MOMENTUM BIOSCIENCES
4entrepeneur interviews Christian Behrenbruch, Managing Director (Pt. 3/3)

by Richard Jones, Jr.

BACKGROUND

4entrepreneur: What motivated you to become an entrepreneur?

CB: Its fun and when I was a Ph.D (well, we call it a D.Phil) student at Oxford, my grant didn’t cover enough money to really stand much of a chance of dating girls in any kind of style.

Actually, in truth, I realized that despite a fair bit of science education and love of technology, that I was never going to be the guy writing the Nature Medicine paper. But I enjoy working with that person to find innovative ways to fund research and get it out the door. I’m a people-person, who is fond of geeks.

4entrepreneur: How did you learn the skills necessary that helped you to become an “Entrepreneur in Residence” at UCLA?

Mostly luck. I’ve had a series of start-ups, some that were successful and some that failed pretty spectacularly. I don’t really talk about the successes much – it’s the failures that have real impact and help you to try and look around the corner. I’ve never claimed to have all the answers, so part of what we do involves bringing people into a project who have really deep knowledge and experience in financing, strategy, risk management, IP and product development. I’ve been fortunate to have met and worked with some of the best people in the industry.

I meet a lot of graduate students and young faculty who want to become entrepreneurs and wonder how to make the first step. Actually, I think the first step is just getting into non-academic organizations (e.g. industry) and seeing how other types of organizations work, making contacts and learning the basic skills required to take a product to market. I think once you have some of those perspectives, it’s easier to see something come along and go “hmmm… that looks interesting”. But you also have to put yourself into a dynamic environment where people around you encourage this. It always amazes me how Genentech spawned a whole genesis of entrepreneurs and start-up companies, but Amgen did virtually nothing (except get rich, dumb and happy). Culture plays a big part and this is why San Francisco and Boston still attract a lot of the best talent.

4entrepreneur: Who were your entrepreneurship mentors?

CB: I was very lucky to have met some “industry retreads” (I say that in the nicest way) early in my professional life, who had really walked the halls of hospitals and universities in the “early days” of med tech and life sciences. One of my very first mentors was a guy who sold the first MRI scanner to MGH. This gent had 30 years of experience in selling and business development – and could explain that no matter how great your technology – if you don’t understand your customer and the market dynamics of a particular product or service, you’re out of business.

Amazing how brutal a lesson that can be. I encounter entrepreneurs all the time who have great ideas and wonderful inventions, but simply don’t get that the market (reimbursement, regulatory, patient “ownership”, physician dynamics) will never enable them to be successful.

My most inspirational mentors were probably my first customers who took an active interest in technology, making money, changing healthcare… it’s wonderful to take a crude idea and watch a practitioner mold and sculpt it into something that is really useable and transformational to care. It really serves to highlight the fact that there is no “I” in “team” – it’s a lot of complimentary skills to bring a product to market.

4entrepreneur: What are your impressions of biotech entrepreneurship around the globe?

CB: Again, I’ve been really lucky in this regard. I’ve been involved with companies in China, India, Russia, France … even Australia. It’s amazing how entrepreneurs are kind of a common breed – despite the cultural differences. Most of my international experience has been with medtech and health services, but I see great things happening with biotech in other parts of the world as well. We are foolish to believe that only in the US or the UK, can we do really effective biotechnology. We should pause and consider facts like ~50% of graduate students at top-tier US universities come from Asia. With the growth in biotechnology in India, China, Korea and other parts – they are no longer focused on staying in the US. They want to go home and do great things and make real money.

As a Canadian/Australian (I’m a dual-national) living in the US, I’m sensitized as to how difficult it is to come here to the US, get trained, innovate and then want to stay. It’s hard. Immigration is difficult – and we have a massive “brain drain” here in the US. We’re literally training the smartest people in the world who are still attracted to a handful of institutions, and then we’re letting them get away. I say watch out… I’ve met a lot of Harvard, MIT and Stanford-educated bioentrepreneurs outside of the US – especially in China and Singapore where “our” best people are being asked to come “home” to amazing salary, laboratory and clinical opportunities.

4entrepreneur: What advice do you have for bio-entrepreneurs?

CB: I think bio-entrepreneurs are, at heart, like any other entrepreneur. They want to create something new, make a difference, make some money and hopefully have some fun in the process. Biotech is great fun on the science side, but can be brutal on the business side. Network, get to know people, understand how commercialization really works and what the market dynamics are before going out and starting a venture. Find experienced advisors. Understand that unless your technology can disrupt markets, it almost doesn’t matter how good it is. The problem is that knowing how to disrupt a market is a business skill, not really a function of technology.

My belief is that today’s bio-entrepreneur is very unlikely to go out and license a new antibody, kinase inhibitor or microfluidics chip, and get rich. The big companies are buying pipelines and so they want to see well structured data, good pre-clinical results, often initial human data. It’s about having enough financial runway to “package” a scientific solution that really shows sophistication in the understanding of regulatory, clinical development and marketing issues. In some ways, this is kind of expensive and boring, so choose your business partners carefully!

(exclusive 4 entrepreneur Interview: copyright 2008 4entrepreneur.net )

Tags: Momentum Biosciences