What strikes me as a Non-US citizen (UK) is the surprising number of solutions to problems that look like US healthcare specific issues. Drug-peer to peer swapping because of prescription costs seems like it would have no demand in most other rich countries, and no supply elsewhere.<p>Not saying it's a bad idea, just interesting to see biases - and wonder how we overcome them.
How does the requirement to relocate to SF work for companies with a wet lab or specialized capital equipment requirement? And outside of mentoring/networking (can YC provide in the biotech space?), how is YC a better deal than an SBIR/STTR?
"Industrial Microbes" has a concept that really excites me, I'd have loved to help them develop that idea for IndieBio Ireland.<p>It's non-obvious ideas like "Why not use natural gas instead of refined sugar?" that are going to make Biotech explode in coming years..while simultaneously putting fossil fuels to more productive or even sequestering use than burning them!
There's a big difference between the 5 - 15 years and billions of dollars to product in biotech/pharma, and the few at most years and relatively cheap amount of money for the payoff in software.<p>And if you think there are shortcuts like uber and airbnb, there are not. Even 23 and me, a pretty innocuous idea, is essentially a failure.
As a biologist with over a decade of experience in areas relevant to these startups, I appreciate the movement into biotech, but I'm unimpressed with the actual products.<p>While everyone might poo-poo academia, it would take little effort to find 100s of projects at universities across the world that are better versions of these projects.<p>As much as YC dominates software applications, they are woefully inferior in biotech/biomedical applications.