Katrina in the Bullpen

You may have seen my LinkedIn posts about the Bullpen and wondered, “What is this group, and why is Katrina involved?” Let me tell you how I was introduced to this novel and dynamic club and why I’m enthusiastic about their work.

What is the Bullpen?

Straight from their website, the Bullpen is a “volunteer-led, invite-only Club that gathers life science Investors and CxOs with a shared goal of helping each other.” Championed by Christiaan Engstrom (Evia Bio) and Phil Ebner (JPMorgan), the group was launched in Q42021 to help life science leaders prepare for and attend JPM Week.

The annual event, held during the second week of January, is an action-packed three days of events and potential meetings for founders, funders, and supporters of life science startups. It’s an expensive trip since it’s held in and around the San Francisco financial district. The 2025 JPM Healthcare Conference, a key event around which everything else seems to spin, will be held at the Westin St. Francis on Union Square. To give you a budget, the hotels on Union Square run from $1,000/night on up.

It’s also an exhausting trip if you are trying to connect with people. There is a tendency to make only tentative plans to meet in case a ‘more important’ meeting comes up. Companies snap up meeting spaces and restaurant tables early, making it hard for solo players to arrange a place to meet. It’s easy to fall into the trap of scheduling meetings back-to-back without realizing the distance between locations. After a mad dash (on foot or in rideshare or cab) across town, you may only be disappointed because your most important connection was canceled because their meetings ran long.

How Does it Work? (With Examples)

So, how do you address these challenges if you are working on a raise and need to participate in either JPM Week or BIO (the other massive annual life science event)? There are three things to do: find a community for support, create a plan, and build relationships. The Bullpen is that community for me, and I’m proud to be a founding member. Let’s look at how it works.

Find a Community

I’m grateful to Victoria Donovan (Clinically Media) for introducing me to Christiaan and the Bullpen during Q423. Clinically Media co-hosted a series of workshops for funding companies with the Bullpen last year, leading me to the fall JPM Week 2024 virtual prep series. These events, called Innings, align with the baseball theme and showcase industry experts in partnering, funding, and launching life science startups. These experts share their background, how they and their companies support the ecosystem, and their ask with the group. Some innings offer pitch critique, and there is always a pitch competition. The first few Innings also invite Social Members, but the final five are Club Members only. You can find the current list of Innings on the Bullpen website. I learn something new every Inning.

Create a Plan

Nothing is more critical to a conference success than having a strategic plan. You must understand why you are going and what you hope to achieve to make the best use of your time. In that discovery work, you may find that attending JPM Week is not the best use of your time, and there are other ways to meet your immediate and longer-term goals. It would be best if you also planned for logistics, like where are your meeting sites, how you will travel between them, when you are going to eat, and how you will sustain maximal effectiveness during the week. You can’t be successful if you are exhausted and stressed out, and you need to plan to “Protect the Asset” (thanks again, Greg McKeown!)

Build Relationships

The biggest benefit of the Bullpen is its high-quality networking. After each virtual inning, participants can go into breakout rooms organized by area of innovation: Therapeutics, MedTech, and Tools/AI. Many people don’t stay for this precious opportunity to chat informally with others. The speakers often stay to converse. The breakout sessions are an ideal opportunity to ask others for feedback on a pitch, advice on a problem, or a referral for a service provider while building your relationships. Our in-person events are invite-only and allow members to expand on those relationships and volunteer to help within the organization. This aspect has been compelling for my progress this year, even though I don’t pitch my business directly. The safe space for open discussion builds trust that is difficult to achieve otherwise.

Your Takeaway

You can’t build a life science startup in a vacuum. No one has all the expertise needed to take a medical product from bench to bedside. Therefore, you must build a robust community to help you achieve your big idea. If you can find a ready-made community that fits your industry, it’s worth your time to engage and may well be worth your time to join. I saw immediately how the Bullpen could help me create a strategy for engaging with people at the major life science conferences. It was easy for me to say, “Yes!” Learning how fun it is to be a part of this club has been a delightful bonus.

Want to know more about the Bullpen? Check us out here: https://bullpen.ventures/