Like many of you, I’m a consumer of biotech industry news. Multiple times of day I scour BioCentury, STAT, Endpoints, Fierce Biotech and LinkedIn to track the scientific landscape, company events, and people updates. During the height of the pandemic, these information sources fueled my confidence that vaccines were on the horizon and that our industry – biotech, pharma, and venture – was all the more pivotal. The 2020-21 news put a spotlight on the speed of innovation, the acceleration of company creation, and the ever-tightening competition for talent. It felt like an endless positive-loop of progress and hope and served as a fantastic motivation for my role as Talent Head at Atlas Venture. Despite the difficult life changes the pandemic created (quarantining, social distancing, remote work), the biotech industry raced forward with possibility, and the demand for talent created limitless opportunity for upward professional change.
And then came 2022. The pendulum swing of the biotech news cycle felt swift. Articles stressed the tightening public markets, the drop in venture creation, and tougher regulatory scrutiny with exclamation points of company after company restructurings and reductions in force. By the end of March, Fierce Biotech had a running tally (here) and…