Dinakar Singh

The axon name, routing back to the long answer, the very short question, was really just there to remind me of what the mission was.

And so it was always amusing because people would sort of wonder, and I'd explain, well, you know, the axon is the thing that connects muscles and nerves and brain, and so connecting thought to action.

And they thought that was a cool analogy from a just general perspective.

Every now and then you'd get a scientist or a former company guy who would see our logo, which is actually the shape of an axon, and would get the fact that this was actually about medical research on stuff, which is always kind of cute.

It's a bit of an Easter egg that we sort of hid in there.

But look, so that was what we did.

I mean, functionally then, my day job was really there to pay for my night job, if you will.

We got teams together.

TPG was my partner in starting up Axon.

They were really remarkably helpful through my relationships and through some of their network.

We were able to really go and connect with some of the absolute rock stars in drug development and people that were not just smart scientists, but actually were biotech guys that really understood this stuff.

And I think for all of them, what was extraordinary was how much of their time and energy they were willing to commit.

Obviously, we weren't paying anyone, but we would get a dozen and a half of the smartest drug development people in the entire world coming together for a couple of weekends a year and just taking time away from their families and their work and just sitting with us and brainstorming about our plan of action.

And I think a part of it was because...

It sounds crazy to think about this, but there had not been a single meaningful drug for a neurological disease developed in decades.

Crazy, right?

So the idea that there was a chance to do something here was really cool because neurology was kind of a graveyard.

I think everyone seemed to have this sense of excitement that, okay, there's actually an interesting plan here.

Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.

And there's someone willing to write the check and fund this.