Timing is everything – but luck helps

About the Book

The biotech sector is one of the biggest success stories in industry, creating high paying jobs for millions of people and producing new drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people battling conditions such as AIDS, leukemia, and lymphoma. At the same time, successful biotech companies have the potential to generate massive returns on investment. This story highlights how one such company, ZS Pharma, paid off for investors. Henrik Sandvad Rasmussen, the former chief medical officer of ZS Pharma, looks back at the founding of the company and how it was to AstraZeneca for $2.7 billion. The story starts in 2009, when the author took a phone call from the founder of a startup that was focusing on hyperkalemia, which is the medical term for elevated potassium levels in the blood. That immediately caught his interest. Join the author as he looks back at how he’s made it a habit to be at the right place at the right time—always willing to take a chance and strike while the iron is hot.

About the Author

Henrik Sandvad Rasmussen earned his medical and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. After five years as a practicing physician, he left Denmark and spent the next thirty years developing new drugs for biotech and pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the United States. He is married with three grown children and five grandchildren. He is retired and divides his time between homes in Florida, Maryland, and Utah.