[lmeyerov]

Not true, plenty of biotech startups fail because they believe this.

Consider the pharma route. Does it solve something that slots in, or will the process be hard, or maybe they have something close enough that disrupting the pipeline isn't worth it? Many projects don't get into testing, many testing projects don't get purchased, and as generally only one pharma will want to purchase, scale won't be hit (so you're dependent), and many purchased projects won't get acquired.

There are other routes and they have their own business risks. The MVP / market analysis process is different for biotech, but still should happen. It's pretty fascinating!

[nmrm2]

> The MVP / market analysis process is different for biotech, but still should happen. It's pretty fascinating!

Right. I think we're all violently agreeing.

Biotech companies do need MVPs and market analysis. My observation is just:

1) The idea of testing product-market fit by building a complete product and putting it out there in uncontrolled settings doesn't really work for a lot of biotech companies. Especially anything that's going to need regulators' approval.

2) Compared with IT startups, Biotech companies are more likely to fail due to having the wrong answer for "but can we make it work?" rather than "is there a market?". So the MVPs optimize for testing former question, which usually means controlled experiments in a lab. There are counter-examples on both sides, I'm sure, just in general.

[jonwachob91]

Can you name one that fits your line of thinking?

> Does it solve something that slots in

I'm not sure what you mean by this...

> they have something close enough that disrupting the pipeline isn't worth it

This is another incident of thinking that IT startups are the same as Biotech startups, or any science startup. Marginal increments in IT can be worth BILLIONS, marginal increments in Biotech aren't worth the paper they are printed on (that may be a bit of an exaggeration), and the biggest reason is cost to get into market. IT has low costs if any to enter a market place, except in the rare exceptions where the FCC is involved, the average cost to get a drug to market is something like $500MM and YEARS of regulatory approval. It's not worth investing in a marginal increment, you invest in moonshots and as you collect more data and better understand how the drug performs to either continue to invest (if it remains promising) or shelve it if it only looks marginally better.

While the market analysis needs to happen it is much less rigorous than IT startups. Hey 100,000 people die every year from infections acquired in hospitals, great lemme call around see what hospitals are willing to pay and sell to them. Lets not forget the other 600,000 that acquire infections from hospitals, for which under the Affordable Care Act the hospital has to pay for. Great sounds like I have a business as long as my product doesn't surpass a certain price threshold. In biotech you are either a billion dollars or a bust, there is no in-between because new products cost so much you have to have those high returns.

Not many IT startups NEED $500MM just to get their first sale.