JPM Week: The Life Sciences Super Bowl
This was the first year I headed up to SF for JPM with a simple objective: compress months of relationship-building into a single, high-signal week.
“JPM” refers to the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the largest and most influential healthcare investment conference in the world, held in SF every January. While the official conference itself is invitation-only and features formal company presentations and investor meetings, the term “JPM” is commonly used to describe the entire surrounding JPM Week—a city-wide concentration of biotech, pharma, medtech, digital health, and life-science investing activity that includes hundreds of private meetings, investor dinners, pitch events, and networking receptions.
For healthcare and biotech investors, founders, and executives, “going to JPM” effectively means participating in this broader ecosystem rather than just attending the formal conference.
JPM is where I met potential partners for Phase Two Ventures, have in-person conversations around the pension work I do, and finally sit across the table from colleagues I’ve only known through Zoom—people flying in from Dubai, Boston, Washington DC, and every corner of the global life-science and investment ecosystem.
There’s a unique efficiency to JPM: conversations that would normally take a handful of calls happen in one coffee or one walk between events, trust accelerates, and long-distance professional relationships become real partnerships once you’ve shared a room, a whiteboard, or a drink.
I put out a call to connect and was fortunate to hear back from people across the map.
San Diego showed up in force this week, with northbound flights packed and each plane effectively a who’s who of the region’s life-science and innovation community.
Even departing from the smaller airport near my home in Carlsbad, the momentum was clear—Patagonia vests, familiar faces, and conversations already in motion before boarding began. It underscored something easy to forget: San Diego is a highly mobile city, tightly connected and outward-facing, able to move its people quickly when the industry’s center of gravity shifts north for the week.
The panels I attended at RESI and other multi-day events featured some remarkably accomplished speakers—people with firsthand authority from running health systems, innovating deeply around diseases, or leading genuinely groundbreaking research—so the week required a careful balance. I found myself constantly weighing time in these killer sessions against carving out space for one-on-one coffee meetings, knowing that both the structured insights from the panels and the informal conversations in between were essential to getting the most out of the week.
Much of the meeting and conference blitz is packed into Monday and Tuesday, so by the time the white-shoe law firms roll out their marquee events, most people are ready to unwind. Those evenings turn into a chance to relax, have a drink or two, and fit in one final round of networking before calling it a night.
The biggest takeaway from the week was how quickly progress accelerates when the right people are in the same place at the same time. Ideas sharpen in person, trust forms faster over coffee than through Calendly, and patterns become clear as the same themes echo across panels, private meetings, and late-night conversations.
There was a clear convergence around practical innovation—technologies that improve efficiency, reduce friction in care delivery, and translate real science into scalable outcomes—alongside a renewed appreciation for relationships as the true connective tissue of the ecosystem. JPM once again reinforced that while capital, science, and strategy matter, momentum is ultimately created by people showing up, sharing context, and committing to build together.
What I appreciate most about these conferences is that they aren’t where deals are closed—they’re where conversations begin. The real value lies in articulating what you’re working on, listening carefully to what others are building, and testing for genuine alignment to explore over the rest of the year. It’s less about selling or forcing outcomes and more about comparing notes, understanding context, and seeing where experience, insight, and networks can be mutually beneficial. When that fit is real, the relationship carries forward naturally long after the conference ends.
Until next year!
- Robert Mowry (LinkedIn) of Del Mar Medical Pensions