Importance of focus in the CEO’s decision making

I spent a day in a situation-room session with a CEO of an early-stage biotech. While I was solely concentrated on the outcomes, the CEO was anxious and overwhelmed with “all the decisions he had to make.” The boldest move on the table was not a new program. It was the decision to narrow focus. […]

Policy uncertainty drives capital investments down

We live in a time when businesses, large and small, are asking their advisors, “What does this mean for me?” more than ever before. Yesterday, it was a most-favored nation policy; today, it’s The OBBB. Policy uncertainty is typically highly countercyclical, which means that those in charge tend to make abrupt policy changes only during […]

Sidelining small molecules: Economic hypotheses

I keep coming back to one question: In our sector’s race to extract margin, are we sidelining the very engine that once ensured broad patient access: small molecules? I wrote down my three economic hypotheses. 1. Investor behavior isn’t strictly rational. Biopharma isn’t an efficient market; too complex, too probabilistic. Early-stage investors often optimize for […]

Assessing human capital of founding teams before investment

Spent last week helping one of the VCs assess a startup for investment. As always, the pitch deck told one story, but the founder interviews told another. When you are in the room, what separates a promising team from an investable one often is not the technology or the addressable market. It is the human […]