When Joshua Boger started Vertex in 1989, the original business plan was to focus on antivirals except HIV.

He recounts, “The reason we said antivirals except HIV was not because we were anti-HIV, but because of the perception within the investment community at that time.

If you mentioned the word virus, they immediately associated you with HIV, the only virus they were familiar with.

Wall Street had decided that HIV companies wouldn’t be successful, either scientifically or commercially.

If we had labelled ourselves as an HIV company, we would have struggled to raise money.

In reality, we didn’t have any ideas about HIV. However, we had numerous ideas about other viruses. So that’s why we said antivirals except HIV.

But guess what… our first product was in HIV!

And that happened because the passionate scientists that you’re trying to motivate to do other projects got some ideas about HIV and started to work on them at the midnight to 6 am shift!

I mean this literally, midnight to 6 am, I’m not kidding! That’s when they did the work.

And they started getting results… very promising results, and they convinced me that maybe we did have some ideas about HIV!

I’ve always respected that passion from the scientists…” — Joshua Boger, Founder and former CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals

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Scientists don’t burn out because they work too hard, they burn out when their hard work doesn’t go anywhere.

They burn out when they are confused…when nobody tells them how their efforts help the business and have an impact on patients.

They burn out when the leadership doesn’t communicate enough with them, i.e. “yesterday they said I should focus on x, today they’re saying focus on y… but why???”

They burn out when there is no transparency about change, priorities, strategy, and company transitions.

They burn out when the strong vision they initially bought into is not there anymore.

They burn out when there’s no psychological safety at work, i.e. a sense of confidence that management will not embarrass, reject or punish them for speaking up or taking risks.

Leadership is about getting people excited about a North Star and giving them the freedom to figure out how they personally contribute to that mission…

Loving you, Angelos.

ps: “We had an X-ray crystallographer who wanted to be close to the company so he rented the closest department to our Labs which was actually about 100 feet away. Sometimes he didn’t go back to his apartment for 3 months. He slept in front of the X-ray generator because it was warm. It ran all the time with 25 KW of power, so at night it was a warm place for him to sleep. We had some pretty dedicated folks…” — Joshua Boger