Founder Story: Charlie & Madeline of Intero Biosystems

On a humid morning in Austin, Texas around the age of 13, Charlie Childs was hauling stand-up paddleboards in 100-degree heat. Long before she ever imagined she’d co-found a biotech company, she worked at the local rowing dock, dumping water out of flipped kayaks and learning firsthand that customer service builds a certain kind of toughness.

Across the country in Colorado, her now co-founder of Intero Biosystems, Madeline Eiken, was absorbing her own early lessons in similar heat; checking families into a community pool and also learning that “everyone should work customer service” at some stage of their working life.

It’s very possible that when you think of a biotech founder, the image in your head is not immediately that of Childs or Eiken. But that’s on you… and also, on all of us. That theme: that things should change, but we’re all also part of the problem, may just be the theme running throughout this story. 

That shouldn’t dilute what these two have already achieved, what they’re building and what they’re likely going to go on and do. But founder stories always start from the founders own perspective. So for that reason, whether you’re a Midwesterner or just a lil’ Midwest curious… strap yourself in.

Let’s begin with some stats: in this country, according to the data, female founded startups received 28% of all funding, while female-only founded startups accounted for 2-3% of all funding.

We’ll just let that percolate in your brain for a moment.

A decade after their watery encounters with the great American leisure-focused consumer, the worlds of these two young scientists would collide in a University of Michigan lab. Childs would build an intestinal model as part of her PhD, one with functional smooth muscle, blood vessels, nerves, and the full absorptive lining of the human gut. And Eiken, after working in a cell-based startup and discovering she loved “knowing what everyone was up to… all the bits and pieces that you need to make a company work,” volunteered to help Childs by being the subject of a customer-discovery interview.

That conversation changed everything for the two of them.

What began as a technical triumph became the seed of Intero, their company which Crain’s recently described as developing “scaled-down, complex human intestines from stem cells for testing and research, including drugs, toxins, bacteria, supplements and more to expedite clinical trials on human organs."

Intero is already serving multiple paying customers and announced a $2 million funding round in June, with in-state investors including Kalamazoo Forward Ventures, Michigan Rise, Accelerate Blue Fund, Michigan University Innovation Capital Fund, Michigan Biomedical Venture Fund and Ann Arbor SPARK Capital.

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Falling in Love with Science

As the sweaty, teen customer service champions stories alluded to, Childs grew up in Austin, Eiken in Denver. Neither has roots in Michigan, the Midwest, or the biotech hubs of Boston or San Francisco.

What they share is an early affinity for science, and further study at the University of Michigan, though neither would have called it ambition. For Childs, AP Biology lit a spark: “This makes me feel something… if I think it’s cool, I should just keep doing it.”

Childs’ spark came with friction. Her entire PhD, she says, was filled with rejection: papers denied, grants turned down, nothing came easy: “I did not win a single thing in grad school… my papers got rejected like seven to eight times… My CV was so bad… I was always like, am I cut out for this?” 

But these setbacks helped toughen her. And prepared her for startups. “By the end, it just didn’t hurt anymore. That has prepared me really well for the company… people tell me no and I’m just like, okay, whatever.”

Childs’ PhD organoid wasn’t just a clump of cells, it was a functioning system, as she tries to explain to your less-than scientifically aware correspondent. It is based on “the inner lining of the intestine where food is absorbed” and is “truly … by far the most complex miniature intestinal model that exists.” 

This work got her wondering: if this works in a lab, could it actually have a commercial application?

She joined U of M’s Fast Forward Medical Innovation (FFMI) center, learned the ropes of customer discovery, and called up someone she knew had done this before. A certain Madeline Eiken.

As the three of us talk, the rapport and mutual respect between the two is apparent. Most especially as they remember their interaction. “You (said) have you thought about this? And have you thought about this?” Childs recalls, referencing the customer discovery conversation. “And I was, no… and she’s like, sounds like I can help you”  Childs recalls.

It was the simplest beginning imaginable:

Two scientists. In the same lab.
One incredible technology.
A hundred customer interviews.
And the slow realization that this might not just be a thesis project.

It just might be a real company.

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Learning to Fundraise While Fundraising

The early questions are usually obvious: Would anyone pay for this? Was drug discovery ready to move from animals to engineered organs? And the inevitable (and unfortunate): Could two 27-year-old women get venture funding in a sector dominated by older men, Big Pharma pedigrees, and deep skepticism?

They had no idea. But they went for it. And the learning curve was vertical.

“We had no idea what we were doing at the beginning… learned what a data room was… the fundamental math behind fundraising… how to tell the Intero story in a compelling way.”

Then comes the moment in our story that defines them. It's the ability to make hard decisions, and make them for the good of their company and decisions that also work for them as founders. In our experience, this is one of the most crucial differentiators between those who succeed and who struggle to get there.

Midway through the fundraising process, they decided to make changes which ruffled some feathers. “We were told we were gossipy and spreading rumors… (but) if we weren’t 27-year-old women, we would not have been treated the way we were,” says Childs, alluding to the way their decisions were perceived

They pushed on. 

“This is probably the scariest thing we’ve ever done… and then we were like, wow, that was the bravest thing we’ve ever done,” Eiken adds.

And the validation of this conviction, of doing the hard thing because it's the best thing for their young, fledgling company? Their $2M pre-seed round was oversubscribed.

According to these two brilliant young founders, it wasn’t because the ecosystem told them they could. It was because they decided what they would and wouldn’t do. Additionally, outside the Midwest, investors thought bigger. “People were like, you aren’t thinking big enough… can we give you more money? Your valuation should be higher,” reveals Childs.

By the middle of this year, Intero had multiple customers, a pipeline of new products, and growing demand. And while TSRL Inc. in Ann Arbor was kind enough to give them some of their extra wet lab space and equipment, they quickly outgrew the footprint. 

On these pages, we’re all about what the Midwest excels at - manufacturing, mobility, SaaS, deep tech research. But according to these two founders (who should know), wet-lab infrastructure remains thin, fragmented, and often outdated.

The founders repeatedly saw tours of lab spaces that weren’t ready for modern biotech, “…a corner lab space in the basement with visible mold growing” or the fact that they “would like to have a window,” Eiken tells us. Recruiting talent has been another struggle. “If you don’t have a connection to Ann Arbor… it’s not an easy sell to somebody not familiar with the area - especially in biotech - to move here,” Childs admitted.

And while Michigan has brilliant scientists, the density of biotech operators - people who’ve actually built and scaled in this field - is still nascent. They’ve had advisors provided, and politely suggested to me that some lacked experience in newer markets and may have been better suited to a bygone era.

So they considered their options, and looked into locations where they had more connections. Including the place where Eiken used to help kids stay safe near the pool: Colorado. There are other reasons, including incentives “Colorado has a ton of non-dillutive economic development funds for biotech… you apply, you pitch, you get it. No strings attached…,” says Childs.

Why should they want to leave, you may ask? Well, because Intero is growing fast.

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The Hardest Part: Leaving Michigan

On January 1st, they’ll be moving the company to Denver. 

There is a combination of factors at play here. First, the business infrastructure in their new location provided turnkey lab space with equipment provided, a talent market dense with biotech professionals, better access to coastal customers, and predictable state R&D funding. Second, they’ll both benefit from strong local family support, as both have family in Colorado. Finally, they’re focused on the long game, understanding that running a deeply technical company requires the strongest possible personal support systems. 

It's important to keep in mind at this point of their story that their message is not one of bitterness, but reality. Michigan gave them their beginning, but Denver offers them a runway. 

Michigan is where they became founders and they each particularly rave about the university's invaluable support for student founders, including resources across tech transfer, the medical school, business school, and engineering school. They emphasized how much people in the community care about one another, recalling that when they announced they were moving for their families, people immediately asked how they could help the two. Furthermore, they raved about the lifestyle, mentioning the low cost of living, their appreciation for the Great Lakes, and the ‘immaculate vibes’ of the region.

This is great to hear, but we also have to admit that personally,  news like this kinda sucks. What can we learn from these two, before they move for ‘greener’ pastures? When asked what advice they’d give younger founders, Childs doesn’t hesitate: “Dream really big… tell the biggest story… think about the ultimate impact this (your) company can have.” 

And Eiken adds: “Protect your time. See what’s actually valuable. Talk a lot to other founders… the most valuable thing we’ve gotten is a really great network of other founders.” At this point they provide us with a personal anecdote that gives a value beyond what we’d hope to be delivering on these pages. “Literally every morning we're like, ‘Did you see what Start Midwest posted?’ We're so into this … the founder group messages love this s***. So, keep it up.”

It’s enough to make us want to keep pushing as well.

Despite that, Intero’s departure shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a failure for the region. After all, it's proof of what we can produce here. Two young women, both outsiders, came to Michigan for school. The state gave them fertile ground: mentors, a lab, customers, even their first investors and they turned their exceptional science into a business with global potential.

Any success they have will always carry a Midwest fingerprint for these reasons.

And the Midwest - if we choose to listen  - can hopefully learn from their experiences:

- Invest in infrastructure, not just ideas

- Build biotech-ready labs

- Attract operators, not just advisors

- Make founder support predictable

- Think in decades, not grants

Because the biggest takeaway isn’t that Intero is leaving, it’s that they actually wanted to stay.

And the hope is that someday, the next pair of brilliant Midwest-trained scientists will be able to stay, scale, and thrive right here. Until then, Intero Biosystems leaves us bigger, braver, and bolder… all for having been born right here in the Midwest.