Co-Founder in Residence, Reversing fibrosis (CEO / Commercial Cofounder)

Deep Science Ventures; London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading venture creation company seeks a Founder-in-Residence to lead drug development efforts addressing fibrotic diseases. The role demands extensive experience in translational R&D and drug development, coupled with a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Candidates will play a crucial role in fundraising, company structuring, and strategic direction, with a significant equity stake in the resulting enterprise.

Benefits

Minimum guaranteed income of £4,166 per month

Significant equity stake in the company

Continued support post spin-out

Access to a vast network of industry contacts

Qualifications

• 15+ years drug development experience in pharma/biotech.
• Strong existing network in investor relationships preferred.
• Ability to challenge the status quo in treatment for fibrotic diseases.

Responsibilities

• Lead the new company focused on drug development for fibrosis.
• Develop fundraising strategy & clinical positioning.
• Refine company strategy for rapid path to Series A.

Skills

Translational R&D experience

Drug development experience

Commercial expertise

Entrepreneurial spirit

Network in investor relationships

Education

PhD in a relevant field

Job description

ABOUT DSV

Deep Science Ventures is creating a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive. We use our unique venture creation process to create, spin-out and invest into science companies, combining available scientific knowledge and founder-type scientists into high-impact ventures. We operate in 4 sectors: Pharmaceuticals, Climate, Agriculture and Computation, tackling the challenges defining those areas by taking a first principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.

OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH GENERAL INCEPTION

Driven by mutual conviction in the huge unmet medical need in fibrotic diseases, DSV has partnered with General Inception to accelerate the development of novel therapeutics, jointly building a new venture solely dedicated to anti-fibrotic therapies. To maximise impact and exploit synergies across both organisations, we are forging a new venture creation model which combines DSV’s innovative first-principles venture creation methodology with General Inception’s deep domain expertise, network and portfolio - leveraging the best of both.

To learn more about the partnership, please see our Press Release, and to learn more about General Inception

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for future Founders: entrepreneurially-minded individuals with deep technical and commercial domain expertise, who are eager to solve urgent unmet challenges through venture building. This role offers a unique opportunity to work at the forefront of fibrosis drug development, leading a company solving challenges in immune resolution and myeloid reprogramming to reverse disease.

You will join DSV’s venture creation programme as a Founder-in-Residence and work closely with the DSV and GI team to spin out the new company. During the programme you will refine, improve and complement existing scoping work on:

• Fundraising strategy & pitching
• Clinical strategy & positioning
• Commercial neglect (IP strategy, differentiation, competition)
• Value proposition (market, value capture, techno-economics)
• Optimising company strategy for the most rapid and derisked path to Series A (within 18-24 months from launch)

Preparation for Investment Committee will involve fulfilling any outstanding investment criteria, recruiting advisory and co-founding team members, and parallel fundraising for additional expansion funds.

Assuming success at both respective Investment Committees, you will receive pre-seed investment from DSV and GI, and spinout the company in Q4 2025. You and your co-founders will own a significant stake in the business and continue receiving support post-spinout.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Fibrosis underlies a staggering proportion of human diseases, accounting for 18% of all global deaths (35% including solid tumours), with increasing prevalence worldwide, and consistent market growth across almost all indications. Yet there are still only two FDA-approved anti-fibrotic drugs – marketed for lung fibrosis alone – neither of which are able to meaningfully halt disease, let alone reverse it.

The unmet medical need is therefore enormous. But competition in the development pipeline is increasingly fierce for liver and lung fibrosis, and many clinical approaches have historically proven to be intractable at reversing disease, teaching us valuable biological lessons that must be incorporated for the next generation of therapeutics. To reverse disease, we must directly or indirectly achieve multiple biological outcomes – manipulating pathogenic myofibroblasts, resolving pro-fibrotic inflammation, regenerating healthy epithelia & endothelia, degrading existing ECM deposits, and ideally neutralising (reactivity to) any upstream triggers. We believe we have identified approaches that may be able to address many if not all of these outcomes, by focussing on pro-resolution mechanisms and immune reprogramming.

Our ambition is to create impactful new medicines that have (i) transformative mono-therapeutic efficacy, (ii) applicability across multiple fibrotic diseases (beyond the lung), (iii) complementary yet distinct mechanism of action compared to standard-of-care medicines (to ensure combinability with future clinical regimens), and (iv) conveniently and/or infrequently administered (to ensure patient convenience and low burden on healthcare systems).

To this end, we are pursuing a multi-strategy portfolio of approaches within immune resolution and myeloid reprogramming that balance ambition, derisking, speed, and optionality, while maintaining focus on key biology areas where we can develop deep expertise and know-how. Our existing strategy involves generation of proprietary assets/IP whilst derisking multiple in-licensing opportunities in parallel that could substantially accelerate the company’s trajectory.

This will require a talented and experienced leader with commercial knowhow to joining the Founding team.

We believe now is the time to turn this vision into a reality. Will you join us to lead the effort?

WHO SHOULD APPLY

We are looking for an exceptional individual with the following:

Essential Values

• You are highly motivated by unsolved challenges in fibrotic disease, and driven to challenge the status quo of how we treat these underserved patients.
• You are impact driven, take the initiative, make things happen, and think from a first principles perspective to figure out what’s really needed.
• You have clear entrepreneurial spirit and mindset, demonstrated through impactful innovation, and an ability to work in ambiguous, unstructured but fast-paced, demanding and pressurised environments.
• Collaborative nature, with the ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams.

Essential experience (must-have)

• You have translational R&D experience in inflammatory, autoimmune or fibrotic disease.
• Analogous experience in similar diseases/cells/tissues/mechanisms such as fibroblast-targeting in solid tumours is also acceptable.
• You have 15+ years drug development experience in pharma/biotech and/or BD/corporate development experience.
• We are also open to life science VC investors with strong operational drug development experience.
• You have deep commercial & strategic expertise in therapeutic development, demonstrated through successful; (a) VC fundraising (ideally at Series A or Seed), OR, (b) execution of deals (licensing, partnering, collaborations) or transactions (M&A, IPO).
• A strong existing network of investor & pharma BD/CVC relationships is highly preferred.
• Strong track record of building and leading successful teams, ideally with experience integrating in-house operations with outsourced relationships (CROs and/or academic collaborators).

Preferred experience (nice-to-have)

• Previous CEO experience (in biotech)
• Previous Founder experience (in biotech)
• Technical or clinical development experience in protein therapeutics and/or bispecific antibodies
• Technical or clinical development experience in lung, kidney, liver, or heart fibrosis.
• Deep technical experience in fibrotic disease biology
• Track record of successful non-dilutive (grant) fundraising
• Track record of high quality publications or thought leadership in the field

OUR OFFER

By joining DSV, you’ll be joining a team of operators who have founded companies and led translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds and government agencies. 2/3 of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite and 65% have a PhD. Our team dedicate several hours every week to each Founder or founding team to provide tailored guidance, resources and feedback covering every aspect of what it takes to successfully launch a new venture from both the tech and commercial perspectives:

• We provide optimised, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch, using our venture creation methodology.
• General Inception’s extensive network (investors, clinicians, academics), technical domain expertise, and wide-ranging portfolio company capabilities across tools, platforms, diagnostics and therapeutics.
• DSV’s network of Partners, Advisors, Community and Pharma Scientific Advisory Board members – including leaders of therapeutics VCs, Pharma BD execs, C-suite operators at leading biotech companies, venture builders, and CDMOs, from whom you will receive detailed feedback.
• We jointly provide an initial £250k (~$340k / €290k) investment governed by our Investment Committee to incorporate the new venture and develop early proof-of-concept data that is often needed to attract high profile non-venture studio VCs. This funding is also key for obtaining grant funding, which often needs to be matched with private investment.
• Note: we will fundraise in parallel (pre-launch) to provide additional ‘expansion’ financing at or shortly after company launch. In this case, with the maturity of the targets, assets and in-licensing opportunities, we anticipate that an acceleratedSeed round may also be possible. Our plan is to nominate a development candidate within 12-18 months of launch (but exact timelines will depend on various factors).
• You and your co-founder(s) will own a significant equity stake in the company.
• We provide minimum guaranteed income of £4,166 per month paid to each Founder as a consultancy fee until the company is launched and pre-seed investment is secured.
• Note: exact compensation and time requirements may vary for this build depending on seniority & team composition & execution plans.
• We provide continuous support post spin-out, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment and team-building (amongst other things).
• There are dozens of Founders currently at DSV across sectors working collaboratively and supporting one another - a unique resource to draw on.