However, as he advanced in his training, he also realized that as a physician, he could only help a few patients a day, a few hundred patients a month, and perhaps a few thousand patients a year. He quickly learned that to maximize his impact on the medical field, he would have to ditch the white coat.

“I saw that new innovations could help patients in a way that I could not do as a physician by seeing one patient at a time,” Dr. Gupta says. “It was great to have a medical background. Still, I felt that I needed to also understand a component of healthcare that I didn’t really get to learn in my medical career. So I went to graduate school at NYU to earn a graduate degree in healthcare finance and management.”

Dr. Gupta has been the founder and CEO of three companies. His first company, BioCycive targeted a pathway for which the Nobel Prize in medicine was given two years ago. His second company, Globavir, was founded based on technologies licenses from Stanford University. Globavir developed technologies that were then partnered with Bio-Rad and Cepheid, two of the largest diagnostic companies in the world. He founded Unicycive with the intent to focus on drugs that could help patients with kidney diseases.

On Dec. 15, Dr. Gupta hosted a webinar for Founders Network where he  shared insights into his transition from the hospital to creating impactful biomedical technology.

To learn more about medical innovation check out his full webinar from December 15 or explore our entire event video library

A Hand in the Medicine

Dr. Gupta practiced medicine for a decade before entering the startup world. But he didn’t immediately hang up his white coat when he transitioned from medicine to biotech.

While Dr. Gupta worked as a stock analyst covering biopharma public company stocks during the weekdays, he picked up a few weekend shifts each month at the NYU Medical Center, where he did his residency and fellowship. He knew the experience would ultimately be valuable to his startup career, and at the end of the day, he enjoyed seeing patients.

This arrangement that kept him from practicing medicine full time also prevented him from experiencing the burnout so common in the medical profession.

When he moved out to California, balancing both careers were no longer possible. But, his experience doing both provided a unique perspective as he dove deeper into the biotechnology field.

How Doctors Think

Drugs, devices, and healthcare technologies created by biotech firms are typically geared toward physicians. But, as Dr. Gupta knew from his experience practicing medicine, physicians aren’t your typical clients or consumers.

When you tell a doctor that new technology will generate twice the revenue, that might not resonate, Dr. Gupta says. “Doctors don’t think that way.”

“The day-to-day focus for physicians is to help patients get better, and they have insights into what are the challenges in the existing solutions,” he explains. “Talking to them and understanding what pain points they see and what their patients see is a key to coming up with new innovative technologies.”

Dr. Gupta’s experience practicing medicine gave him valuable insight into his customers’ minds. Working in biotech startups gave him the opportunity to take that experience to the next level.

The Mission of Biotechnology

Before launching his own startups, Dr. Gupta joined the biotech firm Genentech, where he worked in a strategy role for drugs that were already on the market or being developed.

By the time Dr. Gupta started working at Genentech, the company had been around for over thirty years and had grown to employ thousands of people.

But, “Genentech still had that culture of focus on the mission of the company that was so very refreshing,” he describes.

Under the leadership of Genentech’s visionaries, the company created a culture that gave everyone a sense of purpose and mission.

“All of Genentech was about doing something that matters to patients,” Dr. Gupta explains. “Even those who were not in the research and development part of the organization. Even if somebody worked in the cafeteria at Genentech, they didn’t feel that they were working in a cafeteria serving sandwiches or coffee. They felt they were making the world a better place.”

It was a sense of mission that left an indelible impression in his mind and led him to think about starting a company on his own.

During his webinar, Shalbh covered:

• Finding a true unmet need that can help a venture succeed
• Understanding what investors want to see
• Measuring success for products
• Lessons from the growth of Genentech
• How to create a mission-based company culture
• Building a biotech startup team

To learn more about medical innovation, see if you qualify for membership and check out the webinar from December 15.

Click here to watch the ENTIRE video

or explore our entire event video library

One of the first big hires for Bandwagon was the software engineer. Because Hughes is not a technical founder, he knew he’d need outside guidance, but he separated the hiring process into two parts. First was aptitude—”from a technical standpoint, let’s make sure the person can do their job,” but the second part was not whether the candidate would be a good fit, but rather if they would provide an additive quality to the team. “So we don’t look for culture fit. We look for folks who are going to improve the culture of our organization.”

“We don’t look for culture fit. We look for folks who are going to improve the culture of our organization.” - @OneBandwagonFan
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One of the biggest aspects of hiring that can hold budding startups back is preconceived notions about compensation. “Remember that at the end of the day you are building this company from scratch and so you don’t have to use some boring compensation plan.” Hughes recommends adopting an approach of employing multiple flexible terms, including:

• Deferred compensation
• Base salary plus bonus
• Commission
• Equity

As long as you are in talks with a candidate open to flexible terms, the more options you offer, the higher your likelihood of bringing on the person that you truly desire for that role. During the event, Hughes will go through the most effective compensation tactics to help land the hires of your dreams.

When it comes to the hiring process, Hughes believes in patience, with an eye towards long-term possibilities. “Timing is everything, especially when it comes to building out your team,” Hughes explains, “and you never know when the career arc of your ideal candidate, and the needs and resources of your own company will be matched up. So when you find an amazing person that you’d love to work with always stay in touch with them, reach out to them, consider adding them to your investor update list, or your stakeholder list so you can continue to massage and build that relationship because you never know when the timing is going to work out.”

“Remember that at the end of the day you are building this company from scratch and so you don’t have to use some boring compensation plan.” - @OneBandwagonFan
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While this might sound like straightforward networking, for Hughes this is not so much about increasing the overall size of the network, but rather the depth of specific relationships with people that you’d like to see in very key roles in the future.

Hughes credits his “always be courting” philosophy as critical to the success of hiring the company’s current COO, Bärí Williams. Hughes had become aware of her almost from the same time as founding Bandwagon in 2016. And while he had added her to a list of people he’d dream of working with, when he met her in 2017, he knew better than to make that ask, feeling that he could not offer any sort of comparable salary.

What Hughes did do was stay in touch, keeping connected with Williams on Twitter and adding her to investor updates. In the end, Williams ended up reaching out to Hughes about a potential role at Bandwagon.

In the pre-seed and seed stages capital is always going to be limited. It can feel like a Catch-22 when it’s necessary to have a winning team to show your company’s value in order to raise that capital, while having so many restraints on building the initial team.

“When you find an amazing person that you’d love to work with always reach out to them, consider adding them to your investor or your stakeholder list so you can continue to massage and build that relationship.” - @OneBandwagonFan
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At the upcoming Founders Network event, Hughes will go into depth on all the ways in which a startup can build the team they need with limited resources. Join Harold Hughes at Founders Network for actionable takeaways on all aspects of hiring including:

• Creating a process and sticking with it
• Being creative with compensation packages and plans
• Always be courting

If you’re an early stage founder you won’t want to miss this critical advice that will show you how to assemble the dream team you need to progress. Register now or request an invite to see if you qualify for membership.