Why I'm Writing This

Last year I sat across from a biotech founder preparing for her Series A. Smart scientist, compelling asset, real shot at helping patients. But the pitch wasn't landing with investors.

The problem wasn't the science. It was everything around it: insufficient data to de-risk the story, a leadership team that looked thin at the top, a fundamental mismatch between what she was saying and what investors needed to hear.

I'd seen this pattern before. After stepping back from my last CEO role, I spent time advising founders on exactly these issues. The obstacles were remarkably consistent. Insufficient data. Inexperienced teams. A gap between founder conviction and investor psychology.

I thought I understood them. I'd helped dozens of founders navigate them.

Then I stepped back into the CEO chair at Santero Therapeutics.

Suddenly I wasn't advising on fundraising. I was doing it. Every issue I'd diagnosed from the outside, I now faced in real time: the pressure of building a Series A narrative, the complexity of positioning early-stage technology to optimise both scientific credibility and investability, the daily reality of leading a team through uncertainty.

Here's what I've relearned: knowing the playbook and running the play are different things.

As an advisor, I could see the problems clearly. As a CEO, I feel them. The weight of decisions that affect people's livelihoods. The gap between the strategy you present to investors and the messiness of execution. The moments when your job isn't to set direction but to clear roadblocks, support your team's convictions, and serve the people doing the work.

But I've also learned harder lessons. Ones that came from watching companies I helped build fail after I left.

I've seen governance structures that protected board members rather than the mission. I've seen scientific founders sidelined by operators who didn't understand the science. I've seen short-term thinking dressed as capital efficiency destroy long-term value creation. I've seen what happens when the people who understand the biology get overruled by people who don't.

Each of those failures was a medicine that never reached patients who needed it.

The biotech industry's biggest failures aren't usually scientific. They're operational. Companies fail because of governance breakdowns, mistimed fundraises, misaligned boards, and decisions made by people who prioritise control over value creation. These failures are preventable. But only if we talk honestly about them.

There's no publication for UK biotech CEOs written by someone currently in the role.

Labiotech covers Europe from a journalist's perspective. Pharmaphorum speaks to big pharma. The BIA sends policy updates. LinkedIn is full of people sharing wins, not struggles.

I want to write what I wish someone had written for me. Not commentary from the sidelines, but dispatches from the trenches, shared while I'm still in them.

I've raised over £40M across multiple biotech ventures. I've also watched companies fail after decisions I would never have made. Both experiences taught me something: the difference between medicines that reach patients and ones that never leave the laboratory is often made not in the lab, but in the boardroom.

That's why I write.

In the weeks ahead, I'll write about the Series A narrative: what investors actually need to hear versus what founders want to say. About building leadership teams and the CxO question, fractional versus full-time. About governance that protects the mission, board composition that works, the CEO-Chairman relationship nobody talks about honestly, and the warning signs that your board might not have your back.

I'll write about the UK funding gap and why British biotechs increasingly need American capital. About what I'm learning about servant leadership when the stakes are real.

If this sounds useful, you're in the right place.

If you know another biotech CEO who might benefit, forward this to them.

We're all trying to build companies that help patients. Every unnecessary failure is a medicine that doesn't reach someone who needs it. If sharing what I've learned helps even a handful of CEOs avoid those failures, the effort is worth it.

The science is hard enough. We shouldn't make it harder by repeating mistakes others have already made.

Mark