An Innovation Fund lead by Entrepreneurs: Debiopharm’s Tanja Dowe on How Investors Support Startups

Tanja Dowe is the CEO of Debiopharm Innovation Fund, the strategic investment arm of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Debiopharm. The Fund invests in

In the anticipation of the session, we asked Tanja about the role of investors in a startup scaling process. If we talk about further support from the investor’s side, I’d point out helping the startup to understand the domain and the market. Understanding of market needs also includes a clear vision on who the startup is ultimately serving: pharma companies or health care providers, etc. Then, investors can contribute a lot with the connections to potential customers, providing access to the type of advisors that intimately know the fields that the startup needs expertise in and guiding the startup in asking the right questions. Depending on whether a startup is selling, for example, to pre-clinical or clinical operations, or to the market access team, we facilitate connection to panels of experts from Debiopharm to help the startup’s team to understand the needs of their clients. One of the greatest compliments that I’ve heard from one of our startup CEOs was that he would define us as almost more entrepreneurs than investors.