4 ms·

An advice for the VC among us. Don't get fooled by all these startups promising to revolutionalize drug-discovery with AI. Go talk to scientists that are specia

by ta988 6y ago

An advice for the VC among us. Don't get fooled by all these startups promising to revolutionalize drug-discovery with AI. Go talk to scientists that are specialists but have no stakes in those approaches. I've seen so much money diverted from projects (many that turned out to work once sanity came back) just to pay for some over-confident startupers shitty solution... Yes AI will help drug discovery no doubt about that, but those companies telling you they can learn from existing data are lying, most data available is of really low quality, acquired in conditions adequate only for specific types of questions... One I know closely will promise you a knowledge graph based on a specific slice of drug sources that can supposedly answer every question. It will almost certainly end up like many of those companies that hire humans to do the work in the back and sell it to you as AI... And their source data which I know well is of really low quality so we can't expect much more from their models either...

ramraj07 6y ago
A lot of times they are not lying, they are genuinely clueless. Part of the problem with academia is that they follow the edict set by George Constanza: “the best liar truly believes in their own lie.” So often they truly believe that their field’s method of choice is how we will use AIDS to cure cancer, because the grants-system ensures that anyone who doesn’t truly believe in their vomit won’t get their grant approved (you need to write them with conviction, not doubt, if you want them awarded). Then mediocre postdocs with an “entrepreneurial flair” decide they’re ready to take their nanobots and cure breast cancer and come to SV to pitch to VCs who are either clueless or are being advised by the same heads that are pouring the Kool-aid in academia to begin with! Exceptions exist of course, and some of these bets turn good purely because of luck (if you take twenty random chemicals and inject, one of them might just cure cancer; incidentally how stuff like paclitaxel & vinblastine was discovered anyway). But this only seems to reinforce the conviction of these institutions to continue their methods. One of the most important differences I feel VCs should acknowledge as a contrast between tech and biotech: with tech you can often choose one method of solving a problem and make it work. With biology however, nature will eventually give you a roundhouse kick if you try to force anything but an actual solution down it’s throat.
- ta988 6y ago
  You are right I assigned to malice what is probably just lack of skills and knowledge. Your are also right on the fact that what works is grind and find. You can do it at the scale of one lab or the scale of many labs, but in the end what works is to try a lot of things because we are still really shooting in the dark for a lot of targets or diseases we don't know any druggable target yet.
  - ramraj07 6y ago
    I’ll propose that we actually kind of know a lot of things about many (not all) diseases, we really just need an objective look at how to address them. The majority of scientists today are mostly quite narrow minded in terms of scientific thinking, every one of them wants to use the method that they are experts at to solve the problem. When the Manhattan project was deployed all the top physicists came and tackled the problem that needed to be solved with the most suitable methods, but there’s been “cancers Manhattan project” or “moonshot” initiatives in biology numerous times and they all fail because the scientists incharge invariably push their own agendas in these. Take Janelia farms for example- without reading their editorialised website if you try to gander what the hell this institution is trying to do, from just the papers they publish, you would fail miserably. Not saying that institution sucks, well I suppose I am saying that, but only insofar because all of academia seems to suck in the same way.
    - an_opabinia 6y ago
      > Janelia farms I’m pretty sure they do basic science for medicine, with many of the same goals as the NIH.
- oivey 6y ago
  It seems kind of odd to blame academia for this. Almost all founders are clueless in all fields, and, additionally, they’re pretty much supposed to be aggressive about their idea in order to get investments. The role of the VC is to invest wisely. If they’re less knowledgeable about tech outside of the niche of computers and they lose money on biotech, that’s their fault.
varispeed 6y ago
Problem is that the big corporations and execs pay far less tax than small to medium corporations and workers. They have extremely distorted view of money and at some point it feels they grow money effortlessly while it is a month to month struggle for workers. This feeling of ease makes them spend money on a whim because it will grow anyway most of the time and if it won't? Oh well there is plenty of billions in the coffers. I think once organisations that are supposed to fight corruption pull their heads out of their and start making politicians accountable and make them plug the tax holes. When those big corporations get a dose of reality, how much effort it costs small business to earn that money, they'll spend it more carefully, but more importantly because of increased tax take it will be possible to lower the tax burden for everyone and level the playing field.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Judgmentality 6y ago
> An advice for the VC among us. I wish I could find it now, but I once read a comment on HN where someone was approached by a VC for technical advice. To make a long story short, the engineer being consulted noted that in order for their growth to continue as the company proclaimed, they would have to break the speed of light before reaching profitability. The VC invested anyway and inevitably the company failed. VCs chase trends just as much as anyone. In my experience, they are more susceptible to herd mentality than regular people.
refurb 6y ago
Yup. People act like computer aided drug design is new, but it’s been happening since the 80’s with the same promises that never pan out. People are right to be skeptical. That said, I could see computational drug design being helpful in particular circumstances solving very specific issues. But the idea it’s going to wholesale change the way drugs are designed and speed up the drug discovery process are very, very optimistic and the landscape is riddled with failed promises over the past 40 years.
- ta988 6y ago
  I work in drug discovery, we use computers all the time though at at every steps. Drug discovery is already computer aided, and they try to sell it like it is not... They just want to sell their expensive and biased statistical model that doesn't do much more than a regression but use the latest shiny thing (knowledge graphs, rnn, svm, you name it ...)
  - ta988 6y ago
    It's a bit like people that want to disrupt the bodega or the breakfast juice or a one drop of blood full test for all diseases. You can pitch it as loud as you want, when you have a shitty product it will not make it better.
  - refurb 6y ago
    What ticks me off is the hyperbole. "We're revolutionizing drug discovery" and "we'll reduce your attrition rate by orders of magnitude". No, no you won't. If your offering a tool that fixes a specific issue I'm facing, then ok, I'll listen. But scientists don't take well to bullshit.

by ta988 6y ago

ramraj07 6y ago

A lot of times they are not lying, they are genuinely clueless. Part of the problem with academia is that they follow the edict set by George Constanza: “the best liar truly believes in their own lie.” So often they truly believe that their field’s method of choice is how we will use AIDS to cure cancer, because the grants-system ensures that anyone who doesn’t truly believe in their vomit won’t get their grant approved (you need to write them with conviction, not doubt, if you want them awarded). Then mediocre postdocs with an “entrepreneurial flair” decide they’re ready to take their nanobots and cure breast cancer and come to SV to pitch to VCs who are either clueless or are being advised by the same heads that are pouring the Kool-aid in academia to begin with! Exceptions exist of course, and some of these bets turn good purely because of luck (if you take twenty random chemicals and inject, one of them might just cure cancer; incidentally how stuff like paclitaxel & vinblastine was discovered anyway). But this only seems to reinforce the conviction of these institutions to continue their methods. One of the most important differences I feel VCs should acknowledge as a contrast between tech and biotech: with tech you can often choose one method of solving a problem and make it work. With biology however, nature will eventually give you a roundhouse kick if you try to force anything but an actual solution down it’s throat.

ta988 6y ago
You are right I assigned to malice what is probably just lack of skills and knowledge. Your are also right on the fact that what works is grind and find. You can do it at the scale of one lab or the scale of many labs, but in the end what works is to try a lot of things because we are still really shooting in the dark for a lot of targets or diseases we don't know any druggable target yet.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  I’ll propose that we actually kind of know a lot of things about many (not all) diseases, we really just need an objective look at how to address them. The majority of scientists today are mostly quite narrow minded in terms of scientific thinking, every one of them wants to use the method that they are experts at to solve the problem. When the Manhattan project was deployed all the top physicists came and tackled the problem that needed to be solved with the most suitable methods, but there’s been “cancers Manhattan project” or “moonshot” initiatives in biology numerous times and they all fail because the scientists incharge invariably push their own agendas in these. Take Janelia farms for example- without reading their editorialised website if you try to gander what the hell this institution is trying to do, from just the papers they publish, you would fail miserably. Not saying that institution sucks, well I suppose I am saying that, but only insofar because all of academia seems to suck in the same way.
  - an_opabinia 6y ago
    > Janelia farms I’m pretty sure they do basic science for medicine, with many of the same goals as the NIH.
oivey 6y ago
It seems kind of odd to blame academia for this. Almost all founders are clueless in all fields, and, additionally, they’re pretty much supposed to be aggressive about their idea in order to get investments. The role of the VC is to invest wisely. If they’re less knowledgeable about tech outside of the niche of computers and they lose money on biotech, that’s their fault.

varispeed 6y ago

Problem is that the big corporations and execs pay far less tax than small to medium corporations and workers. They have extremely distorted view of money and at some point it feels they grow money effortlessly while it is a month to month struggle for workers. This feeling of ease makes them spend money on a whim because it will grow anyway most of the time and if it won't? Oh well there is plenty of billions in the coffers. I think once organisations that are supposed to fight corruption pull their heads out of their and start making politicians accountable and make them plug the tax holes. When those big corporations get a dose of reality, how much effort it costs small business to earn that money, they'll spend it more carefully, but more importantly because of increased tax take it will be possible to lower the tax burden for everyone and level the playing field.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Judgmentality 6y ago

> An advice for the VC among us. I wish I could find it now, but I once read a comment on HN where someone was approached by a VC for technical advice. To make a long story short, the engineer being consulted noted that in order for their growth to continue as the company proclaimed, they would have to break the speed of light before reaching profitability. The VC invested anyway and inevitably the company failed. VCs chase trends just as much as anyone. In my experience, they are more susceptible to herd mentality than regular people.

refurb 6y ago

Yup. People act like computer aided drug design is new, but it’s been happening since the 80’s with the same promises that never pan out. People are right to be skeptical. That said, I could see computational drug design being helpful in particular circumstances solving very specific issues. But the idea it’s going to wholesale change the way drugs are designed and speed up the drug discovery process are very, very optimistic and the landscape is riddled with failed promises over the past 40 years.

ta988 6y ago
I work in drug discovery, we use computers all the time though at at every steps. Drug discovery is already computer aided, and they try to sell it like it is not... They just want to sell their expensive and biased statistical model that doesn't do much more than a regression but use the latest shiny thing (knowledge graphs, rnn, svm, you name it ...)
- ta988 6y ago
  It's a bit like people that want to disrupt the bodega or the breakfast juice or a one drop of blood full test for all diseases. You can pitch it as loud as you want, when you have a shitty product it will not make it better.
- refurb 6y ago
  What ticks me off is the hyperbole. "We're revolutionizing drug discovery" and "we'll reduce your attrition rate by orders of magnitude". No, no you won't. If your offering a tool that fixes a specific issue I'm facing, then ok, I'll listen. But scientists don't take well to bullshit.