????? 有時我們會為了表面上的好理由而貽誤時機（比如：“我們就要達成業務開發協議，不想在這一過程中改變現狀”），而實際情況往往證明這些都不是什么好理由（比如：“這項協議一直都沒有付諸實施”）。迅速擺脫束縛幾乎也總是正確的選擇。

????? 招聘時別只看履歷，要聘用真正的人才。生物科技行業中許多人的履歷都很不錯，要么是參與制造了了不起的藥物，要么是參與過漂亮的投資退出行動，但這些實際上都不能決定他們到底是怎樣的人物（至少和他們自詡的人物相比相去甚遠）。當然，在我們聘用的履歷非凡的CEO中，有相當一部分并沒有在我們的初創型企業中成為優秀的領導者和經營者。仔細核實以往他們做過的實際貢獻是背景調查和聘用的一個重要組成部分。有時，書面文字和實際工作出現落差是因為盡管過去作用重大，但從大公司轉到小公司是個艱難的過程；另一個原因是他們以往的成功更多的是靠運氣，而不是技能，而重復好運的難度很大。

????2. 你不能選擇自己的出身，但能選擇自己的投資伙伴。最終實現退出的生物科技投資中，絕大多數都需要1,500萬美元（9348.75萬元人民幣）以上的風投資金，而平均投資額則接近6,000萬美元（3.7395億元人民幣）。這就是說大多數投資都需要至少三方組成的風投財團，而且投資方往往超過三個。這為出現混亂局面埋下了很大的伏筆。我們觀察到的情況是：

????? 大型財團往往運轉不良，我們會設法避開這樣的財團。財團越大，參與議事的人就越多，對孰輕孰重的不同理解就越發分散注意力。投資人的退出傾向不同（長期投資，還是盡早轉讓），資本偏好不同（節約資金，還是傾囊投入），對管理團隊的看法不同（換還是不換），同一領域中利益不同（同一項投資讓有些人賺錢，讓有些人賠錢）。

????? 投資者目標不一的害處可能和管理不善一樣大。這一點毫無疑問，而且基于上述原因，大型財團中投資者目標不一的可能性較大。最優秀的管理團隊會努力讓投資財團中各位成員的目標保持一致，并且會為了在戰略、愿景、財務和退出等問題上保持一致而與董事會進行開放性的探討。

????? 風投技能之外的經驗能在初期真正提升董事會的實際價值。我們深信，起步時引進獨立董事會給初創型企業帶來極大幫助。比如，讓制藥公司Vertex前總裁兼研發業務主管維基?薩托進入計算機輔助藥物探索公司Nimbus，盡管當時董事會的規模超過公司本身，但這是一項正確選擇并大大提升了Nimbus的實力。

????3. 較為務實的預期有利于盡職調查。避免在生物科技行業蒙受損失的最佳途徑就是別向生物科技公司投資。這個行業比較復雜，針對科技、項目、團隊、計劃、專利等方面的盡職調查至關重要。

????? Sometimes we've delayed for apparently good reasons (e.g., "we were close to a BD deal and didn't want to rock the boat during the process"), which more often than not turns out to be poor reasons (e.g., "the deal never got done"). Ripping the bandage off quickly is almost always the right answer.

????? Don't hire for the resume, hire for real talent. Lots of folks in biotech have good resumes, were part of stories with great drugs or great exits but didn't actually shape them (or at least no where near as much as they think they shaped them). We've certainly hired our fair share of great paper-resume CEOs that didn't translate into excellent leaders and operators in our startups. Diligencing the specifics of their actual contributions in the past is an important part of reference checking and recruiting. Some of the disconnect between paper and practice is that the transition from large to small companies is hard despite great past roles; others is that their past success was more luck than skill and repeating luck is a challenge.

????2. You can't pick your family, but you can pick your co-investors. The vast majority of biotech deals require >$15M in venture capital to get to an exit, and the average is close to $60 million. This means that most deals require syndicates of at least three VCs and often more. This creates a lot of potential for entropy. Our observations:

????? Big syndicates are often dysfunctional, and we try to avoid them. The bigger the syndicate, the more cooks in the kitchen, the more distracting the differing priorities become: Different exit preferences ("go long" vs "sell early"), different capital appetites (capital-sparing vs pushing money into a deal), different views of a management team (change vs no change) and different disease area interests (one made money on eye-deals, another lost money on eye-deals).

????? Misaligned investors can cause as much harm as weak management. This is undoubtedly true and, for the reasons stated above, big syndicates increase the odds of misalignment. The best management teams work hard to keep their investor syndicates aligned and maintain a continual open Board dialogue about that alignment on strategy, vision, financing, exit, etc…

????? Experience beyond the venture skill set can add real value on early stage boards. We are big believers that bringing great independent directors into deals early can be a huge help for startups. For example, getting former Vertex president and head of R&D Vicki Sato involved at Nimbus, even when the board was larger than the company, was the right thing to do and a great addition.

????3. Diligence would benefit from more realistic crystal balls. The best way to not lose money in biotech is to not invest in biotech. It's not a simple business, and deep due diligence around the science, programs, team, plan, patents, etc. is critically important.