Will we ever see a biosciences startup school?

April 20, 2008

YCombinator just organized startup school #4. According to TechCrunch, there was a crowd of over 650 developers, writers, and entrepreneurs at Stanford. The event gives techies the chance to learn, network and, perhaps most importantly, pick the brains of industry stalwarts like Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen and ask questions about venture capital, IP law, and other aspects of the startup process.

I can’t help but wonder if we will ever have a similar forum for the biosciences; a place where graduate students with ideas, postdocs, or young science types (or even older ones like yours truly) can gather to talk to VCs, compare notes, etc. Innovation in the sciences has always had small academic roots and you all know that I feel that the way this innovation reaches people, whether through public availability, non-profits or via commercialization needs to change. There are so many smart young people out there in the sciences. By changing the environment, by exciting people about the possibilities of collaboration, recognition and/or potential business opportunities we can get even more people excited about the biosciences, and the world will only benefit from that. Social networking might be cool, and in many cases useful, but scientific discovery has benefits that are far greater. Time to get VCs and entrepreneurs (not just scientists) more involved in a new model.

Postscript: I wonder if there is a way to cast what a startup mentality/culture in the life sciences really means. It doesn’t have to be commercial. Any thoughts?
YCombinator logo via Wikipedia

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