Timing and the Transitory Nature of Biotech Startups - Brief Article

Physician Executive, July, 2001 by Kent Bottles

A bittersweet feeling overtook me during my senior year of medical school at Case Western Reserve University.

I wanted to stay in Cleveland. I loved the medical school, my friends, my growth as a beginning physician, Bellfield Street in Cleveland Heights where I lived, and the Saturday pickup softball games at the end of the street.

I wanted to stay because my life was perfect. And yet I knew if I stayed, my life would change. Many of the people who meant the most to me were leaving after graduation for residencies on either coast. I knew I could not stop the change that was coming.

That bittersweet feeling hit again just recently when I left my position as chief knowledge officer at Genomics Collaborative. I left willingly, eagerly, to help organize a biotech venture capital fund on Wall Street that will invest in genomic and proteomic companies.

The move is a good one. It makes sense in the overall development of my career:

* From practicing pathologist

* To medical director of managed care

* To pathology department chair

* To executive search managing director

* To biotech startup executive

* And now, venture capitalist

And yet, for about nine months Genomics Collaborative was the perfect place for me to pursue my education as a physician entrepreneur. When I joined the company, there were only about a dozen employees. I had to be a jack-of-all-trades: pathologist, lecturer, venture capital fundraiser, manager, leader, and a recruiter.

I loved the challenge of working in so many fields at the same time and learning so much so quickly. The only other time I learned that much in such a short period of time was as a resident at University of California San Francisco.

Transition

As Genomics Collaborative grew larger (there are almost 100 employees now), specialists joined the company to do parts of my job better and faster than I could. I had to reinvent myself several times at Genomics Collaborative as the needs of the company evolved. Just as I learned as a senior medical student, I discovered the transitory nature of my perfect job as the organization matured.

I recently heard Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, give a speech to a venture capital meeting in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He talked about biotech start-up companies' changing character and work environment at different stages of their development.

He also announced he was leaving his position as a venture capitalist at Accel Partners in Palo Alto because he realized he really loved the first stages of a startup best. Those are the stages where there are many more ideas and challenges than employees. Talking to him at lunch, I detected an emotion similar to the one I experienced when I graduated from medical school.

The price of constant innovation and change is people have to give up their natural desire for security and stability. And they have to take responsibility for continually improving their skills. And perhaps more importantly, they must continuously redefine what they want to contribute through their work.

People who worked at Apple when John Sculley was CEO recall that he was blunt about no guaranteed jobs for life. However, he did promise to provide employees an environment of constant challenges and learning so they would be better positioned in the labor market when it was time to move on.

Randy Komisar, another prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur, makes a similar point in his enlightening book The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur.

Commenting on the common problem of the founder or CEO of a startup outliving his usefulness to the organization as the company grows, Komisar identifies three different types of CEO that a startup needs:

1. The Retriever must assemble from the muck the core team and the product around a coherent vision.

2. The Bloodhound must find the market and assemble an operating team.

3. The Husky must lead the team with constancy and scalability.

"None of these...is top dog," Komisar says, and it is rare to find all these talents in the same person or even in a team at the precise time the organization requires them.

Whirl of activity

To the outside world, and sometimes I suspect to my family, the constant whirl of activity and job changing may appear to lack direction. However, for me it's perfectly sensible and consistent. I am continuing to try to pursue those goals I identified in 1998 when the health care world was shaken by the Allegheny bankruptcy.

The goals include to:

* Take risks

* Learn and grow intellectually

* Become a better person, husband, and parent

* Make a real contribution to the development of the new genetics and proteomics

* Be of service to the various communities to which I belong

Mitch Albom in Thursdays with Morrie described his mentor's recipe for a meaningful life. "Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

I think piano tuner Eugene Russell, one of the few satisfied workers in Studs Terkel's book Working, would agree with Morrie's advice. Russell said in his interview: "I don't see any possibility of separating my life from my work.... Everything we do in our lives has something to do with respectability. What it appears to someone else is not too important as long as we do a good job and as long as we do it honestly.