I’ve become interested in two ideas:

Investment bank for drug (asset) financing

• Lots of assets and lots of biotech startups (housing 1 -2) and unable to drive further. Also maybe good science but unable to fundraise & develop

• Find & package promising assets into bundles for mid-sized co’s etc to acquire and develop.

• Likely not where I’d start. Start with vendors (sell to PE or larger vendors). Build track record of transactions. Leverage into deal flow for biotechs needing to raise or looking for partnerships. Establish relationships with late stage bio capital networks.

Late stage bio funding flywheel (the bottleneck in scaling of bio companies; shapes the macro industry dynamic of no biotech leverage).

• This is the major value inflection point for biotechs. Also appears to remain highly hierachical, not many credible players (long money, interested in building the co not trading on one-off clinical readouts). Remains a very nebulous cycle of bio companies beyond incumbents

• Most of the exciting bio companies launched from silicon valley are hung out to dry or forced to bend to conformity of existing investors

• Post-IPO investors are another ecosystem uniquely necessary to bio. Bio value inflection often doesn’t come till years after IPO (after approval, commercial launch, and reaching a steady state of revenue from drug sales). There’s a handful of investors who can diligence at this stage & this is the barrier to unlock further capital

• How can you bridge early startups into this flywheel? Necessary for freestanding drug companies. Or even more successful outcomes from M&A.