3 ms·

Funny to see tech VCs try to get into the medical space with no knowledge or expertise in the subject. Expect more of this as clueless GPs try to cash in on per

Funny to see tech VCs try to get into the medical space with no knowledge or expertise in the subject. Expect more of this as clueless GPs try to cash in on personalized medicine trend and shady founders give them every opportunity to hop aboard. There are already professional VCs who do this shit all day everyday, they just hang out in Kendall Square and RT. 128 not SF.

entee 11y ago
There are plenty of Biotech VCs in the bay area. The one I know best is Third Rock Ventures, but there are others. The timelines for success are extraordinarily long so it's not quite as splashy a space. It's almost impossible to "fail fast" with a "MVP" in the biotech space, so you have to put in tons of capital for a long time. That said personalized medicine should end up being interesting, but I think it's really, really early days.
- jonwachob91 11y ago
  Bull Shit. Biotech companies produce more MVP's then any other sector. Just because we don't need to test if the business will work (as much as say a facebook) we do need to test the science. My startup is working on infection resistant materials for around hospitals. Infections are a problem, if we solve it we will have customers, how many and at what cost is the question. But because science is the question, and it's relatively easy to test compared to a business model, we run lots of MVP tests. By the time we seek our first outside investment at the end of summer my team will have built and tested over 1,000 MVPs testing different nanotexture geometries and bacteria. 1,000 MVPs before our angel round, 1,000 opportunities to fail fast. That's not something you'll EVER see in an IT startup.
  - entee 11y ago
    That's fair, absolutely if you put it that way then yeah MVPs are much more frequent. I think I see the experiments you're doing more as internal development. I.e. I run bits of my code dozens of times a day to make sure it's working (or not), which I see as analogous to running bench experiments. Also, I'm thinking more about traditional pharma biotech where you can run tons of experiments but the drug has to be put into people at some point and there's actually a lot that can go wrong there that can't be easily forecast. The only time you get hints at whether your drug is "viable" is when you're in clinical trials and even then until succeeding in Phase III there's a ton of potentially catastrophic risk. For the record I was a bench biochemist for the better part of a decade, so under no circumstances do I mean to denigrate bench science.
  - haberman 11y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought one of the key ideas of a MVP is that it's something you put in the hands of customers to get feedback on. How many of those 1,000s have you given to customers?
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      > I thought one of the key ideas of a MVP is that it's something you put in the hands of customers... Internet-type startups, at their core, are about marketing more than they are about technology. Getting the technology right is absolutely no guarantee of success, but you can hack together some PHP and -- if you get the marketing right -- make a shitload of money. Psychology is kinda hard to do rigorously, so you test marketing the only place you really can -- in the market. Conversely, the question "does this material prevent infections?" can actually be studied, to a significant extent, in controlled lab experiments. You don't need the marketplace to answer that question. And for many cases -- such as the OP's -- it's obvious that if the answer is "yes" then you have a valuable product. Period. End of story. Infection-resistant materials aren't a fucking social network. If they work, they are obviously and immediately useful. You'll need to get the business side right, but it's really less difficult than the science itself because hospitals are begging for products to buy that address this problem. So the question is more "can we solve this totally obviously extant and well-defined and obviously significant problem" rather than "have we identified a problem whose solution will let us win some pocket change of a big number of consumers?" Figuring out if the science works out IS the MVP test. If you have a product that works your customers will be lining up.
      - lmeyerov 11y ago
        Not true, plenty of biotech startups fail because they believe this. Consider the pharma route. Does it solve something that slots in, or will the process be hard, or maybe they have something close enough that disrupting the pipeline isn't worth it? Many projects don't get into testing, many testing projects don't get purchased, and as generally only one pharma will want to purchase, scale won't be hit (so you're dependent), and many purchased projects won't get acquired. There are other routes and they have their own business risks. The MVP / market analysis process is different for biotech, but still should happen. It's pretty fascinating!
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I'm not certain the availability of infections-resistant materials is the problem. Most majority-copper alloys are naturally antibacterial, but most hospitals still stick with stainless steel and things that can be bleached or autoclaved. Your product will not only require extensive marketing to make it into a major hospital system, it will also need to be cheaper than brasses and bronzes.
    - jonwachob91 11y ago
      I'd don't want to detract from the original topic, but if you want to know more you can check out my Appy HN thread -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122

entee 11y ago

There are plenty of Biotech VCs in the bay area. The one I know best is Third Rock Ventures, but there are others. The timelines for success are extraordinarily long so it's not quite as splashy a space. It's almost impossible to "fail fast" with a "MVP" in the biotech space, so you have to put in tons of capital for a long time. That said personalized medicine should end up being interesting, but I think it's really, really early days.

jonwachob91 11y ago
Bull Shit. Biotech companies produce more MVP's then any other sector. Just because we don't need to test if the business will work (as much as say a facebook) we do need to test the science. My startup is working on infection resistant materials for around hospitals. Infections are a problem, if we solve it we will have customers, how many and at what cost is the question. But because science is the question, and it's relatively easy to test compared to a business model, we run lots of MVP tests. By the time we seek our first outside investment at the end of summer my team will have built and tested over 1,000 MVPs testing different nanotexture geometries and bacteria. 1,000 MVPs before our angel round, 1,000 opportunities to fail fast. That's not something you'll EVER see in an IT startup.
- entee 11y ago
  That's fair, absolutely if you put it that way then yeah MVPs are much more frequent. I think I see the experiments you're doing more as internal development. I.e. I run bits of my code dozens of times a day to make sure it's working (or not), which I see as analogous to running bench experiments. Also, I'm thinking more about traditional pharma biotech where you can run tons of experiments but the drug has to be put into people at some point and there's actually a lot that can go wrong there that can't be easily forecast. The only time you get hints at whether your drug is "viable" is when you're in clinical trials and even then until succeeding in Phase III there's a ton of potentially catastrophic risk. For the record I was a bench biochemist for the better part of a decade, so under no circumstances do I mean to denigrate bench science.
- haberman 11y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought one of the key ideas of a MVP is that it's something you put in the hands of customers to get feedback on. How many of those 1,000s have you given to customers?
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    > I thought one of the key ideas of a MVP is that it's something you put in the hands of customers... Internet-type startups, at their core, are about marketing more than they are about technology. Getting the technology right is absolutely no guarantee of success, but you can hack together some PHP and -- if you get the marketing right -- make a shitload of money. Psychology is kinda hard to do rigorously, so you test marketing the only place you really can -- in the market. Conversely, the question "does this material prevent infections?" can actually be studied, to a significant extent, in controlled lab experiments. You don't need the marketplace to answer that question. And for many cases -- such as the OP's -- it's obvious that if the answer is "yes" then you have a valuable product. Period. End of story. Infection-resistant materials aren't a fucking social network. If they work, they are obviously and immediately useful. You'll need to get the business side right, but it's really less difficult than the science itself because hospitals are begging for products to buy that address this problem. So the question is more "can we solve this totally obviously extant and well-defined and obviously significant problem" rather than "have we identified a problem whose solution will let us win some pocket change of a big number of consumers?" Figuring out if the science works out IS the MVP test. If you have a product that works your customers will be lining up.
    - lmeyerov 11y ago
      Not true, plenty of biotech startups fail because they believe this. Consider the pharma route. Does it solve something that slots in, or will the process be hard, or maybe they have something close enough that disrupting the pipeline isn't worth it? Many projects don't get into testing, many testing projects don't get purchased, and as generally only one pharma will want to purchase, scale won't be hit (so you're dependent), and many purchased projects won't get acquired. There are other routes and they have their own business risks. The MVP / market analysis process is different for biotech, but still should happen. It's pretty fascinating!
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  I'm not certain the availability of infections-resistant materials is the problem. Most majority-copper alloys are naturally antibacterial, but most hospitals still stick with stainless steel and things that can be bleached or autoclaved. Your product will not only require extensive marketing to make it into a major hospital system, it will also need to be cheaper than brasses and bronzes.
  - jonwachob91 11y ago
    I'd don't want to detract from the original topic, but if you want to know more you can check out my Appy HN thread -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11443122