Dec 11, 2019
Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Our Investment Syndicates
How to fund scrappy biotech startups is foremost on Jeff Behrens’ mind. He was CEO if a startup that raised $20 million in funding but not one cent from VCs. An invaluable interview for anyone thinking of starting or investing in a life science company.
Highlights include:
- Jeff Behrens Studied Philosophy at Harvard but Stumbled Upon Entrepreneurship: Renaissance Man for the 21st Century
- MIT/Harvard Medical School Collaboration, HST, is Discussed
- Siamab Therapeutics
- Siamab Pursues Therapies Based on the Work of Ajit Varki on the Weird Sugars on the Surface of Cancer Cells
- Siamab Did Not Go the VC Route, I Took a Scrappier Approach to Funding from Other Sources
- Ovarian or Pancreatic Cancers Are Tough to Fight; Siamab Targeted them Based on the Unique Sugars on the Outside of the Cancer Cells
- Creating Lethal Molecules that Attack only the Cancer Cells
- Standard Chemotherapy Is a Carpet-Bombing Approach, Doing Harm to Healthy Cells
- Jeff Behrens Has Started and Run Companies but He has an Unusually Thoughtful Approach to the Work
- VC Are Making Large Bets on “Big-Idea” Companies, Leaving More Targeted Startups Struggling for Funding
- More Targeted Approaches May Be Promising but How Do They Get Funding?
- The Early-Validation Trap
- “So, I think there's an opportunity, there's some funding available, but I think there's a real need for more attention and more creativity around sort of those next stages of how we take those ideas forward”.
- Sal Updates Us on Portfolio Company SQZ Biotech
- How Jeff Behrens Went from Philosophy Major to Entrepreneur
- “…my roommate said at the time, "You're really a business person. Why don't you just make this your thing."”
- Built Telluride Group to 35 Employees & It Got Acquired by a Fidelity-Backed Group
- “And we had enough money from that exit to be able to support that so I started thinking what would I be interested in learning about the life sciences…”
- “…but in biology, it struck me, we just don't know what we're doing. It's just it's hard”.
- “…who makes more money, drugs, devices, healthcare IT or other healthcare investments?”
- Unusual PhD Program for Business People at Lausanne’s EPFL
- “…how often do angel-funded companies go on to raise venture capital?... in tech companies that’s true only 8% of the time…”
- “…only about 4 to 5% of biotech firms start in angel land and then transition on to venture land.”
- Venture Capitalist in Life Sciences: “…have evolved their model dramatically from 10, 15 years ago. So, they're doing much larger rounds. They are syndicating a lot less. They're taking more of the early equity, and most importantly they're creating companies.”
- “...companies that are born out of this model start... They are born with $50 million…”
- Crucial Question for Biotech Entrepreneurs: “…how you get to that pharma exit without needing the venture money?”
- Capital Efficiency Is Growing in Biotech
- How LabShares Newton Came About
- Tenancy in Shared Labs Has Low Turnover Since It’s Not Easy to Get Your Lab Up and Running
- A Discussion of Meenta as Part of the Trend Towards More Capital Efficiency in the Life Sciences
- Jeff Behrens Urges Entrepreneurial Postdocs to Spend Time in Large Companies to Learn How they Work, Before Venturing Out on Their Own
- “One of the few ways you can get to know pharma is working at pharma for a while.”
- Savran Technologies as an Example of a Scrappy Life Science Startup
- “…memo to founders. When you're offered money, take it. You will need more than you expect.”
- Different Paths of Lives Well Lived – The Life of Joe Tosti
- Getting into Business Alongside Your Spouse
- “It's not easy working with your spouse…And you're never far away from the company and all those things.”
- Having His Wife as His Co-Founder Was Key to the Success of Jeff Behrens’ First Company
- “I think there is this unsolved problem of funding, not the first steps of an entrepreneurial scrappy biotech, but sort of the next steps.”