BioEntrepreneurship - Market assessment: great new product or just really cool science?
BioEntrepreneurship: Market Assessment
After last month’s general overview session on the business of biotech, this month saw the focus of BioEntrepreneurship narrow down on the subject of market assessment.
In this session, Kelly Holman and Damian Lamb from Genesys Capital, a local life sciences focused early stage venture capital firm, shared their thoughts on how to assess early stage biotechnologies. Unfortunately, such as with most things in a life, there just isn’t an easy answer. But then again, if it was easy where would the excitement be?!
Damian ran through what to take into consideration when looking at early biotechnologies, such as:
- How much data do you need? (the answer is that someone will always want more!)
- Commercialization risks
- Estimating your costs
- Evaluation the market opportunity
One of his biggest takeaways is to remember that early stage technology is competing against not only current standard of care, which you must significantly surpass, but also all the other new technologies that are emerging in your field. Be sure to familiarize yourself with what the major pharmas and biotech have in development (Pre-Clin, Phase 1, Phase II), as well other academic researchers, as they are going to be your competitors when your product hits the market 10 years out.
Kelly switched gears a bit and gave a quick look at how a VC assesses early stage opportunity. Making the point that early stage evaluations are as much an art as a science due to numerous unknowns (Will the technology really work? Will the team be able to make it happen? How big will the market be? Regulatory? etc), Kelly concluded that an evaluation will ultimately result in a negotiated price, not a formula. However the evaluation exercise, while imperfect, is an important one to go through to help you understand where others perceive the sensitivities and risks in your project.
Downloads
- Presentation
- Session presentation - Dial-up connection (mp4)
- Session presentation - Broadband connection (mp4)
Kelly and Damian are also standing by to answer questions on in this blog… so fire away!
Be sure to join us Dec 4th to learn about IP Strategy.
Nina Chagnon facilitates connections between MaRS and its constituents to the biopharmaceutical industry and develops programs for bio-entrepreneurs.
There are few easy roads to successful product development, yet it is crucial strategically for companies to innovate with new or improved products. There are definitely proven approached to product development. Medical device commercialization is particularly challenging though.
Many popular “best-seller” approaches to product development are actually unhelpful and damaging to product innovation for your company - typically companies spend more time wasted on process than successful launches.
Posted by: Anderson on January 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am