Vaccine Startup Co-Founder Talks Entrepreneurship

Patrick Ho, co-founder of Vaxess Technologies and a Harvard Law School graduate, spoke Tuesday about his experience in entrepreneurship and the challenges associated with building a for-profit company that supports the public interest.

The event, hosted by the Law School as part of its celebration of National Pro Bono Week, attracted more than 40 attendees, primarily law students.

Ho co-founded Vaxess Technologies during his third year with three other Harvard affiliates from across the university, with the goal of promoting global access to vaccines.

“Currently, all vaccines need to be refrigerated, and in many cases need to stay frozen in very stringent conditions,” Ho said. “Ideally, vaccines should be given to 7 billion people. And that’s pretty hard for areas that don’t have roads or electricity, let alone the ability to keep vaccines between two and eight degrees Celsius.”

Vaxess Technologies licenses a technology created by researchers at Tufts University, which uses a silk-derived protein to encapsulate and stabilize vaccines. This process allows vaccines to be transported more easily and without refrigeration.

In 2012, Ho and the other Vaxess co-founders were awarded $70,000 by winning the grand prize in Harvard’s President’s Challenge, organized by the Harvard Innovation Lab and University President Drew G. Faust, which challenged students to address societal problems via entrepreneurship. They also won $25,000 in Harvard Business School’s 2012 Business Plan Contest.

While Vaxess was initially a side project for Ho and his team, eventually they chose to focus on it after graduation, despite being offered jobs elsewhere.

“We felt this was an important human issue that we potentially had the technology to solve,” Ho said.

During the question-and-answer portion of the event, one law student inquired as to how Ho was able to make this a financially viable alternative to his standing job offers at the time.

“I didn’t,” Ho answered. “Frankly, it made no financial sense. We came out of the spring of our [third year] with about $150,000. That allowed for 12 months of running the company, including paying all of us. There was very little coming back into my pocket.”

“But at the end of the day, you have to invest in the upside,” Ho said. “It’s what we wanted to do, and I just hated the idea of seeing this project go on without me being a part of it.”

Lee B. Mestre, associate director of the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs at the Law School, moderated the event.

“We’re happy to have Patrick here,” Mestre said. “We want to talk about doing well while doing good, and what it means to run a company that’s in the public interest.”