December 16, 2024

Should I Bother Going to The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Investor Conference if I’m a Small/Medium Sized Biotech?

Forst of all, let’s be honest: you want me to say “No”, right?

The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Investor Conference is the week most people love to hate. Not only is it a super-spreader event for COVID, HMPV, RSV, flu and goodness knows what else, it’s usually marred by cold and rainy weather, with more than just a smattering of San Franciso’s homeless population to navigate around on your way to the Westin St. Francis.

BUT… it’s also the single most important event on the healthcare calendar and everyone who is anyone is there in person. Particularly Big Pharma.

Nevertheless, unless you’re inside the Westin St. Francis – on J.P. Morgan’s dime – you’re just not likely to have a super fun or very productive time. Or at least one that even approaches meeting the high expectations of the average public or private biotech CEO or CFO.

Here’s the reason: all the big accounts you want to meet with are typically inside the Westin St Francis. If you’re on the fringe, they’re just not going to have time to meet with you unless you are an absolute priority of theirs.

As such, think about making yourself available later in the month via Zoom or Teams if you want to try and market to the big accounts, at which time you stand a much better chance of them saying “yes”, and you may even get more than the “J. P. Morgan average” of a 20-25 min meeting.

With this approach, you could avoid the ridiculously overpriced meeting rooms ($7000+ a day?) and hotel rooms ($1500+ a night?), and you may even spare your liver the damage it will sustain at the multitude of banker, lawyer, auditor and consultant parties that you would otherwise be spending your evenings at.

That being said, you should have someone in attendance for BD purposes since those types of meetings tend to be more easily arranged.

And if you do insist on going – quit complaining. It’s San Francisco in January, what were you expecting? And you don’t even have a relationship with J. P. Morgan? And finally, yes, the whole thing should have been moved to Vegas years ago (which had 154,662 available lodging rooms in 2023). To conclude – use your time wisely. More likely than not, your management’s time and your company’s money would be better spent with a more flexible approach to “the biggest week in healthcare”.