Company Overview

Curie.Bio is a founder-focused seed-stage venture firm combined with an industry-grade therapeutics accelerator focused on one thing: helping entrepreneurial founders launch viable therapeutics companies. Curie.Bio does this by giving founders access to a team of the world’s best drug hunters and drug makers, seed capital, and best-of-breed services - everything a founder needs to get from concept to a compelling dataset that enables an awesome Series A financing. In a nutshell, we want founders in control of their own company and focused on their area of expertise and creativity, while we help make the rest happen smoothly.

Curie.Bio was designed by founders for founders. Our founding team of Zach Weinberg, Christoph Lengauer and Alexis Borisy, has collectively helped start numerous therapeutics companies and been intimately involved with the Series A financing of many more. We have witnessed first hand the difficulty of going from a seed stage concept to generating the data package necessary for a successful Series A raise; targets need to be properly selected, experiment plans designed, vendors selected and contracted, experiments need to be run, people need to be hired - all with a few million dollars. These perennial challenges are what led to the creation of Curie.Bio. If we want to dramatically increase the number of viable drug companies created every year - we’re going to have to reduce the complexity of getting to a compelling POC data package required for a Series A. Reducing this complexity requires us to provide real support to these new companies - support that is both strategic (think target selection, unique access to strategic partnerships, early introductions to top Series A investors) and operational (experiment execution, vendor management, back office support). 

As an early employee joining us on this mission, you will see first hand what it takes to successfully bring a company from concept at the seed stage to compelling wet-lab derived POC data with an industry-grade progressible drug (candidate) that enables a Series A financing. You will work alongside the world’s best drug hunters and industry veterans whose experience spans all facets of drug discovery and preclinical drug development - from disease biology to medicinal chemistry, to recruiting, to business development, and more. 

In order for Curie.Bio to achieve its mission, we need the best people. Companies are nothing more than a group of people working together on a shared objective. Great companies are when those individuals come together to form something larger than the sum of its parts. 

The Role

The VP, External Research and Development (ERAD), Strategic Scouting will be responsible for helping shape the scientific plan enabling investment decisions and identifying the best external strategic partnerships for our portfolio companies. 

This role will partner with our internal investing team who together with ERAD work closely with our portfolio companies. Your job will be to ensure that our founders have the best plan and companies have access to the world’s best technology and partners in order to maximize the chance we successfully execute on their plan to reach a Series A financing. To be successful in this role, you will need to have a sound understanding of the drug discovery and development process across modalities, allied to a a love of hunting for the latest and greatest technologies around the world as well as getting deep into the details to ensure the execution part of the plan is an ideal fit for Curie and our portfolio companies.

Our ideal candidate is excited by the breadth (majority of modalities/indications), scale, and stage (primarily early discovery) of our portfolio. 

[This role reports directly to the Chief of ERAD & Partnering]

Responsibilities

• FOUNDER PARTNERSHIP: During the planning (pre-investment) and execution (post-investment), be the point of contact with the founding team on all research externalization topics, as required.
• POD MEMBERSHIP - Critical part of the internal team, who drives the creation of the investment memos with specific responsibilities on feasibility, planning, timelines, budgets and external partner selection under the leadership of the CSO Partner.
• SCOUTING - Building and maintaining Curie’s understanding for which external partners do what, and knowing in detail which are best-in-class for specific capabilities, ability to diligence them, set criteria for good/bad on specific capabilities, all across a wide breadth of modalities/technologies
• SELECTION SUPPORT - Help our CSO Partner team think about the technical nuances, trade offs, and pros/cons for selecting various external partners for a project. Contribute to building vendor maps for key capability, working closely with CSO and ERAD teams
• EVALUATION - Contribute to the design and maintaining of a rubric/framework to evaluate and monitor external partner quality, and provide insight to the organization for “why” a vendor is a high or low quality option for a given capability, and monitoring the vendors’ quality don’t deviate over time
• ROADMAP FOR SCALE - Contribute to the design, build, and constantly improve the processes and infrastructure required to do this at serious scale (~50 new companies per year)

Requirements and Qualifications

• Degree in Biology, Chemistry or related field with experience in the pharmaceutical or life science industry, ideally as a project lead (PhD preferred)
• At least 10 years experience in Alliance/Vendor/CRO Management or related function with increasing levels of responsibility and demonstrated success in managing large and strategic external relationships, ideally with discovery stage experience across modalities 
• Understanding of how the CRO/CDMO operates and its key drivers essential
• Familiarity with dealing at C-suite level internally and externally
• Prior experience or exposure to business development (as part of deal teams for example or through selection and contract negotiations with CROs/CDMOs) is a distinct advantage
• Familiarity with legal agreements in the biopharmaceutical field
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to negotiate, persuade, resolve conflict, and manage through significant ambiguity and complexity
• Experience managing geographically diverse partners and adaptability towards cultural differences
• Ability to travel 10-25% of the time depending on need