Head of Business Development (Pharmaceuticals, Organoid Platform)

Boston, MA, United States

Parallel Bio finds the fastest path to drugs that work for more people by starting in human systems first. Our platform replicates the human immune system in a dish across populations to discover cures at a pace never seen before. Come join us on our mission to flip the 95% drug failure rate to a 95% success rate.

What we do:

Our immune systems are master regulators of health and disease. Current tools used to discover drugs that target the immune system are wildly inadequate. To fix this critical gap, Parallel Bio created a human 'immune system in a dish' to rapidly accelerate the development of new drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients. This is the first step on our journey to build a new type of biopharma by reimagining the way we cure disease. Our mission is to design and engineer breakthrough tools inspired by human biology, starting with replacing ineffectual mouse and synthetic platforms.

Parallel Bio finds the fastest path to drugs that work for more people by starting in human systems first. Our platform replicates the human immune system in a dish across populations to discover cures at a pace never seen before. Come join us on our mission to flip the 95% drug failure rate to a 95% success rate.

What we do:

Our immune systems are master regulators of health and disease. Current tools used to discover drugs that target the immune system are wildly inadequate. To fix this critical gap, Parallel Bio created a human 'immune system in a dish' to rapidly accelerate the development of new drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients. This is the first step on our journey to build a new type of biopharma by reimagining the way we cure disease. Our mission is to design and engineer breakthrough tools inspired by human biology, starting with replacing ineffectual mouse and synthetic platforms.

We are seeking a highly driven Head of Business Development to elevate our current sales function through management and deepening of our current relationships, establishing new partnerships, and optimizing our internal and external processes.

What you'll do:

Own all aspects of our business development (BD) efforts: as the sole champion of our sales function, your ultimate goal is to expand upon what the founders have built for Parallel Bio's business development pipeline by growing the current partnerships as well as initiating new ones. Parallel Bio partners with large pharmaceutical companies to co-develop drugs and this role will be key in expanding our current efforts. By staying on top of trends, you'll establish yourself as a thought leader, infusing innovative ideas and strategies into our business development efforts and sales processes.

Actively manage our sales process from start to finish: while our founders have adeptly overseen BD and sales, successfully closing deals and establishing a pipeline, we're looking for someone capable of assuming control of this process and expanding its scale. This role involves coordinating and organizing the sales process, acting as a liaison between internal Parallel Bio team members, service providers, and external partners. You will lead negotiations with partners concerning terms and pricing. Drawing upon your experience and expertise, you will optimize both the sales cycle and the overall process, ensuring increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders at major pharmaceutical companies: you will inherit a network of stakeholders established by our founders. You will not only maintain and expand upon these existing relationships but also leverage your own connections to forge new ones within the industry. This role requires proactive outreach, extensive networking, upselling, and cultivating connections. Success hinges on your ability to persistently pursue opportunities through expert outbound hunting and active participation in prominent pharmaceutical partnering conferences throughout the year. Your focus will be on engaging key stakeholders within these companies who are tasked with evaluating new technologies, positioning our organoid platform as instrumental in fulfilling their organizational objectives.

Keep our marketing materials up to date: you will assume responsibility for updating and refining the materials previously created by our founders, ensuring they are not only up-to-date but also approachable and comprehensible to both current and prospective partners. This entails maintaining various sales decks and collaborating with internal scientists to ensure that all data presented are accurate and current. You will also ensure that content across our website and other external channels aligns seamlessly with our BD and sales messaging. It is imperative that our mission and new product offerings are accurately reflected in our marketing materials to maintain consistency and effectively communicate our value proposition to our audience.

Who you are: You have a PhD in Biomedical Sciences: your background in biomedical research provides you with credibility and the ability to quickly understand our organoid platform technology.

You have 5-10 years of relevant experience in Fortune 500 pharma: work experience includes a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company in a Business Development and/or Search and Evaluation role. Expertise solely in licensing, or in pharmaceutical sales (eg MSL) is not a great match for this role.

You have a solid network: your connections span across key business development stakeholders in many of the major pharmaceutical companies, and you're great at keeping those relationships thriving. You're familiar with major partnering conferences, having attended and gained valuable insights from them. With your intimate knowledge of the nuances between BD and sales processes at major pharma, you're well-equipped to navigate through it all. Plus, your natural inclination toward networking makes building and maintaining connections second nature to you.

You always rise to the top in competition: when it comes to closing deals, you're highly intelligent and strategic which means you know all the right moves to make. Your knack for innovative thinking and consistently surpassing expectations in deal value, size, and terms has garnered recognition. Driven by a competitive spirit, you thrive on securing victories. Having worked at prominent pharmaceutical companies, you understand how they are structured and how they operate and you're excited to leverage that experience to effectively position Parallel Bio for extraordinary success.

You are a consummate professional: you need to be strategic with who you reach out to and how you maintain your existing relationships. Because there are a finite number of pharmaceutical companies, you recognize that each relationship is critical. You've mastered the rules of engagement and how effective partnerships are established.

You excel at optimizing processes and have excellent organizational skills: your deep understanding of the complexities of pharmaceutical partnerships gives you an edge. You know just what knobs to turn to make things run smoother, backed by a solid history of successfully optimizing processes. You excel at managing multiple moving parts, contacts, projects at different levels of maturity.

You take initiative and ownership over your role: as the first Head of Business Development, you'll be reporting into our extremely busy Founders. You are a self-starter who is able to create and execute on a plan and understand that reliability is key. You don't wait for others to tell you what to do, and you don't doubt your decisions. You can keep moving forward and thrive on the unknown. You're driven by impact: you're energized by what we are doing and are solution oriented. We're a team of problem solvers seeking the best outcome for what we are building at Parallel Bio. We hope you get excited about exciting new ways to develop drugs and have a desire to continuously learn.

Why work with us:

As experts in human drug discovery, we have worked hard to position the company for success and to expand our team. We are funded by some of the world's best investors: Y Combinator, Refactor Capital, Breakout Ventures, leaders from pharma, tech, government, and more. You're joining an incredibly ambitious team at an early enough time to help us define our culture, choices, and impact success. Every day will be a new adventure for you as we continue our journey of growth. We will have the highest expectations of you, just as we do of ourselves. Join us in re-imagining what's possible with drug discovery!

Your generous compensation package will include a base salary of $170,000 - 180,000USD plus commission, equity, unlimited PTO, 401K plan with matching, as well as comprehensive health, dental, vision, and life benefits.

We are building a diverse, interdisciplinary team of dreamers and doers. Forget incrementalism and leave low-risk ideas at the door. We're looking for fellow visionaries hungry for real impact in reimagining every facet of how we cure disease. Some of our values: first principles thinking, burning passion, and a drive to work with people with like-minded values; thinking outside the box and the ability to envision that which has not yet been built; listen, then talk; don't forget to have fun; cooperation, trust, ethics, and transparency.

Why work with us:

As experts in human drug discovery, we have worked hard to position the company for success and to expand our team. We are funded by some of the world's best investors: Y Combinator, Refactor Capital, Breakout Ventures, leaders from pharma, tech, government, and more. You're joining an incredibly ambitious team at an early enough time to help us define our culture, choices, and impact success. We will have the highest expectations of you, just as we do of ourselves. Join us in re-imagining what's possible with immunotherapy!

We are building a diverse, interdisciplinary team of dreamers and doers. Forget incrementalism and leave low-risk ideas at the door. We're looking for fellow visionaries hungry for real impact in reimagining every facet of how we cure disease. Some of our values: first principles thinking, burning passion, and a drive to work with people with like-minded values; thinking outside the box and the ability to envision that which has not yet been built; listen, then talk; don't forget to have fun; cooperation, trust, ethics, and transparency.