Since that time, I founded Bio-Venture View, a monthly biotech industry newsletter, and Bio-people Magazine; I was the founding editor of the first daily biotech fax newspaper, Bio-World; and I started a consulting business with another former scientist, providing business, technology, and financial consulting to startup biotech firms and multinational pharmaceutical companies. While I talk, write, and help build companies around science, I haven't done a hands-on experiment since 1984.
And I couldn't be happier.
This completely unplanned-for transition has led me into more opportunities to learn about new science, to spend time with world-class researchers pushing back new frontiers, and to communicate the excitement and promise of that technology with the nonscientific world. And what other biochemist can claim to have been quoted in that respected scientific journal, Town & Country?
When I crossed that line from scientist to "suit" person, there were very few examples for me to study. Researchers in the biological sciences were just starting to believe that it might be okay to leave academia and go into biotech companies. I literally did not know a single person who had made the transition-and I had no idea what a scientist out of the lab could actually do! I had spent my entire science career immersed in a very rarefied environment, surrounded by other biomedical researchers who saw the move to company-based science as the most unusual career move you could make.
Right now, you probably can't imagine why a science background can be valuable in being a stock analyst, a publisher, an entrepreneurial chief executive officer, a venture capitalist, or a government policy expert. But, it is the science that taught us to think analytically, to structure an approach to new areas, to forge ahead into new territory without fear.
The world is full of MBAs who long to enter the burgeoning biotech field, but who just can't master the intricacies of the technology sufficiently to be valuable to their companies or to their investors; patent lawyers who struggle with patent applications because they can't fully grasp the prior art in the scientific literature; information providers who don't understand that information they sell, and thus have a difficult time telling the difference between crucial and just interesting data.
Don't let anyone tell you that science is a dead end, now that becoming a full-tenured professor seems out of reach. And don't believe anyone who tells you that it is a waste of time to pursue a science education unless you plan to stay in the lab. There is a whole, wide universe out there, just waiting for you to explore it.
So How Did This Happen?
Back when I was in seventh grade, it came to me-I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. The teacher was showing us how to drip acid on a piece of rock to discover if it was limestone. This simple-minded experiment had a huge impact on me, the idea that you could do experiments to figure out something that you didn't know already, that you could query the universe! This appealed to me immensely, probably in part because I had already developed a slight problem with authority figures and I really liked the idea that you could find out answers independently.
While the specific field of interest evolved over time, the basic drive toward lab work never changed. At Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, my biochemistry focus shifted a bit when I took my first immunology course, taught by a young scientist fresh out of his post-doc at Yale. Immunology was just on the verge of converting from a phenomenology (okay, let's stick this heterogeneous garnish into the bunny and see what happens!) into a realm where a protein biochemist could have some fun and learn some cool new stuff! My teacher was the first to let me into the wonderful of hands-on science-I was in love.
I moved to Texas for my graduate work in the lab of Dr. Benjamin Papermaster, where the focus was on applying the tools of biochemistry to purifying and characterizing the proteins that carried the messages (kill that tumor, knock off the virally infected cell!) for the immune system. I was intrigued by the idea that we could use our work to find a way to provide cancer patients with the immune factors their own systems were not making, moving away from the incredibly toxic chemotherapy drugs that were the only pharmaceuticals available at the time.
It was also increasingly clear that academia was not for me-I couldn't stand the thought of teaching one more medical student lab course. I started interviewing at pharmaceutical companies, but I was discouraged by their apparent propensity for hiring only middle-aged white guys as scientists (not to mention the white shirts and ties in the lab). Those companies seemed too conservative for me, and my little problem with authority figures had not gone away.
In 1980, I was in the midst of a post-doc in the interferon lab of Dr. Howard Johnson when I got a phone call from a scientist from a newly formed company-Genentech, Inc., in South San Francisco, California. While I had no idea what the heck this "biotechnology" industry was, my ears perked up when he said that the company was only 2 years old and had chosen cytokines-my area of interest-as an initial research focus. We agreed to meet in Paris, at the week-long International Immunology Congress. To this day, I am convinced that it was my ability to order him his first full meal in France that got me the job, as much as it was my research.
In spite of howls of "traitor" from my academic colleagues, Genentech turned out to be exactly what I was looking for, in many ways. The labs were packed with young post-docs and new Ph.D.'s with no commercial experience, along with just about every piece of equipment you can imagine. The corporate environment was very entrepreneurial-Genentech was one of the first biotech companies formed, and it changed the ground rules for doing science in a corporate setting. Dress codes were nonexistent, scientists kept whatever schedules they wanted (being ex-post-docs, we all worked 18-hour days, at least 6 days a week), and we didn't have to write grants or teach medical students! I was working with some of the best scientists in a broad range of disciplines-protein chemistry, immunology, tumor biology, molecular biology, X-ray crystallography, amino acid sequencing, cell assay development, and so on. I was in heaven.
It was at Genentech that my "jack of all trades, master of none" personality, first nurtured in Johnson's lab, really came into play. While I was supposed to be focused exclusively on design of assay systems and purification schemes for certain cytokines, I spent a lot of time wandering the halls and learning how to do amino acid composition and sequencing, RNA purification (and why you really don't want phenol on your hands), and some really hard-core protein biochemistry. I learned about the problems in designing productive animal studies, the challenges of clinical development of complex biologicals, and the even bigger challenges of growing a young entrepreneurial business from 75 people who all knew each other, to 150 people, to 300 people and more.
During my Genentech stint, I spent time as a project team leader. The phrase "herding cats" springs to mind when I remember what it was like to get a group of aggressive, competitive scientists from different departments to quit bickering and start cooperating so that the project could move forward. This experience convinced me that people management skills were crucial to a successful business-and it also convinced me that I needed to improve those skills.
The other change in my thought process was the realization that science for science's sake wasn't all that satisfying to me-I wanted my work to contribute to developing a new therapeutic that could help patients. I wanted to know how the company decided which science projects would make the best products-what issues, besides science, had to be considered?
As luck would have it, my incredible ineptness at corporate politics and frustration with the "pushing on limp spaghetti" aspect of team-building in a non-team environment propelled me out of the lab and into the best place to learn the answer to that question-business development.
I wanted desperately to leave Genentech and the constant battles, but I couldn't find a bench job in the area that would not be in conflict with my project at Genentech. I literally had no idea how to find a non-bench job. The only scientist I knew who had made the transition was a Ph.D. biochemist who became a patent lawyer-and law did not beckon to me at all. I started scanning the newspaper want ads and reading the classified ads in the back of Science and Nature. Months went by before I stumbled on an ad for "Advisor to the CEO" at a company I had never heard of, California Biotechnology, Inc. I had no idea what California Biotechnology, Inc. did, but what the heck, they were looking for a Ph.D. with biotech experience, and I certainly could give advice! (Of course, my shy and retiring personality might be a drawback ....)
I sent in a resume, and got invited in for an interview with the CEO and the vice president of business development. It turned out that Cal Bio was another biotech firm, and the CEO wanted me to help analyze the huge number of ongoing science projects and help the management team determine which great product opportunities were and which were not.
The perfect job! I had to learn how to analyze science not just from the perspective of experimental design and data, but also through examining intellectual property issues, competition-not only from those in the same technology area, but also from other areas that might compete in the marketplace; I had to build a network of clinicians and learn what they saw as critical medical problems that required a novel therapeutic approach; I had to understand what it would take to develop such a therapeutic from bench to FDA approval and through into the marketplace; and I had to learn what other companies, both big pharma and biotech, were in that marketplace already. Luckily, I had a great mentor-Stefan Borg, who had a molecular biology background plus an MBA degree. Stefan taught me the basics of business development, and encouraged me on a daily basis.
I loved it! My science training in tracking down information and learning how pieces of data fit together to form a picture came in very handy, along with the ability to critically evaluate and analytically work through to a potentially unexpected answer. I absolutely loved working in such a broad range of disciplines. It was my job to track down experts in various fields and entice them into telling me everything I needed to know. In other words, I got paid to be educated in new areas by the experts-what a great concept!
I found that my scientific background and degree were almost more important than any growing business sense-just mentioning that Ph.D. and the labs in which I had worked gave me instant credibility with wary scientists who were getting really tired of talking to nonscientists-the bankers, analysts, lawyers, and corporate executives who wanted to put their inventions to work.
As I started putting together my reports to the management team on these projects, I found that I had to communicate the key concepts and issues in language that they understood. If the CEO didn't grasp the gist of my recommendations, all that work was useless to the company, no matter how profound my analysis. This basic fact of life forced me to improve my writing skills, which consisted strictly of knowing how to write dry journal articles for people in my very narrow field. I found that I loved to write, and I loved to find ways to communicate to others my excitement about an area of science.
This led me to start an in-house newsletter-the RR Report-to keep management informed about the activities of the competing biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and to highlight interesting scientific papers and conference presentations that might be good projects for the company. I had to learn how to use computers and word processing programs to generate my reports and the newsletter-the departmental secretary had informed me that she "didn't work for girls." I learned how to build databases, because it was the only way to keep track of the information in my newsletters. While I whined about having to learn this stuff back then, it gave me the confidence to tackle computer hardware and software (it also taught me not to read the manual).
This little newsletter brought me to the attention of Dr. Steve Bennett, an M.D./Ph.D. from Stanford, who had traveled around the world for the World Health Organization. When he tried to retire, he was recruited to run the medical portfolio of G.T. Capital Management's Emerging Technologies fund. Steve was an important investor in Cal Bio and he decided that putting a Ph.D. in business development was a great idea. He introduced himself, and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
