BarabanLab

There’s a belief in SF that with enough money you can solve anything. For a lot of technical companies, VCs are therefore looking for a charismatic founder who they believe will be able to get that money. In the first few rounds, they care less about the actual technical progress. VCs won’t directly tell you this but it is true, or at least revealed through their choices of who to fund. You’re seeing companies winning big rounds with no tech, followed by a scramble to acquire the people to build the tech for them. The problem with this is the word spreads quickly that you are a bit of a bullshit company amongst the people you want to hire. I’ve heard accumulating insider stuff lately that makes me believe this has gone too far. Money going to young founders or founders with no domain knowledge because they told a great story, but then technical friends go to interview there and are horrified. This is especially true on the life science side of things, where biologists are going into labs and seeing what looks like a 1st year try to do experiments and making obvious critical mistakes. Next the founder will argue with said interviewee, insisting they’re wrong only to then ask chatGPT in front of them and further humiliate themselves. Interviewee then refuses to join, and slowly finds others in their network who have done the same. Now it’s even harder for this founder to recruit anyone serious to solve their problem and they panic. Next they start to fabricate data and marketing materials. We all know where this goes. There seems to be a new bio wave coming through atm (imo GLP-1 success has renewed belief in power law outcomes). I think the challenge with life sciences in particular is the people who go into it are less financially motivated, and so to recruit them, you genuinely need to be doing excellent work and know your stuff. VCs with limited exposure to scientists may be making an error in thinking everyone has the same motivations as the average software engineer. Winning over talent for your life science company is different from software. Arguing with someone with deep technical expertise and being wrong is extremely bad for the company’s reputation and spreads fast. All this is to say is be careful. Many of these founders seems to sell a story that they’re going to do things faster and better than trad bio, but once you get in there they’re actually just doing the same thing in a much less sophisticated way. There is basically nothing new. It’s like you’re giving them money for a science project and to do a course on how to be a research assistant in a lab. For anything that’s science problem-like, make sure the founding team has someone who is respected in their field. Maybe get someone from your network with expertise to step into a lab with them and check. Granted being able to fundraise is important, this blanket rule isn’t translating as well to life sciences. They also need to be able to hire the best people.