Noubar Afeyan, CEO of Flagship Pioneering, explains why Flagship strictly builds platform biotechnology companies rather than single-asset clinical companies.
“Every single of the 110 companies we've been involved with for 25 years are a platform. Every single one. There's no exception to that.”
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More from Noubar Afeyan
Opinion
Afeyan: Traditional cancer staging has no basis in underlying biology
“Like right now, people say stage one cancer, stage two cancer, as though there's such a thing. The medical profession has created stages every once in a while, they change them. It's a joke. That's got nothing to do with underlying science and biology. No offe…”
Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 30:10No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
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Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 30:28No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
Opinion
Afeyan: Single-asset biotechs face mass extinction due to Chinese competition
“And in an environment like this, There's almost like a mass extinction event going on, unfortunately, as we speak for a lot of these single asset companies accentuated by the recent bets that China has made both centrally, governmentally, and in the form of re…”
Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 36:59No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
Insight
Afeyan: Parallel entrepreneurship forces founders to systematize reproducible venture processes
“The learning cycles of doing things at the same time is completely different than if you actually force yourself to think about the essence of what you're doing and what's reproducible, what has to be different in each case.”
Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 2:51No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
Insight
Afeyan: Most successful entrepreneurs secretly recognize chance drove their outcomes
“Most successful entrepreneurs who've done, you know, kind of like unexpected things also secretly worship at the altar of chance, because they also realize that at the end of the day, their explanations of what happened. Do not suffice for actually what happen…”
Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 9:38No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
Insight
Afeyan: Renewable fuel innovators cannot command a price premium over commodity diesel
“The price of diesel, whether it's renewable or not, is the price of diesel. The price of carbon when we started was 50 bucks a ton, when we ended it was five. And When we started, the U S was energy dependent. And when we were done, the U S was cushing with en…”
Noubar AfeyanFeb 27, 2025▶ 13:00No Priors Ep. 104 | With Flagship Pioneering CEO and Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan
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