Avalyn Pharma and Generate Biomedicines executives discuss the long hours, hard work and rewarding moments of taking their companies public.
For Lyn Baranowski, it all comes down to a watch.
Asked to share a memory that summed up the experience of getting Avalyn Pharma ready to go public, the biotech’s CEO focused on a moment at the end of the process. She recalled standing next to a Morgan Stanley employee at Nasdaq. The man wore a watch that had belonged to his grandfather who passed away from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The lung disease is one of the diseases Baranowski’s company is developing therapies to treat.
“He doesn’t wear the watch very often,” Baranowski told BioSpace. “He did that day because this work that we’re doing is meaningful to him too. He showed me that as we were getting ready to open the stock on the Nasdaq, and he teared up. I teared up.”
It’s a memory Baranowski said will stick with her for the rest of her life because it made the initial public offering (IPO) more than a financial process. It made it human.
Getting to that moment took a considerable amount of work, as is typical with IPOs. For a look behind the scenes of preparing a company to go public, BioSpace spoke with Baranowski, her Avalyn colleague Doug Carlson and Jason Silvers of Generate Biomedicines.
Avalyn Pharma
Based in Boston, Avalyn develops inhaled therapies to treat rare respiratory diseases. The company’s goal is to deliver medicines directly to lung tissue to potentially enhance efficiency and avoid side effects associated with systemic drug delivery. Avalyn’s lead asset is AP01, an inhaled version of pirfenidone, a small molecule inhibitor. The biotech went public earlier this year, raising $345 million. It began trading on the Nasdaq April 30.
Doug Carlson, Avalyn’s chief financial officer and chief business officer, said he was thrilled with the company’s upsized IPO.
“That was above and beyond expectations, and it allowed us to really think about things like pipeline expansion and other ways to continue to build the business,” he told BioSpace.
While Avalyn’s IPO process took four months, Baranowski noted that the company had laid the groundwork much earlier. When she joined the biotech four years ago, she said, it had mostly earlier stage investors. With an IPO in mind, Baranowski worked on diversifying the shareholder base, involving more later stage and public market investors. She also brought in Carlson in 2024, as she wanted someone onboard who had taken a company public. Carlson once served as chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Ikena Oncology, where he headed up a $144 million IPO.
The two executives worked 12- to 16-hour days preparing Avalyn to go public. Carlson said there was a consistent heavy lift, especially after the organizational meeting that kicked off the IPO work group. Baranowski noted that the weekdays were so busy, she and Carlson often met on Sunday afternoons to catch up on what they’d been unable to address during the week and discuss what was happening next.
Baranowski’s longest hours came during the company’s testing the waters meetings, which took place over a two-week period. Baranowski estimated that she met with around 100 investors one on one for an hour each, resulting in 14- to 16-hour days.
“Getting through that, that was probably the most exhausting month for me personally because I had to tell the story every time and make it feel fresh and exciting for them and me,” she said.
Getting through that, that was probably the most exhausting month for me personally because I had to tell the story every time and make it feel fresh and exciting for them and me.
When all was said and done, and the moment came to ring the opening bell at Nasdaq, Baranowski described it as one of the most joyous days of her life. Members of the leadership team and Avalyn’s patient advisory council were on hand, and she gave a speech. It was a real opportunity to celebrate, Baranowski noted.
“It was probably a little bit like a wedding,” she said.
Overall, preparing for the IPO brought Avalyn employees together in a special way, according to Baranowski.
“In some ways, I feel like these people are family now,” she said. “I feel like we’ve been through a war together. And so, you develop, I think, a sense of camaraderie that is very different, really, from the regular day job.”
Generate Biomedicines
Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, Generate Biomedicines is a generative biotech whose Generate Platform creates medicines on demand across multiple therapeutic modalities. Its lead asset is GB-0895, an anti-TSLP monoclonal antibody being studied for the treatment of severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The biotech went public earlier this year, raising $400 million.
The Generate team began working on the IPO shortly before Thanksgiving last year. Silvers, the biotech’s president and chief financial officer, remembers well the company’s first meeting about going public, when they discussed a late February 2026 target date. Just four days prior, he told BioSpace, Generate had been considering raising money privately. Looking around the room that day, Silvers said he didn’t see fear or concern on people’s faces but rather exhilaration and excitement—a consensus of “This makes sense. I get the fast timeline. We’re going to dig in, and we’re going to make this happen.”
Silvers noted that such a mentality reflects how Generate employees tackle any problems they’re given, which was exciting to see.
“They’re curious, they’re focused, they’re intense, they work extremely hard and they are confident that they can get things done, and that’s what we did,” he said.
Silvers described working at Generate as it prepared its IPO as intense but rewarding. In his role, and with CEO Michael Nally’s support, Silvers oversaw the entire process. He coordinated everybody’s work and ensured tasks were done when needed so the company could go public on its target date. That date took advisors by surprise, Silvers recalled.
“Most of the advisors thought we were a little, maybe crazy is not the right word, but a little optimistic, I would say, relative to what normal IPOs or historical IPOs’ precedents had done,” he said.
Most of the advisors thought we were a little, maybe crazy is not the right word, but a little optimistic, I would say, relative to what normal IPOs or historical IPOs’ precedents had done.
Still, Generate filed its S-1 registration statement just before Christmas, and McNally rang the opening bell at Nasdaq Feb. 27.
Getting to that milestone required a significant workload for many at Generate. Silvers noted that he typically worked 14 to 18 hours a day on the IPO, and certain people on teams including legal, finance and accounting logged similar hours.
“So, while that wasn’t all 315 people at the company working at those levels, the people who were really involved more heavily were absolutely heads down for a long time,” he said.
In reflecting on employees’ contributions, Silver highlighted those in the technology and science groups, who he noted were integral in shaping the S-1 and investor presentations.
Overall, he said, the Generate team did an amazing job getting the biotech to the finish line.
“It’s actually a testament to our company, and that’s kind of how people work, even from different backgrounds,” Silvers said. “We have technologists, we have platform folks, we have clinical folks, we have preclinical folks, biologists, people across all the GNA functions, and the level of collaboration was something to be really, really proud of.”
