If you go ask scientists that work in the life sciences, most (at least the ones I know) will say that there are much more fundamental problems that we should be tackling.
Synthetic biology is super interesting, and maybe that is the right space for YC to play in, but it's not the needle mover that the tech crowd thinks it is going to be. Trying to understand the mechanisms of GNRH receptors and developing lead candidates that could be potential therapies is just not as sexy as synthetic biology. Would you fund something in that space?
But this is where my head just starts spinning
"I'm going to help our biotech startups find the partners and tools they need to make wetware at software-like speeds."
That's not going to happen. It's not how biology works in a lot of others, and you lose a lot of credibility when you say that. Unfortunately, a lot of founders say that as well. I forget the name of the company, but there was a recent algorithms startup that made it sound like they were (a) going to change pharma with their methods, and (b) what they were doing was new and unique. None of which was true.
YC (and others) can do a lot here, but I feel you go in without really understanding the space or the pitfalls. A lot of biotech fails not because of the business model, but because biology hard, the human body is unreliable and illogical, and because our understanding of the science is flawed.
Wouldn't any CS academic also look at every YC software startup and say, "there are much more fundamental problems that we should be tackling."?
Biological engineering can and should be a thing separate for biological sciences.
You do not always need to understand biology to be able to hack with it; it's robust that way. Maybe biology can't breakout the way software has, but on the off chance that it could, it's worth having a lot of people trying to figure out how.
CS academics would have no interest in the majority of YC software startups, because most of them are not innovating in CS, they're just using software as a tool for business model innovation.
Biotech startups are fundamentally different in that they're driven by scientific advances, which is exactly what life scientists in academia are trying to produce.
That's exactly my point. Silicon valley used to be driven by scientific advances too. But at some point the science got good enough that the engineering and business logic decoupled from the science. That will happen in biology, maybe it's now.
> at some point the science got good enough that the engineering and business logic decoupled from the science. That will happen in biology, maybe it's now.
It's definitely not now. The thing holding back biotech isn't business model innovation, it's technical difficulties - what the scientists are tackling. You can't compare semiconductor innovation to biological research - one system was man-made to be as reliable and robust as possible, whereas the other one is still largely utterly incomprehensible.
My sense is that the vast majority of people on HN touting rapid advances in biology have never actually spent any time reading up on the scientific literature, and haven't spent any time doing life science research. The same goes for most of the YC partners, which has led to their selecting companies that often have fatal flaws that are immediately apparent to anyone with life sciences expertise.
>"I'm going to help our biotech startups find the partners and tools they need to make wetware at software-like speeds."
This is spot-on. The "quickly move to market" approach of the typical VC simply does not work here.
Good science -- in which I include money-making science -- takes time. There's a lot more fiddling involved, as we can't manipulate the system at all levels.
While I agree that there are more critical and fundamental problems that need to be solved by us, not all of those problems could be solved by a profit seeking corporation. Also, a lot of such problems should be kept out of hands of people primarily concerned with building a business, because that could be a dangerous way to lead the solution.
That said,these problems must be solved. Which is why over the last thousand or so years, we have built a system of universities, public donations, and taxation, so these problems are addressed by right people.
If you know great scientists solving important problems, please encourage them to apply :)
That said, great research projects do not necessarily translate into great startups. People doing fundamental research with no clear path to market likely aren't a great fit for the program at this time.
I suspect that's one of the differences between the CS world and life science world (again broadly speaking). In CS, there tends to be a pretty large gap between academic projects and commercial software projects both in terms of the expected output and the goals. For the life sciences that's not the case. Even in commercial companies you end up doing a lot of fundamental research or you acquire it via partnerships or IP acquisition.
There are some aspects of biology that likely translate better to the tech model. But for most aspects, especially anything to do with therapeutics, it is essentially impossible to avoid the hard slog. No software is going to change how you study efficacy and toxicity in animal models and human testing. With more targeted therapies the complexity only goes up.
I think YC should invest in the life sciences, but it should be a different model, perhaps an innovation on the existing tech transfer model, perhaps building an incubator that ends up being an IP funnel for pharma, or to provide some competition in an underserved area, but the software mindset is generally going to fail.
Your problem is that great (life) scientists solving important problems have no interest in (or need for) YC. They'll just go to Noubar Afeyan, Bruce Booth, or Bob Nelsen.
Mmmmm. Flagship (Noubar's shop) mostly incubates it's own companies (same with 3rd Rock) and uses VC partners as founding CEOs -- so if you are a missionary founder it's not really a fit. In general the pharma VC ecosystem is way more "professional executives"-minded. It's a stark contrast to tech venture ecosystem that goes for young founder leadership. So if you are a great, recently graduated life scientist solving important problems and want to build your own company I'd still consider YC.
I don't think that young founder-driven companies make sense in biotech. Young founders do well in tech because business model innovation requires contrarian thinking, which young people (who are naive and lack preconceptions) are more likely to do. Also, software engineering can be learned at home for very little money, on one's own, even at a very early age.
In biotech, once the technology has been developed, the innovative component has largely been completed. And it's the top scientists that have the institutional knowledge and non-dilutive funding to make that happen. The reason there are so many unmet needs in healthcare isn't for lack of trying or a lack of original thought in the top academic research labs - you can be sure that Bob Langer isn't just trying to up his h-index.
That said, you are right that a recent graduate won't be able to found a company in that model. That's mostly irrelevant though, since recent graduates are rarely capable of creating scientific breakthroughs on their own.
Who do you think is doing the hands-on work in Bob Langer's lab that leads to that scientific breakthrough (hint - it's not Bob). No reason that recently graduated PhD/postdoc can't start a company built on their work. The pharma VC ecosystem has a blind spot for these sort of founders - I'm glad YC is an option for them.
> No reason that recently graduated PhD/postdoc can't start a company built on their work.
Except for the minor problem that any IP generated through their work is owned by the university. And if the IP's valuable, it typically flows straight into the hands of Flagship, Polaris, Third Rock, & co. The professor might have a say in what happens to the IP, but the students and postdocs have zero leverage with the TTO. And how could they? They are replaceable cogs in the machine (and often in the US on a student/work visa) - Bob Langer is not.
I won't go down the pharma IP rathole, but I don't think this problem is intractable. There are many inventions that aren't CRISPR where TLO is happy to have the student who invented it run with it. Funding is a much bigger limiter than IP in my experience.
> There are many inventions that aren't CRISPR where TLO is happy to have the student who invented it run with it.
And my original point was that Paul Buchheit's request that "If you know great scientists solving important problems, please encourage them to apply" was unrealistic. YC isn't going to get the crème de la crème of scientists or scientific innovations - they're getting what's discarded by the TTOs.
To be more precise, nobody's going to get the top scientists (they're going to go right back to their labs) and the biotech VCs are going to get the top innovations (for which they often have an informal licensing option with the inventing professor before the academic research even begins). There's a record amount of funding in biotech right now, but why spread it evenly? Might as well just run dozens of trials in parallel for therapies derived from a single technology.
I apologize if I sound overly negative, but I have expended significant time and energy exploring this idea maze (http://cdixon.org/2013/08/04/the-idea-maze/), only to hit one dead end after another. I left for greener pastures (software), but I wish you and the rest of the YC biotech founders the best of luck.
> I forget the name of the company, but there was a recent algorithms startup that made it sound like they were (a) going to change pharma with their methods, and (b) what they were doing was new and unique. None of which was true.
Synthetic biology is super interesting, and maybe that is the right space for YC to play in, but it's not the needle mover that the tech crowd thinks it is going to be. Trying to understand the mechanisms of GNRH receptors and developing lead candidates that could be potential therapies is just not as sexy as synthetic biology. Would you fund something in that space?
But this is where my head just starts spinning
"I'm going to help our biotech startups find the partners and tools they need to make wetware at software-like speeds."
That's not going to happen. It's not how biology works in a lot of others, and you lose a lot of credibility when you say that. Unfortunately, a lot of founders say that as well. I forget the name of the company, but there was a recent algorithms startup that made it sound like they were (a) going to change pharma with their methods, and (b) what they were doing was new and unique. None of which was true.
YC (and others) can do a lot here, but I feel you go in without really understanding the space or the pitfalls. A lot of biotech fails not because of the business model, but because biology hard, the human body is unreliable and illogical, and because our understanding of the science is flawed.
I'll get off my soapbox now :-)