For the last year I've been running a program connecting grad students and postdocs from bay area universities with biotech VCs to learn about the industry, find jobs and start companies. I also advise seed stage biotech startups.<p>What I've found through all this is that there are way more talented young biotech founders than there are investors who will fund them.<p>The top biotech VCs don't fund young founders -- much like tech VCs wouldn't fund young founder-CEOs until YC, a16z and Zuckerberg showed that young hackers could build huge companies.<p>Generalist tech VCs are starting to get into bio, but they shy away from therapeutics because they lack expertise and networks, even though therapeutics is by far the biggest sector of healthcare VC and where the returns are.<p>There is no real seed / angel ecosystem in biopharma, despite VCs investing $17B in the space in 2018.<p>So there are lots of interesting companies / founders that the funding market is not currently equipped to serve.<p>I'm considering doing a program on investing in biotech startups to address this. The format would be similar to the program I currently do on biotech entrepreneurship: weekly lectures / guest speakers (cell biology 101, a VC discussing how they do technical diligence, a successful entrepreneur discussing her story, etc). We'd also do bring in startups to pitch, then have a guided discussion of the company, perhaps moderated by a VC.<p>Ideally, at the end of the program, each investor would invest in a startup, as the best way to learn investing is by doing it under the guidance of experienced investors.<p>Would people be interested in something like this?
Not interested. Unlike the "normal" tech field, biotech and pharma is an extremely high risk investment and if you aren't a life scientist, it's almost impossible for you to separate the wheat from the chaff or do any kind of due diligence. A "cell biology 101" course won't help with that, you'd need a bachelor's degree at the very least. It's biology at the end, and biological systems are so complex that it costs billions to develop a drug, and you don't have a guarantee that you will find a working drug.