Some things I've learned from being a biotech founder for the last 4.5 years
Everyone tells you recruiting is the most important thing. And you believe it. And then you start your co and you realize it was at least 10x more important than you thought.
Your org will become an exact reflection of who you are as you are building it. Work on yourself accordingly.
People who say ideas don’t matter have never experienced, on a gut level, how powerful a truly good idea can be.
A players attract A players and B players attract C players (Steve Jobs). It's far better to leave a role open and wait for a rockstar candidate rather than to fill it immediately with someone who is good enough but not great, even if it slows you down significantly in the short-term.
Capital efficiency matters. Negotiate everything. There are usually cheaper, but equally good, ways to do many things if you look hard enough.
Being a technical CEO is a superpower if you can do it well.
Hire an EA earlier than you think you need one. You should do as much of the initial company setup as you can and the associated administrative tasks so you have a good understanding of what needs to happen on the backend for the company to run smoothly, but once you've done that avoid those tasks at all costs (without losing the mentality that nothing is beneath you). Your time is more valuable than you realize, you shouldn't be spending it scheduling meetings.
Your job is not to sell what you’ve currently accomplished to investors, but instead the vision of what you can achieve with funding. You will likely not have proof that your vision is truly achievable until you've been able to invest a serious amount of R&D. As a scientist it's especially easy to get lost in the weeds here.
Learn to notice your state. When you are happy, high energy, confident, etc, you will naturally be better at fundraising, recruiting, decision making, managing, etc. Take this into account when planning these things.
Similarly, giving feedback is best done when you are "above the line" (aka in the green zone, in abundance mindset). If you have feedback to give to someone wait until you can do it from a place of wanting only growth and what’s best for them.
Giving good, consistent, frequent feedback, both positive and negative, is one of the most important leadership skills. There is an art to appreciation too, learn the good things that people are overlooking about themselves, or the things they are just being to show glimmers of excellence in and appreciate those.
One of your most important jobs as a manager is to believe in people more than they believe in themselves. To see the potential they have and provide energy and encouragement for them to reach that.
Being excellent at cold emails is a superpower. It's not that hard to stand out from the crowd here either.
1% of the emails you receive will be 100x more important than the other 99%. Respond to those with commensurate speed and diligence. Superhuman is great for this.
Your company will generate a lot of positive and negative things that will scale linearly (or maybe quadratically?) as you grow. However you will be predominantly exposed to the negative ones and humans generally also are impacted more by negative emotions than positive ones. So learn how to deal with this! Exercise, meditation, and other founders to talk to can help a lot.
"Which way you run is often the key differentiator between effective and ineffective CEOs. Almost all CEOs know where the problems are, but only the truly elite ones run towards the fear."
Discomfort = growth. Anytime you feel discomfort simply reframe it in your head as “oh, this is me learning again”.
You have infinite potential for growth. The only thing holding you back are your self-limiting beliefs and the amount of discomfort you can endure.
Wisdom (probably) comes from enduring the uncertainty of unresolved answers for long periods of time without loss of enthusiasm, giving in to the quick answer, or running from the discomfort. Live the questions.
“The key of strategy is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory."
There are many paths to victory, so don’t worry too much about what others are doing. The best path is the one that you can be the most all-in on.
When you can’t decide between two paths, choose the more ambitious one.
In general most start-up founders should probably be more ambitious. Start-ups are extremely hard. Don’t waste your life on something trivial.
There is only one factor unifying all successful start-ups: they win.
Ignore all advice, you are the only true expert on what you are doing.
This is really good
Great list!
“Your org will become an exact reflection of who you are as you are building it. Work on yourself accordingly”.
This, I wholeheartedly agree with. It’s something I noticed throughout my career. The group culture ends up being a reflection of the manager’s character.