Our Event!
“Learn about biotech careers, venture capital, and
the commercialization of academic research!

Flagship is a life sciences company creation firm that creates, builds,
and grows brand new biotechnology startups across human health
and sustainability – notable companies include Moderna
Therapeutics, Generate, Cellarity, Inari Agriculture, and many others!”

Summary

Flagship has incubated and IPO’d 25 companies, including Moderna and more.

They focus on venture creation, from the ground up — creating platforms

• includes elements of management consulting, VC, and academic research; Science meets Entrepreneurship meets Invention
• Key is an Entrepreneurial Attitude and Scientific Creativity

Four stages in the company incubation cycle

• Hypothesis
  • Network, find and discuss ideas, iterate on them until you hit on something
  • “How COULD we make this happen?” Pitch it to your colleagues
• Feasibility: ~$2 million dollars and 10 months to prove it’s possible
  • Higher a small team, get some lab space, and run the critical experiments you need to demonstrate your idea
  • “Killer experiments” for go / no go decisions
• Internal Venture
  • If successful, Flagship invests more heavily so you can build out
• Spin out
  • If continued success, Flagship invites external funding
  • Recruit a CEO, pitch it to the world

New subteam in Flagship: Pioneering Medicines

• Med/Pharma expertise with a disease-first mentality
• Taps into the entire Flagship portfolio to find fits for their disease area

Ecosystem of shared lab spaces encourages collaboration, shared resources

“Why should we expect extraordinary things from reasonable people doing reasonable things?” Be great, and do great things

• Target uncharted spaces, beyond the adjacent technologies
  • more IP opportunities
  • More fun!!!

Exploration is key. “What If…?”

• what if we used X to do Y?
  • x = something novel
  • y = something impactful, platform-oriented

Bioplatforms: once created, allows for intentional and repeatable generation of multiple medicines.

Flagship Pioneering Fellowship – “Bootcamp for scientific imagination”

• Full-time, 12-weeks: June 5 – August 5 within a year of graduating
• 3 months broken into three experiences, new team and problems for each one
  • Fast iteration!
• Successful applicants:
  • deep scientific or medical background
  • creative, solve complex problems and think about “how can we turn it into a business?”
• Application is a CV and some short questions
  • Keep the CV short! Keep the cover letter short!
    All the information they need should be obvious in < 1min.
  • Followup: interviews about motivation, with some practical questions