Thoughts on decentralized biotech

The era of DeBi is here

First off, I didn’t arrive here by accident. I’ve been thinking deeply about open science, community building, company building, and the long tail of disease for a while.

The mainstreaming of crypto and the pandemic have done the rest in terms of shaping my thinking.

So what do I mean by decentralized biotech or DeBi?

In analogy to decentralized finance/DeFi where open protocols and online platforms have democratized access to capital markets,

DeBi means moving away from the traditional funding and knowhow gatekeepers in biomedicine. How?

Online tools/platforms for the enterprise and online entrepreneurship resources have opened up and flattened company creation at scale. Outsiders (techies) and first-timers (postdocs) can found biotech startups. It’s not just closed hierarchical networks of VCs and repeat execs.

Until the day comes when you can push experiments like code, cloud labs are as accessible, affordable as AWS/G Suite, and AI oracles can spit out the answer, biotech startups will need labs to do science.

The concept of “virtual biotechs” powered by CROs is not new, to be clear.

That said, a decentralized biotech company ≠ a virtual biotech company.

Virtual biotechs are still centralized. They depend on a contract lab vs their own lab to run experiments. The mgmt team still almost always co-locates. Supply chains are vulnerable to single point failure.

A decentralized biotech company has the following attributes:

• remote-first (or hybrid) team
• distributed-first, no-lease R&D network
• local just-in-time supply chains
• operatable from a device/laptop
• upfront consulting/services
• profitable unit economics on day 1

I’ve told the story of Perlara 1.0, which followed the classical centralized course. I’ve talked openly about what experiments worked and which ones didn’t.

The second time around, Perlara 2.0 will be the first decentralized biotech company.

More to come soon!