Founders’ Story: Dr. Michael Triplett, Co-founder and Chairman of Armatus Bio
The first Founders’ Story of 2025 is one of our all-time best. This not-to-be-missed video features the remarkable leadership and journey of serial entrepreneur Dr. Michael Triplett, Co-founder and Chairman of Armatus Bio.
Armatus Bio and Neucore Bio are Dr. Triplett’s third and fourth life sciences startups. Previously, he was Co-founder, President, and CEO of Myonexus Therapeutics (acquired by Sarepta Therapeutics in 2019) and Clarametyx Biosciences, a clinical stage life sciences business that closed a $33 million Series A round last year.
Tips from Dr. Triplett:
Big company experience prepares engineers to become entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs must install discipline around the product development process and fiscal management. The strategic context is different. How you show value is different but learning how to do technical platform management and how to integrate financial management the right way, in large or small company innovation, the process is the same.
Build Products that People Will Buy.
Proctor & Gamble is where I really learned to build products that people would buy, time and time again—to know what the end looks like and to begin with the end in mind.
Think about what a bioscience company needs to look like at each stage.
Capital attraction is key for success. Do more on the integrated business case early. Don’t fall in love with the technology. It’s about more than the unmet need and the technology. Think of the other dimensions—the competitive landscape, how the category of science is evolving, and how technologies are converging.
People really, really matter. The right talent. The right chemistry. The right team.
Early-stage companies must execute. In early-stage biotech companies, the technical founder may be the most important person to have a working relationship with. A commercially oriented technical leader can pave the way for success.
If you don’t come from a sales background, asking people for money isn’t easy.
But when you are focused on a mission like therapeutics for limb girdle muscular dystrophy where kids are 18 they are in a wheelchair and by thirty or forty they die from respiratory failure, the hardest thing is not to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
For investors and entrepreneurs in life sciences, this video is about more than a journey—it’s a clear-eyed roadmap for what it takes to build a startup life-sciences company in the Midwest. The specifics may be different for entrepreneurship in IT or advanced materials, but Dr. Triplett’s expertise in achieving milestones, scaling talented teams, and relationship-building is applicable across the board.
