Jan Lichtenberg, Co-founder and CEO of InSphero, is 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year Switzerland and ETH Zurich, University of Neuchâtel, EPF Lausanne, and University of Bremen alumni. Founder and former CEO of Advanced Micromachining Tools GmbH. Starting with a team of 5 people the company has now grown to (80+) full time employees.
InSphero was founded in 2009 as an official spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – ETH Zürich. The main mission of the co-founders, Dr. Jan Lichtenberg, Dr. Wolfgang Moritz, and Dr. Jens Kelm was to address the rising need for alternative methods to animal testing in the drug discovery process.
Too often European Founders are accused of not being ambitious enough - not thinking "big enough"..
The 2024 McKinsey report that was presented at the BioEquity conference confirms this: European companies are more likely to be acquired or engage in early M&A activity instead of pursuing extended growth through additional funding or IPOs, which is more common in the US. This is compounded by European companies' tendency to go public prematurely on US exchanges rather than waiting for more favorable market conditions.
In drug development where large amounts of money are needed to bring a product to market this trend is of course linked to the availability of capital. For everyone else there is less of an excuse:
You should be thinking bigger.
In this session Jan will share:
Where he sees the critical inflection points as you are building your venture and how he dealt with the challenges at each stage.
What his biggest scaling challenges were and how he overcame them.
How he reinforced his growth strategy with his investors.
How he ensured that he and his team grow with the company's vision.
How to ensure your board grows and evolves according to your needs.