With previous roles like scientist and startup CEO, Linda Spahiu Elvesjö’s background is ideal for investing in companies that’ll make a difference in patients’ lives and provide strong returns. As Principal at Sound Bioventure, this globally minded Ph.D. is especially interested in projects that cross borders and continents.
Spahiu Elvesjö speaks nearly half a dozen languages. Her fluency ranges from basic to the level of a native speaker. Based just outside Stockholm, Spahiu Elvesjö credits a big part of her multi-lingual abilities to the fact that she’s originally from Albania.
“Albanians, in general, speak a lot of languages,” she explains, noting that as a child, everything on TV was in another language. “That’s what happens when you come from a really small country instead of a larger one with an international language.”
Another major factor was the fact that Spahiu Elvesjö moved around quite a bit in her formative years. She and her family eventually settled in Sweden, where she attended secondary school.
An unexpected transition
In 2008, Spahiu Elvesjö graduated from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm with a master’s in engineering and biotechnology. After a few years as a pharmaceutical scientist, she began working towards a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Karolinska Institutet and moved into consulting. There was some postdoctoral work after completing her degree in 2014, but by the end of 2015, Spahiu Elvesjö was an analyst and expert focused on healthcare and medtech at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In 2020, she left the global firm to be chief executive officer at a small startup in cancer diagnostics.
“I thought I would be building biotech companies as a CEO and other roles like that,” says Spahiu Elvesjö, who left the company after about a year and a half. It ultimately proved serendipitous. The company’s former board chair thought she’d be a good fit as an investment manager and recruited Spahiu Elvesjö for a position at Karolinska Development.
“Initially, I was a little bit unsure if it was the right move,” she recalls about the career transition. “But then once I actually got into it, I liked it. I felt like I’d found a home in a way.”
Advantages from the lab to the C-suite
For Spahiu Elvesjö, each experience from her background has its own advantage as an investor.
Her tenure as a CEO, for example, provides a unique ability for navigating contrasting views between a company’s board of directors and C-suite. “When a board thinks that, ‘Oh, why aren’t they doing A, B, C?’ Then maybe, at least I know of other difficulties and reasons why management does things differently or wants to do things differently,” says Spahiu Elvesjö.
She often finds herself drawing from the structure and insights of business analysis she learned at BCG. Meanwhile, her roles in the labs and time spent working on her Ph.D. allow her to dive deep into and understand clinical or scientific papers.
All put together, they set Spahiu Elvesjö apart as an investor. “I think it’s the combination of experiences that’s an edge for me,” she says.
From her previous experiences, Spahiu Elvesjö also knew she enjoyed projects that were spread out between different countries and even continents — relishing opportunities to speak a different language or interact with another culture. It was a key draw for her to join the Sound Bioventures team.
“Sound Bioventures is truly an international investment fund,” Spahiu Elvesjö explains. “I look forward to broaden my horizons through projects outside of Scandinavia.”
“You have to understand how it actually works, not just that it works”
As a Principal at Sound Bioventures, Spahiu Elvesjö’s involvement in any potential investment can be expected in a variety of ways — due diligence, deal flow, and portfolio management. She’ll also represent the fund and influence companies it’s invested in through board work.
In terms of any types of therapies that Spahiu Elvesjö may focus on, she prefers to maintain the Sound Bioventure commitment to being uncommitted. “We are therapeutic area agnostic,” she says, “which I think is a good thing because you don’t want to be too locked into specifics.
However, Spahiu Elvesjö stresses that no matter what, there will always need to be a strong foundation in science and an understanding of that foundation.
She explains that investors can’t change the scientific basis for a therapy or treatment. There are any number of ways to adapt and transform strategies to get to market or optimize development. Yet investment success isn’t possible without knowing the scientific mechanism behind a product.
“You have to understand how it actually works, not just that it works,” says Spahiu Elvesjö. “I think that’s where investment and science really complement each other and have the same objective.”
Find out about the other unique members of the Sound Bioventures team!
