Noubar Afeyan Has Had 38 Biotech Wins; Here’s How His Formula Challenges Silicon Valley Dogma

I would say it this way – first envision several possible future states where in each case some combination of new science or technology can deliver value by addressing an unmet need.  From among those, chose the one future state you want to pursue by trading off likelihood of reaching that state as well as the impact and value created by doing so. Then evaluate various paths to reach that future state. Keep in mind that the future states you envision will necessarily seem unreasonable at first (given that the technology/science and need are not yet clearly established). An entrepreneur’s goal is to define incremental steps from the present to that envisioned future each of which may seem reasonable but which in combination can take us to a place that initially seemed unreasonable to aspire to.

And here were five of the ideas that we talked about when I asked him to expand on this.

Be a paranoid optimist. Entrepreneurs should always be worried about what could go wrong, and yet believe that in the long run thing will go right. “You need a gas pedal and a brake pedal,” Afeyan said. I thought this was interesting because it adds a dose of realism to what sometimes seems like a false or overly exuberant sense of optimism out of Silicon Valley.

Follow a process of variation-selection-iteration. One of the key insights here is that it’s not just products. Silicon Valley is very focused on products, but in the biotech space, you can also use this process with hypotheses, jobs or marketing messages in your company, among many other things. “The pace of the variation is only limited by the resources you can deploy,” said Afeyan.

Recognize what creates value. Your company is not necessarily a product-building engine; it is a value creation engine. Your ideas have value, too. “You sell the idea to gain credibility and trade in credibility to get money. The more you build stuff from your ideas, the more credibility you have,” Afeyan said.

Be realistic. Realism imbues this process, more than I find in the world of tech startups, where the abundance of cash leads entrepreneurs to take pie-in-the-sky risks. Realism doesn’t rear its uncomfortable head until the end of a startup’s life, when it becomes apparent that your startup isn’t one of the rare winners.

Think about the destination, not the directions. One of the other differences between the Silicon Valley model and the biotech model is that creating product-market fit often means picking a direction and then steadily narrowing it. Afeyan has a different idea: he asks his team of about 20 to hypothesize in as many different directions as possible, but always with the aim of creating a use for a new discovery. “There is nothing like a game about this,” he said. If the science isn’t there, why are you talking about products?

How does this work in practice? Afeyan gave me an example of nine or 10 years ago, when researchers were just beginning to be able to measure the microbes that colonize the gut. There were multiple hypotheses for how that new science could be used, from the idea that you could diagnose different diseases by measuring microbes, to the idea that you could potentially come up with a subset of microbes that combatted a particular super-bug, to the idea of enabling fecal transplants. The third hypothesis led to a company, Seres Health.