health
"We're not doing 30 bets a year": Vijay Pande on betting small after running $4 billion at a16z
Vijay Pande — who left a16z's roughly $4 billion biotech practice last year to start the much smaller, AI-native VZVC — talks about why biology is finally shifting from a "discovery" science to an "engineering" one, why clinical trials are still brutally expensive, and why he thinks open, shared datasets (not walled-off ones) are what will actually let AI transform medicine.
TL;DR
- Vijay Pande, formerly a Stanford professor and head of a16z's biotech practice, co-founded VZVC with Zach Werner, focusing on a smaller number of concentrated, AI-driven investments.
- Biology is shifting from a "science of discovery" to an "engineering" discipline, with AI enabling more targeted drug development and potentially streamlining clinical trials.
- Clinical trials remain expensive due to high failure rates, which Pande believes AI can mitigate by offering more predictive models than animal testing.
- Unlike other fields, biological data is not easily scraped from the internet, leading to data silos that present a challenge for AI development in medicine.
- Pande sees AI's potential to act as a 'specialist in everything,' overcoming human medical silos, but emphasizes the need for data sharing.
- He believes open-source foundation models in biology will have a broad impact, similar to open-source LLMs.
- VZVC focuses on AI for healthcare delivery and clinical trials, valuing founders with high integrity and a long-term vision.
- Pande learned the importance of go-to-market strategy, urging founders to apply their brilliance to this area as much as to technology.
- VZVC operates with a very concentrated portfolio, making few, high-conviction investments, contrasting with larger funds.
- Pande notes that AI's potential is limited by data availability; the hype around AI curing all ills is tempered by data quantity and quality concerns.