Agreed that pharma research is not limited to the US, but neither is VC investing. US VC firms account for the majority of global biopharma VC investment (thoug

Agreed that pharma research is not limited to the US, but neither is VC investing. US VC firms account for the majority of global biopharma VC investment (though china is catching up). As it stands now most FDA approved drugs are developed by US, European or Japanese firms, and in 5-10 years china will be up there as well. The US is the most profitable drug market, so as a quick and dirty analysis I think using FDA approvals, VC funding and big pharma m&a data makes sense. Not perfect, but it's a decent heuristic VCs do make money on management fees, and VC returns in biotech from 2000-2012 were poor, but biopharma VC has done insanely well the last five years. Better returns than software VC, more IPOs and big m&a exits than tech despite only accounting for 20% of venture funding A lot of money is now chasing these high returns, but there are not enough good biopharma entrepreneurs. So there more money but not more good startups. And yes, that chart about r&d spending is not statistically valid :), but it isn't meant to be. But it illustrates a trend that big pharma is cutting back on r&d, especially early stage research which they outsource to startups. This topic is tangential to the topic of the post, but the article that was the source of that chart has good context around pharma r&d trends