Biopharma startups are about as different from tech startups as you can get. The traditional tech incubator approach doesn't really work for biopharma. It can work for some life sci stuff but not pure biopharma (which is where most of the opportunity is)
That said, they said they've learned some lessons and they are providing more capital, and I'm sure if any organization can fix the biopharma seed exosystem it's them
The most important thing for them will be to get the right group of mentors. If you go off on the wrong scientific direction at the start of the company, it's much harder to salvage things with a pivot, so you need good eyes on all details of your experiments before you deploy capital
I was really disappointed to see YC involved with 'glowing plants' a few years back, which predictably failed (non-science founders, among other reasons). Color me skeptical.
Biology is a very different field; stuff that is wonderfully promising can get help up for years based on trivial mistakes or simple strategic errors. And on top of that, 95% of the stuff that sounds great won't amount to anything, and you can't tell until a few years have passed.
Our understanding of molecular biology isn't nearly as plug-and-play as many would like it to be.
Personally I love the idea of glowing plants. We first discussed it in 1983 after the announcement that the luciferase gene sequence had been added to a tobacco plant.
What could be better than glowing monkey grass leading up to your house? But as always, devil is in the details.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/gingko-bioworks-secures-27...