When George Yancopoulos, the Cofounder and CSO of Regeneron, was a postdoc at Columbia and received a faculty position offer, the Department Chair took him out to dinner and said:

“I want to be clear with you about one thing. Once you start your own lab, you can’t publish with Fred anymore.”

(Dr. Fred Alt was Yancopoulos’ supervisor, and mentor at Columbia for ten years.)

“Why?”, Yancopoulos asked. “The whole reason I want to be here is because I want to continue publishing with Fred!”

“You have to prove that you are independent now; you have to show us that you can do this without Fred.”

Yancopoulos responded, “Wait… let me get this straight. If I can cure cancer with Fred Alt, that’s not good enough; I have to cure cancer on my own?…

… how about Brown and Goldstein? Why can’t I and Fred be like Brown and Goldstein?”

(Brown and Goldstein, who won the Nobel Prize together in 1985, were Yancopoulos’ heroes at the time… and they’ve been on Regeneron’s board for more than 30 years!)

“You are neither Brown nor Goldstein”, replied the Chair!

Yancopoulos later reflected, “I understood that I would have to do it alone without Fred, which not only took away the fun but also made Fred my competitor!

Fortunately, it was around that time when I received a cold call from Len Schleifer, and together we founded Regeneron.

At Regeneron, I wanted it to be like the early days with Fred when we were all one family, working together and supporting each other.

That became our model. It’s what we said to the first people we hired, and it remains our model today. Here at Regeneron, no one works in isolation…”

—–

The only way to build an iconic biotech company and bring breakthrough medicines to patients is…”together”.

And that’s the biggest mindset shift for you guys coming out of academia.

So…

• identify your blind spots and find people who complement them early on

• seek mentors who’ve done it before

• build a strong and active Scientific Advisory Board and Board of Directors

• pressure test your assumptions

• hire people who are more skilled or experienced than you

• hire your “counterbalances”, i.e. people who have the same vision but a different approach, mindset, and perspective on the world

• surround yourself with people who challenge you

• choose investors who’re going to fight in the trenches with you for years…

ps: “Back in the ’80s, biotech was like going to the dark side, it meant you were lost forever. It was the time when the first genes were cloned and Schleifer was desperately looking for a gene cloner. It turned out I was the only one who answered his calls!” — George Yancopoulos