Rod Wong – Empty Rooms: Innovation in Biotech at RTW (Capital Allocators, EP. 310)

On today’s show, we’ll discuss a continuing empty room – an opportunity ignored by most investors because they either don’t want to or can’t participate. We’ve shared conversations under the theme about investing in Venezuela, Africa, CLO equity, tax assets, and biotech. Among them, biotech is a room that just keeps getting emptier, so I thought it would be fun to pay it another visit.

 

Rod Wong is the founder and Managing Partner of RTW Investments, a life sciences-focused investment and innovation firm of 80 professionals that manages $6 billion in assets.

 

I had a chance to drop by Rod’s office in NYC and discuss his background, case for life sciences, investment and business approach, investment process across sourcing ideas, research, probability assessment of binary outcomes, portfolio construction, competition, and outlook.

 

 

Show Notes:

03:20 | Background in medicine |  
05:16 | Path to biotech investing |  
08:13 | Case for life sciences |  
10:47 | Innovation in biotech |  
12:24 | Founding RTW |  
15:33 | Building and managing a multi-functional team
22:23 | Filtering investment opportunities |  
27:27 | Assessing science, business and management |  
34:51 | Portfoio construction |  
39:50 | Market structure in biotech |  
44:53 | Competitive environment |  
47:59 | Opportunities |  
50:24 | Risks |  
51:37 | Positioning RTW for the future |  
52:57 | Closing questions

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