Most regrets in a U.S. expansion traces back to a handful of decisions made before anyone thought to question them and they split cleanly into two categories:
· the space itself,
· and the strategy behind it.
Getting one right without the other may turn a promising U.S. entry into a five-year constraint.
In this session, Joe Judge and Alex Nuyken will walk through the four tests worth applying to any space:
· Your landlord. A landlord who has never served life science tenants learns your lab requirements on your dime. Look for a genuine track record, not just available square footage.
· Building infrastructure. A building without adequate power becomes a ceiling you discover only after signing. Confirm capacity and headroom before you commit, not after.
· The lease. A lease timed to a generic template outlives your funding certainty. Termination, expansion, and renewal rights should match your horizon, not the landlord's.
· Capital preservation. Capital that should fund hiring and R&D goes into building out raw space instead. Functional labs and minimal buildout keep it where it belongs.
The space is only one lens. The other is strategy and "we want to be near Boston" is not a decision so much as a placeholder for several different ones. Kendall Square and the Route 128 corridor sit in the same metro area but serve very different combinations of cost, talent access, culture, and growth headroom, and those objectives are rarely weighted the same way for any two companies.
Joe and Alex will walk through a simple scorecard, what they call a Perfect Lease Index, for testing any location or lease against your own weighted objectives.
One model many companies overlook: entering fast and capital-light through co-working lab space, and graduating into a dedicated facility once the market and the funding is proven - that too we will discuss.
Why This Is Relevant for You
Where you locate is a strategic decision that in terms of capital, culture, and how easily the company can pivot. Getting it wrong can be costly.
Some Questions two think about:
Has anyone scored your target location against your own weighted objectives — cost, talent, culture, growth, or have you just been looking at rent?
If your headcount plan changed materially tomorrow, would your space help you or constrain you?
Speakers
Joe Judge is a Vice Chairman of JLL's MedTech & Life Sciences Practice. Over the past 26 years Joe has developed relationships with and managed a wide variety of advisory and brokerage assignments ranging from global, national and regional headquarter relocations to consolidation studies for portfolio clients within the Medical Device and Life Science sectors throughout North America and across the globe. Joe is the active President of JLL's Brokerage Leadership Board, which provides strategic insight to drive and enhance results at every level of JLL's brokerage business. In 2020, Joe was presented with JLL's highest honor, The Champion of Excellence, recognizing an employee that most exemplifies their values of teamwork, ethics and excellence.
Dr. Alexander Nuyken has led JLL's EMEA Life Sciences practice since 2022, bringing more than 23 years of experience working with life sciences companies across a range of advisory roles. An M&A lawyer by training, he began his career advising on life sciences transactions before completing an MBA at INSEAD and moving into investment banking, where he spent ten years serving major pharmaceutical clients across the DACH region. Prior to joining JLL, Alex was a Partner at EY, where he led the firm's EMEA Strategy and Transactions practice for Life Sciences. He is a frequent conference speaker and a sought-after voice on life sciences real estate investment in the region.