Robert Ingram’s lengthy pharmaceutical career includes the highlight of helping to lead the merger forming the company that became GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK). At the time of the deal in 2000, GSK was the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world.
But Ingram’s less spoken work includes support of numerous startup life science companies. He has also served as a resource for government leaders who had questions about the pharma industry.
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For his contributions, Ingram was awarded CED’s annual Life Science Award on Thursday. The award was presented to Ingram by former Gov. Jim Hunt, who said that Ingram has done more than any business leader to build the life science industry in North Carolina and beyond.
In 2007, Ingram joined Durham venture capital firm Hatteras Venture Partners as a partner. In accepting the CED award, Ingram said that North Carolina and the Southeast need to attract more venture capital to support innovation.
“Great ideas need funding and we need more capital,” he said.
Ingram took some time after receiving the award to share his thoughts about venture capital funding in the region. Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: You said North Carolina needs to attract more venture capital. What pieces need to fall into place in order to make that happen?
A: If you look at what we have in North Carolina, we have first and foremost great universities, both public and private, with great medical schools, great schools of veterinary medicine in the case of N.C. State … they’re producing talent. That talent will produce ideas that can turn into products that can turn into companies. If you look at the quality of our science in North Carolina, one barometer would be NIH grants. If you look at NIH grants in the southeast, Virgina down to Florida, and you stack that against Boston and San Francisco, we stack up very, very well, almost equally. But when you overlay on that the amount of early stage venture capital, we’re not even in the same game as Boston or San Francisco. That says there’s huge unmet opportunity to get venture capital to come here.
Q: What’s North Carolina missing?
A: What we haven’t had in North Carolina as much as say San Francisco or Boston is that one big super success. In the case of San Francisco, Genentech. In the case of Boston, Genzyme or Biogen. We haven’t had that yet. There’s an old axiom, nothing breeds success like success. Because of the success of those (companies), there’s been not only a lot of other companies formed, but there’s been a lot of money come in hoping to replicate it. Do I have confidence that in time we will produce that kind of success? I do. Is it a certainty? No. But I think we have that quality of science here.
Q: What other pieces do we need?
A: We need non-stop air flights from Raleigh-Durham to and from the West Coast. And we’re starting to get that for the first time, as you probably know. We need a state government, put party affiliation aside, that understands the importance of funding basic science in our universities. I’m optimistic that even in these tough budgetary times, that will happen. And we need good technology transfer. I would cite as one really good example the Carolina Express License at UNC. We need to see more of that at UNC, Duke, Wake Forest.
Q: Venture capital investments aren’t limited by geography. Why do we need VC firms here?
A: We, Hatteras, don’t invest outside of the Southeast. You want to stay close to your investment. We live with our investments. If you’re an investor in Hatteras and you give us $1 million of your personal money to invest, I would hope you would want us to not just write a check but to really be diligent in following the progress. You’ve got to have that balance in being determined, being diligent, but (also) being disciplined when enough is enough to say ‘no.’ The key, in my experience in life science, is that it’s a high failure business. The trick is to fail early.
Q: What I’ve been hearing from startups is that it’s harder than ever to raise money.
A: It’s because there’s not enough.
Q: But they tell me that investors are more risk averse.
A: That’s also true. In our region here, we have three or four venture capital firms. There’s us. There’s Intersouth (Partners). There’s Pappas (Ventures). That’s about it. One, because of the overall economy and its challenges, and two because it is a high-risk endeavor, raising funds has become more of a challenge. We were the only fund I’m aware of in the Southeast that’s closed a new fund in the last couple of years, when we just announced the closing of our Hatteras Fund IV.
Q: So the solution is more venture capital firms?
A: We need to get more venture capital firms that have headquarters in say either the West Coast or Boston, to open up offices here. You would say for Hatteras, that’s more competition. But the more, the better. The more venture capital, the more these ideas will stay here. If we don’t have the venture capital dollars, some of these good ideas and the talent that has created them will leave to follow the money. And they’ll go to Boston. And they’ll go to California. And we lose. We lose as a state in revenue, we lose as a state on jobs. That’s why I think it’s so important.
