Makenzie Norris

Biotechnology investing: how to engage with finance as a biological scientist.  

During the summer of 2022 I had the opportunity to intern with Biogenerator, the venture arm of BioSTL, through the Pivot 314 Fellowship. Biogenerator is an evergreen investment firm dedicated to investing and building biotech startups in St. Louis. As part of my internship, I was able to acquire knowledge and skills specific to bioentrepreneurship. Specifically, I learned how to leverage pitchbook, a private capital market software, to assess investment environments around certain indications (i.e. Parkinson’s Disease). As part of acquiring this skill, I was able to gain a better understanding of the distinguishing factors between financing rounds and various other financial terms such as merger/acquisition and debt. Along this same line, it became clear throughout the summer that dedicating time to understanding the financing structures of biotech startups would become the most critical skill I would obtain. The finance world has its own set of rules and its own unique language. As a result, when sitting in investment team meetings, I often could not follow the conversations as the financial aspects were extremely difficult to understand initially. As a result, I spent the majority of my one-on-meetings with leaders in the firm asking questions to better understand the financing side of biotech venture capital investment. In addition, I was given the opportunity to work with one of Biogenerator’s portfolio companies. This experience expanded the scope of my internship to include a perspective on startups themselves in addition to my experience on the investor side. Through this specific experience I was able to work with scientists with decades of industry experience in pharmaceutical development. In addition to the connections it afforded me, I was also able to gain a better understanding of the industry pharmaceutical development process. This includes information about patent protection of innovation, FDA regulations, preclinical testing strategies, and targeting indications for maximum impact and profit. This opportunity in particular has resulted in an extension of my time with Biogenerator to continue helping their portfolio company to bring new pharmacotherapies to market. Through this extension I hope to enhance my pharmaceutical development knowledge even further to facilitate my next step after graduate school. Through this process I have come to discover my interest in biotech startup financing, particularly from the perspective of investors. I hope to land a job in a similar sector after graduate school with an ultimate goal of starting and running my own biotech company. Skills acquired from my time with Biogenerator will certainly help to bring this goal to fruition.