Moffitt conference links researchers, entrepreneurs
A Stanford University scientist who has co-founded three biotech firms offered five tips for successful business strategies to participants at the Moffitt Cancer Center’s Business of Biotech conference.
It’s important for scientists whose work is being commercialized by newly formed biotech companies to know their role, and be willing to step aside, said Gary Nolan, who sits on the board of directors of Nodality Inc., the firm he most recently co-founded. He’s also professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Stanford NHLBI Proteomics Center.
He also said the founders of startup biotech firms should hire managers they can trust. The founders should remember that they no longer own the technology that’s the basis of a new firm because they sold it. Nolan advised that “there’s lots you can get for free,” such as legal services, by offering stock in a newly formed firm. And he cautioned against promising anyone anything, advising, “make them work for it.”
Nolan was the keynote speaker at the biotech conference Feb. 1, the fourth such event hosted by the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.
A principal aim of the conference is to foster a life science cluster in Tampa Bay, said Jarrett Rieger, director of Moffitt’s Office of Technology Management and Licensing.
“It’s one thing to have discovery that could be monumental. It’s quite another thing to deliver it,” said Dr. William Dalton, president and chief executive of Moffitt.
Moffitt is playing a critical role in that delivery, he said.
Also attending the conference was H. Lee Moffitt, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, who was instrumental in funding the now 24-year-old organization that now bears his name.
“I constantly pinch myself that we’ve come as far as we have,” Moffitt said.