Science is a risky business, and when money is tight, the margin for error gets narrower for those who dare to build biotech companies. Part of what that means is the CEO, or the head of R&D, sometimes ends up being a visionary as well as the chief cook and bottle washer.
“When you’re building a team today, you need to have people with enough former company T-shirts to knit together a quilt in a nursing home,” quipped Bruce Montgomery, the founder and CEO of Seattle-based Cardeas Pharma.
That’s one way of saying biotech startups now need teams of highly skilled, highly experienced people who can go a long way on a little bit of money. That was one of the main themes that came out yesterday at our big Xconomy event, “Reinventing Biotech’s Business Model.”
We had a tremendous turnout at yesterday’s conference at PATH, with a packed house of more than 260 registered guests. There was a terrific mix of entrepreneurs and investors from Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, & Seattle, who told their stories about different ways they are advancing drug development during a historic shrinkage in the venture capital industry. This is the kind of event that we believe will help better connect people and ideas in the innovation community, which is what Xconomy is intended to facilitate, both online and in person.
Special thanks go out to PATH for hosting this event, and to our event sponsors Fenwick & West, Cooley, Wells Fargo Insurance Services, and Christensen, O’Connor, Johnson & Kindness. And, I’d like to thank my colleague Curt Woodward for taking photos, Jim Edwards for his work on the business side, and Richard Freierman on logistics. Here are some of the images Curt and I took from the event. Enjoy!
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| Reinventing Biotech’s Business Model — Corey Goodman (right), the co-founder and partner with venBio, chatted with a couple of guests before leading off the opening keynote chat with John Mendlein, the chairman and CEO of aTyr Pharma. Both Corey and John sported their Seattle-style fleeces—smart move. | |
| Photo by Luke Timmerman |
