Building an A+ Life Science Team

FountainBlue's November 20, 2006 Life Science Entrepreneurs Forum theme was "Building an A+ Life Science Team".

As life science entrepreneurs, we know the value of an experienced, results-oriented management team, but what can entrepreneurs do to attract the best and the brightest in early stage companies, when cash is tight? How can we retain, inspire and motivate your executive team and staff to work start-up hours and continually go the extra mile? How do you know what type of executive is best for which stage of your company, and how do you retain the right people at the right company stage, while maintaining relationships?

As facilitator was Roy Fiebiger, Managing Partner of Sanford Rose Associates-Silicon Valley, a Life Science Executive search firm. Prior to starting his executive search practice, Roy had served as a CEO and senior executive in several venture-backed medical device companies. Roy brings a unique combination of corporate experience, entrepreneurial wherewithal, vision, and dedication to address soft people issues and other business challenges. He has worked with many early and middle stage companies with their executive hiring process, and is eager to share his knowledge and advice on leadership, management and people issues with life science entrepreneurs. Roy has also assembled a panel to address the questions about and others from the VC, CEO, recruiter and legal perspectives.

- Tom Afzal, CEO of SpinalKinetics, who will share the life science CEO perspective
- Andrew Farquharson, currently with InCube and formerly with The Halo Fund, who will share the life science VC perspective
- Mike Hall, Partner Life Sciences Practice, Latham & Watkins, who will share the legal perspective

Below is a Summary of Notes and Advice for your reference, drawn on the wisdom of our facilitators and each of you as participants.

An effective management team is an essential ingredient for success

• It is necessary both to have the visionary with the innovative ideas and the executive with the experience, connections and resourcefulness to execute and consitently deliver results.
• There are different management needs for different stages of development
• For early stage, resource-constrained start-ups, the founders must passionate communicate the start-up concept and get the right early founders to become engaged and grow the company. (A corollary to that is that if the right people aren't signing up for the company, perhaps the concept is not as exciting as the founder thinks!)
• 'Convenient Hires' - hiring friends, neighbors, family, may be detrimental to the long-term (and short-term) needs for the company, and may in the end strain these relationships, particularly when one party is laid off.

Planning on attracting and retaining an A+ management team will help ensure that it happens

• Know what type of leadership area you need in what area by when, and create a strategic, milestone-related plan to get the right executives in place at the optimal time
• Setting the goals, communicating the vision, attracting and retaining the right talent are all crucial requirements for putting the right management team in place
• Creating and maintaining a positive, motivating and supportive culture will encourage your top talent to stay with the organization. It's not necessarily expensive to do that, and it's very worthwhile.
• In order to hire the right people, you must be thorough and invest the time in the interview and screening process, including conducting behavioral interviews and doing full background checks.

Be careful with the current trend of hiring consultants rather than a full time staff.

• There are a handful of requirements necessary to be considered an independent consultant rather than a staff member.
• If most people in the organization is a consultant: You must still have a 'buck-stops-here' decision maker to make pivotal decisions for the organization; The business may not be as scalable; It may not be as fundable by investors.

When you must lay off people on the team:

• Be direct regarding your concerns and try to come up with a mutually agreeable arrangement to part company gracefully.
• Document your communication - the measures taken to resolve any performance issues in case there is a legal dispute around wrongful termination.
• It is more awkward for investors to part company with the senior executives for portfolio companies, but it can be done with respectful and direct communications, based on measurable, milestone-related performance/progress.