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By centralizing resources (hub), PureTech can dispassionately kill failing programs and reallocate talent. This structural design counters the powerful emotional and financial pressure to continue that exists when a company's survival is tied to a single drug, as people's livelihoods aren't dependent on one program's success.
In a market favoring asset-centric biotech, Springtide VC remains focused on platform companies. This countercyclical strategy mitigates the binary risk of single-asset failure and allows for multiple "shots on goal" and diverse business models, such as partnerships or becoming a drug developer.
BridgeBio's unique structure creates dedicated subsidiaries for each program. This empowers small, focused teams closest to the science to make key decisions—"play calling on the field"—without layers of bureaucracy. This model dramatically accelerates development, leading to unprecedented output of new drugs.
CEO Daphne Zohar uses a platform model to avoid the "sunk cost fallacy" common in single-asset biotechs. Having multiple programs makes the company more willing to reallocate resources from a failing drug to a more promising one, creating better alignment between management decisions and shareholder value.
To combat bias, the team contractually agrees on strict, predefined success metrics for major milestones *before* any data is generated. A program either meets the criteria or it doesn't, removing ambiguity from go/no-go decisions. This discipline is applied both internally and at the board level for spun-out companies.
Instead of relying on serendipity, PureTech uses a structured process: 1) Identify unmet need, 2) Find a promising but flawed drug with human data, 3) Define the problem that held it back, 4) Design a solution to overcome it, and 5) Test the solution. This institutionalizes the innovation cycle for value creation.
When a biotech company shutters, it's not a total loss. The scientific dead ends it uncovers prevent others from wasting resources on the same path. These "failures" enrich the ecosystem with crucial knowledge and release experienced talent back into the market.
While biotech cannot easily replicate tech's rapid iteration cycles due to high costs and long feedback loops, it can adopt the capital efficiency model of tech seed investing. The strategy is to kill flawed projects quickly and cheaply, ensuring that when you lose, you lose small.
Many founders become too attached to what they've built. The ability to unemotionally kill products that aren't working—even core parts of the business—is a superpower. This prevents wasting resources and allows for the rapid pivots necessary to find true product-market fit.
Single-product companies struggle to align R&D team size with fluctuating opportunities. Bending Spoons uses a centralized pool of flexible R&D talent that can be rapidly deployed to different portfolio companies, maximizing efficiency and capturing short-lived windows of opportunity that others miss.
By centralizing oversight at the hub, the model prevents teams from becoming emotionally attached to a single asset. This structure allows leadership to make objective, data-driven decisions to terminate unpromising programs without it being seen as a personal or career failure for the team involved.