Launching a biotech startup: A complete guide to developing great products
You’re a scientist and you have a great idea for a new product. You’ve done the research, developed your prototype, and are ready to launch. It may sound simple, but the process isn’t so straightforward - and you may have a lot of questions as a founder of a new biotechnology startup.
To start, a startup in the biotechnology industry is different from other types of startups because it’s focused on developing life-saving drugs and therapies. Your typical startup might develop new software that helps people connect with their friends, or it might just be a game for people to play on their phones. When you’re launching a biotechnology startup, you’re developing new treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and more. You’re developing products that will change the world.
Launching a biotech startup isn’t easy, but if you follow this guide, you can increase your chances of success.
The Risks of Launching a Biotechnology Startup
There’s no way around it, launching a biotech startup is risky. There are many unknowns, and it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important to scale your business. It goes without saying, the more risk you take on, the more likely it is your business - and product - will fail.
With that being said, this isn’t an excuse to pass up opportunities because they seem too risky or complicated. While there is great demand for new startups in this space, let’s talk about some of the risks involved in launching a business in biotechnology:
Industry standards are difficult to navigate: Many startups have difficulty reaching launch because founders don’t have the stamina to weed through all the industry licensing, accreditation, and regulatory compliance. At SciMed, we have over 20 years of experience navigating federal regulatory compliance so you don’t have to.
Complex technology barriers: Developing a life-saving treatment is hard. Managing all of the information needed to develop those treatments is one of the many challenges you’ll face as a biotech founder. Lucky for you, SciMed has developed software and processes that help streamline workflows and increase efficiency for plenty of startups and institutions like the School of Medicine at Duke University.
Lack of networking within the industry: People are everything. A lot of the time, founders will not have the relationships with potential users, institutions, and medical professionals to really know how to best develop a product. The SciMed team does. We’ve built relationships that
only come with years of experience developing custom software solutions and developing products.
Now that we’ve identified some of the potential risks when launching your biotechnology startup, let’s talk about how you can manage risk when you’re launching:
Know the industry landscape: Before starting any business venture or product development process - especially in biotechnology - make sure you understand all relevant regulations and market trends so you can best avoid potential pitfalls along each stage of development and launch.
Know your customer base: It’s important to know who will buy your product so that when going into sales mode or production there isn’t any confusion about who should receive what type of communication. Additionally, knowing exactly who needs help from whom (i.e., patient vs doctor) at different stages throughout their disease progression journey could help inform decision-making processes.
Understand why patients need help today instead of tomorrow: Developing new therapeutics takes years before reaching patients’ hands through clinical trials, it’s your job to convince payers today why such treatments should happen now rather than later on when only proven clinical success rates exist (and therefore higher costs associated with them).
The challenges of product development and how to manage them
Biotechnology product development is extremely challenging. As a founder, you’ll face a multitude of regulatory hurdles, high capital costs, and long development times before you can bring a product to market.
Product development includes research and development, design, engineering, and testing. It’s an intensive process involving many people from many different disciplines and backgrounds in order to create something that meets the needs of consumers and the industry.
Your product manager is responsible for overseeing this process and should be someone who has experience working on projects in their specific area of expertise; for example, if you were making a drug to treat cancer tumors, you would want someone with experience developing drugs rather than just anyone who knows how to write software code. Our team of senior software developers is exactly that. Rather than putting anyone on your project, we have years of experience and do the due diligence to ensure we’re creating the best possible product that meets your needs.
Launching a successful biotechnology startup requires extensive experience and knowledge, both of which we have.
Our team of experienced biotechnology product developers knows how to develop top-notch products that will stand out in the market, helping you to work more efficiently and focus on your core mission. With over 20 years of industry experience, we’ve developed numerous products that have been approved by regulatory agencies around the world.
We’ve helped numerous biotechnology startups and institutions to launch and scale their product, including:
Creating a Cardio ECG technology that helps hospitals efficiently manage data from medical devices such as ECGs, EEGs, and many other types of monitoring equipment.
Developing a web-based software application to coordinate quality assurance protocols at more than 50 leading research laboratories worldwide.
Developing a Laboratory Assay System (LAS) to manage millions of data records generated and used by HIV scientists around the world.
When you work with us, we’ll help you launch your product on time and on budget and do the necessary due diligence to ensure all your needs are being met. Each team member at SciMed has an average of 15 years of experience in their respective field, so rest assured your project is in good hands. We can provide guidance throughout the process from initial planning until launch. To learn more, get in touch.
