Investment Lead, Intercept

Who we are

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone's reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the team

This role is on the Intercept team, which is part of Stripe's broader collection of public goods initiatives, including Frontier.

Respiratory viruses kill 1 million people a year, cost us $600B annually, disrupt everyday life, and periodically threaten civilization. Recent breakthroughs may make it possible to develop and deploy broad-spectrum preventatives and air cleaning technologies that defend against common respiratory infections. Intercept is a $500M philanthropic initiative that aims to radically reduce the burden of respiratory infections, and eventually eliminate them altogether. Learn more about Intercept via our launch post and our website

What you’ll do

Intercept is looking for an experienced biotech/biohealth investor to join our team. 

We’re working to make sure the portfolio of technologies needed to radically reduce the burden of respiratory viruses exists. We have two main focus areas: air-cleaning technologies (ACT’s) and broad-spectrum preventatives (BSPs). For BSPs, our goal is to advance 2+ products that meet our target product profile through Phase 2. We make both grants and investments, using the most capital-efficient tool to advance our target product profile.

Initially, this role will be focused on building internal investment processes, investment thesis, and supporting Intercept in establishing the investment function. Ultimately this role will focus on sourcing, diligencing, and executing on pipeline opportunities to make equity and/or grant investments in companies that have the most promising BSPs against our target product profile (TPP). In addition, the role will be responsible for portfolio management to make sure portfolio projects successfully advance their products by helping to remove bottlenecks and accelerate timelines. To effectively accomplish this work, the Investment Lead will develop views on the most promising approaches, identify new cutting edge areas of science, understand key product development inflection points, including mapping key technical and clinical/regulatory bottlenecks and developing plans to de-risk / mitigate them.

We need someone who can  go deep on scientific and development diligence while also  zooming out to synthesize how findings  impact our capital deployment plan and long-term goals. A successful candidate will be action-oriented and comfortable working independently (vs. waiting to be told what to do) and a great communicator who can translate complex science for diverse audiences.

Intercept is a small team; you'll work with the entire team, many partners, and wear many hats. You'll own specific outcomes end-to-end and have a chance to contribute to BSP strategy over time.

Responsibilities

• Expand the pipeline of candidates. Proactively engage networks (researchers, investors, founders, funders, etc.) to source new ideas and technologies. Manage referral channels  (open RFP, referrals, etc.) and screen investment and grant opportunities.
• Own projects through diligence and transaction execution. Advance companies through early and deep / technical diligence: evaluating science quality, development plans, team, and fit against our TPP. Drive the investment or grantmaking process, coordinating with internal and external legal and diligence consultants. Bring projects through internal approval processes and act as the internal owner/champion.
• Develop points of view on technologies. Contribute to publishing a POV for the 5-10 most promising approaches (i.e., siRNA, T-cell vaccine, innate immune stimulators) and identify the key 'gating datapoints' that would make us kill or double down on that approach and when we'll get that datapoint (or if there is a gap).
• Build and maintain the CRM. Help ensure our CRM captures ~all known projects, and we have a process to systematically learn about/capture the best new projects early.
• Portfolio management. Supporting portfolio projects and leading on efforts to accelerate and support projects post investmentDetermine what would let the top projects in the field move 2x faster beyond funding and make sure those things happen.
• Map demand-side bottlenecks. Help map key stakeholders and address key evidence needs and bottlenecks across regulatory, clinical, recommendations, reimbursement and adoption/uptake.

Future opportunities for growth

• Lead investments independently. Grow into a more senior team lead, owning deals from start to finish, managing investment teams, and generating / pursuing new investment theses.
• Shape capital deployment. Contribute to our capital deployment plan informed by a clear POV of the most promising approaches.

Who you are

We're looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.

Minimum requirements

• MD/PhD in immunology or infectious disease with 2+ years of investing, BD/partnering, or grantmaking experience or minimum 5 years of biotech investor experience in immunology or infectious disease at VC fund 
• Experience with portfolio management, including portfolio construction and post-award management 
• Ability to translate scientific diligence into strategic investment recommendations and a coherent capital deployment view
• Product development experience (and/or broad exposure via investing in or supporting companies)
• Experience with project management from launch to completion / project quarterback with a high openness to getting hands dirty
• Extremely self-directed, diligent, very fast learner, excellent communicator, very action oriented (vs talking about things)
• Compelled by our mission to greatly reduce the burden of and risks from respiratory viruses 

Preferred qualifications

•  Public health / global health / biosecurity experience
• MBA or MPH degrees 
• Experience with issuing non-dilutive funding / grant programs