Jumping to a Biotech/Pharma/Life Sciences HF

Congrats and welcome to the ER role. I didn't personally go through the ER route, but it's a great path to the HC buyside (whether that's smid therapeutics or large cap biopharma).

The role is more like technical due diligence mixed with a sprinkling of financials napkin-style. It helps to have a modicum of the financial basics (and I mean, the REAL basics) - if you're focusing on smids with clinical binaries, you should spending <1% of your time on "financial" "modeling". You're better off learning about the historical drugs in your therapeutic areas, how certain clinical/preclinical endpoints are captured, getting a grasp of the technical terms used, a handling of biostats - items like that. Once you have a grasp of that, the second phase is finding how all those work in tandem and what insights can be produced from them - sort of like a 24/7 meta-analysis.

While I don't recommend the Cowen therapeutic bible because it is unnecessarily dense for someone onboarding, I've found it most helpful to read a few long / short (regardless if you want to do LO or L/S) reports on binaries to get a feel of how things are measured. Can't say Kerrisdale is the most accurate, but check some of those out to get a feel or MRC's.

A key part of your ER role, as time passes, will be providing your opinions / helping with requests from buyside folks and a ton of drinking. I would view these as good moments to network with them and give your technical opinions only when you're ready. Should you move to the buyside, you'll get reference checks.

I've actually found some of the sharpest and scariest folks are those without MD/PhDs (because of the harder selection process in the industry vs. someone who gets an easier entry pass with an MD/PhD). I'll also say that some of worst MDs are of a neuroscience/cardio background due to the chips on their shoulders + limited engagement with modern therapeutics, and some of the best MDs are of GI/immunology backgrounds because they get to embrace heavy innovation in their practices. You'll find a lot of "KOLs" are unable to think on the bleeding edge or accept alternative hypotheses, despite being leaders in their field ironically. These mindsets make for opportunities to bet on (or against) these people's ideas.

I see a lot of MD's and PhD's at these roles, but also those without MD's and PhD's. 

Whoa - easy tiger, haha. You don't. And besides, you'll find it matters only a part of the equation. Helpful to know what an IC50 is, yes, to cross the boxes off an investment, but reading 80 hours of some preclinical pathway only to arrive at a conclusion of "no one knows" only helps so much! 

I completed my 2nd year of medical school and passed step 1 so I know all of preclinical knowledge.

You're going to learn lots and humbled extremely quickly when a binary works/doesn't work - it's part of the fun of the game. Good luck and best wishes!

This is what many doctor's call the peak of ones medical knowledge (in respects to scientific facts/knowledge). I also have many published papers in various medical journals.