| > I'd like to point out, however, that there several thriving biotech incubators around the country. Surely the demand must be coming from somewhere when tenants must be found to pay the bills. Indeed, I think the startups that enter an incubator space are well aware of the rent prices, and do so to to take advantage of the certified lab space provided which is impractical to build on one's own. Yep, I was just about to update my answer with the following: --[I want to emphasize that there isn't inherently wrong with co-working spaces. They just aren't in the same class as [YC, 500s, Techstars] Also, I read up on Harlem, they claim that they are providing laboratory space. That's a pretty solid value add. So I can understand why they may be wary of losing their investment in capital. I didn't consider this, but there is an argument to be made that things are different in more capital intensive industries. Unlike software, the incubator model may be more palatable in these industries. Still, I think they should hypothetically re-price equity demands compared to software equity demands, not charge per unit. Just demand more equity. Charging entrepreneurs is still bad signaling and can lead to adverse selection (if you market yourself as being equivalent to [YC 500s Techstars])-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > A takeway from all this, for me, is that I'm wondering what one could do to make a biotech-focused YC a workable model. Unfortunately, the (comparatively) glacial pace of biotech startups dampens a lot of enthusiasm. Honestly, I think it's a bit early for the YC model in biotech. Too many subsets of the market are just too capital intensive, time expensive, and subject to regulatory burden. However, with exciting technologies like CRISPR and high throughput sequencing starting to come on to the scene, genetic engineering and DNA derived technologies may be much more viable as a low capital cost subset of the market. Also, DNA looks suspiciously like software embedded on extremely high density storage tape to me... :) |