Every biotech startup knows it’s coming—but few are truly prepared for it.
The dreaded “valley of death” between early-stage funding and Series A is where promising science goes to die, not because the idea isn’t good, but because the communication isn’t.
To explore why so many early-stage biotech companies fail to cross this chasm, I spoke with Thomas Averre, founder and managing director of Tarleton Communications. With deep experience guiding science-driven companies through investor engagement, reputation-building, and strategic messaging, Thomas shares what it really takes to survive the valley—and why strong communication might just be your best lifeline.
In this interview, you’ll learn:
- How to build investor relationships early by communicating well before you're fundraising, so you're not pitching cold when the time comes.
- What biotech startups should focus on beyond the science—including how to talk about the team, milestones, and commercial path without overhyping.
- Why a communications strategy is essential to avoid the valley of death, and how smart PR and consistent messaging can generate investor interest and build momentum.
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The interview below is based on the transcript of our conversation but has been edited and rearranged for conciseness and clarity.
Understanding the Valley of Death in Biotech
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your agency?
Thomas Averre: I am the founder and managing director of Tarleton Communications. We are a specialist consultancy that works with science and technology businesses to help them, one, sort of understand the world and the environment that they're in, but also to help them communicate more effectively with those really important stakeholders like investors, clinicians, government, and others. We provide political and sector insight and intelligence, and then we also offer traditional public relations services in terms of brand management, reputation management, relationship engagement, and that sort of thing.
So in biotech, the so-called “valley of death” between early-stage funding and Series A is a well-known challenge for many startups. From your perspective, why do so many biotech startups struggle to bridge this gap?
T.A.: The problem with this valley of death is that it's structural. Biotech, generally, is a risky sector—even compared to medical devices, it's considered more risky.
And so there are a lot of investors who shun that level of risk and don't want to invest in biotech. If you think about the investment market as a whole, you've got a large number of those investors automatically out just by the fact that they don't want to get involved in biotech. Then, among the investors that are left and still interested in biotech, lots of them invest across multiple sectors. So they don't necessarily have an in-house or contractor specialist in a particular sector—whether that's neurodegeneration or something else. And so, doing the scientific due diligence is a lot more complicated. For that reason, they tend to stick to niches that they invest in.
You might find, for example, an investor focusing on ADCs or antibodies or whatever it might be, and they'll stick quite rigidly to that. So it can feel really difficult for biotech companies to find the investor that's the right fit for them.
This valley of death is something that I think a lot of governments in Europe and in the US recognize. And so they provide a level of support to help companies get through that—whether it's research funding or R&D tax credits, which are quite popular in the UK.
Those are typically the sort of ways in which companies can bridge that gap temporarily, until they can provide investors with that de-risked investment profile, which is often only achieved once they've started gathering human data.
You think that startups should start engaging investors a full round ahead of time. So, if they're raising their Series A, they should actually start communicating about it in the seed round. Why is that so important?
T.A.: So, a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think because, as in every other area of life, people don't really make decisions based on something that they've only just started learning about, right?
So when companies send a pitch deck to a VC firm or private equity, if it's not a company that the investor has already come across, it's very unlikely they're going to pick up a completely brand new cold opportunity and say, "You know what, let's just start going down the track with this."
And so what needs to be done is that companies need to think about engaging investors a long time before they actually want that investment. Whether it's seed, pre-seed, Series A or beyond. They need to start helping those investors become familiar with the company, help them start understanding what milestones they've already met, why the industry is excited, who they're bringing on board and start to help them do that mental due diligence before they get into a conversation.
When you then approach the investors because you need to raise the money, they're thinking, "Okay, I've heard about this company, I've seen this company before. It seems to be going in the right direction. There's lots of interest and excitement. I'm happy to have a conversation and start moving down the track."
I think there's nothing worse than a sort of company panic stage where their thinking, "We have to raise this money immediately," because I think investors can smell the fear and trepidation at that point. And they also start to think, "Okay, why haven't you raised the money already?"
I think doing it for the long term and planning and being strategic about it really pays off.
Crafting effective messaging for startups
What kind of messaging and content should biotech startups be sharing with investors when they're still at the seed stage?
T.A.: I think the temptation is for a lot of these companies to talk about the intellectual property, about the science, about what it is they're developing. And obviously, that is really important—so, whether it’s conferences they’re attending, study results, patenting, or whatever it is that they want to focus on about the science and the technology—that's really important. So definitely do that.
But I also think they need to talk a lot more about the team that is involved in the business. So yes, the founder—if it’s a spinout, the academic founder—but also who’s working on it day to day. Who have they brought in to look after the business development and M&A side? Who have they brought in to advise on the clinical implications? Who have they brought in to build out that team and say, “We’ve created a vehicle for this to succeed”?
And also, it’s really important to talk about the milestones that they expect to hit in the next three, six, nine, 12+ months—and demonstrate how they’re going to achieve those things. Because I think a lot of investors are looking for, yes, great science, of course—but they’re also looking for: what is your ability to commercialize that science? How are you going to get that into human trial, get positive results, and then start to gear that up into a format that can either be licensed or acquired by a big pharma firm?
So three things, really:
- Talk about the people and the sort of talent you’ve got to do that.
- Talk about the science and why that science is great, and how it compares to what else is out in the market.
- And also talk about the commercial milestones that you have hit and are going to hit.
How do you balance communicating this kind of big vision without overpromising, especially when it's early stage and they don't necessarily have so much data?
T.A.: The market is full of companies that use buzzwords constantly. Everything’s revolutionary. It’s game-changing. They often throw AI in there and add that to the mix. And I think, sadly, because of the overuse of buzzwords and really big, exciting language, it’s started to lose a lot of its meaning.
So something that companies can do to help balance the big vision without overpromising is actually dial it down a little bit and understate how good it is—what you’ve really got, right? So, verge on modesty—or, as I like to call it, “ambitious modesty.”
So, how to do that? I think you need to be realistic about the challenges and talk about what could go wrong. Investors instantly know that biotech is risky, right? So point out all of the risks:
- The data might not work.
- The translatability from our mouse models into humans might not work, etc.
But talk about how you're going to mitigate those risks. And I think that’s the key to demonstrating commercial maturity—having a plan to do that.
Frame the big vision stuff in terms of: what the science looks like in terms of the problem you’re tackling, and how does what you’ve developed fit into that? So how are you adding that new scientific piece of the puzzle into the wider jigsaw? And why should people care about how that’s different?
I think too much emphasis is put on the whole sort of total addressable market—how much money could this be worth, what’s the current spend on disease X. Yes, that’s important. Put it in the pitch deck, talk about it at some point, but you really need to engage investors initially with the “why”—why are you doing what you’re doing, and why does what you’re developing make sense? Then, talk about how you’re going to get that closer to market.
Creating a compelling narrative for investors
How can biotech companies craft a narrative that resonates with investors?
T.A.: All good communication is, at some level or another, about storytelling—and about explaining what motivates the team involved. Why are they doing what they’re doing? Why now? Why in the way that they’re doing it?
Scientists generally have amazing stories to tell about the challenges facing humanity, progress against them, historical and present failures and hurdles in doing that, and also what they’re doing differently to continue making progress. But I think it’s important that that narrative is clear, compelling, and universal.
I talked earlier about the fact that some investors are not sector specialists—they might invest in biotech, but they don’t necessarily have a deep knowledge of it. They sort of have a broad but shallow knowledge. And so while there is a place for complexity and jargon—particularly when it comes to the scientific due diligence—there’s also definitely space for clear communication. Everyone understands clarity. Some people understand jargon.
And so, if it can be said and told in a really clear way, I think that’s all the better. Focusing on the why, and then talking about how and explaining how that’s going to be developed.
Putting a communication strategy in place really helps founders and management teams think about how they’re going to articulate that narrative to investors—and other audiences as well.
When an investor goes through due diligence with a startup, is this communication plan something they look at?
T.A.: I think what they’re looking for are two things that a communications plan can convey—but they don’t necessarily label it as such.
The two most important things that come up again and again when helping biotech companies communicate and engage with investors are, firstly: credibility. You need to demonstrate that it’s science that has a real shot at succeeding. And also that you’ve got that team in place to commercialize it, and that you’ve got a plan.
The communications plan comes in there because a lot of investors are also thinking about the follow-on investment. Maybe they can take part in that round, maybe they can’t. Maybe they’re a seed-only investor or a Series A-only investor. And so they’re thinking about how you are then going to warm up the other partners further down the line to help them eventually get to an exit.
Second thing is momentum, because a lot of investors want to see the milestones being hit regularly, others getting excited, and to feel that the time is now. It’s not necessarily the sort of fear-of-missing-out environment that you want to create, but certainly, you know, spinouts, for example, that have been through two, three, four iterations of product development—sometimes they’re pitching to investors, and the investors are going, “Okay, but you were established a decade ago. Why have you not already raised the money?”
It now feels like, “I don’t really want to be getting on board with something that’s been lingering for a long time.”
Whereas if you can plan and have that momentum and that cadence building up, I think that’s something that really helps.
Common mistakes in early-stage biotech communication
Are there common mistakes you see with biotech startups when they present themselves to investors?
T.A.: Yes—so many different mistakes. Some are quite common and some are dependent on the exact company and what they’re doing. I think one that’s not necessarily a mistake, but a missed opportunity, is that a lot of companies initially think venture capital and say, “We’re getting money from VC, that’s how you do it, that’s who’s going to provide the amount of money we need to raise,” etc.—particularly for Series A, right?
I think there’s a gap in the market for companies looking to actually expand their horizon when it comes to fundraising. Think about high-net-worth individuals, think about family offices, think about angel investors. Now, these are quite hard to get to because, in some ways, they’re sort of in stealth mode—it’s often referral into these groups that enables investment to take place.
But I think it’s worth thinking about. We’ve had biotech clients raise money exclusively from high-net-worth individuals who are investing anywhere between £100,000 and £500,000 each. And they’re pulling together 10 or 15 or 20 of these people, and that sort of solves that challenge for them.
The second thing is, like I said, focusing a little bit too much on the science and not enough on how that’s actually commercial—or how it can be commercialized. If you’re ultimately going to license it to Big Pharma, or you want to sell the entire company to Big Pharma, or whatever the model is, you need a really clear plan for how you’re going to do that.
Not just, “fingers crossed, we’ll do some great science and then it will be acquired,” but actually: Okay, have you brought in someone who has worked at AstraZeneca in an M&A team and knows exactly what format that needs to be in and how to do that? That’s, I think, really important—and not communicated enough.
What’s the first communication step a biotech should take to get out of the valley of death?
T.A.: The first thing is: put the plan in place. Because I think so many companies have not thought about communications in a really strategic way. They just think, “Right, okay, we’ll have a LinkedIn page and we’ll post some stuff about recent studies, and we’ll maybe do a press release once we’ve spun out or we’ve launched the company, or when we get someone new on the advisory board.”
I think we really need to think much more carefully about: okay, which audiences do you have? Big Pharma, clinicians, other academics, investors, government, etc. Which ones are more important than others? Start to think about ranking those. And then—how are you going to communicate with those different groups? How are you positioning the company? What does the messaging look like between those different groups?
So that’s the first thing—put the plan in place, just to provide clarity and direction, as much as anything.
The second thing is to invest in doing it properly. It’s really curious that people who often invest in doing things really properly—you wouldn’t skimp on the IP, for example, and you invest in getting the right scientific talent into the business—those people are often the same people who think communications, or reputation management or public relations, can just be done by someone in a back office doing a couple of tweets or LinkedIn posts. Or that anyone can write a press release.
And while there are some things that can be done in-house—I often say to clients, “Actually, you know what? You could probably do most of your LinkedIn stuff in-house if you needed to, depending on financial pressures and everything else”—some things need to be invested in and done properly.
And I think there is a huge difference between companies that say, “We need to have our brand managed properly, we’re going to invest in that and invest in a professional or an agency to do that for us,” and others who think, “That can just sit way down the priority list. It’s not important.” Until they get so far along the track—and then it is really important. By which point, it’s too late, because you needed to have been warming up the investors first.
So it’s a little bit of chicken and egg in that situation.
And then the third thing is really ensuring that they are communicating the right message—ensuring that when they are talking to investors, they are giving them the information that is going to be useful, by way of waking them up and making them alive to the opportunity in front of them.
I think if they get those three things right—putting the communication strategy in place, investing where it needs to be done properly, and delivering the right message—then they’re probably on to a really good start in bridging that valley of death.
When you say investing in communication, does it mean bringing external help, like an agency?
T.A.: Yes. The thing that public relations is very effective at is building up external credibility, because you can’t buy media coverage.
It’s quite difficult to secure in the first place. So if you’re able to do that third-party verification is very valuable to investors.
Now, if you were to say, “You know what, we want to influence clinicians and patient groups”—sure, PR has a role, and it definitely can support. But there are also other things you can do—particularly tapping into online communities, going through charities, etc.—to do that as well.
So it’s about thinking: which tactic is most appropriate for which group? And certainly, if you’re looking for investment, having a proper external reputation campaign can be very effective at doing that. And that’s why bringing in someone can be really useful.
Choosing the right communication channels
Is there a communication channel at this stage in the life of startups that is more important than others?
T.A.: I don't think so. I think they all sort of come together and support one another. Some are probably more important than others at different stages of the company life cycle. I'd often say digital channels—whether it’s LinkedIn, newsletters, or owned content—are really important for pushing people through the funnel.
For example, you’ve already got an investor signed up for investor updates, and you’ve got a newsletter where you communicate your milestones regularly—that’s really useful for getting that investor from cold, to interested, to really interested, to happy to have a conversation.
But getting people into the funnel in the first place is really the job of public relations and media relations. So digital is an important part of the puzzle, but some audiences are more traditional and analog in the way that you engage them.
If we think about political engagement, for example—which is something we do for quite a lot of clients—posting on LinkedIn or Twitter isn’t a very effective way of doing that. It’s often about relationship-building: being able to set up meetings, have the roundtables, and engage with parliamentary officials or congressmen, or whoever it might be, to have that one-to-one dialogue. That’s how they are most effectively influenced.
Investors are a little bit closer towards the media side. Patients and others—much more about digital communication. It’s a mix. It depends on what you’re focusing on. But that’s the point of the strategy. It should uncover this and help guide you toward the right tactic.
Do you see a correlation between high-profile press coverage and interest from investors?
T.A.: For sure. There’s a story that I share with clients—which admittedly is one example, but I think it’s illustrative of a wider point. I spoke to an investor who was talking about which opportunities they decide to pick up as a firm, and which they don’t. And he said to me, “Look, there’s loads of amazing stuff out there,” he gets pitches every day. And he said, bluntly, “I delete them all unless I’ve either been passed it by someone I trust—a patent attorney, a university, another investor, or someone within the network—or I’m reading about it all the time and thinking, What is this?”
So, short of having the referral and the network to get you in front of the investor in the first place, external press coverage is a really effective way of getting them in.
We’ve had clients where the investor literally told them, “I only found out about you because I read about you in X publication. I want to have a discussion.”
And for one client, that investor ended up being the lead investor. And they had come as a direct lead, out of the blue, from reading about them in the media.
Very helpful for us, because that client was like, “Wow, this does work.”
To which we were like, “My gosh, does it work that well?” It’s not that common. But I think it’s certainly possible.
Long-term strategies for building investor relationships
Do you have other examples you can share?
T.A.: Most of the time, it’s not that straightforward and it’s about doing it over a slightly longer period and being quite strategic.
We have a client that we’re working with who is developing drugs for neurodegeneration. We started working with them when they’d recently started the business—building up the profile of the team, talking about some of the challenges in developing drugs in their field, talking about the science—all of the things I’ve listed to you, which helped them get from spinout, having raised nothing, through to proceeding to clinical trial this year. Which is, you know, obviously raising multi-millions.
That’s an example of strategic patience shown by the client—they knew this needed to be a 12–24 month process. And now, near the end of that process, it’s like, you know what? We’ve had a really effective investor relations campaign. And that’s been in national media, international media, sector media, etc.—and it has enabled them to:
- Raise awareness among investors,
- Make investors more receptive when they do approach them,
- Help smooth those conversations along.
Very rarely does media coverage move you from zero to one, but very often, it creates that glide path through which business development and investor relations can succeed. I think that’s probably the best way to look at it. And then if it does happen that an investor pops up out of nowhere after reading something in the media, then that’s a bonus, really.
How does your work over those 12-24 months look like in practice?
T.A.: Often, a project will start with the client sort of saying, “How do we know if this is going to be successful? What are the metrics we’re looking for?” And PR and agencies generally have a bad reputation. Like no one really trusts anyone in PR—which is hilarious, given the whole industry is about creating trust.
But I often say that you can make stats show anything. If you decide you want to say that some press coverage was great for a client, you can look at international impressions, you can look at the quality of the people reading it, how many shares it’s had on social. And you can—I don’t want to use the word “manipulate”—but you can pick the stats that are most helpful for the cause.
The way we operate as a consultancy is that basically, if the client doesn’t feel the benefit, then it’s not beneficial. And if we get pieces of coverage that attract millions of readers, that’s not useful unless some of those readers are investors, and those investors then approach them and contact them.
So we work on a really transparent, frank basis of “you will know as a company whether this is working or not”. And so often what we do is we start with a defined piece of work with a company where we say, “Okay, you’re raising a seed round or a Series A round. These are the things we want to do, and this is how long we think the campaign will take”.
But we’ll start with some first steps—we’ll put the basics in place and get you going, and you will see some benefit at that stage. And then inevitably, we get to the end of that short first stage and clients say, “Yes, actually, we are seeing the benefit already. When we speak to investors, they’ve started to hear about us. This is working. Let’s continue.”
And that’s the way that, one, we get satisfaction in the work we do, but also the way clients feel the benefit of engaging with us: from the insights we bring, the sector intelligence we give them that helps them formulate thought leadership and various other bits, and obviously the services we deliver on reputation management.
It’s kind of like building trust between your agency and your clients, and feeling that everyone’s just working towards the same goal, right?
T.A.: Yes, exactly. Almost all of our work is referral between companies.
We’re relatively small—I only started the agency in 2022, there are four of us now—we’re not large enough that people are coming inbound because they’re seeing our marketing. But it’s often that a biotech founder speaks to another biotech founder and says, “Hey, these guys are helping me, I think it’d be useful for you”.
In most cases, most life science companies I speak to do not want to engage with PR. They don’t think they need it. They don’t think they need sector intelligence. They already understand the sector, etc.
But when you explain to them how useful it can be, how it’s going to make an impact, what that might look like—a lot of them then do buy in. Because they’re typically, being scientists, very logical people who make decisions based on the evidence in front of them.
Often, our strongest selling point is just saying, “Hey, we’ve got all of these clients. Which ones do you want to speak to?” And they will tell you, independently, how they feel—hopefully for the best. And that trust is a really big and important factor in them making that decision.
Key advice for biotech founders
If you had to give biotech founders one key piece of advice for supporting their startup’s fundraising efforts, what would it be?
T.A.: Think seriously about what are the barriers to achieving your objective, and what you need to do to achieve it. It’s really difficult, but being really honest about what skills you as a founder have, and what skills your team has, is a critical step in being able to assess what help you need.
So, you know, we typically work with companies that say, “You know what, we’ve got someone on business development who’s working to build relationships with Big Pharma. We don’t need help with that—they’re great at doing that job. We’ve got the scientists that have developed the IP in the first place. We know that inside out. We don’t need help on that.”
But a lot of them look and say, “You know what, we can communicate really well with other scientists. We can’t necessarily communicate really well with investors, government, clinicians, patients, charities, academic institutions, and internationally. Who can help us with that? Who can do it well? What does that look like? And how do we resource that?”
So, the piece of advice I’d give really is: invest in doing things properly. And that doesn’t mean do everything to the maximum extent, but think about—what are the bits that are really going to move the needle and make the difference?
That’s really a sound piece of advice going forward, because poor communication has a much greater hidden cost than a lot of people think it has.
Some companies point to another company and say, “Well, they didn’t really do much PR,” or “They didn’t really invest in reputation,” and they raised money. But it’s like—okay, well, might that money have been raised more quickly? At a better valuation? And more of it raised, had they done that as well? It’s not necessarily binary.
Recommended resources for effective communication
Are there any books you'd recommend for early-stage startups struggling with communication?
T.A.: So the first one I would say is The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton, which is primarily a consumer book, but it has some really interesting insights and lessons for readers about how humans make decisions—whether it’s consumer psychology or the way that decisions are made. I think there are things in there that you can take and apply to biotech and life sciences more generally.
Second one: Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy, is a great lesson in simplicity and why clarity in communication is important. There are lots of examples from the 40s, 50s, and 60s in there, but some of them are still relevant—which I think is impressive. And it’s quite an enjoyable read anyway.
And then the third, which is much more technical and geeky, is Media in Focus: Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era, by Les Binet and Peter Field. It’s not necessarily a book, but more of a report, if you like. It looks into: how do you do marketing effectively? It analyzes loads of case studies from The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and tries to plot what makes marketing work.
What it finds—and talks through in considerable detail—is that the evidence shows that doing long-term brand building is more effective than doing short-term activation-type stuff. So, thinking strategically, investing in the long term, doing a campaign over 12, 24+ months delivers a much higher return than doing something short-term, immediate, and temporary multiple times.
That’s something B2B decision-makers really need to start factoring into the way they look for customers, look for investors, and influence other people.
Where can listeners learn more about you or Tarleton?
T.A.: Our website is probably the best place to start. We've got information about what we do, some case studies and whatnot on there. Or they’re very welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn, where I sort of provide brain dumps on everything to do with science, technology, politics, communication, and that sort of thing.
