How can CMOs and COOs build a compelling story for different audiences?
Boudes: For a story to be compelling, you first need to agree on the story internally. You need to build your corporate story based on the scientific and medical story. Once you have a story that management agrees on, you need to be open to changing the story when you have a good reason to, like when you generate new data. If you’re telling the same story without any changes or additions, you can lose credibility.
Lastly, CMOs and COOs speak to very different audiences. While the story is the same, you need to adjust it based on what the audience needs. So Sachiyo will be telling the story with a lens for investors while I tell the story with a lens for a scientific audience.
Minegishi: Clarity and focus of message are so important. Often there is so much within a biotech’s story and the human mind can only process so much. It’s important to be consistent and focused in what you say.
When should biotechs bring in a CMO?
Boudes: As a company, you are at the beginning of a story, and you have to figure out the ending. In our business, the end is to develop and register a new treatment for a specific indication. It’s a long journey. A CMO has to be involved as early as possible because it isn’t only about the science and medicine, but there is also a big operational component. It’s nice to have a nice scientific idea, but if you cannot operationalize it, it’s useless. As a platform company, Rectify has one more advanced program alongside other programs in novel indications so the team needs to figure out where we are going to move forward and what our story will be.
Minegishi: A common mistake for biotech companies is to wait too long before hiring a CMO. You need to think early on about the end and what your lead program will be in order to set up the value creation that follows you throughout your corporate journey.
"A CMO has to be involved as early as possible because it isn’t only about the science and medicine, but there is also a big operational component. It’s nice to have a nice scientific idea, but if you cannot operationalize it, it’s useless."
How are your roles defined at Rectify?
Boudes: We don’t really define our roles because we are in a startup environment. As a small biotech, everyone brings their field of expertise to the table, and we all work together. When you are a close, small team, you can exchange all levels of information very fast and make decisions quickly.
How can CMOs and COOs best work together?
Boudes: You need to be close and feel comfortable asking and answering any questions, no matter how basic. Constant, free communication is very important. You also need to be open to being vulnerable and talk about the good and the bad. Having emotional intelligence to try not to be the sources of each other’s stress.
Minegishi: Given how fast startups move and how hard people are working, it’s important to have a shared purpose. It isn’t Pol’s question to solve or Sachiyo’s question to solve but a shared ownership. Coming in with that mentality doesn’t diminish each of our individual deep, functional expertise.
As an example, finance is often viewed as a “bad cop” that keeps people in line and constrains creativity. But the best teams work across operations and clinical development and use funding as a tool to get work done together and allocate resources. While there are often financial constraints, we can be creative within those constraints and innovate.
"Usually, companies don’t run out of good ideas; they run out of money."
How do you evaluate company culture and the executive team when deciding to join a biotech?
Minegishi: Culture is very much driven by the people, especially in a small startup environment like Rectify. With only about 20 employees, each one of us is a significant proportion of that culture and environment. I don’t think any of us want to work with people who are exactly like us but it’s about whether you share the important values. Do we have the same standards of quality? Do we have similar values relating to collaboration and leveraging each other’s experience? Are we curious and open-minded in a way that enables collaboration? Those are some of the basic ingredients of the DNA of the company.
Lastly, if you’re not excited about where the science and clinical development could take you towards helping patients, then find another idea. What we do is really hard, and you need to be excited by the work you are doing and its potential.
Boudes: In my experience, you look at what the people have done in the past because that reveals a lot. The personality of the CEO is very important because it reflects on the whole company and it’s important that you are in an environment where you will match the culture.
Especially as a platform company, how can you as a CMO build a clinical strategy while taking finance and operations into account?
Boudes: The role of a CMO is to lead the medical and potentially also scientific side of things. It’s also very much operational because you can come up with the best idea but if you don’t have the means to operationalize it, you aren’t a good CMO. You have to understand that you don’t have all the money you want when you start but you can build your programs and get more money step-by-step to reach the goal of offering new options to people in a disease area you want to solve. It's a constant back and forth between the science and operations. And when you deal in an environment where money is constrained – which is by definition where we are for most biotechs – you are forced to be innovative.
Minegishi: Part of the reason so much innovation happens in biotech is because of its constraints. You need to be fast and work within a set amount of financial capital available to you. On the medical side, scientific side, clinical side and even financial side, there is a lot of innovation that can happen to make us better, stronger and faster.
"People can be functional subject matter experts but so much of what we do is about trust and respect."
How do you collaborate on financing as COO and CMO?
Minegishi: It’s important to understand where value creation is going to happen. No startup has enough capital to get it to its actual ultimate end goal. From the very beginning, you need to think across operations and the CMO and COO need to talk through how we ensure there are milestones that can create sustainable financing. Usually, companies don’t run out of good ideas; they run out of money. It’s critical for crosstalk to happen so you can inform each other and discuss what can be achieved within a timeframe and consider the cost and financing implications. It’s a wonderful, iterative process.
Boudes: I previously worked for small public biotechs. The way we raised money on Wall Street was very different from what we are doing here at Rectify, which is a private company. I need to better understand the mechanisms of private funding rounds and the data catalysts that drive future financing.
Minegishi: When you think about how to drive financing, it’s about data that will increase the confidence of the people who will fund you to the next milestone. You need both sides of the puzzle: You need the clinical medical guidance on which milestones matter, and which datasets are really going to increase that confidence to support the financing strategy. And vice versa, it’s hard for CMOs to understand what kinds of data will move the needle. That interaction and exchange of ideas enables companies to move forward.
What else should CMOs know about supporting their COO colleagues?
Boudes: We need to see each other as individuals so that I can help Sachiyo to the best of my capacities. When you spend so much time with people you need to make sure you understand them well to work together better.
Minegishi: You don’t want the emotions to get in the way of creatively problem solving. Some of the teams that struggle the most are hampered because of those interpersonal relationships being so difficult. People can be functional subject matter experts but so much of what we do is about trust and respect. If you don’t trust and respect each other, it’s very difficult to combine efforts and expertise to deliver shared products.
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