Our founder and Chief Creative Officer Kat Arney has contributed a guest post to the One Nucleus blog exploring what biotech companies need to be thinking about to secure investment in todays tough climate.
Early-stage life science companies need more than strong data and an interesting platform. They need clear positioning, a credible route to value, and a story that helps investors, partners and potential acquirers understand why this company, this asset and this moment matter. And, of course, they need to make sure that this story and messaging are clearly communicated to the people who matter.
A few highlights:
Founders need to think about their route to exit from the start. Are you building towards acquisition, partnership, pharma interest, or something else? You need to understand this ‘customer’ and make sure you’re ‘marketing’ to them.
Investors are balancing three kinds of risk: team risk, commercial risk and biological risk. Different investors will weight these differently, so giving everyone the same pitch deck and hoping for the best won’t cut it.
The biggest question is why invest now? What does this cheque unlock that makes it worth coming in at this stage, rather than waiting until things are more de-risked?
Brilliant science will always matter. But in this market, brilliant science wrapped in muddled messaging, vague positioning and a hand-wavy ‘Underpants Gnome’ approach to commercial value is going to struggle. And once you’ve got those nailed down, you need to get them out into the world in an effective way. As Kat always says: The data does not speak for itself – we must speak for it.
The companies that make it across the valley of death will be the ones that can demonstrate how they answer the three questions that every investor and partner is really asking:
Why you, why this, and why now?
Image generated by ChatGPT.