NEW YORK — Is Vivek Ramaswamy the smartest guy in biotech?
His business model all but depends on it. The 31-year-old former hedge fund manager has raised $1 billion in just two years to play a sprawling game of pharmaceutical moneyball — sifting through the thousands of would-be drugs that larger companies have left to gather dust and picking out a few gems he believes can be developed into blockbuster medicines.
Ramaswamy was just 29, with neither a PhD nor MBA, when he devised this approach and founded Roivant Sciences to carry it out. Confident and charismatic, he speaks like the valedictorian of a school for biotech CEOs — explaining his vision in full paragraphs dappled with business buzzphrases, rarely sounding rehearsed and yet always staying on message.
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Seems like he is in it for the money. Trying to package an idea, sell it quick and make a big buck.
There’s probable 100s of thousand wanta be discarded – shelved- “drugs” collecting dust cause they didn’t quiet make it for probable 100s of thousand of reasons. Maybe there should be a use it or lose it mime regarding these limbo drugs. Patent rights are what’s messing this gd up in MHO. Patent rights never end because a good lawyer and a little tweeking gets you to eternity. It’s patents that are the causation of price gouging but that’s the system.
-Love the Boy CEO’s appearance of genuineness. “Drugome.” Shame! He ought to start studying the path of Theranos/Holmes, as that seems to be his likely direction. And the old guy who wrote the book? If he was so great what is he doing in this startup? More to worry about are the dementia patients. Soon to see more hopes dashed. GSK is not usually wrong.
Well, in the near future, to invest in this kind of all smoke and no substance kind of company makes economic sense. After all, it looks like that any “drug” will be approved as long as it is proven safe. Of course, whether those drugs are actually having any therapeutic effect is completely irrelevant.
Maybe, it couldn’t even bother to have to pay royalties to any pharma company. But, then again, it is probably a good marketing stunt to give your enterprise a stamp of legitimacy in the business.
Poor choice of title. Last time I looked my industry does not need saving. For all its warts pharma is still one of the most profitable industries on the planet.
What an apt observation! “Save” is ridiculous.