How Protara Built a Biotech Around Second-Chance Drugs

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Most people who leave Wall Street don’t end up founding biotech companies. Jesse Shefferman is the exception.

Although his path wound through finance, business school, and healthcare, each step was part of a long-term plan to build a biotech company. His efforts paid off.

In 2017, Shefferman cofounded Protara Therapeutics with Jacqueline Zummo. Three years later, the company went public. 

Today, the publicly traded biotech is advancing therapies for rare diseases and cancer using a strategy centered on giving overlooked drug candidates a second chance.

The approach reflects Shefferman’s broader philosophy as a leader. Rather than chasing novelty for its own sake, he says he believes in recognizing overlooked opportunities and building teams around shared values.

That philosophy has helped Protara raise more than $420 million from investors, grow from three people working out of a WeWork to nearly 70 employees, and advance multiple late-stage clinical programs. 

However, Shefferman says none of those milestones matter if they don’t ultimately improve patients’ lives.

A Company Built on Overlooked Opportunities

Shefferman traces his leadership style back to his childhood in rural New Hampshire. His mother, who became a nurse after having him as a teenager, continually returned to school to earn more advanced nursing degrees. Watching her pursue new opportunities while caring for patients shaped both his ambition and his understanding of healthcare.

"What my mother modeled for me was the side of healthcare that is really the most patient-centric," he said. "She wasn’t solving incredibly complex biologic challenges. She was caring for the patient."

That perspective eventually shaped Protara’s business model. Rather than building the company around brand-new discoveries, Shefferman wanted to identify therapies that had already demonstrated clinical promise but had stalled for other reasons.

He points to the company’s early programs. One — IV choline chloride — had already generated Phase 2 data in an academic setting, while another — TARA-002 — had previously been used in thousands of patients in Japan before Protara licensed it for further development. 

Existing clinical experience allowed the company to tell what he describes as a more mature story to investors while reducing some of the uncertainty that typically surrounds early-stage biotechnology.

The strategy, he says, also helped Protara reach the public markets in less than half the average time it typically takes biotech companies. 

Leading with Transparency Instead of Certainty

Biotechnology is defined by uncertainty, and Shefferman believes leaders lose credibility when they pretend otherwise. His approach is to acknowledge setbacks directly without letting them define the company.

"I have always been a believer that setbacks are temporary," he said, adding, "Don’t sugarcoat. And also don’t present anything as though it’s fatal, because nothing ever really truly is."

That philosophy was tested after Protara released early long-term clinical data from one of its oncology programs. Because the dataset included only about 15 patients, investors reacted negatively, sending the company’s stock down roughly 20 percent in a single day, Shefferman recalls.

For many CEOs, the stock decline would have probably dominated internal conversations. Shefferman instead focused employees on the bigger picture.

"My communications broadly in the company were like, ’Let’s hold our head high. This is immature data. We’re confident that we’re going to get to a competitive level. Live to fight another day.’" 

He also reminds employees that a company’s value can’t be measured by a single trading session.

"If we’re doing right by patients, if we’re doing right by our employees, and we’re doing right by our shareholders, eventually we’re going to be on the right side of the ledger," he said.

Building a Culture People Don’t Want to Leave

As Protara expanded, Shefferman found that maintaining culture became more difficult than raising capital.

"When it’s just five people, everything is visible," he said. "When it’s 50 people, you have to entrust the care and maintenance of your values and your North Star to people that came along after you."

Shefferman recalls the clearest sign the culture had taken hold came during an employee town hall about a year and a half ago. The company invited a woman living with a rare lymphatic malformation to speak with employees. She described years of misdiagnoses, unsuccessful surgeries, depression, substance-use challenges, and the lifelong effects of living with facial disfigurement. According to Shefferman, there "was not a dry eye in the room."

Watching employees’ emotional response convinced him the company’s mission had become larger than its founders.

“I get hit by a bus tomorrow, this will endure, and the people that work here will continue to work on behalf of patients,” he said.

Success Measured Beyond the Balance Sheet

Although Protara now has four pivotal clinical studies underway and expects to continue expanding, Shefferman says traditional business metrics are only part of the equation. 

He monitors clinical trial enrollment closely because it reflects progress toward potential approvals, but he draws equal motivation from seeing the patients who may benefit from the therapies under development.

Looking a decade ahead, he isn’t focused on market capitalization or share price.

"I would like this company to be remembered or known as sort of the best place anyone ever worked in biotech," he said. "I would like our legacy alongside that to be, you know, we really made a difference in patients’ lives."

He often thinks back to a case study he studied in business school about Johnson & Johnson’s response to the Tylenol crisis. After cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules killed seven people in the Chicago area in 1982, the company pulled millions of bottles from store shelves and prioritized consumer safety over short-term financial losses. 

The lesson that stayed with him was that companies should focus first on customers, employees, and communities because financial returns follow.