Rohan Pavuluri

Former Dragoneer biotech & healthcare investor Edward Larkin @ealarkin7 on the single best investment he's ever made: @10xGenomics.

10x Genomics is up nearly 300% in the last year!

Edward explains his thesis at the time to @DeeyaKotecha on The New Alchemist:

1/ At the time, trading at one of the lowest multiples he had seen in healthcare companies.

2/ Still very much growing adoption. Single-cell and spatial technologies were gaining traction.

3/ Financially healthy. No debt and no cash burn.

4/ Founder led & founders still very much in it.

5/ AI x Bio upside. Potential for being a critical picks & shovels in the upcoming wave.

Edward is now founder/CEO of @Valius_Sciences, maximalist diagnostics company for patients with challenging cancers backed by @gitlab founder @sytses. Valius is now a 10X Genomics customer!

Just like @leopoldasch on AI infrastructure, curious if now is a good time for a public markets fund focused on bottlenecks within AI x Bio, diagnostics, etc.

Lots of investors expressing this thesis in the private markets but as Edward points out, public opportunities very much coming online.

Not Investment Advice.

What are the strongest levers commercial stage pharma companies can use to increase their revenue with AI & long running agents?

Obviously a lot going on with clinical trials and drug discovery and regulatory submissions speeding up timelines. But curious for pharma companies that already have drugs approved & are selling them.

Interested in learning more about vertical agents, AI-enabled services companies, etc. in this domain.

I know you can cut costs but accelerating revenue is more interesting!

Advertising on @OpenEvidence & increasing adherence with @forus are two I know of but want to learn about more strategies/companies.

A couple months ago, I started looking for great biotech podcasts that would help me learn from folks at the frontier of AI x Bio, both founders building companies and investors funding them.

Basically a @HarryStebbings @20vcFund, @MollySOShea @sourceryy, or @patrick_oshag @InvestLikeBest for biotech.

There were some great episodes but I couldn’t find a media platform that was exactly what I was looking for.

At the same time, I had the observation that biotech/pharma has the highest imbalance between how important the industry is to the world and how much storytelling the industry does around the people behind it.

These are some of the largest businesses in the world (so many $100B+ co’s) and there’s nothing more important to me than the medicines we make to cure disease in society. But the majority of stories are untold. And the majority of important people are widely unknown. Contrast this with the tech or financial services industry.

Fortunately, my wife @DeeyaKotecha practiced medicine before moving into biotech investing at Avoro Capital, one of the larger public market biotech specialist funds.

She was just as excited about this problem as I was and, given her passion for biotech and storytelling, decided to start The New Alchemist, a media platform focused on telling the stories of founders, operators, and investors on the frontier of AI x Bio.

We also thought it’d be fun to work on it together, though it’s 99% her and I’m just excited to learn.

I think a lot of tech/AI people are now looking towards bio as a way to channel their energy so I’m hopeful The New Alchemist can help inspire them! And we can play a small part in helping the wider public understand what goes into building the medicines they consume everyday.

@ealarkin7, founder of @Valius_Sciences epitomizes the AI-native founder of tmrw. He dropped out of med school to lead healthcare deployments at @PalantirTech & then led biotech & healthcare at Dragoneer.

He met @gitlab founder @sytses who pioneered much of the current discourse on maximal diagnostics in cancer and started Valius to give any patient the ability to be maximally diagnostic in overcoming their own cancer.

Edward is building a generational company and the perfect person to build it given his life path. Lucky for him to be our first guest.

If you have advice on people to interview or are also passionate about this mission, please reach out 🙏🏽💊

A couple months ago, I started looking for great biotech podcasts that would help me learn from folks at the frontier of AI x Bio, both founders building companies and investors funding them.

Basically a @HarryStebbings @20vcFund, @MollySOShea @sourceryy, or @patrick_oshag @InvestLikeBest for biotech.

There were some great episodes but I couldn’t find a media platform that was exactly what I was looking for.

At the same time, I had the observation that biotech/pharma has the highest imbalance between how important the industry is to the world and how much storytelling the industry does around the people behind it.

These are some of the largest businesses in the world (so many $100B+ co’s) and there’s nothing more important to me than the medicines we make to cure disease in society. But the majority of stories are untold. And the majority of important people are widely unknown. Contrast this with the tech or financial services industry.

Fortunately, my wife @DeeyaKotecha is a Cambridge MD an practiced medicine before moving into biotech investing at Avoro Capital, one of the larger public market biotech specialist funds. She was just as excited about this problem as I was and, given her passion for biotech and storytelling, decided to start The New Alchemist, a media platform focused on telling the stories of founders, operators, and investors on the frontier of AI x Bio.

We also thought it’d be fun to work on it together, though it’s 99% her and I’m just excited to learn.

I think a lot of tech/AI people are now looking towards bio as a way to channel their energy so I’m hopeful The New Alchemist can help inspire them! And we can play a small part in helping the wider public understand what goes into building the medicines they consume everyday.

@ealarkin7, founder of @Valius_Sciences epitomizes the AI-native founder of tmrw. He dropped out of med school to lead healthcare deployments at @PalantirTech & then led biotech & healthcare at Dragoneer.

He met @gitlab founder @sytses who pioneered much of the current discourse on maximal diagnostics in cancer and started Valius to give any patient the ability to be maximally diagnostic in overcoming their own cancer.

I personally felt Edward is building a generational company and the perfect person to build it given his life path. Lucky for him to be our first guest.

If you have advice on people to interview or are also passionate about this mission, please reach out 🙏🏽💊

Pretty amazing what Deerfield has built at Cure 345 Park Avenue South.

A single building in the middle of Manhattan that houses a healthcare / bio hedge fund, several biotech portfolio companies, a private investment arm/incubator, actual wet lab research facilities with PIs, a foundation, etc. all collaborating with each other in a single building.

Cool to think there's actual wet lab research happening on Park Ave with the fuel to finance it all, happening under one roof.

A gem in NYC!