Founder Roundtable on Building in Biotech & Medtech Today

I’d like to invite you to a small, candid roundtable for biotech and medtech founders, investors, and operators, co-hosted with Alex Goddard, Director at Otsuka BioVentures.

I’m Ted Cho. I work in healthcare venture at Pear VC and am a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. My path has run through venture and research at Rock Health, digital health policy as a CMS Fellow, and AI policy advising for the State of Utah, alongside an MD and MBA from Georgetown. Across those roles, I’ve seen how much of a company’s fate is shaped by forces outside the lab: capital, policy, reimbursement, and partner fit.

Alex brings 20+ years from nearly every side of the table. He has been a neuroscientist at Harvard and Stanford, worked in discovery at Novartis, run R&D at startups, and led external innovation at Takeda. He now invests in early-stage companies. With one of us at an independent venture firm and the other at a corporate fund, we hope to offer two complementary investor perspectives.

Capital is flowing again, but unevenly. It is concentrating in larger, later-stage rounds and in companies with near-term data, while the bar for Seed and Series A keeps rising. In medtech, acquisitions and strategic partnerships are filling much of the gap. We want to talk about what that means for founders building now.

Proposed topics:

Bridging science and fundable data: reaching proof-of-concept in CNS, immunology, and rare disease when investors want de-risked assets.

Translational risk in hard indications: how biomarker, endpoint, and IND-enabling strategies can change the financing conversation.

AI in discovery: where investors see real value versus hype.

Medtech’s path to market: evidence, reimbursement, and strategic acquirers as the main exit.

Policy and pricing: how drug pricing, regulation, and global competition shape what gets funded.

VC vs. corporate VC: return mandates versus strategic alignment, partner expertise versus signaling and independence, and how to build syndicates that get the best of both.

This is a working conversation. We want to hear what’s working for you, where you’re stuck, and what you wish investors and pharma partners understood.

The group will be kept small, and the discussion will be held under Chatham House Rule.