
Sam Altman Is Bullish on Biotech Startups - x43b
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/y-combinator-sam-altman-interview-on-investing-in-biotech-startups/
======
kayhi
Biotech is certainly exciting on the cost front as technology progresses,
however, there is an even easier win which is bringing price transparency to
supplies and reagents.

We've worked with every YC biotech company (except Ginkgo) and the savings is
massive verse paying list price. Startups are unable to negotiate competitive
prices from large distributors due to their limit budgets so we've been
pooling their purchasing power.

Recently, we've started doing analytics
([http://labspend.com/](http://labspend.com/)) for labs on supplies/chemicals
and see huge differences even in universities that spend 10+ million per a
year.

Here is an example from four universities located in the midwest of the USA
for a commonly used chemical reagent called acetonitrile.

List price for this item is currently at $1335.49
([http://www1.fishersci.com/ecomm/servlet/fsproductdetail_1065...](http://www1.fishersci.com/ecomm/servlet/fsproductdetail_10652_679239__-1_0))
and here is what university labs are paying $399.31, $239.16, $220.54, $156.10
- image: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7671582/chemical-
pricing...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7671582/chemical-pricing.png)
).

We commonly see 10x savings, but even in this example 5x can be quite
significant in the budget of a start up.

~~~
supster
Interesting! So are store.p212121.com or lapspend.com aka offers.p212121.com
hooked to the same backend? Can I buy from labspend.com? Since universities
buy through their labs do they see divergent prices even within the same
institution? How do you provide cheaper prices - do you buy in bulk and then
redistribute or do you simply get lower prices bc you move large volumes via
pooling? I think you are onto something really cool here. I imagine a future
where perhaps Stanford would do all their buying through you since you could
pool the volume of multiple large research institutions. Btw how do you
process payments? Also the more info boxes on labspend.com don't seem to be
working.

~~~
kayhi
We started by offering an e-commerce solution although we are adding products
like crazy there's 30+ million chemicals/products in science. This is another
reason we built out labspend which has a different backend. We are seeing labs
paying different amounts at the same school. Stanford we are able to find
10-20% savings at times, but there are in a good place compared to start ups.

Sorry about the Lean More buttons not working and will get those up to date
soon. Feel free to shoot me email if you have a specific question
(sean@p212121.com).

------
apapli
I know it's a bit OT as these companies are more established, but what listed
stocks show some promise in BioTech that are worth watching? (Both big and
small)

~~~
w1ntermute
I won't make any specific recommendations, but you can learn more by following
these journalists:

\- Adam Feuerstein:
[http://www.thestreet.com/author/1352996/AdamFeuerstein/all.h...](http://www.thestreet.com/author/1352996/AdamFeuerstein/all.html)
(and the rest of The Street's biotech coverage:
[http://www.thestreet.com/headlines-and-
perspectives/biotech/](http://www.thestreet.com/headlines-and-
perspectives/biotech/))

\- Matthew Herper:
[https://twitter.com/matthewherper](https://twitter.com/matthewherper)

~~~
apapli
Ta! :)

------
bcks
Any news from the YC-backed Immunity Project? Seems like nothing new on their
blog or Twitter feed since 2014:
[https://www.immunityproject.org](https://www.immunityproject.org)

~~~
untilHellbanned
Sh*t takes time.

~~~
bcks
Well, critics warned it was a scam and crowdsourcing funding was a way to
bypass legit medical processes and review. I want to give them the benefit of
the doubt, but a year's silence doesn't look great.

------
wuschel
(Disclaimer/shameless advertisement: I am a co-founder of a project in the
problem domain. We are currently in seed stage, fundraising mode, and are
going to have a look at the U.S. east/west coast soon).

I am quite happy to see YC to jump on the SynBio train. While other
specialized accelerators such as _IndieBio_ [1] have been first in this fairly
unclaimed industry sector, I expect their involvement to trigger a cascade in
professional investment that will help the bulk of us to get more money. In
contrary to software (and for a multitude of reasons), biotech investments
have recovered at a much slower pace since the 2008 crash.

If I get around to make a solid write up, I would like to compare the
wet/hardware biotech startup accelerator experience. As in software, biotech
tools have made a great improvement and became cheaper by orders of magnitude.
However, the development workflow is still different, and many things such a
reproducibility, lab environment, specialized talent are not as easy to come
by in a lean and fast accelerator program. 3 month to MVP is a true challenge
- we were quite lucky that we made it [2].

Biotech can be far more complicated as software on the business side of
things, and going lean is often not really an option (think production
standards, ISO/cGMP). A 1:1 copy of the software accelerator model is
definitely not enough.

[1] [http://indie.bio](http://indie.bio) [2]
[http://sothicbio.science](http://sothicbio.science)

------
w1ntermute
Prior discussion on YC + biotech:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9997722)

~~~
OopsCriticality
I'm still wondering what YC's value proposition is in this space:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998739)

~~~
increment_i
Gotta agree with this. If YC is serious about biotech, we should expect them
to start bringing domain experts into the fold soon - doctors, surgeons,
eminent researchers, possibly folks with high level experience in regulation
etc. I imagine we'll start seeing this soon.

~~~
jrkelly
They recently added Anne Wojcicki (23andMe) as a part-time partner.

------
codyb
Makes sense to me. I was talking to a trader the other day and I asked if he
bought when Hilary's comments drove the prices down. Seems he turned a pretty
penny for his firm.

The technology required is becoming more accessible, the research and break
throughs certainly aren't going to stop, I guess the big question really
becomes, which companies? Unless there's a bubble, because the profits don't
materialize (in which case progress would slow only to pick up again down the
road I figure).

Of course, you could probably buy a fund which tracks that particular segment
of the market.

