The bottom line is too far away
The last few weeks, I’ve been exploring different ways of trying to communicate the value of building a data driven biotech startup, as opposed to one that uses data in more or less the way that biologists and chemists have been doing for decades. One of the reasons this is hard is that many biotechs that claimed they were going to use data or AI/ML to revolutionize drug development have either fizzled out or have yet to deliver the kinds of results that we were promised. I’m not saying we haven’t seen progress from them - just not as much as many were hoping for.
So maybe the promise of this approach has been a bit oversold. But I think that’s to be expected with this sort of thing: The way that you typically improve or speed up a process is to do it over and over again, iteratively making changes. Some changes improve it, some make it worse. Over time, if you keep the changes that work, you get faster and better.
With a process that takes seconds or minutes, you can iterate and optimize it pretty quickly. With a process that takes hours or days, this takes a bit longer. The drug development process, on the other hand, takes decades.
So to fix drug development on a reasonable timespan, we can’t just iterate. We have to introduce bigger changes that we have reason to believe will make a big difference. Things that have worked in other industries. Things that follow principles we believe in. And some (many? most?) of those things are not going to work. But when you’re pitching VCs, you can’t dwell too much on that or you’ll never get the chance to start.
Overselling is a necessary part of the process.
Now we’re at a point where the financial markets are making investors reluctant to take the kinds of risks they were clamoring for just a few years ago. And they’ve conveniently noticed that some of those earlier bets were oversold.
I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t yet found the magical set of tools and processes that will make a biotech startup data driven, and make that data driven biotech hugely successful. But that doesn’t mean we can’t and it doesn’t mean we won’t. It just means that we won’t know if it’s possible until we do.
It means that the only way forward is to keep placing big, risky bets. To take it on faith that one of these bets will pay off as long as we keep pushing.
If others want to stick to the comfortable options that feel safe, that’s fine for them. But those of us who believe in the promise of data driven biotech will keep pushing.