The Advisory Board Question Every Founder Gets Wrong
Most scientists I talk to who are building companies approach networking the same way: they treat it as a channel for finding investors. They register for the same industry conferences, connect on LinkedIn, and walk into introductory meetings with one unspoken goal. A check at the end of it.
The instinct is understandable given the stakes. Biotech is expensive, the development timeline is long, and capital determines what’s possible. Narrowing every introduction to a single outcome, though, shortchanges most of what networking is actually good for.
I’m Leen Kawas, Managing General Partner at Propel Bio Partners, a life science venture capital firm backing founders developing breakthrough health innovations. Before moving to the investor side, I led a biopharmaceutical company focused on neurodegenerative disease from its early stages through a 2020 IPO that raised over $400 million. That decade of company-building taught me, more than anything else, that your network determines your ceiling. The reasons go well beyond who might write you a check.
Build the Advisory Board Before You Need One
There’s a version of Leen Kawas who made the mistake of underestimating this early on. The instinct as a scientist-entrepreneur is to assume that strong data will open every door. It helps, but it’s not sufficient. The scientific community is small and densely networked, and a warm introduction from someone who has reviewed your work firsthand carries a weight that a cold email never will. The advisory board sits at the center of that process.
The founders who build the most durable companies tend to have something in common: they started assembling their advisory board before they needed one. Not at the point of crisis, not when a regulatory filing was in trouble or a manufacturing partner fell through, but before any of those problems existed.
A strong scientific advisory board signals something to investors that raw data can’t easily communicate: that credible, experienced people in your space have looked under the hood and decided your work is worth their time. That third-party validation matters. It also gives you something more immediately practical, people who can spot the gaps in your thinking before you’ve spent twelve months and a substantial portion of your runway discovering them yourself.
The best advisors are in high demand. If you wait until you’re in trouble to find them, you’ll compete for their attention against founders who established those relationships during calmer periods. Build when you have momentum.
The Investor Meeting Reframe
Here’s specific advice I give founders who are frustrated by rejections: go into meetings asking for advice before you ask for capital.
This sounds counterintuitive. You’ve prepared a pitch. You have a specific ask. But investors at serious firms have seen hundreds of companies across your space, and the pattern recognition they’ve built through that exposure is genuinely useful to you, even when the answer is no.
According to venture industry research, less than 1% of sourced deals ultimately get funded. The meetings that end without a term sheet don’t have to end without value.
When an investor passes, ask for feedback on what they’d want to see differently. Ask whether there’s someone in their network whose perspective might be useful to you. Investors who respect your work and your approach, even when they’re not writing a check, are often willing to make the introductions that change the trajectory of your company. Those connections sometimes lead to the hire that addressed their concern, or the co-investor who helped close the round six months later.
The most effective founders I’ve worked with hold both orientations simultaneously: deeply committed to their vision, genuinely curious about what others know that they don’t. Treat investors as advisors first and let the relationship develop from there.
What Leen Kawas Looks For in a Founder’s Network
When I’m evaluating a company at Propel Bio Partners, I pay close attention to who founders have built around them. Not just their cap table. Their advisors specifically, and whether those relationships were built deliberately or assembled for appearances. You can usually tell.
Founders who’ve built real advisory networks have done something uncomfortable: they asked for help before they could offer anything in return. They introduced themselves at conferences when they were unknown. They sent notes to researchers they admired and weren’t embarrassed when the response was slow. They turned hard feedback into ongoing relationships rather than closed doors.
Scientists, in my experience, are often less comfortable with this kind of deliberate outreach than people who came up through business. If that’s you, I’d reframe the instinct. You’re not asking for favors. You’re inviting experienced people to engage with work that might actually matter, and when the science is real, that’s a genuinely interesting invitation.
Build the advisory board now. Attend the conference you’ve been postponing. Ask the investor who passed on your last round who else they’d talk to in your position. And when someone can’t help you directly, ask who can.
The answer to that question has opened more doors than almost any pitch I’ve seen.
Leen Kawas is the Managing General Partner at Propel Bio Partners, a life science venture capital firm dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs developing breakthrough health innovations. She previously took a biopharmaceutical company through a successful IPO in 2020 and is a longtime advocate for scientist-entrepreneurs, particularly women in life sciences.