BIO International Convention 2026: practical advice from former Evotec CEO Werner Lanthaler

What It Covers

Werner Lanthaler, former Evotec CEO who scaled the company from 200 employees and €40M to 5,000 staff and €800M revenue, shares practical strategies for biotechs attending the BIO International Convention in San Diego, covering preparation, on-site execution, and post-event follow-up to convert meetings into partnerships.

Key Questions Answered

• •Pre-event targeting: Biotechs should map their disease area and development stage against the 20–40 pharma companies with publicly known pipelines in that space, then identify specific attending individuals via LinkedIn and the conference attendee list — not just company names — weeks before the event to build a structured meeting skeleton.
• •Cost and timing discipline: Conference costs are predictable months in advance — flight prices, hotel availability, and ticket early-bird discounts are all time-sensitive. Lanthaler frames late booking as a strategic failure: BIO's date and location are known a year out, so teams should lock in travel and registration three or more months ahead to control budget.
• •Profile completion via AI: Filling out partnering system company profiles is non-negotiable for maximizing meeting requests. Lanthaler dismisses the "too much work" objection entirely — any AI tool can generate a complete profile from a single prompt, removing the effort barrier and ensuring the company appears in relevant search results within the platform.
• •Meeting framing: A 20–30 minute partnering meeting should be positioned as the opening of a relationship, not a pitch session. Presenting 150 slides is the wrong approach. The goal is to surface the real obstacles and value proposition quickly in person, since in-person dialogue allows faster course correction than email or legal back-and-forth ever can.
• •Follow-up within one week: Any meeting worth pursuing requires follow-up within seven days of the conference. No response within 14 days typically signals low priority rather than rejection. Lanthaler recommends re-attempting contact across multiple conference cycles, noting that most successful venture rounds and BD deals required several separate initiation attempts before timing aligned.