Once again, an unplanned move turned out to be the perfect place for me. The flexibility of working for myself was a blessing, since I had a 6-month-old son. I love working with the fund, which was heavily invested in both public and private biotech firms. Steve taught me to understand some of the issues and agendas that investors must face, especially fund managers and venture capitalists who have investors and limited partners who whine about return on investment. He also showed me just what a great investor can bring to a company besides money-he was an active participant on the boards of directors of several of his portfolio companies and he actively stayed in touch with others.
The 1980s were heady days for biotech venture investing, and through Steve, I met and worked with many of the key players. I admired the way this first generation of biotech venture capitalists was focused on building successful operating businesses around this emerging new technology. They had to be swift on their feet, as the rocky ride on Wall Street made financings a challenge and the long product development time frame made smart management critical for survival. This group taught me how to pay attention to a broad range of issues, and not just to get enamored of the sexy science.
I thrived on the chaos and uncertainty of consulting. I loved working on multiple projects simultaneously. I had the opportunity to interact with a huge number of very smart people (most of whom also had great senses of humor), and I started developing a powerful network of people in and around the industry. I learned quickly that you always try to treat people fairly, and always help out when you can-you never know when and where that person will show up again! The phrase "what goes around, comes around" is really true.
But even as I became immersed in the consulting world, I was starting a second business-an industry newsletter. After I had been working with Steve's firm for about a month, he suggested that the RR Report, which he missed, would make a great publication for the venture community that was investing in this emerging industry. He offered me free run of the G.T. offices to work on the newsletter (access to computers, printers, copiers, and the all-important postage machine) in return for my more-regular presence in the office. And so Bio-Venture View, the first newsletter to focus on the business of biotechnology, was born in mid-1986 at 3000 Sand Hill Road, the hotbed of biotech venture capital.
The consulting and publishing sides of my business were a great synergistic fit-my monthly writing fits improved my writing skills immensely, and the increasing flow of company news into my files gave me a growing database of information for the consulting business. The key was keeping an absolutely strict confidentiality in place-no consulting client ever found their confidential information on the pages of Bio-Venture View.
As the newsletter grew in circulation, spreading to the executives in the venture-backed firms and then to the wider biotech community, I was struggling to keep up with the business. I spent my evenings and weekends on the living room floor, stuffing and sealing envelopes full of newsletters or reminder notices or invoices, had reentered my life, as a constant commentator on the wonderful world of biotech finance (she was now an investment banker) and an occasional BW author on financial topics. It was great having someone else whose view of science and business was so complementary to mine. By late 1988, she had quit her job at a leveraged buyout firm and joined Bio Venture Consultants full-time as my partner.
When my second child was about 6 months old, another change came. I was recruited by David Bunnell, a well-known publisher in the computer world, to put together the first daily online news service-focused on the biotech industry. This made me an employee again, although at least this time I ran my group (the editorial room) and was part of the "Gang of Four" that managed the company. Bunnell's team had great experience in the publishing world, and together we created Bio-World.
I had to create a newsroom that could provide very specialized reporting, including copy editors (I had never been copy-edited!) and reporters, and I built a true dream team. We lured Joan O'C. Hamilton away from her long-time post as chief biotech reporter for Business Week; along with Ray Potter, the biotech reporter from the San Jose Mercury News and Chuck Lenatti, a longtime magazine/newsletter editor. We stole Carol Ezzel away from Nature to run our Washington, D.C, office and to set up a network of freelancers around the United States.
Running a daily newsroom was a complete change for me-the pace was outrageous, compared to the monthly crawl of Bio Venture View (which I also was still producing), and I had never worked with professional journalists. But we built a great news service, which transformed reporting in the biotech world and made our industry suddenly very visible to more than just the hard-core insiders. Even the most nonscientific analyst was comfortable reading our daily faxed version of Bio-World, which was designed to resemble a newspaper.
While daily news can be very addictive, I was getting worn out from the relentless pace and I was also chaffing once again at being an employee. So, in early 1991, I left Bio-World and took Bio-Venture View independent once again. Carol and I revved up the consulting business, which had been on the back burner while I ran the newsroom and Carol had her second child. Our client base evolved away from the venture capitalists and toward working directly with early-stage biotech firms that needed help. We wrote business plans, we helped with restarts of companies whose initial strategy didn't work out, we assisted with public and private financings, we worked on finding corporate partners to help companies develop and commercialize their products, and we generally had a great time. Essentially, we got paid the big bucks to learn cool new science and boss around people in suits.
As the consulting business grew up, the networks that Carol and I had nurtured all those years paid off. They brought us great consulting projects and access to the experts whose input we and our clients heeded. In many ways, we act as biotech yentas, matchmakers who look at science, financial issues, and management teams to help bring together the critical mass for the successful growth of the companies. We work with brand-new companies, established multinational pharmaceutical firms, companies in Canada, Asia, and Europe, as well as in the United States.
As time has gone by, we are spending an increasing amount of time giving invited talks at industry conferences-talks about the overall biotech industry, about trends in financings and corporate partnering, about our annual Women in Biotechnology survey that tracks women board members and members of top management, and about moving from science into new careers.
Carol and I are both the beneficiaries of mentors who helped us find our way in new universes, and we field calls every week from students, professors, and industry scientists who are looking for some suggestions on how to investigate the possibilities outside the lab. The increasing pressure on federal funding of research and the increasing number of Ph.D.'s in many scientific disciplines has meant that the demand for academic jobs far outstrips the supply. More and more scientists are forced to consider alternatives at an earlier and earlier stage in their careers.
Even though I don't run gels and columns anymore (and I'm not sure I can still do cardiac puncture on a rat), I very strongly believe that the key to my contribution to our clients lies in my hard-core, hands-on science training. While I have spent the past 15 years learning many other disciplines, it is that core experience that informs how I think and analyze, how I bring together apparently disparate pieces of information. The driving force behind my enthusiasm for my work is the love of the science that lies behind it all.
I encourage all of you to pursue far-flung opportunities, and find some of your own. Oh, and remember that nice young post-doc who first let me loose on an unsuspecting laboratory? He is now wearing a suit as Assistant Director of the Office of Science and Technology at Duke University, building alliances between the scientists and clinicians on campus and the biopharmaceutical industry. His broad scientific knowledge and ability to understand the issues affecting both sides of those negotiations is the key to his success.
So take off your lab coat and check out this new universe. You never know where you might end up.
