“We saw what you guys built and made a decision pretty quickly: we didn’t want to compete with that. We wanted to be part of it.”
Life Science Connect CEO Jon Howland on a new chapter for biopharma outsourcing media and events.
Jon Howland, CEO of Life Science Connect, didn’t mince words when explaining why his company came looking for PharmaSource and CDMO Live rather than building a competing events business. That directness and the strategic clarity behind it, are good indicators of how this deal came together, and where it’s heading.
Jon Howland has led Life Science Connect for more than 30 years, steering it from a print-only publisher of business machine trade magazines into a $30 million private equity-backed media and data platform serving the life sciences industry. The company’s portfolio today includes Life Science Leader, Pharmaceutical Online, Outsourced Pharma, Clinical Leader, Bioprocess Online, and the CDMO and CRO Leadership Awards, among others.
In the latest episode of the podcast, PharmaSource Co-Founder Luke Bilton sat down with Jon to discuss what this acquisition means, both for the two businesses, and for the broader biopharma outsourcing community they both serve.
Follow your reader: The Philosophy That Connects Both Businesses
Life Science Connect has operated for three decades under what Howland calls the “follow your reader” philosophy. The principle is simple: understand exactly what problems your readers are trying to solve, and build everything around helping them solve those problems faster.
“Everything you do should come from what your readers need,” Howland explained. “And the only way you can know that is to have the discussion with the reader.”
That philosophy led LSC to exit dozens of markets — from automotive to school purchasing — and double down on life sciences. A segmentation of broad publications into focused vertical communities ensued: Outsourced Pharma for the CDMO space, Clinical Leader for clinical operations, Cell and Gene for advanced therapies. Eventually, following its readers led LSC back to live events, because when they surveyed their readers on how they get information, direct peer interaction came out near the top.
“The buyers, especially in this industry, need the insights of their peers and colleagues to solve their problems,” says Howland. “Particularly when dealing with suppliers, there’s nothing like looking someone in the eye, face to face, to establish that trust.”
PharmaSource was built on exactly the same premise. Luke Bilton and co-founder Chris Kilbee spent three years building a content-first community before launching live events. CDMO Live has recently been awarded ‘Best Event Launch’ at the international Association of Event Organisers (AEO) Excellence Awards.
Howland put it plainly: “This was far more about Luke and Chris and their team than it was about the products they created. It’s a bet on people.”
What Life Science Connect Is Building — And Why Events Are Central to It
Life Science Connect’s ambition is to become what Howland describes as “the most comprehensive platform for life sciences professionals”, covering the entire development journey from drug discovery through commercial manufacturing.
That platform is built around three interlocking components: community-specific digital media, proprietary behavioral data and intent signals, and live events. Each feeds the others.
The digital communities such as Outsourced Pharma generate a continuous stream of behavioral data. LSC can see what content a reader is consuming, in what format, and at what stage of the buyer journey. Is someone reading about titer yield optimization (a problem-solving stage) or browsing CDMO capability profiles (a supplier evaluation stage)? The platform captures the difference.
“We can see patterns in the kind of content they’re looking at,” Howland explained. “Are they focused more on problem-solving content, or are they starting to research different suppliers? We can identify where they are in the journey and deliver them more of what they need.”
That intelligence can support the in-person interactions that events like CDMO Live deliver. Instead of a pharma innovator showing up to a partnering session cold, both sides arrive having already been served relevant information about each other.
“When a contract manufacturer is setting meetings with innovators at CDMO Live, they already know about each other because of the data we have,” says Howland. “That meeting, instead of a discovery meeting — ‘Hey, what do you guys do, can you even help us?’ — becomes a productive conversation. That’s a big benefit.”
The deal to bring PharmaSource, CDMO Live, and External Manufacturing Leaders inside LSC closes that loop. The outsourcing-focused events and media will now have LSC’s technology infrastructure, audience data, and PE-backed investment behind them.
The AI Opportunity: Content That Can’t Be Scraped
Howland explains what the rise of AI means for publishers, and why live events may be more valuable now than ever.
Up to 75-80% of Google searches now result in zero clicks, as AI-generated summaries absorb queries that used to drive traffic to publishers. Many B2B media businesses built on SEO are facing an uncomfortable reckoning.
Howland’s response is not to fight that shift, but to follow the reader through it. “The reader is changing their behavior, so how do we help get them what they need as they need it?” he asked. “The way they seek information has changed. The information they need, and the things they’re trying to do — that hasn’t changed.”
What has changed is the strategic value of content that AI engines cannot access.
“If you think about the discussions that happen at a live event, that is just another version of content,” says Howland. “And it’s a version of content that AI can’t scrape anywhere. It’s unique to that delivery mechanism. The readers value that they can’t get that anywhere else.”
Building, capturing, and extending that kind of proprietary knowledge is central to what LSC is now constructing. AI, in their model, is a tool for delivery, getting the right content to the right reader at the right moment in their buyer journey, not a replacement for the human insight that makes that content worth reading.
The Investment Backing and the Board Behind the Strategy
Life Science Connect is backed by Latticework Capital Management and Edgehill Management, a growth-oriented PE partnership that Howland describes as philosophically aligned with how the business has always operated.
“You don’t grow by cutting stuff,” he said. “You have to add fuel. That’s been the approach, whether it’s financial resources or people.”
The board assembled around that thesis is notable. Doug Emslie — the exhibition veteran who executed the events industry’s largest-ever transaction when he sold Tarsus to Informa — brings deep event industry expertise and, as Howland noted, is “boots on the ground” rather than a quarterly boardroom presence. Sean Griffey, who built and sold Industry Dive, advises on audience-building. Don Hawk, co-founder of TechTarget, helped pioneer the use of intent data and behavioral signals in B2B media — directly applicable to what LSC is building. George Gallate, a digital marketing pioneer who helped launch the first digital-only marketing organization.
Media analyst Colin Morrison of Flashes and Flames noted that the approach LSC is taking is “unlike any other private equity experience that has been seen before” — pointing specifically to the weekly strategy calls, the refusal to cut for the sake of margin, and the hands-on involvement of board members in operational decisions.
Howland summarized the philosophy: “We’re betting on people. Everything else is just what people create.”
What Comes Next for PharmaSource, CDMO Live, and External Manufacturing Leaders
The immediate picture is straightforward: the event portfolio continues to grow, starting with CDMO Live Americas in Boston (October 20-21, 2026), followed by CDMO Live Europe 2027 and the continued expansion of External Manufacturing Leaders executive dinners across global biopharma hubs. PharmaSource’s podcast and newsletter continue as the editorial backbone of the community.
Sandy Voss, another veteran of Informa’s event business, joins Bilton and Kilbee as part of the new events division leadership within LSC.
The longer-term ambition is more significant. Howland described a four-year vision in which LSC becomes a highly engaged platform covering the full life sciences development cycle – one that could, if successful, serve as a transferable model for other industries with similar characteristics: food, energy, others.
“What we want is this platform created to serve drug industry and life science industry professionals from discovery all the way through commercialization,” he said. “That’s going to include live events in those areas. It’ll include some products we haven’t even thought of yet.”
For us at PharmaSource, the appeal is equally clear. The infrastructure, investment, and audience reach of Life Science Connect removes the constraints that come with building independently.
“We couldn’t be happier with our new home within Life Science Connect,” said Bilton “We’re now going to have access to the resources and support to do more of what we love… more podcasts, more events, more work with the outsourcing community. This is the start of a new chapter.”
