Category Archives: New business models

By Ankit Mahadevia, CEO of Spero Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC This time a quarter ago organizations large and small were in the thick of the “to hybrid or not to hybrid” debate. Each

By Ankit Mahadevia, CEO of Spero Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Biotwitter is great for healthy debates.  The most recent has been on the merits of the hybrid vs.an in-person model.  John Maraganore’s excellent

By Bob Clarke, CEO of Kinaset Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. In December 2019, I was in London meeting with my future co-founders to discuss an asset that would eventually become the cornerstone of

By Deanna Petersen and Holly May, Chief Business Officer and Chief Commercial Officer, respectively, of AVROBIO, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Moving from traditional drug development and commercialization to gene therapy development and commercialization can

By Jonathan Montagu, CEO of HotSpot Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC Returning to work following the pandemic presents an opportunity to think creatively about how to re-configure the workplace.  CEO’s that I have spoken

This blog was written by Rene Russo, CEO of Xilio Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. A lifetime ago, in May 2020, I had the honor of writing my first “From the Trenches” blog. I

This blog was written by Ros Deegan, CBO of Bicycle Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. As a child, I once played the fiddler in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’. I was a horrible violinist with

This blog was written by Jeb Keiper, CBO of Nimbus Therapeutics LLC, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Walking the streets of Union Square in mid-January torrential rain, we had the good fortune of sharing the

This post was written by Adam Rosenberg, CEO of Rodin Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Those of us in biotech tend to focus our attention on drug discovery and development, but it is also

This post was written by Jason Gardner, Atlas EIR and CEO of Magenta Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. A new type of medicine was approved in Europe at the end of May that culminated

This blog was written by Jeb Keiper, CBO of Nimbus Therapeutics LLC, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Unsurprisingly, I had not given that much thought to the parent entity of my new employer when I

This blog was written by Adam Rosenberg, CEO of Rodin Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. As a controlled experiment, try placing a tape recorder, rotary phone or record album in front of an 8

This blog was written by Rosana Kapeller, CSO of Nimbus Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC. Love it or hate it, no one can deny that Über has revolutionized the fundamental nature of the taxi

This blog was written by Mike Gilman, CEO of Padlock Therapeutics, as part of the “From the Trenches” feature of LifeSciVC. I stumbled into a bit of a mess a few weeks ago. It was with the best of intentions, of course.

The exciting renaissance in cell and gene therapy over the past five years has yielded some of the most innovative medical advances in the industry’s pipeline today.  There are now multiple stories of patients getting “cured” of rare diseases, responding

External models of R&D innovation are the rage in Pharma today, as they should be – the future of our industry depends on a great deal more rather than less collaboration. In a very healthy way, lots of experiments are

Much has been written about the merits and demerits of the virtual biotech model.  In essence, a virtual biotech outsources all non-core activities and rejects the need for in-house laboratories.  Instead, a small internal team manages execution outside the company,

With today’s announcement of Roche’s deal with Spero Therapeutics LLC (here), and last month’s news regarding Biogen’s deal with Ataxion (here), we’ve added further momentum to our strategy of working closely with larger BioPharma partners to create innovative “external R&D”

As an early stage biotech investor, the future of the industry and its structure are clearly important things to think about – especially since most of the drug programs our new startups are working on won’t get launched, if they

A couple years ago we unveiled a new startup called Nimbus Discovery LLC which was experimenting with a new model that combined three key elements: Schrodinger’s cutting edge in silico drug screening and design platform, a truly virtual and globally

Today we announced a pair of Corporate Strategic Partnerships (CSPs) with Amgen and Novartis, as part of our closing of Fund IX, with the aim of working closely with them during our venture creation process of starting new biopharma companies. 

Not a biotech conference goes by these days without a discussion about new models for financing or exiting companies, and BioPharm America in Boston this week is no different.  I’m on a panel discussing the topic on Wednesday afternoon. New

Debating the merits of various biotech business models is in vogue today, in part as a response to the proliferation of experiments around the right form and function of the companies themselves.  An often asked question: are we supporting CEOs

Corporate venture capital’s role in the new biotech ecosystem couldn’t be understated today.  They are a major syndicate partner for those of us in the early stage arena, and we couldn’t power up our startups without them. I’ve written on

Flying home from JPM 2012 and thought I’d share a few reflections from our early stage venture perspective on what we heard (or didn’t) around the year’s kickoff biotech event. While most of the attendees were focused on Inhibitex and

Today we announced a new strategic alliance with Shire Pharmaceutical’s to identify new opportunities for early stage venture creation aimed at addressing rare genetic diseases.  This collaboration brings unique expertise from Shire’s Human Genetic Therapies group together with our company creation

Biotech’s high risks have led to the conventional wisdom that it’s valuable to construct a diversified portfolio of products at the company level.  Reinforced by the “show me multiple shots on goal” mantra of the capital markets, many product-focused biotech

Virtual research-stage biotechs seem to be all the rage these days.  And they do offer interesting investment theses in some settings and with particular assets.  But there are a bunch of myths about going virtual that deserve attention. But before

Corporate venture capital’s rise to prominence in biotech over the past few years is now a well worn subject.  It was yet again debated this week at the Windhover PSA meeting, in part triggered by the recent widely-covered launch of

Earlier this week the Startup Genome project released a report on the DNA of internet startups.  Essentially what attributes lead to success or failure.  One of the things they found was that 74% of startups failed because of “premature scaling”.

We all recognize that realizing value from a biotech company has historically been geared to one of two paths, IPO or M&A, and that they’ve both been getting tougher.  There’s been a number of articles recently about some of the

Academic-industry partnerships are popping up all over the place these days to fund early stage programs as part of ‘”open innovation” initiatives and “external sourcing” of new pipeline projects.   Here’s a non-exhaustive list of a few such deals this year

Today we announced a novel alliance with Monsanto to identify new life science technologies and explore the potential for creating/investing in new seed-stage startups around them.  It’s an exciting collaboration that brings a complementary set of interests, capabilities, and access

Bill Gates has just backed one our new startups – Nimbus Discovery LLC – as part of an extension to the seed tranche. Here’s the press release. It might come as a surprise to some, but Bill Gates has been a long-time