Luis Peña has held leadership positions across a spectrum of life science companies. He co-founded Dermira, a company dedicated to developing therapies for chronic skin conditions. He was Senior Vice President of Portfolio Planning and Management at dermatology-focused pharma company Stiefel, and had key roles at Connetics, Theravance and Genentech.
In 2020, he founded Evommune, where he is currently the President and CEO. Evommune is a biotech company that is focused on discovering and developing novel therapies designed to treat and halt the progression of chronic inflammatory diseases.
Along his career journey, Peña has accumulated valuable lessons about leadership and management that have aided his success in business. Here are his five top tips for entrepreneurs.
1. Focus on culture
Peña said that one lesson he took away from his time at Genentech was the importance of good organizational culture — and that is something he strives to continue as the CEO of his own company now. “I would love to recreate that,” he said.
2. Bring emotional intelligence
“I’m a huge believer in emotional intelligence,” Peña said, “Being a CEO now, I can really put that into place as part of the culture.” He said that he now refuses to work with people — including investors — who lack emotional intelligence and are difficult to work with.
“We work with nice people,” he said. “You can have the most talented people that are also great to work with. And that actually makes it a much more powerful combination.”
3. Invest in training
Peña said that another thing he learned during his time at Genentech was the importance of investing in training — and how training and development programs create opportunities to improve skills and knowledge that prepare employees for higher responsibilities.
“Individual development is huge,” Peña said. But also, “it made the company stronger because individuals were great in their function [and] great in their leadership.”
4. Don’t be a one-trick pony
Many companies in the life science industry have failed because they were focused on a single experimental product that did not deliver results. While product development is complicated and costly, building a broad pipeline is key to avoid total failure if one drug target doesn’t work out.
“If you're going to have a drug discovery and development company, work on multiple shots on goal multiple programs,” Peña said. Otherwise you're going to find yourself in a tough spot.
5. Think about risk and risk management
One thing that early entrepreneurs may not think enough about, Peña said, is risk and risk management. In the biopharma industry specifically, “there’s so much risk across everything that we do,” he said.
These risks include interactions between various stakeholders like regulators, investors, clinics and manufacturers. Having a plan in place for risk analysis, assessment, mitigation and monitoring is crucial, Peña said.