An Entrepreneurial Mindset

Jeff Fairman is not naive.  

He knows businesses are created to make money. However, the businesses that are the most rewarding to work for are the ones that are financially profitable while also doing good for the general public. 

Those are the companies where Fairman has always wanted to work. Those are also the companies he's helped create. 

Fairman is a serial entrepreneur with nearly three decades of experience as a scientist and founder. During that time, he's helped raise more than $1.5 billion in capital.  

Fairman is currently vice president of research at Vaxcyte, a vaccine innovation company he co-founded in 2013 that is developing broad-spectrum conjugate and novel protein vaccines to prevent or treat bacterial infectious diseases.  

“Especially with vaccines, you have the potential to do so much good for humanity," he said. "Yes, the goal of a company is to make money, but it’s going to help save lives.”  

Fairman spoke with students from Northwestern Engineering's Master of Biotechnology Program (MBP) as part of the program's Biotech Nexus event. The annual gathering features a panel discussion with industry professionals followed by a networking event. 

Fairman discussed his current role and why he loves how it blends science and business. 

“A lot of my responsibility is figuring out what's new and what we're going to go after next,” he said. “But it’s also providing scientific gravitas with respect to the investment team. When we talk with investors, many of them were in the biotechnology field but switched to investment banking, so I'm able to speak with them as someone who understands both the business and science side of things.”  

Fairman’s entrepreneurial spirit goes back to Juvaris BioTherapeutics, the first company he founded back in 2002. There, he served as research director and spearheaded the development of two products still being used in animal health to this day.  

Fairman’s message to the Biotech Nexus attendees was that the key to a successful biotech business is having good science and good business sense. It's not an either or. 

“It's got to be an amalgam,” he said. “You can't make up good science, and, on the other hand, you can't have a product that's not going to have any market.”  

Success as an entrepreneur also takes thick skin. Ideas will fail. Potential investors can be brutally honest in critiquing product pitches.  

The key, Fairman said, is perseverance.  

“It’s a great field, but it’s not for the faint of heart," he said. "I've been laid off three times in my career when the companies didn't get funding or were not successful. But it's about getting back up and taking yourself forward."