Biotech executive headhunter. Since 2011
Permanent C-level placements in under 60 days. Interim in 6 days.
The pattern
The CFO who got you through Seed will not get you through Series C. The CEO who built the science is rarely the CEO who runs a commercial launch. The CMO who designs a Phase 2 protocol is not the CMO who navigates a launch in seven markets.
What worked in clinical-stage often breaks in late clinical. The people who pretend otherwise cost their companies a year of progress. Sometimes EUR 20 to 40M of avoidable dilution. Sometimes EUR 200M left on the table in a partnership that was negotiated by the wrong person.
I have seen the pattern across fifteen years, four biotech cycles, and over a thousand executive conversations that ended in a placement. Knowing when a leader is the right hire for now is the easy part. Knowing when that same leader is the wrong hire for the next phase is what founders and investors actually need a search partner for.
How the job changes
At Build
Series A · 10-30 people
You are selling a vision to investors who are betting on the science and on you personally. You are hiring the first five to ten people who will define the company. You are in lab meetings because the science still needs your judgement, and because there is no one else senior enough to make calls on it. Capital is what you spend most of your time on. The board is small, friendly, and bets on you. Strategy and operations blur into one thing called "what we do this week."
Storytelling power. Scientific credibility the founders trust. The kind of conviction that survives a "no". Real network depth in the therapeutic area. Comfort with ambiguity. Hiring scars and instinct.
At Scale
Phase 3 & pre-commercial · 100-250 people
You are running multi-site clinical operations, a real BD function, a finance team with its own CFO, and a board that includes crossover investors who think in quarters. You are not in lab meetings. If you are, something is wrong. Most of your time is on people, capital markets, and the strategic positioning that decides whether the company gets acquired, goes public, or commercialises on its own. The conviction is still there, but it is layered under judgement, delegation, and the kind of patience that lets other people make decisions you would have made yourself two stages ago.
Experience running a 100-plus organisation. Public-markets or pre-IPO exposure. BD and partnering muscle. Ability to integrate executives without crushing them. Pattern recognition across cycles. The willingness to step back from the science.
Some founder-CEOs grow into this. Most do not. The honest ones know which they are.
At Build
Series A · 10-30 people
There is a financial manager job. Someone who can build a clean monthly close, manage the cap table, support the next financing round and translate the science budget into investor-speak. The strategic financing decisions are made by the CEO. Jan de Kerpel said this directly on Willing to Win: "In early stage companies, the CFO role, it's not a CFO role. It's actually a financial manager role." Most companies hire too senior here and pay for it twice. First in salary, then in frustration on both sides.
Operational discipline. Investor reporting craft. Cap table fluency. Comfort working closely with a CEO who still owns the financing strategy.
At Scale
Phase 3 & pre-commercial · 100-250 people
The person in the seat is running a finance team, structuring institutional financings, modelling commercial scenarios with real revenue assumptions, and sitting opposite analysts and crossover investors as a credible peer. The IPO conversation is real. The acquisition conversation is real. The strategic capital decisions are no longer the CEO's alone. The CFO is a co-pilot to the CEO and a primary contact for the board on everything financial.
Experience as a CFO at a clinical-stage or commercial biotech. IPO or public-markets exposure if the path is going there. Scenario-modelling sophistication. Board command. The judgement to push back on the CEO when the model says push back.
Some CFOs grow into the strategic role at Scale. Most do not. Hiring the wrong type at the wrong stage means paying twice: first in salary, then in the cost of finding a replacement when the company is at its most fragile.
At Build
Series A · 10-30 people
The clinical asset is years from the patient. What the company needs at this stage is a Medical Advisor or a fractional Chief Medical Officer, two days a month, helping the CSO shape the development plan and run the early regulatory conversations. Founding teams that hire a full-time senior CMO three years before first-in-human discover quickly that the role has not yet been invented for the person, and the person leaves or the role drifts. Jan de Kerpel said this directly on Willing to Win: "It is totally useless to have a superb Chief Medical Officer in your company when you are three years away from testing the first in human."
Medical training combined with operational instinct. Comfort working part-time or as an advisor. Strategic feel for the development plan, not just protocol-writing. Real chemistry with the CSO and the CEO. Willingness to grow into the full-time role later, or to step aside cleanly when the time comes.
At Scale
Phase 3 & pre-commercial · 100-250 people
The job is running multi-site Phase 3 trials, navigating end-of-Phase-2 and pre-NDA conversations with regulators, building the clinical development organisation, and standing in front of the medical community at scientific congresses. The CMO is the public face of the science alongside the CSO, and increasingly the internal advocate for what the asset can and cannot claim in a label. The role is no longer about getting the trial designed. It is about getting the trial finished, the regulatory dossier filed, and the medical community prepared for launch.
Phase 3 experience, ideally in the relevant therapeutic area. Regulatory track record with the FDA and EMA. Comfort with public visibility: KOL relationships, scientific congresses, investor calls. Operational leadership of a clinical organisation of 30 to 80 people. The ability to manage commercial pressure without compromising scientific integrity.
The CMO who designs Phase 2 is almost never the CMO who runs Phase 3 in seven markets. Hiring too early, or keeping the same person too long, costs the company a year of trial momentum.
The same pattern, different roles
The Chief Business Officer who closes the first licensing deal at Translation is rarely the CBO who structures a USD 500M partnership at Inflection. The first kind opens doors. The second negotiates from inside the room. They are different jobs.
The Chief Operating Officer is a rare hire before Scale, and almost mandatory by the time of commercial launch. In early biotech, the CEO is the COO. In late biotech, the COO is the person who keeps the company running while the CEO faces outward to investors, regulators, and acquirers.
Each role has its own signals, its own timing, and its own cost of waiting. Which one is due in your company depends on where you actually sit.
Want to know which role is due in your own company, and who fits it?
Book a diagnostic callMethodology
You have just seen how the same job changes from one stage to the next. So how can I be sure which roles a company needs at each stage, and how each one shifts as it grows? That is the Rados Method.
And it goes one step further. Knowing the role, and how the job looks at this stage, is only one half of a hire. The other half is knowing who truly fits it.
What does the company need, now and next?
I place the company on a six-stage lifecycle from what can be observed: the round, the headcount, the clinical phase, the board. The first conversation decides whether a move is due, and what shape it takes.
Does the seat feed the person in it?
Capability gets a person hired. Whether the seat keeps feeding the two of six human needs that drive them decides whether they stay and do their best work. The need stays constant. The vehicle that feeds it changes with the stage.
Services
Sometimes the phase calls for a role that didn't exist yet: the first real CFO, the first CMO. Sometimes the seat is held by the leader who got you here and won't get you there. Either way, I find the person who fits the phase you're entering. Shortlist in days. Closed in under 60.
So the right leader is in the seat before the gap costs you a round. Or a year you can't get back.
A clinical readout is coming and the CMO seat is empty. Series A is close and a full-time CFO isn't justified yet. The cycle turned and you need a steady hand between CEOs. I place senior interim and fractional leaders at C-level, in six days. No one else in Europe does this credibly.
So you have the leader the moment demands. Without betting the company on a permanent hire it isn't ready for.
The seats get filled either way. That's governance, the easy part. The hard part is filling them with people who change the outcome: a director who's raised the round you're about to raise, a chair who's run a CEO succession. The wrong board costs you nothing visible. Until the financing stalls or the first-time decision goes wrong, and the seat is already taken.
So when the moment of maximum consequence comes, the help is already in the room.
Podcast
A long-form podcast featuring biotech founders, CEOs and Chairpersons who have built companies through real adversity: failed trials, board fights, near-bankruptcy, regulatory setbacks, personal cost. Not the highlight reel. The willingness.
Jan de Kerpel · Investment Banker, Managing Director Van Lanschot Kempen
Frequently asked questions
Large firms sell process. A partner pitches the role, an associate runs the search, a researcher builds the longlist, and three months later you receive a shortlist.
I sell judgement, applied through a framework. Every mandate runs through The Rados Method, a structured assessment on two fits, stage and need. Not gut feeling, not introducing two people I happen to know, not random LinkedIn outreach. One person owns every mandate from the first conversation to the placement.
Fifteen years of biotech network combined with AI-leveraged research and a structured method means shortlists arrive in days, not weeks. Permanent C-level placements close in under 60 days. Interim placements in six.
C-level and senior leadership for venture-backed and listed biotech across Europe and the Boston corridor. CEO, CFO, CSO, CMO, CBO, CCO, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Technical Officer, Independent Directors and Chairpersons. Permanent, interim, and fractional.
Most mandates are at Series A through C clinical-stage companies, with one or two clinical assets in or approaching Phase 1b or 2.
Geographies include Munich, Vienna, Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Ghent, Oxford, Cambridge UK, Boston, New York, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Permanent placements are long-term C-level hires, usually employed by the company, meant to build and lead a function over time. Interim executives are full-time temporary leaders for defined periods, typically three to twelve months, during clinical readouts, restructurings, or leadership gaps. Fractional executives are part-time senior leaders, often two to three days per week, on an ongoing or retainer basis.
I place all three. No other firm in Europe places interim at C-level credibly. Typical mandates include Interim CMO during a clinical readout, Fractional CFO before Series A, and Interim CEO between cycles.
Each engagement model has its own implications for legal structure, statutory officer responsibility, and time commitment. For a full guide on engagement models and statutory officer responsibility, see the complete guide.
Permanent C-level placements close in under 60 days from briefing to signed offer. Interim placements close in six days. Compared to the four to six months typical of global search firms, the difference is structural, not a side effect.
Fast is the time to a shortlist, not a shortcut on diligence. The candidates surface in days because the network is already built and kept warm, not because the evaluation is compressed. The referencing, the assessment of capability and human needs, and the chemistry calls still happen in full.
A boutique model with one person owning the mandate removes the organisational drag. Speed comes from knowing the people, not from skipping the work.
Yes. Independent Directors, Chairpersons, and strategic advisors for biotech companies and biotech funds. Board mandates run as quiet, slow, deliberate searches, different from executive search in tempo but built on the same principle: one person owns the mandate.
The companies that retain me for board work want directors with real operational depth in clinical development, regulatory affairs, business development and licensing, or commercial launch. Not names for the deck. Real help that turns a board from a governance body into a vehicle that opens doors, sharpens strategy, and earns the trust of the next investor.
Permanent executive search: retainer at typical market rate of 30-35% of first-year compensation. Interim & Fractional: one-off payment, day-rate, or monthly retainer. Mandate-specific.
Detailed pricing and contract structure are discussed in the first conversation. No hidden fees.
Most early-stage biotechs do not need a CFO. They need a financial manager who builds a clean monthly close, manages the cap table, and supports the next financing. Jan de Kerpel said this directly on Willing to Win: "In early stage companies, the CFO role is not a CFO role. It is actually a financial manager role. It is only when companies mature that it becomes truly a strategic CFO role."
The strategic CFO becomes necessary when financing decisions move from supporting the CEO to co-leading with the CEO. That moment typically arrives between Series B and Series C, when the company is building real financial scenarios for commercial readiness, structuring institutional rounds, and beginning serious IPO or M&A conversations.
Hiring a strategic CFO three years too early means paying twice for the role and watching the person leave out of frustration. Hiring one a year too late means the CEO carries the financing burden alone and operating decisions get worse.
Not when the asset is three years from first-in-human. At that stage the company needs a Medical Advisor or a fractional CMO, two days a month.
The full-time CMO becomes necessary around 12 to 18 months before the first clinical readout that will define the value of the asset, typically late Phase 1b or early Phase 2. From that point on, the CMO is running the trial design, the regulatory strategy, the KOL relationships, and the clinical narrative for the next financing.
The CMO who designs Phase 2 is almost never the CMO who runs Phase 3 in seven markets. Companies that delay the CMO hire pay for it in trial momentum and regulatory missteps. Companies that hire too early end up with an underemployed senior executive looking for a different job within twelve months.
Almost every founder-CEO faces this question eventually, and most face it later than they should. The founding CEO and the commercial CEO are different jobs, not two stages of the same job.
The skills that built the company are conviction, hands-on operation, fundraising from the science, and founder compatibility with a small board. They are not the skills that run a commercial organisation of 200 people through an FDA approval and a market launch.
The signals that a transition is due include: the board having repeated private conversations about CEO readiness, the founder's own time consumed by operational decisions they were never meant to make, financing conversations stalling because investors want to see institutional leadership, or the next round structurally requiring it.
The honest founder-CEOs recognise the moment. The dishonest ones wait for the board to force it, which usually happens a year too late and at a higher cost. The Rados Method judges this transition on both fits, with the weight on need fit.
Let's work together
A first conversation is the cheapest part of any executive search. Forty-five minutes on a call to understand the phase you're in, what you actually need, and whether I'm the right person to help.
