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The role of STEM generalists

The role of STEM generalists

And why startups desperately need them

Giammarco Pacifico
February 14, 2024

STEM generalists are scientists and engineers with a technical background who grow to become experts in other areas, from business development to operations, from marketing to HR. They never lose touch with the technical/scientific side and they are still in love with building products but they don’t work in the lab anymore.

After training as a bioengineer and spending many years in the startup world, between startups, accelerators and VCs, I consider myself a STEM generalist.

Everybody at a health/bio startup should be a STEM generalist

An early-stage deep-tech startup needs people who know very well the science/technology, who love to get into the nitty-gritty details and who can get their hands dirty when necessary, even if it’s not their primary role.

At the same time, they need to be interested and understand the dynamics of the startup world: from funding and how investors’ incentives drive the company’s decisions to sales, marketing and dealmaking.

Of course, such broad understanding requires time and effort so it has to come up at the expense of being in the lab all the time.

In my experience, only someone in such a position can quickly iterate on the company’s priorities, avoid getting stuck in the wrong direction and embrace that scientific/tech progress is not the primary goal.

They are also able to build products, complex models and presentations for different stakeholders without constantly needing the CEO’s input and they easily grow into leaders who can work with different professionals (inside and outside the company).

The risk of hiring full-time specialists

The other side of the coin is that early-stage startups should not hire full-time scientists to work in the lab.

I know this might sound controversial but let’s look at what usually happens.

It’s no secret that startups need exceptional specialized talent to build disrupting products or turn proof of concepts into viable science. In other words, they are trying to achieve a feat that only 1% of the companies reach so they need the top 1% of the talent.

The truth is that no startup can attract such talent, even if they’ve already raised some investments. Why? Because their offer is just not compelling enough.

Exceptionally talented scientists and engineers are obsessed with a specific discipline, they’ve spent years (if not decades) mastering their craft and they dream of spending all their time working on it without worrying about anything else.

They are also highly sought after by large companies that are always on the lookout for specialized people who can solve narrow and complex technical problems. In return, they offer very high salaries and benefits (much better than startups) and leave them alone to do their jobs most of the time.

These offers just make much more sense for them, don’t you agree?

On the other hand, there are a few people who don’t care about money at all and they remain forever in academia (even with no chance of ever getting a professorship) because they simply enjoy getting lost in discovering new things. Good luck getting them on board and even if you did, they’re not going to last.

This means that when early-stage startups hire STEM specialists, they are never getting the best talent they so desperately need. Instead, they’re getting someone who did not get into a large company and is happy with a good job that pays the bills, as long as they don’t sweat it too much. These people are terrible for a startup and will likely drive everyone there crazy.

Two exceptions that confirm the rule

This doesn’t apply in the following (unfortunately very rare) cases:

A hyped startup that raises over €100M pre-product. This happens mostly in the US, but sometimes also in Europe
An extremely charismatic founder who can convince anyone to follow them in their quest to change the world

These two cases are often correlated and let’s be honest: 99% of the startups are not in these categories.

So what should early-stage health/bio startups do?

A different gameplan

I believe there is another way of building health/bio startups, where we create a new role for STEM professionals who want to tackle hard problems.

The approach is simple: hire STEM generalists to cover key company functions and hire contractors/deep experts as needed.

In practice, these STEM generalists are usually young and driven people who are not there to manage someone else while jumping from meeting to meeting (sorry business gurus). Instead, they are domain experts who can and like to get involved first-hand in building products while leveraging the best technical talent when needed (many times you only need world-class experts for a certain period).

I’m not talking about building virtual biotechs with seasoned executives hiring expensive CROs to run all their experiments while playing project management Tetris. These were mostly a product of the ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) environment and will not return for a while.

Instead, I’m talking about companies that are efficient with their capital (full-time hires are extremely expensive, especially if they are mediocre), rely on a core team of ambitious STEM generalists who believe in the product (because they get it) and are rewarded for being ambitious.

If you think about it, this is what being a researcher is all about and I believe there is a new role for scientists and engineers to be created in startups.

Let me know what you think about this issue: do you agree or disagree?

And if you enjoyed it, share it with your favourite STEM generalist!

This week's top scientific reads

Why is urine yellow? (Nature Microbiology)
Relay Tx discovers a new cancer therapy (PNAS)
Opioid-free pain killer from Vertex (NYT)
How long do dogs truly live? (Nature Scientific Reports)
Focused ultrasounds to relieve pain (PAIN Journal)

Read the highlights of these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

Zetta Genomics raised €2.1M for their genomics data platform to enable a variety of precision medicine solutions 🇬🇧
Enterprise Therapeutics closed a €30M Series B follow-on round to advance their Phase 2a clinical trial in cystic fibrosis 🇬🇧
Sable Bio raised €1.7M to help scientists identify potential safety risks during the drug development process 🇬🇧
Oryl Photonics raised €874k light-scattering based technology for solubility management in the biopharma industry 🇨🇭
Tortus raised €4M to develop AI assistants for clinicians 🇬🇧
Unfabled raised a €1.5M seed round for their women’s health platform that matches users to products based on their hormonal priorities 🇬🇧
Planet A Foods raised €14M to make future-proof chocolate using precision fermentation, instead of cocoa beans 🇩🇪
Mantle raised €2.8M to advance the development and sales of their premium skincare products 🇸🇪