Lucio Iannone, vice-president of venture investments for Leaps by Bayer, the corporate venture unit for pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer, grew up in a rough area of Naples where taking up a sport was a way to stay on the straight and narrow. The lessons he learned there have served him well in corporate venture capital.
“Boxing was the way for me to get out of that environment and it really taught me to persevere,” he says. “Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, and when you win, you need to keep training. When you lose, you need to train harder. I think it’s a lesson I’ve taken with me every day.”
Iannone went on to get a PhD in medicine at Imperial College London and ended up heading business development for RNA drug developer Silence Therapeutics. He had to cover a variety of functions in the role but it gave him the understanding to work with startups from the corporate end.
“In four years I got exposed to every type of scenario and that gave me the right approach to sit on the boards of companies and evaluate them”
“It was a bit stressful, but at the end of the day it was a great experience, because in four years I got exposed to every type of scenario and that gave me the right approach to sit on the boards of companies and evaluate them,” he says.
Iannone has been involved in everything from series A deals to IPOs and has built a reputation as a great communicator with startups, several of which nominated him for his Emerging Leader position. He identifies, develops and manages the portfolio of biotech ventures from proof of concept to shaping the setup of the ventures and developing the business case for investing in technologies.
His ultimate aim is to replicate and expand Leaps by Bayer’s business approach to other pharmaceutical firms. “Leap’s strategy is to do impact investment, so it has to be a company that can actually change the way we treat patients,” he says. “It has to be an impact type of technology, something new that can really change the way we treat patients.”
See the rest of our Top 50 Emerging Leaders for 2023 here.
