By Linda Bain, Venture Partner at Atlas Venture, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC
“Do one thing every day that scares you” – Eleanor Roosevelt
I remember the first time I consciously stepped out of my comfort zone.
I was twelve. It was a Friday night. I sat at a grand piano in an auditorium filled with parents, teachers, and a small group of students from across the region, selected to perform pieces we had worked on over a season of competitions.
The room was quiet with anticipation.
I placed my hands on the keys — and in a split second of shock, realized I did not know where to begin. This was a piece I knew well. But at that moment, my mind went blank. I started. Wrong note. Stopped. Tried again. Wrong note.
The silence shifted. I heard sighs. Murmurs. Coughs growing louder. The audience grew uncomfortable. After several attempts, I stood up and walked off the stage — stunned by the embarrassment of what had just happened.
Backstage, my teacher — an unassuming woman often underestimated for her quirks — pulled me aside.
“You have two choices,” she said calmly. “You can leave now and go home. By Monday, most people will have forgotten. Or, at the end of the program, you can go back on stage and play the piece the way we both know you can. That will be much harder. And you need to be certain you can do it.”
She paused. “Either way — you won’t forget the decision.”
I sat in the auditorium for the next two hours, wrestling with that choice — knowing how easy it would be to walk away. At the end of the evening, the director announced one final performance. He called my name. I walked back into the bright lights, closed my eyes, and began to play.
This time, the music flowed.
What I remember most is not the standing ovation. It was catching my father’s eye — a quiet acknowledgment that something had shifted. A few months later, he passed away unexpectedly.
That night was the first — and the last — time he saw me take a meaningful step outside my comfort zone. It marked the beginning of a pattern that would dramatically change the course of my life.
A Pattern of Stepping Forward
After my father’s passing, I made a decision he had always encouraged — to leave the small farming community where I had grown up and enroll in a much larger high school farther from home. It was my first real step into a world that felt significantly bigger than the one I knew.
Over time, the choices became less obvious — and more consequential.
Right after graduating in finance, I chose a path that none of my peers did. I joined a smaller Deloitte office when every other graduate pursued more conventional options. That decision led to an opportunity I never could have planned — a short-term secondment to Deloitte’s Boston office that ultimately became permanent.
Stepping into the pharmaceuticals industry at AstraZeneca presented opportunities for growth and set of a new cascade of uncomfortable decisions to make. I took the role at AZ without any life sciences background, so while the language of numbers was familiar, that of drug development, novel targets, programs and their numerous naming conventions, was all a vast unknown. Each new challenge carried the same sensation I felt backstage that night — the tightening in the chest, the pull toward safety, the awareness that I could remain where things were predictable or take a leap of faith into something I had not done before. And yet each time I dove into the unknown I also had the same relief on the back end of it, and the accumulated knowledge that I could do hard things and be impactful.
Over the next decade, I made more radical jumps in a variety of healthcare roles, including an opportunity to step away from healthcare. That latter experience really taught me how important it was to me to focus on developing therapies for patients and it quickly drew me back into industry.
But one of the biggest leaps was moving into biotech. I was not the obvious candidate. I had spent over a decade in big pharma. I did not know what a cap table was, or what those letters in “Series A, B, or C” financing really meant. I fumbled my way through early conversations about value inflection points. Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you how I live by my value inflection maps now – how the tables have turned!
I was, in many ways, starting over. And yet, that decision became the beginning of the most demanding — and ultimately most meaningful — chapter of my career. Over the next fifteen years, I worked alongside teams operating at an exceptional level — building companies, navigating successes and setbacks, and contributing, in small ways, to the development of therapies for patients.
Like all biotech journeys, there were moments that did not go as planned. A company that didn’t succeed. Decisions that were made for me, not by me. Moves that stretched my family as much as they stretched me. But each of those moments reinforced the same lesson: Growth rarely comes from staying where you are comfortable.
Why This Matters in Biotech
It is perhaps no surprise that I feel at home in biotech. This is an industry where being comfortable being uncomfortable is not optional — it is essential.
We advance programs with incomplete data.
We invest capital at risk.
We make decisions in markets we do not control.
The most important choices are often made before certainty arrives. The instinct is to wait — for more data, more clarity, more confidence.
Sometimes waiting is discipline. But often, it is hesitation because it is downright uncomfortable to make important decisions when you don’t have all the pieces in hand. That hesitation often leads to costly delays or worse, in an ever-shifting landscape where others operate faster, with fewer regulations, simply being left behind.
It is in many respects fitting that one of the key lessons I learned from my dad, perhaps not fully understanding it at the time, was to boldly make tough decisions and to do so quickly. He always spoke about the time lost on analysis/paralysis and if said decision wasn’t the right one, to fix it quickly, or to learn from it and move on.
It sounds overly simple, but over time pattern recognition sets in and allows us to take the right risks, at the right time, for the right reasons. We have all heard some variation of the phrase “luck favors the prepared mind,” and it has been attributed to esteemed luck-makers including Seneca, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Jefferson, and most recently Ina Garten
As I reflect on decisions made, what might look like luck is often the result of repeatedly being willing to step into situations where you are stretched, exposed, and forced to grow. Our industry creates those moments constantly.
We can do hard things together
I was reminded of this recently in a vastly different setting.
I had the privilege of joining Luke Timmerman and a group of biotech executives and investors to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in support of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
It was inspiring — and demanding.
In my line of work, many things can be negotiated. Altitude is not one of them. The air thins whether you are ready or not. Each step becomes heavier. Your body reminds you that you are operating well outside its comfort zone.
But the dynamic changes when a group commits to doing something challenging, together. We moved deliberately, led by Eric Murphy and supported by an extraordinary Tanzanian team. We relied on one another, shared perspectives and stories, and carried the harder moments together — often with humor.
No one summits Kilimanjaro comfortably or alone. And no one builds a biotech company that way either. Progress — in both — requires endurance, trust, and a willingness to keep moving forward when things get really uncomfortable. This climb exemplified what makes biotech so special and unique – doing hard things together, as a team.
What I Would Tell My Younger Self — and Those Early in Their Careers
Looking back, a few lessons stand out, some which I hope you will recognize or find helpful.
Don’t wait to feel ready.
Most of the decisions that shape your life will come before you feel fully prepared.
Choose the path that stretches you.
The less obvious path is often the one that creates the most opportunity. Ask yourself – what is the worst that can happen if I make this choice?
Not every uncomfortable decision will feel right — and that is okay.
Some of the most important clarity comes from discovering what doesn’t fit and what you never want to do again.
Take the risk anyway.
The downside is often smaller than it feels in the moment — and the upside is rarely visible in advance. “Feel the fear and do it anyway” – Susan Jeffers
Pick the best team.
Find mentors, teammates, and communities who will help you take those steps. This is a topic close to heart and one I will come back to in a future post.
Coming Full Circle
When I think back to that twelve-year-old backstage, it is easy to see it as a small moment. It wasn’t. It was the first time I chose to step forward before I felt ready.
What I didn’t know then was that this decision would shape how I approached each one that followed. Over time, it became a pattern. And that pattern became a way of operating.
One that led me across continents, into roles I was not prepared for, through decisions that affected not just my career — but my family — and ultimately led me into biotech, an industry that demands exactly this mindset.
In biotech, as in life, the most important decisions rarely come with clarity. They come with uncertainty. And the question is not whether those moments will come.
It is whether you recognize them when they do — and step forward anyway.
