Archive by category | Business development

Testing the Value Hypothesis

Testing the Value Hypothesis

Medical research tool providers have driven sweeping changes to the biotech industry. By introducing technologies like DNA sequencers, thermocyclers, mass spectrometers, and others, tool providers have tremendously accelerated biological understanding, leading to advanced new treatments and diagnostics.  A prime example is the impact genomic tools are making in the emergence of personalized medicine.  Technology push is a key factor driving medical revolutions and these new tools are enabling capabilities not previously dreamed possible.  Read more

Taking a Short Cut

Taking a Short Cut

Any bioentrepreneur considering a start-up to develop a new drug is quickly bludgeoned by the conventional wisdom that such a venture is too expensive and too high-risk to attempt.  One whack is the often-cited sound bite cost of $800 million per new approved drug that was reported by DiMasi, et al, and which is now up to $1.7 billion or more (see Munos 2010).  Another is the high failure rate of drugs in human trials (see a list of ten drugs that failed in Phase III in 2010, supposedly the least risky phase, compiled by Fierce Biotech).  With the major pharma companies scrambling to find a formula for profitability, smaller companies crashing and burning (or rarely getting bought out), and venture capitalists running for the exits, entrepreneurs should steer clear of drug discovery and development.  Or should they?  Read more

Minimum Viable Products in Biotech

Minimum Viable Products in Biotech

Hat tip to the source. A major pillar of Lean Startups is their use of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to test the validity of a product within a marketplace. By definition, a MVP has the minimal number of features that is required to test a given market hypothesis. A MVP allows the originating startup to gather invaluable feedback from customers, which in turn accelerates the feedback cycles around every aspect of development. Put differently, the use of an MVP avoids spending extensive time and resources building a finished product before validating the product concept with customers. When used in the  … Read more

New Bioentrepreneur article

New Bioentrepreneur article

We’ve posted a new article, Shape Shifting, to the Bioentrepreneur site. The piece examines how to mold a company’s pipeline and opportunities, making it most attractive for partnering or buyout. It was written Bob Baltera, CEO of Amira (at the time), and the title refers to the necessity of changing the shape of a company as it progresses. But shape shifting could also refer to the article itself. The process began early this year, after a meeting with Bob at the JP Morgan healthcare conference. The article went through several drafts and took months to put together — long enough  … Read more

Key strategic choices – ‘when’ to plug into the value chain

Key strategic choices - 'when' to plug into the value chain

Companies must make many strategic decisions in developing a business model. My last post looked at key strategic choices about ‘what’ a company could develop, and it considered trade-offs and implications of decisions that greatly impact the risks, costs and rewards of drug development. This post looks at another important element of the business model – ‘when’ a company should plan to plug into the value chain and earn a return for its investors.  Read more

The Israel-US Connection

The Israel-US Connection

The Israeli and American biotechnology industries are quite closely intertwined, with collaborations ubiquitous in academia, the clinic and in the financial community. What seems to makes the interplay successful is that there is no fixed pattern- players on both sides change roles according to various needs and opportunities. For instance, the U.S. seems to be a bigger draw for academic studies in this relationship, but when it comes to clinical or industrial work or finance, companies will simply go where the best deal is. A good example is Prolor Biotech, a developer of therapeutic proteins that owes its origins to  … Read more

Key strategic choices – ‘what’ to develop

Key strategic choices - 'what' to develop

As I discussed in my last post, the key strategic issues facing biotech start-ups are capital constraint, regulatory burden and the need for complementary assets and credibility. Together, with project specific factors such as market opportunity and competition, they shape decisions about what, when, and how a firm plugs into the value chain. These decisions are captured in the firm’s business model. Over my next few posts I am going to explore the implications and trade-offs that surround each of these strategic decisions, beginning with what.  Read more

Bioentrepreneur article online

We’ve posted a new article on the Bioentrepreneur website, Headwinds into Opportunity, by Prabhavathi Fernandes. The author is CEO, president and founder of Cempra Pharmaceuticals, and she previously helmed DarPharma, Ricerca Biosciences and Small Molecule Therapeutics. She’s also worked at BMS and Abbott. For more on her background, go here.  Read more

Non-dilutive financing to power your leverage startup – part 1

Non-dilutive financing to power your leverage startup - part 1

In this post, we will discuss the use of non-dilutive financing to incubate early-stage technologies with commercial potential prior to company formation. This strategy is designed to advance technologies originating from, or based in, an academic environment. In a later post, we will explain how the non-dilutive financing strategy can evolve when the startup company is founded. Non-dilutive finance and the Leverage Startup Non-dilutive financing is a central tenet of the Leverage Startup Model. This model is a capital-efficient vehicle to advance research-intensive technology, through its earliest and riskiest stage, toward commercialization. The Leverage Startup is designed to leverage established  … Read more