The Fallacy of the One Big Exit: Why Building a Biotech Career Is Not a Lottery

The myth of the one big exit is a seductive one. It is the fairytale biotech tells itself over and over: that success is a singular event, a sudden upward arc, a euphoric liquidity moment that transforms your life and validates your existence. The IPO bell rings, the champagne flows, and your LinkedIn suddenly becomes a shrine to entrepreneurial brilliance.

But here’s the unvarnished truth: most biotech careers don’t work like that. Most successes are iterative, partial, and won over years of slow, grinding work. And the idea that you only need one “hit” to be set for life? That’s not a strategy. That’s a lottery ticket in a lab coat.

In reality, biotech is a multi-season game. If you are lucky, you will build, break, rebuild, and reinvent over a decade or two. You’ll have wins that don’t look like wins. A trial that didn’t succeed but taught you everything. A team that failed but launched three other ventures. A licensing deal that saved the company but cost you equity. These are the contours of a real career—not the highlight reel but the blooper reel, edited with hindsight and hard-earned clarity.

Yet we persist with the mythology. Partly because it’s marketable. VCs love the idea of backing the next unicorn. Founders are told to swing big, aim high, and shoot for billion-dollar valuations. Nobody wants to fund a “modest, well-structured success story with good governance and a modest multiple.”

But here’s the problem: if you bet your entire career arc on one asset, one program, one pivotal trial—you’re not building a company. You’re buying a scratchcard. And when it fails (and statistically, it will), you are left not just with a failed company, but a stalled career narrative.

Contrast this with those who take the long view. They focus not just on one win, but on credibility. On building networks that survive the cycles. On delivering small, consistent value. They understand that reputation compounds, that talent remembers, and that a 5x win with integrity can be more valuable than a 50x mirage.

Biotech careers are made not just in the spotlight of success, but in the shadows of disappointment. They are forged in the quiet calls after a failed readout. In the board meetings where you choose transparency over spin. In the backchannel references that tell future partners: “Yes, it didn’t work—but they handled it with grace.”

And here’s the final irony: the people who eventually do get the big exits? They are almost never the ones who fixated on them. They are the ones who kept showing up. Who made themselves useful, reliable, and visible. Who treated biotech not as a stage, but as a profession.

So by all means, celebrate the wins. Pop the champagne. But don’t build your identity around a single shot. Build it around your ability to stay in the game long enough to matter.

Because biotech doesn’t reward drama. It rewards resilience, memory, and optionality.

And you can’t compound any of those if you’re only in it for the miracle moment.