In 1981, Hybritech issued its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and raised $12 million, and $33 million in a secondary offering in 1982. Hybritech was founded by cancer researcher Ivor Royston and lab technician Howard Birndorf of the University of California, San Diego, becoming San Diego’s first biotechnology company.

Royston and Birndorf had assembled a business plan calling for the production of monoclonal antibodies for research purposes, but in conducting due diligence on the investment opportunity, Byers formulated a different plan. He proposed to pit the start-up against powerful competition in the clinical diagnostics market.