Recap — Season 2: 10/10 VC Series
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Alix Ventures: Supporting Early Stage Life Science Startups Engineering Biology to Drive Radical Advances in Human Health
Calling All Innovators — Click to Reach Out 🚀
Overview: 10 Questions to 10 Early Stage Venture Capitalists
This topic series brings together perspectives across a variety of early-stage VC funds to help readers gain insight into what investors believe to be key to their growth and success. In our belief that perspectives should be well-rounded and not monopolistic, we chose to feature 10 different investors rather than to dive deep with just 1 or 2 individuals. We have a lot to learn from each other and hope that by sharing 10 unique viewpoints, we may all come to our own insights faster. Our posts will be organized by question and cover topics including investment criteria, portfolio support, industry trends, and general advice.
We are honored to feature investors at:
Boehringer Ingelheim, Breakout Ventures, Arkitekt Ventures, Time BioVentures, B Capital Group, NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, NFX, Not Boring, Mayfield Fund, & Alix Ventures
In this final post, we recap the series, covering topics including investment criteria, portfolio support, industry trends, and general advice. There was a wealth of knowledge shared, not all of which fit in this summary.
1
“What are the top 3 common traits of founders in your portfolio?”
“Optimism, grit and humility. Making the choice to start a company of any sort is a bold pursuit, let alone when that company’s success depends on commercializing novel science at scale. So it requires a unique ability to have a definitive view of how to build the future, the perseverance to get there no matter how many times you’ve been knocked down, and the awareness to know when you need support.”
Julia Moore — Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Breakout Ventures
“Purposefulness — sense of urgency to build something that matters
Fearlessness — gumption to make the impossible possible amidst uncertainty and limited resources
Humility — hunger for advice and hiring people smarter than them”
Widya Mulyasasmita — Sr. Principal @ B Capital Group
“Trust, teamwork, and excellence. Drug development is a long and winding road — for biotech founders, it isn’t a question of if there will be challenges, but rather when. We’re always looking for founders that have a strong internal compass and high integrity that we can trust to do the right thing for the company, employees, investors, and patients. Additionally, Biotech is a team sport. We look for founders that can assemble and manage great teams and who view investors as company-building partners. Finally, we are driven by opportunities to partner with founders exhibiting novel ideas and industry-transforming approaches — those who settle for nothing less than excellent.”
J.C. Lopez — Principal @ NEA
For more insights read — Part 1: Top Portfolio Founder Traits
2
“How does your investment criteria change in a recessionary environment?”
“I believe it takes an even higher level of conviction from a founder to take the risk and start a company in a recessionary environment. So my criteria doesn’t change much — I continue investing in the best founders that are building businesses with solid business models that can have a massive impact on healthcare.”
Pavan Choksi — Partner @ Arkitekt Ventures
“The goal of identifying the best companies will not change. We’ve always been focused on business model fundamentals and efficiency and I’m glad the conversation is broadly shifting this way. I recently studied 52 public and private companies to understand fundamentally what KPIs were best in class vs average in digital health (Learn more here). We are hoping to change how these companies are valued to match how efficient and scalable the different business models can be.”
Sofia Guerra — Investor @ Bessemer Venture Partners
“At Not Boring, Packy and I spend a lot of time thinking about the big opportunities opened up by the current macro environment. We have conviction that it’s a great time to build Hard Startups that do ambitious things in the physical world. In other words, the biggest returns will come from a return to the basics of venture capital, where fortunes were made financing truly frontier technology like semiconductors and computer networks.”
Elliot Hershberg — Partner @ Not Boring
For more insights read — Part 2: Raising Capital in Down Markets
3
“How has your worldview evolved since you first started your VC career?”
“At the risk of sounding cheesy, the biggest waves can be started by the smallest pebble. By that I mean seemingly small ideas can have a huge impact. I do this job to work with multiple teams with one goal in mind, novel, approved medicines. If you get there, the rest of it takes care of itself. Watching the earliest stage ideas mature and evolve into drugs is the coolest think about biotech VC.”
Kanad Das — Investment Director @ Boehringer Ingelheim
“I would say I’m much more optimistic! A career in VC forces you to ask yourself — what if this idea works? On a daily basis I get exposed to new approaches to make healthcare or medicine better and I’m so fortunate that I get to spend my time with founders that make me ask questions to imagine a future where they realize their vision: What if this care delivery model can help kids access better mental health treatment? What if this technology helps discover a new cancer drug?”
Pavan Choksi — Partner @ Arkitekt Ventures
“You learn how to be more selective. Seeing more deals helps your pattern recognition. You get to see that great IP and technology is not enough. The quality of the founding team is crucial. I would rather have mediocre technology with an incredible team, than an incredible technology with a mediocre team.”
Omri Amirav-Drory — General Partner @ NFX
For more insights read — Part 3: Worldview Changes Since Starting VC Career
4
“Outside of operating experience & higher education, what is one seemingly random thing you look for in a founder’s background?”
“Leadership through emotional intelligence and empathy. Being a founder/C-suite team member is hard and the ability to stay humble, data driven, understanding of human emotion leads to high functioning teams. This is a people business at the end of the day and in my experience a strong team that asks the right questions and does the right experiments has the greatest chance at success.”
Kanad Das — Investment Director @ Boehringer Ingelheim
“I’m particularly excited to meet founders who have been outsiders or underdogs and have worked incredibly hard to turn those odds around. It can be small examples from your upbringing or what you’ve done to alter the status quo. I left my home in Guatemala alone when I was 17 because I was searching for better opportunities to pursue science and excellence in education. I defied the stereotype that little girls couldn’t study science or live alone to follow their dreams. I look for a spark in founders that will drive them to break through walls to achieve their goals.”
Sofia Guerra — Investor @ Bessemer Venture Partners
For more insights read — Part 4: Preferred Founder Backgrounds
5
“Outside of investing, what is one seemingly random activity that helps make you a better VC?”
“Nature walks with folks who aren’t traditionally in VC. For instance, I love walking with scientists and professors. The mix of fresh conversations, exercise, and being outdoors has a generative power to spark great ideas and new ways to spot innovation trends.”
Widya Mulyasasmita — Sr. Principal @ B Capital Group
“Well before I worked in VC — or even did science — I spent a team of time reading fiction and poetry. I actually published works of poetry before I ever published a scientific paper! While at first it doesn’t seem related, I think this focus on language has helped for the unique path I’ve taken into venture with such a specific focus on writing and storytelling. This is a unique way that we partner with founders and concretely provide value at Not Boring.”
Elliot Hershberg — Partner @ Not Boring
For more insights read — Part 5: Growth Mindset
6
“What has been the most helpful piece of advice you received throughout your career as a venture capitalist?”
“‘Don’t lose sight of the forest for a leaf’ — when assessing an opportunity there is always another question you’ll want to ask but always focusing on the bigger picture has made me a better investor and partner to founders.”
Pavan Choksi — Partner @ Arkitekt Ventures
“Do the work (calls, analysis, review docs) and trust your intuition. You’ve done the work to build conviction.
There are multiple investing styles, try to find what is true to you vs trying to become someone else.”
Sofia Guerra — Investor @ Bessemer Venture Partners
“Don’t invest for the first 9 months as a VC. It takes time to recognize what makes a successful company. You need that time to really see a lot of companies, to see what the best companies have in common and once you’ve started to build that pattern recognition you can start investing.”
Omri Amirav-Drory — General Partner @ NFX
For more insights read — Part 6: Best Career Advice
7
“As an early stage investor, we often pick companies whose directions change. Can you talk about pivoting vs. staying the course?”
“If done well, early stage is a constant iteration of taking in new data and slightly adjusting the trajectory. That may mean you end up somewhere entirely different than you thought at seed, but less often as the result of a sharp left turn. To some extent that is even true in seemingly immovable trajectories like therapeutics where you can adjust your pipeline or how you approach preclinical data. Staying the course blindly feels like an outdated concept — the pace of innovation is so incredibly fast, the reality you are operating in today is inherently different than the one you built your business plan in.”
Julia Moore — Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Breakout Ventures
“Companies are like organisms, and their success comes from finding niches in their environments. The key is to “listen” to the environment and respond to it. Sometimes, this means pivoting and other times it means doubling down. The key is to ground these choices in rational consideration.”
D.A. Wallach — Co-Founder & General Partner @ Time BioVentures
“Product market fit is learned, not divined. Pivoting is a way of finding product market fit through experience. In capex heavy companies, the key is to find ways of discovering PMF without incurring heavy costs. Great founder-product fit results in fewer pivots. This is why we at Mayfield back people first, markets second.”
Arvind Gupta — Partner @ Mayfield Fund
For more insights read — Part 7: Pivoting vs. Persisting
8
“How do you advise founders in your portfolio to prepare ahead of time for future fundraises?”
“Being a founder (particularly a first time founder) means you’re doing something you’ve never done before. That means you’re likely rather uncomfortable. Knowledge can assuage some of that discomfort. Successful founders find creative ways of finding an answer, and a lot of the time it just means picking up the phone. I strongly advise founders to talk to their peers, their board, other partners at the funds who gave them money, their networks and the independent/chair. I can’t overemphasize the concept of group think when it comes to these things. When I was a grad student, my Ph.D. advisor would always say that an afternoon in the library saves a month in the lab. In this case, a few zoom calls can save a lot of time and money. I would suggest that founders start with the Board (it’s our job after all!) and then expand.”
Kanad Das — Investment Director @ Boehringer Ingelheim
“In my experience, if you’re courageous enough to ask for help, most people are willing to give it. We all started at the bottom and remember what it was like to be there.”
Omri Amirav-Drory — General Partner @ NFX
“Find the best people in your field and surround yourself with them. Learn from their experiences. Become their friends. Life is not a transaction and mentorship isn’t either. Great mentor relationships come from two-way streets of inspiration.”
Arvind Gupta — Partner @ Mayfield Fund
For more insights read — Part 8: Advice for Founders Seeking Mentorship
9
“How does your evaluation process change when it comes to backing first-time vs. repeat founders?”
“You are looking for those same traits — optimism, grit and humility — that can exist in a founder whether it is your first company or your fifth. The more experience a founder has, the easier it will be to spot those traits as you simply have more data to go off of. In a first time founder, you need to read between the lines a bit more. To that end, we look for founders who are able to recruit great talent to their vision from day one and who never feel threatened that they will be hiring people much smarter or more experienced than them in one way or the other.”
Julia Moore — Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Breakout Ventures
“We are equally receptive to both first-time and repeat founders. There are trade-offs associated with both founder phenotypes. First-time founders are typically closer to the science/engineering, and have a lot of energy and vision. By definition, they have less entrepreneurial experience. This can make the choice of investors and advisors more important.
We’re also excited by founders who led in technical roles at larger biotechs and biopharmas, and are leaving to solve pressing problems in the industry that they have direct experience with.”
Elliot Hershberg — Partner @ Not Boring
For more insights read — Part 9: First-time vs. Repeat Founders
10
“As a founder building something new in the world, you are often in need of knowledge you don’t possess. How would you recommend founders go about seeking mentorship?”
“I could write about this for many paragraphs, but like anything, a clear story and ask is the key. I firmly believe that science determines the contours of a deal so I would suggest that they are as open as they can be about the data they have, the risks, and the time/money to a meaningful value inflection point. I would then take the story to a small number of known, trusted and experienced people to ask for feedback. While you likely won’t get consistent messages, the key is to listen to where people feel ‘the story falls apart.’ Take that feedback seriously and try to incorporate it into your deck.”
Kanad Das — Investment Director @ Boehringer Ingelheim
“Let us in early. We have seen thousands of pitches and know how to spot a good deck. Let your investors help you and give feedback on the story and the flow.”
Omri Amirav-Drory — General Partner @ NFX
For more insights read — Part 10: Preparing for Future Fundraising
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Alix Ventures, by way of BIOS Community, is providing this content for general information purposes only. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, or its affiliates. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by Alix Ventures employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the view of Alix Ventures, BIOS Community, affiliates, and content sponsors.
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