I think the huge amount of regulation and barriers in the field are largely to blame. You can't really have pharma startups the way you can have tech startups.

I think the huge amount of regulation and barriers in the field are largely to blame. You can't really have pharma startups the way you can have tech startups. You couldn't just start a company tomorrow and start incrementally prototyping a drug by testing it on people (or even animals) with lots of genetic testing... Even though I'm sure a lot of people (eg: cancer patients) would gladly volunteer.