Evan Zhao - Co-Founder and CEO of Pacagen
Evan Zhao started his first company in college with $20,000 of informal debt financing, a friend from a chemistry class, and no idea what venture capital was. A few years later, as a postdoc at Harvard's Wyss Institute, he met the former CFO of Google at a fellowship panel interview, cold-emailed him afterward, and turned that conversation into his first institutional check. Two years after that, the consumer biotech brand he co-founded was doing $50 million a year in revenue. Then it got acquired and the acquiring company IPO'd two months later.
In this episode of What Fuels You, host Shawna Suerland sits down with the CEO and co-founder of Pacagen for a conversation that covers growing up between Beijing and Buffalo, the McDonald's app co-founder origin story, what the beauty industry has been getting wrong for 80 years, why he hates the word "strategy," and what it actually means to make large companies lose sleep.
📋 Episode Chapters
| 00:00 | Rapid fire: scrolling his phone first thing, Sherlock Holmes, and why "strategy" is his biggest pet peeve |
| 08:00 | Born in Colorado, raised between Beijing grandparents and Buffalo, New York, and making friends with the football team |
| 16:00 | Grandma's daily math tutoring, remedial English class, a sophomore wake-up call, and getting into Caltech |
| 24:00 | Why he chose a PhD over a job: the moment someone told him it was the first point in life where you control your own destiny |
| 30:00 | Princeton PhD in synthetic biology, using light to toggle bacteria between growth and chemical production modes |
| 36:00 | The Schmidt Science Fellowship, the Harvard Wyss Institute, and a question from a random panel member who turned out to be Google's former CFO |
| 44:00 | Founding Rivella: his wife's La Mer bottle, a new molecule called ProSelenil, and going from zero to $50M ARR in one year |
| 54:00 | Acquisition by Oddity, IPO two months later, and what being a public company taught him about short reports and information risk |
| 62:00 | Founding Pacagen: alpaca-inspired allergen neutralization, cat and dog sprays, and the biotechnology behind the product |
| 70:00 | Jim Sinegal, Costco, loyalty, and what fuels Evan: making large companies lose sleep |
The Question Nobody Had Asked Him Before
Evan Zhao had just finished the final interview round for the Schmidt Science Fellowship, a postdoctoral program funded by Eric Schmidt of Google, selected by nomination from top research universities and designed for scientists doing unusually ambitious work. He had performed well. He thought he knew what came next.
Then a gray-haired man on the panel asked a question that stopped him cold: why are you doing this in academia? Why couldn't you do it in industry?
"I don't know. I haven't thought about that. I just always thought you did this cool stuff in academia."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
After receiving the fellowship, Zhao tracked down the mystery panelist. He turned out to be Patrick Pichette, former CFO of Google and at the time Chairman of Twitter. Zhao cold-emailed him, told him the question had not left his mind, and asked whether he thought it was actually possible to do serious science in industry. Pichette became his first check. The company that followed did $50 million in revenue in its first year.
Beijing to Buffalo: Growing Up Between Two Worlds
Zhao was born in Colorado, sent back to Beijing for his earliest years to be raised by his grandparents while his parents established themselves in the US, then returned to grow up moving between Colorado, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and eventually Buffalo, New York, where he spent middle school and high school as one of very few Asian kids in his grade.
His grandmother tutored him in math every day after school, convinced he could not afford to fall behind. He had arrived back in the US in remedial English class, not because he lacked ability but because it was a new language. The tutoring worked. Math became a genuine strength that would run through everything he did later, from repackaging Pokemon cards as a kid to charge other children prices they could not calculate into profitability, to building a consumer brand at 25% margins in year one.
"My grandma tutored me in math every day after school. That's always been a focus. My biggest strength is I always ask why not. I've never been a 'why' guy. I'm always like, yeah, that sounds like it might work."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
High school in Buffalo was, by his own description, two distinct chapters. The first two years: hanging out, avoiding studying, and cultivating friendships with the football and wrestling teams as a survival strategy for being a small Asian kid in a school where smaller kids sometimes got beat up. The last two years: Science Olympiad, chemistry competitions, and a serious gear shift after his parents met with his guidance counselor and heard that he was not on track for a good school. He got into Caltech. The chemistry Olympiad was the thing that made the difference.
From Princeton to La Mer: How Rivella Happened
After his Princeton PhD on using light to toggle bacteria between growth and chemical production modes, and after the Wyss Institute postdoc where he met Pichette, Zhao started looking for something to build. His college friends, many of them now quantitative analysts at finance firms, suggested creatine. His wife suggested something else entirely. She held up a bottle of La Mer.
"She said, 'Evan, women really need innovation. This is the only brand that claims they have any new ingredient, and they sell it for $300. If you can invent something new that actually helps women, you can charge them $100 and it would be cheap.'"
— Dr. Evan Zhao
He looked at the beauty industry and saw what he calls an 80-year problem. Drug discovery had transformed medicine to the point where cancer, once almost certainly fatal, is now frequently manageable. The beauty industry was still selling retinol, vitamin C, and retinol again, wrapped in expensive packaging and science-washing language about novel delivery mechanisms that, as Zhao points out, would be worth a trillion dollars if they actually worked.
He and his co-founder David used an AI-powered molecule discovery platform they had been developing, ran a full discovery cycle for $10,000 instead of the $1 million or more it would previously have cost, and found a new molecule they named ProSelenil. They built it into a hair thinning serum, launched it in December 2022, learned Facebook and Google ads from YouTube videos made by teenagers, and hit $50 million in annualized revenue within a year. Margins were 25%. The company was profitable. Oddity, a publicly traded beauty tech company doing roughly $600 million a year, acquired them shortly after.
The McDonald's App Co-Founder Story
David, Zhao's co-founder at Rivella and now Chief Science Officer at Pacagen, was working in a lab two floors away during COVID. The only food available on campus was McDonald's. They ran into each other every single day. One afternoon Zhao noticed David was paying full price.
"Dude, you're wasting so much money if you don't use the McDonald's app." David has since estimated he has saved approximately $20,000. He also says the McDonald's app insight was 5 to 10 percent of the reason he agreed to co-found a company with Zhao. The logic: if he knew about that, he probably knew something about money.
What Pacagen Actually Does, and Why Alpacas
Pacagen makes sprays that neutralize pet and dust allergens using protein therapeutic technology, the same class of drug that accounts for nine of the top ten medicines in the world. The name comes from PACA, the alpaca-derived protein technology at the foundation of the product, combined with "gen" for generated. The allergen-neutralizing proteins were originally discovered in alpacas.
"Instead of trying to neutralize a cancer motif, we're trying to neutralize an allergen. Allergens are also proteins. And we have done a bunch of research on how to specifically neutralize these things. You spray it wherever the allergic person is going to interact with the allergens."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
The current formulation smells faintly of vinegar, a byproduct of the acetic acid buffer the proteins require to remain stable. A new fragrance version is in final development that resolves the smell entirely. This is, Zhao notes, a good example of his operating philosophy: launch when the science works, then keep improving without waiting to be asked.
The product line currently covers cat, dog, and dust allergens. Pacagen has raised $30 million and counts Maveron (Howard Schultz's consumer-focused fund), Coastal Ventures, and Digitalis (the Mars family venture fund) among its investors. The company has five full-time R&D team members and 20 active discovery projects in various stages of development. Products only advance when they pass head-to-head clinical trials against the current market standard.
The Jim Sinegal Dinner and What He Took From It
Before Pacagen launched, Zhao badgered his way into a dinner organized by Maveron with Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco. He had never met a leader from outside the tech world and describes it as one of the most formative experiences of his career.
Sinegal offered two explanations for why Costco wins. First: many of their leaders are the children of people who started with the company, because people simply do not leave. Second: other retail companies expect loyalty from employees while laying off entire departments without warning. Costco, by contrast, always finds people other work when circumstances require a change. You cannot ask for loyalty you have not earned.
"What I took away is I have to spend all of my effort making sure my team of young people can become the leaders of this company. Because if I can't do that, I'll have to airdrop in leadership. And if I do that, what loyalty can I expect from my team?"
— Dr. Evan Zhao
5 Key Takeaways
Evan Zhao - Co-Founder and CEO of Pacagen
Evan Zhao started his first company in college with $20,000 of informal debt financing, a friend from a chemistry class, and no idea what venture capital was. A few years later, as a postdoc at Harvard's Wyss Institute, he met the former CFO of Google at a fellowship panel interview, cold-emailed him afterward, and turned that conversation into his first institutional check. Two years after that, the consumer biotech brand he co-founded was doing $50 million a year in revenue. Then it got acquired and the acquiring company IPO'd two months later.
In this episode of What Fuels You, host Shawna Suerland sits down with the CEO and co-founder of Pacagen for a conversation that covers growing up between Beijing and Buffalo, the McDonald's app co-founder origin story, what the beauty industry has been getting wrong for 80 years, why he hates the word "strategy," and what it actually means to make large companies lose sleep.
📋 Episode Chapters
| 00:00 | Rapid fire: scrolling his phone first thing, Sherlock Holmes, and why "strategy" is his biggest pet peeve |
| 08:00 | Born in Colorado, raised between Beijing grandparents and Buffalo, New York, and making friends with the football team |
| 16:00 | Grandma's daily math tutoring, remedial English class, a sophomore wake-up call, and getting into Caltech |
| 24:00 | Why he chose a PhD over a job: the moment someone told him it was the first point in life where you control your own destiny |
| 30:00 | Princeton PhD in synthetic biology, using light to toggle bacteria between growth and chemical production modes |
| 36:00 | The Schmidt Science Fellowship, the Harvard Wyss Institute, and a question from a random panel member who turned out to be Google's former CFO |
| 44:00 | Founding Rivella: his wife's La Mer bottle, a new molecule called ProSelenil, and going from zero to $50M ARR in one year |
| 54:00 | Acquisition by Oddity, IPO two months later, and what being a public company taught him about short reports and information risk |
| 62:00 | Founding Pacagen: alpaca-inspired allergen neutralization, cat and dog sprays, and the biotechnology behind the product |
| 70:00 | Jim Sinegal, Costco, loyalty, and what fuels Evan: making large companies lose sleep |
The Question Nobody Had Asked Him Before
Evan Zhao had just finished the final interview round for the Schmidt Science Fellowship, a postdoctoral program funded by Eric Schmidt of Google, selected by nomination from top research universities and designed for scientists doing unusually ambitious work. He had performed well. He thought he knew what came next.
Then a gray-haired man on the panel asked a question that stopped him cold: why are you doing this in academia? Why couldn't you do it in industry?
"I don't know. I haven't thought about that. I just always thought you did this cool stuff in academia."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
After receiving the fellowship, Zhao tracked down the mystery panelist. He turned out to be Patrick Pichette, former CFO of Google and at the time Chairman of Twitter. Zhao cold-emailed him, told him the question had not left his mind, and asked whether he thought it was actually possible to do serious science in industry. Pichette became his first check. The company that followed did $50 million in revenue in its first year.
Beijing to Buffalo: Growing Up Between Two Worlds
Zhao was born in Colorado, sent back to Beijing for his earliest years to be raised by his grandparents while his parents established themselves in the US, then returned to grow up moving between Colorado, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and eventually Buffalo, New York, where he spent middle school and high school as one of very few Asian kids in his grade.
His grandmother tutored him in math every day after school, convinced he could not afford to fall behind. He had arrived back in the US in remedial English class, not because he lacked ability but because it was a new language. The tutoring worked. Math became a genuine strength that would run through everything he did later, from repackaging Pokemon cards as a kid to charge other children prices they could not calculate into profitability, to building a consumer brand at 25% margins in year one.
"My grandma tutored me in math every day after school. That's always been a focus. My biggest strength is I always ask why not. I've never been a 'why' guy. I'm always like, yeah, that sounds like it might work."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
High school in Buffalo was, by his own description, two distinct chapters. The first two years: hanging out, avoiding studying, and cultivating friendships with the football and wrestling teams as a survival strategy for being a small Asian kid in a school where smaller kids sometimes got beat up. The last two years: Science Olympiad, chemistry competitions, and a serious gear shift after his parents met with his guidance counselor and heard that he was not on track for a good school. He got into Caltech. The chemistry Olympiad was the thing that made the difference.
From Princeton to La Mer: How Rivella Happened
After his Princeton PhD on using light to toggle bacteria between growth and chemical production modes, and after the Wyss Institute postdoc where he met Pichette, Zhao started looking for something to build. His college friends, many of them now quantitative analysts at finance firms, suggested creatine. His wife suggested something else entirely. She held up a bottle of La Mer.
"She said, 'Evan, women really need innovation. This is the only brand that claims they have any new ingredient, and they sell it for $300. If you can invent something new that actually helps women, you can charge them $100 and it would be cheap.'"
— Dr. Evan Zhao
He looked at the beauty industry and saw what he calls an 80-year problem. Drug discovery had transformed medicine to the point where cancer, once almost certainly fatal, is now frequently manageable. The beauty industry was still selling retinol, vitamin C, and retinol again, wrapped in expensive packaging and science-washing language about novel delivery mechanisms that, as Zhao points out, would be worth a trillion dollars if they actually worked.
He and his co-founder David used an AI-powered molecule discovery platform they had been developing, ran a full discovery cycle for $10,000 instead of the $1 million or more it would previously have cost, and found a new molecule they named ProSelenil. They built it into a hair thinning serum, launched it in December 2022, learned Facebook and Google ads from YouTube videos made by teenagers, and hit $50 million in annualized revenue within a year. Margins were 25%. The company was profitable. Oddity, a publicly traded beauty tech company doing roughly $600 million a year, acquired them shortly after.
The McDonald's App Co-Founder Story
David, Zhao's co-founder at Rivella and now Chief Science Officer at Pacagen, was working in a lab two floors away during COVID. The only food available on campus was McDonald's. They ran into each other every single day. One afternoon Zhao noticed David was paying full price.
"Dude, you're wasting so much money if you don't use the McDonald's app." David has since estimated he has saved approximately $20,000. He also says the McDonald's app insight was 5 to 10 percent of the reason he agreed to co-found a company with Zhao. The logic: if he knew about that, he probably knew something about money.
What Pacagen Actually Does, and Why Alpacas
Pacagen makes sprays that neutralize pet and dust allergens using protein therapeutic technology, the same class of drug that accounts for nine of the top ten medicines in the world. The name comes from PACA, the alpaca-derived protein technology at the foundation of the product, combined with "gen" for generated. The allergen-neutralizing proteins were originally discovered in alpacas.
"Instead of trying to neutralize a cancer motif, we're trying to neutralize an allergen. Allergens are also proteins. And we have done a bunch of research on how to specifically neutralize these things. You spray it wherever the allergic person is going to interact with the allergens."
— Dr. Evan Zhao
The current formulation smells faintly of vinegar, a byproduct of the acetic acid buffer the proteins require to remain stable. A new fragrance version is in final development that resolves the smell entirely. This is, Zhao notes, a good example of his operating philosophy: launch when the science works, then keep improving without waiting to be asked.
The product line currently covers cat, dog, and dust allergens. Pacagen has raised $30 million and counts Maveron (Howard Schultz's consumer-focused fund), Coastal Ventures, and Digitalis (the Mars family venture fund) among its investors. The company has five full-time R&D team members and 20 active discovery projects in various stages of development. Products only advance when they pass head-to-head clinical trials against the current market standard.
The Jim Sinegal Dinner and What He Took From It
Before Pacagen launched, Zhao badgered his way into a dinner organized by Maveron with Jim Sinegal, the founder of Costco. He had never met a leader from outside the tech world and describes it as one of the most formative experiences of his career.
Sinegal offered two explanations for why Costco wins. First: many of their leaders are the children of people who started with the company, because people simply do not leave. Second: other retail companies expect loyalty from employees while laying off entire departments without warning. Costco, by contrast, always finds people other work when circumstances require a change. You cannot ask for loyalty you have not earned.
"What I took away is I have to spend all of my effort making sure my team of young people can become the leaders of this company. Because if I can't do that, I'll have to airdrop in leadership. And if I do that, what loyalty can I expect from my team?"
— Dr. Evan Zhao
