venture capital

Fred Hammack, a venture consultant, has benefited from an education in classics and finance. A fortuitous decision, he says, because “once you understand maths and statistics, you can read any paper on the planet and as long as you have the vocabulary, you can learn the underlying technology”.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, crafted from years of experience in different industries, Fred has an intrinsic understanding of what drives a biotech business. This understanding of the science and the business allows Fred the benefit of many perspectives, allowing him to really help people understand what it takes to gain investments in the space, how to get someone’s attention and how to build successful business models.

How does a start-up get onto your radar?

Two things…

One of my heroes in life is my dad, a paediatric surgeon renowned for his abilities. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but if you challenged him to commercialize something, he would fail. I wouldn’t trust him to manage a dollar. I would trust him with my life, but I would not trust him with my start-up.

That’s not a criticism of him, but if you are that incredibly smart researcher, that person who’s able to do incredible discovery on the bench, that person that has incredible scientific ability, it’s important to be realistic. Some can deal well with the crossover and some of them…