From Lab to Cap Table: Why the Right Team Is the Only Bet That Matters

A panel of investors, founders, and advisors gathered recently to talk early-stage fundraising in biotech and digital health. The conversation kept returning to the same theme — not science, not valuation, not IP. Team.

The 2021 era of “spraying capital at any great idea” is definitely over. Every voice on the panel agreed that the bar for seed and Series A funding has shifted structurally, not temporarily. But underneath the expected warnings about governance terms, IP strategy, and misused SAFEs was a more fundamental message: in a tighter market, the team is the diligence.

“There was a point in time where a good concept with a flagship founder was enough,” said Vikram Chaudhery, Partner at Genoa Ventures and Founder of General Inception. “That’s no longer the case. You need well-characterized, validated science — and a seasoned team that can execute against that plan.”

That second half of the sentence is where most early-stage companies stumble.

The Team Is the Signal

For investors, the composition of a founding team isn’t just a factor in the diligence process — it often is the diligence process. Dr. Kiersten Stead, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of DCVC Bio, was direct: proof of concept matters, but so does the ability to attract experienced talent from established institutions. “It’s no longer good enough to be a really bright scientist with a great idea. Have you been able to convince someone to leave Gilead, or someone to leave Juno?”

She was equally precise about what kind of experience moves the needle. General business acumen is not what early-stage investors are evaluating. “The hard part is making sure the science is bulletproof from the get-go” — and that requires deep clinical development and translational biology expertise. A company that can recruit someone with that background before funding closes is telling investors something more meaningful than any pitch deck can.

Karl Handelsman, Founder of Codon Capital, made the same point from the operator’s side. His framework — built from taking four companies from Series A to exit in under eighteen months — begins not with the science but with the people who can stress-test it. “Who’s the person you’re going to call? The person who knows how to do the thing. If that person’s convinced to join the team behind the science, then they see something there.” The right CSO or head of R&D also brings relationships with CROs, CDMOs, and pharma partners that can compress years of business development into months.

The panel was emphatic that pharma relationship-building has to begin long before a company is funded. “This is the missing step,” Karl said. “In academics, it’s like, ‘Oh well, we’ve got this and we’ve got the IP.’ Yeah — we’re gonna have to fix that. And we’ll probably have to fix the technology. That’s why startups exist.

What the Right Team Actually Looks Like

Vikram outlined what a fundable seed-stage team requires: a CEO who understands the market well enough to define the indication and the data package, has existing relationships with development partners, can access pharma early, and can recruit the scientific leadership to execute. “That’s a pretty high bar,” he acknowledged — but it’s the bar.

The question of whether technical founders can lead as CEO drew a qualified yes — with one condition: self-awareness. “Technical founders can succeed as CEOs if they surround themselves with experienced people and are self-aware of their limitations,” Kiersten noted. She’s seen it work. She’s also seen founders unwilling to hire above themselves, and that tends to end predictably.

IP strategy is another area where the right expertise on the team makes an early and lasting difference. Antoinette Konski, Partner and IP attorney for Foley Lardner, warned that founders are increasingly exposed. “You should file with a strategy in mind — really understand what you need to support that strategy. If you don’t have European protection, Japanese protection, the major markets, it’s very hard to raise money.” She added that AI is sharpening the risk: patent offices are now using it to surface prior art that would previously have gone undetected, including statements made in early filings that founders assumed were buried.

The panel was also clear that academic founders are not expected to leave their university roles. The more successful model is an advisory structure with equity, allowing a seasoned operator to lead while the PI remains a scientific anchor. What matters is not where the founder sits, but who is running the development program.

The Protillion Example: Getting It Right

The kind of hire the panel described in theory, CollectiveMinds executed in practice. When Protillion Biosciences — a Stanford spinout backed by ARCH Venture Partners and Illumina Ventures — needed a CSO to lead their Series A-stage antibody discovery platform, CollectiveMinds placed Robert Hollingsworth, PhD. With over 30 years of drug development experience including roles as CSO at Shoreline Therapeutics and VP & CSO of Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics at Pfizer, Dr. Hollingsworth is precisely the kind of operator-scientist the panel described: credible to investors, connected to pharma, and capable of building a team as much as leading the science.

“At this stage, a company needs a CSO who can build and inspire a team as much as drive the science — and Bob brings both,” said Tara Kochis, CEO of CollectiveMinds. This is the inflection point we work in – when the right leader becomes the reason investors say yes.

Beyond Valuation: Building for the Long Run

The panel’s broader advice orbited the same center of gravity. Brian Wheeler, Partner at Foley and a founding managing partner of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, urged founders to look past valuation and scrutinize governance terms, SAFE structures, and investor behavior under pressure. His advice: don’t ask for references from success stories. Find out who did a down round and how investors reacted.

Jonathan Norris, Managing Partner at HSBC Innovation, offered useful market context: “What I’ve seen toward the end of last year into this year is investors that are actually excited to put money to work, willing to invest in a smaller round and take more ownership — because they think the near-term value inflection is more predictable. There are more $20M to $60M rounds instead of $100M rounds, where investors can actually get paid for the risk they’re taking.”

“Our strategic link with LG Electronics showed us the power of finding partners whose capabilities unlock entirely new markets for both parties,” said Darren Sabo, CEO of Primefocus Health. “They benefit from a validated pathway into rural healthcare; we benefit from the potential for hyperscale and brand credibility with enterprise buyers. The partnership doesn’t just accelerate our growth; it proves our thesis that the hardest markets to serve are often the most defensible. That’s exactly how we think about building our team as well: find people whose unique strengths create opportunities that neither party could access independently.”

Kiersten’s closing words may have been the most honest of the evening: “The venture investor you are talking to is going to be your best partner. The worst thing you can do is be arrogant. You need to show them that you are going to be a good partner as well.”

In a market where capital is more selective and timelines less forgiving, the founders who build teams that embody that principle are the ones worth betting on.