Oxford Immune Algorithmics’ CEO participates at the Ferguson Summit with fellow founders and investors in Florida
Fellow CEOs and founders at the Ferguson Summit in Palm, Beach, FL. Dr. Zenil, CEO of Oxford Immune Algorithmics is on the right.
Palm Beach, Florida — OIA at the Founders Summit organised by Roger Ferguson II, former Vice-chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, current sitting director on Alphabet's board (Google), former CEO of TIAA with 70K employees, now the currently second largest individual investor in Oxford Immune Algorithmics Ltd. (OIA) and, most importantly, a great approachable leader and supporter of meaningful causes that can be driven by commercial success.
“Founders are accidental CXOs. We, founders, started out being CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, CMO, coder, engineer, heads of sales, and everything else at once when we launched our projects. We are clearly not the best fit for, nor can we possibly be knowledgeable enough to fill all these positions. However, we are the best possible founders for our own start-ups by definition. For me, the start-up journey is about finding the people best fitted to take on each of these roles at different stages of the company’s evolution and delegating. In our companies, we should not seek people who’ll follow a person but an ideal, a purpose, so that the company will thrive and prevail even if we were to remove ourselves. Take advice and feedback on board, but do not let others try to make you conform to pre-conceived roles you are not comfortable with. Non-conforming is what led us to found our companies to begin with, and leaders come in different shapes and styles.” Said Dr. Zenil on the panel discussion on leadership in times of crisis with other fellow CEOs and investors moderated by Freddie Martignetti.
The event was opened with an introduction to the many achievements of Catherine B. Reynolds and the Impressive technology of VitaKey Inc. the company she leads as the CEO and founded by Prof. Robert Langer, the same founder of Moderna that brought us one of the two mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. Dr. Roger Ferguson II, is an investor in and supporter of both Vitakey and OIA. Prof. Langer was heavily discouraged and was told to do something else but stuck to his vision led by his knowledge and expertise.
”The worst disservice a founder can do to their company is to transform it into something they no longer like or recognise. Start-ups with good ideas and products may fail because their founders were not true to themselves, thereby burning out even if they could have conceived contingency plans to stay afloat. Leaders are risk-taking but risk-taking takes a toll and is not for everybody (and doesn’t have to be). The current style of (good or bad) leadership is too person-centric (hello @elonmusk); we need less personality, and more high ideals. This plus perseverance and resilience from its founder may be key to a company’s chances of success.” added Dr. Zenil.
About Oxford Immune Algorithmics:
Incubated by the University of Oxford, OIA is a deep-tech start-up that aims to apply super-human-like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to tackle disease and bring precise and personalized medicine to everyone.
For more information, visit: https://www.immunealgorithmics.com/