51–54 of 54 posts
It's non-obvious ideas like "Why not use natural gas instead of refined sugar?" that are going to make Biotech explode in coming years..while simultaneously putting fossil fuels to more productive or even sequestering use than burning them!
As a biologist with over a decade of experience in areas relevant to these startups, I appreciate the movement into biotech, but I'm unimpressed with the actual products. While everyone might poo-poo academia, it would take little effort to find 100s of projects at universities across the world that are better versions of these projects. As much as YC dominates software applications, they are woefully inferior in bio…
Medical device innovation is broken. Companies developing devices like ours are taking 10 years and $100M to see revenue, and most people in the industry consider this time and cost inevitable. For that reason, investment in the space has plummeted. ROIs suck. The thing is though that it's not inevitable. The space is ripe for smarter and more efficient ways to bring products to market. This process innovation is not coming from academia, nor will it ever. Academics just doesn't think that way, and they're categorically not good at commercialization. This new thinking is coming from independent startups that embrace a hacker mentality and reject conventional wisdom. As we all know, that's very similar to the ethos of YC.
Stanford Biodesign has a stellar track record of producing medtech winners, and that's because its process works. The advice we've heard from the YC partners in the program has aligned very well with the advice we heard from the top forward-thinking entrepreneurs in the industry at Biodesign. They get it. YC partners may not understand the intricacies of healthcare as well as industry veterans, but it doesn't need to. They understand how to build a great company regardless of vertical. YC brings in top founders from industry, who already have the necessary expertise and connections, and encourages them to think big and think differently. I don't see how that's not a winning formula. Yes, healthcare is different, but it's similar to other typical YC verticals in more ways than you think.
There's a big difference between the 5 - 15 years and billions of dollars to product in biotech/pharma, and the few at most years and relatively cheap amount of money for the payoff in software. And if you think there are shortcuts like uber and airbnb, there are not. Even 23 and me, a pretty innocuous idea, is essentially a failure.