At LabGenius, we’re combining the very best of human and machine intelligence to accelerate the discovery of advanced medicines. How? By building a cutting-edge ML-driven protein engineering platform that’s capable of speeding up the discovery of next-generation antibody therapeutics.
With an industry partnership and a host of validatory proof points under our belt, we have conviction in our approach and we’re scaling up operations. In practice this means continuing to expand our platform’s capabilities, starting to invest in a wholly-owned pipeline of drugs, whilst also being able to deliver on multiple partnered projects.
“Seeing our proprietary technology platform being applied to multiple protein engineering projects simultaneously is incredibly rewarding but inevitably it comes with new and often unforeseen obstacles — this can be exhilarating but isn’t without its challenges.”
Says LabGenius’ CEO and Founder, Dr. James Field.
To avoid these bumps in the road and ensure maximum efficiency along the way, we’re privileged to benefit from the expertise of some of the world’s leading scale up professionals, including LabGenius investor and trusted advisor, Patrick Pichette.
With more than 30 years of C-level financial and operating expertise at leading global companies, Patrick now spearheads Inovia Capital’s European strategy. Prior to joining Inovia, Patrick led world-class companies including Google, McKinsey, Sprint Canada and Bell Canada.
Patrick has endless first hand experience, so when he attended a recent company wide Q&A, we listened closely to his sage advice…
1. When in doubt, just say it loud
Start ups need to cycle fast, learn fast, fail fast, react fast, experiment fast. Everything is fast. In such an environment, fast (and frequent) communication is critical. To make sure that the messages travel fast, over-communication is key. This is true for good news, but especially true for bad news. According to Patrick,
“If something is broken, say it’s broken, and say it loudly! Everyone should know, so reaction is quick, and you don’t lose precious cycles to adapt, reset and go at it again.”
2. Boost motivation by looking beyond job descriptions
“Working at a startup is not a day job. It’s a fluid set of opportunities. Which means that you will always be able to expand your role and chip in where you never thought you would. This is a huge opportunity for both your personal development and makes the team that much better.”
For example, Patrick was hired as Google’s CFO but it soon became clear that his skills stretched far beyond the role. To ensure that there was always a new challenge on the horizon, Patrick agreed to continuously expand his job description — within 24 months he was running the entirety of the core business infrastructure, which encompassed everything from real estate to people operations. Patrick stayed on at Google for over 7 years, describing the experience as win-win:
“This approach gives individuals the opportunity to grow, and having a team with broad skill sets makes the business more flexible as a whole.”
3. Identify strong leaders at all levels of the business
For a company like LabGenius, agility is vital. When we asked Patrick how he was able to work at pace whilst being responsible for such vastly different areas of operations he responded by saying,
“If all decisions in my areas of responsibility required my approval, Google would have ground to a halt. It is essential to find world class leaders you can trust, and let them lead.”
4. Use humor to get through the tough times
Moving quickly will always come with a degree of uncertainty but Patrick has the perfect antidote:
“When you’re growing as fast as Google was at the time, something is always broken somewhere. So it’s essential that you bring a good dose of humor to most situations — it’s amazing what a good laugh can do to lower the temperature in key moments, and reset the team on the right path.”
5. Stabilize the company’s core engine
When building from scratch, there’s always the temptation to be distracted by initiatives beyond the scope of your value proposition. Patrick’s advice was to first stabilize your core offering before expanding into adjacent areas of interest — just as Google did with search.
“Google’s initial focus and resulting success in search earned us the right to diversify and take risks elsewhere in the business. But despite all the other initiatives, Google never (and to this day) lost focus on THE most important product — search.”
With strength in our core offering, the LabGenius team is growing! If you would like to learn more about the open roles across different teams, visit our careers page.
