Dr. Francisco Gimenez, partner at 8VC, discusses the shifting business models of biotechnology startups with Joe Lonsdale.
Insight
Gimenez: Rare cancer therapies build infrastructure to cure broader diseases
“Once we create the tools and technologies to cure those,
We have this infrastructure layer that allows us to expand it to so many others. So we cure rare cancers or cell therapies today, but we're looking and building all of the infrastructure, the manufactur…”
What-if
Gimenez: Eliminating Startup Upside Would Entrench Incumbent Pharma
“If we didn't give people upside to translate these things, there would not be a system to actually sort of commercialize these things in a sort of fast turnaround biotech ecosystem. We would be dependent, it's not like that, that innovation would go away, but …”
Insight
Gimenez: Just 100 to 200 pharma CSOs dictate which diseases get cured
“So we've got, like, on the order of, what, a hundred, maybe 200 pharmas looking to make these M&As. So it means a hundred to 200 chief scientific officers are dictating what does.”
Opinion
Gimenez: Tenured academics enjoy the privilege of principle without practical trade-offs
“If you are in a tenured position in academia and you consider moving to industry, the dark side, which is always considered like the phrase that they tell you have like the privilege of principle that many other people don't, right? You don't have to make trad…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Gimenez: Life sciences will shift from curing diseases to active human enhancement
“I think we would flip the model of what we think of in bio life sciences from amelioration of suffering, which is essentially curing diseases, to sort of improvement of, like, human condition, like this, the transhumanist might call it something like that”
Insight
Gimenez: Entrepreneurs need both humility and entitlement to succeed
“Berkeley is where I learned humility, and Stanford's where I learned entitlement which kind of angers both groups off, which is why it's the best Kind of joke, but I think it's, you need both of those to, I think, succeed in sort of entrepreneurship.”