Agios Pharmaceuticals needed money. It was 2010 and Agios, like many other biotechnology startups then, was trying to survive following a global recession.
Venture capital was contracting, leaving emerging companies with fewer financing options. Initial public offerings, a main source of funding, weren’t readily available, especially to biotechs like Agios that hadn’t begun working on a drug.
“Public investors back then didn’t invest in private companies,” said David Schenkein, Agios’ longtime CEO and now a general partner at the venture firm GV. “We knew there would be limited sources of capital.”
