Top all-time · #2710
Bruce Booth
Personal blog · lifescivc.combusinessscience
Bruce Booth writes LifeSciVC, a personal blog at lifescivc.com about business and science. Since 2011, 27 different Hacker News readers have linked it 66 times, most often “It might work in the lab, but don't start a company yet.”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Bruce Booth's LifeSciVC blog for analysis of biotech venture capital, drug development costs, and startup funding. Commenters cite its figures and explanations in discussions of drug pricing and funding.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Bruce Booth, partner at Atlas Venture, blogs on all facets of early stage biotech.
Most-linked posts?
- It might work in the lab, but don't start a company yet.3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-04-20
- Venturing a Perspective on the Drug Pricing Debate2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-12-11
- Biotech Venture Capital Mythbusting Redux2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-11-24
- /2014/11/a-billion-here-a-billion-there-the-cost-of-making-a-drug-revisited/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-11-24
What Hacker News says?
Venturing A Perspective On The Drug Pricing Debate https://lifescivc.com/2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on-the...
Comment linking /2019/12/venturing-a-perspective-on-the-drug-pricing-debate/
on “Oxford University breakthrough on global COVID-19 vaccine”Submitted The Consolidation Of Talent, Capital and Returns in Biotech as a story · 86 points
HN discussionThe academic publishing model, and academic research in general, will be dramatically different in 15 years, maybe fewer In california, venture capital already funds more research than the NIH ($5B vs $1.5-2B). Much of this is one step later stage than academic research but increasingly they overlap directly. VC funding for life science research is skyrocketing, and NIH funding is declining. In January 2018 alone th…
Comment linking /2011/03/academic-bias-biotech-failures/
on “Science’s Pirate Queen”Submitted Venturing a Perspective on the Drug Pricing Debate as a story · 7 points
HN discussionWe actually have a pretty decent understanding regarding how the immune system remembers illnesses, although it is above my pay grade. if interested, read up on "adaptive immune system" the genes involved in autoimmune disease are not as well understood as in some other diseases, and the individual contribution of any one gene is pretty small in autoimmune disease (compared to, say, spinal muscular atrophy). so as y…
Comment linking /2016/09/re-balancing-immunity-via-regulatory-t-cell-potentiation-introducing-delinia/
on “Haemophilia A trial results 'mind-blowing'”Submitted This Time May Be Different: Today’s Biotech Market in Context as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThe "power law" / all-or-nothing form of VC is really just one flavor of tech investing. It is certainly the most widely discussed, and maybe its the best, i dont know, but there are other successful models. For ex, many growth equity funds focus on a "doubles and triples" strategy where the risk / return profile is somewhere in between that of a bank loan and VC. They're looking for high probability of 5-7x returns…
Comment linking /2019/02/our-year-in-review-annual-talk-on-macro-biotech-and-atlas/
on “Earnest Capital is live”Submitted The Creation of Biotech Startups: Evolution Not Revolution – LifeSciVCLifeSciVC as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis was a really interesting article. I've worked with researchers who try to defend a small but statistically significant finding that just doesn't seem likely to be real, and this provides a statistical explanation for my skepticism. The p-value mentality is deeply entrained in a lot of researchers, though The challenge for journal editors seems very real. There's another group that deals with this challenge of i…
Comment linking /2012/09/scientific-reproducibility-begleys-six-rules/
on “Why I've lost faith in p values”Submitted The Biotech Venture Capital Math Problem (applies to Tech, too) as a story · 4 points
HN discussion(Since no one is pointing out Elephant in the room, I will do that). YC has been around for 10 years. Average age of a company from First Investment to IPO in 2014 is less than 10 years ( http://lifescivc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Time-From-VC... Source 1.) Personally, I believe startups excel when odds were stacks against us (forced to innovate and make founders strong and tested). I think YC or any incubator…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Time-From-VC-Investment-to-IPO_Feb2015.jpg
on “YC Stats”Submitted On-Q-ity, a Cancer Diagnostic Company: R.I.P. as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI have worked in biotech / biopharma for the last eight years as a founder / venture investor / operator coming from a non biology / chem background. It is an amazing space that needs more smart people from other domains Most engineers / tech VCs have been making initial forays into this world through bio-IT / software driven drug dev. This is potentially a really promising space, but I'd suggest starting with bioph…
Comment linking /2018/01/two-carts-two-charts-dissecting-returns-t-cell-therapy-ma/
on “Startup Investor School: The Basics of Seed Investing”Submitted Scientific Reproducibility: Begley’s Six Rules as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe approval process (clinical trials) far outweighs the costs of the R&D proper: https://lifescivc.com/2014/11/a-billion-here-a-billion-there... That article does not include any marketing costs, that for large companies like Pfizer may be around 30-40% of the total cost.
Comment linking /2014/11/a-billion-here-a-billion-there-the-cost-of-making-a-drug-revisited/
on “Analog Devices AD9361 – when microchips are more profitable than drugs”Submitted Biotech: The Featherweight Champion of the Markets as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"Reverse ageism" is actually a fairly controversial topic in biotech. After a Twitter debate, a top VC (and one of the only biotech VCs who blogs) wrote this post about why he likes older entrepreneurs [0] 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://lif…
Comment linking /2018/02/grey-hair-c-suite-experience-age-ipos-biotech/
on “Boston-area startups are on pace to overtake NYC venture totals”Submitted Strategic Planning in Biotech During a Pandemic Crisis as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs a sector. One source is here: https://lifescivc.com/2016/11/biotech-venture-capital-mythbu... Are you referring to Nasdaq as a whole when you say Nasdaq tech? The Nasdaq components aren't really representative of tech startups: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/quotes/Nasdaq-100-Ind... Biotech startups IPO at a much higher rate than tech startups and IPO on average 3 years after series a: https://www.baybrid…
Comment linking /2016/11/biotech-venture-capital-mythbusting-redux/
on “Biology Is Eating the World”Submitted Venturing a Perspective on the Drug Pricing Debate as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe small funds on that list are all tech funds. The larger funds are all biotech. Biotech funds are "specialist" but they aren't really small. Biopharma is a top 5 subsector of VC (by some estimates it is the 2nd biggest sector after software) and the largest sector by far of healthcare VC, with $17B+ invested in 2018. Orbimed manages $10B+ (though some of that is public equity). Flagship manages many billions (lat…
Comment linking /2016/11/biotech-venture-capital-mythbusting-redux/
on “Biology Is Eating the World”Submitted Game Isn’t Worth the Candle: Reflections on the JPM Healthcare Conference as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is cool scientifically, and also a cool example of how amazing things can happen with interdisciplinary collaboration in biotech. When you have a new technology with so many potential applications (adding 152 extra codons on top of the normal 64), it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. Getting from "we can add letters to the DNA alphabet" to "we can build new amino acids into IL-2 to facilitate PE…
Comment linking /2016/09/re-balancing-immunity-via-regulatory-t-cell-potentiation-introducing-delinia/
on “Adding new DNA letters makes novel proteins possible”Submitted The Incredible Expanding Universe of Biotech Stocks as a story · 2 points
HN discussionProblem: lots of early stage biotech/medtech ventures have a hard time raising funding, for a variety of structural reasons ( http://lifescivc.com/2015/01/venture-backed-biotech-today-re... ), despite having already made initial progress using non-dilutive government funding (NIH grants, SBIR, STTR, etc.). Solution: an equity crowdfunding site for early stage biotech/medtech ventures focused on gaining backing from…
Comment linking /2011/11/risky-business-late-stage-vs-early-stage-biotech/
on “Ask HN: Idea Sunday”Submitted Biotech Venture Capital Mythbusting Redux as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I'll add that my own experience of licensing (my own) IP from a top-25 university TTO has been interesting In my experience, there's a lot of variance between universities, and even between tech transfer officers within a given university. Another complication: at Harvard/MIT, where professors may have cross-institutional appointments, you need to nail down exactly who you'll be dealing with (for example, the Broa…
Comment linking /2014/04/pushing-forward-with-collaborative-rd-models-in-biotech-roche-spero-and-biogen-ataxion/
on “Sam Altman Is Bullish on Biotech Startups”Submitted Startup Tech Incubator Announces Biotech Experiments as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnother excellent resource is the LifeSciVC blog: https://lifescivc.com/ https://lifescivc.com/category/from-the-trenches/ (the posts here aren't included on the main page)
Comment linking /category/from-the-trenches/
on “HN Office Hours with Michael Seibel and Aaron Harris”Submitted Mythbuster: Does Tech have a faster time to exit vs Biotech? as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
