Beyond Biotech - the podcast from Labiotech

Inside Flagship Pioneering's strategy: How this VC turns ideas into biotech giants

Labiotech Episode 146

Flagship Pioneering doesn't go out to find the next big thing in biotech when investing their billions in fund capital - instead, they take a different route.

Flagship Pioneering has founded more than 100 companies in the life sciences worth in total an estimated $75 billion. With a proven model for biotech startup success and a culture designed to surface new and interesting ideas, Flagship offers a different approach to biotech funding that is paying off time and again.

In this episode I talk with Lovisa Afzelius, a General Partner at Flagship, uncover the ways in which Flagship is shaking up the biotech funding model, and come to understand the reasons why others will have a hard time imitating its success.

This episode is brought to you by Jubilant Biosys.

01:52                      Meet Lovisa Afzelius

03:37                      Learning lessons in big pharma

04:56                      From top pharma to startup biotech

07:23                      Two different worlds and ways of thinking

08:29                      Flagship Pioneering

13:39                      Finding the right people

18:13                      Deploying capital to create value

21:06                      Expanding into new markets

21:55                      How does the Flagship model identify disruptors so well?

24:20                      Why don’t others emulate the Flagship model?

25:36                      Building a culture of ‘yes, and…’

27:47                      Learning from the companies that don’t succeed

30:49                      Artificial intelligence and biology

35:19                      Lessons from business that never found market fit

37:29                      The future for Flagship

39:55                      The importance of diversity in biotech

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