How to turn a BIO-Europe meeting into a lasting partnership
Episode
31 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Relationships, Investing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Pre-conference targeting: Begin attendee list analysis six weeks before the event. Filter by three distinct groups: potential new customers (prioritize companies not already in your CRM), existing customers ripe for second or third programs, and investors. This segmentation prevents wasted meeting slots and ensures every booked conversation maps to a defined business objective before arriving on-site.
- ✓Alternative meeting tactics: When partnering platform requests go unanswered — common for newer or lesser-known companies — attend 15-minute pitch sessions and approach speakers directly afterward. Targeting the CSO or Head of Manufacturing immediately post-talk in a small, focused setting produces higher-quality first contacts than cold platform requests, particularly for companies without established industry name recognition.
- ✓30-minute meeting structure: Allocate roughly two to three minutes for introductions, ten minutes for a high-level capabilities overview, and the remainder for collaboration discussion. The goal is not to close a deal but to secure a defined next step — a follow-up meeting or a signed NDA/CDA to enable confidential information exchange — before the 30 minutes ends.
- ✓Post-conference follow-up timing: Avoid contacting new leads immediately after the event. Allow contacts several days to travel and clear their backlog, then send follow-up emails the week after the conference. Centralize collected decks and scanned badge data into a shared platform like SharePoint, and upload contact information directly into the CRM to maintain momentum without losing leads in post-event chaos.
- ✓After-hours networking ROI: Evening networking events consistently surface contacts unreachable through formal meeting platforms. Asking other attendees directly what they are doing after sessions is a reliable entry point. These smaller, informal gatherings provide access to a concentrated group of decision-makers in a setting where relationship-building moves faster than in scheduled 30-minute conference rooms.
What It Covers
Shashi Kuduru, Senior Director of Business Development at Vector Biomed, a lentiviral vector CDMO, outlines his conference strategy for events like BIO Europe — covering attendee targeting six weeks out, running productive 30-minute meetings, post-event follow-up timing, and converting first contacts into active partnerships.
Key Questions Answered
- •Pre-conference targeting: Begin attendee list analysis six weeks before the event. Filter by three distinct groups: potential new customers (prioritize companies not already in your CRM), existing customers ripe for second or third programs, and investors. This segmentation prevents wasted meeting slots and ensures every booked conversation maps to a defined business objective before arriving on-site.
- •Alternative meeting tactics: When partnering platform requests go unanswered — common for newer or lesser-known companies — attend 15-minute pitch sessions and approach speakers directly afterward. Targeting the CSO or Head of Manufacturing immediately post-talk in a small, focused setting produces higher-quality first contacts than cold platform requests, particularly for companies without established industry name recognition.
- •30-minute meeting structure: Allocate roughly two to three minutes for introductions, ten minutes for a high-level capabilities overview, and the remainder for collaboration discussion. The goal is not to close a deal but to secure a defined next step — a follow-up meeting or a signed NDA/CDA to enable confidential information exchange — before the 30 minutes ends.
- •Post-conference follow-up timing: Avoid contacting new leads immediately after the event. Allow contacts several days to travel and clear their backlog, then send follow-up emails the week after the conference. Centralize collected decks and scanned badge data into a shared platform like SharePoint, and upload contact information directly into the CRM to maintain momentum without losing leads in post-event chaos.
- •After-hours networking ROI: Evening networking events consistently surface contacts unreachable through formal meeting platforms. Asking other attendees directly what they are doing after sessions is a reliable entry point. These smaller, informal gatherings provide access to a concentrated group of decision-makers in a setting where relationship-building moves faster than in scheduled 30-minute conference rooms.
Notable Moment
A relationship that began as an unplanned post-pitch conversation at BIO US 2023 took eleven months to convert into active work — only after the prospect's existing CDMO suffered a catastrophic downstream purification failure, losing roughly 90% of their vector product.
Episode Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Beyond Biotech, the weekly podcast from LeBiotech. I'm Dylan Kussain, and this is episode 222 for the podcast. Partnering season is here. As the biopharma community in Europe heads to Cologne and BioEurope and the busy end of year conference calendar kicks off, the question isn't just who you meet, but how you make those meetings count. In this episode, we're talking about the small details that make a big difference at a global conference. Joining me is Shashi Kuduru, Senior Director of Business Development at Vector Biomed. Shashi is an industry veteran, and shares how he plans his on-site schedule, finds the right partners, and makes short meetings productive. We also talk about follow-up, sharing materials after the event, and churning a first conversation into a lasting partnership. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Shashi Kadura. Shashi, welcome to Beyond Biotech. It's a pleasure to be on. Hey, Shashi, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you actually do there at Vector Biomed? Yeah. So I started at Vector Biomed about three and a half years ago. I'm the senior director of business development. So I wear several hats, including leading the sales and marketing efforts, as well as establishing critical relationships with our customers, as well as vendors and suppliers. So a bit of everything, including some investor relations activities as well. But tell me a little bit about how you actually got to Vector Biomed. What sort of career did you have before you joined up? Sure. I could start from the beginning. My undergraduate degree was in chemistry with a specialization in biochem, have a master's in physiology, and then wanted to expand my molecular biology skills. So I obtained a fellowship at NIH where I was studying tRNA processing in yeast. So I learned all my molecular biology skills and got into industry with Solara Genomics as a scientist working to sequence the human genome back in the early 2000s. It's there where I really saw the disconnect between scientists and business people, and that prompted me to obtain my MBA. And from that, I switched over to managing, actually got out of the lab and started managing bioinformatics projects with Applied Biosystems, which at the time was a sister company to Celera Genomics. And then from there, I moved to Fisher Bioservices, part of Thermo Fisher, where I was supporting clinical trial projects with Fisher Bioservices and their support services. So it's primarily shipping active drug products in clinical trials and all of the clinical supply testing as well as sample testing. So a number of related activities towards supporting clinical trials. From there, had a brief stint at a startup called Nantomix and then got into the CDMO world at IDT Biologica back in 2018. So I spent five years there leading the project management teams. Then I also had responsibility for the business management. So that's where I made the shift to getting into more …
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