I completely agree that funding will change dramatically in the next few years, and that the phenotype of founders will change. YC is doing a lot of awesome th

I completely agree that funding will change dramatically in the next few years, and that the phenotype of founders will change. YC is doing a lot of awesome things to lead this change. Historically, most $10B+ biotherapeutics companies were started by young technical founders, but most VCs today start companies in house, then hire older, non technical execs from big pharma to run the companies. Most of these companies are built to sell, and will never be lasting companies. I wrote several articles on this [0], [1], [2], [3] This model is poorly suited for companies based on innovative platform tech. Technical founders (biologists, bioengineers) are the right people for these companies. In this way, biotech is very much like the tech startup world pre-YC However, I don't necessarily agree that the world is changing because starting a biotech company is getting cheaper. And I don't think the traditional tech funding model is right for biotech. The biggest risk in biotech is that stuff that works in mice doesn't work in people. You need to filter out false positives early on to avoid spending $200M getting a drug that wont likely work to Phase 2. It is better to spend $2M properly vetting the science than it is to go cheap and fast and cut corners. The reason biotech VCs have done so well the last 10 years is that they are really good at finding bad science quickly. The mentality of "spend as little money as possible to quickly generate positive data to raise more money" is the mindset that leads to the reproducibility crisis in academia and, in extreme cases, to companies like theranos Starting a biotech company is cheaper, but it has been cheaper for a while. The big change now is that biotech companies can get bigger because scientific innovations are letting us develop better medicines faster with higher probability of success. 10 years ago, it was unlikely for a biotherapeutics startup to exit for over $500M. Now we see dozens of $1b+ exits a year Companies are getting bigger, and they are getting big faster. Kite, Juno and Avexis (gene and cell therapy leaders) reached $8-10B valuations faster than SpaceX, Twitter, Pinterest and Dropbox. It is now possible to power law invest in biotech, which was impossible 10 years ago when you had to get venture returns for a fund in a world where the best exit you could hope for was $500M. In that world, VCs have to get consistent singles and doubles: low risk, low valuations. Now investors can take more risk (including management risk) and invest at higher valuations But they need to take smart risks. Product cycles in biotech are still much more expensive and long than tech. You need to diligence the science and be thoughtful. [0] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders.html [1] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_1.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_1.html [2] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_2.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_2.html [3] https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_3.html https://www.baybridgebio.com/blog/young_founders_3.html