Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

Seminar: Lars Ekman – EVP & President Global R&D – elan

From Rags to Riches and back again - 7 Year Learning Experience with eLan
History -
Deal driven
Cash Flow - Drug Delivery

Acquisitions - 22 companies in 2.5 years
Model - JV between Biotech and elan which will buy IP from elan using money from elan!

MS Tysabri Tlymphosites
reverse memory loss on cover of nature December 2000 (big achievement)

Perfect Storm brewing!
Enron, SEC investigation, Halt Trials Generic Threat, Critical WSJ Article

Share Price - $62 - $1.30 (Market cap 24 B to 400 mill) had 4B debt (looks okay for 24B company, but not for 400 mill company)

Recovery
New management
Debt Reduction - 2.4B from asset divesture, 1.2B LT convertible Debt
Headcount reduction - 5400 to 1800
Cost Reductions

Tysabri got FDA approval. filed MAA

New Challenges
Cox2 Congressional Hearings. Two adverse events.

Share Price: 29-3 11.5 - 2.6 Billion

New Trials
Approval by EV and VS
AD - phase 3
Market Cap 11 B

Lessons Learned:
1. Maximum Transparency - dispense all bad news at once
2. Delineate Facts from opinions
3. Select Data Setets? (Monitoring Board w/ease)
4. Don't look back - Address next 3 steps.
5. Don't look down

Date: 11/16/2007

Seminar: Leo Spiegel – Mission Ventures

This was the first professional seminar. Leo Spiegel is a managing partner with Mission Ventures, a hi-tech venture capital firm. Leo has been a president of Digital Island, CEO of Sandpiper Networks. He is also a member of Dean's advisory Council of Rady School of Management, UCSD.

This was an interesting and engaging presentation about Leadership Lessons (the subtitle was funny but I cannot remember it). One interesting thing was that all the slides were a single point followed by a cartoon describing that. Presentation Zen!

The actual message in the presentation was same-old. Good values, Vision, Choose Great People. Common sense (so uncommon in practice!). The anecdotes after each point were very interesting. The following question-answer session was also great - He talked about the startups in San Diego and Orange County area, the profiles of the companies they are currently "incubating" (Entropic, Slacker - which he was very enthusiastic about), his greatest investments so far...

All in all, a great kickoff to the seminar series.

Date: Sept/21/07