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Masterclass: Building Biotech Businesses
This masterclass is for anyone in biotech or life sciences, for students and entrepreneurs already active in these fields, and anyone with an interest in building a successful biotech company. The host of this masterclass is Ulf Grawunder, a highly successful biotech entrepreneur. He shares his experience building and selling several biotech businesses out of Switzerland.
In 12 video lessons, you will learn Ulf’s views and tools from building his biotech companies. Complete the lessons one by one or feel free to skip between them, they are each individual units in their own.
Participate actively
Before you begin, please download the free workbook (pdf, 2.5MB) to follow along with the lessons.
Throughout this masterclass, the workbook asks you to think about your own biotech venture. You will walk away from each chapter with actionable items for your own business that you can tackle right away. Of course, there is no right or wrong in these end of chapter questions. They are there to reflect and help you consolidate the learnings.
About Ulf Grawunder
Dr. Ulf Grawunder has co-founded several biotech companies including NBE-Therapeutics, a Swiss company developing antibody-drug conjugates for cancer treatment. As CEO, Ulf sold NBE-Therapeutics to Boehringer Ingelheim for $1.4 billion in 2021. His previous company 4-Antibody was acquired by U.S.-based Agenus for $50 million in 2014. In 2017, he co-founded T-CURX, a company that develops novel cell therapies for cancer treatments. Ulf serves on various boards of non-profit and for-profit life-science organizations and is vice-president and board member of the Swiss Biotech Association.
A biochemist by training with a PhD from the Basel Institute for Immunology, Ulf worked at Washington University School of Medicine (USA), the University of Southern California (USA) and the Basel Institute for Immunology. He also holds a Diploma of Technology Entrepreneurship from the University St. Gallen (HSG) and teaches an advanced program in BioEntrepreneurship at the Universita della Svizzera Italiana (USI).
Video Lessons
| Introduction | 3 minutes |
| Lesson 1: From Science to Entrepreneurship | 25 minutes |
| Lesson 2: Founding a Biotech Startup | 39 minutes |
| Lesson 3: Finding Your Purpose | 15 minutes |
| Lesson 4: Mindset and Skills | 24 minutes |
| Lesson 5: Finance and Fundraising | 30 minutes |
| Lesson 6: Innovation, R&D, Prototyping | 21 minutes |
| Lesson 7: Producing and Distributing a Product | 29 minutes |
| Lesson 8: Networking, Marketing and Sales | 28 minutes |
| Lesson 9: Pricing a Biotech Innovation | 10 minutes |
| Lesson 10: Team and Leadership | 18 minutes |
| Lesson 11: Parting Thoughts | 7 minutes |
| Bonus Lesson 12: Coaching Session | 39 minutes |
Introduction
“If you have discovered an innovation that could be useful commercially, I can only encourage you to make the jump from academic research to putting this into the marketplace as an entrepreneur.” Welcome to Building Biotech Businesses with Ulf Grawunder!
Duration: 4 minutes
Lesson 1: From Science to Entrepreneurship
Ulf had been a researcher at the Basel Institute for Immunology, when the institute closed its doors on short notice. He had followed biotech companies in the United States and had noticed the jump from academia to a startup was much smaller than one would think. This gave him the necessary push to venture into entrepreneurship.
Duration: 25 minutes
Lesson 2: Founding a Biotech Startup
Ulf’s first two companies had different founding stories. In his doctoral research during the mid-nineties, Ulf researched B cells and monoclonal antibodies, then an overlooked field in biotech, but today the most successful class of biological drugs.
Duration: 39 minutes
Lesson 3: The Purpose
Entrepreneurship is no smooth ride and you need a strong motivation to keep you going and lead your team through difficult times. The biggest motivation for many entrepreneurs, including Ulf, is the prospect of curing disease. Another motivation is completely legitimate: Profit.
Duration: 15 minutes
Lesson 4: Mindset and Skills
Ulf has had many surprises when building his companies and needed to be open to solutions from unexpected avenues. While at NBE-Therapeutics, they were looking to add better antibody-drug conjugates to their technology platform but couldn’t find anything using the normal scientific rigor in research.
Duration: 24 minutes
Lesson 5: Finance and Fundraising
Introductions to investors are best made by people who already have a connection to them. It is unlikely that a venture capital fund will respond to your cold call or email containing your pitch deck. Do you have an experienced mentor or co-founder with a network bigger than yours? This can be extremely helpful in fundraising.
Duration: 30 minutes
Lesson 6: Innovation, R&D, Prototyping
The premise of NBE-Therapeutics was the idea that enzymes could replace the chemical conjugation between the molecule and the payload in antibody-drug conjugates. Ulf filed a patent application describing two different enzymatic approaches. Out of two shots on goal, one ended up being the winning technology. Ulf admits they were lucky.
Duration: 21 minutes
Lesson 7: From Proof of Concept to Production
Very few companies go through the whole value chain of drug development. Biotech startups in Switzerland normally don’t produce and distribute their drug product. They develop a drug to a certain inflection point and validate a technology platform that they then license or sell to a pharma partner.
Duration: 29 minutes
Lesson 8: Networking, Marketing and Sales
Biotech startups normally don’t have a product yet that they could market. But of course, a startup company does marketing as well: its technology, innovation, its patents, its know-how, and its founders. Even though your startup may not sell its own drugs, you have to go out to industry conferences to make yourself known in the industry.
Duration: 28 minutes
Lesson 9: Pricing a Biotech Innovation
If your company has sales, you can calculate discounted cash flows and extrapolate into the future. But without these numbers, there are no concrete metrics. Nevertheless, pricing is important very early on in your startup because somebody has to pay for your innovation.
Duration: 10 minutes
Lesson 10: Team and Leadership
Ulf stresses throughout this masterclass the importance of a good team. Team members need to have complementary expertise and add value to the team. But then you also need to give your team incentives to stay with your company.
Duration: 18 minutes
Lesson 11: Parting Thoughts
Ulf revisits some of the key learnings from his career as an entrepreneur.
Duration: 8 minutes
Bonus Lesson: Coaching Session NXI Therapeutics
This bonus lesson is a real-life coaching session with Ulf Grawunder. He discusses with Rajesh Jayachandran, CSO and co-founder of NXI Therapeutics, and Ruben Herrendorff, CEO of NXI Therapeutics challenges they face in their company.
Duration: 35 minutes
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