Founder Talk Recap – What an Inspiring Evening!
Who Is Marc and What Does AaviGen Do?
AaviGen is an innovative biotech startup developing next-generation technologies in the life sciences, in order to tackle cardiac disease and transform human heart health. The team combines scientific excellence with entrepreneurial spirit, a combination that is especially critical in the biotech sector. As CFO, Marc leads AaviGen’s financial and strategic efforts, shaping the company’s capital strategy and ensuring that scientific breakthroughs translate into a viable, scalable business model.
What Challenges Do Biotech Startups Face?
Marc spoke candidly about the unique hurdles biotech founders encounter, including:
- extremely long development timelines, often stretching over many years
- a still-limited investor landscape in Germany and Europe
- high capital requirements long before reaching the market
- the difficult transition from strong patent activity to securing long-term financing
He also walked us through the typical biotech startup journey – showing that only a small fraction of ventures make it all the way from idea to commercialization. It requires strong ideas, clear strategy, resilience, and yes, a fair amount of luck.
Particularly compelling was his take on the current investment climate, in which a significant share of capital and attention is flowing into AI. For biotech founders, this means even more strategic thinking around positioning, timing, and capital access.
Why Biotech Startups Need Business Expertise
Marc also highlighted an important but often overlooked reality: many (bio)tech founders possess exceptional scientific depth, yet have little exposure to company building, financing, or commercial strategy. This gap becomes especially challenging in biotech, where long development cycles and high capital needs require careful financial planning and a strong business foundation from day one.
That’s why business professionals – especially those with backgrounds in finance, strategy, and business development – are essential contributors to biotech teams. They support areas such as:
- developing a viable business model,
- shaping market and pricing strategies,
- planning and securing financing,
- and building the overall operational and strategic structure of the company.
These skills complement scientific innovation and ensure that groundbreaking technology can ultimately reach the market.
Founders who seek to build an interdisciplinary team can benefit from networks like the DeepTechHub. They offer dedicated matchmaking events, connecting (bio)tech founders with business talents such as finance experts or strategy professionals. These formats help teams find the right complementary partners, bringing together scientific excellence and business acumen to build resilient, fundable, and sustainable ventures.