Episode 15 | The Truth About Biotech Funding Nobody Wants To Admit (Jan de Kerpel)

Fifteen percent of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025. A senior banker explains who got it and why. Jan De Kerpel runs life sciences and healthcare investment banking at Van Lanschot Kempen. Before that he was a scientist, working on an HIV drug that is still saving lives today. He moved from the lab to the trading floor by accident, and he has stayed there for two decades because, he says, very few seats let you sit with twenty companies at once and watch which patterns repeat. This conversation is about the patterns. In 2025, fifteen percent of biotech transactions absorbed fifty percent of the capital raised. The money is there, De Kerpel says, but it is floating toward a small number of names. Tubulis raised four hundred million euros at the end of last year, the largest private biotech raise in Europe, and was then acquired by Gilead. Agomab, the first European biotech IPO on NASDAQ in roughly five years, started life as an antibody spin-out from Argenx and pivoted to small molecules along the way. These are the companies that get the room. The other eighty-five percent are operating in a different market and most of them do not know it. De Kerpel is direct about what separates them. Diversified investor bases over concentrated ones. Boldness in vision paired with brutal realism on valuation. Founding CEOs who recognize when the company has outgrown them and step into the chair role before they are pushed. "An excellent project with a mediocre team is a recipe for failure," he says. And on the romantic idea of family money funding clinical trials: "In our business, philanthropy is not a good idea." He also calls out the geography of success. Munich, Leiden, Flanders, Copenhagen, Switzerland, increasingly France. Not because the science is better there but because companies in those clusters can fail in front of each other and learn faster. The companies that get acquired are usually acquired by partners they have known for years. The IPOs that land are usually relationships started before lockdown. There is a line in the conversation that holds the rest of it. Opportunity, De Kerpel says, does not arrive in a sharp suit. It arrives with mud on the boots, and only the founders who knew what they were looking for in the first place will recognize it. [3] In this episode: • Why 15% of biotech deals took half the capital in 2025 • How Tubulis raised €400 million and got acquired by Gilead • Why founding CEOs rarely become commercial-stage CEOs • The real reason philanthropy fails as biotech funding • What investors actually look for besides the science • Why your cap table determines your ceiling, not your asset GUEST Jan De Kerpel, Head of Corporate Finance/ECM and Managing Director Life Sciences & Healthcare at Van Lanschot Kempen. A scientist by training with a PhD in quantum chemistry from the University of Lund, he spent eight years in pharmaceutical R&D at Tibotec and Devgen before moving to KBC Securities as senior biotech/pharma equity analyst, and then to Van Lanschot Kempen in 2016. Based in Brussels. 💼 LinkedIn:   / jan-de-kerpel-a48a2a   🏢 Van Lanschot Kempen: https://www.vanlanschotkempen.com CHAPTERS 00:00 — Introduction 01:07 — From HIV drug research to a trading-room phone call 05:44 — Why face-to-face still beats the data feed 09:51 — The platform companies that survive the storms 13:04 — How the wrong shareholders quietly kill a biotech 19:19 — Why 15% of deals took half the capital in 2025 27:34 — When founding CEOs need to step aside 36:53 — Why philanthropy is not a way to fund a clinical trial 42:18 — When to call a banker (and when it's already too late) ABOUT WILLING TO WIN Willing to Win — Biotech Leaders Against All Odds is a long-form podcast featuring biotech founders, CEOs and Chairpersons who have built companies through real adversity: failed trials, board fights, near-bankruptcy, regulatory setbacks, personal cost. Not the highlight reel. The willingness. ABOUT THE HOST Christian Rados is a biotech executive headhunter since 2011 and founder of Rados Recruiting, a boutique executive search firm based in Munich. Rados Recruiting places CEOs, CFOs, CSOs, CBOs and Chief Medical Officers for venture-backed and listed biotech companies across Europe and the United States, permanent, interim and fractional mandates. 🔗 Website: https://rados-recruiting.com 💼 LinkedIn:   / christianrados-biotechdreamteams   📅 Book a call: https://calendly.com/radosrecruiting/... LISTEN ALSO ON 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast... 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08766OI...