“Biologists and scientists are an angry crowd.”, said Nvidia’s Jensen Huang at theRecursion JPM24 event. That’s also my experience working with you guys. You’re VERY angry, and that’s the most beautiful thing about you. I’ll explain, but first, here’s what Jensen said: “I’m super excited to be here. First of all, this is not my…

Biotech CEOs, your job is not just to raise money. Fundraising is all-consuming. It becomes a critical mission for the CEO. “I am responsible for all these people. I must succeed. They trusted me with this mission.” You tie your whole self-worth to a check. “No check? I’m a failure.” While extreme focus is essential,…

When Stelios Papadopoulos, aka the Godfather of biotech, was asked why he loves biotech, he said: “What intrigues me the most is this whole process of taking a casual idea in the lab. Sometimes you sit with a cup of coffee and you say, gee, how about this? And then, twenty-five years later, there’s somebody…

15 principles for building and managing a multidisciplinary biotech team: 1. Hire “polyglots”. “It’s hard to build a multidisciplinary team from hyper-disciplinarians. People who speak multiple languages have an easier time learning another one.” — George Church “Bilinguals can bridge the chasm and play the role of the translator between disciplines. They are rare but…

1. From scientist to politician The biotech industry has some unique challenges: • long lifecycles • capital intensity • high risk • pharma alliances • regulatory scrutiny To navigate these challenges you need to build strong communication, sales and networking skills. You have to be incrementally better at fundraising and attuned to corporate development. You…

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…

Daniel Skovronsky made Eli Lilly the most valuable drug company by market cap (Sep 2023). His company was acquired by Lilly and within 8 years he became Lilly’s CSO. He took brave bets in areas no one was willing to go for patients—and he won. Here are eight principles from Dan Skovronsky’s leadership playbook: 1.…

He 5X’ed AstraZeneca’s productivity from pre-clinical to phase III completion and transformed the company’s R&D strategy, culture and approach to innovation. The more I researched Mene Pangalos and immersed myself in his interviews, the more I found myself inspired by his exceptional communication skills and his ability to unite people around a common vision. 10…

“Drug discovery is an insanely complicated activity; what makes a great leader in our industry is the ability to hold a team together for a very long time.”—Joshua Boger, Founder of Vertex 1. Don’t Tell a Star What to Do. A biotech team is a bunch of brilliant PhDs, postdocs, and scientists. These folks are…