Anna Perdrix Rosell: biotech co-founder and managing director
While completing my PhD at the Francis Crick Institute, I co-founded a biotech start-up called Sixfold Bioscience. We had an idea that we knew would have an impact for people with cancer. We were too impatient to wait, so we made the leap to create our own start-up. Through Sixfold Bioscience, we hope to address a real-life challenge of delivering drugs to cancer cells.
I started a biotech startup during my PhD because we were sure our idea would have an impact
Anna Perdrix Rosell
I have always been keen to learn and improve my skillset as much as possible. My business idea gave me the opportunity to dive into the business world. I quickly had to learn how to fundraise, understand IP, build a team and much more. I knew I would have to become competent in a lot of new things if I wanted to make this journey, but I was interested in all of it.
Every day, I face new challenges and I have to be creative in how to address them effectively. It’s what makes my job interesting and different. Our initial challenges were obtaining funding and finding a base for the lab. We headed to the US and managed to secure investment from the accelerator Y Combinator and then raised a seed round of funding on the back of that. Soon after, we found lab space for our 10-people team in the Translation and Innovation Hub in White City, London. Slowly but surely, things started to fall into place.
It has been hard work to get this far and it will be hard work to keep the momentum going. I always tell people who want to start their own company that they need to be ready for what it will take. The responsibilities increase exponentially. Before you know it, you have a team joining you on the journey and your decisions have an impact beyond yourself. You have to be prepared for things like that.
While it shouldn’t matter, being a young entrepreneur brought challenges I have had to navigate. You can be easily overlooked when you are in the early stages of your career. To me, the important thing is to critically evaluate what you know and what you’re good at. It’s important to surround yourself with people who can complement you – that’s why we’ve worked hard to create the right team with skillsets that complement each other. Self-awareness is not something that comes with age, but something you can work on and that enables you to improve yourself.
I have always been keen to learn and improve my skillset as much as possible. My business idea gave me the opportunity to dive into the business world. I quickly had to learn how to fundraise, understand IP, build a team and much more. I knew I would have to become competent in a lot of new things if I wanted to make this journey, but I was interested in all of it.
Every day, I face new challenges and I have to be creative in how to address them effectively. It’s what makes my job interesting and different. Our initial challenges were obtaining funding and finding a base for the lab. We headed to the US and managed to secure investment from the accelerator Y Combinator and then raised a seed round of funding on the back of that. Soon after, we found lab space for our 10-people team in the Translation and Innovation Hub in White City, London. Slowly but surely, things started to fall into place.
It has been hard work to get this far and it will be hard work to keep the momentum going. I always tell people who want to start their own company that they need to be ready for what it will take. The responsibilities increase exponentially. Before you know it, you have a team joining you on the journey and your decisions have an impact beyond yourself. You have to be prepared for things like that.
While it shouldn’t matter, being a young entrepreneur brought challenges I have had to navigate. You can be easily overlooked when you are in the early stages of your career. To me, the important thing is to critically evaluate what you know and what you’re good at. It’s important to surround yourself with people who can complement you – that’s why we’ve worked hard to create the right team with skillsets that complement each other. Self-awareness is not something that comes with age, but something you can work on and that enables you to improve yourself.
Anna Perdrix Rosell is the co-founder and managing director of Sixfold Bioscience. She is a Royal Academy of Engineering SME Leader, an advisory board member of the EPSRC-funded Portabolomics consortium and has been listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science and Healthcare, Maserati’s Top 100 British Entrepreneurs and The Observer’s rising stars of science.
This is an edited extract from Researcher voices: The thrills and skills of becoming an entrepreneur, written by Rupal Mistry and published by Cancer Research UK on 2 November 2020.