Capital efficiency has become a mantra at Atlas, one shared by a number of other early stage biotech investors. It’s a term often repeated in discussions about building young companies, and yet it has become clear that there’s no consistent definition of what the term means.
A common perception is that capital efficiency is synonymous with tightly constrained, small amounts of investor capital – the “small ball” criticism of capital efficiency. Others think it means only ultra-lean, asset-centric, virtual companies. There’s also the perception that you can’t build something big if you are capital efficient.
