Investing in biotech with TPG Life Sciences Innovations' Dr. Carolyn Ng
Episode show notes and transcript
About The Guest
Dr. Carolyn Ng is Partner and Managing Director at TPG Life Sciences Innovations. With a decade of expertise in life sciences investment under her belt, she's the powerhouse behind infusing capital into groundbreaking startup companies in precision oncology, immunology, ophthalmology, metabolic diseases, and rare diseases
📄 Summary
Dr. Carolyn Ng is Partner and Managing Director at TPG Life Sciences Innovations. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Ng shares her journey from academia to venture capital and discusses the investment thesis of her company. She also shares her insights on startup success factors - robust IP, strategic partnerships, and a stellar team. Plus, get the lowdown on navigating macroeconomic headwinds and savvy exit strategies for biotech companies.
🥡 Key Takeaways
Experience plays a crucial role in drug development and investing, with 80% of the focus on experience and 20% on theory.
Evaluating a biotech startup involves assessing factors such as IP portfolio, partnerships, risk profile, and the strength of the team.
Although the biotech industry is currently facing macroeconomic headwinds, resilient companies are able to stand out even more. For investors, there is no better time to invest in biotech if you have conviction in the sector.
Flexibility and adaptability are important for startup founders when interacting with investors, but they should also remain focused on their mission.
💬 Quotes
"Most of these drugs are going to fail for a variety of different reasons. So that is why experience is so important when it comes to drug development as well as investing."
"We want to make sure that we're not compounding risk upon risk upon risk within the same investment."
"Having a scientific background or a medical background allows you to go very deep into the scientific or clinical language of the clinical programs that you're trying to back here."
"It's not just locally but globally because we're a small country, and we won't be able to be successful if we're only successful in Singapore. It has to be global."
"The ecosystem is made of people and interesting scientific ideas. We've always scientifically been pretty strong, given all the academic institutes that we have in Singapore. But now I think it's prime time as we thoughtfully gear people towards building new companies around these scientific ideas."
⏱️ Timestamp
00:58 - Introduction
03:50 - Journey to venture capital
09:34 - Assessing biotech startups and their risk profiles
19:56 - Keeping up with biotech
27:47 - Different flavors of biotech
29:59 - Advice for entrepreneurs
🎙️ Transcript
Episode Preview
Dr. Carolyn Ng: It's definitely, in my mind, it's probably 80 percent experience, 20 percent theory. Because at the end of the day, drug development is extremely tough. And that is what we're investing in. But the reality is that most of these drugs are going to fail for a variety of different reasons. So that is why experience is so important when it comes to drug development as well as investing.
Joson Ng: Hi, thanks for joining us on Nucleate Singapore Pulse, Singapore's premier podcast on the biotech ecosystem. I'm your host, Joson Ng, an MD-PhD candidate at Duke-NUS Medical School. Whether you're a student thinking about creating your own startup, or an industry professional looking for diverse perspectives, this is the podcast for you.
The show notes and transcripts for the episode can be found on nucleatesingapore.substack.com.
Introduction
Joson Ng: Hi, thank you so much, Dr. Carolyn, for joining us on this podcast. So for the audience, Dr. Carolyn Ng is a partner and managing director at TPG Life Sciences Innovations. Dr. Carolyn, do you mind introducing yourself a little bit for our audience?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Hi everyone, I'm Carolyn Ng and I'm Partner and Managing Director at TPG Life Sciences Innovations.
Joson Ng: So Carolyn, you started your career in Singapore, as I understand, just like most of us. And at that time, you started in pharmacy, and then you eventually completed a PhD in the National University of Singapore about 10 years ago.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your journey, how you decided to embark on a career in venture capital?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: It sounds like I'm dating myself here, but yes, I left school more than 10 years ago for sure. So I actually, after my PhD in the School of Medicine under the NGS program, I decided that academia, it's not my cup of tea necessarily.
And I actually got some really great career advice from some of the other peers of mine in the industry that, you know, perhaps management consulting or strategy consulting could be a good way to go to further widen my skill set toolbox. So I joined a boutique strategy consulting firm that was actually headquartered in London that works exclusively with top 10, top 20 global pharma.
And that turned out to be a really great decision for me I think back then, because I learned to work on various projects that's on the entire value chain of pharma business and acquire critical skill sets like presentation, synthesis, analysis, and understanding how the business mind in the pharma industry works.
So that was great exposure for me. I worked on that for at least, I think two, three years, and it was a very intense pace. And from there, that was when an opportunity came to me where Vertex Ventures HC was actually starting their first time fund in 2014. And when I was actually still based out of London, they called me and tried to recruit me to this new fund.
I think what they were looking for back then was someone with technical skillset or technical training of advanced degree in areas that are important for venture investment, and life sciences and oncology is one of them. And that was kind of where I got my PhD in. And they were also looking for an individual that, you know, on top of that had business exposure.
And I think strategy consulting and pharma was a great exposure for that. So I guess in a way I tick a lot of boxes for that organization. I was really lucky to be offered a role to be one of the founding members of Vertex Ventures HC back in end of 2014. So I decided to take a leap of faith, left my consulting role to join venture investments and I guess the rest is history.
I was lucky to be granted an opportunity back then by my previous fund.
Journey to venture capital
Joson Ng: Carolyn, you mentioned a while ago that you moved from academia to management consulting based on the advice of your friend, as well as trying out a bit of going out of academia. What was the impetus for you to go into management consulting?
Because a lot of academics find it a bit prohibitive. They think they need a bit more business skills. They need a bit more exposure before they can make that leap.
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Right. So I actually see strategy consulting and management consulting as a perfect training ground for someone with a technical, scientific, or clinical skill set, but has no business training.
So, in fact, many of the top firms that has biopharma practice in their firms actively recruit PhD graduates with no background in business. So as long as you're happy to get into those firms at an entry level role, and be an associate or an analyst, it's actually a very good exposure for you to gain skill sets that go way beyond academic lab.
So for people or graduates that are at the crossroad, be it career decision, and it's kind of unsure how they would like to, you know, get involved in a business side. I highly recommend them to consider consulting as a possible career option.
Joson Ng: So back in the early 2010s, the general Asian tech ecosystem was not advanced and a career in venture capital was not so widely known.
How did you find resources to develop yourself then as a life sciences investor?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think a ton of it is, it's got to do with just learning on the job. So I was fortunate to be working with a great team back then, and my then superiors were very good at pushing me to be more articulate and sharp in terms of refining our investment thesis.
So as a team, you know, we collaborated closely on how we review and assess and evaluate every single investment and also how we present it to our investment community. So a lot of it was actually just learning on a job with a great team. But outside of that, as with many other careers, you need to also be a very self motivated learner.
So I did try my best to read through resources online. And, back then, for example, Bruce Booth, who's one of the most prominent investors in our field and a Partner at Atlas. He used to publish all these monthly or weekly articles that is either written by himself or other entrepreneurs in this space.
And I've always found it super helpful as well as publications by a biotech journalist, like Luke Timmerman. He also has another excellent platform where there are extensive articles written about biotech and life sciences investing as a whole. So I think it's a combination of self learning through voracious reading of materials, as well as learning on the job.
Joson Ng: In terms of venture capital work. How much of it is theory versus experience?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Oh, it's definitely, in my mind, it's probably 80 percent experience, 20 percent theory. Because at the end of the day, drug development is extremely tough. And that is what we're investing in. We're investing in the probability success of something that is actually really low.
So if you think about sort of the average probability of success of a drug that goes through from preclinical to approval. Right? So if you think about the odds there against the success, so as a result of that, most of it comes from experience of pattern learning, of recognizing challenges and potential pitfalls, and not all of these are documented in theory.
So, a drug should work in theory as we pursue them and translate them from the bench to bedside. But the reality is that most of these drugs are going to fail for a variety of different reasons. So that is why experience is so important when it comes to drug development as well as investing.
Joson Ng: What's the state of the life sciences market? Where are some of the opportunities in life sciences investing right now?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: We're very focused as a firm on providing what we call inflection capital to startup companies. So inflection capital means the funding that advances these technologies to a proof of concept stage, usually in the clinic.
And as you know, in life sciences, achieving clinical proof of concept is in turn to say that you're demonstrating for the very first time in humans that therapy is safe and shows signs of efficacy, which usually in turn, creates that key value inflection point that can drive either M&A or a substantial increase in valuation.
We think that in the current ecosystem of life sciences investing. There is a gap in the type of investors that provide this sort of funding because the universe of licensed investments currently, you can broadly classify them into two different categories, which is the very early stage venture creation type investors and the late stage crossover public investors.
So there is a little bit of a gap in terms of investors that address the specific need of inflection capital that is in between the early stage and the crossover investing stage.
Assessing biotech startups and their risk profiles
Joson Ng: You mentioned that the startups that you are facing are usually in between their early VC fund and their late stage. And most of these biotech startups will also face challenges with manufacturing and scaling up as well. How do you assess whether they're able to meet those production demands and how do they navigate these challenges?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So manufacturing scalability is part of CMC for any company, and depending on the modality that they're pursuing, that might be more challenging than others. So, for example, if you're in cell therapy, that is the logistics behind it, and the manufacturing logistics behind it could be non trivial.
So, depending on the modality, we spend a lot of time trying to understand whether or not the company has the right partnerships in place. For example, with the right CMOs or CDMOs to meet the demands of the clinical development. And we also have technical deep dives to understand how they do the tech transfer.
For example, if they're spinning out of academic lab into a industry grade company. So there are various ways of looking at how the CMC of the company, whether or not the, they meet quality standards. And whether or not they're able, more importantly, to meet the requirements that they would need for clinical development as they move into later stage trials, because that is when scalability really comes into play.
Joson Ng: How do you evaluate the risk profile that you're taking on as well?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So your question is asking what do we evaluate as we determine the risk profile of companies, right?
Joson Ng: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Carolyn Ng: We're actually very disciplined when it comes to taking on risks in the type of investments that we make. And that is clearly delineated and defined with each and every opportunity that we look at. So the type of risks that you are taking on can be broadly categorized maybe into a few different types.
So some of the obvious ones are, for example, scientific risks. Especially if you're translating a novel target, for example, from preclinical stage to clinical stage, right? So there's scientific risks that you're taking on.
There are also clinical risks that you're taking on, and that pertains to patient selection or clinical development strategies that the company needs to execute on.
And then there are other risks, such as regulatory risks, depending on how the FDA or other regulators view the clinical development path for a novel experimental drug.
Then there are other areas that are even further down the value chain. For example, commercial risks which are taken on, especially in areas where there is high competition, so you have multiple parties that are going after the same target.
And finally, the other risk that's associated with execution of the programs themselves, and that could be contributed by, let's say, the team structure or the management team's experience.
So these are all risks that we take on as an investor, as we do life sciences investing, and what we do in a very disciplined fashion is to make sure that we're not compounding risk upon risk upon risk within the same investment.
So for example, if I'm taking on biology risk with a novel target, then I would try to avoid doing that with a novel modality in a novel patient set that has never been treated before, because that compounding of multiple layers of risk make the probability of success for a specific investment even lower.
So, as we evaluate all these risks we have to decide for ourselves as an investor, what is the level of risk that we can tolerate? And how do we avoid compounding all these layers together?
Joson Ng: Given your decade of experience in the life sciences investment space, including being on the board of multiple companies, we wanted to explore your thoughts as well on the other contributing factors to the success of a life sciences startup.
What are the other metrics that you look for in terms of assessing the potential of a biotech startup or a company? And how do you know whether an investment is viable?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So we are a fundamentals first type of investor group. That means we don't invest just based on macros momentum. So for example, like AI is really hot right now, or RNA is really hot right now.
We don't just jump into a specific space because it is hot. Right. So there is a strong focus on fundamentals analysis. And we assume a very asset centric view to the type of investments we do. So what does that mean? So let's say if there is a platform technology that is really interesting. At the end of the day, the underwriting of our investment is still based on how much of a value do we ascribe to the assets that are generated from that platform.
And we do a deep dive of scientific, clinical, regulatory, all those, you know, all those areas that I just talked to you about, right? We do a deep dive analysis of the asset and the clinical program to determine how valuable that program is, and what is the probability of success we assign to those programs.
So that is a fundamental layer of sort of how we approach investing. Now, there is also on top of that consideration of people, because we think that, basically, companies are people, the people that work in the company. You can have the best drug in the world. But if you don't have a great team to execute on a program, it will never be successful.
So that is also another layer of important diligence for us is to make sure that we build conviction on the team that we're betting on.
Joson Ng: A lot of biotech startups also think of IP as a potential metric by which venture capitalist companies could evaluate them as well.
How do you assess a company's IP portfolio? And how does it affect the VC view of its potential for competitive advantage?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yeah, this is absolutely critical for life sciences investing, right? So we usually work with a lawyer on that aspect. So towards the, I would say in the middle of the process of our diligence with a company if we are pretty sure how having, you know, sort of checked off the boxes on the scientific areas or evaluation and we feel pretty comfortable with the other deal terms and other parameters of the investment, then we'll start formally engaging an IP lawyer whom we trust to do a deeper dive into the IP portfolio of the company.
So usually the few aspects that you would consider doing analysis on is the patentability of the technology and also the FTO freedom to operate. On the patent side, there are a few different ways where you can protect your IP and that could be through matter composition, it could be through methods of use, it could be through formulation, depending on the type of patents that have been filed or could be filed that would impact the strength of your IP protection.
And then lastly, of course, we also have the lawyer usually do a FTO search to make sure that hopefully the company is not infringing on prior art.
Joson Ng: The thing that biotech startups also do is to collaborate with academia, with large research institutions, and even pharmaceutical companies. Do you assess what types of partnerships biotech startup engages in and how do you assess the strength and potential of these partnerships?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yes, that's right. Well, collaboration is actually really key to startups in this space. So it depends on what type of company you're building here. In certain instances, if it's a platform company that is spun out of an academic institute, then we will focus on reviewing whether or not the company has exclusive license, for example, to that platform technology, because if they don't, then there might not be any barrier of entry for another group to come partner with the same academic PI and get access to the same platform technology, right?
So that's kind of one way you would want to evaluate the partnership to make sure that you're setting up a competitive mode against other competitors.
And if it's a company that's built on assets, they're coming out of Big Pharma, then again, you want to closely look at how the contract is written and how the monetary terms are set. For example, you want to understand, how much milestone payments do you owe the Big Pharma partner? What's the royalty amount that you have to pay them should your product become successful?
So there are a ton of business related monetary considerations. When you think about such partnerships, especially if you're spinning out assets from biopharma. There are so many different types of, of collaborations, but I'll just like sort of bring out just maybe one more example.
The last one is what we consider to be a research and development collaboration. Oftentimes you see that biotech with a interesting platform might partner up with big pharma to develop, let's say, use your modality against a number of targets. So in those instances, they might get non diluted funding from the Big Pharma in exchange for their services of developing certain assets.
And in that case, we want to make sure that the targets that they're pursuing for the Big Pharma does not impact the overall value of the company, because if you give up those assets to Big Pharma, like what is left for yourself, right? That would determine the fundamental value of the biotech. So these are some examples of the considerations that would go into looking at different sort of partnerships, depending on which parties are involved and what are the terms.
Keeping up with biotech
Joson Ng: Are there any specific areas in the life sciences industries that are particularly appealing to you?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yes. So I would say that we are pretty modality agnostic. So that means that we work across the board from cell therapy to RNA modalities, between biologics or drug conjugates, as well as even small molecules. So, from an investor standpoint, we are not pigeonholed into any specific modality.
Having said that, there are therapeutic areas that we focus on as a team and as a firm. And namely, these are precision oncology, immunology, ophthalmology, metabolic diseases, as well as rare diseases. So as I've mentioned before, we are a fundamentals driven firm, so that means that our underwriting is specific and tailored to the assets that we're underwriting.
We want to make sure that these assets, if they were to be high quality assets, would be assets that big pharma would like to buy. We don't want our investments to be contingent on just the public market performance because there's a ton of volatility, in the public market. So we want to make sure that the company will be able to have a successful exit by having big pharma buying the assets.
That's why we've handpicked therapeutic areas where there is a lot of M&A potential.
Joson Ng: That actually segues quite well with the next question that we wanted to ask, which was in terms of exit strategies for biotech companies. There are many forms, there's mergers, there's acquisitions, there's licensing deals as well.
How do you plan, or help companies plan for these scenarios and what factors influence what are practical exit paths for different companies?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: That really depends on the type of companies you're building. In our case, because we're very focused on assets or clinical programs that are generated from the technology platforms that the companies are building, there is a strong emphasis there.
So it really depends on a case by case basis. And we don't want to prescribe a one size fit all type of strategy. It depends on the progress the company is making and also how you build optionality for the company to continue to make progress going forward.
Joson Ng: Lately, there's been a lot of macroeconomic headwinds and biotech investing as a whole has come down from its high.
What are your thoughts on how this has affected biotech or technology development as a whole?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So our view is actually more of a half glass full type of perspective. I actually think that as an investor, this market correction creates a lot of opportunity for us to invest. So the reason why I say that is because we still have high conviction that the fundamentals of scientific advancement remains really strong.
I mean, if you think about it, we are currently in the golden age of life sciences. In the past decade or so, we've witnessed the first approvals of gene therapy, the first approvals of cell therapy, and new waves of technology in RNA editing, for example. So these are all real advancements which are unheard of a few decades ago in human history.
So given that the pace of fundamental science continue to accelerate, there are going to be continued upside for investment in this space. So this market correction is largely due to macros and that's affected our sector in a negative way. However, like I've said, the market correction actually allows for us to go into deals that now have a more attractive valuation.
So it's a time to buy if you have conviction in this space, which we do.
Joson Ng: Is it similar to the idea that usually it's the companies that can deal with these macroeconomic headwinds, that are the ones that turn out the most successful ones as well?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yeah, I think what you will see is that high quality companies will be very resilient, even in the toughest times, and their programs will prevail clinically.
So, some of the examples that we've seen are, you know, companies like Prometheus, for example, that just got acquired for over 10 billion dollars with a positive Phase Two readout in immunology. So I think that is a great example where even in this environment as of today, if you are able to persevere as a company and generate great data, you'll be able to do well.
Joson Ng: Zooming out a little bit in terms of from your company to your more personal stance as a venture capitalist, how do you personally keep up to date with biotech? Because every time I check online, there's always new updates in terms of new breakthroughs, new innovations, new companies being set up as well as new companies exiting the industry.
How do you keep up to date with all these trends and news?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yeah, it is a constant challenge, I would admit, just given, the amount of news flow that one is inundated with every single day. But there are a few different sources, I would say, that I personally use to keep up with the news within the life sciences, and there are several good publications in that area.
Endpoints News, Fierce Biotech, BioCentury and many other good groups with publications that come out almost on a daily basis. So I try to sort of make sure that I scan through those headlines and dive into specific articles that I'm interested in. And then there's also on a scientific front, often publications come out in prominent journals and we make sure that we stay in close touch with the new publications that come out and be aware of which direction I think the field's heading.
Finally, I would say that other than just reading literature and news, there's a constant dialogue that we have as an investor with various KOLs, with various investors, patient groups, or physicians to stay on top of the latest developments within the field. And I personally find those to be the most engaging because they also provide additional insights that you don't always learn just from reading literature and news.
So there are many different sources that I make sure I immerse myself with to stay on top of things. But it is a challenge, nobody can always stay on top of everything, so, but you just gotta try and at least be up to date on some of the more important areas that we focus on in our investments.
Joson Ng: I wanted to ask, do you feel like your previous background in academia helps a lot, and how do you think that has changed or molded your perspective in terms of engaging biotech as compared to someone who's coming from a general sort of business background.
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So our field is quite special in a sense that unlike other investing sectors, for life sciences, it's more the norm that we will build a team of investment professionals that have either a PhD or MD. So all of us are equipped with a scientific or medical background. There are some rare exceptions, but that's usually the norm.
So I think that the reason being, I think having a scientific background or a medical background allows you to go very deep into the scientific or clinical language of the clinical programs that you're trying to back here, right?
So the speed and the learning curve is not as steep if you come from such backgrounds. So you're able to read and absorb literature information and be able to engage key opinion leaders in a productive way. So I do think that having an academic background is quite important for what we do.
Different flavors of biotech
Joson Ng: I also wanted to zoom out again, further to the broader ecosystem, because you have had an amazing list of experiences in terms of working with some of the most dynamic ecosystems out there.
You've been to Boston, MIT. You've also been to Cambridge as well as the West Coast in San Francisco. How similar or different are they in terms of the culture, in terms of the regulatory environment, the kind of mindset that the entrepreneurs and the investors have?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yeah, every ecosystem has its kind of slightly unique flavor. Even as I compare and contrast, say, the Boston East Coast ecosystem versus the West Coast ecosystem in San Francisco, there are some notable differences.
On one hand, I would say that the scientific and clinical rigor, it's pretty consistent from a quality level across both coasts. And also, you know, I think in certain parts of Europe, like let's say in the UK, where the life sciences ecosystem is also fairly well established.
Culturally, however, there could be some differences. For example, in the West Coast in San Francisco, where you really see kind of more of a melting pot between tech and biotech versus in Boston, where there's kind of more I call traditional pure play biotech. There are some differences in the type of approaches for the modalities and the types of companies that get built.
So, for example, it is more likely that you find a health tech company to be born out of the West Coast in San Francisco, where there is a conversion between tech and health tech. Whereas in Boston, you will see more traditional biotech companies that are focused on drug development. With a few exceptions, but that's usually sort of the rule of the mainstream biotech ecosystem in Boston.
West Coast has some of that too, but there's more flavors of tech being incorporated into the company just because it's immersed in a heavily tech centric Silicon Valley. It's interesting to sort of see those companies grow in slightly different ways and adopt slightly different approaches to how they do drug development.
Advice for entrepreneurs
Joson Ng: And so trying to bring that back to Singapore, what are some of the best practices that you've observed so far in all these different ecosystems that you think we can try and adopt in Singapore as we try to help the local ecosystem mature and develop?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: So that's a really great question that's also very difficult to answer because it takes so many different factors to make an ecosystem thrive, right?
I do think that at the end of the day, it's a talent pool question. We need to be able to train our local workforce, our local talent pool to have the right skill set and specifically in drug development.
So, doing science or doing fundamental science is different from developing a drug. The fundamental science is step one, but there are like step two to three to four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, right, in drug development. And you require different type of skill sets in order to complete the entire journey of getting an idea from bench to bedside.
So, I do think that it's great that we have some big pharma expertise in our local ecosystem, but we need more of that. We need more of that passive diffusion and also active training of the local talent pool, perhaps by starting out with people that have done it before, having them form more companies and train more people and have that percolate throughout the ecosystem.
It doesn't happen overnight, but it's something that we need to be very consciously building, I think for decades to come.
Joson Ng: I think in Singapore, we really are starting to get on that trajectory. We have more and more startup founders. We have more people looking into entrepreneurship and the private industry as career options.
Are there any advice that you want to share with startup founders that are looking for investment or, are there any mistakes that you foresee that are common and could be avoided?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: I would encourage entrepreneurs or founders, even before they pitch to investors, to take a very hard look at the overall competitive landscape of the space that they're operating in to make sure that they really truly have something differentiated that they're able to offer, that is not just different, but has to be a step change, or at least incremental in one way or other from what's out there.
So this is often a common mistake that I see is that scientific founders locally do not do that rigorous landscape check to make sure that they truly are competitive on a global level. So it's not just locally, but globally, because we're a small country. And we won't be able to be successful if we're only successful in Singapore. It has to be global. .
There's one piece of advice I'd like to give to startup founders in Singapore before they even think about articulating the narrative is how do you juxtapose your offering in a competitive landscape that is worldwide.
Joson Ng: Gotcha. So it's really starting with a global mindset already at the get-go, right?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Absolutely. Yes.
Joson Ng: I wanted to ask as well, usually a startup's first pitch will sound very different before and after their first round of funding and probably as they interact with more investors, the shape of the idea kind of changes a bit. How important is flexibility and malleability for startup founders in terms of when they interact with VCs as well?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Yes, there is a balance between malleability adaptability, focus, and perseverance, right? On one hand, I do think that it's really critical to be able to keep an open mind as you're starting the company for the first time, especially if it's a platform technology, because There are so many different directions the company could potentially go.
On the other hand, you don't want to be confused as a founder by conflicting or contradictory pieces of advice that you get from different people. At the end of the day, you're the founder. You need to own the decision on which direction you would like to take the company.
So before you arrive at that conclusion, do a ton of homework. Gather feedback from other investors, gather feedback from other ecosystem players, gather feedback from even pharma, if you get contacts there. And from there, fine tune your plan and decide which direction you'd like to take the company to. But it's a balance between being adaptable, open minded, but also remaining focused on your mission.
Joson Ng: It's definitely super helpful for a lot of startup founders thinking of looking for investment. More specifically for the Singaporean life sciences ecosystem, how do you see the local ecosystem evolving over the next 2 to 3 years, especially given the macroeconomic headwinds that we talked about a while ago?
Dr. Carolyn Ng: I think I remain optimistic about our Singapore life sciences ecosystem, especially in view of the fact that we now have more players entering into the system. I think it's nice to sort of see the new organizations like ClavystBio or EDCC or even Nucleate, right? Even though you guys are a non-profit, but having these new groups being active in the ecosystem, being thoughtful about talent development, nurturing new companies, I think these are all really good signs.
Because at the end of the day, the ecosystem is made of people and interesting scientific ideas. We've always scientifically been pretty strong, given all the academic institutes that we have in Singapore. But now I think it sounds like it's prime time as we thoughtfully gear people towards building new companies around these scientific ideas.
So I feel really good that we're going to make progress in the coming years.
Joson Ng: Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Carolyn. Thank you so much for being so generous with sharing your advice, your expertise in venture capital investing.
Dr. Carolyn Ng: Absolutely. Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for all these questions.
Joson Ng: Stay tuned for monthly podcasts with key stakeholders of the biotech ecosystem, including founders, investors, and policymakers.
If you have suggestions for the podcast or who you'd like to hear from, feel free to send me an email in the episode description. Join the Singapore Life Sciences Community Slack channel, powered by Nucleate Singapore, where we are building an open community to enable conversations in the life science ecosystem of Singapore.