You’ve spent years working hard to hone your skills in science, medicine, or business. You’ve accomplished things, and you have the talent and desire to do more. You may be bored, or stuck at a dead end job in academia, Big Biotech, or Big Pharma. You are intrigued by a job posting you just saw at a biotech startup, and the company appears to be showing some interest in you.
It’s a great position to be in, but you may quickly discover you’re out of your depth. What are the things you ought to know about the company before you make that life-altering decision to take a job at a startup? What questions should you ask? Where can you get the straight scoop about whether this opportunity is a fair deal?
These are relevant questions for many people, as biotech companies are starting to hire more after years of recession-related belt-tightening. From 2011 to 2012, there was a 13 percent increase in employee headcount at companies listed in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, according to the accounting firm BDO. Many people being drawn to those jobs are smart people with specific expertise, but are naïve about how to evaluate a startup. I know, because many people in this camp have been asking me for advice lately, and I haven’t felt very well equipped to offer detailed answers.
So, I spent some time last week interviewing a few savvy insiders about what biotech job candidates can and should do to study a startup before they sign up. I spoke to Bob More, a senior advisor for venture investing with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Craig Greaves, recruiting partner at Third Rock Ventures; Thong Le, a managing director at WRF Capital; and Michael Gilman, a scientific entrepreneur formerly with Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BIIB]]) and a startup called Stromedix.
I’ve tried to distill the various thoughts into a set of guidelines below. If you have other suggestions, please leave a comment at the end of the story or send me a note at [email protected].
Get to really know the senior management team, and I mean really! This is a science-based industry, so put your scientific hat on, observe the people who run the company, and try to ask the key questions. Dig deep. Look at this person’s work history on LinkedIn, and track down people who have worked with this person in the past. Does this person treat people fairly? How does he or she perform under pressure? Does the CEO, or other members of the senior team, have previous experience at a startup? Does this person have a track record of success? Credibility in the industry? Do they have the trust of investors? How did this person react to their first failure? Does this manager seem to really believe in the mission of the company, care about the company, care about you? “If those answers are yes, you’re in position to consider the job,” Le said.
If you’re the person who thinks you’re being hired to do a specific thing, and you don’t really work that closely with the boss at a startup, think again. Many companies, particularly those with 30 employees or fewer, are small enough that the boss is closely involved and aware of detailed, day-to-day matters. As Gilman put it, “it’s important to understand that there’s a much sort of stronger food chain in a company than generally there is in an academic environment. There’s an egalitarianism in an academic lab. But if you work at a company, you have a boss. That boss is second only to your spouse, and maybe not second, in terms of people who can make your life wonderful or miserable. It’s important to pay close attention to who that person is.”
Greaves, the recruiting partner at Third Rock, said all CEOs
