The amount of money being invested (and made) in biotech today, and the level of technological advancement in the field, is disproportionately higher than mainstream awareness of the field
As you say Boston is strong in a lot of tech areas but they’re often different from SV tech.
https://www.jacksonlewis.com/publication/massachusetts-legis...
This is mostly heresay from folks I know from my PhD days in a computational life science field in Boston. The other computational folks I know have either tried to stick it through in academia or have left for greener pastures in software. The wet lab people who joined biotechs are not thrilled.
From what I've heard this is a bit worse in Boston than the Bay Area. There seems to be more hierarchy and ageism in Boston and some of the VCs are very vocal in their preference for older employees. Bay Area is a bit better, some tech VCs are trying to get into biotech by supporting young scientists but there's still a long way to go
IMO he has valid points, but there are all kinds of issues with his analysis, but bottom line is there isn't enough data to prove either sides point, so there's a lot of opinions presented as facts
[0] https://lifescivc.com/2018/02/grey-hair-c-suite-experience-a...
Most of the tech industry in Dallas is telecom. There are many, many reasons why I categorically refuse to ever move to SV, and one of them is that I love telecom and can't stand web/social/mobile. I'm saddened and disappointed that the biggest tech hub in the country, the part of the country whose name is synonymous with the tech industry, is just a collection of web/social/mobile developers who don't work on anything I consider interesting. SV just has this narrow definition of tech that really puts me off. OK, to be fair, there are a few telecom companies in SV, but they don't dominate the industry like they do in Dallas.
My career goals are to work in B2B telecom for the rest of my life and never ever do web/social/mobile, so I need to avoid SV.
I'm also working on a database tracking biotech VC activity. Still in alpha but you can take a look here [3]
Pretty much all of the big biotech exits are mostly not even covered in the tech press (with the exception of stemcentrx, unity and maybe a few others)
[source: I'm in consumer tech and my brother-in-law is a cancer researcher.]
A VC's core competency is typically in knowing & applying the core industry dynamics to their investments, so if the core industry dynamics are different, it makes sense that VCs will eventually specialize in subjects that they actually know something about. Trying to apply consumer software "best practices" to biotech will get people killed and you sent to prison.
Cycles times are costly / more expensive, and companies usually only get a handful of chances to get it right. And it's too expensive to try to manage this risk through diversification alone -- cost of failure is too high. That's why biotech VCs spend so much time on diligence -- mostly scientific diligence -- compared to tech counterparts
Once upon a time, software was developed with that care. Read up on the Multics security model, or Spark ADA, or the multiply-redundant systems that Tandem and Stratus put out. It really wasn't until the microcomputer era that software became "test it until it works" rather than "rigorously prove that it meets the specification".
And that was absolutely the right move, economically, because for most of the stuff we use consumer software for, it's really not that important. If Reddit shows the wrong point total for a story, nobody really cares. If YouTube occasionally hiccups while playing back, it's not a big deal. I'd rather have YouTube at all rather than insist that they get all the bugs out.
Someday, probably, people will insist on ironing out all the kinks in software, the same way we consider plane crashes unacceptable now (if you read the history of aviation, there was a time period where virtually all the key aviation innovators died in plane crashes or accidents). That period comes after all the major markets have been discovered and filled, though. Once computers have spread into every niche that they can, with clear market leaders for each industry, we'll see them devote their energy toward making things bug-free.
This often translates into lower status and lower pay.
You really need some chemistry and biology to get love in a biotech firm.
I think biotech may be exacerbating inequality more than most industries, as the profits are most definitely not going to the employees like they do in other STEM fields.
One reason is that there are just a ton of experienced entrepreneurs in Boston and few in NYC. One VC said that in NYC you could shoot a shotgun and not hit an experienced entrepreneur but in Boston you could shoot a water pistol and hit a dozen. Not sure why that's the case tho, maybe bostons legacy as a tech hub, more early stage VC, and more entrepreneurial culture at MIT / Harvard
There is a huge concentration of academics, VCs, startups and big pharma outposts within walking distance of each other in Kendall square. In NYC it's harder to get around, and even in the Bay Area you have several biotech clusters in Berkeley, mission bay, SSF, and the valley
Beijing is likely far ahead. Beijing's total VC investment is much higher, it accounts for over 1/3 of Chinese domestic VC and Chinese firms have accounted for over 40% of the biotech investment in US drug startups in the beginning of this year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-18/chinese-m...
I don't think that's true. China is doing some amazing things in biotech, and they have perhaps the best young drug discovery talent base in the world, but most VC and innovative startups are in the US for now.
Most of the Chinese VC investment has been in Series B or later stage rounds in US-based companies (some UK / EU as well). Most Series A rounds are led by US biotech VCs, and these VCs seed most of the funded startups as well. There are some large Series A rounds led by Chinese VCs (mostly Sequoia China), but not as many as by US VCs [0] -- disclosure: i created this database, it's still in alpha
There have been a few mega-rounds for Chinese biotechs recently, but it seems like a lot of those are aimed at developing Chinese versions of drugs originally developed in the west. There are exceptions of course, like Legend
Don't mean to knock China's biotech scene, but Beijing does not seem "far ahead" to me
If you know of any good data sources for domestic china biotech VC id love to see it