Episode 137: How to Make the Right Deal with a Large Biotech or Pharmaceutical Company (RE-RELEASE)

From the lab bench to billion-dollar partnerships, we're talking biotech dealmaking with someone who's done it all. You're listening to BIO from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes.

Each episode provides insights and information to expand your network, advance your product line, and help your company thrive.

Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to BIO from the Bayou. I'm your host, Dr. Elaine Hamm, the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine, and I'm really excited about today's guest, Dr. Renee Williams. She is an independent board director for AGS Therapeutics and a founding managing partner of Williams Biotech Consulting. She has experience as VP of External Strategy for Genetic Medicines at Eli Lilly and as the Senior Manager of Business Strategy and Operations at Janssen Biopharma. Welcome to the show, Renee.

Ah, so happy to be here. Thank you very much for the invitation, Elaine, and I'm excited to brush the chat today.

Yeah, we, I mean, we've chatted before, so now we just have it recorded and it's on documentation. So now it's—

Oh no, I try not to leave a paper trail. True.

No, exactly. We'll, we'll keep it a little cleaner than our last conversation. All right. Not give all the tea. So, well, I've given a little bit about your background, which is very, very impressive. And we, we also include your LinkedIn profile as part of our show notes. So I, I encourage people to go and check, check you out, but love to dive a little bit deeper. What's been the biggest highlight of your career thus far?

Yeah, when I think about all the different roles that I had, they all served sort of a purpose in my career journey. So, you know, from that perspective, they're all important. You know, and I wouldn't change any of them, but hands down, working for myself, right, founding my own company is definitely the highlight of my career. It's something that I kind of always wanted to do, but never really thought like I had something strong enough to go out into that world and step off the ledge and be able to support myself for more than 2 seconds. And so being a year and a half in, right, being a year and a half in and not having to move back into my parents' house or to get a loan or to do any of those things.

Right.

Has been really— has been really validating. And the ability to sort of connect all the things I've done to date, right, all the way back from being in grade school to today, I can sort of connect the dots to how I got here. And then having that sort of fuel this space I want to be is just really rewarding. It's hard. Let's not get that part twisted. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.

Nope.

It is a constant hustle. Maybe it's not even for everyone, but it's kind of where my spirit lies. And so I'm just— I'm really happy I was able to find my way to it. And kind of do what I want to do with it and succeed.

You've done a lot of different types of partnerships and really bringing, you know, early-stage, you know, technologies and therapeutics to the forefront to larger companies. What are some of those key factors that, that have contributed to successful partnerships that you've seen in those, those types of situations?

As cliché as it's about to sound is overcommunication is key. You know, assuming that someone has the same understanding that you do, When you use a particular word that they think that it means the same thing that you think that it's going to mean, it's not the case. And so, like, as you're moving through these partnerships, like, maybe it's a direct equity investment. Yes, you're happy they're giving you money, but you also need to know what is, what is required to go from investment to maybe it's the POC, or maybe it's the larger, the larger deal. You know, which direction would you like our company to move? And you're not just going to do it because they said it. You got to make sure it fits into your overall strategy, but it's part of deciding, are they a good partner for you, right? If they want you to move into oncology, but you are only focused on neuroscience, and that's not really in your path, they're probably— yes, their money is green and you can spend it, right? But they may or may not be the best partner for you. They may not have a whole lot of strategic insight to you. They may not be able to help you in ways that you want outside of dollars and cents. And so it's kind of the same thing if you're at, let's say, the POC level. And you're putting them together. You need to understand what it's going to take to get you to the next level. And do you have that bare minimum requirement of experiments built in so when successful, everyone is aligned and you're ready to move on? And by the way, how do you know if you're successful? What are your critical success factors, right? It sounds insane, but you know when people do MTAs and there's no idea of what good looks like yet? And then at the end, everyone is like, huh, Let's decide what we can do with this. No. Why are you doing it? Right? Now, if there's a reason for you to do it, if you're like, hey, we just need— like, maybe you're a platform company and you just need more exposure of your platform. And you know, OK, maybe nothing's going to come from it, but they're going to pay us to do it. OK, maybe it makes sense. But if the goal is to get to that larger deal and you have no idea what's required, then you've really just wasted your— it's like an opportunity cost, right?

Mm-hmm.

You could have been spending your time Yeah. And then, like, when you're in the big deal, everyone always says it's like, it's like a marriage, it's like dating, which sounds silly, but it is. Because at the end of the day, you are not doing a deal with Big Pharma. You are doing a deal with people who work for Big Pharma. And so you have to treat them like people. It's not— what's the show? Married at First Sight. This is not married at— it's not Married at First Sight. You don't just get to show up and be like, here's my science, now give me a deal. You do have to date them. They want to see you grow. They want to see, like, that if they give you money, that you're going to know how to push your program forward and you're going to make good decisions. They want to know, are you easy to work with or are you going to be a nightmare? And the scientists are going to come back and be like, we want to— we want to kill you. Don't ever bring us people like this again. Right? Like, you— like, there's just so much that needs to happen that part of a good deal besides community is just getting in there, just getting early. And talking about things. Most people who are S&E type, their role is to be out there. The role is to engage with you. I used to share info all the time if someone asked, right? If they were like, hey, we're thinking about this, what do you think? And I'd be like, well, from a Lilly perspective, I can tell you that if you want to get the scientists engaged, doing that experiment that way is not going to get it done. Because now I've done enough deals that I've seen it. You might want to consider using, I don't know, like, siRNA scope. I know it's expensive. If you can't afford it, here are some other thoughts about designing your experiments in such a way that your answer is diagnostic. Things like that, because you're going to go out. I just don't want to say, hey, go prove it to me, and you go prove it the way that you prove it, and you come back, and it's— I already know that it's not going to pass muster. And so a lot of us do that because it makes our jobs easier, right? If you come to us with stuff that's right in the pocket, it's in scope, and you've done it in a way that we like, It's easy lifting.

Yeah.

Right. Right. I don't have to try to convince people the same way. And so it's like, ask questions, like get information. Don't assume. Because it's always different.

Yeah.

Make sure that it's something that you want to do. I think that we all sort of have, once we get our goals, get a deal, get a deal, you know, and have that be our end goal. And it's just the beginning of it. And if you get into the wrong deal, it can make your life Miserable. And I'd licensed an asset to a company that, that wasn't their expertise. And they ended up returning it because they were an oncology company. I kind of giggled when you said oncology, because like, they didn't know anything about this, this indication. And so, and when you just turn things over, it has the risk of failure and then it comes back to you and now it has the ding of, oh, it got returned.

Yeah. So that's exactly what I was going to say. It is worse to have A deal that doesn't go right than not having that deal at all. Because now you've sort of been marked your little scarlet letter of, oh, I don't know, this company couldn't make it happen. You know, was it the people? Was it the asset?

Yeah.

And so when people say find the right partner, you're a perfect example, is don't go fishing. If I am not an oncology company, don't go fishing an oncology asset to me. One, it's going to make me feel some kind of way about you that you haven't done your homework. And you have wasted my time in my inbox at bio. You're just one more person I have to decline nicely. Right.

Right.

And in a sea of invites, but also if I say yes, what does that say about you? Why are you putting your stuff in the hands of someone, right, that doesn't know what to do with it?

And so, yeah, you don't want to get into a marriage with someone that you're not, not sure. It really is a marriage too. So you haven't done your job once you had the wedding and you wore the beautiful dress and you drank too much champagne at the party. Yeah. Yeah. There's more work to be done after that.

Right. After you get the big splashy, you know, headline, which everyone's looking for, it's like, such and such did a deal for this many million, you know, billion bio bucks and it's woo woo woo woo. But don't get me wrong, it is hard work to get to the end of that contract, but definitely then the work begins.

The really, really hard work began because then you, right again, you're, you're dealing with people and you're, and you're building up a relationship and you have to roll up your sleeves to do that.

I think people forget that. It's like, I get it. Like, when I sat on the other side of the table, you look at me, this is Lily. I'm still a person. And I have to want to engage with you the same way that I would want, like, if this was just in our social setting.

Yeah.

Right? I'm not going to engage with you if I don't like you, right? If I don't enjoy your presence. Like, if you have great science, maybe the better your science, the more we're willing to kind of bite the bullet. But We have absolutely walked away from deals. Like, no, there's no way that I can work with that person for the next how many ever years and/or I don't trust that person. It's kind of sketchy. Every time I ask a question, it's like, oh, well, you know, they give you an indirect answer or they don't want to share this, this data. Like, yeah, it's not, it's not going to be good.

Then you'll never do another deal. I mean, like you're set, you're setting yourself up for future problems because you want to be someone that is easy to work with. And I never want to have a handler, you know, I mean, there's always an alliance manager. But I want them to never have to really, you know, worry.

Could be a handler. That's a great—

Yeah. There's some that I know have just been absolute nightmares for those people. And I feel for them because I, I, and this is true for my personal life too. Like I have always been friends with my ex-boyfriends. Like, I mean, it's— I want to leave a relationship well and that it's a mar on me if it ended badly and we hate each other. Like that, that's also the same thing on a bio deal too. I mean, I always want to remain friends afterwards because we got into a relationship for a reason. So.

Yes, and even though it seems like this is a vast industry and it's just so many places to go, no, no ma'am. The BD area or the S&E area is actually really quite small. And you notice people jump from one company to another company to another company because they've already built up the skill set. And so while you think like, oh, you know, I had this bad experience at Merck with this person, that's okay, they'll never know at Sanofi. That is not the case, right?

Never.

Because then people are also friends. You sit, you have drinks, you sit on panels together, you chitchat, like, It gets around.

Yeah. You get a reputation.

But I lied.

Well, you have done a lot of different deals in the industry. So give me an example of a successful deal and, and really what it taught you about dealmaking in biotech.

I'm gonna give you an example. It's sort of one of each. And so high level, what I have learned is a deal is not done until the ink is dry on the definitive contract. And on the opposite side, a deal is not dead until it's dead. So, I have—

Got it.

Okay.

I have a few examples. One of the early deals I was working on at, at Lilly, I'm like a year into it. I just knew that this was going to transact. You know, we had alignment internally. It fit what we needed to do. I had some depth of knowledge that I brought with me from Janssen about why they should be doing this thing before, because it was a new organization. Like, this is how it's going to help you in, in the future. It checked the boxes, had figured out what all of the sticking points were upfront. And we started negotiating, like, the big rocks first. We didn't leave them to the end. But, you know, certain things kept reoccurring. We were aligned on economics. Like, we'd even worked out the work plan, right?

Yeah.

We knew who was doing what, what experiments were happening. Everything was done. And when we got down to the end, we could not get over this hurdle for, like, 1 or 2 points. And so, while we're working on internally, like, okay, how can we make this happen? The partner comes back and says, you know what? You are costing us so much money in legal. I don't think that we're going to be able to get past this. We're going to walk away now. When I tell you that hurt my heart, because I had already counted like, oh, I've only been here this long. This deal is about to— it was about to close. Like, it's going to be amazing. And then just like generally crushed. Like, I can't believe that we lost this deal. And I was thinking, okay, well, maybe, maybe we'll come back to the table in a couple of months or so. No, gone. Now, the reverse of that, and I was just so sure, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, first day.

You're already scratching to pat yourself on the back, warming up.

You don't have anything until it's dry. Now, the reverse of that, you know, working on an acquisition deal, and mind you, these are large companies, so there's lots of us working on it. It's nobody's one, one deal. And okay, it seems pretty good. We get into the diligence, you know, get into the diligence room, and there's a showstopper. There is something that just is a It's a no-go. And so, you know, from the S&E, the BD perspective, we're already wrapping this up. We're tying this down. We're writing the little notes. And we have moved mentally on to the next deal. Like, OK, what else do we have to do? This deal is dead. And then there was some last-minute information that came to light. The whole thing resurrected. And out of nowhere, this deal gets done. And I was like, holy crap. I had—

I know.

If I would have bet, I would have lost all the marbles. On, on that one, because there is just no way that I thought that that deal was getting, was getting done. And so, yeah, what I have learned is no matter how excited and how you feel about it, it is a roller coaster. It is not done until it's signed and it's not dead until it's dead.

I haven't heard that other perspective of like, it's not dead until it's dead. That gives me some hope because I'm definitely one of those until the check is in the bank and it's cleared, I don't count it as done. But I like the reversal of it that, hey, corpse arrives. It's not just a cocktail.

So, yeah. And like, even though that one was dead, dead, you know, if I were to throw one in, in the middle, I kind of had both where, okay, we had alignment. I even had the capital, which is a little bit more than we normally were willing to pay. They came back and the number that they wanted and the reason why they wanted it was insane. It made no sense for what we were doing to the point that it actually annoyed the BD people. And they were like, I'm off this deal and don't call me back. I refuse to work with someone that doesn't know this much.

Yeah.

About what they're doing. He was like, I have other things to do. He literally was just like, Renee, don't call me again. Don't call me again for this, right? And so then, you know, we tried to do a little bit of negotiation. I was like, you know what? I'm going to walk away because we are so far apart that this is never going to happen. And so it sat. It sat for like 6 months, 7 months. They ended up getting a new BD person. And I think, you know, part of the BD person's original outreach was they had to go through things that didn't transact and try to fill out the waters. And so this person reached out. And mind you, we still liked the technology.

Yeah.

And so, you know, the person reaches out and was like, hey, you know, my name is, and I'm just this, that, and the other. And I said, OK, hey, new person, let me tell you. I am happy to reengage. However, if there's any word that comes remotely close to this, this, this, or this, let's not waste our time because there's no version of where we get it done that way. Now, if you want to think differently, I am happy to come and try to find a happy medium. That deal got done.

That's great.

But it had to sit, and it had to simmer, and it had to soak for a few months. And I wasn't going to reach out because there's just so many— there's so many things on the table, right? Like, I could just— I'm going to go move to the other thing. But that reach out was something new, which is important, right? You didn't come back to me with the same exact thing that we'd already said no to. You came back with a slightly different ground. And we moved away. You know, we ended up paying a little bit more than we wanted to. to pay. You didn't get nearly as much as you asked for in the beginning, but you got something that made sense for where you were at. And then we worked pretty well together to put together what the work plan was going to be and then execute on that thing. So like I said, things aren't over until they're over, and they're not signed until they're signed.

That's fantastic. Well, I'm going to switch gears just a little bit. And I'm sure this is— we're going to have some folks that they're in the science side of things and would love to understand how to transition into the business realm of science. Do you have any advice to offer scientists that are aspiring to transition into more strategic roles within industry like you have?

I can share my path. But high level, I would say that the intersection of business and science is more business than science when it comes to how you're going to interact and how you're going to communicate. So it is first on you to even learn the lexicon of that side. You can't just expect, like, hey, I have a PhD, I've done this work, and then Now I want to slide in. And by the way, you have to teach me all the things, right? Like, yes, you learn a lot on the job.

Definitely.

But there's a lot of scientists who want to move in that space. So how are you going to differentiate yourselves from the other? So the path that I took, right, again, not knowing in the beginning, 2 years into my very first role, I was at Janssen. I just, I knew I wanted to be sort of at that intersection. I applied to all sorts of jobs in the company, like within Janssen and outside. When I say zero traction, not even a cricket, not even a thank you, but a no thank you. I heard nothing from anywhere. So then I had to take a step back and I said, okay, let me— let's evaluate critically. I know that I can do these things, but my resume, it just says chemistry from top to bottom. And while it's analytical chemistry, it still says chemistry from top to bottom. What can I do without actually having the new job that I want to demonstrate that I am ready for the new job that I want? So I'm in a big company. There's resources for education. I looked around, and I was like, oh, look at all this money sitting here that no one's using. I got them to let me use it. I went to a venture capital course at Wharton. I went to one at Stanford. I went to one at Columbia. I wanted to learn, like I said, sort of the lexicon and how things work, but also start to build a network. And then, OK, maybe I want to be a founder. Maybe I don't. If I'm going to work with founders, I should know how founders think. So what did I do? Well, I've always wanted to patent something. I kind of always had this entrepreneurial thing. There was something I was working on. I managed to get 100% assignment of it. I went and patented that thing. I started a company around that thing. And then, like, okay, by day, I am a chemist for a large organization. By night, I'm a founder. I pitched, I went to accelerators, like, I lived the life of a founder, so I could kind of understand who it is I'm working with on the other side of the table. And so, I kind of did all of those things, and then I actually fixed up my LinkedIn, because at the time, I had no LinkedIn. I made a LinkedIn that reflected that I am a scientist who is interested in business. And by the way, here are the things I've done to kind of prepare myself. So then when the time came, how did they find me? A recruiter found me on LinkedIn and was like, hey, we're looking for someone who knows the business of science, but also knows about oligonucleotides, which that part was just kind of serendipitous that that was the space that I was in. And ultimately, that is how I ended up at Lilly. They had a business person.

Eh.

They had a science person. Hmm. Now they're looking for a business science person that knew about nucleic acids. And when the time came, I was ready. I could talk the talk, right? I knew the— I knew the space. I knew the industry. I'd never done the job, but I knew about the job. And I always thought about how I'd approach the job if the opportunity came. So when it came, yeah, man, I sounded like I'd been there before. Oh, my word. And that's the difference. I was, even though I wasn't. And so that's, that's what I would say to, to science folks. Like, you can't just expect that I've done all this great science and now it's going to make me a great business person. It's not the same. Now, for me, I also ended up getting an MBA because that is how I got traction. Like, I just, I couldn't get anyone to give me a look until I showed, like, for me, that I did something that said I am a business person. Do you need an MBA? No. But everyone has their path to how do you, how do you get that first look? And I got to say, the moment I put Cornell MBA on my resume, then I start getting responses. And I should also say that I took a small role in between, one that I didn't really want. I didn't want to be in operations, but it was an opportunity to get out of the lab and to get into a space where I really wanted to understand how large pharma worked. I wanted to get in front of higher-ups, higher-up people, and that is what that role—

Mm-hmm.

allowed me to do. I turned it into what I wanted and then I was ready. I had the demonstration. So that's sort of my, what I would tell people to do is if you're not getting the look straight away, do things in the background, spend your time. Like I literally was living a double life until it became my—

Did you sleep in that time period? Because you're working at a big company, running your own small company, looking, you know, take, getting your MBA, taking extra courses. I'm assuming that there was a period of time where you just didn't sleep. Right.

And even though I say running my company, I started a company because I needed someplace to put that patent, but I was always a company of one, right? I never— I knew that I was never going to build this thing. Yeah, because it was really a product. It wasn't a company, but I just needed that. I needed the platform in which to go, to go do those things. And so, you know, you just kind of manifest your own fate here.

Yeah.

Did I know it was going to work? No. But I also knew that not doing anything was also not going to work. So Try, just try to do something.

That's a great place to leave this on. This is— that is perfect. Thank you so much for sharing not only the insights on the company side, but your own journey. I know there's a lot of scientists out there that want to get onto the business side, but don't know where to begin. And those of us that are on the business side and navigating that large company thing is very, very challenging. And I know in our conversations that we've had, you've, you've been enormously helpful in helping me navigate as a startup company, larger companies. And I know that some of the work that you do on the consulting side. You have an incredible Rolodex that I think that, that's, that's an advantage of. Your experience has been incredibly helpful to my company. So I hope that others will take advantage of that.

Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. This has been great.

Yeah.

Just another conversation with you, Elaine.

We'll have Renee's contact information and informational links posted in our show notes. So make sure that you check them out to learn more. Thanks again for joining us today.

Absolutely. Just reach out. Thank you.

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