TFTSL Ep42 — Chris Thomajan
Today in the Sky Lounge, we are joined by Chris Thomajan, a CFO who’s spent 35 years with startups and has worked with over 100 companies—mostly in biotech, mostly venture-backed, always as the steady hand while everyone else loses their minds.
Chris didn’t start in finance. English major, disco worker in London, law firm (hated it), Columbia Business School, then three decades of pattern recognition in the startup world. He’s developed a particular skill: knowing which CEOs will make it and which won’t. He’s even categorized them like wine—from Beaujolais Nouveau (enthusiastic first-timers) to Port (dictators you really don’t want to work for).
We explore what makes Boston’s biotech ecosystem unique, why nine out of ten boards need to be “managed away,” and what it really takes to prepare a company for IPO. Chris breaks down the current VC landscape (“too many capital calls, not enough distributions”), why he’d never personally invest in early-stage biotech, and the one quality that separates great CEOs from the rest: the ability to delegate.
Plus: hitchhiking 5,000 miles across America in an era when that was still possible.