The One Where Squirrels Have The Answers
FOUNDING BIO #005 - Ashley Zehnder
future.bio is built on trust, transparency, and minimal bullsh*t. That’s exactly the spirit behind this interview series - casual and candid conversations with some of the most exceptional builders working at the intersection of computation x biology.
This week, we’re in conversation with Ashley Zehnder - scientist, exotic animal veterinarian, and Co-Founder of Fauna Bio (LifeForce, True, Boom). Fauna is inspired by the untapped potential of non-model organism biology, leveraging insights from extraordinary mammalian phenotypes to develop novel translational therapeutics.
Below, we get deep into overlooked exotic species, what it’s like to be a founder who never wanted to start their own business, and why thirteen-lined ground squirrels might just unlock the next billion-dollar drug. This one was really fun, and huge shout-out to Ashley and team for the amazing things they are building!
Read time: 5 minutes
Such a pleasure to have you with us, Ashley! Can you quickly walk us through your background and what led you to build Fauna?
I started in veterinary medical training, doing exotic animal medicine. It’s an interesting field because it really operates right at the edge of knowledge - there’s not a lot known about different exotic species. So it allowed me to think about how to stretch my clinical skills into new areas. I finished vet school, an internship in New York, then an exotic residency at UC Davis in 2006. I became super interested in why different species present with different diseases. Some tumours are much more aggressive in rats than in mice. Ferrets almost always get endocrine and adrenal tumours. Why is that? I really wanted to understand the molecular underpinnings.
But I had no bench research training. I was planning to do a PhD at UC Davis, but the day my mentor had to commit, I got an email from Stanford asking if I was a vet who wanted to do a PhD. They have an excellent cancer biology program, so I applied, came down to interview. All of these old traditional cancer researchers were very confused as to why an exotic animal veterinarian should be applying for a cancer biology PhD, having done exactly zero bench research. But I talked about the animals I treated and why it was interesting. I started learning bench science, did a postdoc merging veterinary and human medicine, and that’s where I met my two co-founders.
Did you always know you wanted to become an entrepreneur? What made you want to build things and go on this crazy journey?
This is not the answer most people give - I never wanted to start my own business. My husband will tell you that. I just wanted to focus on clinical medicine. But it was interesting when I met my two co-founders and talked with them about the science they were doing. I’ve had a tendency throughout my career to be a bit of an organiser. During my PhD, I started this group called the Exotic Species Cancer Research Alliance, which is now at NC State. It was a group of clinicians and pathologists and zoo vets and human oncologists working together on exotic cancer. I have this tendency - if there needs to be somebody at a whiteboard, it tends to be me.
When we started thinking about starting a company, we needed to organise ourselves to apply for Laura Deming’s accelerator. I found myself again at the whiteboard, organising our business plan and strategy. When we decided we were going to start the company, Laura was smart enough to say, “Who’s going to be the CEO?” We honestly hadn’t talked about it. Katie said, “You’re basing the company around my hibernation science and genomics, I should probably be the CSO.” Linda said, “I’m a computational genomicist, I should probably be the CTO.” So I literally drew the short straw. But it works well. I view a lot of my role as blocking and tackling - my job is to make sure I do all of the not-fun science most of the time to let my co-founders do what they do best. That means I do a lot of interfacing with external partners, investors, and all the mechanics you need to get the science moving.
What do you think we’re overlooking in terms of animal medicine and all the rich untapped biology that’s out there in nature?
It’s really fascinating if you study the history of how we discovered that genes cause cancer and how we discovered zoonotic diseases. The reason we even know today that genes are what cause cancer is through studying chicken tumours. We could see these tumours were actually picking up chicken genes and putting them back into the genome in a bad place, and then they started replicating. We’ve learned a lot about our own biology by studying similarities across species, and this was back in the 40s, 50s, 60s.
Then we figured out how to sequence the human genome and finished that in the early 2000s. It felt like a Rosetta Stone moment - “Oh my God, we’ve sequenced the human genome, it’s all gonna be laid bare.” Well, it’s just a bunch of letters. It doesn’t necessarily make words. You need a translation. The way to figure out what’s important in that book is by actually looking to see how other species are using that same language. Trying to imagine humans as this island of biology doesn’t work really well - we come from an evolutionary process, we are mammals, we’ve got to follow the same rules. We have to view ourselves in this context.
I feel like, as a scientific community, we were very open to exploring novel biology when science was young, and then we felt like we got really sophisticated - “Oh, we just need to sequence people. We’ll make mice and rats with the same genetic mutations, and they’ll all be great.” Well, the same 10 diseases that killed people in 2003 are still pretty much killing people in 2025, except we added COVID a few years ago. Clearly, we’re not where we thought the Rosetta Stone would take us. Sequencing more people is not going to get us there. We need more focal points of evidence to figure out what’s important, and that’s really where this data comes in.
Looking back over seven years now, were there any challenges that really took you by surprise?
I think we always expected the fundraising and partnering to be tricky. I think trying to figure out how to put the right people in the right roles and keep them motivated - that was challenging. When the company grows, people who used to be able to work on more things and be generalists have to settle down and focus. Not everybody can go from being a sole contributor to working in a team, particularly when you get really high-performing scientists out of academia - switching from “my goals don’t matter as much as the company’s goals.” That transition is actually really hard, and some people don’t make that transition well.
Trying to figure out how to get the best work out of people is actually much more nuanced art than I thought it was. Even running a good meeting is actually kinda hard. What kind of meeting, who needs to be there, how much prep do you need, how much time, how many people should be in that meeting to accomplish the goal? It sounds super boring, but it’s super complicated psychology. We’ve actually experimented a lot with meeting cadence, focus days, focus blocks - this kind of nuance around how people do their work when we’re still hybrid is really important and something that wasn’t even on my radar.
Is there one hire you’ve made that has made the most significant difference to the success of the company?
It’s hard to call people out, but I will say we did hire a very excellent head of therapeutics in 2021. We were a drug development company with three founders who had never made drugs before, and investors rightly gave us a bit of a side eye about that. We were fortunate enough to meet Bryan through one of our advisors. He worked in exactly this niche of early discovery into the early clinical phase and had worked 23 years at Novartis in cardiometabolism, which is now really what we’re focused on. Critically, he’d also spent time in a couple of smaller biotechs where they were essentially virtual with very small teams. That’s a hard transition to make - you don’t want to be the first biotech, you want to be the second or third biotech. He’s been with us for a little over four years and drove our lead program from very early preclinical efficacy to where it is now, poised to do IND-enabling studies and go into the clinic.
I’ll also call out Kacey because she came to us literally out of the blue. She messaged us after seeing a webinar that my CTO and one of our scientists did for the American Physiological Society. She cold inbounded and said, “I don’t know if you have a job for me, and I didn’t know you existed, but you’re the only company I want to work for. What do you need?” I was like, “Actually… yes” We cobbled together a job for her and she ended up doing parts of four different jobs. She was one of our first glue hires - someone who really works across different pieces. Now she works with Bryan as lead program manager for our early program, thinking about clinical strategy, works very closely with our emerging animal models group, working with academics building out new animal model systems, and is our alliance manager for Lilly.
Your partnership with Eli Lilly was announced in late 2023. What was that experience like, and is there anything you would have done differently?
I learned a lot about cadence. We had worked with Novo Nordisk before, and learning how to manage the dynamics between those two pharmas was an interesting experience. Building strong scientific consensus is always really important - making sure the scientific teams on both sides are aligned on the problem and the solution. Everything else will fall into place from there.
Also, having the correct deal counsel was super important - we’ve got a really good attorney who works on both sides, biopharma and biotech. They all knew each other, they know the standard contract language, they know what is market on both sides. You just streamline a lot of the fluff when you have somebody who really knows that process well.
When you initially started Fauna, what was your definition of success? Has that changed over time?
At the core, we really wanted to see this emerging animal model biology translate into drugs in the clinic and impact on patients. Could we actually find drugs that improve heart failure by looking at ground squirrels? It cracks this nut of saying these species don’t matter. The only way to do that is to take something into the clinic, see the efficacy, ideally partner it and let somebody else do the commercial and sales. Then we can turn our attention back to the next 10, 15 species.
It’s really showing those proof points that you can go from these novel data sets to a therapeutic in a VC-investable time window. Now we’re doing real-time target discovery in cycles and driving toward in vivo. Most people assume we partnered on targets we’d been working on for years - no, we’re literally doing it in real time. That shows how quick that cycle time is compared to traditional discovery. We started with one species in a handful of disease areas, but it’s the tip of an iceberg - it’s about changing the mindset of the entire biopharma industry. You have to put it in people’s faces that it works.
What’s one competitor in the space that you really respect and why?
I think Variant Bio is trying to do a philosophically similar type of thing with human genetics - let’s look at these extreme populations and see what we can learn from them. Luckily for us, I think the ethical challenges around sequencing ground squirrels are a lot easier than on the human side!
There’s also a company that got started looking at bat science called Paratus Biosciences. We’ve always been fascinated by bats, and Paratus has some unique technology around sequencing cells from bats. Bats are just cool animals. They were on our roadmap, but we’ve ceded the bats to Paratus - we have other things we could work on. I also think bats are cool, so I’m glad there’s a bat company.
What are VCs getting wrong in the biotech space?
So many things… It’s a hard job - early science is cool, but trying to figure out what’s gonna hit and not is difficult. I do feel like starting a company as three first-time female founders didn’t help us. In VC, pattern matching is a problem. As a founder, you just have to do the work, but you end up doing it with oftentimes fewer resources than others may have to work with. It’s not always a bad thing, because you learn how to work very efficiently and get a lot done with less capital. So for VCs, it’s the over-pattern matching and over-reliance on reputational decision making, I think, that doesn’t do anybody good.
If you could turn the clock back and write a small check into an early company of your choice, which one would it be?
Oh, that’s a great question. Who would I invest in? I really like what Basecamp are doing - I would have loved to write a check into them. I think they’re gonna do well. I introduced them to True Ventures and helped them strategise around knowledge graphs back in the day. I think they’re doing a great job.
What’s one thing you believe in this space that other people might call crazy?
That we can find drugs by sequencing thirteen-lined ground squirrels! I mean, it’s not reaching - everything we do, most people would think this is crazy. Looking at spiny mice, camels and ground squirrels to find drugs - the whole company that we run, most people would think is insane (and it makes it even more awesome that it works)!
Next week, we’re speaking to someone in the protein-design space. What’s one question you’d like to pass on to our next guest?
If you were going to design a protein to do anything, what would it be? And, what’s been the most fun project to work on?
Brilliant - thanks so much, Ashley!
Thanks guys!
Who should we chat with next? What questions would you ask? Let us know in the comments…
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