-- Nick Veringmeier traces his career in Life Sciences Marketing back to an unlikely starting point: a sneeze over a set of petri dishes during his studies in Biomedical Sciences.
"The experiment survived. My reputation did not," Nick recalls. He describes the incident as a turning point that, in hindsight, foreshadowed the direction his career would eventually take. While studying alongside classmates who were focused on perfecting their experiments, Nick found himself drawn to a different question entirely.
"What fascinated me wasn't just the science itself," he says. "It was why some ideas captured people's attention while others didn't."
When Great Science Isn't Enough
After university, Nick worked across pharma and healthcare, holding roles at Quintiles, Grünenthal, Almirall, AbbVie, and Sandoz, before joining Xendo in Leiden, where he worked with biotech and pharmaceutical companies developing new therapies.
It was during this period that he began to notice a pattern that would shape his thinking for years to come. "The companies with the strongest science were often not the companies getting the most attention," he says. "Some struggled to attract investors. Others struggled to attract customers, partners, or talent. Meanwhile, companies with objectively less impressive technology sometimes seemed to generate momentum everywhere they went."
Nick says his initial instinct was to attribute this to investor behaviour, but he came to a different conclusion. "The explanation was usually much simpler," he says. "One company could explain why its innovation mattered. The other assumed everyone already understood."
The Communication Gap
According to Veringmeier, this pattern repeated consistently throughout his time in life sciences. He describes founders as deeply immersed in their own technology, familiar with every experiment, setback, and technical distinction, while audiences encountering the work are hearing the story for the first time.
"I've sat through enough pitch decks to develop a mild allergy to the phrase 'revolutionary platform technology,'" he says. "Not because the technology isn't interesting, but because it is usually followed by fifteen slides explaining how something works before a single slide explaining why anyone should care."
In Nick's assessment, investors are not questioning whether a founder understands the underlying science. What they are seeking to understand, he says, is why the innovation matters: what problem it solves, why it matters now, why it is different, and why they should care.
"Those sound like simple questions," he says. "They aren't."
His broader conclusion is that the life sciences industry is filled with people solving difficult scientific problems, but that many companies treat communication as a secondary consideration that follows the science rather than running alongside it. "In reality, commercialization starts much earlier," he says.
How Commercialization Starts Earlier Than Most People Think
Nick’s position is that companies are competing for attention long before any product reaches the market. A biotech startup pitching investors, a CRO seeking new clients, a CDMO pursuing new projects, and a scale-up hiring talent are all, in his framing, engaged in the same underlying competition for attention, funding, partnerships, and trust.
"The challenge is not always having the best science," he says. "Sometimes the challenge is helping other people understand why the science matters."
Reflecting on this pattern across his career, Nick says he came to see it as a recurring issue rather than an isolated one. "Many life sciences companies didn't have a science problem," he says. "They had a communication problem."
Starting JPP Life Sciences Marketing & BD
Nick founded JPP Life Sciences Marketing & BD following the acquisition of the company he had been working for, a transition he describes as prompting a period of reflection about what to do next.
"At the same time, I kept seeing the same challenge appear in startup after startup, scale-up after scale-up, and service provider after service provider," he says. "Brilliant people were building valuable technologies but struggling to explain them. I started wondering whether I could help solve that problem."
That question became the foundation for JPP, which Nick describes as working with biotech companies, pharmaceutical companies, CROs, CDMOs, and other life sciences organisations on marketing, business development, positioning, lead generation, content, conferences, and commercialization. He characterises the firm's model as functioning not as a traditional agency but as an extension of each client's internal team.
Where Nick Veringmeier Has Ended Up
Alongside JPP, Nick is co-founder of FutureofCGT.com, a platform focused on cell and gene therapy, and creator of ScienzAndLives.com, a comic series he describes as a way of engaging with the industry he works in.
Looking back across his career, Nick maintains the view that the central challenge in biotech is rarely the science itself. "The science is often remarkable," he says. "The challenge is helping the rest of the world understand why it matters."
About Nick Veringmeier
Nick Veringmeier is the founder of JPP Life Sciences Marketing & BD, the only Dutch agency dedicated exclusively to life sciences marketing and business development. He has held commercial and business development roles at Quintiles, Grünenthal, Almirall, AbbVie, Sandoz, and Xendo/ProPharma Group. He is also co-founder of FutureofCGT.com and creator of ScienzAndLives.com. JPP is recognized by Health~Holland as an Innovation Broker and works alongside biotech, pharma, CRO, CDMO, and life sciences organizations as a long-term marketing and business development partner.
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