Most venture capitalists have never walked in an entrepreneur’s shoes. They’ve built careers evaluating companies from the outside, armed with spreadsheets and pattern recognition, but they’ve never experienced the gut-wrenching uncertainty of building something from scratch.
Leen Kawas brings a different perspective to biotech investing. As Managing General Partner at Propel Bio Partners, she’s the one writing checks to start-up and early-stage biotechnology companies. But before that, she was the one pitching for those checks—co-founding and leading a biotechnology company through its initial public offering, raising over $400 million in the process.
This dual experience has given Leen Kawas an unusually sharp eye for what separates promising biotech teams from those destined to struggle. She’s seen the patterns from both sides of the table, and her evaluation criteria reflect hard-won insights about what actually drives success in life sciences.
The Green Lights: What Gets Leen Kawas’s Attention
When Leen Kawas evaluates potential investments, she’s not just looking at the science—though that matters. She’s looking for specific signals that indicate a team can navigate the unique challenges of biotech entrepreneurship.
The Growth Mindset Signal
“I think for me, when I look to build a team, especially having hands-on experience and now as I’m working with multiple companies, I look for the mindset,” Leen Kawas explains. “Regardless of an individual’s career stage, they should always embrace the idea of growth.”
This isn’t corporate speak. In biotechnology, where regulatory requirements shift, clinical trials fail, and market dynamics change rapidly, teams that can’t adapt don’t survive. Kawas specifically looks for what she calls a “beginner’s mindset”—founders who “approach each problem individually, and don’t use the mindset that led to the problem to solve the problem.”
This mindset reveals itself in how teams respond to setbacks. Do they blame external factors, or do they analyze what they could have done differently? Do they stick rigidly to their original plan, or do they adapt based on new information? Teams with genuine growth mindsets view obstacles as learning opportunities rather than evidence that their approach is fundamentally flawed.
The Learning Orientation
Another green light for Leen Kawas is intellectual humility. She appreciates “people who are innovative, and they look to learn from everyone.” This trait becomes crucial in life sciences, where successful companies often require expertise spanning biology, chemistry, regulatory affairs, manufacturing, and commercial strategy.
Founders who think they know everything typically struggle when reality forces them to rely on others. Those who actively seek input and remain curious about different perspectives are more likely to build the diverse expertise needed for biotech success.
Execution Over Ideas
Perhaps most importantly, Leen Kawas focuses on execution capability rather than just innovation. “It’s not just the idea, it’s the ability to execute on the idea,” she emphasizes.
This distinction matters enormously in biotechnology. Academic institutions and research labs generate thousands of promising scientific concepts every year. What’s rare is the ability to translate those concepts into viable businesses that can navigate FDA approval processes, manufacture products at scale, and compete in complex markets.
Leen Kawas looks for evidence that teams understand this reality. Have they thought through regulatory pathways? Do they have realistic timelines for clinical development? Can they articulate how they’ll manufacture their product? Teams that focus only on the science often struggle with these operational realities.
The Collaboration Factor
“We look for people we’ll enjoy working with…people with a vision and a sense of fun,” Leen Kawas notes. This might seem like a soft criterion, but it reflects practical realities about biotech investing.
Building a biotechnology company takes years, involves countless setbacks, and requires sustained collaboration under pressure. Investors don’t just provide money—they provide ongoing guidance, make introductions, and help solve problems. Teams that are difficult to work with create friction that can doom promising ventures.
The Red Flags: Warning Signs from Hard Experience
Leen Kawas’s experience as a founder, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated industry, has taught her to recognize concerning patterns that other investors might miss.
The Bias Blind Spot
During her fundraising experience, Leen Kawas encountered explicit gender bias. She recalls one potential investor who said he wouldn’t invest with her company solely because she was a woman. This experience taught her that some investors make decisions based on factors unrelated to business fundamentals.
From her current investor perspective, this translates into watching for teams that haven’t considered diversity and inclusion strategically. “I’m not just investing in women or minorities—I’m investing in diversity because this will bring the best innovation and the best returns,” she explains.
Teams that are homogeneous or that haven’t thought about building diverse leadership often miss opportunities and blind spots that could hurt their competitiveness.
The Fundraising Psychology Gap
Leen Kawas observed significant differences in how male and female founders approach fundraising. Women-led biotech companies typically ask investors for less money than the business actually needs, while male biotech leaders ask for more than needed, often receiving final amounts closer to their required capital.
This pattern reveals a red flag for any investor: founders who don’t understand fundraising psychology may struggle with other aspects of business development. Whether it’s pricing their product, negotiating partnerships, or managing investor relations, founders who consistently undervalue their needs may face ongoing challenges.
The Barrier-Focused Mindset
During her time as a CEO, Leen Kawas emphasized building teams that “did not think about barriers. We only thought about solutions and how we can do things better, differently.” From her investor perspective, she now watches for the opposite—teams that focus more on obstacles than opportunities.
Biotechnology is inherently challenging. Regulatory hurdles, clinical trial requirements, and manufacturing complexities are industry realities, not unique obstacles. Teams that spend more time explaining why things are difficult than how they’ll overcome those difficulties often struggle to execute effectively.
The Patient Disconnect
One of the most serious red flags for Leen Kawas is when teams lose sight of their ultimate purpose. “Track the success and satisfaction of your customers (in life sciences, the patients). That’s going to drive value. You are developing therapies. You are changing people’s lives. Once you achieve that, the financial value is going to follow,” she emphasizes.
Teams that focus primarily on financial returns or competitive positioning often make decisions that hurt their long-term prospects. Patient-centric thinking should inform everything from product development priorities to clinical trial design. When it doesn’t, teams often develop products that technically work but don’t meet real patient needs.
The Fresh Perspective Advantage
One of Kawas’s most counterintuitive insights concerns experience levels. “People just starting their career bring a unique, fresh perspective. That’s as valuable as someone who’s doing the same thing or working in the industry for 20 years,” she observes.
This perspective challenges conventional wisdom about preferring experienced teams. While industry knowledge matters, fresh perspectives can identify opportunities that veterans miss because they’re not constrained by assumptions about “the right way” to do things.
The key is balance. Teams need enough experience to navigate industry realities, but also enough fresh thinking to approach problems creatively. Leen Kawas looks for teams that combine both elements rather than defaulting to either extreme.
The Evaluation Process in Practice
Leen Kawas’s dual perspective has shaped how she evaluates teams during the investment process. She looks beyond polished presentations to understand how teams actually work together and solve problems.
Her patient-centric approach during her time as a CEO—including innovations like arranging onsite meals for Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers during clinical trials—demonstrates the kind of creative problem-solving she values in potential investments.
This wasn’t just operational efficiency; it reflected deep understanding of patient needs that translated into better trial outcomes. She looks for similar thinking in the teams she evaluates—evidence that they understand their patients’ real experiences and design solutions accordingly.
The Competitive Intelligence
Perhaps most valuable is how Leen Kawas’s founder experience informs her ability to spot teams that will struggle with investor relationships. Having been on the receiving end of investor bias and challenging fundraising dynamics, she can recognize when teams are likely to face similar obstacles.
This insight helps her make better investment decisions, but it also positions her to provide more effective guidance to portfolio companies. She understands not just what challenges they’ll face, but how those challenges feel from the entrepreneur’s perspective.
“I gave opportunities to other women,” Leen Kawas notes about how her success opened doors for other female entrepreneurs. This ripple effect reflects the kind of long-term thinking that drives her investment approach—recognizing that building successful companies creates opportunities for future innovation.
The Bottom Line
Leen Kawas’s evaluation criteria reflect a sophisticated understanding of what drives biotech success. Having experienced both the challenges of building companies and the responsibilities of funding them, she’s developed a framework that goes beyond financial projections and patent portfolios.
The green lights she looks for—growth mindset, learning orientation, execution focus, and collaborative approach—predict how teams will handle the inevitable challenges of biotech entrepreneurship. The red flags she watches for—bias blind spots, fundraising psychology gaps, barrier-focused thinking, and patient disconnect—often signal deeper problems that can derail promising ventures.
For biotech entrepreneurs, understanding these signals provides a roadmap for building fundable companies. For other investors, Leen Kawas’s dual perspective of
