It takes a village
***A quick ad: if you haven’t already, check out the Biotech Reference Stack.***
For the last few years, my main goal with Scaling Biotech has been to try and understand how biotech organizations can become more data driven while communicating to others what I figure out in the process. I plan to continue doing this, but I’ve realized that to do it properly requires more of a group effort. So in this week’s post, I’m going to describe what I think that looks like and how I plan to help make it happen.
The short version is: I believe that the software companies that are building tools to make biotech more data driven should be the ones educating potential customers about how to do it.
And when I say “should” here, I don’t mean in some ethical sense. They don’t have a moral obligation to do it. But they do have an economic incentive and they have the broadest possible experience from talking to lots of different biotechs. So for their own good and the good of the community, they should do it.
And no, I’m not worried about software companies spreading biased or incorrect information to trick users into buying things they don’t need. Users in this space are smart enough and the community is small enough that that would backfire pretty quickly. If you look at the blogs that software teams are writing today, it’s good stuff.
So I’m going to be doing two things to try and make it better:
First, through Merelogic I’m offering a service called the Go-to-Market Foundation that helps software teams determine what to write about, and how to write about it in a way that highlights what users care about while balancing teaching and selling. If you’re a software startup that could use something like this, click here to learn more.
Second, I’m starting a second newsletter called Viral Esoterica about writing about data and software in niche sectors such as biotech. I’m doing this as a separate newsletter because I know the topic may not be of interest to many of my subscribers here. But if you are someone who wants to learn all my tricks, and how I think about writing this newsletter, follow the link and subscribe. My first post goes out tomorrow.
For the next two months, I’m planning to post on both newsletters weekly, but I’ll eventually switch to alternating weeks between Scaling Biotech and Viral Esoterica. I’m excited to keep writing about the Reference Stack here, and get Viral Esoterica off to a good start but long-term I don’t think I can write two newsletters every week.
On here, I’m going to spend the next few months exploring different corners of the recently launched Biotech Reference Stack (starting in two weeks), and announcing updates and improvements to the site.
As the world of data for biotech continues to grow and evolve, I’m looking forward to building resources to make sure it grows right. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading this week’s Scaling Biotech! I really appreciate your continued support, and I read every comment and reply.
As a reminder, I offer several services to help connect biotech teams with tools, practices and expertise to make their organizations more data driven.
The Biotech Reference Stack is a website designed to help biotech data teams identify the tools they need and figure out how to put them together.
For help navigating the Reference Stack, sign up for a free consultation call to clarify a problem you're facing and identify the best options to evaluate.
Or if you’re building software that makes biotech more data driven, find out how to add your app to the Reference Stack.