Before acquiring a company, the most valuable preparation is to work as a "right-hand person" to an existing small business owner. This apprenticeship provides crucial, ground-floor experience with the operational realities that financial models and spreadsheets completely miss.

Rather than trying to start a new venture from scratch, ambitious young people should find a master in their field and make themselves useful. By helping with menial tasks and demonstrating value over time, they can earn a place on the team and gain invaluable experience that is impossible to acquire alone.

In a tough funding environment, John Maraganore cautions against rushing into founding a company. He recommends that aspiring entrepreneurs first spend 5-10 years at a successful biotech. He argues that when capital is scarce, investors prioritize experienced operators, making deep industry experience a critical prerequisite for getting funded.

After her MBA, Michal Preminger spent three years in tech, deliberately taking on diverse roles like sales and product management. This fast-paced environment provided a condensed, real-world business education that she later applied back in the biotech sector.

Contrary to startup culture, the best training for biotech leadership is gaining broad, cross-functional experience in a large, structured pharmaceutical company. This foundation provides the necessary depth and breadth to navigate the complexities of leading a smaller, resource-constrained biotech later on.

Aspiring founders should resist starting a company until they've experienced multiple full project cycles, from messy conception to messy deployment. This repetition builds an invaluable intuition for timelines, processes, and what 'good' looks like, a crucial foundation for setting credible goals and leading a team.

It takes years of dedicated practice to master a technical skill like being a chiropractor. Entrepreneurship is no different and demands similar patience. Expect a multi-year learning curve where the primary outcome is skill acquisition, not immediate financial success.

Derek Adams began in late-stage vaccine manufacturing at Merck before moving to earlier-stage companies. This "reverse" path provides a deep understanding of commercial realities, operational execution, and scale-up challenges that is invaluable for building a capital-efficient startup from the ground up.

Instead of starting a roll-up from scratch without experience, aspiring entrepreneurs should first join an existing, successful company in their target sector. This allows them to learn what success feels like, understand the operating playbook, build a network, and develop a credible investment thesis—increasing their chances of success when they eventually launch their own platform.