About
Mark Surles runs companies, and still writes the first version himself.
He started as a computer scientist. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, advised by Frederick P. Brooks Jr., he created Sculpt for his Ph.D.: a chemist grabs a protein on screen and watches it relax in real time. As a research fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and UC San Diego Biochemistry, he put that work on the cover of Science's 1993 issue on the future of computing. He then founded Interactive Simulations, Inc. and turned Sculpt into the first desktop 3D graphics and interactive modeling application for drug design. He raised venture, angel, and SBIR funding, recruited the board and team, and sold to most of the top-20 pharmaceutical companies. In 1999 MDL Information Systems, part of Reed Elsevier, acquired the company.
At MDL he ran business development and marketing for a $20M portfolio of chemistry, biology, and decision-support products. He designed a drug-safety product line that the Reed Elsevier CEO backed as a $50M opportunity, and he launched an FDA Cooperative R&D Agreement on predicting adverse events. Next came a run of company-building roles. At Viking Systems, a public surgical-imaging company, he led 3D and information products. For a private equity group he sold a 147-patent health-IT portfolio acquired from IBM. At AVACEN he took a Stanford-originated migraine device through clinical trial and FDA filing. At CONNECT he mentored founders as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
For thirteen years Mark served as CEO of ScienceMedia, Inc. He turned a low-margin services firm into a cloud product company: five-fold revenue growth, nearly 70% recurring, and SaaS-level gross margins. He led product development and, with the ScienceMedia team, created its two products: SMi Source, the largest disease-education library for life science professionals, with about 1,000,000 views a year, and SMi Trial, which created the market for risk-based clinical protocol training. He led every financing, the board, and finance operations.
Today, through MCS Strategies, LLC, Mark advises CEOs, boards, and investors on strategy, growth financing, pricing, market sizing, and corporate development. Since leaving ScienceMedia he has focused on deep product development with AI and has shipped Answer Reel, which gives trusted video answers from massive content libraries; PillSheet, an iPhone app that reads prescription bottles aloud for older adults and people with low vision; and a rebuild of Sculpt from its 1994 papers in about a week.
One experienced builder with the right AI tools now does what once took a funded team, and Mark helps companies capture that advantage. For larger builds and managed hosting he works with Jean Holt and Hatchery of Bozeman, Montana.