PhD to Corporate Finance & M&A? Gabriel Fung’s Unconventional Journey!

Ever wondered how a PhD in Pathology transitions to high-stakes roles in Equity Research and Corporate Development? In this episode of Careers in Finance on FinPod, Gabriel Fung reveals his unique path from the lab to leading strategic M&A and partnerships at Exact Sciences in the competitive healthcare and biotech sectors. This is a must-listen for PhDs, scientists, and anyone considering a career pivot into finance from a non-traditional background!

Transcript

Meeyeon (00:13)
Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Careers in Finance. This is a podcast series where we explore conversationally the real stories behind job titles. And today I’m joined by Gabriel Fung, who is actually a longtime friend of mine from high school and also a PhD, perhaps the only one that we’ll ever have, first and only of his kind.

So welcome, Gabe.

Gabriel Fung (00:39)
Thank you, Meeyeon. Pleasure to be here.

Meeyeon (00:41)
Today, so has a really interesting background. He’s the first, I think, person that I’ve had on this series where his academic background is quite different. And not just very different, but he’s pursued it to the fullest at a PhD level. But today he’s in a role in finance, which is very different from what he studied. So that kind of spoils a little bit of my first question that I typically lead in with. But I’m going to ask it anyway, which is…

How did you get interested in a career in finance? Your academics were very different from ⁓ finance. And so did you get your interest from family members early on? Kind of what inspired you?

Gabriel Fung (01:25)
That’s actually a really funny question and perhaps I should start with kind of my background to set the foundation for how I got there because that plays into the story. So I was actually, it was during my graduate studies, I was actually in the lab. was a PhD in the Department of Pathology working on molecular work but pathology in essence.

And at the end of my lab bench, there’s actually a computer which I normally work at. The funny part about that is that when I was working at the bench, my boss came in and actually said, he looked at my computer screen and said, hey, that’s some really cool data. ⁓ What is that? Well, what data is that? Tell me about it. And I said, what data? Because I wasn’t looking at data. And ⁓ so I glanced over at my computer screen and turns out that was a stock chart.

It was a stock chart for some biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies. And I said, no, that’s just a stock chart. I’m always interested as to what drives valuations for companies like biotech. And especially for some of these biotech companies where R&D takes so long and they’re pre-revenue for a decade plus before they actually make money. How do investors think about the valuations for stocks in this space?

How I eventually started to dive a little bit deeper into this was actually when I went back to my computer screen eventually I was looking at the Google tabs that I had Google Chrome tabs I had open there were more tabs open that were focused on understanding valuation and business and then there was Basically publications that are surrounding my work Which was an indication to me that I perhaps had more interest in business than purify academics.

That wasn’t to say that I was not interested in academics at all. My goal at that time was actually to become a professor and had that opportunity to do so. I ultimately realized that that would just be a detour to my, I guess, ultimate career goal. And to understand business would be a key part of that. So I decided to explore that deeper. And that’s really how I got into the business side of things from academia. I had never taken a single finance or accounting course at

that point and I was already in my mid to early to mid 20s at that time and I had no siblings or relatives that were even in the finance or business areas either or sectors.

Meeyeon (03:59)
How’d you get interested even just in the idea of looking at company valuations? And when you’re looking through like companies that are typically, when you’re analyzing companies, you’re probably looking at public ones, maybe through 10 Ks. But as someone that has been in the sciences, I find that I think typically I don’t, I don’t really find many people that would have discussions about company valuations at that point. How did you even get to that point?

Gabriel Fung (04:28)
Yeah, I was actually looking purely at investing and just building wealth and starting early and that was really kind of where I started. It wasn’t focused specifically on biotech, I’d say, but given that I was from the science and academic field, I decided to look into that because that was something that I understood. And so when we look at it, you can think of any, let’s say, tech company, or it can even be a consumer.

Meeyeon (04:41)
Mm.

Gabriel Fung (04:57)
know, consumer’s business, like, what drives those valuations? And it’s a little bit easier and more tangible to understand in my opinion. But, you know, I’m like, okay, so how do I dive deep into this and understand the thesis for why there is something behind a consumer business or now compared to now a tech business? Like when an AI company comes to us that you hear all the time, there are many AI companies out there. We find this through AI algorithms. We do this using AI algorithms.

How do we sort through the junk there? How do we know which ones are actually good? You kind of need to have a little bit of the industry expertise to be able to look at that and actually make a call. And so I figured that I’ll lean into my strengths a little bit from the academic and scientific point of view that I could help look into then, you know, what’s a good drug? How do we understand clinical trials and their readouts and the mechanism of action and how those drugs are actually working?

To then also understand whether or not there is actual meat behind what a company claims on their websites and through their publications.

Meeyeon (06:04)
And we, okay, wait, we might not include this portion, it gets all edited. I don’t know if you want to talk about this, but remember that time that you did your own business venture prior to, like after, I think you were finishing your PhD and then before you went into equity research, you had your own business. I was in like education consulting.

Gabriel Fung (06:17)
You mean.

Yeah, there was a part in there that I was running a business on education. It started as educational tutoring business. It was like an academia, academy. But then a part of it became the value prop, which was peer mentorship. And so that was, I guess, a part of just understanding running a business. It was, yeah.

That was completely different and it’s hard to explain because when we eventually struck a deal with a company in Shanghai to open a satellite office over there to then establish partnerships between two different countries, that quickly fell apart because the deal, ⁓ not quickly fell apart, but over the next year, I started to realize that there was tensions between what the business owners wanted from the Chinese side compared to what the Canadian side was looking for. ⁓

Chinese side, how do I say, ⁓was hard. Their business goals were not aligned with mine in Canada. That was a mistake that I made that ultimately I had to walk away from because they had more voting rights in the end.

Meeyeon (07:34)
It’s interesting though, because then you’ve had so much ⁓ more, I guess, experience curricularized outside of what you studied for at that point in your life. ⁓ But when you take us through, when you finally decided, OK, like I’ve completed my PhD. I don’t think I want to pursue a career in academics. Then you had to start applying to jobs and then thinking about moving across to a different country.

Take us through what that was like for you. Because I would assume it’s very kind of stressful to think about, okay, I’ve spent so much of my life studying this. I thought I wanted to be a professor, and now all of a sudden, I’m going to go down a very different path.

Gabriel Fung (08:17)
Yeah, I think there was a lot of, I wouldn’t say haters, but naysayers to that thesis, to me going away from the academia because honestly, I loved it a lot and luckily I was good at it and I had the track record to continue to be very successful at it. What happened, I think, was me just having to lean into exactly what I knew what my strengths were. know, everyone’s career goals are going to be different and I think I understood that mine wasn’t going to be the very typical

academic type individual that I had to kind of stray from the regular path a little bit. And I think when it came to, I guess, growing up in Vancouver, you would very much know that in my opinion, anyone can rebuttal this if they like, but Vancouver was kind of narrow minded, especially at UBC, I think, like you go into a certain route, a program, you specialize in XYZ. You go to another program, you specialize in XYZ and that was it.

The truth was that I think there was a lot of opportunities out there that are not talked about at a university like UBC where there are kind of cross-functional roles. Where your expertise could play to be very useful in something else. And in my case, it was the science part of it to then investing in business. And so I think that was a scary path for me to go out and figure out on my own. I went and did a lot of mentorships and just

cold call discussions with people in different industries that may or may not even be specialized from the scientific point of view, but to understand, to ask them and understand what else is out there just to open up my eyes a little bit. And that’s kind of how I landed at a few different paths. One I think is pretty common for people to hear is one is management consulting and the other two, one of which was investment banking and equity research.

Luckily, I had an opportunity in all three and I made my decision based off of what I felt was best for me and the opportunity that was in front of me at that time to go to New York to explore and try equity research.

Meeyeon (10:24)
Yeah, and it’s interesting because people don’t necessarily have that exposure right away, ⁓ where you don’t realize that in university you can pursue whatever that you are most interested in, that you’re most passionate about, and hopefully you end up pursuing something that you love so much that you would then, not necessarily, not many people do this, but that you would pursue a PhD in. Because ultimately, find finance is so, it serves so many different interests, like for example,

having a background in biology is perfect. If you want to cover, let’s say you’re in traditional investment banking, healthcare sector, that’s a great place to be because they specifically seek out people with that type of academic experience because it’s not easy to understand. For example, going into industry coverage in healthcare with my background, which is a general business management degree, a commerce degree, that would be very difficult for me to understand.

In metals and mining, if you don’t come from an engineering background or a geography background, it’s very difficult to understand the operating model of the business and the actual business itself and the resource. So it’s really interesting to see that it wasn’t as accessible for you in university to know like, hey, I could do this. And if I want to go get a job in finance, it’s perfectly complementary.

Gabriel Fung (11:50)
Yeah, that’s right. Did seek a lot of help, discussions from career counselors and other resources that were at UBC. Didn’t find it all that helpful, in my opinion. But maybe just because the things that I was looking for may have not been there at that point, but maybe in other industries that were there.

Meeyeon (12:11)
And one thing I know just from knowing you is that something that I think is really interesting is that academics, particularly at the PhD level and wanting to become a professor, is highly competitive. And ⁓ it’s very similar to running a business where you kind of are the business itself. And so coming from a very academic background lends itself very well to going into finance because it is kind of at the heart of it very competitive. Would you still stand by that statement?

Gabriel Fung (12:37)
Yeah, yeah, this.

Yeah, there are definitely some translatable skills, I think, there between running your own research laboratory, you know, asking the good, the relevant scientific questions and going at it with limited resources and then same thing in finance to ask the right questions and to go ahead and say, like, to be able to drive that program to actually end up at a full recommendation.

so that the business can succeed. Think there are some translatable skills there. Clearly in a different setting, but definitely there’s some skills there.

Meeyeon (13:17)
Okay, so then I would love to get your, like take us back to when you first landed your role in equity research. You have generally a equity research from my knowledge. I have pretty good experience with it because I used to work in debt capital markets. It’s an intense job. There’s a lot of data analysis. There’s a lot of Excel. There’s a lot of financial statement analysis. Could have long hours, particularly during a earnings season.

How did you adjust to that? And did you find that you were kind of prepared day one on the job to do the literal tasks every single day to be able to do all that data analysis in Excel, to access all the information in Bloomberg? There’s just like so much skills that typically are like learned on the job. And I’m curious what your experience was like.

Gabriel Fung (14:11)
Yeah, there was a lot to be learned on the job. think ⁓ when I was interviewing for these equity research roles, what I ultimately came to find is I think I needed to have a baseline of just ⁓ industry expertise and ⁓ specialization that made sense to that specific role because I covered a very unique sector within healthcare that is. But on top of that, I think the groups were just willing to invest in my profile in terms of my work ethic

to show the grit that I think that was needed for this type of role. And the same thing with capital markets and banking. It is long hours. And to show them that I guess I had the thirst and the need to and the want to ⁓ prove that I’m more than just a bench top scientist. And that was, think, what they were, in my opinion, what the company or the bank was actually investing in me, is what they found the most attractive in.

For me, that was kind of a scary experience. I don’t think I fully understood what it took to be successful right away. And at the same time, I don’t think I was fully prepared for it either. And I think it’s really hard for me to understand that. I think it’s almost impossible because, again, I haven’t taken a single accounting class in my life or finance class. And going into this role, it was like, I generally know how to use Excel and build financial models and so on. But I never had…

the right training to feel validated in that. I can do what I want, but I don’t know if I’m doing the same mistake constantly over and over again. And so going into it for me, how I really tackled it was when I moved to New York for that, I dedicated every single second of my day from morning till night to just be open-minded to all the work that needed to be done that’s in the actual job at the office.

But in addition to that, I went into all those securities exams that you would need for equity research with basically a very, very humble mind. Telling myself that I don’t know these things, but I can learn today. Going in and ROI meant something very different to me. From a scientific point of view, that was the region of interest as opposed to return on investment.

And you know, what does fair value mean? What does all those kind of things and and and to really just go into understand all the fundamentals and To tell myself every day when I after I finished a 12 plus hour workday to then go home or I personally went to a hotel lobby those like a lounge and I just studied there it was easier for me to stay focused and a study, know for a few more hours every day until I got my exams done and I was telling myself

I’ve done a lot more things, harder things than just learn some accounting and finance. So why not put a few more hours here for the next few months to get these, and bang these exams out.

Meeyeon (17:15)
My God, what a very mature thing to do.

Gabriel Fung (17:18)
It was, I had to be like that, honestly. think I was forced to be like that because if it wasn’t then you know I would have to, probably lose my visa and have to go back to Canada and not be able to explore that part of my, you know, part of my interest that is. So I really did force myself into it. By the same time, you know, like I liked it. So it wasn’t hard in that sense. I really do think someone’s gonna like what they do to go through, put themselves through work hours of 12 to 14 hours a day and then afterwards study for another three or four hours. Yeah.

Meeyeon (17:47)
Study on top of it. And

that’s where probably there’s a lot of transferable skills and passions between academics and equity research, which is like a lot of just learning and being passionate about learning and being able to dedicate yourself to like all the milestones that are involved, passing series, whatever exams and potentially do the CFA, all that kind of stuff. You’ve done a lot more challenging things typically when you have pursued a PhD than really any exam in finance.

Gabriel Fung (18:18)
Yeah, I yeah, I really agree with that. I would, I think just being a lifelong learner, summing up like that, continue to be a lifelong learner, and to be able to kind of shift to where the market’s moving, but also where my own interests are moving, to continue to just be happy to stay sane and to be a valuable contributor to society.

Meeyeon (18:42)
And so take us from your very first job in finance to where you are today, and maybe tell us some of the highs, high points, and the lower points that you experienced.

Gabriel Fung (18:54)
Yeah, that’s a great question. For those of you that don’t know, of course, I started in equity research after my PhD. I spent about five years there. But I today work in corporate development, or some people call it corporate development, business development, but primarily by side. And I’ll get to that in a moment. But starting back after my graduate studies and in equity research,

low days were primarily just when, I think when, you know, if I made a mistake at work, sometimes it would be really tough to swallow because I think, you know, just explaining the 12 to 14 hours of work and then on top of that studying, it could really be draining. And I was there by myself, you know, I and moved to New York without a single other network. You know, it was just, there was no one to really call on other than actual virtual phone call, but even times of differences made it different. Yeah.

Meeyeon (19:49)
My gosh, you should have told me. I know this is like a bit of an aside, but I wish you would have told me then I could have at least set you up from with some UBC students that were in finance that worked there. Yeah.

Gabriel Fung (19:52)
Right. Over there.

Yeah, yeah, no, I probably could have also done more to go seek more help. I think those are also my rough days and I just tell myself like this, you know, no excuses, just success. I gotta discontinue to put my head down. I honestly think that the work and the work ethic, ⁓ the long hours and even just studying was not even the hardest part. In my personal opinion, the hardest part to all of that was

when you spend that much time with those people at work, especially the small teams, right? ⁓ In equity research, you really, really, really got to enjoy working with your manager and your teammates. And even if you do, you also want to make sure that you guys have the right chemistry in every way, not just like on the pure content of the work, but also just like from a friendship level, personal level. And I think that, yeah.

Meeyeon (20:52)
Yeah, you have to be able to joke and be able to kind of talk about stuff that’s in the news and like basically

bring up any topic that’s not work-related so that you’re able to kind of like keep your sanity because you’re there for like 12 hours, right?

Gabriel Fung (21:04)
Yeah, yeah, these people ultimately become your family then at times. You’re immersed with them every day. And when they text and call and need help or the other way around, you do expect on both sides ⁓ immediate responses, as you would know, also from the banking sector. So that was, I think that was my hardest time because I think I put myself in situations in the past where I didn’t have the best chemistry with…

with my teammates or managers and I just needed to put that aside and just keep grinding through it. That’s just the nature of things. Not everyone’s going to have a good manager or a good boss in any industry. And so I just need to be humble about that and tell myself that I’m not alone in this. I just gotta keep cranking at that.

Meeyeon (21:51)
Yeah, and like that’s,

and it’s so hard, especially in the beginning, because when you’re looking for your first job in equity research or your first job in capital markets, first job in ⁓ &A, those jobs are hard to come by as it is. Like for every like 100 applicants, maybe you’ll have one get an interview and then eventually it’s like of the 10 from the 1000 resumes, you’re gonna hire one. So you’re not gonna get to choose. You’re not gonna go in there and be like, I’m gonna be really picky about like which investment bank I work for.

If you’re applying for Goldman Sachs and you get a job, then that’s great. Like that’s all that matters. And it’s really luck of the draw. You’d be extremely fortunate, I think, in your career to be able to work with really amazing people that you respect, admire, and want to emulate from day one. And I think it’s really important to actually go through the challenging pieces earlier on in your life and be able to work with people that you don’t see eye to eye with, who you would rather not be sitting for 12, 14 hours a day with, and to be able to learn how to…

like tolerate that, but not even tolerate that, but just to be able to be your best self throughout that type of situation and learn how to navigate those scenarios early on, I think sets you up for a ton of success in the future. To be able to learn those tough lessons and go through that kind of hardship process when you are not married, don’t have children, don’t have huge financial obligations, makes it a lot easier.

Gabriel Fung (23:16)
Yeah, you brought up lot of good points there. ⁓ I think that those skills are very useful for anyone in any industry. Of course, not just in the banking or in equity research, but especially when you spend X amount of hours with someone every day, anywhere. It could be like a roommate. If you don’t have the right roommate, it could make your life a lot harder.

Right? But it can also make life a lot better when you do have the right one. And so, you know, I admit that when I went in, it was tougher for me because like I just had to accept the fact that if I didn’t put up with this, that I would lose my visa. And so it was harder for me to just think that, I can just go to another bank right in the beginning, especially when I, you know, I still haven’t really completed my exams yet, like that kind of thing. was…

I haven’t really fully proven to Wall Street that I was just more than just a bench top scientist. I think that was where it was the hardest. Afterwards, I think when I built my reputation, both with the buy side and of course sell side, ⁓ when opportunities did come, I think the biggest thing I’ve heard from these recruiters or even the straight up hiring managers that reached out to me directly,

What my value proposition was that they wanted another, how do you say, a scientific PhD that could both do the science part of it, but also the finance part of it. And they didn’t want to have to teach someone that because I think they have found a lot of PhDs. can hire PhDs or MDs from different universities. A lot of them couldn’t get themselves out of the mindset that they are in academics and academia that they, to go to.

How to say I think there’s a skill in itself and just understanding the science but not having to put it all in like Deep deep detail that they know it because honestly not all watch we have to know that it’s packaging Putting it all in the right package the business thesis and investment thesis Why what why should I buy the stock and then wash it by today or not or sell the stock? Why should I sell it later or today? Right, and how do you put numbers behind that without having to get into the

the details because there’s just so much information nowadays? I think that skill set was ultimately what had me being able to kind of flip the table in a sense that later in my career in equity research, when I did have opportunities come in front of me, I got to pick and choose and I was choosing between managers, so to say, at that point and the banks, mostly because I’ve already proven to myself and the street that I can do both the science and the finance piece of it.

I think that this profile is relatively rare.

Meeyeon (26:07)
And okay, that leads me to the question of, I think more technical sectors ⁓ require generally more academic backgrounds, but what do you think is more difficult to learn? The sector, is for you in bioscience or, okay, what is the right terminology? Is it bio?

Gabriel Fung (26:23)
Biotechnology or biofarm. Yeah, sure.

Meeyeon (26:28)
Okay, bye, I’ll redo that. Okay.

So what do you think is more difficult to teach from ⁓ coming from a very technical sector, biotech or equity research, like the skill set behind that? Like what do you think is harder to teach some?

Gabriel Fung (26:45)
Biotech. And I say that because a short way of summarizing what I’m about to say is that it’s easier to teach a scientist some business than it is to teach a business person some science. And so that’s why, in my opinion, it’s easier for a scientist to come onto Wall Street and to learn the business side of things than the other way around

for someone that’s maybe a more generalist or anywhere else in the, let’s say in the finance kind of background to then go in and jump into biotech and say, and look at a drug and be like, well, what does this mean? What does that mean? And then ROI means something very different to them, right? So it’s a little bit harder in that sense. When you read an academic paper, the language in itself, of course, is English, but the way that they talk, the vocabulary, it’s very different from

Meeyeon (27:28)
Yeah.

Gabriel Fung (27:46)
any other thing you would read? It takes a lot of practice to understand how an academic paper reads and to really quickly know where to look, what to look for, what kind of language gives you red flags, that kind of thing. Whereas I think a business person, it would be harder for them to learn that piece.

Meeyeon (28:06)
And so after you’ve went through the almost like initiation, so to speak, which is that hard work passing those exams and the really kind of tough three, I would say the first like three to five years in your career in finance is really, really challenging. It requires just a lot of dedication. Basically your personal life is like not super existent at that point, but after going through and making like making your way through that chapter, how did you end up where you are today?

Gabriel Fung (28:37)
Yeah, you know, actually, I think I would say that at both three year time frame, I realized that ⁓ in finance, at least for for for at least my field in biotech, and I think this is broadly applicable to other industries as well. That’s about three years in, if you don’t want to be a long-term equity research analyst, big name, big bank, that kind of thing,

doing more than three years doesn’t really help all that much. You’ve learned all the translatable skills to bring you to something else. And something else can be packaged, in my opinion, in two or three different ways. And that’s when I realized. So I had to ask, that’s the fork in the road for me, ask the question to myself, do I want to stay in equity research? Do I want to stay in, or not? I think that was the first question. Yes or no? And the answer was no, equity research was not going to be the end goal.

I really liked my manager and the team and the bank that I was at that time, so I spent two more years there to a total of about five years in equity research just to hone in. think that was like the execution phase. I think I was just executed very well in those last two to three years. But then when I answered the question for myself, like, no, it’s not going to help me that much more to stay in equity research at this point than what are those other options? And all the options, in my opinion, at least specifically for me, one which is there was one that…

You could go to actual banking, stay in the finance side of it and go to banking. Yeah.

Meeyeon (30:07)
Yeah, I know that’s like, it’s kind of a backwards, like typically people end up like start off at industry group and then, okay, they look maybe about crap on markets, but you don’t really see the reverse happening.

Gabriel Fung (30:16)
Yeah. Funny.

Meeyeon (30:18)
But it was an option.

It’s not like a super attractive option, but it is an option.

Gabriel Fung (30:22)
It is, yeah, it wasn’t an option. It wasn’t attractive option, yes, you’re right. Another one was then to go to banking, I started off by buy side. So that’s, know, any of things like from venture and hedge funds, PE, right? Everything which we just like exploring all those different options and you kind of like, what’s your style? You can kind of go to those ones. So I just generally bucket that as buy side. And then in my opinion, the last option then the third option is corporate.

Meeyeon (30:36)
PE, everything in between.

Gabriel Fung (30:52)
And when I mean corporate, some people go to straight thing, you know, straight into like things like FP and a roles. And some people go into investor relation roles. Some people go into corporate development roles. So there’s different buckets within that too. And, I asked myself and had the very honest conversations that what do I like about this job the most? And do I plan to stay on, you know, in finance, so to say, the core first question, do I plan to stay in finance would help me eliminate the first two answers.

Meeyeon (31:19)
Yeah.

Gabriel Fung (31:19)
Right?

Banking and like basically buy side. And I said, no, I don’t plan to stay in finance. But what do I like them? What do I like about the most about this job? And what fits to my personal needs? Part of this is actually like, you know, be navigating this with my own personal needs, ⁓ which was, you know, my wife had moved to New York with me. And so you know, if I was working 14 hours a day, it was very, you she left her home,

Meeyeon (31:25)
Interesting.

Gabriel Fung (31:44)
family, and friends circle to come here. So my point around is that, you know, to be respectful of that, but also because I don’t care to be working 14, 15 hours a day, especially at that kind of that pace, I needed to kind of shift out of finance too. So that was a part of my decision as well. So finance wasn’t the thing, but what did I like about the most about kind of now being kind of in between the science part of it and then like the financial part of it.

And the question, I mean, the answer that I landed on was that I really enjoyed ⁓ strategic transactions the most. What I mean strategic transactions, could be partnerships, could be ⁓ corporate venture, it could be also M&A. Doing those and guiding and advising on those were, in my opinion, the most important and most exciting parts about the job. ⁓ So I started looking at ⁓ a corporate.

And then within corporate, I eliminated restorations because you don’t do any of that kind of stuff there. But then I kept looking into corporate development and business development type work, transaction partnerships, that kind of thing. And so that’s how I ended up going ⁓ going now into the corporate development route. And I said, you know, why not? I mean, of course, it has to be a science company that I’m going to lean into. And so I worked at first this company called 10x genomics. That’s a that’s…

how say, it’s a laboratory tool, a very innovative one, a very, very, very good, I think in my opinion, from a scientific point of view, a lot of good information that can come out of that type of technology. And I was doing m&a and strategic partnerships for 10x genomics. Through time, their coffers started to dry up a little bit, and so my role started to shift towards alliance management, and how that ended up was just like, you this

not interesting, I’d leave finance and take a massive pay cut to just do alliance management now. And so I had the opportunity to then I was recommended to refer to a company called Exact Sciences. And if anyone’s listening to this from in America, you think about those commercials for a product called Coligard, it’s a diagnostic, it’s a screening. So basically helps patients screen for colorectal cancer.

There’s other parts to this too, but that’s the main product that they sell in the industry. And here at ExactSciences, I lead corporate development for a part of a division called Precision Oncology. So focused again on &A and strategic transactions, and also when there are opportunities for venture investments, I also do those.

Meeyeon (34:34)
And so to this point in your career and everything that we’ve chatted about so far, I think that you’re going to come off as maybe one of the most well-planned, pregnant, and pragmatic with your career. It sounds like you’ve really got everything sort of figured out. And so with that said, I’m curious, what do you think your career will look like in five to 10 years?

Gabriel Fung (34:59)
I don’t know if I figured it out, so to say, but I do think I know I have landed on something that I really, really enjoy. I honestly really like my work. Yeah, that has good balance, not just between my own personal life. In corporate development and business development, there’s lot of, there’s ebbs and flows of work. Sometimes it is a lot of work. Just, when you have a live deal going on or multiple live deals, just like it is in banking, you’re crunching all the time, 14, 15 hour days. And then sometimes,

Meeyeon (35:08)
Good balance.

Gabriel Fung (35:28)
there’s, you know, it’s just, there’s not much going on. And, you know, the whole industry is starting to fall apart or, you know, like political things change it and make it so that there’s not much work to do for a little bit. And you start to look for different opportunities. It’s a little bit more of proactively thinking about how do we shift work now as opposed to like having to work on a live deal and there’s more time to do the other, you know, the former there. I really, I think that worked very well for me in business development.

I’m sorry, your initial question was? yes. Right. And then so in five to 10 years, I still think see myself walking a similar path. But what does that mean, at least for this development? think when you think about like when people go into certain industries or roles, like whether it’s banking or corporate development, whatever it may be, they generally have like, they might think of it like a stepping stone, they know exactly where that gets them to.

Meeyeon (36:01)
Where do you think you’ll be in like five to 10 years?

Gabriel Fung (36:29)
In business development, it’s not entirely clear what generally comes next for anyone who might want to move on from corporate development or business development-type roles at some point. Some people go on to become a chief business officer. Some people just go on to leading a division or becoming a general manager of a division. In five to 10 years, what I think is reasonable for me, at least, or let’s say five years, being a VP of a division,

in the BD role that is, makes sense. I would be very happy with that. If there was a very exciting opportunity that came along to, let’s say, like be a GM of a smaller business, I would absolutely love that. But I honestly think I still have a lot more learning to get there. Just being humbly speaking, is. I think on the 10-year timeframe, that’s probably much more attainable.

Some people become Chief Business Officers of their respective businesses. In this case, this company doesn’t have a Chief Business Officer, but that doesn’t mean that that role can’t be created at some point as well. Because in some ways that we did have one, I mean, actually we didn’t officially have that title, but there were different roles in the C-suite level that did encompass almost entirely the BD type function.

Meeyeon (37:37)
Created, yeah.

Gabriel Fung (37:55)
There could be an opportunity there and in my opinion that’s up to me to control the controllables and if it means that I can convince the business to create that business, I mean that role for me at some point, then yes, but as of right now that doesn’t exist for the business. They have other functions, I think it’s kind of been consolidated to a few different roles that you wouldn’t think that they have BD, but they do kind of overlook my position here.

Meeyeon (38:24)
And on the, I think a great way to wrap up our podcast, because you’ve had such a good breadth as well as depth of experience, all of our listeners are going to be from various different parts of the world and various different parts of their career. But at your current stage, with all of the experience that you’ve had, if you could give someone that is thinking of transitioning from academics or as some very different line of work into equity research.

What would be your kind of like nugget of advice you would give them?

Gabriel Fung (38:59)
I would say go in with the best attitude possible. And the reason why I say that is because ⁓ when you have the best attitude, think you immediately already have a leg up on not the thought that it’s a competition, but on your colleagues that are going to be fighting for that same position at some point when you want to become the VP of your team in equity research or own your own coverage universe.

You really need to go in with a good attitude and manage up, in my opinion. That’s, I think, that’s an opportunity that’s a skill set that applies again to all careers. Wherever you are, know how to manage your team if you have a team that reports to you. But also manage up to manage your own boss and also their colleagues to the point where they already see that you’re doing their job for them so that they can they can more or less at some point when the opportunity comes promote you into those roles, would say go in with an opportunity to take your opportunity to demonstrate your skills at skill sets as best as possible.