
Presenting a live Endpoints News event: Managing a biotech in turbulent times
Biotech is one of the smartest, best educated industries on the planet. PhDs abound. We’ve had a long enough track record to see a new generation of savvy, experienced execs coming together to run startups.

And in these times, they are being tested as never before.
Biotech is going through quite a rough patch right now. For 2 years, practically anyone with a decent resume and some half-baked ideas on biotech could start a company and get it funded. The pandemic made it easy in many ways to pull off an IPO, with traditional road shows shut down in exchange for a series of quick Zoom meetings. Generalist investors flocked as the numbers raised soared into the stratosphere.
But it wasn’t all over the top. Some of these far out ideas are destined to change the practice of medicine and save lives. And they will make some people wealthy along the way. The numbers, though, got to be too good to be true. And now it’s time to pay the piper as even good biotechs with strong prospects are being cooked in the same boiling kettle as the bad.
So how do you respond to these extraordinary times?
In a nutshell, that’s what I’ll be exploring during our upcoming live panel discussion at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina during BIO22 week in San Diego on June 14. The networking gets started bright and early between 6 and 7 am. And I’ve got a great panel lined up for the discussion. I’ll be joined by:
— Andrew Lo, one of the original, out-of-the-box thinkers in biotech who’s been fascinating audiences on biotech financing from his post at MIT for years.
— Neil Kumar, CEO of BridgeBio, will be on hand to discuss his own experiences reorganizing the company in the past couple of months.
— Kristina Burrow, the managing director at ARCH, who has funded a slew of biotechs that have laid out extremely ambitious goals, will offer her insights on how she’s advising them through this difficult period.
— The always outspoken Paul Hastings, CEO of Nkarta, has been raising money and navigating troubled waters through the year. He’s got a lot of ideas on what CEOs should do now.
— And Faheem Hasnain, best known for selling Receptos to Celgene for $7.2 billion, rounds out the panel with his insights on pushing the envelope in 2022 — biotech style — as he runs his latest creation, Gossamer.
We’ll get it started with a fireside chat with Sebastian Guth, Bayer’s president of pharmaceuticals for the Americas region, with plenty of networking opportunities built into the breakfast.
And of course, I’ll be there, moderating the discussion, looking to you for some questions. I hope you’ll come and join us for this live event in San Diego. I’ll be staying on well past the end of the panel discussion to chat with the audience. I hope you come by to say hello. And let me know if there are any questions you would like me to ask this group.
It should be fun. This is our first live event in more than 2 years, and I am really looking forward to seeing a biotech crowd come together again.
- Location: Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina
- San Diego Ballroom
333 W Harbor DrSan Diego, CA 92101
- San Diego Ballroom
You can buy tickets for the event here.
You should also check out the full slate of virtual panels and firesides we’re planning for that week. Here’s the link.