Taking Innovations From Ideas To Ventures: Women In Bio
Lessons From Female Founders
This article is the summary of a Women In Bio event. Speakers at the event are female founders in biotech who turned their startups from zero to young companies in genomics. In this post we go over the lessons they learned and our thoughts.
I went to a panel discussion organized by Women In Bio on April 17th. Three brilliant female entrepreneurs answered questions about how they brought their companies from ideas into reality and the lessons they learned along the way. The event took place at Illumina’s new Foster City site on a sunny afternoon, with light dinner and drinks served an hour before the Q&A commenced.
The speakers
The speakers at the event included: Emma Taylor from Naked Biome, Ridhi Tariyal from NextGen Jane, and Christine Du from Algen Biotechnologies. The discussion was hosted by Illumina Cashin from Illumina Accelerator and other members from the Women In Bio organization.
Women In Bio and Illumina
Women In Bio is an organization that aims to empower women to fulfill their career aspirations in the life sciences field. Members and nonmembers participate in networking events as well as panel discussions on various topics related to the organization’s mission. For the event I went to, most of the speakers are founders from companies that went through the Illumina Accelerator program and as an interesting side note, 26% of the companies that went through Illumina’s Accelerator program have female founders and 42% of them have female cofounders according to Amanda Cashin, the Head of Illumina Accelerator. Illumina Accelerator is an accelerator program that provides extensive coaching, financial support, equipment and facility to selective genomic startups to help them grow (and learn to grow) at the beginning phase of the journey. It made perfect sense for Illumina to sponsor this Women In Bio event to share their experiences and to highlight their contribution to the women in life sciences.
The Qs and As
Here are some of the interesting questions asked at the panelist discussion:
- “How did you find your cofounder and hire a team?”
- “What were some hurdles you faced?”
- “What do investors look for when investing in startups?”
- “How do you navigate working with mostly men being the only woman in the boardroom?”
Thoughts And Opinions
The hosts did a wonderful job touching on important starup topics from the female founder’s angle. Having been in the startup scene for a few years now, I am familiar with the struggle but only from the employee’s point of view. It never occurred to me how founders met or choose their cofounders: you find people with whom you work well with and ones whose personalities and experiences complement those of your own. The difficulties of getting funding are apparent, but I never considered how hard it would be to convince a roomful of investors (mostly men who have little understanding of women’s healthcare needs) to invest money in companies that aim to alleviate women’s healthcare pain points. The hardest one to believe was when Rhidi had a hard time convincing skilled surgeons the need for non invasive diagnosis of rare diseases that can only be done through surgeries — imagine if you had to go through a surgery just to find out if you were pregnant. How crazy is that?!
When Emma Taylor shared how one of her female entrepreneur friends devised a workaround to deal with failing to get messages across in meetings being the younger female in the room, despite having the right credentials and experience, I was taken aback. The answer was not to tactfully convince other men at the table, but to bring in a more senior man and have him deliver the message. Expressing your opinions and decisions through some older man’s voice apparently made it convincing.
The third thing I noticed and was probably more actionable on our (audience’s) part: there were only two men in the audience in a room of 40+ women. I understand the event was organized by Women In Bio and having the focus on women, it is less enticing for men to show up. BUT what we can do is either invite a male colleague or bring a male S.O.
Inequality hurts EVERYONE: when women have less power over their careers, men get hurt too; conversely, when women are no longer treated unfairly, the opposite sex benefits. Imagine a world without wage inequality based on gender (read: when women make more money), women will bring home more pay and provide more to their families and lessen the financial burden of the entire family.
Finally, my favorite moment was when someone in the audience asked “do you ever feel like, among a group of men or mostly men, you have to act more like a man and be less emotional?” The answer was “I find myself to be the less emotional one” which got a round of applause and laughter. Jokes aside, it was a gentle and honest reminder that not all the stereotypes are true. More importantly, we should actively avoid having those stereotypes and limiting ourselves with those beliefs.
Work In Progress is a platform hosted by two twin sisters passionate about transitions in work and life. Our series “#womencrushwednesday” features profiles of women who inspire us to do better and push boundaries.
