Life Sciences 360 Podcast: Elegant Improvisation in Biotech Leadership with Bill Holodnak

In this candid and thought-provoking episode of Life Sciences 360, host Harsh Thakkar sits down with Bill Holodnak, a renowned biotech executive recruiter, to explore the evolving landscape of leadership in life sciences. From navigating FDA layoffs and funding shifts to decoding what VCs look for in founders, Bill brings wisdom from the front lines of biotech hiring. Through engaging stories and firsthand experiences, he offers valuable takeaways for CEOs, founders, and executives seeking to lead with adaptability and purpose.

‍

Key Takeaways:

‍

Biotech Leadership Requires Improvisation

Success in startups isn’t linear; “elegant improvisation” is key to building companies and careers.

Post-FDA Opportunities

Regulatory professionals leaving agencies like the FDA can thrive in biotech and VC roles, but attitude and openness matter most.

VCs Want More than Science

Investors assess scientific brilliance and the founder’s ability to scale, hire, and commercialize.

Failure ≠ Disqualification

A founder's past loss, when well-fought and well-learned, can be a strength in new ventures; context matters.

Hot Areas in 2025

AI drug discovery (AIDD) and immunology are investor favorites, while pure platform companies and CGTs face more scrutiny.

Board Recruitment Trends

Operators are now joining boards alongside investors to bring functional depth and strategic governance.

Recruiting at the Executive Level is Relational, Not Transactional 

True matches come from dialogue, reflection, and trust—not just resumes.

‍

Follow Us On LinkedIn for Life Science Executive Search Insights

‍

‍

Full transcript:

‍

Harsh Thakkar (00:01.746)

Bill, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.

‍

William Holodnak (00:06.702)

It's great to be here, Harsh.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (00:08.774)

Yeah, I want to ask you, you've been through, you've helped tons of biotech executives through everything from IPO highs and post-layoffs, all of this stuff over the years. I want to rewind back and ask you, what drew you first into this executive leadership and search-type work in the life sciences industry?

‍

William Holodnak (00:37.526)

Those are two separate questions. Would you like me to comment on how I get into recruiting or how I got into recruiting in the life sciences?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (00:46.27)

Both. Yeah, I would like to know both.

‍

William Holodnak (00:50.926)

Okay. Well, this is a profession where there's no kind of honorable aspiration, if you know what I mean. People don't set out in life or even after their teens or early 20s, saying, I want to be a recruiter. It's usually a default position, a lovely serendipity in my case. So I began life, I'll try to be concise here, as an aspiring academic.

‍

I have a graduate degree in 12th century French intellectual history. My parents wanted me to do something practical, so I showed them, but scholarship was not for me. I wound up going and running small businesses, one of which was a series of movie theaters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which showed art films and foreign films and older American films. I became, I was interested in the subject matter. I taught film for a while.

‍

But then I had to make a living. And so I went back to business school, tried public accounting, tried to do something analytical. My version of that was public accounting. I spent two marginally distinguished years with Price Waterhouse. Accounting was not for me either. Then somebody said, “Why don't you try this recruiting thing?” And so intuitively, totally intuitively, I thought it would be pleasing to me. And I turned out I got good at it, but more importantly, getting good at it, I really loved it. And I can explain the nature of my love if you'd like, or the reasons for my love. I've been a general, in the early going, was recruiting for venture capital firms, and that was very exciting. But I was then hired by the chairman of Fidelity Investments to be his personal recruiter in a totally random occurrence that was very fortunate for me. So I wound up recruiting financial people.

‍

Investors and non-investors at a very senior level all over the world. It was a wonderful education for me. He, whose name was Ned Johnson. Ned understood my nature and knew I was entrepreneurial. And he funded a business where I could recruit the way I like to recruit, which was for early-stage startups. And so I did that and built a firm to a hundred people. However, this is an important thought for you and the audience. One day, a very senior guy at Fidelity said, “Have you heard about this biotech thing?” And it was just emerging in Boston, with Biogen, Genetics Institute, Integrated Genetics, and Genzyme, of course. And so it seemed opportune to me. So, because it was opportune, I pursued it. And then all of a sudden, I met these scientists, these biologists, these chemists, and they thought in ways that I thought were marvelous.  The mission of the enterprise, the complexity of the science, and the sheer exuberant risk-taking were all kinds of immediate emotional magnets for me. And so I built the practice in that. And that has been the dominant note in my court ever since. I'd like to say I'm a specialist wrapped in a generalist paper, if you know what I mean, because I've recruited all over the world, all different kinds of people. But what I really love is working in the biotech industry.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (04:19.996)

No, I know you mentioned Biogen, and I actually spent four years of my career working in Boston for Takeda, for Biogen, and for other companies. So, I have a lot of friends at Biogen, and if any one of them is listening, huge shout out to them because I had a lot of fun working there. And I can relate to what you're saying because this like...

‍

Even when I was in Cambridge, I could go on my lunch break to get something, and I would run into five other biotech folks. I go to the gym to play squash, and the people playing with me are like, in that building in Cambridge, there are five other biotech startups. You're always just constantly... I never thought of going to a conference as such because I was literally in Cambridge, where there are at least 50 biotech startups. Today, I don't know what that number is. I don't even want to know, but at that time, it was an insane vibe, like energy. Like you could feel like, everybody is part of this culture. And it's amazing for Boston what biotech has done in that sector, Cambridge, and Kendall Square, and all.

‍

William Holodnak (05:45.58)

Well, if you're in the 14th century, you'd want to be in Florence, right? And in many ways, Cambridge at that time was the Florence of the emerging life sciences industry. There's a very interesting book called Career Imprints. And the woman who wrote it is a friend of mine. She tracked the history of the early biotech CEOs. Where did they come from?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (05:48.899)

Mm-hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (05:58.787)

Yep.

‍

William Holodnak (06:15.126)

Gabe Schmirgel, Henri Termeer, and Tuan Hanouk, all of these people came from Baxter because Baxter made a decision when it was growing prodigiously in the late and mid 60s to hire older graduates of business schools, top business schools, people who had some experience, and then bring them into corporate headquarters and disperse them.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (06:23.992)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (06:44.28)

to run these subsidiaries. So these were brilliant people at an adventurous time in their lives who were given experience that was quasi-autonomous. It was analogous to what an entrepreneurial experience would be, except with some of the coverage of the mothership in Chicago. Anyhow, there were so many great, know, Ed Green at Hypertech, they were all out of Baxter, and many of them wound up in Cambridge.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (06:46.0)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (07:13.558)

As you said, Harsh, it was just a wonderful place to be at the burgeoning of the industry.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (07:20.571)

Yeah, and I wanna ask you this next question because it is very interesting. I haven't been able to ask this to anybody else who's been on this podcast in this similar field of recruiting because this is not a current thing that was going on at the time. But when I look at LinkedIn or I've been looking in the past, let's say three to four weeks, we're hearing a lot about the layoffs at FDA, HHS, etc.  You know, all the stuff that's going on, restructuring, trimming down of different departments and entities. There's a lot of fear and confusion. Some people are seeing the good in it. Most people see the bad in it. When you sit on the sidelines, because you're definitely in the recruiting business, you are working with tons of biotech companies. What are you seeing as the impact of all these things that are happening? In the regulatory agency and all the supporting agencies in DC.

‍

William Holodnak (08:26.2)

Well, I'm sure they thought they came from not a static world, but a normalized, structured, constant world. And now, of course, the current administration has turned that topsy-turvy. And for people, people react to these crises or these radical changes in circumstances in different ways. I'll answer your question by giving you a very specific example.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (08:53.454)

Mm-mm. Okay.

‍

William Holodnak (08:54.01)

Recently, I recruited a woman who was the Deputy Director of the FDA; her name is Namandjé Bumpus. And I met her in the midst, just at the very beginning of this dislocation. Numanje had been a distinguished academic at Johns Hopkins and then had spent almost three years in the FDA. One is first as the chief scientist and then as the deputy director. She did extremely well, coming from one institutional environment to another.

‍

And she was really a marvelous personality because when I met her, I had something very specific in mind for her. And I told her about that, but she exuded this wonderful, you know, kind of optimism and a sense of the new possibilities in her life. She liked working for the FDA. She more than liked working for the FDA, but

‍

It was different now, and she had to find something new. And rather than approaching it with fear and trembling, she looked at it as an adventure, and she was looking, I don't know, where she's landed full-time. I recruited her for the board of Recursion, which is an AIDD company. We can discuss Recursion later if you'd like, or computer-aided drug discovery and development if you're interested. But we recruited her to the board there because they're in...

‍

Harsh Thakkar (10:02.169)

Mm.

‍

William Holodnak (10:14.862)

You know, she was particularly appropriate because they're very interested in how to approach the FDA with drugs that are essentially discovered through computing, a combination of computing, biology, and chemistry. The important point in the answer to your question was that it's all how it's all your mind, you know, change is either a threat or it's an opportunity. And Namandjé was wonderfully adventurous in how she looked at it. And she's finding herself. She's not only meeting all sorts of new people, but she's also looking at what a big pharma job might look like to her. She's looking at what a biotech job might be to her. She's looking at board roles. So she's making the absolute most of this and taking advantage of a very rich career that was all institutional and is now becoming commercial.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (10:54.956)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (11:05.817)

No, that's a very important point because, as I've seen a lot of the conversations around this topic, or even when somebody has posted who was working at the FDA, saying, hey, I have been part of the layoffs, or my role was terminated. I've seen a lot of people sharing, I've seen comments from biotech executives asking these FDA laid-off team members to connect with them to see if there are any possibilities. As you're saying, the example you gave, of Namandjé, is obviously making the most of this by engaging in all these conversations that she never had a chance to while at the FDA. And now it's like, she has a lot more options to figure out how she wants to, does she want to work in an industry? Does she want to work on the VC side that's funding great ideas? I mean, there are multiple ways to be in life sciences. It's not just about working for a company,

‍

William Holodnak (12:17.91)

Absolutely. And look, she's making the most of it. I'm sure she's going to have a splendid career post the FDA. And that has to do with her intellect, but it has to do with an openness and a positivity. Not to sound simplistic, but she just has a wonderful attitude. There are so many talented people in there who are no longer there. They'll find something, and the industry will benefit, I would say.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (12:38.232)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (12:48.32)

Yeah, yeah, and another interesting topic or another interesting thing that I don't know what the implications are, but again, for the last, I wanna say like, know, 10 days or 15 days, whatever, everyone's just talking about the stock market. Like, even people in Europe and other, you know, regions of the world are talking about the US stock market and how the VC funding into biotech and life sciences might change radically with everything that's going on in the stock market. So, are you seeing some kind of shift with everything that's going on and how VCs are going to fund new startups that are coming in 2025 and beyond?

‍

William Holodnak (13:36.536)

Look, we still see lots of companies being funded. I won't sugarcoat this. I mean, there are some projects that are being put on hold because of the uncertainty that's being created by policy decisions that are sometimes mysterious, if you know what I mean. So I don't have a crystal ball as to how long this uncertainty will last, but it's certainly, you know,

‍

Harsh Thakkar (13:54.219)

Yep. Yep.

‍

William Holodnak (14:06.058)

It's certainly there. I've lived through a number of market cycles. As I told you earlier, I worked at Fidelity, and there, the stock market was essential information every day. And it goes up and it goes down and it means something or it means nothing. There are good times and there are bad times. And the pendulum swings. I could offer you any number of other cliches. But I don't have a...

‍

Harsh Thakkar (14:26.603)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (14:34.68)

conviction of how long this is going to last or how severe it's going to last. It's a wonderful industry, the life sciences, because it's so complicated. It's got an elegant mission, a spiritual mission, and it's got intellectual brilliance, and it requires nerves of steel and the patience of Job, right? It's a very complicated affair.

‍

I assume you can't underestimate the changes that these economic dislocations are creating, but I still see, you know, creative thought and risk taking coming from the venture community, but fingers crossed.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (15:16.225)

Yeah.

‍

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It is a great time to be witnessing all this that's going on. And again, nobody knows exactly what the implications are. I'm still, just like you said, I'm still seeing a lot of... let me frame that, but basically what I was gonna ask you if you wanna gather your thoughts is what kind of stuff do VCs look at and things like that, but let me go back to what I was saying. Yeah, so I was basically saying that, you know, I've seen, nobody knows what's going to happen, like you said, you don't have the crystal ball. Nobody knows what's gonna happen, but I've still seen a lot of great companies being funded and a lot of great ideas, especially like you mentioned, AI drug discovery, or using AI. Those companies are, I'm seeing a lot of that on my LinkedIn feed. So that's really great. I wanted to ask you a little bit deeper question on VCs and what they look for when they're looking to invest in a biotech startup. So you mentioned earlier that you love working for the startup ecosystem within the biotech industry. So, can you break down some of the signals that VCs are prioritizing when they look at a biotech leadership? Like, are they looking for founder conviction and past pedigree? Are they looking for the idea? Is it a unique idea, or is it like a combination of multiple things? Can you comment on that?

‍

William Holodnak (18:01.806)

You know, it's a multivariate equation, if you know what I mean. I mean, they do look at the intellectual luster of the founder. They look at the uniqueness or the differentiated quality of his or her ideals. This will bring us to a deeper topic, I think. They also look for the quality of leadership. 

‍

Harsh Thakkar (18:26.87)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (18:28.288)

So, one of the things you find is that many biotechs are funded by brilliant scientists, people who have enormous intellectual capacity, people who have mastered complex disciplines. The art of running a company, the art of growing a company, of growing an organization, the art of financing, these are all different. They might be lower on the intellectual order, but they're high on the demands for energy, creativity, conviction, and improvisatory ability. And some scientists think that's easy, which is a mistake that they have to get over. And they have to understand the special challenges that come from managing as opposed to intellectually creating. And sometimes the quality of their reputation and their accomplishments blinds them to the complexity of the more vulgar art of management, if you know what I mean. venture investors in their hearts, I think, look at the quality and the differentiated aspect of the science that's created by the founder. They also look at how fluid the person is going to adjust to commercial responsibility. And that adjustment can take two directions. It can either be by mutating and

‍

Harsh Thakkar (19:27.924)

Yep.

‍

William Holodnak (19:56.258)

getting beyond the science, recruiting a chief scientific officer, recruiting other people, and taking charge of the orchestration of the functions, internal, and becoming a salesperson externally, they either adapt to that or they don't adapt to that, right? And if they don't adapt to that, they've got to hire somebody to be their CEO or they've got to get out of the way, right?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (20:04.692)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (20:22.887)

Hmm. Right.

‍

William Holodnak (20:25.932)

And one of the things I look for, apart from what a venture person looks for, is if I'm going to help these people, I have to believe in them. I have to understand them. I have to believe that they will be fluid. I'm currently working in the UK with a brilliant academic from Oxbridge who has developed a unique immunology platform and has a clinical strategy in place, although no clinical programs are in place yet. And he, in this case, is wonderful to work with because we're doing a search with him that is simultaneous, bifocal. This is going to sound crazy to you, I think, but it's an ambiguity I tolerate and encourage in certain instances. We're looking for a chief business officer, but if you find somebody who is so good at looking for a chief business officer, they have to be the CEO. This person has already admitted that they will allow themselves to be replaced.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (21:08.051)

Yep.

‍

Mm-hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (21:26.156)

Right, based on the evidence. You realize what a wonderful improvisation of elegance that is, you know, and that should be very, and I'm working closely with the investor, and I've made the investor aware of this. So it's really, you're asked the question about what investors look for. I tried to answer that, but I am also investing my time in these people and sometimes my money, right? I'm looking for whether you can work with them and if they will adapt to the realities of the candidate pool they see, and if they look into their own hearts and determine what gives them pleasure and what they feel they're authentically good at, if you know what I mean. 

‍

Harsh Thakkar (22:06.459)

Right, right, yeah. No, you made a very good point, which is that at every stage of the product development, research and development, commercialization, and clinical trials, there are different responsibilities at the leadership level, right? So what you're basically saying is, the CEO and the executive leadership team are going to adapt and sort of have that skillset to interact with the regulatory agencies or understand the clinical trials or the regulatory milestones they need to hit to keep the investors happy and keep their employees and everyone happy. And then also, when they get to that almost line of commercialization, are they going to be able to come out of this scientific mindset into now, hey, we gotta sell this thing to make the money that we invested in the past?

‍

Twenty years, and for some CEOs, it's great. They can do that probably because they have management experience or they get that experience, and they have strong scientific skills, so they have both. But it's really hard to find someone who has those two because they're both needed. You can't just be truly scientific and just try to take it to commercialization because there are so many other factors involved.

‍

William Holodnak (23:36.608)

Here's a topic that might be interesting for you related to what you asked. Sometimes, when there's a first-time CEO, the investors thoughtfully encourage the recruitment of a chairman or an executive chairman, usually a serial CEO who, beyond operating, can bring governance discipline to the board meeting, can be a mentor to the CEO, and can help that person grow beyond it.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (23:40.069)

Yeah.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (23:50.791)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (24:05.646)

It's one strategy that you can apply to augment a founder or to augment a first-time CEO. And we are engaged in these kinds of searches a lot. But it's a very kind of dynamic circumstance that requires thoughtfulness on the part of the people in the company, the people investing in the company.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (24:13.49)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (24:35.488)

And I have to be thoughtful in my own way as a service provider because I only derive pleasure, to be honest with you, if something works out, and it's an inexact science.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (24:49.241)

Yeah, and you mentioned you were talking about first, yeah. No, sorry, go ahead, go ahead. There's some lag, so I thought you were done, but go ahead.

‍

William Holodnak (24:51.542)

And to your earlier.

‍

William Holodnak (24:57.868)

No, no, please.

‍

William Holodnak (25:02.958)

I was just going to say that there are people who can mutate all along the line of the company life cycle. There are CEOs who bring the company together. They're kind of catalytic agents where they bring all of these elements together, the science, the seed funding, et cetera. And that's one species of CEO.

‍

Then sometimes there's somebody needed who is kind of strategic and product-oriented, who understands how to shape this science into a convincing program that will create assets, that will create value for the investors. And that's a different kind of CEO. And then there's the kind of person that comes along who's more commercial, who understands how to address reimbursement issues, market access issues, et cetera, et cetera.

‍

There's an adage in Britain that I've heard often from my British constituents: there are horses for courses. Now, I can give you a counterexample as well. There's a guy by the name of Peter Hecht in Cambridge. Peter, I met when he was a cell biologist coming out of the Whitehead Institute, and he had founded a company called Ironwell.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (26:01.681)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (26:19.084)

And it was based on basic, interesting science. And he got the company funded by friends and family. Then he raised money from venture capitalists. Several rounds. Then he raised a crossover round. Then he took the company public. Then he hired a commercial organization to introduce the product, which was for Crohn's disease or irritable bowel syndrome. Anyhow, he's no longer with the company, but he had a remarkable set of mutations, but he is by far the exception.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (27:02.639)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (27:07.589)

Yeah, and I actually, it's interesting that you mentioned Ironwood because back when I was at Takeda between 2012 and 14, I actually got to work with a lot of people that had moved from, left a role at Ironwood or came to Takeda or maybe I think left Takeda and went to Ironwood, I don't know. But I remember hearing the name, it's interesting you mentioned that example. Another thing you mentioned that was interesting is, you know, first-time founders. So this is also a question I had is how much of, like if we are, let's say we're not talking about first time founders, we're talking about people who have had led or scaled or raised money or commercialized at a startup before, how much of their wins and losses in their past companies affect their success rate in a newer company? Like if a founder or CEO, you know, had a company that went bankrupt, does that mean if he starts a new company tomorrow, he's not gonna get funding, or like, can you comment on that? Like, how much does that play into their pedigree of the wins and losses?

‍

William Holodnak (28:28.494)

It's a very, very astute question. I'm glad you asked. In many ways, it's the bane of my existence. Oftentimes, especially when times are tight, venture investors can revert to the psychology of only wanting to hire somebody who has gone from pharma to biotech

‍

Harsh Thakkar (28:37.296)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (28:56.662)

and made money for their investors, right? Only the winners are consoled by the winners. And that win can be an IPO, that win can be an &A, it doesn't matter, they've gotten the sophistication of big pharma, they've taken the chance in biotech, and they've succeeded, right? Now the problem with trying to recruit that person again is if they've done this and they've done this and they've made money,

‍

Oftentimes they don't want to do it again because it's such hard work, or they want to vary their pain and pleasure. If you know what I mean, they want to become venture investors or they want to sit on the floor. But the default, the default preference is for somebody who's done that. There is a tendency to discount people who have gone from big pharma, gone to biotech, and had a win or a draw, right?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (29:28.728)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (29:34.096)

Yeah.

‍

William Holodnak (29:56.098)

I mean, there is an adage that I believe in that you kind of learn more from failure than you do success, because success in biotech has to do with hard work, has to do with brilliance, but it also has to do with the wheel of fortune, if you know what I mean. And so if somebody has, and this is when we get into recruiting somebody for a CEO role who

‍

Harsh Thakkar (30:12.077)

Mm-mm. Mm.

‍

William Holodnak (30:21.934)

has been a biotech and had a biotech CEO before, and it hasn't succeeded, then we have to reference and make sure that the fight that was fought was intelligently waged, and there was honor in that defeat. But it's a much harder sell job, right?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (30:42.636)

Hmm.

‍

Right.

‍

William Holodnak (30:47.35)

It's just life. So I have to look at people for what they are. I have to analyze them for what they are. And if I believe that there was quality in the decision-making of their ultimate failure here, and there were lessons learned, why wouldn't you want this? They've been a CEO before, and they've experienced harsh reality, and they've learned from it. That would be a good bet in my mind.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (31:11.725)

near.

‍

William Holodnak (31:13.986)

And so these are the cases that I have to try in the high court of the venture investors, regularly.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (31:14.178)

Yeah.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (31:21.41)

Yeah, Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but I'm sure like if I research more on this topic and like look at a founder of a new startup and see what their previous wins or losses were, I'm sure there's even within VCs and investment communities, there are different styles and there are believers of what you just said that, you if somebody has failed, they know a lot more, they have a chip on their shoulder to go and win, they're hungry versus somebody who has won is probably going to just try to come and do that slightly better, but that doesn't always work. There isn't a right or wrong answer, but I'm glad what you commented is very interesting.

‍

William Holodnak (32:12.3)

Right, I'm so glad you brought up the topic, because it's an important one for me.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (32:15.565)

Yeah, and then when you are, so this is another thing that I wanted to get your take on. So, as you're working with these executive teams or maybe you're interacting with investment companies who are working with biotechs, are there any specific therapeutic areas or types of companies that you are seeing a lot more?

‍

And are there any types of companies that are sort of fading? Like for me, I'm just seeing a lot of cell and gene therapy. I'm seeing a lot of AI, drug discovery-type companies. Can you comment on, like, what sort of companies are you seeing peak and what are the ones that you're seeing sort of fade away?

‍

William Holodnak (33:04.206)

Well, look, the AIDD space is red hot. I'm sure you saw the recent financing for Isomorphic, $600 million in the UK. We see companies getting formed all the time. There are new venture groups being formed around this. There are dedicated subsets of venture firms focused on this.

‍

There's such an opportunity to create efficiency in the radically inefficient enterprise of drug discovery and development that AI and computing just seem to be getting better and more potent every day. I think there's a real belief that machines can transform biology. And anyhow, there's a lot of investor enthusiasm about that. Apart from the AIDD space,

‍

Harsh Thakkar (33:52.557)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (34:00.236)

we see a high degree of emphasis on immunology and autoimmune diseases. Many oncology companies are pivoting from pure oncology, especially the IO companies, to immunology. So that seems to be a very hot space as well. Kind of repurposing drugs within, essentially, you know, foraging about looking for compounds that could be repurposed, that seems to be attracting a lot of interest these days. The pure platform companies, biology or chemistry, are having a tougher time of it, I would say.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (34:44.887)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (34:47.468)

And cell and gene therapy, it's a wonderful modality, but it's also going through a hard time, I would say, as well.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (34:56.043)

Yeah, because the odds of success are extremely low, and I can only speak a little bit about cell and gene therapy, since I'm doing a lot of technology and compliance consulting, the majority of the clients I've worked with in the past three years have happened to be in the cell and gene therapy space. I've seen some companies flourish, which means more work for my team and me. But I've also seen some of my projects being canned because the company, you know, I had to take a step back. It's very interesting modality, but again, I think there are a lot of ups and downs happening there just because it's so personalized and the manufacturing is so different from, you know, traditional biologic. So yeah, I agree with you on that.

‍

William Holodnak (35:58.67)

I was just thinking of other topics that might be of interest to the audience.

‍

William Holodnak (36:12.005)

The.

‍

William Holodnak (36:24.568)

There's a lot of, we're seeing a lot of board-level recruiting these days. Especially companies that are investor-heavy on the board. Whether it's a first-time CEO or whether it's a company focused on.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (36:29.132)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (36:47.886)

Maybe I'll give you an example rather than just talk abstractly. One of our clients is Mammoth, which is a gene editing company founded by Jennifer Doudna. They started off in 2017 or 2018 by using CRISPR for diagnostic purposes for a variety of reasons that are probably easy enough to imagine. They pivoted to therapeutics, and they came to us. We helped them recruit a translational scientist, adding early clinical development wisdom to the team, which had been more purely scientific and focused on genetic, the science of genetic medicines. And then we recruited Bob Brown, who was one of the founders and the chief scientific officer, head of R&D, Gorday Serna. And we brought him onto the board. So there was a desire to kind of enable this pivot from diagnostics to therapeutics with some truly industrially strong or industrial strength capability, both at the R&D level as well as at the board level.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (37:43.851)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (38:07.125)

Hmm. Yeah, no, that's a great example.

‍

William Holodnak (38:10.766)

So in the board recruiting, you know.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (38:14.591)

Yeah, no, go ahead, go ahead. No, it's got to get, go ahead.

‍

William Holodnak (38:15.982)

So I didn't mean to interrupt.

‍

It just, I was just saying that, you know, that there's, you know.

‍

Getting these companies to completion and success often involves a combination therapy. You have to add executives at the right time and with the right skills; you oftentimes have to augment the board because if you just have investors on the board, they don't always help because they're not operators. Some of them come from an operational lineage, but more often than not, they're investors and they have the interests of their shareholders to think primarily of, which is their duty, and they should do it.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (38:33.195)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (38:55.832)

Boards are often the focal point of board dialogue, and the strategic dialogue is often enriched by experts, whether those are R&D experts, strategy and business development experts, or regulatory experts. There are different phenotypes for board recruiting. And basically, you want to orchestrate a board like a portfolio where you have a series of diverse skills that add real richness at the strategic level for the company, shareholders, and the betterment of the CEO as well.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (39:26.058)

Hmm.

‍

Yeah, I wanted to, what you said makes sense, and this example and this trend of, you know, recruiting at board level that you mentioned is a very good insight. You, you know, when you are, I guess this is more of a philosophical, I don't know how to put this question, but like, it seems like you are so,

‍

deeply involved in these early-stage companies, and you're right in between the people, who are in executive leadership positions, and the purpose, which is what that company is trying to do for the patient community or for trying to bring a new product to market. So you are like the middle person who is basically facilitating hiring and recruitment of people for the purpose. When you're talking to a new biotech executive who is looking for his next opportunity or recruiting, are you like, what does that conversation look like? What are you asking them? Because I'm sure it's not like, you know, any other recruiters who are just looking for a purely execution role, like, hey, I need you to be in manufacturing, and it's a nine-to-five job and you're gonna do.

‍

A, B, and C, I want to know what your conversation looks like because it's a different style of recruiting at a different level.

‍

William Holodnak (41:06.55)

Well, mean, you have an odd job, there's no doubt about it. Or maybe my firm and I have chosen to do it in an odd way. But we feel we're very well networked globally in the biotech space. And we use our network to create opportunities for

‍

Harsh Thakkar (41:10.451)

Mm-mm.

‍

William Holodnak (41:35.586)

both the candidates and the companies, but we're paid by the companies. So that's our primary focus. There's no doubt about that. But we try to give them advice on when to make trade-offs. We never want to dilute the discipline of the thinking, but sometimes it can be impractical. I can give you some examples.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (41:54.505)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (42:04.174)

There's a company that is at the intersection founded by one of the Google meta mafia. So founded by a technologist bringing software, data science, and services together to the benefit of the R &D function.

‍

William Holodnak (42:32.354)

They have a technology founder, and they need somebody to augment that technology founder in the business development and strategy side.

‍

William Holodnak (42:42.872)

First time CEO from the tech space, not from the drug discovery space. We have to try to find somebody who will have senior-level strategic ability in the product strategy side, in the business development side, and even in the commercial side, that will make that person complete.

‍

And at the very high end of the chief business officer spec, you often find people who want to be CEO. And so what we're trying to do through both producing qualified candidates is trying to orchestrate a trade-off. Now, maybe the job has to be changed. Maybe it has to become president. Maybe he has to become CEO. Or maybe you have to, you know, compromise between commercial skills and strategic business development skills, but it becomes an exercise in, you know, showing them people of quality who could make a difference, but then nobody is as complete as the ideal requires. So, making intelligent trade-offs is really part of what we do. And that comes from philosophical dialogue with the client, as well as producing people who are qualified for the job. So the intellectual overlay or the psychological overlay or the dialectical reasoning overlay of the client, of the candidates, is as important to the quality of our offering as is access to the network. Did I answer your question, Harsh, or did I ramble in my own fashion?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (44:32.804)

Yeah.

‍

Yeah, no, no, no, you did answer the question. It makes a ton of sense because, as you mentioned, you have built a network of either early-stage biotech clients who are looking for executive leadership talent, and biotech executives who are looking for a new company or in a company with a different mission, to sort of chase that, you're basically sort of understanding both sides. Still, because you have so much trust built in with these clients, they're willing to sort of understand and listen to make these trade-offs because there isn't a perfect candidate. You wanna, sometimes if a candidate has certain strengths, then maybe that job needs to be slightly modified so that it can play to the candidate's strengths and thereby the company can benefit from that, right? So it sounds like that's what, those are the discussions, and not all clients are willing to do that, but for people like you, I think there is that level of trust built in that if Bill says I need to reword or rethink this, I really should versus somebody else who hasn't had that much experience, their advice wouldn't be taken in the same light. It's kind of what I'm hearing.

‍

William Holodnak (46:12.834)

Well, I'd like to think that that's the way I operate and the reason I'm hired.  The firm functions as a cohesive unit, and there's a common philosophy. So I have my own species of wisdom, which you've been kind enough to acknowledge, but we operate as a firm in a unified cultural way, so that trust is earned, and we have to earn the trust of the clients. But our objective is always to become

‍

Harsh Thakkar (46:23.856)

Hmm.

‍

William Holodnak (46:43.374)

providers of talent, but trusted advisors so that they make, they stand the best chance of making the right choice. And that's not an abstract exercise. That's about really entering into the ring and kind of going at it, right?

‍

Harsh Thakkar (46:52.486)

Hmm.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (47:03.494)

Hmm. Yeah, I'm loving everything you've shared so far. Before I let you go, I have one final question for you. If anybody is listening to this episode, they are either a CEO or founder of a biotech or early-stage startup, or maybe they are a C-level executive who's looking for a change in job opportunity.

‍

What's one final takeaway that you want them to leave with from everything we've discussed so far?

‍

William Holodnak (47:45.326)

You've given me a number of audiences to try and answer this question for. I'm not so sure one size fits all. But I mean, I think building a career or building an organization, you have to look at it as best done by way of elegant improvisation.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (47:51.632)

Yeah.

‍

William Holodnak (48:14.99)

If you're a founder trying to start a company, find the right investors, and that might mean talking to more than just a few people, and that would require you to be honest with yourself and inspire honesty on the other side. Artful, disciplined conversation and adventurousness are important for finding the right investors, employees, and business development partners, but they are somewhat the opposite of digital activity. It's radically analog, and it requires listening. It requires knowing yourself. It requires an ability to, I'm back to this word, improvise, react to circumstances. And biologists are wonderful at this. That's why I think I love them so much, because their science is so complex.

‍

The reason is not that there's anything wrong with an engineering mentality, but it tends to be iterative. Whereas biologists tend to think in leaps, if you know what I mean. And that means believing in your intellect, but also believing in your intuition, which is Bill's philosophical watchword in response to your omnibus question.

‍

Harsh Thakkar (49:33.977)

No, I love that. That's great. That's great. Thank you so much for coming on. This was a very interesting conversation. I'm sure the audience is going to find a lot of value from this, but I really learned a lot from the different examples that you shared and the types of scenarios that you are finding yourselves in with different founders or investment companies or when you're hiring or looking for people. So it's interesting to learn from somebody like you who is right, like I said, in between the people and the purpose, and helping these early-stage companies. So, thank you for coming on and sharing all your insights.

‍

William Holodnak (50:21.912)

Well, thanks for your kind words. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me. And if there's anything else you need, I'm happy to talk again or respond to you in any way you'd like. So thank you so much. And this has been fun for me.