Biotech Conference Approaching - Should I fill up my Dance Card?
By Anders Månsson, Senior Advisor at Ventures Accelerated
September 2, 2026
Anders Månsson, Senior Advisor at Ventures Accelerated
Every partnering conference begins with the same small act of optimism: opening the meeting scheduler. A few clicks later, the calendar is packed; fifteen minutes with an investor in the corridor; a “quick catch-up” with a pharma scout during lunch; and, naturally, a meeting at 17:30 with someone whose asset, geography, and strategic rationale remain pleasantly mysterious. The dance card is full. The question is whether you are dancing with the right partners…
Biotech and pharmaceutical business development often oscillates between two philosophies. The first is precision-guided matchmaking: define the ideal partner, understand the strategic gap, identify the few organizations for which the proposition is unusually relevant, and pursue them with tailored evidence and patience. The second is the high-quantity trial-and-error approach: maximize conversations, test the story repeatedly, and trust that probability will eventually produce chemistry. One resembles selecting a dinner companion after reading the menu, the reviews and perhaps the restaurant’s latest inspection report. The other resembles speed dating in a room where every participant has brought a hefty 50-page slide deck.
The Case for a Precision-Guided Approach
Precision starts before the first email. It asks what problem the proposed transaction would solve for the counterparty, not merely what the seller wishes to sell. Does the asset fill a pipeline gap? Does my technology complement an established modality, therapeutic-area franchise, manufacturing capability or commercial footprint? Is the timing compatible with the partner’s patent-expiry exposure, capital allocation and tolerance for development risk? In an industry where external innovation is central to growth, strategic relevance is not a decorative extra; it determines whether an opportunity receives senior attention or disappears into the corporate equivalent of a coat-check room.
The precision model has several merits. First, it respects scarce organizational bandwidth. A serious transaction consumes scientific, clinical, regulatory, intellectual-property, CMC, commercial, legal and financial resources. Every weak opportunity entering diligence competes with stronger ones for expert attention. A shorter, better-qualified list therefore creates not just efficiency but analytical depth. Teams can examine the evidence, map decision-makers, anticipate objections and design a transaction structure that addresses the partner’s real risks.
Second, targeting improves the quality of courtship. Generic outreach forces the recipient to discover the strategic logic for themselves. Tailored outreach does that work in advance. “We have a promising inhalation technology” may earn polite curiosity; “our platform could shorten development of the respiratory asset you identified as a priority, while using a device architecture compatible with your commercial infrastructure” gives the conversation a reason to exist. Precision signals preparation, preparation is a proxy for credibility, and credibility is hard currency in deal making!
Third, precision can improve negotiating leverage. A proposition built for a clearly identified strategic need is less interchangeable. The value discussion can move beyond comparable deal headlines toward the specific economic benefit of fit: time saved, risk reduced, capabilities avoided, or competitive position strengthened. The ideal outcome is not merely a willing counterpart, but one for whom losing the opportunity would be inconvenient.
The Case for Filling the Dance Card
High-volume outreach, however, is not simply laziness wearing a conference badge. Markets contain hidden information. A company may have priorities that are not public, a new executive may be changing strategy, or an apparently peripheral player may possess exactly the manufacturing, regional or commercial capability required. Broad engagement is a way of buying information. Each conversation tests the positioning, reveals objections, surfaces competitor intelligence and occasionally uncovers a partner that no desktop analysis would have ranked highly.
Volume is particularly useful when the proposition is novel, the use case is still being refined, or the relevant buyer universe is fragmented. If management does not know yet whether the strongest interest will come from large pharma, specialty pharma, a regional player, a device company or a financial sponsor, premature precision can become precision-guided self-deception. A broader first pass creates a map of the market before the company starts drawing borders.
There is also a statistical argument. Even an excellent strategic fit may fail because the prospective partner has a competing internal program, budget constraints, a recent leadership change or simple deal fatigue. Many rejection reasons are unrelated to asset quality. Increasing the number of qualified shots reduces dependence on any single organization’s internal weather. It can also create competitive tension, provided the outreach reaches genuinely plausible partners rather than an indiscriminate mailing list assembled with the elegance of a supermarket flyer campaign.
The Hidden Costs of Both Extremes
Pure precision carries concentration risk. Teams can fall in love with their own strategic logic and confuse a beautifully constructed partner thesis with actual partner appetite. They may overinvest in one courtship, accept long periods of ambiguity, or allow the perceived “perfect partner” to dictate timing and terms. In business development, exclusivity before commitment is rather like declining every invitation because one especially attractive guest said, “We should definitely talk sometime.”
Pure volume has the opposite weakness: activity masquerades as progress. A crowded CRM can produce impressive dashboard colors while generating little learning or momentum. Poorly qualified meetings dilute the message, exhaust technical leaders and create inconsistent follow-up. Worse, indiscriminate outreach can damage positioning. If everyone in the room has seen the same generic teaser, the opportunity may appear less like a strategic prize and more like the last canapé on the tray.
Perhaps a Better Model: Segment the Courtship
The most effective answer is rarely “precision or volume.” It is disciplined breadth followed by increasing precision. Start with a sufficiently broad universe to avoid blind spots, then segment it. A practical “dance card” might contain three groups: a small number of strategic must-pursue partners; a larger set of credible alternatives; and a limited number of exploratory conversations designed primarily to test assumptions. The allocation of senior time, custom analysis and follow-up should differ sharply across those groups.
So, Should I fill up my Dance Card?
Yes, but not every line, and not with every name that happens to be available. An empty calendar produces no serendipity; an overfilled one leaves no time to notice where genuine chemistry exists. The objective is not maximum meetings, nor the intellectual satisfaction of identifying one theoretically perfect partner. It is to generate enough informed contact to learn, while concentrating efforts quickly when evidence of mutual fit appears.
In biotech and pharma, a deal is not the end of the dance. It is the beginning of a long sequence involving development plans, governance meetings, regulatory surprises, manufacturing decisions and commercial trade-offs.
Partner selection therefore deserves more than indiscriminate enthusiasm. Fill the dance card selectively, keep a few spaces open, listen carefully to the music; and remember that the most valuable partner is not necessarily the one who accepts the first invitation, but the one still moving in step when the orchestra changes tempo.
If you find this advice difficult to practice, I think it is wise to consider the following quote from Jane Austen: "To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.", so no matter your preferred method in the end, the most important aspect is of course that you do face the music and dance!