The strong history of biotechnology can be directly attributed to the men and women working in the field. For them, biotechnology is not just a profession, it is a mission and a call to solve the greatest challenges of our time: unraveling the essence of life and using knowledge in the service of compassion and the name of hope. They are entrepreneurs. They take risks. They are scientifically motivated and stubborn in their refusal to accept status.
The vast majority of companies working with these innovations and biotechnology are small revenue-generating companies. Your success in sourcing new drugs and therapies depends on one key factor: your ability to raise the large amounts of private capital needed to finance these challenging and incredibly risky ventures. This capacity, in turn, depends on a public policy environment that supports innovation and encourages these investments, including the continued promotion of scientific knowledge; strong intellectual property (IP) rights, and a reliable system for IP transmission, licensing, and collaboration; an effective and predictable regulatory review process; and transparent payment systems that reward innovation and encourage competition in the free market.
Biotech entrepreneurs take enormous financial risks as they try to innovate and find drugs and therapies for diseases, and this only happens occasionally. Patients benefit and investors get a return on their investments, enabling a continuous cycle of innovation. The market reality is that the return on successful medical innovation should be enough to provide investors (VCs or companies) with a favorable risk profile to invest in the next generation of medical discoveries.