Project Insulin: Ensuring everyone has equal access to affordable insulin.
- KLS
- Apr 10
- 8 min read
For the 173rd feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Project Insulin and Founder, Eric Moyal.
"Together Talks" feature # 173: Project Insulin presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business? How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
Story of how it was created?
We started in 2021, that was when we incorporated. I think the idea stemmed in November of 2020 from my partner, she has diabetes. She was telling me about the disease and I was reading one of her papers for school. It was a paper about identity and diabetes. For example, if you're Mexican and Mexican identity comes with a lot of beer and beans and rice, those are all parts of your identity, just from a cultural perspective, from a food perspective. What do people with diabetes who are also Mexican do? How do they let those two different identity pieces overlap with each other? In that paper, there was one sentence that said a million Americans ration their insulin every year.
I was astounded. I asked her a little bit more about that and confirming it is accurate. I couldn't believe it. I asked her how is this a thing, it has been around for so long, there is no patent on it, how can it not be affordable. She challenged me to go look into it. I took her up on that and became really interested. It's not affordable because three companies make insulin and they can sell it for whatever price they want. I decided this is something that I could tackle.
What have been the biggest challenges?
My background is fundraising. I've done professional fundraising, including university fundraising for a long time. I thought this would be a money problem. This isn't a science problem, the patents are expired, people know how to make insulin, it's just matter of raising money to do so. And that is true, that thesis is still correct, but someone has to know science. I spent about two years learning, and I don't mean formal education, just learning about insulin specifically. I had to understand how it's made with the FDA approval processes, what are the different pathways you can take because this is a generic drug or a biosimilar in the world of insulin. I had to invest time learning the science, that was one of the biggest early issues.
Now it's more of raising money. This is a long project, it'll take five years to make the insulin we're creating and it requires a lot of different moving pieces. When asking people for funding, normally you're used to donating and the impact happening within six months, or six to nine months tops. I'm asking you to donate and be okay with not seeing results for a long time. Some people are already on board and I think more people will get on board the further along we get.
We're still in the pre-drug development phase, we're actually about to begin drug development sometime in 2025. That will be pretty monumental for us. But it also provides that signal to potential donors that this is happening. The donations actually are going to move us into the next thing that we're doing.
With fundraising and then credibility, which we feel comes hand in hand. It's like a two-pronged piece where the more credibility we have, the easier it'll be to fundraise, the more funding we raise, more credibility we have. We're hiring a chief science officer. We're hiring a contract research organization to do the actual development and I think both of those issues will hopefully start easing a little bit in the next few months.
What were your concerns to transition to starting your own business?
When we incorporated in 2021, I didn't quit my job until much later. I spent another year or two continuing to learn and get feedback and responses from different people. Over the years, I never felt like it was one thing to convince me to do this. Fortunately, I feel like it was a culmination of no one saying no. Don't get me wrong, so many individuals that I spoke with mentioned how difficult it would be, but no one said it couldn't be done. Knowing this isn't impossible, but there will be roadblocks and they're challenging, daunting. I believe the thesis still stands. If we can raise money, we can make insulin. We just have to hire the right teams to manage the different parts. I think it was more of a slow burn than a specific moment.
How have you dealt with being the face of the company?
It's nerve-wracking, because you never know how things are going to turn out. There's a chance it won't work even though I believe this will work. There will be a six, seven-year history of me talking about this thing that potentially didn't pan out. It is scary to put yourself out there and share your goals and hopes of success. It's been hard from that perspective every once in a while, I'll get stressed about it. But overall, I'm passionate about it. I love what I do. I think the cause makes sense. I think we're raising money to do something really special that has implications beyond diabetes that has implications.
For healthcare around the world, it has implications for how we make and distribute generic drugs in the US. This is hard and there is a chance it doesn't work. But even if it doesn't, I can say that I tried to make tangible change in how generic drugs are made and distributed. How generic drugs are thought of in the US and how we could potentially work on getting them around the world. Yeah, it's hard, it's stressful, I go to therapy, you just have to do the things to take care of yourself too, but I am happy and proud to kind of be the face of this.
What have you learned since becoming an entrepreneur?
This is my first startup. People talk about when they became an entrepreneur. I think on parts of the project and doing it in a way that you are set up to succeed, I take pride in now. For example, I had an intern recently who was doing some one-pagers for us and her first draft was like quite bad. Iit was not her fault, she's a sophomore in college, of course it wasn't going to be professional grade. But by the time the final version of it came out three weeks later, I was really proud of the work she did. Not only delegating but providing the resources for the person you delegate to succeed I think is really important. That has been a journey and it's taken a long time because it's weird being the boss anything. Before it was you had your co-workers and you, almost like friends. Then it transitions to I am responsible for managing them. I'm figuring that out and trying to be a good manager to the people who are giving up their time, right? Everyone who's helped us has done it for free. I want to make sure that I give them the time that they're giving me.
What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?
I'll say the isolation is very difficult. It's really hard to be an entrepreneur. Over time, more and more people have joined in and been a part of it. But you take this home with nobody else who understands what you're doing. And not in the sense that no one understands the business or the work, but more so doesn't understand how much time you put into something or how hard it is. Unless you're living it, it is hard to understand how up and down it is and the rollercoaster with all these different moving pieces. I think that is probably the thing I appreciate the most of entrepreneurs that I don't think I did in the past.
When it comes to the best part of being an entrepreneur, it's the growth. It's so cool how much you get to learn while being an entrepreneur. Especially doing what I do where it's a field that I didn't know before, I'm learning supply chain, direct development and learning about like all these different pieces to our business It's just very fun and interesting. I've always loved learning.
What is your why?
It's interesting, my partner was the spark to make it happen, but I've been passionate about healthcare my whole life. Whether I knew it or not is a different story, but my sister has a rare chronic illness that I raised money for. I've seen other people dealing with health care issues. I think it's that cumulative experience of seeing health care issues and finally finding one where it's a money problem, not a science problem.
There's a way for me to potentially make a difference in health care. It just really excites me, the potential impact in the future. Understanding what kind of savings we could create for patients in the US and then people around the world in the future, it's quite astonishing. If we're selling insulin to 1 million patients in the US, we would be saving people 10 billion dollars a year. That's just la million patients, which is the insulin-dependent population of California, just to put it into perspective.
Those numbers are kind of recent, we just figured that out. That's super exciting to me despite it being a long time away. Yes, we're asking you for money today. Yes, you're not going to see anything for a while, but a million patients equals 10 billion yearly in savings. Seeing the long-term economic impact, people's health gets better because they have consistent access to this insulin. That means they're not going to the emergency room as much. not having as many complications. They're living longer because they have access to insulin. I think that is something that really excites me.
Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?
It's two things that happened really close to each other. The first one was we got a $50k grant out of the blue. I knew the person, I'd met them previously, but she told me I'll get a a donation in the next couple weeks. It ended up being $50k, I thought it was going to a thousand or something. That was quite a significant difference. That was the moment where I knew we could start drug development, we now have the money to do that.
A couple of weeks later, I won my my first pitch contest. And that was for $10,000. I had probably pitched a good 20 to 30 times before winning one. I've won prizes, I've won second or third place on other pitch contests. But to finally win one was special. It was at a social impact pitch contest. But to win the one that was about social impact was incredibly validating. It was in front of a room with around 300 people. It was quite a moment. It was really special.
What are you trying to conquer?
Project Insulin is a nonprofit making biosimilar, which is the technical term for generic insulin. the long-acting insulin. We're going to sell it directly to patients at cost regardless of insurance status. It'll be one flat rate for everyone, no matter if you have insurance or if you don't have insurance.
Piece of Advice?
I mentioned it earlier with starting drug development too early. Those pitch contests taking 30 to win one. All the grant applications that you get rejected from, moral of the story patience is important. There is a difference between patience and doing something that you know won't work. I was adamant in listening to people and making sure that no one said no to our idea. They just said it will be hard. Combining that, taking in the feedback you're receiving, and I was saying everyone's feedback is important. That's not the case. I had to learn whose feedback was worth listening to. By doing that and being patient it allows you to be ready for whatever it is you're about to do.
Community Callout
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Project Insulin and Founder, Eric Moyal, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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