Recent research4 suggests that there are four pre-formation entrepreneurial capabilities that lead to well-endowed university spin-offs. This research is rooted in dynamic capabilities theory13, which posits that some firms exhibit heightened performance due to their ability to leverage unique sensing and shaping and seizing capabilities. Subsequent literature has extended this theory to the level of the individual entrepreneur14, and more specifically, scientist–entrepreneurs who form university spin-offs4. Academic scientists have underappreciated agency to shape commercialization opportunities, particularly in the years prior to venture formation15,16. Early path dependent decisions made by scientist–entrepreneurs are critical to post-formation firm success4, for example, through sensing and shaping capabilities such as technology-market matching17,18 and seizing capabilities such as claiming and protecting the invention, attracting and mentoring the founding team, and strategic timing of firm-formation2,19,20. While empirical research related to dynamic capabilities theory has largely focused on firms post-formation, we demonstrate, through an extended case study, that path-dependent, pre-formation decisions taken by scientist–entrepreneurs have significant influence on rapid pandemic response through university spin-offs.
We show that these capabilities helped expand AbCellera’s firm value chain so that they were able to discover the antibody bamlanivimab against the SaRS-CoV-2 virus in just 90 days, resulting in the development of an FDA emergency-use-authorized therapeutic in eight months21. AbCellera’s benchtop technology is predicated on single-cell analysis chambers, each of which has a volume of less than one nanoliter, allowing for B cell secreted antibody detection within hours, compared to weeks, as seen in traditional antibody discovery experimentation.
As a faculty member at UBC, Hansen, his team and his collaborators developed a highly novel microfluidic technology, which forms the foundation of AbCellera’s antibody discovery platform and was their entry point into the antibody therapeutic market. This microfluidic technology, along with antibody-focused research produced by his graduate students in the mid-2000s and later supported by Canadian government science grants related to antibody discovery, indicates that Hansen had already targeted the antibody market for his microfluidic technology long before AbCellera’s formation in 2012, demonstrating the first entrepreneurial capability, technology-market matching. Hansen further demonstrated prioritization of the antibody market when he negotiated a “worldwide, exclusive license to the… Technology solely within the Antibody Field of Use”22 with UBC. This early prioritization of the antibody market by Hansen enabled AbCellera to rapidly develop bamlanivimab. A timeline of the path-dependent decisions described in this section, along with other notable milestones and the demonstration of Hansen’s entrepreneurial capabilities, is presented in Fig. 1.
The data sources include AbCellera’s (and their partners) websites and press releases, Pitchbook, LinkedIn and other social media profiles, grant information released by public funding agencies such as DARPA, NIH, Genome Canada, MSFHR, NSERC, and CIHR, patent data from the US Patent and Trademark Office and Google Patents, journal publications and United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Early patenting and high-quality research publications facilitate science commercialization through university spin-offs2,4,23. We find evidence of Hansen engaging in the entrepreneurial capability of claiming and protecting the invention through two relevant patents filed by Hansen and his colleagues in 2010, two years before firm formation24,25 and ten years before they were utilized in rapidly responding to COVID-19. We also identified early papers in high quality journals, written by Hansen and his colleagues26,27 up to seven years before firm formation (Fig. 1): these papers are evidence of the progression of AbCellera’s technical capabilities. These capabilities and intellectual property signalled credibility and facilitated fundraising and partnerships, which were leveraged to develop bamlanivimab in 90 days, while traditional drug discovery and commercialization can stretch up to 20 years28.
Mentoring is critical for scientist–entrepreneurs4,29, and we find evidence of entrepreneurial mentoring both pre-formation as well as post-formation. Hansen was initially mentored by Prof. Stephen Quake (and his key collaborators at Fluidigm, who pioneered the development of microfluidics instrumentation for biological research) during his PhD at the California Institute of Technology. As a faculty member at UBC, Hansen maintained collaborative research agreements with Fluidigm. Relatedly, Lineage Biosciences’ Ig-SEQ technology was co-developed by Stephen Quake, suggesting that AbCellera was familiar with the platform prior to acquiring it, de-risking the purchase. Crucially, Hansen also mentored graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from his research lab, who became co-founders and early employees of AbCellera. Former Hansen lab members Veronique Lecault, Kevin Heyries and Kathleen Lisaingo have grown into senior leadership positions at AbCellera. Such scientific and entrepreneurial mentoring allowed Hansen to leverage the existing trust among his former lab members to drive highly coordinated and fast decision-making at AbCellera, thus enabling rapid pandemic response.
Strategic timing of firm formation has been shown to play an important role in raising financing2. Typical venture capital investors expect to recoup their investment in three to five years, thus for science-based firms facing high uncertainty, it may be beneficial to delay firm formation to shorten the time to commercial viability, to better meet investor timelines2,9. Substantial evidence from Hansen’s PhD thesis, patents, papers, research grants, and the research conducted by his graduate students at UBC indicates that his scientific expertise surrounding microfluidic technologies, which AbCellera utilizes for its single-cell antibody screening procedure30, was developed prior to firm formation and supported by a significant early stage translational grant (Fig. 1). AbCellera stayed on the UBC campus for six years post-formation and Hansen maintained his UBC faculty position until 2019.
This extended incubation period allowed AbCellera to focus on its scientific development, incurring significantly lower costs, both in operating overhead and in onboarding a highly skilled workforce, and providing better access to complementary research and technologies from other labs. Hansen’s previous experience co-founding Precision Nanosystems with serial scientist–entrepreneur Pieter Cullis also influenced AbCellera’s early decision-making, incubation, and commercialization success.
As a result, Hansen didn’t need to source his first external seed investment until late 2014 (ref. 31) and was able to delay Series A financing until 2018, when a strong case for commercial viability and multiple rounds of financing had been built. AbCellera received several rounds of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding during that incubation period, most notably a 30M USD award from DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program in 2018, which specifically molded the firm’s capabilities in rapid antibody discovery. The expansion of AbCellera’s capabilities spurred several more significant financing events, including a 175.6M CAD investment from the Government of Canada in May 2020, a 105M USD Series B also in May 2020, and the largest IPO in Canadian biotechnology history in November 2020 (ref. 28).
