Introducing Playbooks,
Entrepreneurial Guides
for Scientists

Entrepreneurial Scientist Playbooks

Nucleate’s Entrepreneurial Scientist Playbooks provide key knowledge for scientific trainees transitioning into a funded company, sponsored by Schmidt Futures. Like all Nucleate initiatives, these playbooks are free and publicly available.

01 Partner With Pharma

Learn the skills to initiate and build a successful biotech partnership

02 Start Your Company

Learn the first steps in building out a new venture

03 License From Universities

Learn the intricacies of working with a university tech transfer office

Our First Playbook: Partnering with Pharma

Partnerships between startup companies and large pharmaceutical companies represent a major driver of innovation. The goal of this playbook to demystify this process. In partnership with Genentech, a Member of the Roche Group. This is the first Entrepreneurial Playbook, available now for free.

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Our First Playbook: Partnering with Pharma

Motivations for Partnership

Learn from industry leaders about best practices for partnerships.

Characteristics of Success

We share what pharma companies are looking for in successful partnerships.

Steps of Partnership

Partnerships can be complex and long. This report elucidates the process.

About the Partnering
with Pharma Playbook

Introduction

Partnerships between startup companies and large pharmaceutical companies are a main driver of innovation and fuel improvements in care outcomes across the biotechnology industry.

Goals

The goal of this playbook is to demystify this process for early-stage innovators.

1) if partnerships with pharma are a good choice for their strategy
2) how to initiate and facilitate collaborations
3) what pharma companies are looking for
4) deal structures relevant to their business model

Process

In this report, we consolidate information from across the landscape and from the sources at companies themselves. The information contained inside this report was sourced from scoured publically available resources and hour-long structured interviews with business development professionals at ten large-cap biopharma companies and four startups conducted over late 2022 and early 2023.

Our results include perspectives from the pharma buy-side and startup sell-side.

Contents

Why partnerships are advantageous for both sides
The buy side motivations
How to connect with pharma
The steps of building a partnership
What to expect at every stage of the deal
Term sheet and deal structure specifics
Startup perspective of working with pharma
A case study of a real deal between Roche, Genentech, a Member of the Roche Group, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Advice from professional pharma partners.