Suggestions
Sara Nayeem
Venture Investor
Sara Nayeem is a Partner at Avoro Ventures, a venture capital firm focusing on biopharma investments. Prior to Avoro Ventures, Sara was associated with NEA. Sara is actively engaged in sharing advice for biopharma executives and advocates for innovation, drug pricing and access, as well as promoting diversity in venture capital.
Sara Nayeem holds an MBA and MD degrees from Yale University and an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from Harvard University. Her educational background provides her with a strong foundation in both healthcare and business.
With an impressive professional journey, Sara Nayeem has held key positions in various organizations. She served as EVP of Investments at Enavate Sciences, Partner at Avoro Ventures at Avoro Capital Advisors (formerly venBio Select Advisor), and as a Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Prior to these roles, Sara gained extensive experience as Principal, Senior Associate, and Investment Banking Associate at NEA and worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Highlights
Emotional resiliency is critically important in biotech, where the probability of success for any one program is so low, and the outcomes are so binary / stochastic. When trials do work, and a drug is approved and helps thousands of patients, the emotional payoff is enormous. And pharma often picks up programs after proof-of-concept – contributing to a critical cycle of biotech teeing up innovative programs for larger co’s. But even when a company is acquired, or stock is sold, producing a good exit for investors and management, the programs themselves often fail later. How do we keep ourselves going in the face of discouraging odds, not to mention all the other complexities (regulatory, CMC, political) intrinsic to drug development? Here are a few suggestions for helping us wear our successes AND failures lightly (and I would love to hear others):
- Adopt a growth mindset. See every role / investment as an opportunity to learn how to be a better drug developer or a better investor. If you’ve had some successes, it’s even more important to think this way; if you don’t, you stand to crash hard with your first failure.
- Mark your experiences along the way – the “wins among the losses” – things you are proud of or ways you grew even if the drug doesn’t work. It’s important to do this along the way because often after a failed trial or disappointing launch, it can be painful to look back. Keeping a written log of these will help you take your learnings to the next opportunity.
- Value the science for itself. Even when it doesn’t play out the way we hope, even when a preclinical model disappoints or a placebo group “outperforms”, we can feel good about having advanced scientific knowledge in the space.
- Lean into your relationships. Biotech is populated by such excellent people – smart, committed, creative, caring, interesting, dynamic people. Work to learn from others and also to support the upcoming generation of drug developers. What you contribute to others’ growth will outlast you and your career. Leave a legacy.
- Practice self-care. This is more than just getting your yearly physicals and hitting the gym; it also means not becoming your work. Even more than in most careers, we need to find ways to disconnect from the job. You are more than your list of approved drugs or your investing track record.
- Practice self-compassion. Try talking to yourself after a disappointment the way you’d talk to a friend. When we beat ourselves up, it actually makes us less able to see the big picture. Self-compassion helps us recognize the ways in which we could have done better so we can change, rather than just doggedly moving forward in old patterns with twice the level of effort.
To move a financing process along, aim to increase mind share as well as urgency.
Mind share can be thought of as where your deal falls on the hierarchy of deals a VC is considering and generally is reflected by how much time they're spending on your company. Mind share derives from a few things:
- Clarity of pitch and investment rationale
- Overlap of technology / approach / lead indication / stage with investor’s areas of interest
- Overlap with fund imperatives, timing, and preferred portfolio construction (this may be a different set of considerations than 2)
- Personal / relational factors (e.g., previous work with founder or exec)
- Deal factors – attractiveness of valuation, strength of / familiarity with syndicate, does financing get company to a meaningful inflection point, likelihood of strategic (M&A) interest
- Everything else going on for the person, both in terms of new deals and portfolio company developments, as well as firm initiatives such as fundraising
Urgency can be driven by the company or by investors. Contributing factors, in addition to overall enthusiasm for the deal, include:
- Whether a term sheet is already on the table or expected soon (a fast-moving process can also dampen excitement for a deal - e.g., if an investor needs to lead / needs more time to do work and they feel they are too late – so don’t overstate how far along your process is)
- Degree of buy-in from an investor’s broader team (e.g., if an investor is doing a lot of work but they never seem to move the ball forward to an IC meeting, it may be that they are still trying to convince their colleagues)
- Fund imperatives – e.g., if there’s a new fund to deploy a group may work faster than if they are closing out a fund and circling in on the last deal or so
- Macro – investors take cues from one another and when things slow down, they tend to slow down across the board. E.g., in some environments there’s more FOMO that drives processes forward and valuations up; in others, investors resist being rushed and demand more concessions such as down rounds.
Management teams can’t control many of these factors. But you should be aware of them and seek (directly or through your existing investors / board members) to determine where you stand with a given investor in terms of both mind share and urgency. E.g., “are you interested in moving to the next phase of diligence?”, “what questions remain for you?”, "what else could we do to help you in your diligence?", “what are the next steps in your process and what would be your overall timeline to get to an answer?” If the VC is well-known to one of your current investors, they can simply ask, "how excited are you about this deal?"
People also viewed
Related People
Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.