Raising capital in biotech in 2025 is not about luck. It is about discipline, planning, and the ability to execute under pressure. CFOs must preserve runway, push science forward, and compete for investor attention in an environment where transactions move slowly and urgency is rare.
Auxilius’s Erin Warner Guill spoke with Kelly Gold, CFO of CAMP4 Therapeutics, about the realities of managing a biotech’s finances today and the skills required to be a trusted steward of capital when every dollar is under the microscope. Below is a lightly edited summary of this discussion.
You have been in the CFO seat through very different market cycles. How does your outlook for 2025 compare to what we have been hearing from other industry leaders?
Kelly: The nature of what investors are looking for has not changed, but the timelines have. Because there are so many companies raising capital at any given point, and there is an imbalance between supply and demand, things are just taking longer to happen. There is not really a sense of competition or urgency. From the operator’s perspective, we are hearing from investors that they are interested in the story, but there are so many stories coming to them and they have to prioritize those names that have nearer term catalysts. You do feel like you are competing for investor attention and in some cases having to create a sense of urgency where there otherwise is none.
How do you see the role of the CFO during a period of uncertainty like this?
Kelly: It is about being a very good financial steward. Every dollar is so precious because the cost of capital is so high. You have to know where every dollar is going, and there cannot be any black boxes of spend. You have to be able to justify to your investors, to your board, and to your collegues why you are choosing to deploy capital in certain areas and not others. You also have to know what you would do if things got worse. That is an uncomfortable thought exercise sometimes, but you can never be caught off guard.
What is the most under appreciated challenge for a CFO right now?
Kelly: I probably will be the first person to say this publicly, but I think a CFO can actually be a steward of culture. It is really easy to be the heavy handed cutter of costs. It is not easy to do that in a way that still engenders optimism across your group of employees, who are seeing cuts and seeing their peers at other companies losing jobs. To continue to tighten your belt in a way that does not make it evident that you are facing leaner and leaner times is important and underappreciated. Done the right way, you can create a sense of ownership that the financial fate of the company is in everyone’s hands. It can be a rallying cry for people to come together, think creatively, and believe in the mission even when they have to do more with less.
You have a background in FP&A. How does that shape how you track and manage spend as a CFO?
Kelly: I would be lost without my accounting counterparts. Anybody who chooses a career in finance is inherently data driven. It is very hard to affect change around spend without being able to show people at a granular level what historical performance has been. Where have we historically been spending? Where are places we did not realize we were spending as much as we are? Where can we be more efficient? Sometimes, my business counterparts are surprised by some of the data we share, but it is having that data that gets people on board with initiatives to reduce costs or change behavior. Reducing costs is not necessarily saying we will no longer spend on something. It is saying we will figure out, based on our data, how to do it in a better, more efficient way.
Finance and clinical operations often operate in silos. How do you build a strong partnership between them?
Kelly: There has to be a true relationship there. You really need to be embedded with regulatory, early discovery, and clinical operations. For clinical especially, because it tends to represent such a large proportion of expenditures, I spend a lot of my time talking to them. These programs can change significantly for reasons that have nothing to do with finance. Changes in enrollment speed, site activation, or geography can all have significant influence on the timing of expenses.
As a finance professional, you can ask basic questions like when are we starting, how many patients, when is the last patient out, and when is the final report. But I like to go deeper: what are the drivers and risks? When are we going to decide to deploy dollars into a second geography, and how will we know it is de-risked enough? Have we thought about more sites in a single geography instead of multiple? You want to be thought of as a true business partner, not the last person to know when something is over budget.
R&D is often the largest expense bucket for a biotech. How do you manage that spend while also managing cash flow?
Kelly: We take a critical look at the pipeline and think about not just what can we fund, but what should we fund. What will have an impact on patients and be appealing to investors? At the same time, we focus on the timing between expense and cash outlay. CRO payments are typically sporadic and quite chunky when they happen. For a non-revenue generating company, knowing when those large payments are going to hit is critical for runway management.
What does future proofing your financing strategy look like in 2025?
Kelly: Every dollar is so precious. You have to know where it is going, be able to justify it, and be ready to act if things get leaner before they get better.
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