When biotech entrepreneur Greg Verdine leased roughly half of a new lab building at 66 Galen St. in Watertown Square two years ago, he was doing something almost no one else in his field was doing: adding space.
Unfortunately for the industry, that dry spell continues, with empty labs all around.
But Verdine feels vindicated about his bucking of the trend, by signing that 120,000-square-foot lease in 2024. He says today that he scored a big win with building owners Davis Companies and Boston Development Group. He points to the fact one of his companies, LifeMine Therapeutics, announced last week it had raised an additional $263 million in equity funding.
LifeMine has developed a radically new drug for organ transplants, one that avoids the kidney damage caused by the drugs in use over the past three decades. Two of Verdine’s other startups, VidaVinci and DoveTree, are also in the building.
Verdine estimates around 70 people work in the building at one of the three startups today, including LifeMine’s new chief commercial officer Yves Zinggeler (recruited from Vertex Pharmaceuticals), leaving plenty of room for future growth.
“I’m a big believer that real estate can be transformative,” said Verdine, a chemical biologist. “This was intended to be transformative for Watertown Square. It can also be transformative for [our] companies.”
The building offers floor-to-ceiling glass windows with Charles River views, along with a gym, restaurant, and parking. Verdine said he believes employees are happier to work in a beautiful building, and it can have a strong impression on potential investors. “For us,” Verdine said, “it has been a good luck charm.”
Verdine has been behind the launch of a long line of biotechs over the years, most with the intent of finding new approaches to treating otherwise untreatable conditions — or, as he puts it, drugging the “undruggable.” They include Wave Life Sciences, which announced promising data for an obesity treatment last December, and cancer drug maker Parabilis Medicines (formerly FogPharma), which raised $670 million in its June IPO, a new record for a VC-backed biotech.
Verdine often gets asked how he balances all of his various ventures. The key, he said, is picking the right executives to take over, as he did with Parabilis chief executive Mathai Mammen, formerly at Johnson & Johnson. Most of Verdine’s time now is focused on his three startups at 66 Galen.
“I had to learn to reprogram myself from an academician to someone running a biotech company,” Verdine said, and then added, half-jokingly: “[Now] I’m learning how to transition from control freak to judicious delegator . . . in my advanced years.”
Barr’s gift lifts Boston music school
The Community Music Center of Boston is relying on millions of dollars in donations to buy and renovate a new home in Roxbury’s Nubian Square.
Now, it’s getting another $1 million, this time from the Barr Foundation, to ensure the nonprofit music school can offer robust programs after the new place opens in January, and to strategize for its future.
It is wrapping up the extensive renovations on the 15,000-square-foot building at 2164 Washington St., which was most recently home to an art gallery. CMCB will keep its leased location in the South End after it opens up in Nubian Square.
To cover the $23 million purchase price and renovation costs, the school raised $11 million in philanthropy, worked with TD Bank, the National Community Investment Fund, and BlueHub Capital to obtain $9 million in proceeds from state and federal tax credits, and will borrow another $3 million.
Zach Sheets, the school’s chief advancement officer, said his 50 or so colleagues are looking forward to playing their part to bolster Nubian Square’s growing arts scene.
“To be able to own [our own building],” Sheets said, “and be a cornerstone institution has been huge for us.”
Making history with Rob Waldron
Rob Waldron has a new ally in his quest to make us all history buffs like him.
Well, actually, the new role for Megan Costello is a bit broader, but certainly it’s on her to-do list: now that Waldron and his wife Jen Waldron have named her the new chief of staff for their family firm Waldron Civic LLC.
Costello might be best known in Boston for her work in the Walsh administration: She led then-mayor Martin J. Walsh’s office of women’s advancement from 2014 through mid-2018, before getting her master’s in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School. She returned to work for Boston in early 2021, as a senior adviser in the schools superintendent’s office.
Now joining the Waldrons, Costello will serve the city in a new way. Waldron had led educational software firm Curriculum Associates until retiring at the start of 2025, and since that time has used some the money he made by trying to bolster the public’s interest in history. Most notably, he sponsored a video contest for eighth graders this past spring called “We Declare! Challenge.” Much of the Waldrons’ charity work is done through a fund they established at the Boston Foundation.
Costello will help oversee the Waldrons’ portfolio of public work that includes improving first-generation college access, high-quality early education, the well-being of children from low-income families, and, of course, public history access and engagement.
“I really love the big dreams that Rob and Jen have,” Costello said, “and look forward to helping them piece it all together.”
A Klaviyo reunion
Elias Torres hired Andrew Bialecki as one of his first engineers at the marketing startup Performable in 2010.
Now, it’s Bialecki’s turn to do the hiring.
Klaviyo, the marketing-tech firm that Bialecki now leads as its co-chief executive, has acquired the technology created by Agency, the AI customer management startup that Torres led, and hired Agency’s 25-person team. Torres becomes Klaviyo’s chief product officer, and will work closely with Bialecki at the Boston headquarters.
Torres will oversee all of Klaviyo’s agentic AI products, including its “Composer” and “Customer Agent” businesses, reporting directly to his buddy who runs the place, “AB.”
Klaviyo and Agency already had a business relationship, but Bialecki decided it made more sense to bring their work entirely in-house. The deal terms, which were not disclosed, came together quickly, Torres said, in large part because of the level of trust he has with Bialecki.
Torres was one of Bialecki’s first angel investors and can’t help but wish now that he had put a little bit more into Klaviyo at the time. (The firm is worth $5 billion today.)
Torres and his business partner David Cancel stayed in touch with Bialecki over the years, after HubSpot acquired Performable in 2011 and Bialecki cofounded Klaviyo with Ed Hallen the following year. Torres and Cancel went on to found Drift, a firm that’s now part of Salesloft.
“I have told my team this is a very small world,” said Torres, a native of Nicaragua who moved to the United States for college. “You can never know [when] it’s going to be a full-circle moment.”
Investors liked the fact SharkNinja raised its revenue outlook for the year. But consumers were more interested in something else: the Needham company’s new microwave oven.
Chief executive Mark Barrocas talked about both on an earnings call last week; the company’s stock is up around 10 percent since its better-than-expected quarterly report card came out on Aug. 5.
Best known for its Shark vacuums and Ninja blenders, SharkNinja is regularly expanding into new and adjacent categories, such as the release last month of the Ninja Crispi Microwave and Air Fryer.
To some extent, the surge in sales can be attributed to SharkNinja taking more of its distribution work in-house. Barrocas said the constant product development and innovation also helps.
With the microwave, SharkNinja applied its air fryer technology to solve a common complaint among users: their food can get soggy when heated or reheated. It is the 40th “subcategory” of home appliance that SharkNinja has entered.
“That’s a category that has had no innovation over the last 20 years,” Barrocas said in an interview. “In its first week on social media, it had over eight million impressions. When we hit on something that is a real consumer problem [and] we start putting content on social media, it resonates. Consumers are saying, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.