Building from the ground up: how Talentmark can help start-ups

Background

Sometimes, our involvement with a company begins at the very earliest stages of its journey – or in one case, even earlier than that! One biotech client we were introduced to via our network had not even been registered as a company when its founder asked us to help assemble a team to develop an innovative therapy.

At the time, only the founder and a CFO were in place, and so our involvement as a strategic talent partner would be critical to the fledgling company’s success. But more than this, as time went on, we were also able to make introductions via our network to potential investors.

This strategy would then drive interest in funding.

Our approach

The CEO of the company wanted to start out with a small team to secure the best discovery strategy in readiness for the lab and clinical studies that would ideally follow. This strategy would then drive interest in funding. Using our expertise with helping businesses at this phase in their growth, we worked with the leadership team to define a talent strategy to ensure that it matched with the expectations of potential investors. It was important to have top talent in place, senior professionals who could convince investors that the company would be able to deliver on its business model and fulfil its potential. A Chief Scientific Officer who could make a persuasive case about the indications, strategy, and expected clinical outcomes, was therefore an absolutely critical appointment.

Outcome

Working in partnership with the CEO we helped to secure the Chief Scientific Officer and two non-executive board members. One was a specialist in R&D and medical, the other had extensive CFO experience. In addition, we helped build out a talented leadership team including heads of discovery, pharmacology & toxicology, project management and other senior support roles such as HR.

As well as appointing key members to the senior team, we were able to add value by connecting the CEO founder with a number of venture capitalists in our network. In particular, we put their team in touch with the head of ventures at a major pharmaceutical firm. Together with the initial hires, this was instrumental in enabling the business to put together a consortium of investors and close a critical Series A funding round.

This example highlights Talentmark’s ability to work strategically in partnership with clients to meet their evolving needs. In this case helping an early-stage venture build a senior team that was not only about it delivering on its business plan, but also gave it the credibility that made it attractive to investors.