The Consolidation Of Talent, Capital and Returns in Biotech | Hacker News Reader

The Consolidation Of Talent, Capital and Returns in Biotech

lifescivc.com

86 pointsfern1217 comments

A biotech management recruiter commented:

  MA will pull away with the lead soon from Bay Area
  based on cost of living. I have senior management
  members tell me daily that they'll move anywhere
  BUT Bay Area. You'll pay $3.2m for 3/4 BR in Palo
  Alto. South Bay and North Bay aren't too much better.

Yeah, but SF has the money, so they'll just have to put up with it. I mean, is there any other reason to be in SF for a biotech startup?

UCSF.

Boston has no money?

Does anywhere in the world have venture capital the way SF/SV has? No, and suggesting otherwise is absurd. Boston has the best research institutions, but cash is king.

> Does anywhere in the world have venture capital the way SF/SV has?

For biotech deals, Boston does.

http://www.fiercebiotech.com/venture-capital/top-15-cities-f...

Boston and SF tend to be neck and neck in terms of biotech VC dollars, with Boston getting more money once and a while.

It's been an interesting change. 10 years ago, SF was the clear leader, but Boston has really moved up.

* A recruiter from and based out of Boston who's totally unbiased

Oklahoma City has a small but strong Biotech and medical device scene ($6.7B Revenue, $2.2B salaries for a workforce of 51,000). Even then most companies in OKC raise money in SF & Boston and either have an office there or move back and forth. Which is pointed out in the section on satellite offices. The satellite office trend I don't see stopping given how cheap flights are and how fast communications have become between coasts.

Uh, San Diego conspicuously not on the list here?

What list? San Diego is mentioned in the article and is #5 in the list given in the first link.

> These data are striking.

The use of 'data' to mean 'plural of datum' continues to fall out of favor in modern usage. Encountering it in a Saturday-morning browse was a note of angelic harmony to start the day.

Would you not agree that it might be a bit of a British thing (the author is Oxford educated)? A reflexive urge to pluralize bands, companies and other startup-proximate collective nouns.

'"Data are" doesn't roll of their tongues smoothly. But for British readers the plural is more natural.' [0]

[0] https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/07/point-...

BTW I looked you up. Do you know anything about Richard Muller's ideas for realising table-top detectors of gravitational waves?

Whether it's a British thing or not is beyond my knowledge. I just wanted to celebrate something that made me happy :).

Regarding Richard Muller's proposals: I don't -- confusingly, I am familiar with Holger Müller's proposals, and it would appear that they are both at Berkeley.

Experiment is the arbiter of truth; whenever any new instrumentation can demonstrably reach the relevant sensitivity and systematic-effect rejection necessary to do a job better than it has been done before, we'll all switch to it.

Wow this article is pretty condescending towards the biotech scene in Europe...

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, maybe there are fewer biotech startups in Europe because profiting off of people's illnesses is generally frowned upon?

My guess is progress in that area falls more into the realm of government grants, with maybe the exception of classical pharmaceuticals (there are plenty of old companies like Bayer).

Biotech is not my field so I'd be interested in hearing other people's opinions.

You should go back and reread the entire article. This isn’t a US is better than the rest of the world post, it’s a Boston/SF are getting really good at the whole life science startup thing.

Sure, I'd see no problem highlighting how far they've come. Sharing success stories is important. Which is why I found it odd that they were making multiple condescending references to Europe such as (paraphrasing) "if you're not in Boston or SF you might as well be in Europe" where it's making it sound like Siberia...

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