Willing to Win

Biotech Leaders Against All OddsBiotech leaders, founders and executives are warriors chasing cures against impossible odds. Their journeys are not only about science, but about belief, resilience, and leadership. Willing to Win is the podcast where these stories are told - the late nights, the rejections, the doubts, and the unshakable conviction that keeps them going.Each episode gives listeners an intimate look into the emotional “why” behind biotech leaders, offering inspiration, connection, and lessons in leadership and perseverance that apply far beyond biotech.

Willing to Win is a business podcast hosted by Christian Rados, with 19 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Christian Rados hosts Willing to Win, a business show with 19 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #18

  Episode 18 | Turning down the obvious path (Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy)

  Aug 13, 202621 minS1

  Halfway through her career, Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy did the thing nobody advises. She left a global role in Boston and moved to Latin America for a job that was smaller on paper. Her own words for the move: "I call this going from the Pentagon to the trenches." In this episode, Christian Rados sits down with Charo for a conversation about the decisions that do not show up well on a CV. About arriving in Buenos Aires with an affiliate to build, a home still to find, and a pregnancy nobody had planned around. About Boston calling her back, more than once, and the photo of her children she held up every time. She is clear that the no was never the hard part. Making peace with it afterwards was. It is also a conversation about what innovation actually requires on the ground. Global patient brochures telling families to eat filet mignon. A local nutritionist hired to rewrite them into something affordable. Why diagnosis, not therapy, is the real bottleneck in rare disease. And a definition of winning that has room for dinner at home. About the guest Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy grew up in Uruguay and trained as a geneticist before a scholarship took her to the US, where she switched to an MBA in Boston. She held global and regional roles at Biogen, Vertex and Genzyme, co-led the integration after Sanofi acquired Genzyme, and built a biotech affiliate in Buenos Aires from scratch. Today she runs RC STEM Consulting, advising companies on go-to-market and international expansion, and coaching people through the career decisions she has already had to make herself. In this episode Reversing the standard career path, from global to regional What gets lost when you only ever see the strategy Building an affiliate while pregnant, in temporary housing Why the global playbook fails on the ground The diagnosis gap in rare disease Turning down the move back to Boston What she tells people weighing the same decision What success looks like now Connect Rosario "Charo" Cestau Murphy: linkedin.com/in/rosariocharocestaumurphy Christian Rados / WILLING TO WIN: linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams Full Episode also on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts

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  Episode #17

  Episode 17 | The fight for thousands is not over (Dr. Dominik Witzigmann)

  Jul 30, 202652 minS1

  Three years ago, Dr. Dominik Witzigmann wrote on LinkedIn: "Last month, we lost the battle against lymphoblastic leukemia. But the fight for thousands of others is not over." He was writing about his daughter, Lotta, who passed away at close to four years old, just eight weeks after her first symptoms. In this episode of WILLING TO WIN, Christian Rados sits down with Dominik for one of the most personal conversations the show has hosted, about the diagnosis and the loss, about grieving as a couple and a family, and about how he turns that grief into what he calls his massive transformative purpose: building medicines that could one day give another family the outcome his own did not get. Lotta still helps him, in his words, in the uncertain moments. It is also a conversation about leadership. "Family first, above everything." Why he gives blood and registered as a stem cell donor, and brings his whole team with him. Why you should give help rather than just offer it. How losing a child reshaped the way he handles stress, builds teams, and hires for personality. And where lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology is heading next, from cancer vaccines to in vivo CAR-T. Dr. Dominik Witzigmann is Co-Founder and President of NanoVation Therapeutics and CEO of the European entity. A pharmacist by training with a PhD from Basel, he joined Pieter Cullis' lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2018 and co-founded NanoVation in 2020 to solve the delivery problem at the heart of genetic medicines. If this conversation moves you, consider registering as a stem cell donor and giving blood. As Dominik says, registration is easy, but be ready for the call. Connect:Dr. Dominik Witzigmann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominikwitzigmann/NanoVation Therapeutics: https://nanovationtx.com/Christian Rados / WILLING TO WIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ If this conversation moved you, consider registering as a stem cell donor and giving blood. As Dominik says, registration is easy, but be ready for the call.

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  Episode #16

  Episode 16 | Why This CRISPR Founder Built a Biotech Without VC Money (Tilmann Burckstummer)

  Jul 21, 202641 minS1

  Tilmann Bürckstümmer co-founded Myllia Biotechnology in Vienna in 2018 and never raised venture capital. Not because he couldn't. Because the money would have cost more than it was worth. The reasoning is specific. A VC needs a 10x or 20x return, and in biotech that return only exists if you develop a drug and get it to market. Myllia is a technology company. Build a technology company on VC money, he explains, and by year three nobody values your technology at all — they value how fast your drug candidate is moving toward the clinic. The thing you actually built disappears. So they took customer money instead, from the first year, and lived with a valuation ceiling. For a while the market punished them for it. Biotechs with no revenue were being valued at $200 million. Founders with revenue got laughed at, because a million in sales made a 200x valuation impossible to argue for. "Sometimes people were belittling us," he says. That has now reversed completely. What it cost him was comfort. He gave up a professorship he had spent thirteen years working toward — habilitation completed — after a single one-hour conversation in a Viennese café, without negotiating a salary. Seven years later the site he ran for Horizon Discovery closed and he was unemployed, which is the only reason he ever founded anything. Four months into the new company every experiment had failed and there were a few hundred thousand euros in the bank. In one afternoon, they threw out the entire business and rebuilt it around CRISPR. "Money means freedom. Money means that you have a chance to develop what you would like to develop." This week on Willing to Win, Tilmann Bürckstümmer breaks down why he refused venture capital, what bootstrapping actually costs, and why he still doesn't feel safe. Bootstrapping is usually sold as a virtue. He tells it as a constraint — one that forced sharper decisions than money would have, and one he never stopped feeling. He says he has never been comfortable and probably never will be. The part he enjoys most now is sitting in a café with founders half his age, telling them what he got wrong. If you have ever wondered whether you can build a serious science company without selling a piece of it first, this episode has the blueprint. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE SHOW This is Willing to Win. Why would anyone bet everything on something that will probably fail? Every episode, I sit down with a founder, an investor, an executive — and I capture the story behind the story. I ask them the real things. What made them start. What keeps them going. Who they became after everything fell apart. You might hear your own voice in theirs. The one telling you you're meant for more. More impact. More joy. More fulfillment. Willing to Win. Biotech Leaders Against All Odds. GUEST Tilmann Bürckstümmer — Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Myllia Biotechnology (Vienna, Austria)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tilmann-burckstummer-19b65949/ Company: https://myllia.com HOST Christian Rados — Executive search for venture-backed, clinical-stage biotechLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ Website: https://rados-recruiting.com EPISODE Willing to Win, Ep16 CHAPTERS 00:00 The professorship he gave up03:00 The phone call that ended the academic path06:00 Can you still copy this path today?08:00 Why they refused venture capital11:00 What Myllia actually does13:50 The CRISPR hype curve, honestly assessed17:00 Both unemployed, so they started a company20:00 Four months in, everything failed23:40 The pivot that saved the company26:30 Where it could have broken30:30 When investors laughed at revenue33:00 "Money means freedom"37:00 China: $100K vs $300K per scientist39:40 What winning means now LISTEN Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-16-why-this-crispr-founder-built-a-biotech/id1868855610?i=1000777684327 Youtube: https://youtu.be/31AZe2YYQIU?si=bFnbaNWNRLFQa2Z4

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  Episode #15

  The Truth About Biotech Funding Nobody Wants To Admit (Jan de Kerpel)

  May 28, 202647 minS1

  Fifteen percent of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025. A senior banker explains who got it and why. Jan De Kerpel runs life sciencesand healthcare investment banking at Van Lanschot Kempen. Before that he was a scientist, working on an HIV drug that is still saving lives today. He moved from the lab to the trading floor by accident, and he has stayed there for twodecades because, he says, very few seats let you sit with twenty companies at once and watch which patterns repeat. This conversation is about the patterns. In 2025, fifteen percent of biotech transactions absorbed fifty percent of the capital raised. The money is there, De Kerpel says, but it is floating toward a small number of names. Tubulis raised four hundred millioneuros at the end of last year, the largest private biotech raise in Europe, and was then acquired by Gilead. Agomab, the first European biotech IPO on NASDAQ in roughly five years, started life as an antibody spin-out from Argenx and pivoted to small molecules along the way. These are the companies that get the room. The other eighty-five percent are operating in a different market and most of them do not know it. De Kerpel is direct about what separates them. Diversified investor bases over concentrated ones. Boldness invision paired with brutal realism on valuation. Founding CEOs who recognize when the company has outgrown them and step into the chair role before they are pushed. "An excellent project with a mediocre team is a recipe forfailure," he says. And on the romantic idea of family money funding clinical trials: "In our business, philanthropy is not a good idea." He also calls out the geography of success. Munich, Leiden, Flanders, Copenhagen, Switzerland, increasinglyFrance. Not because the science is better there but because companies in those clusters can fail in front of each other and learn faster. The companies that get acquired are usually acquired by partners they have known for years. TheIPOs that land are usually relationships started before lockdown. Opportunity, De Kerpel says, does not arrive in a sharp suit. It arrives with mud on the boots, and only the founders who knew what they were looking for in the first place will recognize it. We also talk about: ​Why 15% of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025 ​How Tubulis raised €400 million and got acquired byGilead ​Why founding CEOs rarely become commercial-stage CEOs ​What investors actually look for besides the science GUEST Jan De Kerpel, Head of CorporateFinance/ECM and Managing Director Life Sciences & Healthcare at VanLanschot Kempen. A scientist by training with a PhD in quantum chemistry fromthe University of Lund, he spent eight years in pharmaceutical R&D atTibotec and Devgen before moving to KBC Securities as senior biotech/pharmaequity analyst, and then to Van Lanschot Kempen in 2016. Based in Brussels. LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-de-kerpel-a48a2a/ Van Lanschot Kempen:https://www.vanlanschotkempen.com ABOUT WILLING TO WIN Willing to Win — Biotech LeadersAgainst All Odds is a long-form podcast featuring biotech founders, CEOs and Chairpersons who have built companies through real adversity: failed trials, board fights, near-bankruptcy, regulatory setbacks, personal cost. Not thehighlight reel. The willingness. ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a biotech executive headhunter since 2011 and founder of Rados Recruiting, a boutiqueexecutive search firm based in Munich. Rados Recruiting places CEOs, CFOs, CSOs, CBOs and Chief Medical Officers for venture-backed and listed biotechcompanies across Europe and the United States, permanent, interim and fractional mandates. Website:https://rados-recruiting.com LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ Book a call:https://calendly.com/radosrecruiting/lets-build-a-dreamteam Watch on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@willingtowinpodcast

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  Episode #14

  FemTech's Trillion-Dollar Question Nobody Asked (Simone Sabbione -Meliodays)

  May 21, 202653 minS1

  Period pain isn't normal. Medicine made it normal. For decades, severe menstrual pain has been dismissed as something women should accept, normalize, or medicate away with the pill. Meanwhile, an entire market and an entire patient population has been ignored by mainstream biotech. In this episode of Willing to Win , Christian Rados sits down with Simone Sabbione, co-founder of Meliodays, the Munich-based FemTech startup developing the first intra-uterine device designed to treat severe period pain (dysmenorrhea) at its source, not mask it. Simone walks us through how a single conversation with her brother, a gynecologist, exposed one of medicine's biggest blind spots: a disease affecting nearly half the global population, with no serious medical innovation in a century. She breaks down why FemTech founders face an asymmetric burden of proof when raising capital, why women's health was never a technology problem but a listening problem, and what it actually takes to build a medical device when investors first ask you to prove the problem exists. This conversation will resonate with anyone in FemTech, biotech, medical devices, women's health, healthcare investing, life sciences, and startup leadership, and with anyone who has been told their pain is normal. What you'll learn in this episode: Why severe menstrual pain has been ignored by mainstream medicine for over a century.How FemTech founders face an asymmetric burden of proof compared to other biotech categories.Why most medical products fail because they're built without patient co-creation.How to raise pre-seed capital as a solo operator in a male-dominated industry.Why honesty and ambition are not opposites when fundraising.The structural reason women's health has been the most overlooked market in healthcare. Chapters: 00:00 The Disease Medicine Dismissed For 100 Years00:31 From Corporate Dreams To Entrepreneurial Reality04:31 Discovering Purpose And Passion08:45 The Founding Of Meliodays12:21 Understanding Menstrual Pain16:52 The Injustice In Women's Health21:11 Innovative Solutions For Menstrual Pain25:11 The Journey Of Entrepreneurship28:26 Securing Pre-Seed Funding As A Solo Founder31:28 The Emotional Burden Of Entrepreneurship34:17 The Mindset Of Success And Confidence35:32 The Role Of Mentorship In Growth38:13 Honesty And Optimism In Fundraising41:21 Current Status And Future Plans For Meliodays45:40 Engaging With Patients And Co-Creation48:01 Vision For The Future About Meliodays: Meliodays is a Munich-based FemTech and medical device startup developing an intra-uterine device that delivers low-dose anti-inflammatory medication directly to the uterus to treat severe period pain (dysmenorrhea). The company closed its pre-seed round in early 2025 and is now raising its seed round to advance toward first-in-human clinical trials. 🌐 https://meliodays.com/ 💼 Simone Sabbione LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-sabbione/ About Willing to Win: Willing to Win, Biotech Leaders Against All Odds is the podcast where veteran life sciences executives, founders, and innovators share the unfiltered stories behind building, leading, and surviving in biotech. Hosted by Christian Rados, founder of Rados Recruiting, an executive search firm specializing in life sciences leadership across Europe and the US. Subscribe for new episodes with biotech and life sciences leaders. If you are interested in hiring your next talent, connect with Christian:🌐 www.rados-recruiting.com💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianrados-biotechdreamteams/ LISTEN ON ALL PLATFORMS Spotify: https://tr.ee/ibOyhAVBaW Apple Podcasts: https://tr.ee/V1PdlqEOG7 Youtube Channel: https://tr.ee/xXGgHIgvn6 #FemTech #WomensHealth #PeriodPain #Dysmenorrhea #Biotech #MedicalDevices #StartupFounder #HealthcareInnovation #WillingToWin #MeliodaysIUD #LifeSciences #BiotechFounder #MunichStartup #GermanyStartup #FemTechInvesting #WomenInBiotech

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