This 21-year-old founder cut open his leg to show off his biotech. Then he raised $4.3 million from Peter Thiel and others.

Business Insider

4 days ago

If you think you're moving fast and breaking things, you haven't met Jake Adler, who poured his actual blood into his startup.
Adler, the founder of Pilgrim, a biotech and defense startup building medical devices for the battlefield, tested his flagship product — a hemostatic dressing he calls Kingsfoil — by cutting open both of his thighs.
Business Insider will spare you the details (and the video), but we watched it. (Adler, who is 21, assured us that he told his mom before filming: "I was very cautious," he said to BI in an interview. He does not encourage other founders to pursue similarly daring — and potentially dangerous — testing on themselves.)
In a video sent to investors and viewed by BI, Adler numbed his legs with lidocaine and used a punch biopsy tool to create two scientifically precise wounds. One was slathered with Kingsfoil, which seemed to stall the bleeding, and the other was a control.
When Kingsfoil touches the skin, Adler said, the gauze morphs into a gel-like consistency. He added that this can help seal wounds, clot blood flow, and aid in healing. Adler claims there are no known side effects to Kingsfoil, a clay-based hemostatic, other than possibly some minor skin irritation.
Adler named Kingsfoil after the healing herb in J.R.R. Tolkien's book "The Lord of the Rings." (LotR names are popular among defense tech founders; Palmer Luckey's Anduril and Erebor and Alex Karp's Palantir all come from the book.)
No investors held Adler's feet to the fire for the video: It was totally his idea, and he hopes to build on the demonstration by testing Kingsfoil in more controlled settings. "It is intended to undergo proper and rigorous clinical investigations," Adler said of Kingsfoil before sterilizing his thigh in the video. "This is just a precursor to that."
"When I looked through the laws, there was nothing that inherently said I couldn't do a test on myself," he added in an interview. "In the same way you can get a tattoo, I'm allowed to do anything to my own body."
Following the video, the Redwood, Calif.-based startup raised $4.3 million in seed funding. Frontier tech-focused firm Cantos VC led the round. Thiel Capital, Day One Ventures, and Refactor Capital participated alongside angel investors including Joshua Browder, Cory Levy, and Adrian Fenty.
There are some established incumbents and newer startups in the wound care space. QuikClot also makes hemostatic dressings; its original formula used a mineral called zeolite, which triggered a heat-releasing reaction upon contact with blood, potentially causing burns. The company now uses a clay-based formula, and its website claims that the US Defense Department uses QuikClot products.
HemCon makes hemostatic dressings using chitosan, a shellfish derivative. There's also Sealonix, a startup that makes hemostatic sealants for surgical use, which raised a $20 million Series A in 2023.
While many defense startups are more focused on autonomous tech that can operate with humans off the physical battlefield, Pilgrim hopes to address critical medical needs of the soldiers who will remain on the battlefield despite advancements in drone tech.
Adler sees the Defense Department as an "initial and first market" for his tech because "their operational needs are roughly five to 10 years ahead of the general operating or emergency room," he said.
"My goal is to translate technologies to the everyday civilian," Adler continued, adding that the company also hopes to one day sell the product commercially. This would make Pilgrim a dual-use startup, an increasingly common business model for companies hoping to diversify their customer base by selling to both the government and consumers.
"We look for people who stand out and are a little weird," Ian Rountree, general partner at Cantos, told BI about Adler. "Jake is exceptional," He added," It's one of those problems hiding in plain sight."
Kingsfoil hasn't yet hit shelves. Since hemostatic agents already exist, Adler said the company can pursue an "expedited pathway" toward FDA approval, which he thinks could take six months. If the FDA deems Kingsfoil as novel, though, the company could face a timeline of one to one and a half years for approval. Adler said Pilgrim has already done a few "pre-submissions" to the FDA.
The company is also working on two other products: Voyager, an inhaled mist that Pilgrim hopes will help the body neutralize chemical threats, like nerve agents, before they reach the bloodstream, and ARGUS, a surveillance platform that Adler says will be able to detect chemicals and other biological threats in high-risk areas like ports, hospitals, and farms.
Both are still in the prototyping and testing phases. The five-person Pilgrim team develops these products and Kingsfoil from a hybrid office-lab in California.
In 2023, a year after graduating from high school, Adler became a Thiel Fellow to work on a wearable device startup that aimed to induce and improve sleep.
"I was really compelled by this belief that we can move beyond that paradigm toward being able to leverage data in real time to augment the body," Adler said.
This idea still underpins his work at Pilgrim, Adler added: "I'm interested in creating an enduring institution that can become a biotech prime and go beyond that and actually translate technologies back to the civilian."