Startup mythology commonly features a young maverick beginning outside the corporate world, developing an innovation from the proverbial garage. This is not the only way in which entrepreneurialism works. After working for more than two decades in Roche, rising to become Head of Clinical Research and member of the global R&D leadership, Andreas Wallnoefer became a serial entrepreneur and investor in biotech.
He has been involved in founding and/or being the lead investor in biotech companies, several of which became very successful and/or were acquired by large pharma companies. He was one of the first investors in the UK/US ophthalmology company EyeBio, which developed a novel, more effective treatment for retinal eye disease to prevent and treat blindness. In summer 2024, only three years after the start of the company, the business was sold to the pharmaceutical firm Merck for $3 billion. Business analysts described the deal as one of the top three startup deals for return on upfront investments in the history of biotech.
His entrepreneurial and investor expertise was honed in part at IMD’s Executive MBA, which he describes as having transformed his perspectives of business. He opted to complement his senior pharma R&D executive experience with business insights to develop biotech and pharma companies, addressing questions such as:
“How do you start up a company? How do you develop a robust business plan that attracts investors? How do you actually pitch the story to investors and M&A partners? How can you adjust as a former corporate leader in an agile biotech environment?”
He states that the most valuable parts of his career have been not the senior titles but the satisfaction to have contributed to several medicines that reached the market and have improved the lives of many patients.
At Roche, he oversaw the re-structuring of the clinical departments during the integration of the US firm Genentech. During this time he met Tony Adamis, who was the head of the ophthalmology department at Genentech. “We got along very well and focused on the science, rather than on the internal politics. And then, at some point, Tony had the idea to look into our portfolio to see whether some of the molecules in the Roche pipeline could be re-purposed to treat eye disease.”
“The beauty of biotech is that science progresses exponentially and that there are so many exciting opportunities”
They worked jointly with their Roche / Genentech teams to develop a drug that significantly alleviated macular degeneration, a progressive disease common in elderly people and in diabetic patients, which ultimately leads to blindness. This R&D effort led to the product Vabysmo, which reached the market in 2022 and became one of Roche’s most successful recent market introductions.
In 2015, Andreas left Roche to become a full-time investor and founder of biotech firms, first at the Swiss venture capital firm BioMed and then as a partner at Jeito Capital, a leading Paris-based European investment company. He has been involved in the initiation and development of several companies. From those, four have been acquired by large pharmaceutical firms, several of them at billion dollar valuations, one went to an IPO and many are operating very successfully at high valuations.
After Tony Adamis also left Roche, he had identified a new and exciting project. He invited Andreas to join building the company EyeBio, to develop an even better treatment for macular degeneration. Andreas was one of the first investors and the medicine proved to be phenomenally effective, with the first studies showing a 90% response rate. The drug improved patients’ vision significantly, enabling people to live their lives more independently. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agreed, based on the strong data, to progress directly in pivotal confirmatory trials, which are now conducted by MSD.
The progress of the development program at EyeBio was significantly faster than can be achieved typically in larger pharma organizations and was using significantly lower resources. After the acquisition, MSD decided to continue the operation of EyeBio as a separate business unit.
There are different dimensions to commercialize innovation successfully, he says: “You don’t go anywhere in biotech if the science is not strong and when you don’t understand drug development. What IMD added is the strategic and entrepreneurial tools and thinking to help making companies successful. The strategic modules and their intellectual grounding at IMD was outstanding and I could apply the IMD strategic framework in multiple companies with success.”
Core to success in biotech is – next to the science – the people and the teamwork. The leadership challenge in small organizations is even more direct than in larger organizations. The individual makes even more of a difference to competence but also to the dynamics in the group.
“I could apply the IMD strategic framework in multiple companies with success”
He says the development and exit with EyeBio has been – so far – his “masterpiece” as an investor. While he has subsequently decided to step back from being a partner at Jeito Capital, the success nurtured the ambition to repeat the winning recipe and to shape and further contribute to promising companies. “The beauty of biotech is that science progresses exponentially and that there are so many exciting opportunities.”
Andreas argues that Europe has very strong universities and is leading innovation, but that the continent’s business culture needs to become more entrepreneurial and more ambitious to stay competitive with US and Asia. By implication, so do its business leaders – and not only the
youngsters.
