Click here for application due August 16.

Career Focus

Creating, launching and funding Life Sciences ventures is a difficult and daunting task, especially given recent market conditions. This course is a practical, hands-on field course primarily designed for students who are very serious about pursuing entrepreneurship within the life sciences, including therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, tools, software & data, contract research/manufacturing and more). The course will feature workshops with practitioners and domain experts providing guidance and exploring how to successfully navigate critical tasks when launching a life sciences venture. These tasks include negotiating licenses for intellectual property, developing clinical budgets and timelines, using these tools to develop a business model and resource the venture, exploring the process of building a syndicate and establishing a board of advisors, finding human talent to accomplish scientific goals, and more. All students interested in this course should have one of the following:

be actively pursuing a job or entrepreneurship in the life sciences post-graduation;

are already actively working on a life sciences company idea or startup;

joining a life sciences company and/or are already working part-time during the school year; or

have previous experience in the life sciences industry.

This field course complements concepts covered in the Entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences course and all other entrepreneurially-focused courses, but with a specific industry focus on the life sciences.

Educational Objectives

This course has been specifically designed to provide hands-on guidance and operational support for students who are seriously pursuing founding or joining life sciences ventures before, upon, or soon after, graduation. Students will learn and develop frameworks, tools, a network, and hands-on experience in critical functions of a life sciences startup, directly preparing them for a career in entrepreneurship in the Life Sciences. Sessions will feature skill-building workshops led by the instructor and outside experts as well as weekly peer-to-peer critiques on work-in-progress. Students are encouraged to work as a cohort to support each other through their networks and to offer insights based on their own experiences. While the course is focused on the life sciences, students need not have a scientific background, merely a passion for making an impact through participation in these ventures.

Course Content

Through hands-on workshops with industry experts and case and/or lecture-based discussions based on a variety of life sciences ventures, students will develop skills across every aspect of the life sciences venture creation landscape. Sectors of life sciences covered include those in biotech, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and related supporting tools, technology and services organizations. Students can work on projects alone or in teams within the course. The field course will explore four different modules:

1. Pre-Requisites to Fundraise - what will investors or grant-making bodies expect you to bring them, and how to do you build this out in a rational manner that investors will believe; building a business plan; developing budgets and milestones; intellectual property considerations and licensing/creation.
2. When, and How, to Raise Funds - what do investors care about when considering a pitch, which investors should you target, how to build a syndicate, and which advisors do you want on board; negotiating term sheets.
3. How to Meet Scientific Deadlines - you raised money, and now you need to hit milestones - where and how to build teams or outsource to achieve scientific goals and have success; optimizing capital efficiency; legal and intellectual property development; regulatory considerations.
4. Industry Challenges and When to Get Help - when should you worry about regulatory concerns? Who do you hire internally or as a consultant? When and if to outsource to contract research organizations? How do you know what to worry about when you don't know what you don't know that is unique to life sciences ventures?

In most classes, we will have case protagonists and guests, including life sciences entrepreneurs, investors and domain experts so you can engage directly with these practitioners from the burgeoning life sciences venture ecosystem.

Key Learning Objectives include hands-on experience in successfully dealing with:

• Learning to operate and fund life sciences from industry-leading experts
• Avoid making the mistakes of others and learning to innovate in the industry
• Navigating careers within the life sciences
• Building a brand and community within the industry to leverage for help
• Building budgets; licensing/creating intellectual property; legal and regulatory considerations
• Fundraising with angel individuals and venture capital funds/investors
• Explore financing sources and how to practically access them, including early grants, non-dilutive financing sources, equity financing, and more
• Identify best practices for building teams (incl. compensation structures) & boards
• Explore ethical considerations while working in a hot-button field

Grading

The course is highly focused on ensuring each team’s venture evolves towards success criteria unique to their needs based on indication, modality, and requirements. Session participation, including working directly with industry mentors and routine session deliverables, will make up a large portion of the individual grade. All readings and deliverables are designed to move student ventures forward and will be critical to the ventures' successes. Grading will be a combination of class participation (40%), mentorship (bi-weekly summaries of activities, learnings and reflections - 20%), writing assignments (e.g., budget, industry reflections - 20%) and a final written paper (20%).

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