What Makes a Good CEO? Steve Lo, Former Valitor CEO, Has Answers
By Niki Borghei.
Steve Lo is one of the more experienced CEOs we’ve had at Bakar Labs. He rose through the ranks in 13 years at Genentech before leading commercial operations at Corcept Therapeutics and Puma Biotechnology. After making the leap to CEO at Zosano Pharma, he became CEO of Valitor, which graduated from Bakar Labs in March 2023. Steve recently moved to a new leadership role at Vaxart, a South San Francisco-based company developing “vaccine-in-a-pill” solutions for influenza, Covid, and norovirus.
Seasoned leaders are one of the hallmarks of a successful biotech company. But what makes a good CEO? We asked Steve what he learned along his leadership journey.
Lesson 1: Have the mindset of a mentor.
“The only reason why I am where I am in my career is because someone took it upon themselves to mentor me about my growth in the biotech industry,” Steve says.
A “mentorship mentality” shapes the trajectory of aspiring leaders. By mentoring others, leaders not only hone their technical knowledge but also practice crucial soft skills such as effective communication. Moreover, mentorship fosters a sense of community and support, enabling CEOs to cultivate a strong network, which brings us to Steve’s next lesson.
Lesson 2: Embrace serendipity.
“When I was thinking about my next move, Valitor made a lot of sense,” Steve says. “One of the reasons was I had never worked in an incubator, and I wanted to work with an early-stage startup. When I visited Bakar Labs for the first time and experienced the energy of this place, I thought, this would be an incredible place to meet others.”
The beauty of the Bakar ecosystem, he says, is how easy it is to make connections. Even moments of down time — making tea, grabbing snacks — become opportunities for serendipitous connections that alter the course of your career for the better.
Lesson 3: Be comfortable with adapting to things outside of your control.
Steve eventually became an advisor to Julian Rees, CEO of another Bakar Labs tenant, HOPO Therapeutics. Steve took this as an opportunity to pass along another key lesson he learned as CEO: Stretch yourself — always learn new things and keep an open mind. That includes, he says, accepting when things are out of your control.
Known as the “wartime CEO” in one of his former roles at Zosano Pharma when he took over the company in late 2019 at the start of the pandemic, he had to learn the art of adapting quickly. Within four months of his tenure, he was running the company virtually for the first time.
“That was out of my control, and I just had to learn how to adapt to that,” he says. “You can apply that same lesson to the financing environment. I’m sure there are a lot of early-stage CEOs right now who are worried about how long it takes them to get their funding. Some advice I’ve imparted on the CEOs I mentor is that we cannot control the financing environment, but what you can control is generating good data. Financing environments change all the time. Focus on your science.”
So what have we learned? Good leadership isn’t just about having the right technical knowledge. Good leaders need to shift the way they think. CEOs recognize that success is not measured merely by financial metrics. Rather, it’s about leaving a legacy of social-impact driven innovation, shaping not only the future of one company, but also outlook and outcomes in the biotech industry as a whole.
