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Jonathan Lim

CEO & Co-Founder, Erasca · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

executivefounderinvestorerasca.com ↗

Jonathan Lim is a physician, biotech entrepreneur, and investor who co-founded and serves as CEO of Erasca. He previously led Ignyta until its acquisition by Roche and founded City Hill Ventures.

23statements → 19claims → 6claims resolved → 83%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential →

5 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 7 not checkable as stated how the 19 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 16 assertions · 2 opinions · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 19 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 12 are resolved, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Jonathan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Erasca claims its ERAS-15 molecular glue outperforms Revolution Medicines' RMC-6236
“And so we actually have our own cyclophiline A molecular glue called ERAS 15 that we just in-licensed, and we're really excited about that with Even higher potency than RMC six two three six”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 11:17 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
86% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

228 words/min while actually speaking · 42.9 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Jonathan Lim: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,639 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Jonathan Lim said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lim: 21-day water fast and plant diet cleared advanced lymphoma case
“Here's an example of a forty-two-year-old woman with advanced stage lymphoma. Her CT scan shows that before treatment, her lymph nodes were significantly enlarged. After a 21 day water only fast, you can see that her lymph nodes shrank pretty dramatically. She…”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 13:59 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Supported
Erasca claims its ERAS-15 molecular glue outperforms Revolution Medicines' RMC-6236
“And so we actually have our own cyclophiline A molecular glue called ERAS 15 that we just in-licensed, and we're really excited about that with Even higher potency than RMC six two three six”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 11:17 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lim: Targeting ecDNA could become cancer treatment's fourth revolution
“Well, if we're successful, this would truly represent a fourth revolution in cancer treatment and could be used to compliment existing chemotherapeutic targeted therapy and cancer immunotherapy approaches to erase cancer.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 12:53 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Biotech funding cycle has shifted away from platforms back to products
“I think the pendulum always swings back and forth between platforms and products and back again. I think we're back in the product cycle”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 19:10 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Partly supported
Lim: Extrachromosomal DNA is found in over 50% of solid tumors
“And this phenomenon is found in more than 50% of all solid tumor types.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 12:13 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Opinion
Lim: Nutrition is a critical component of cancer treatment's fifth revolution
“Well, I believe that nutrition is a critical component of the fifth revolution in cancer treatment.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 13:40 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Insight
Lim: Dietary choices can impact health as much as pharmaceutical drugs
“We eat three, sometimes more meals a day, so the foods that we eat can be as impactful to our health as the drugs that we take.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 13:48 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Prediction Held up
Halozyme guides to $1 billion in revenue in coming years
“Which now Halozyme is guiding to about a billion dollar in revenue in the next few years.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 4:12 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Extrachromosomal DNA was an unknown cancer driver until recent discoveries
“Most of the industry didn't even know that this circular chromosomal DNA was a mechanism for driving cancer as well as metastases and recurrence until Paul Michel and others identified this and developed diagnostics to look for it.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 8:42 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Disclosure
Lim admits skepticism on targeting wild-type RAS until RevMed proved it
“Until RevMed showed that that you could target RAS wild type. I actually was very skeptical that we'd be able to do that. But then when I saw the data, I was just amazed that this was safe and reasonably well tolerated.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 11:35 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dr. Jonathan Lim: No single cancer treatment revolution is sufficient alone
“I've outlined five revolutions that give us potential paths to being able to do this, and we've seen some miracles occur. But each one on its own in a vacuum is insufficient.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 15:42 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Supported
Lim: Majority of solid tumor patients do not respond to immunotherapy
“Checkpoint inhibitors have since been approved in multiple solid tumor types outside of metastatic melanoma, and the story holds true where you have a minority of patients that reach that five-year mark, what we call the long tail of survival, but still the ma…”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 10:49 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Opinion
Lim: Extrachromosomal DNA is the missing link in cancer biology
“I believe the missing link is extra chromosomal DNA or ECDNA, which represents a brand new way in understanding how cancer behaves.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 11:28 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dr. Jonathan Lim: Multi-modal personalized therapy will one day erase cancer
“This is what gives me hope that we will be able to one day erase cancer.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 16:06 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Supported
Halozyme had three months of cash and zero VC funding in 2003
“So we had Three months of cash on hand, a company that had zero VC dollars invested.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 3:00 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Supported
Checkpoint inhibitors achieve long-term cures in roughly 20% of patients
“Especially with the checkpoint inhibitors where you see the long tail. So you see about 20% of patients that have long term remission that, that actually turns into cures.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 6:50 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Supported
Lim: ADC Drug Enhertu Has Reached Five Cancer Indications
“Whether it's the, some of the ADCs, like Inheritu, where you see just remarkable long-term survival outcomes OS and PFS with in breast cancer, and now they're in five different indications, including tissue agnostic.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 7:19 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Partly supported
Lim: U.S. NRAS mutant melanoma patient population is roughly 50,000
“NRAS mutant melanoma, there's about 50,000 patients total in, in the U.S.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 16:23 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lim: My Penguin Friend was shot 80% with real penguins
“So about 80% of the movie is shot with real penguins. You can't put penguins in peril though. So 15% is with CGI and then five percent is with puppets or animatronics.”
Jonathan Lim Apr 30, 2025 ▶ 23:44 Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer
Assertion Supported
Lim: Checkpoint inhibitors yield five-year survival for one-third of metastatic melanoma patients
“The data here show you that with checkpoint inhibitors, as many as a third of patients reached that important five-year mark.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 10:25 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Supported
Dr. Jonathan Lim: Cancer causes nearly 10 million deaths globally per year
“Cancer is the second leading cause of death, responsible for nearly ten million deaths globally every year.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 4:47 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Partly supported
Lim: Over half of cancer patients present with late-stage disease
“More than half of all patients present with advanced or late stage disease.”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 5:04 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment
Assertion Supported
Lim: Gleevec approval in 2001 launched precision medicine in oncology
“The second revolution is genomically targeted therapy, which really was birthed in the 19 nineties with the development and subsequent approval of Herceptin for breast cancer and Gleevec, which is an oral therapy for leukemia that was approved in 2001 and esse…”
Jonathan Lim Mar 2, 2020 ▶ 5:25 The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Biotech CEO on where we are in the fight to cure cancer Apr 30, 2025 19m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Jonathan Lim was played rather than Jonathan taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
The 5 Revolutions in Cancer Treatment Mar 2, 2020 13m aired address
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