I became a confirmed adrenaline junkie-which is a good thing. Stress becomes a constant part of your life. Once you take other people's money, and are responsible for watching over their investment, everything changes. Even more importantly, once you have employees who look to you for their paycheck and health benefits, you realize that your actions impact a wide group of people who depend on you to keep things running. There will always be some crisis or other to be resolved. I suggest taking up boxing or racquetball!
One of the most important skills to have for anyone who is involved in managing a company is the ability to get other people excited and engaged. This is particularly crucial in start up companies, where a very small team of people works very hard in a very high-risk situation. You have to keep people willing to work long hours for what is frequently low pay. At any given point, the company can appear on the threshold of financial or scientific disaster, and the executives at the top have to keep everything moving forward in spite of this. You must be able to motivate folks to take on a broad range of tasks, since a young company can't afford to hire enough employees to have specialists.
The CEO had better know exactly what they want to do with the company, what the goals are, and then he or she must be able to communicate with others who must come together to make this goal a reality. Lots of people start companies with the vague idea that they want to be in a certain area of research or clinical development without really having thought through just how to turn that idea into a sustainable business.
You must be able to persuade a group of people from different walks of life-scientists, technology transfer folks at universities, other companies, investors of various types, physicians, lawyers, journalists-that your business is worthwhile. You must enlist their support of your cause.
Communication is the second great task. If you personally are not comfortable communicating in public, you must bring in someone to be the public voice. The CEO doesn't have to be charismatic (although this certainly helps), but you must be able to communicate clearly what you are doing, why it's important, and you must get the outside world excited about it. The company lives or dies based on your ability to communicate-if outsiders aren't supportive, you will run out of money and the company will die before accomplishing anything worthwhile.
You must be able to decide not only what the company's goals are, but also how you will implement your decisions and stay on track through the inevitable crises. People (employees as well as investors) want to know that the company's leadership is a very clear beacon keeping them off the rocks. You must stay the course, and keep people optimistic rather than panicky. As Woody Allen says, 90% of success is just showing up. It takes about a decade for a new pharmaceutical to move from discovery into the marketplace. The company must survive long enough for an opportunity to come along that you can exploit into a business opportunity. You must be an optimist in order to keep others fired up. If you are pessimistic, if you constantly look to the possible negative outcomes, why should others persevere?
You need to have the ability to collect and synthesize data, the ability to interview people productively, and to ask the right question at the right time to get the information you need. An important part of my training as an internist was learning how to get a good medical history. A CEO must have the ability to identify people to bring into the company who have the right talent and personality traits, and the CEO must be able to find the right technology to in-license, the right sources of financing, and so forth.
I have found that the ability to identify early on the people who will help you and those who will hurt you is a critical, but apparently rare, skill. Young companies are constantly approached by individuals who portray themselves as "friends and supporters" of the company. But often you will find that this friendship lasts only long enough for them to extract whatever they need from you. Sometimes you need to do business with them anyway, but it is always better to know when you are dealing with a real friend and when you are not.
Learn to trust your gut reactions to people and situations, as opposed to over-intellectualizing everything. In my experience, in a fight between my gut and my head, my gut is usually right. For example, we have pulled together a scientific advisory board of leading scientists working in different areas related to SCI. Prior to working with Acorda, these folks often competed with each other for grants and publications. As part of our SAB, they work as a team, sharing information and ideas, as well as technology. This requires a strong team spirit and a willingness to work together without betraying the confidence of the group.
My chief scientific officer and I met with a scientist whom we liked immensely and who we thought could provide crucial technical expertise to the SAB. This person elicited a very strong reaction from other scientists in their technical field. Numerous people in the field gave us very negative feedback-it was a real dilemma. But my gut said strongly this person was important for achieving our ultimate goal. I went with my gut. Three years later, this has shown itself to be one of my best decisions. This person is one of the key performers on the team, and a real asset to the others on the team. Had we gone with our heads, we would have made the wrong decision.
This gut instinct will be important when making decisions about potential corporate partners, bankers, and employees. Also, young companies tend to use consultants to help handle some of the more specialized tasks, such as business development, financial analysis of deal points, corporate communications with the press and the financial community, clinical and regulatory affairs, and manufacturing. Because these folks are working outside of the company, you need to identify those folks who really have your best interests at heart and who are conscientious and honest.
The Pros and Cons of Being the Boss
What I like the most: I enjoy building teams of extraordinary individuals to do extraordinary things. It is a rush to get a group of very talented and motivated people of good will to come together to do something challenging and worthy. And we are all working toward goals that we can be very proud of in a humane sense. This is the best of all worlds.
What I like the least: Invariably, our progress in the science exceeds our ability to fund the work. I am impatient and hate the time needed to raise money. Biotech firms never seem to have enough funds to implement fully their strategic plan, to build the team as fast as they want. This means that I have to spend an inordinate amount of time gathering the capital until the company is able to fund itself. This is particularly true in biotech, because the product development path is long (7 to 10 years), and it takes years to get product to market and generate significant revenues.
One of the problems with running a lean machine is that the money limits how many employees the company has and what they are paid for working in a very high-risk environment. I didn't receive a salary for the first 3 years. Instead, I worked for a significant chunk of founders' stock, which will someday be very valuable if we make Acorda a success. Recently, the board voted me an annual salary of $120,000, based on the closing of our first corporate deal and the company having made sufficient progress and having raised sufficient funding.
