Before You Tell Investors How, Tell Them Why

On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, I was in synagogue listening to a magnificent and poignant sermon by our rabbi, Marcia Zimmerman.

She spoke about the Jewish New Year as a time to reflect on our lives and an opportunity for all of us to begin anew. As she described the need for each of us to persevere and maintain our sense of self during these turbulent and divisive times in which we are living, she referenced a book that has sat on my bookshelf for years and that, I believe, should be read by every CEO and investor in our industry: Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, wrote about the importance of knowing your why. His insight was profound: when people have a reason to endure, they can find a way through extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

It made me think about a conversation I recently had with Robert Blum, CEO of Cytokinetics , whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in a fireside chat at Demy-Colton's BIO CEO conference earlier this summer in California.

Until the week before the conference, Robert and I had never met. As we got to know each other during our pre-conference phone call, it turned out we had quite a bit in common.

We are both children of Holocaust survivors. Earlier in his career, Robert worked for Marion Laboratories and Syntex Pharmaceutical, both important, long-standing clients of my first consulting firm, Migliara-Kaplan. And Robert and I both had Frankl’s book on our shelves, well earmarked.

But what struck me most during our conversation was Robert’s unflagging commitment to patients.

When asked by one of the conference attendees about the impact of MFN (most favored nation) on the recent launch of Myqorzo outside of the US, his answer, paraphrased, was simple:

“The drug was studied in global clinical trials that enrolled participants across many countries.  We believe we have a moral and a corporate responsibility anchored in our science to ensure it is accessible to patients at an equitable price that local markets can support.  We believe we are accountable to all of our stakeholders and doing right by patients is good for business.”

That’s a why.

It’s succinct. It’s powerful. And you immediately understand something about the company and the people leading it.

Last week, listening to several pharma earnings calls, I heard plenty about the how: revenue growth, profitability, payer challenges, pipeline development. What I heard far less often was why the company mattered in the first place.

That omission matters.

Our industry spends years, often billions of dollars, taking enormous scientific and financial risks to develop medicines that improve and extend lives. Most compounds fail. The few that succeed have survived an extraordinarily demanding process.

Yet when companies tell their stories, too often all of that can quickly get reduced to revenue growth, margins, payer access, cash runway, and earnings.

Those things matter enormously. But they are the how.

The public sees the price and their out-of-pocket cost. Investors see the burn rate. Payers see the budget impact. What gets lost is the value being created for physicians and their patients, the problem being solved, and the reason the company exists in the first place.

The how matters. But it should follow the why.

So whether or not you're celebrating the year 5787 of the Jewish calendar, as we head toward another earnings season, the investment banking conferences, and eventually JPMorgan, I'd encourage every CEO to consider beginning the company story somewhere else:

• Why does your company exist?

• Why will your products make patients' lives better?

• Why do you and your employees get up every morning to do this extraordinarily difficult work?

Then tell investors how you're going to succeed. If they know and understand the company’s why, they’ll be more patient and forgiving if that success takes longer and costs somewhat more than originally anticipated.

I wish all of you a happy and healthy remainder of 2026.