Building in Bio

Vijay Pande, founding partner of Bio + Health, is joined by Daphne Koller, Andrew Ng, Aviv Regev, and Jakob Uszkoreit. Vijay leads us on a reflective journey through the monumental achievements in AI from the 1980s to today, with a focus on the progress in healthcare and life sciences.

Jordi Mata-Fink, PhD, cofounder of Gate Bioscience, joins Vineeta Agarwala and Ben Portney of a16z Bio + Health.In this episode, Jordi discusses how he and his cofounders are working to commercialize a novel class of therapeutics, termed "molecular gates."

Each new modality needs to find its platform-disease fit—the diseases it is uniquely suited for. But finding fit has increasingly turned into a fight; many have crowded into the same indications. With an expanding arsenal to treat disease, how will patients, clinicians, and the market determine what tool to use?

Olga Troyanskaya, PhD, a professor in the department of computer science at Princeton and Deputy Director for Genomics at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Biology, joins Vijay Pande, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health.

In this episode, Dan joins general partner Jorge Conde and investment partner Becky Pferdehirt to discuss how he got started working in chemical biology and chemoproteomics and his experience founding companies, along with leading lab and pharma collaborations.

Greg Verdine, PhD, is a leader in the discovery, development, and commercialization of new drug modalities, a repeat founder, and the newest venture partner at a16z Bio + Health. He is joined by Vineeta Agarwala and Jorge Conde, general partners at a16z Bio + Health.

In this episode, taken from a live a16z event, Bio + Health general partner Vineeta Agarwala moderates a panel of UCSF faculty founders, including Michelle Arkin, Jimmie Ye, and Natalia Jura

Today’s episode is with Magi Richani, founder and CEO of Nobell Foods. She is joined by a16z Bio + Health general partner Vijay Pande.

This is a crossover episode with The Bioverge Podcast, hosted by Neil Littman. Neil is joined by Vineeta Agarwala, general partner at a16z Bio + Health.

In this episode, Daphne Koller, founder and CEO of insitro, chats with a16z Bio + Health founding partner Vijay Pande.

In this episode, Jorge Conde, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, talks with Josh Mandel-Brehm, founding CEO of CAMP4.

Kevin Parker, cofounder and CEO of Cartography Biosciences, joins Jorge Conde, general partner at a16z Bio + Health, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead.

In this episode, Kristen Fortney, cofounder and CEO of BioAge, joins Vijay Pande, founding partner of a16z Bio + Health, and Olivia Webb, editorial lead, to discuss the biology of aging, how she started a company, and some fun things—like how long a hypothetical venture capitalist can expect to live.

Cultivated meat: just sci-fi? SCiFi Foods cofounder and CEO Joshua March talks with Bio + Health general partner Vijay Pande and editorial lead Olivia Webb about the challenges, opportunities, and future of cultivated meat.

Now more than ever, business development is top of mind for biotech founders. Scientific collaborations have always been an essential piece of the drug development ecosystem, enabling small biotech companies to accelerat...

Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her co-discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, a versatile genome editing platform. In the decade since its discovery the toolbox of CRISPR technologies has exploded, acting li...

Biotech founders face a variety of challenges in building a successful startup. Beyond confronting daunting scientific and technical hurdles, they must develop a strategy to ensure their technology has a compelling business model and is focused on the right problems. Also, they need a plan for how the tech will go the distance — i.e., when to go it alone or seek to partner.

We’ve now seen multiple trends come to fruition at the intersection of bio and technology over the past decade: A Moore’s Law for bio, thanks to computation; machine learning and AI transforming many areas of bio pharma...

As new biological technologies shift the way we make new medicines — from “bespoke craftsmanship to industrialized drug development” — we are seeing bio platforms truly deliver a dizzying array of novel discoveries, tool...

It's Time to Heal is a special package about engineering the future of bio and healthcare. See more at: https://a16z.com/time-to-heal/.

It's Time to Heal is a special package about engineering the future of bio and healthcare. See more at: https://a16z.com/time-to-heal/.

It's Time to Heal is a special package about engineering the future of bio and healthcare. See more at: https://a16z.com/time-to-heal/.

It's Time to Heal is a special package about engineering the future of bio and healthcare. See more at: https://a16z.com/time-to-heal/.

Many, many pieces have been written about the immense potential of synthetic biology to make manufacturing more sustainable, flexible, and cheaper. Synthetic biology presents the tantalizing opportunity for scientists an...

As scientists and particularly as professors, we aim to do big things. We aim to discover new insights, create new tools, and further the scientific endeavor. And occasionally, out of our academic research may come a pro...

For generations, the field of biology has been largely defined by its discoveries. Now, because many crucial aspects of biology have begun the transition from an empirical science to an engineering discipline, the pendul...

Is there a limit to what humans can do? And if so, how do you know when you've reached it? Welcome to part one of a two-part series on human performance with professional rock climber Alex Honnold.

Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it's not too ear...

The new discipline of bioengineering is going to dramatically impact how we produce and consume our food. The petroleum era ushered in many of the marquee companies and manufacturing processes of our generation – names s...

Our best tools for understanding and manipulating biology have historically been observation and experimentation. Then, we developed the ability to “read” and “write” in biology. And now, the convergence of biology with...

Editor’s note: This article is based on an episode of the a16z Podcast, which you can listen to here.

Much of Silicon Valley mythology is centered on the founder-as-hero narrative. But historically, scientific founders leading the charge for bio companies have been far less common. Developing new drugs is slow, risky, an...

10X engineer memes have resurfaced lately, for better and for worse. But what does the idea that a certain individual can be ten times as productive in tech companies mean for multidisciplinary companies in spaces like b...

Editor’s note: This article is based on an episode of the a16z Podcast, which you can listen to here.

M&A in the biotech industry is off to a fast start in 2019. Just this past weekend, Roche announced it is acquiring Spark Therapeutics; Ipsen announced its acquisition of Clementia Pharma; and GE announced a spinoff...

The role of the healer is an ancient calling as old as humanity itself. Human skeletons dating back as far as 6500 BC bear the scars of medical interventions including, incredibly, brain surgery. But the formal practice...

1/ A thought for early-stage bio companies on the eve of the upcoming #JPM19 networking bonanza in SF: Bio entrepreneurs, especially first-time founders, often underestimate the importance of analyzing and selecting pote...

Much has been made of the looming shortage of physicians. But there’s one place where the shortage is being felt acutely, is talked about even less, and the effects will ripple far into the future: the founding of new bi...

Because biology is the result of evolution and not human development, bringing engineering principles to it is guaranteed to fail. Or so goes the argument behind the “Grove fallacy,” first invoked by drug industry observ...

One of the greatest missed opportunities in health care is all of the “dark data” out there -- this includes all the critically useful data sets detailing specific patient treatments and health outcomes that are hidden t...

watch time: 26 minutes

While the early signals of progress for traditional tech companies are fairly well known -- product, customers, revenue -- biotech companies operate under a very different timeline, metrics, and milestones. Building a co...

watch time: 4 minutes

watch/listen time: 22 minutes

It's surprising that how (and what) we eat has actually changed very little over the ages, despite how much we’ve advanced as a species. Now, however -- driven by globalization, environmental factors, and other considera...

Much of our current food system is broken. Food production is an enormous part of our economy, requiring 10% of the US’s power, 50% of our land, and 80% of our freshwater -- and yet 40% of our food goes uneaten at the sa...

Editor’s Note: Vijay Pande (“pahn-day”) is Andreessen Horowitz’ newest General Partner, dedicated to our new bio fund.

BY STUART LUMAN

The Challenge of Sustainable Development