I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast. I talked with Dr. Shalabh Gupta, founder, chairman, and CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics, about the leadership principle he says built a culture his team isn’t afraid to fail in.
When a CEO publicly takes ownership of every organizational mistake while crediting the team for every win, Shalabh Gupta holds that employees stop protecting themselves and start proposing solutions they would not have offered otherwise, the approach he used while building Unicycive Therapeutics from its 2016 founding to a Nasdaq initial public offering five years later.
Gupta’s track record runs deeper than one company. He previously founded BioCycive Inc., acquired by Sorrento Therapeutics in a deal valued at more than $160 million, and serves as CEO of Globavir Biosciences, a diagnostic platform company that has partnered its technology with Bio-Rad and Danaher. Before any of it, he was an attending physician at NYU.
This episode is for CEOs and founders trying to build a culture where their team takes smart risks instead of playing it safe to avoid blame.
Key Takeaways
- A CEO who publicly takes the blame for organizational mistakes while crediting the team for wins creates a culture where employees stop operating from fear and propose solutions they would not have offered otherwise, the leadership principle Shalabh Gupta used while scaling Unicycive Therapeutics from its 2016 founding to a Nasdaq IPO in 2021.
- Startup CEOs facing 50 competing priorities scale faster by deliberately narrowing to the top three to five tasks and consciously ignoring the rest, rather than making incremental progress on everything at once.
- Investors function as more than capital. After Unicycive’s main investors signaled that a second drug in development was not their priority, Gupta deprioritized it to concentrate resources on the company’s lead treatment for high phosphate in dialysis patients.
- A biotech company without legacy systems can apply AI directly to commercialization, such as analyzing where patients are not filling prescriptions by geography, rather than building AI into research and discovery the way larger pharmaceutical companies do.
How CEOs Build a Culture Where Teams Aren’t Afraid to Fail
Gupta’s rule for his leadership team is direct: “If we make a mistake, it would be me making the mistake, not you.” Wins work the opposite way. He tells his team that if the organization succeeds, the credit belongs to them, not to him.
Gupta says this asymmetry is intentional, not generous for its own sake. As a leader, he believes you have to own the downfall for the organization, and that taking the blame yourself creates a culture where people are not afraid, because they stop protecting themselves and start thinking about what is best for the organization. The effect, in his telling, is a team that proposes creative solutions it would not have offered under a culture of blame.
How CEOs Narrow 50 Priorities Down to the Three That Matter
Gupta names prioritization as the first thing he had to figure out scaling his own leadership style for a Nasdaq-listed company. He describes startup to-do lists that balloon to 50 items, and says the discipline is knowing which three to five matter. “It takes a wisdom to understand which are the top three or five things you can do and ignore the remaining 45 or 47 of them,” he said.
He applies the same logic to team building. Gupta compares assembling an executive team to a jigsaw puzzle: fill the biggest pieces first. For Unicycive, that meant sequencing the largest organizational needs, raising capital, building the clinical team, and building the commercial team, ahead of smaller hires, rather than trying to staff every function at once.
How CEOs Use Investors and Advisors to Find Their Blind Spots
Gupta is candid about the limits of being a generalist CEO. “I may not be good at everything, but I know a lot of things about a lot of things,” he said, but he is equally clear that every CEO has blind spots, and that no degree or business school course teaches a leader how to handle the specific problems that come up day to day. Filling those blind spots, in his view, depends on humility and a willingness to receive critical feedback without getting defensive.
That is where investors come in. “Good investors give you money, but more importantly, they give you a wisdom,” Gupta said. He compares a heads-down operator to a horse with blinders in Central Park, focused on the straight path to the finish line but unable to see what is happening around it. Investors, board members, and advisors, he says, help a CEO filter signal from noise and see what a focused operator misses on their own.
Gupta points to a direct example. Unicycive has two drugs in development. After hearing from its main investors that the second drug was not their priority, the company put that program on hold to concentrate resources on its lead treatment for high phosphate in patients on dialysis. He still treats the final call as his own to own: “Can I go with this decision and sleep well at night?” is the test he applies before any decision that will disappoint some stakeholders, even when the input that shaped it came from outside the company.
How Biotech CEOs Use AI to Scale Commercialization, Not Discovery
Gupta splits Unicycive’s AI strategy into two distinct uses, and is explicit that the company emphasizes one over the other. Clinical discovery and clinical trials are not where Unicycive applies AI: the company is not running drug discovery or its own trials at the scale where that would matter most.
Commercialization is where Gupta sees the leverage. Unicycive uses AI to analyze regional prescription fulfillment behavior, identifying places like California’s Central Valley or a specific Florida county where patients are not filling prescriptions, to decide whether a CSF interacting directly with physicians in that area would help close the gap.
Gupta credits part of this approach to having no legacy systems to defend. “We have an ability to start fresh and there is something nice about the starting fresh,” he said, contrasting Unicycive’s position with a big pharmaceutical company that has to build AI initiatives on top of existing architecture. The goal, in his words, is using the most efficient resources to get the company’s drug to as many patients and physicians as possible.
The Framework to Scaling a Company
| Principle | What it means | Named evidence from this interview |
| Own every mistake publicly, credit every win to the team | A CEO who takes blame for organizational failures while crediting the team for successes removes the fear that keeps employees from proposing real solutions | At Unicycive Therapeutics, Gupta built this into team culture while scaling the company from its 2016 founding to a Nasdaq IPO in 2021 |
| Narrow every list to the few priorities that matter | When a leader faces 50 competing tasks, the discipline of scaling is choosing the top three to five and consciously ignoring the rest | Gupta applies the same logic to team building at Unicycive, filling the largest organizational needs, capital, clinical team, commercial team, before addressing smaller gaps |
| Let investors fill your blind spots, not just your balance sheet | Outside investors, board members, and advisors see what a focused operator misses, and that outside signal should change decisions | After Unicycive’s main investors signaled its second drug was not their priority, Gupta put that program on hold to concentrate resources on the company’s lead treatment for dialysis patients with high phosphate |
| Apply AI where you have no legacy system to defend | A company without inherited infrastructure should target AI at the part of the business that benefits most, not wherever competitors already use it | Unicycive uses AI to analyze regional prescription fulfillment patterns, in markets like California’s Central Valley and counties in Florida, to decide where physician outreach will have the most impact |
Quotes from This Episode
- “If we make a mistake, it would be me making the mistake, not you.” (Shalabh Gupta, MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Unicycive Therapeutics)
- “It takes a wisdom to understand which are the top three or five things you can do and ignore the remaining 45 or 47 of them.” (Shalabh Gupta, MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Unicycive Therapeutics)
- “Good investors give you money, but more importantly, they give you a wisdom.” (Shalabh Gupta, MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Unicycive Therapeutics)
- “Can I go with this decision and sleep well at night?” (Shalabh Gupta, MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Unicycive Therapeutics)
- “We have an ability to start fresh and there is something nice about the starting fresh.” (Shalabh Gupta, MD, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Unicycive Therapeutics)
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CEO respond when their team makes a mistake?
Shalabh Gupta, founder, chairman, and CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics, tells his team that he will take the blame for any organizational mistake, while any win belongs to them. Gupta says this removes the fear that keeps employees from proposing real solutions, because they stop protecting themselves and start thinking about what is best for the organization. He used this approach while scaling Unicycive from its 2016 founding to a Nasdaq initial public offering in 2021.
How should a CEO prioritize when there are too many things to do?
Shalabh Gupta, CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics, says the discipline of scaling is narrowing a list of 50 competing tasks down to the top three to five and consciously ignoring the rest. Gupta applies the same logic to building his executive team, comparing it to assembling a puzzle: fill the largest pieces first, such as raising capital and building out the clinical and commercial teams, before addressing smaller organizational gaps.
How can a CEO find their own blind spots?
Shalabh Gupta, CEO of Unicycive Therapeutics, says investors, board members, and advisors are often the best source for identifying a CEO’s blind spots, comparing a focused operator to a horse with blinders that sees only the straight path ahead. Gupta credits his investors with helping Unicycive decide to put a second drug in development on hold after they signaled it was not their priority, allowing the company to concentrate resources on its lead treatment for dialysis patients with high phosphate.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Themselves
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and five years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
