI overlords. I'd just like to make a statement at this point in time. Don't kill me i mean to uh to make a to make it less worrisome i don't think that's happening for another 10 20

years so i gotta i'm okay yeah you're safe it's gonna go to shit about the time i'm i don't know in a box somewhere this really became a dark show, didn't it? What the fuck are we doing? We're laughing at the darkest shit. What else? Companies that want to work with you, what size do they have to be? I imagine you give advice in consulting to CEOs, maybe these companies. Do they need to be at a certain level, have a certain budget to work with you, etc., etc.?

So it depends. So our range is working with early startups to the more established enterprises. So we've worked with solo entrepreneurs, just helping them get a business model situated, giving them just the ground fundamental tools they need. We've helped companies that are merging or they're growing to the point where they're getting VC attraction. We've worked with mid-stage companies. It really does depend. And of course, how much they're making also has a factor in it. So we have the flexibility to do success models, to do retainer models, things like that. It really helps with all the stuff that you're doing there. How can people onboard with you?

How can they reach out, find out more about you and what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera? Absolutely. So you could find us on LinkedIn. So Ambrosia Ventures, or you could look up my name, Isa Kildani, and you'll find all of our other associates and partners. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on our webpage, our website. We're just about to roll out our soft launch for the toolkits. Get on our website. You can

sign up for early access and you'll get live updates on what's happening before our hard launch in the new year. Now, what is this hard launch you're doing then? Yeah. So soft launch is really just to gather up the community, give them some, get more feedback from everyone to see what they think of it. I mean, we already had tested their proof concept, but the exciting part is that we're really giving them an inside view and exclusive access to what we're developing, what we're building and how we're trying to make this more transformative. So we're providing them that very intimate access to the toolkit before it goes hard launch.

So before we be hard launch the product, we actually can develop another product. And that's going to, of course, come with different features and different applications as well. So jump on now, then of course, it'll be cheaper too. And it'll be a one-time buy usually from soft launch to hard launch. So it makes you get grandfathered in basically. Nice. You got to love it. You got to love it. Give us your final thoughts as we go out.

Tell people they can onboard you and give us your dot. See you. Absolutely. You know, if you're really trying to change your company's vision, you're trying to take it to the next step, that's where we come in. We can definitely help you understand the landscape, help you identify where you want to be in the next year five ten years you know reach out to us on our website and brochureventures.co fill out the contact page one of our employees will definitely reach out to

you guys and we definitely hope to speak with you and see how we can change the future thank you very much sir for coming the show we really appreciate it thank you very much, sir, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me. And thanks to my answer tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss, one, the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out, my friend.