Biotech Entrepreneurship: An Interview with Dr. Christian Tidona

Have you ever observed a true mentor at work? One who isn't hesitant to thrust his people forward, crack their shells of shyness, sharing useful career advice enthusiastically without holding back. I got to witness one such mentor, Dr. Christian Tidona, as he trained young life science graduates during a recent biotech entrepreneurship training program in Heidelberg, Germany.

Dr. Tidona is a serial biotech entrepreneur and the managing director of the blooming biotech cluster, BioRN, in southwest Germany. His business acumen is backed by a stellar academic record. Back in 1999, he finished his doctorate in molecular biology and virology from the University of Heidelberg, in three years straight, graduating summa cum laude. Immediately after, he moved from academia into the high seas of biotech entrepreneurship. This was a new journey, one on which there was a great deal to be learnt. Much of this knowledge, he acquired through his own experiences and with the aid of his mentors. Today, despite his pressing schedule, he makes time to train young scientists for entrepreneurship, something that academia often does not actively prepare one for.

I am happy to present you this candid interview with him, where he generously shares industry insights on what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur in the biotech and pharma industry. Read on to get a closer glimpse of his journey and to gather some must-know tips for becoming a dream leader!*

Photograph of Dr. Christian Tidona (Courtesy: BioRN Cluster Management, GmbH)

The Interview:

Q. Dr. Tidona, please share how did you decide to move out of the academia into the life science industry.

A. I had studied molecular biology and virology in the lab at Heidelberg and I just wanted to see the application of the basic research in the patient. Basically, I was just desirous to be a part of the transfer of this scientific knowledge that could be used to help patients. That led to the foundation of the first startup in 1999, a little diagnostic company in Regensburg, Germany.

Q. Was this company founded based on your research work?

A. It was in connection with the research work. It was actually the technology of a pretty newly founded company in Austin, Texas. I had heard of this technology, which allowed hundred different diagnostic tests, from one drop of blood and I was excited about it. My scientific mentor at that time, was involved in this startup and they were looking for a managing director. I helped to write the business plan and they liked the business plan so much that they thought, that I might be a good CEO of this company. That was how it all started.

Q. Certainly when you shifted from academia to a completely new field, that of industry, there must have been some initial challenges. What were those?

A. Oh yes, basically everything - starting with negotiating the licensing agreement with the American company to attracting the venture capital and convincing the venture capitalists. At that time, I had 2.4 million Deutsche Mark to start with (around 1.2 million Euros). I had been the lab head at the laboratory in Heidelberg, but it is different when you hire people that work in the lab on scientific things and when you try to put a team together that is trying to build products and trying to do marketing, sales, financial reporting and things like that. So, it was basically learning by doing.

Q. What were some of the first things that you had to learn by yourself upon arriving into the industry?

A. Oh, they were quite a many. I think, the things I knew the least about were the finance and the accounting that comes with it. Especially in this case, I also had public funds and research grants involved. There is a huge difference between public funds, where you have to basically spend the money doing research. On the other hand, financial planning for venture capital, is a quite different because you have other milestones - you have to think about things like depreciation, tax issue and such things, which I never had to think about as a scientist in the lab before. I found quite good people I could learn from, like a good accountant who taught me a lot, and mentors who helped me to understand what a P&L (profit and loss) statement looks like, how to read a balance sheet, what's important and what's not.

Q. Is this one of the reasons that you take so much initiative to train and mentor young students, because of the challenges you faced yourself?

A. Yes, it's part of it. The way I learnt it was very expensive, from a socioeconomic point of view and also for myself. This is because the first startup did not go well. After two years, my share holders who were professors, wanted to pursue research while I was somebody that wanted to do products and profits. This didn't match. So, we split up. I left the company, lost a lot of money - money of my family and friends. The company afterwards, did not do well, either. From a socioeconomic and personal point of view, this was a very expensive learning experience. But I am convinced that failure is part of the process. It might have been more efficient if I had already had some entrepreneurship training at the university before. If I had known some things before, that I know today, I wouldn't have made that many mistakes. You always make mistakes, but not that many.

Q. After learning from you, that one can meet failures along the way to a good position in the industry, it seems quite encouraging for younger talent to feel that perhaps it's alright, even if there are a few failures along the way.

A. Well, unfortunately in Europe it's not alright. Because in Europe if you fail, you are stigmatized. I mean people usually do that once and then they won't get back. But I was pretty lucky.

Q. So, it is a rare phenomenon in Europe to recover from a business failure?

A. Yeah. The spirit in the United States is different from the spirit here in Europe, specifically in Germany. Whenever, I do the Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Training seminar, I ask the students what was their perspective, when they began studying molecular biology. About 80% answer by saying "Well, I was interested in an academic lab career doing research" and up to 20% say "Well, I was thinking about a career in a big company," but basically 0% think about starting their own company! The reason for this is that in Europe and Germany we do not have this training level, like many incubators and accelerators with good mentors. In addition to that, as I said, you are stigmatized when you fail. In the United States, if this failure doesn't go back to very severe mistake you made and was a part of the learning process, your CV actually gains from the failures you survived. In Europe, it's different. If one has a failure in the CV, then one is basically done with this type of career. This is the attitude, which we have to change.

Q. What personal and professional qualities have enabled you to reach the position you are at in the industry today?

A. It's an incredible belief in the fact, that if you only try hard enough and don't give up, you will make it sometime. That's the most important lesson, I have learnt as a startup entrepreneur, especially in the biotech field, where it takes a lot of money to begin and you loose a lot of money if you fail. It's an experience where you change from euphoria to terror, from day-to-day. If you don't believe that much in yourself, that if you only work hard enough and follow your passion, you will make it sometime, you will give up sometime along the way. That's the distinguishing factor. If I look back at some colleagues, that started their first companies together with me in the 90s, most of them had given up after a while, although they had good potential. They have become consultants and so on. So, it is important to believe in what you are doing and in yourself. Believe that you can do it and stand up, whenever you fall stand up - just get back up.

Q. What are the job prospects for freshly graduated doctoral students in the biotech industry in the region?

A. In the biotech and the pharma industry, especially when it comes to bigger companies, it's bad timing, essentially at the moment. Most of those companies are cutting down their workforce, especially in Europe, though not so much in Asia. Most of them are building up in Asia and also in United States, but in Europe they are basically cutting down their workforce. So, this is a phenomenon, that is just due to bad timing and not due to general principle. Today I am not sure, if I had to decide once again whether to do a PhD or start a company earlier, then if I knew what I know now, I would probably have started earlier. But it was not clear for me that I was going to end up an entrepreneur. In the 90s, I had very straight forward paths of academic science in front of me. I was teaching at the University, I had students and quite a lot of good publications. So, it was some sort of an accident that I ended up as an entrepreneur and then found out that this is my way. If there had been some entrepreneurship training during my diploma studies, I would have probably started much earlier.

Q. What should young scientists who aspire to become entrepreneurs, keep in mind?

A. Maybe a little bit of advice for younger people. It is not easy in biotech to start a company. You will need a lot of money and big risks. The venture capital situation in Europe is not very good and neither is the situation with incubators and accelerators. Having served in juries and as a coach for quite a few business plan competitions, I would strongly recommend to people who have technology or product ideas for startups, the first thing they should try to do is to get involved with one of those business plan competitions because they give you access to coaches, mentors, lots of jury members who give you feedback regarding your idea, your business plan and the way you present it. Then, may be as a second step, once you have those connections, you should use social media. I am a firm believer in personal networks and social media. Take part in one of those incubator or accelerator programs, where in a period of 3, 6 or sometimes 12 months, you are in a protected incubator environment with lots of good mentors, that help you work out the real idea and make it ready for presentation to venture capitalists. So, the advice would be to not go too early for venture capital, because these guys are used to well thought through ideas and well trained teams. If you don't have these types of skills from the start it can be very disappointing because you don't get a second chance at those. If you have wasted that chance once, you won't get a second appointment, if you get an appointment at all.

Q. Could you share some of lessons that you have learnt from your own mentors?

A. Certainly. One of the greatest mentor I was able to spend time with in the past, is actually Mr. Ashok Rao. He is the first person of Indian origin to bring his startup to the NASDQ, in the United States. He is also the chairman of our global entrepreneurship organization, The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and he is really a brilliant mentor.

In every speech he gives, he presents, his ten so-called "Ashokisms." I am trying to follow some of them myself. Particularly, two of them are quite important. The first one, he mentions is that "You should not shave superman every morning." As a young entrepreneur when you get control over a lot of money, perhaps many millions, people start looking up at you, although you do not have much experience yet. It can be very easy to come to a position where you loose context. You think you are basically superman and start behaving like superman. However, it is very important to stay humble because there are ten thousands of people out there that are much, much more clever, have much more money, have much more access and much more ideas. So, it is very important to stay humble and "do not shave superman when you look in the mirror every morning."

Another thing is that, as an entrepreneur and as a creative person, most people have short attention spans and think that things are not moving fast enough all the time. While it's important to have this attitude to speed up things when they are too slow, sometimes young people tend to overdo it a little. What Ashok always says is, "Don't push the river. Let the river flow." When you want something, you should keep it in focus but do not try to force it immediately because then you can ruin it. Somethings need time and effort and don't come that fast. So you shouldn't "push the river, rather let the river flow."

Q. What are the key ideas that an emerging manager should keep in mind that help the entire organization, the team and the individuals?

A. It takes a while until people understand it in their career. Their role as leaders is not doing everything by themselves and also not to delegate everything. Rather their role is to create an environment, that makes the great people they hire, happy and productive. That is the most important thing. That's what I am doing here. I am creating an environment for my employees to be as productive and as happy as possible, because my productivity is the productivity of my team.

So, it's important to enable and energize the team, so they can perform in an optimal way. This is the performance of the leader in the end. Basically, if your are a good leader, it seems like you are not necessary anymore, because you are not really doing the work - you are just helping the work environment. On the other hand, it may be quite dangerous, when some people tend hold on to their jobs very tightly in leadership positions. They tend to do everything by themselves to be irreplaceable. I think the best thing a leader can do is becoming replaceable, and then move onto the next position.

Q. What are the key ways in which you enable your team to stay energized and actually produce their best?

A. Before you can do that, you have to understand that this begins with hiring the team. It's important to understand what are the specific capabilities of the team members and what are the requirements they need met, in order to be really productive. Especially what's important, is to make sure that they have access to what they need, so they don't have to procure it by themselves - it needs to be provided.

To give you an example, the first instrument bought at my first company in 1999, was a fully automated cappuccino machine. From an economic point of view, the depreciation of this object is gone after three years and if people are happy drinking coffee and being social, this experience stays over the entire lifetime of the company. Salary increase might have a similar effect, but I don't think that it stays with you forever. So, from an economic point of view as a leader, it's better to invest in the work environment, the infrastructure and everything people need to be productive, instead of attracting people just through high salaries.

People spend more of their lives with their boss and at their company, than with their families. Therefore, it should be an environment where they can be productive and happy. Also, to give another example, in my companies (which have been quite a few up to now, which I have either led or restructured) I was always very happy about women that had their first children. They were a little less flexible than everybody else, but on the other hand, they wanted to succeed and do their work. After the children, they wanted to come back to the job. Once you give them the flexibility they need, to bring the children to kindergarten (nursery) and take them back, they work much more productively and with much more energy than most men that have a simple life. This is also a lesson that I learnt during the first startups, that it's also about personal motivation, capabilities and possibilities.

Q. How do you guide your team for more success in their careers?

A. When I hire people, I tell them right from the start that I don't expect you to be here forever. I expect you to do in the next couple of years, something that is very, very useful and has a high impact on your CV, which will then be a high impact for my company. Then, I will do whatever necessary to bring you to the next level, even if this would mean to hand you over to another career, where you can do the next steps if you can't do them here.

Also, I expect people to improve their skills constantly. I don't want people that just do the assigned work. I want people that have the ambition to learn new things. Every employee in my company has to do a course or special educational program which they can choose by themselves, that costs the company money, but which brings them another bullet in their CV. This makes them happy and makes me proud that they are developing. This again, makes them more productive. That is something, I think leaders need to understand now a days - that employees are not a given, especially the motivation of employees is not a given. Basically, leaders are there to enable the employees to be as productive as possible by themselves.

Q. Finally, before we close, what is that one life wisdom that you would like to share with everybody?

A. I guess, what I have learnt and what is very important for everyone that wants to change something in the world for the positive, is that you must focus on quality and performance, nothing else. What I see in many companies and institutions, are some people that are always looking and comparing themselves to others, trying to be better than others or trying with political steps to inhibit others and suppress them in order to look bigger and things like that. In the end, I am a firm believer that if you focus just on your own performance and the quality of things you are doing, success will come by itself. So, once again, "you shouldn't push the river" and success will come by itself if you focus on the right things, which is just quality, nothing else.

Me: Thank you Dr. Tidona. That was really insightful!

Dr. Tidona: My pleasure! Thank you.

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