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5 Career Predictions for Health & Bio Startups in 2024

5 Career Predictions for Health & Bio Startups in 2024

From the fall of AI companies to a new generation of leaders

Giammarco Pacifico
January 03, 2024

What does 2024 hold?

Everyone is asking the same question and if we look back at the year that just finished, we can’t help but wonder how much our lives will change.

Between AI, scientific breakthroughs, climate and unexpected global conflicts there is a lot to consider when looking ahead. But in this newsletter, I’ll focus on what I know best: careers in health & bio startups.

None of these predictions is meant to be controversial but after discussing them with a few people, I found them to be less obvious than I initially thought and there is at least one group of people who would disagree. So I hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking.

Without further ado, here are 5 career predictions for 2024:

1. Less location compromise: either in person or cheap labour from 3rd world countries

Remote/hybrid work from the same country (or another place close by - like another EU country) has turned out to be not a great deal for startups.

Especially in small startups tackling hard problems, you need two things: high energy/creativity (working together every day) and/or cost efficiency (hiring overseas).

These two options will become much more popular while the middle ground of hiring top talent living and working 500 km away will fade off because it doesn’t give you either of these.

Some startups have already realized it. More will embrace it in 2024.

2. Technical CEOs will lead startups for longer with less pressure to step aside for part-time CEOs

In the past few years, more and more startups decided to hire part-time generalist CEOs to “do the business development and fundraising”.

While technical/scientific founders staying in the lab and focusing on the product is often the right choice, the ever-rapid advancements in science and AI, require CEOs who are believers instead of mercenaries.

Executives who don’t have a tight hold on the state-of-the-art and cannot make independent decisions based on that will have to step aside and give the helm to technical CEOs who can do that.

This is good news for STEM professionals who are interested in joining startups. Speaking the same language as the CEO, who is a technical expert and leader will make a huge difference, instead of being a second thought that gets assigned to technical managers.

3. Fewer AI companies. More AI-enabled health/biotech startups

2023 was the hype year for every AI startup making drug discovery or healthcare more efficient. Many capitalized on a new sector and leveraged the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) of large companies to get massive deals, sometimes with suboptimal tech.

As AI models become more and more open-source, AI products will become a commodity, or at least it will be much easier to fine-tune free models to specific applications using reinforcement learning or other techniques.

This means that AI as the one-size-fits-all solution will get less attention and many of these startups will disappear.

Instead, deep tech startups that are working on new drugs, devices or other assets will learn to leverage AI to enable their core solutions. Because they are still small and agile enough, they’ll embrace AI at the core of their product, instead of an afterthought to boost productivity.

For many nascent health & bio startups, 2023 was the year of dabbling, and 2024 will be the year of implementation.

Such an evolution of course could apply to every company, not just startups. But I’m not worried about big pharma or medtech companies as they’ll probably need 2-3 more years before getting up to speed and rolling any meaningful change across the organization.

This means that if you’re a STEM professional and you want to work on cutting-edge products, you only have two options:

Extremely small and specialized teams within large companies (kind of the SWAT of the corporate world)
Startups that have real products/drugs and are investing in AI for internal purposes and competitive advantages (instead of selling SaaS)

Avoid the rest.

And if you are not an AI expert you should not despair (and please stop trying to become one) because AI is coming to you so you can mould bits into atoms.

4. Less VC-backed startups with weak scientific/technical propositions

Venture Capital is being disrupted by AI. And it’s only the beginning.

One of the main bottlenecks of VCs investing in deep tech companies (especially health & bio) is that when it comes to validating the potential of a technology or scientific breakthrough, they must rely on experts (either former researchers working as junior investors or external advisors).

This strategy has clear limitations:

Even with a PhD, you cannot be an expert at everything. Jumping from antibody-drug conjugates against cancer to a retinal implant requires a lot of research
External advisors are very expensive, can only be used sparingly and are not personally invested in the decision so their feedback can at times be over-simplistic

New advances in AI to study scientific research and surface the right insights will allow VCs to get ahead of a specific topic much faster. Having a general understanding of the field together with specialised AI that does not hallucinate and provides reference will make every deep tech investor 10x better.

This means less funding will go to startups selling pipe dreams and more talent will by default get into good startups with stronger products.

(If you’re curious about this, check out WikiCrow and Elicit)

5. More meaningful work, less incentives on climbing corporate ladders

Boomers are retiring all over the world. The first cohort will be 66 years old in 2024 and they will leave the top seats to a new generation of leaders.

In addition to transitions and employee retention plans across industries, this shift will also have a huge impact on the way work blends into everyone’s life.

Because of how they were brought up, boomers prioritized hustle, financial success and status above everything else. As they expected the same in younger employees, friction in the workplace with Gen X and Gen Z employees has been very common for the past decade.

Instead, new leaders will internalize that outputs ≠ inputs, especially in this new technological era.

This shift will lead to more people working on more important, more meaningful work, which often is not the most productive.

There will be more time to experiment and wonder while productivity and efficiency are left up to the machines.

This week's top scientific reads

AI agent to study scientific research (ArXiv)
The hormone that leads to renal dysfunction in cancer patients (Nature)
The first cardiac organoid (Cell)
Under the skin implant to treat Type I diabetes (Nature Biomedical Engineering)
New insights on morning sickness (Nature)

Read my comments on these articles here.

Latest European funding rounds in health & bio

Ready to turn this news into your next career opportunity? Here is how

Spotta raised €3.5M to develop a novel technology that detects pests like bed bugs in residential and commercial buildings 🇬🇧
LUMA Vision closed a €20M Series A extension for their platform that helps cardiologists make decisions using imaging solutions 🇮🇪
Okomera raised €10.2M to advance their personalized treatment solution for cancer treatments using tumour replicas on microfluidic chips 🇫🇷
Netris Pharma raised €7.5M to develop treatments against cancer resistance to current approaches such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy 🇫🇷
Metrion Biosciences raised €4.3M to advance their suite of products and services to biopharma, specialised in ion channels 🇬🇧
FeelTect raised €1.5M to further advance their device that measures and monitors bandage pressure during compression therapy 🇮🇪
Sentante raised €6M for their robotic system that is capable of performing full endovascular operations remotely 🇱🇹

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