Should you work at a startup?

Should you work at a startup?

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably asked yourself this question at least once (but most likely many times).

Startups are the lifeblood of innovation and when they succeed they become industry leaders.

Every big company you read about in the news was once a startup.

From Amazon to Roche, everything had nimble beginnings.

But should you join a company in year #1, #5 or #20?

And what is a startup? And are all startups the same?

Startups come in many different shapes and forms.

If you’re wondering which type of startups are out there, take a few minutes to check out the life of a startup.

Do it now…I’ll be waiting

Now that you’re back, let’s get into it.

Should you join a startup?

Even if entrepreneurship has recently become cool, choosing a startup is still an unorthodox decision and you won’t be pleasing society.

Europe is quite risk-averse (with probably a handful of exceptions) so everybody expects you to join a big company or renowned consulting firm.

If you feel the need to get social validation because of your job, you should do that first. If it works, you’ve found a fulfilling corporate career.

If not, keep reading.

Learning vs earning.

Startups work best if you’re in the season of learning.

You are young and bold. Or experienced and ready to start over.

You get some earning potential but you don’t get rich quickly.

And you’ll probably get a higher salary working for the man.

Can you get rich by working at a startup?

Yes. But you should think of it as a lottery ticket.

If you get some ownership participation (either through equity or stock options - a topic for another time), you have a small chance of winning big.

Let’s say a ticket costs €1 and you have a 1/1000 chance of winning €1M.

The reasonable thing to do would be to buy as many tickets as possible, even if winning chances are low.

And there are many examples where employees become wealthy by moving from one startup to another every 1-2 years, collecting stock options on their way and building an “employee investment portfolio”.

When assessing an opportunity, you should consider both the likelihood of success and the magnitude of success.

The best way to succeed is to work hard.

The best way to do hard things is to be surrounded by other people who want to work hard.

You are not scared of working hard.

But not all hard work is the same.

Before going all in, make sure:

• It matters for the company - if you stopped working, the company would suffer

• It matters to the world - if your company succeed, the world will be a better place

• It matters to you - you want to be held accountable for your work

What would you do if nobody gave you any direction?

You might call it being a self-starter, being industrious or driven.

The bottom line is that if you measure your work in output (e.g. customers, deals) you are probably a better fit for a startup.

If you measure your work in input (e.g. emails, articles read, meetings) you’re in for a rude awakening.

In a startup, there is no formal management and you get to organize your time for the most part to achieve an agreed goal.

This also means it’s harder for you to get regular feedback and it’s almost impossible to learn by watching what experts do.

The only way to learn is by doing.

The flip side?

You’ll get a tremendous amount of autonomy and you’ll get assigned to projects that are many years ahead of your current experience level.

Ready to join a startup?

Reply to this email and let me know (I reply to every email)

Did this make you excited to work at a startup or are you already running in the opposite direction?

Gene therapy: a manufacturing race

Last year alone there were over 2’200 ongoing clinical testing for cell and gene therapies, which has created an unexpected demand for specialized contract manufacturers.

Why is it so hard to manufacture cell and gene therapies?

Synthetic genetic materials need to be delivered to patients via their own cells, viral vectors or ad-hoc made lipid vesicles.

This requires a variety of specialized parts that are very hard to make by hand in a lab and even more at scale for clinical trials or commercialization.

Large Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) like Catalent and Thermo Fisher spent years and millions of dollars building their own plants and working with them comes with some challenges too.

Most such therapies are developed by VC-backed startups that rely on processed hard to adapt to large plants and on the other hand, large players prefer to work with other large players (pharma and biotechs), rather than a young startup.

Believe it or not but some of them have a 2 years waiting list!

But what about building their own labs or renting?

Building internal manufacturing capabilities is no small feat, and certain components (like those viral vectors I mentioned earlier) can be real budget busters.

So, there's a lot of weighing the risks and rewards when deciding whether to jump into the manufacturing game too early.

Is there a solution?

A new generation of startups working on manufacturing cell and gene therapies is rapidly emerging to fill this market need.

But instead of relying on industry-standard processes, these startups are bringing new technologies to make manufacturing cheaper and more effective.

Not to mention their hands-on offerings are much more attractive to therapy startups as well as academics and nonprofits that struggle to access large CDMOs.

In such a new and fast-moving space with industry leaders younger than a decade, there is space for Davids to challenge the status quo.

For example, one of the major bottlenecks is how a functional copy of the genetic message is delivered to the cell.

Both viral and non-viral delivery mechanisms have pros and cons, so extracellular vesicles (EVs) have become more and more popular with multiple clinical trials currently ongoing.

EVs are physiologically used for multiple cellular mechanisms and for this reason, they offer a much higher efficacy.

Codiak BioSciences was founded in 2015 to bring this delivery method to market but recently filed for bankruptcy because of too high expenses and the inability to raise more capital.

As the first attempts in cell & gene therapy manufacturing unfold, there are new opportunities for scientists-entrepreneurs to build on these lessons and focus on a platform-first approach, rather than rushing clinical products.

Here is a selected list of startups specialising in cell and gene manufacturing:

• Elevate Bio ($1.3B raised)

• Shape Therapeutics ($147.5M raised)

• Ascend Cell & Gene Therapies (132.5M)

• Landmark Bio ($75M raised)

• VintaBio ($65M raised)

• Vector BioMed ($15M raised)

• Limula ($8M raised)

• MicrofluidX ($6M raised)

• Aglaris ($4M raised)

• Kolibri ($2M raised)

… and many other

This week's top reads

1. Mitigating bias in AI at the point of care (Science)

2. Can AI language models replace human participants? (Science)

3. A common allele of HLA is associated with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection (Nature)

4. Donanemab in Early Symptomatic Alzheimer's Disease (JAMA)

5. Personalized cancer vaccines pass first major clinical test (Nature)

Latest funding rounds in health & bio

• Orikine Bio raised €5.5M to further develop engineered cytokines to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases 🇪🇸

• Recursion raised $50M from Nvidia via a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity - buying of shares of publicly traded stock at a price below the current market value) 🇺🇸

• MAGIC raised $2.5M to bring an AI-powered personal coach hologram to your living room 🇬🇧

• Oritain raised $57M to scale their forensic science verification solution offering origin traceability in food supply chains 🇬🇧

• Halitus raised €1M to develop their AI-powered medical device for disease detection from patients’ breath 🇩🇪

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