The Role
At Curie, we do early diligence differently. While most venture funds have their most junior team members as the filter for new inbound companies, Curie does the opposite. We believe that spotting the next great therapeutics company is hard, especially at the idea stage. It not only requires deep industry experience, but also the imagination and creativity to elevate the initial idea from good to great. “Elevation” may entail everything from changing the proposed targets of an exciting new drug embodiment technology, to finding the right drug embodiment approach of a fundamentally new biological insight. This is why Curie approaches early diligence with a ‘lead-from-the-front’ mentality, putting our most senior drug hunters at the top of the funnel to reduce the chance of a false negative mistake that could cause us to miss the next great therapeutics company.
We are looking to hire a VP of Company Evaluation & Diligence to ensure we are world-class when it comes to picking the best therapeutic companies. At Curie, we see thousands of exciting new therapeutic concepts every year across all therapeutic areas and modalities. In this role, you will have the opportunity to see all companies that come our way (a few thousand new ideas per year), providing a rare and truly unique ‘birdseye view’ of the drug discovery landscape. Day to day, you will work alongside Curie’s CSO and cofounder, Christoph Lengauer, to spot the exciting ideas as they come into Curie, and help drive the early diligence efforts to elevate those companies from good to great. In addition to the evaluation side, you will also act as the initial external representative of Curie, interacting with the founders of the most exciting companies as they enter into diligence.
Our ideal candidate is someone who is deeply passionate about drug discovery and is excited by the idea of working side by side with Curie’s most senior scientific leaders to spot the gems, think through the most important early diligence questions, and partner with our most seasoned drug hunters to elevate the most exciting ideas from good to great…all at unprecedented scale.
The Responsibilities
In this role, you will develop an early read on inbound companies and communicate your synthesis to our CSO Partner team. This requires both a ‘nose for value’ for what concepts are exciting as well as the ability to quickly identify the essence of the company’s approach in a highly efficient manner. For a subset of the most exciting companies, you will be part of the team that is charged with deeper diligence where you will help identify the key open questions and engage with the Founders in elevating their concepts so their future Series A will be ‘a walk in the park’.
Your day to day will include:
- Identifying the most exciting ideas at the top of the funnel and working alongside our most senior drug hunters to come up with a diligence plan to answer the most important go/no-go questions
- Acting as the first point of contact, the initial brand ambassador for Curie, for the most exciting companies entering early diligence
- Collaborating with our CSO partners to come up with creative ways to ‘elevate’ company ideas from good to great
- Ensuring our diligence infrastructure is constantly improving by partnering with our core services teams including; our Expert Network, our Investor Network, our Competitive Intelligence team, and our internal data & software tools team
Our Ideal Candidate
- At least 10+ years work experience, intimately familiar with early stage drug discovery
- A PhD in biology, biochemistry, or related discipline with experience
- A ‘nose for value’ when it comes to determining what makes an exciting seed investment in therapeutics
- The gravitas and magnetism to be a brand ambassador for Curie with founders
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- The ability to come up the curve quickly on new and/or different therapeutic areas without prior experience or familiarity with them
- Strong organizational skills and detail orientation
- Passion about using modern technology (software/data) to systematize our investment process
Company Overview
Curie.Bio is a founder-focused seed-stage venture firm combined with an industry-grade therapeutics accelerator focused on one thing: helping entrepreneurial founders launch viable therapeutics companies. Curie.Bio does this by giving founders access to a team of the world’s best drug hunters and drug makers, seed capital, and best-of-breed services - everything a founder needs to get from concept to a compelling dataset that enables an awesome Series A financing. In a nutshell, we want founders in control of their own company and focused on their area of expertise and creativity, while we help make the rest happen smoothly.
Curie.Bio was designed by founders for founders. Our founding team of Zach Weinberg, Christoph Lengauer and Alexis Borisy, has collectively helped start numerous therapeutics companies and been intimately involved with the Series A financing of many more. We have witnessed first hand the difficulty of going from a seed stage concept to generating the data package necessary for a successful Series A raise; targets need to be properly selected, experiment plans designed, vendors selected and contracted, experiments need to be run, people need to be hired - all with a few million dollars. These perennial challenges are what led to the creation of Curie.Bio. If we want to dramatically increase the number of viable drug companies created every year - we’re going to have to reduce the complexity of getting to a compelling POC data package required for a Series A. Reducing this complexity requires us to provide real support to these new companies - support that is both strategic (think target selection, unique access to strategic partnerships, early introductions to top Series A investors) and operational (experiment execution, vendor management, back office support).
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