We just held our first-ever, and hopefully only, virtual Atlas Venture Annual Meeting for our investors.
Although science is winning in this pandemic, we’re clearly not back to normal yet so felt it prudent to shift to a virtual format. It’s certainly not the same as an in-person event, but it was a success – sharing our perspective on biotech as a whole, as well as a detailed review progress in our funds and portfolio.
One of the elements in our Annual Meeting agenda is our Year In Review, which covers the macro environment, biotech ecosystem, and our venture firm, in what could be described as a “state of the industry” opening talk. While the rest of the programming isn’t publicly shareable, we’ve decided to once again share the Year In Review as we did in 2018 and 2019.
COVID and our resilience has obviously been a dominant macro theme – and so the talk begins by exploring the impact crater of the pandemic on society, science, and the sector. And despite COVID, the biotech ecosystem has been booming. Although the stock indices have been choppy this year, it’s been a record-breaking period for new equity issuances across venture, IPOs, and follow-ons – and at a faster pace than ever. As with the overall biotech markets, Atlas has also had an incredibly good run the past couple years – helping start a bunch of new and exciting companies, and supporting their financing trajectories, with the aim of advancing their new medicines to patients.
With that context, here’s link to the 2021 Year In Review on YouTube.
It’s 42 minutes long, so watching it at 1.25x speed is recommended for those short on time.
Special thanks to my Atlas colleague Aimee Raleigh, who led the project management and partnered with me on the content, and to Edward Goin, our brilliant graphic designer.