Hi!

For us at T2B and probably for most of you, too, September is not only the return from summertime, but also the turn around the corner that takes us through the end of the year and into JPM.

This year feels especially jam-packed, so before anything else, I want to thank everyone who joined us at our T2Bmeets last week along the Eastern Seaboard, in D.C., Philly, and Boston for making the time — time away from work, client deadlines, family, travel, and everything else competing for it.

A few special thank-you's for our Boston meetup:

... to the Alkermes Corporate Affairs team for welcoming us into your space, being terrific hosts, and continuing to be such engaged members of the T2B community.

... to Biosector 2 for your generous support of the evening and of T2B.

... to Andrew Law, Gretchen Murphy, Carlo Tanzi, and Alina Worth for such a candid, practical conversation about how we keep companies relevant when the obvious milestones can be few and far between.

... to Carly Goldsmith, Deb Becker, and Kim Meninger for experimenting with us re: our first-ever Coaches Corner, with speed-coaching sessions. I loved being able to offer another way for people to use the evening to invest in themselves.

10 takeaways from last week's "staying relevant between milestones" panel discussion:

1. Fight for mind share. An investor's juggling 50 or 100 names, and suddenly going quiet is how you slide down the list.
​>>Example: one investor's line stuck with a panelist for years - "Just stay in front of me."
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​2. Educate before you have news. Use the slow months to get people up to speed, so the data doesn't land without context when it finally comes.
​>>Example: one team spent months before a readout getting investors to see that a disease dismissed as mild was actually debilitating, so the proof of concept landed the way they intended.
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​3. Own the part that feels too raw to share. The thing you'd rather not say out loud is often the most interesting thing about you.
​>>Example: one company's real edge was that it was brutally hard to work there; they wanted to hide it, then saw -- and embraced -- that their all-in approach was fueling the speed of their success.
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​4. Selectively jump into conversations you didn't start. The industry keeps moving while you're heads-down, so consider lending your take to something already in play and stay visible without an announcement.
​>>Example: a competitor's data drop or an industry debate you have a real stake in is a natural opening to say something, no company news required.

5. Start with who needs to hear it. Classic, right? It's worth repeating: The same news reads differently to an investor and a patient community, so sort the audience before the channel, and of course, lean on legal and reg to ensure compliance.
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​6. Go a layer below the C-suite. Sometimes, the more compelling employee and patient stories sit below leadership, and your owned channels can let you tell them your way.
​>>Example: one employee heard the company talk about a certain disorder, saw a doctor, and got diagnosed with it!
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​7. Look harder before you call it quiet. Get off the pipeline chart and talk to your clinicians and scientists; there could be progress hiding in plain sight.
​>>Example: an old data set worth re-cutting, or a KOL dinner where the expert is the draw and the attention carries back to your program.
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​8. Make the in-person moments count. In-person is back as the antidote to the Zoom-and-AI slog, but events look different -- keep them shorter and punchier. Save room for the coffee after, where the real questions come out.
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​9. AI can be more useful for testing than drafting. Everyone drafts with it now and it shows; an alternative use case is checking how your message reads to stakeholders like reporters and analysts.
​>>Example: one team built bots off analysts' public comments (no confidential inputs required), caught the market misreading where they sat in the competitive set, and those bots later predicted about 83% of their earnings questions.
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​10. Please, please keep a human in the loop. The stuff that matters most, like what short-sellers are quietly telling analysts or where reporters are sourcing their intel, comes from working your relationships and understanding the rumor mill.

Thanks again to everyone who made last week's mixers meaningful. I hope you left with a few new ideas, a few new connections, and maybe a little more space to think.

See you next time,

Lynnea

P.S. - If you're in the SF Bay Area, join us TOMORROW (September 22nd) @ Exelixis for our local mixer, and if you're in San Diego, hope to see you at next week's meetup (September 30th)!