Pande: Bio startups risk failure pivoting to drug design without internal expertise
Vijay Pande · Shifting Risk Mindsets, from Tech to Bio · Apr 30, 2018 · at 7:33
Vijay Pande, General Partner on the a16z Bio team, discusses common pitfalls for tech bio founders attempting to negotiate platform partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.
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“Whatever the technology is, they got the cool technology, they think this will change drug design, and so then they go to pharma and they try to sell it. And pharma's not convinced yet. Ah, it's like my kids with new foods, and they don't want to try it until they really know that they really like it. And then they love it and it goes, but the beginning's really hard, and so then you decide, okay, we can't. Try it. We can't sell it to pharma for what we think it's worth, so we're gonna design drugs. But we don't know anything about designing drugs. And then that can also be a very dangerous road.”
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