The Thrills Of Science Under Startup Stress

Life In The Fast Lane At Nova Pharmaceuticals, And The Not-So-Sweet Smell Of Success To hear pharmacologist Bill Kinnier tell it, life at Nova Pharmaceutical Corp. has finally settled down. He’s back to being a full-time scientist He gets to go home at a normal hour. He even has a new secretary all to himself. The only problem is: Kinnier misses the old days. Take the summer of 1984. Nova, a hot pharmaceutical startup, had been born of a dream that renowned Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Solomon Snyder could spin off powerful and profitable drugs from his pioneering work on nervous system receptors. Barely a year old, the firm was still in its vagabond stage, promising enough to have outgrown its home for the second time in a few months. This time the man in charge, the director of research, was preparing to consolidate two labs into one much larger building in east Baltimore. The move was imminent when word came that he was needed in England to negotiate joint venture agreements. Startups aren’t rich in executives, so management came hunting for the next likely suspect to oversee the move. Bill Kinnier, in his fourth month with the company, was happily occupied developing drug assays based on Snyder’s receptors when they told him he’d have to double as a logistics expert. What they didn’t tell him was that the building they’d set their hearts on needed renovation. A former morgue, the building still had a room filled with partially decayed radioactive monkey corpses. The monkey business had only just begun for Kinnier. On move day, Nova signed a big contract with Marion Labs, the leading pharmaceutical company in cardiac drugs. Kinnier recalls: "We’re to start on the project immediately, and I’m to be in charge. The only problem is, the project involves screening gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and bladder drugs, and all everyone on staff knows about is the central nervous system." Meanwhile, management expects him to get the company into its new headquarters smoothly. But the elevators lack permits and the city inspector won’t come for another three months. "So everyone in the company—Ph.D.’s, technicians, janitors, and anyone we could get—had to form a firemen’s brigade just to get our supplies upstairs." These are the tales that scientists who’ve survived successful startups love to tell. In many ways, Kinnier is more than a survivor, though. Today he is a wealthy man. Like all Nova employees, he received stock options on the day he was hired. When he started, Nova stock was worth $1.75 a share; it was to reach a high of $22 at one point. He and his wife and three children have a nice home in nearby Towson, Md., and Bill gets to spend a lot of time with them. But he misses the old days so much that he says, "If the right offer came along, I’d do it again in a hot second." In this sense Kinnier epitomizes the entrepreneurial fervor that is sweeping portions of the U.S. reearch community. Figures from the Small Business Administration show that between 1980 and 1986—the latest year for which figures are available about 22,000 scientists cast their lot with 922 new science-oriented startups. Not all succeed, of course: an estimated 15,000 scientists lost their jobs. when 627 such firms failed. Nevertheless, employment in small, science-related companies jumped 24% during those years, while the number of jobs in established firms fell 16%. This trend is expected to continue, since academic jobs remain either scarce or unattractive. So more and more scientists will have to confront the question: Do the rewards of working for a promising startup company outweigh the grueling working hours and chaotic management practices—not to speak of the unpredictable and uncertain future inherent in a new business? Of the scientists who offer an unequivocal yes to that question, some make the jump to a startup like Nova because they’re tired of the rigid life in a big company or the sometimes staid or bureaucratic environment of some university labs. Others do it because they see an improved opportunity for advancement, betting on getting to play a major role in a company’s future. Still others hope to do more and better science at a small company than in a university or big company. And at least a few are mercenary. For Kinnier, the rewards were largely emotional: "I liked the challenge of becoming an overnight expert in some new facet of science when we’d get a life-saving contract for some project we really weren’t prepared to do. And I liked the action and pressure associated with starting a new business. I think I became addicted to the constant adrenaline rush of always having some crisis to manage." But Kinnier couldn’t have known he’d thrive on entrepreneurial adrenalin back in 1983, the year he first learned of Nova, so something must have been driving him to risk a startup. As he remembers it, life was good, very good, for the Kinnier family that year: Bill was a mid-level pharmacologist at A.H. Robins and was being groomed for a soon-to-be-vacant management position. He was making good money, and he lived happily with his pregnant wife and young daughter on a three-acre farm, complete with bass pond, just outside Richmond, Va. But one January day his supervisor spent a couple of hours "dumping on him." Then, by coincidence, a good friend from grad school called to say that he had just taken a new job. The company was called Nova, and "Mike wanted me to come work with him. Since my boss had been such a jerk that day, I thought why not, I’d come up and take a look." Bill and his wife Vicki drove to Baltimore and went to the building in which he’d been told Nova had its offices. The building’s main receptionist, however, had never heard of Nova, nor did the name of David U’Prichard, the company’s vice president and research director, ring a bell. Fortunately, a security guard standing nearby thought he remembered seeing the word "Nova" written on the door of an old machine shop in the basement. "It was the pits," recalls Kinnier. "We almost turned around and went home right then." They stayed, though, and listened to what U’Prichard and Williams had to offer. There was a little more money, but the cost of living was much higher in Baltimore. There was a potentially lucrative stock option, but that didn’t carry too much weight with the Kinniers. What Nova did have was something intangible, something that might not appeal to everyone, but swayed Kinnier. "They offered me the scientific opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to interact with people on the company’s scientific advisory board: Sol Snyder, Julius Axelrod, Floyd Bloom, Paul Greengard. How could I pass it by?" He did'nt, and the adventure began a month later three technicians, three scientists himself, Williams, and Larry Steranka, with whom he shared a broom closet of an office, "one spatula, one stirring bar, one set of pipettes, a balance, a pH meter, and an IBM PC and plotter that nobody knew how to work." "It was rough. Money was tight. Space was tighter," says Kinnier. "It was stress city." Kinnier laughs. The only reason that Nova was able to function as a business in those days, he says, was that everyone helped everyone else. "The camaraderie was what pulled us through. And the wild times. Like the time they handcuffed U’Prichard to the picnic bench." It was Friday; they’d worked another endless week. "Every Friday. no matter what was going on, we’d stop working and go out on the loading dock with a case of beer and watch the sunset. One fall night in 1984, we’re having a crab feast in the hallway when David’s wife calls and says he must come home or else. We don’t want him to leave, so Larry and I chain him to the picnic bench." Today, Nova has 160 employees and no one sits on the loading dock drinking late on Friday nights; indeed, no alcohol is allowed on company grounds. This past August, Hans Muller, chief executive officer, reorganized the company into three divisions, and company officials now feel that Nova is going somewhere, and going there fast Says Joseph A. Twist, vice president of business development, "We’ve got several products under development and $70 million in cash to keep us comfortable until these products hit the market. We’re by no means a mature company yet, but I think we’ve made it out of the startup phase now." Twist also feels that people come to work at Nova for different reasons these days. "The inducement to come now is that people want to work on a particular project we have going," he says. While the company continues to give stock options to all employees, the package is less generous than it was in Bill Kinnier’s early days. Even the scientific advisory board is no longer the drawing card it once was, primarily because the company is now focused on different scientific areas than it was at its birth. In fact, says Kinnier, "we’re starting to address that problem by getting some new advisers with expertise in these new areas." The changes haven’t been lost on Bill Kinnier. "If the right opportunity comes along...” he muses. He knows he’s speaking on the record." Joseph Alper is a Baltimore-based science writer.

The Thrills Of Science Under Startup Stress

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