MassBio CEO & President Kendalle Burlin O’Connell initially posted this to LinkedIn:
Today we had a room full of early-stage biotech CEOs in conversation with Governor Maura Healey and Economic Development Secretary Eric Paley hosted here at MassBio.
What they heard was blunt. Early-stage companies are struggling. The startup pipeline here in Massachusetts is under duress. Competition for talent and dollars is fierce, domestically and globally. The conversation spanned the issues you would expect: access to capital, protecting innovation, making bets on risky science. It also covered the challenges these executives carry on behalf of their employees, including housing, transportation, childcare, and the cost of living. These are top of mind when a scientist is considering taking a job here or somewhere cheaper, and when a CEO decides where to expand.
Everyone in that room was aligned on the goal. Make it easier for a biotech to get started, get funded, and grow here. And on the question underneath it: how do we get from idea to clinic faster?
What I’ve always appreciated about this Administration is their willingness to listen and then roll up their sleeves with us to find solutions. This was not a one-time event. This has been a year-long engagement with the biopharma industry. When the Governor says she’ll take what she heard this morning back to the strategic review of state programming, we can be assured she will.
The Administration is also willing to change course and meet today’s challenges rather than those of 20 years ago. There was an acknowledgement that this is an all hands on deck moment for state government, private investors, biotechs, large pharma, philanthropy, academia, and hospitals to protect what we’ve built here and make it stronger going forward.
Thank you to the CEOs who came out this morning and gave so freely of your time. You left your labs and your fundraising to make the case in person, and you made it candidly.
Thank you to Governor Healey for spending hours with us. For taking notes. For taking questions, some of them pointed, and answering directly to the people running biotechs with tiny teams and shoestring budgets, working around the clock to find a breakthrough that saves lives.
