EP 183: Marie Schroeder | Send the Rough Deck, Not the Perfect One

A seed investor at Novo Holdings would rather read your rough idea than your finished pitch deck. Most founders spend a year building the deck, forming the team and waiting until the story holds together. By the time it is ready the science has moved, the money has gone somewhere else, and nobody told them the fund they were preparing for creates companies out of raw material. Marie Schroeder is a Principal on the Seed Investments team at Novo Holdings, the investment company owned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Before that she spent five years at Novo Nordisk in cardiovascular drug development. Before that, a doctorate at Oxford and research work in Toronto. Beginning with what a seed investor watches at the start of a year, the conversation becomes a practical guide to building and funding early biotech: the question her chief scientific officer put to every project until it hurt, what to do in the first hour after a negative readout, why the founder who discovered the science is often the wrong person to run the company, and how her team tracked one Swedish heart failure company for three years before a single risk cleared and the money moved. WHAT LISTENERS CAN EXPECT TO LEARN Why defining what good looks like before the experiment runs decides whether a failed program gets funded twice How to break a plan into killer experiments so each tranche of money buys one specific answer What a board wants to hear on the day something fails, and how early it wants to hear it Why team quality beats science quality in early biotech, argued on commercial grounds What a seed fund actually wants in a cold approach, and why a rejection is usually about timing BEST QUOTES (00:14:09) "Defining what good looks like before you start the experiment is absolutely paramount." (00:22:42) "The target failing is one of maybe five things that could have gone wrong." (00:52:36) "He only has time to give the negative feedback. Every other paragraph was good." (01:15:58) "You can have great science, and if you don't have the right team, it will fail." (01:35:47) "I would rather somebody send a rough concept than spend half their life making a pitch deck." TIMESTAMPS THE YEAR AHEAD (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:35) What is on top of a seed investor's mind this year (00:05:43) The muscle loss problem inside the obesity story RESILIENCE AND FAILURE (00:10:45) What resilience means to a biotech investor (00:14:09) What does good look like, the question behind every project (00:18:42) Killer experiments and what has to be true next (00:22:03) The first hour after a negative readout (00:27:19) Learning resilience without joining Special Forces FEEDBACK, BOUNDARIES AND BAD NEWS (00:45:52) Compromise, burnout and anger out of proportion (00:51:18) The Oxford professor who wrote nonsense on the draft (00:57:25) Jensen Huang, no firings and torture them to greatness FROM OXFORD TO NOVO HOLDINGS (01:02:15) Academics are the true scientists, the belief she dropped (01:07:51) Novo Nordisk, Novo Holdings and the foundation explained (01:12:26) Two lessons from five years inside Novo Nordisk WHO BUILDS THE COMPANY (01:15:49) Why diverse teams are non-negotiable in biotech (01:21:31) Why the scientific founder should not be CEO GETTING FUNDED (01:33:54) The minimum a cold pitch deck needs (01:39:55) The company they watched for three years (01:50:46) Venture capital as a self-fulfilling prophecy WHAT COMES NEXT (01:55:13) Two directions pharma has to run at once (02:01:28) Closing thoughts Marie Schroeder at Novo Holdings: https://novoholdings.dk/people/marie-schroeder Newsletter: https://lsg2g.substack.com/ Follow Beginner's Mind for long-form conversations on leadership, capital, technology, and the people shaping what comes next. Ranked in the global top 10% of all podcasts, named #1 Deep Tech Podcast in 2025, and #8 Deep Tech Podcast in 2026 Send us Fan Mail Join Christian Soschner for expert coaching. 50% Off - With 35+ years in deep tech, startups/scaleups, and public companies, Christian offers power video sessions. Elevate strategy, execution, and leadership. Book Now. Support the show Join the Podcast Newsletter: Link