The Quilt

At the "Reinventing Biotech's Business Model" meeting yesterday here in Seattle we saw an assembly of men and women who will lead us to prosperity. At least that was their purpose for getting together.

“When you’re building a team today, you need to have people with enough former company T-shirts to knit together a quilt in a nursing home,” quipped Bruce Montgomery, the founder and CEO of Seattle-based Cardeas Pharma. 

That’s one way of saying biotech startups now need teams of highly skilled, highly experienced people who can go a long way on a little bit of money. That was one of the main themes that came out yesterday at our big Xconomy event, “Reinventing Biotech’s Business Model.“

It's also another way of saying that we have created a multi-billion dollar quilt pieced together by failed biotechnology companies.

Quip:  A witty or funny observation or response usually made on the spur of the moment.


The main theme seems to be that failure is no big deal. Make a quilt and move on using the same people. Perhaps to reinvent biotech we should replace certain people. If you have made a fortune in the process of losing a fortune... you need to be replaced. 


We should think about making another quilt in ten years. This quilt will be built from success.