Thanks to everyone who helped make “Biotech’s Back in Seattle,” the latest production of Xconomy Seattle, such a smash hit. We sold out this puppy, packing the house at PATH last night with more than 200 people for an evening of insightful conversation and lively networking.
The featured speakers were a couple of Seattle’s top CEOs at public biotech companies—Dendreon’s Mitch Gold and Seattle Genetics’ Clay Siegall—and two of the rising stars on the private company scene—Calistoga Pharmaceuticals’ Carol Gallagher and Alder Biopharmaceuticals’ Randy Schatzman. We followed up with a lightning round of 3-4 minute “burst” talks by local innovators working on early-stage projects with big-time potential—Tom Hansen of Seattle Children’s Hospital, Caitlin Cameron of Presage Biosciences, Stefan Kappe of Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, and Ryo Kubota of Acucela.
Thanks go out to PATH, the nonprofit global health center that graciously agreed to open up its new headquarters in South Lake Union to host this event. And special thanks also go out to our event sponsors: Christensen O’Connor Johnson & Kindness, Cooley, Fenwick & West, and Wells Fargo Insurance Services.
Xconomy Seattle’s ability to pull off wicked awesome events like this is bolstered not only by our event hosts and sponsors, but also by our underwriters and venture members, who provide us a foundation of long-term support the likes of which is rarely found in online journalism today. Xconomy Seattle has now attracted 14 underwriters and three venture members who provide long-term support.
Our underwriters include Alexandria Real Estate Equities, AMRI, Christensen O’Connor Johnson & Kindness, Cooley, Davis Wright Tremaine, Fenwick & West, the Institute for Systems Biology, Invest Northern Ireland, J. Robert Scott Executive Search, the Kauffman Foundation, the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Seed IP, Swedish Medical Center, and Wells Fargo Insurance Services. Our venture members are Arch Venture Partners, Vulcan Capital, and WRF Capital.
I was busy asking the questions as the moderator and emcee, so I didn’t really take notes for a full recap story. You can check out a post here from Clay Holtzman of the Puget Sound Business Journal that focused on the state’s role in supporting biotech. Luckily for us, we also had some talented photographers on hand capturing images. One of them, Songmao (Ben) Zheng, took some nice shots that I’ve put together below. One of the pro photographers who regularly appears at Xconomy events, Robert Wade, was also on the scene. Check his site for a nifty slide show. One of these years, I hope to be able to edit slide shows this cool and still hit my daily reporting deadlines.
One last announcement: For those of you who missed a tour of PATH last night and want to catch one another time, simply send a note to [email protected] to check on upcoming dates.
You can click on the thumbnails below to see a larger image of Ben Zheng’s shots.
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