Life Science Success Stories

Silicon Valley is world-renown for its technology, its business success stories, and its innovative and entrepreneurial culture. While we're still reaping the benefits of the age of the personal computer and the age of the internet, the new buzz in the last few years has been on the convergence of bio, nano and information technologies. This month's panel will focus on life science success stories and consider how life science companies differ from more strictly high-tech companies, which key success factors for life science companies, and other thoughts, while sharing stories of how individual companies managed to succeed in this challenging new industry

The facilitators and panelists for the September 15, 2006 Connections meeting on Life Science Success Stories were facilitator Ken Macrae, Ed Amento from Theracos, Sergio Garcia from Fenwick & West, Geetha Rao, and Dave Whitman from Pharmadyn. Below are some words of advice shared by the facilitator and panelists, as well as the collective wisdom of the audience.

• Define success
  Venture Funding?
  Delivery of product?
  Merger/Acquisition Event?
  Great Team?
  
• Grasp and communicate the market opportunity and trends
  VCs can work with technology challenges and even leadership challenges, market challenges are much more difficult to address
  

Get support

• IP and corporate attorney from established, well-respected firm like Fenwick & West has many advantages
  Protect what you have, build the fences;
  When working in partnerships, attorneys can help develop an understanding of who owns which IP
  Attorneys from established firms are better positioned to negotiate with VCs as they have more leverage
  
• Finance professional
  
• Business Development professional
  
• Management professional

Don't have a one-man team
Management Team should be able to speak candidly, manage conflict, build consensus
Corporate Board
Scientific Board (not just the big names): Technical advice and cross-checking; Represent product to professional environment, users, evangelists; Regulatory pathway; Put investor's minds at rest

• Company qualities
  Must have a balance of vision, passion, discipline and risk management
  Senior management must be able to balance the business people (rewarded for teamwork, collective problem-solving, seeing beyond the data) and the scientists (rewarded for facts, being #1)
  Senior management must have the ability to manage the tremendous cash-burn of R&D activities while sustaining the enterprise and growing
  

Trends in Funding:

• Pharmaceutical companies are funding earlier stage companies
• Consequently, VCs are looking for funding opportunities before pharma companies fund them
• As a result, entrepreneurs may have more latitude in the negotiations, both in seeking funding earlier in development and also negotiating governance agreements through the funding process.
• Mergers and acquisitions are a more common exit path.