Meet the team – spotlight Patrick Hämelin

You made the transition from one of Finland’s largest corporations towards an innovative, but early-stage, startup. How afraid are you?

So far, more excited than afraid, I believe! Although not expecting this to be any amusement park, I sure believe I will experience things to be different from an established corporate environment. However, my recent role with UPM was with its Biomedicals business unit, which as a medical technology startup inside a corporate, was already quite a stretch from the mainstream UPM. Risk-taking appetite, focus on the short versus long term, relative importance of growth, profitability and portfolio synergies are very different for established corporates than they are for deep-tech startups. This experience made me realize that I enjoy developing and being part of building something completely new, even if that involves significant uncertainties.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and what is your role at Arivin Tx?

I have been mostly working in strategy and business development related leadership roles for most of my career. I have an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from Helsinki University of Technology (nowadays Aalto University), graduated in 1999, and worked my first years as a management consultant before a corporate life from 2005 onwards. Corporate finance and investment analysis, restructuring, commercial excellence and new business building have been recurring themes in my earlier roles.

At Arivin Tx, as Chief Business Officer, I lead our business development, strategic partnering and fundraising activities, ensuring that these align with our vision and strategy, coordinate the work of our service partners and lead selected initiatives to mature our organization going forward.

What unique qualities do you bring into the mix?

Experience from building and managing strategic business partnerships, and from medical device development in advanced wound care and implants. Transformational leadership experience relevant for this degree of business maturity: I would know how to build a sufficiently stable backbone for the business operations providing efficiency and focus, but without inducing excessive bureaucracy, getting lost in the science or killing the spirit of a startup.

What are your expectations about the future of the company?

During the next years we will transition into clinical trials at least with our lead asset. I look forward to getting validation on the promising pre-clinical data we already have. In the longer term I hope to see our technology in therapeutic use with great patient outcomes for a target group for which this really makes a difference. By that time non-traditional therapies are favoured when combating AMR and Arivin Tx is known as one of the pioneers in this field.

Read the original release on arivintx.com