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The Hard Thing #5: The Myth of Platform Biotech

thehardthing.substack.com · 5,928 words · saved by 1 readers

And there’s no doubt that AI is increasing our ability to understand and leverage the biological “toolkit” at a headspinning rate. And yet… Techbio (or whatever you want to call it) has failed to have the transformative impact that has been “just around the corner” for the past 20 or so years. Check out the AIxBio Database In 2011, Marc Andreessen published a prescient Op-Ed in the WSJ titled Why Software is Eating the World.1 A few years later, his fund, a16z, launched a dedicated platform bio effort and argued that the confluence of exponentially decreasing costs (across both compute as well as the tools to read and write DNA) would create a similar dynamic in biology. Biotech would be transformed by broad platforms in the same way that platform business in tech soared to capture about a third of the S&P 500’s total value and usher in an unprecedented wave of innovation.2 YAAASSSS!!! As a one-time molecular biologist turned tech investor, this was catnip - I bought deeply into this v

The Hard Thing #5: The Myth of Platform Biotech “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.” - Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems) Anna Marie Wagner Jan 22, 2025 122 14 17 Share Biology is the most powerful technology on the planet (come at me, bros). And there’s no doubt that AI is increasing our ability to understand and leverage the biological “toolkit” at a headspinning rate. And yet… Techbio ( or whatever you want to call it ) has failed to have the transformative impact that has been “just around the corner” for the past 20 or so years. Check out the

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