It is really translated from the English word "Integrity". "Ge" is the realm, godhead is the realm of God, and personality is the realm of human beings, which is really the essence of "truth". Zhenge Fund was established on 20 1 1. Up to now, the total scale of accumulated managed funds has exceeded 1 billion USD, and it is determined to become the "largest small fund" in the world.
In the fiery medical track, Zhenge Fund has laid out 64 projects, of which 19 has entered the B round, and its main fields include innovative drugs, medical devices and medical services. Chen, vice president of Zhenge Fund Investment, introduced at the opening ceremony: "Zhenge not only pursues the professional prudence of medical funds in terms of' seeing outpatient service' and' seeing data', but also takes' people+track' as the core and has greater tolerance for technical risks." Jingtai Technology, which completed the financing of $3.65438+0.88 million in September 2020, is a case representative of Zhenge's bold layout of AI+ medicine. As early as 20 17 when the industry was generally full of doubts about the track, Zhenge became one of the early investors of Jingtai Technology.
In order to let more young medical science and technology talents have the opportunity to expand the ideas and directions of exchange technology transformation, Zhenge Fund and MIT Science and Technology Review China jointly held the second phase of the frontier science and technology talents incubation project "Zhenge Planet"-Medical Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Camp from June 65438+1October 65438+July.
During the four-day activity, 26 selected students visited Merck China Innovation Center, ATLATL Dart Accelerator and Yiming anke biotechnology Medicine, and had on-site exchanges with 16 entrepreneurs, industry pioneers and investment experts in the life sciences, facing the real entrepreneurial story.
What is the particularity of medical science and technology track? What are the necessary topics when starting a business? The collision between scientific research and entrepreneurship is sometimes surprising and sometimes frightening.
For example, one of the most common bottlenecks for scientists to start a business is the industrial transformation of outstanding scientific research achievements, only to find that the imaginary market does not actually exist. In the sharing of mentors, we also heard a similar story: due to the advanced products developed, the company was once in financial difficulties, and finally succeeded in returning blood after the painful business transformation. Since then, the founders have learned from setbacks, and in the process of building business logic, they have begun to attach great importance to thinking about how to give consideration to self-hematopoietic ability and forward-looking business layout. Now the company can also ride the dust in the industry.
Of course, starting a business can't just think about "making the best products and selling them to the market"-how to distribute the company's equity, whether large companies come to cooperate sincerely or get information, what to do if some founding partners change, how to recruit and manage talents who are better than themselves, and how to negotiate with investment institutions to win the maximum benefits for the company. These seemingly unrelated things to technology and products often occupy the founder's most time and determine the company's life and death.
14 senior professionals and expert consultants from domestic and foreign medical science and technology fields, as well as the founder and mentor of the battle-hardened vertical track head company, had an unreserved and sincere dialogue with the students on the above issues.
Q: How do you understand that "founders need to have rich industry experience, but not too rich industry experience"?
Tian, founder, chairman and general manager of Yiming Anke: It is suggested that in the initial stage of starting a business, the founder should set up his own company first, and then look for partners to supplement differentiated resources and capabilities after the business logic and basic framework are established. If there are two or three partners at the beginning of the business, it is easy to have differences on the development route and finally go their separate ways. Such examples are not uncommon. In this process, the founder needs to fully understand the industry situation and business logic, which requires rich industry experience; However, too much industry experience may also make entrepreneurs think too much and be indecisive, which may affect decision-making.
Q: How do you define your role as an entrepreneur or a scientist?
Tian Anke founder, chairman and general manager: You need to deal with investors half the time, and you have to be the CSO and CEO of the company. In the early days of the company's establishment, the founder needs to wear several hats, and gradually set up a management team with matching trust and ability to help you share some work. At the beginning of the company, there is no need to hire a very beautiful consulting team. Maybe when approaching IPO, we will select, train and reserve some senior managers according to the needs of IPO.
Q: What role should scientists play in startups?
Yao Yi, academic member of the Department of Immunology of China Academy of Engineering (foreign consultant) and chairman of the Hong Kong Biomedical Transformation Research Association: For biomedical enterprises, the establishment of companies is often based on the technology of scientists, so scientists play a very key role in biomedical enterprises. For the mission of scientists in enterprises, I think there are three points: First, we should complete the scientific breakthrough and animal experiment demonstration of new technology from laboratory to CMC industrialization pilot stage. Secondly, we should do a good job of coordination to ensure that the company's research team can digest this new technology. Finally, scientists should constantly innovate in the process of company growth, and pipeline should do a good job. Now many scientists who come back from overseas are favored by some funds or policies, and sometimes they are busy socializing, but they can't get the best results. I think scientists should make up their minds to do science and give full play to their advantages.
Q: What advice do you have for "grassroots" entrepreneurs with technology but no industrial background?
Shen, founder and CEO of Ao Bai Saitu: When I started my business, I often saw suggestions written by some successful people, which made me nervous-totally different from what I did. Did I do something wrong? Later, in the process of starting a business, I felt that this was not the case. For example, it is unrealistic for "grassroots" entrepreneurs to form a luxury team and recruit the top people from outside at the beginning of their business. Only the entrepreneurs themselves make more efforts, start the business first, and then slowly make up the team. The situation of each company is different, so don't be too superstitious about other people's experience, or proceed from reality.
Q: How can a company founder with a non-technical background better lead and manage people with a technical background?
Ding Wei, founder and chairman of Pinfeng Medical: Let me give you an example first. Jobs, for example, is not a purely technical person, but he knows the essence of products very well. For the founders of the company, they don't need to know much about coding or hardware, but they are very sensitive to the combination of products, markets and users. This degree of integration is a very important factor for you to surpass technicians and manage them well. At the same time, don't just talk about feelings. They must finally recognize your deep understanding of the company's development direction. This direction is not single, but multiple dimensions such as customers and markets. These are the core of letting everyone follow you.
Q: How did you persuade Bayer and other large international pharmaceutical companies to join ATLATL when you started your business?
Zhu Pengcheng, founder and CEO of ATLATL Innovation Center: The first is to dare to think and do. Don't give yourself many subjective obstacles before you do it. There is nothing to be afraid of. The second point is to be prepared and make full use of every opportunity. The third is to keep a good attitude, even if you fail, you can accumulate experience for the next time. But only by taking the first step will there be opportunities and possibilities for follow-up.
Q: What are the general characteristics of projects that reach commercial cooperation with business departments through Merck Innovation Center?
Sun, Managing Director of Merck China Innovation Center and Vice President of Strategy and Transformation of Merck China: Merck Innovation Center will create opportunities for enterprises to collide and communicate with business departments. More than 50% of enterprises with Merck Innovation Center can reach different degrees of cooperation with business departments. Even if no cooperation is reached, start-ups can better understand the needs of target customers, the market and the business process of establishing cooperative relations with large companies during the communication process. The global expert network of Merck Innovation Center will also challenge and suggest the technologies and products of start-ups from Merck's perspective. Start-ups that have reached cooperation generally have very solid technical capabilities. Secondly, the innovation ability of these companies can usually give full play to Merck's existing product and technology advantages and accurately solve some practical problems faced by Merck's customer base. Therefore, the business correlation between them is also very important.
Q: What "pits" have new products stepped on when establishing sales channels?
Zou Hongzhi, founder of Kang Liming Bio: The biggest "pit" I encountered when I established the sales channel was actually the pricing problem. At the beginning, our products were overpriced, which directly led to the problem that patients were unwilling to pay and had fewer tests. Later, we adjusted the product pricing, and the situation finally improved. My experience is that the unit price of screened products should not be too high, so we also control the product cost. Mainly from two aspects, the first is to reduce the cost from the source of design, and make the product the simplest and use the least symbols on the premise of ensuring the product performance. Secondly, in the supply of core raw materials, we also actively build our own channels to reduce costs. With these two items, we can fundamentally reduce costs and gain cost advantages.
Q: According to the different needs of medical institutions at all levels, how can Yi Tu Medical provide targeted empowerment?
Fang Qi, Chief Operating Officer of Yi Tu Medical: For large-scale diagnosis and treatment centers, one of their pain points is to improve diagnosis and treatment efficiency and see as many patients as possible in the shortest time, and the other is to improve scientific research ability and promote platform construction. Drainage is a key problem for municipal specialized treatment institutions. They not only need to work together to improve the level of scientific research, but also need to drain downwards and recruit suitable patients. However, the diagnosis and treatment ability of primary medical institutions is relatively weak, which is what they need to solve most. According to different dilemmas at different levels, Yi Tu Medical has prepared different solutions. For example, intelligent specialized disease database and intelligent scientific research platform for head hospitals, intelligent clinical auxiliary diagnosis system for middle-level hospitals, and intelligent screening and evaluation tools for grassroots institutions.
Q: How did Jingtai find the first paying customer?
Wen Shuhao, co-founder and chairman of Jingtai Technology: Customers from 0 to 1 are very important for enterprises. I think they still need solid technical ability to knock on their door. At that time, we had a chance to talk to Pfizer, but the big companies were very cautious. Without any external experimental data, they proposed three kinds of internal drugs, and invited us to do experimental evaluation with the team of institutions around the world that can predict the crystal structure. On Thanksgiving Day of 20 17, more than 30 people from the company pooled all their resources to complete this project. Finally, Pfizer's evaluation of us is: shock, I can't believe that an early startup can achieve such good results.
Q: What do you think are the characteristics of successful and failed startups?
Zhu Pengcheng, founder and CEO of ATLATL Innovation Center: Successful teams have a * * * nature: "confident in their charm", and it is inevitable that there will be extremely slim, complicated and difficult moments in the process of starting a business. If they are too "sober", they may not do it. The other is persistence. In many cases of entrepreneurial failure, it is usually that the founder has many retreats and temptations besides starting a business. For example, if he gets a high salary in a big enterprise, he may stick to it. Finally, maintain the ability to learn quickly. After taking the first step of "superstition", we should quickly accumulate learning, digest and understand new information and experience, and finally become an expert in the industry.
Q: From which dimensions should we start thinking about the direction of entrepreneurship?
Guohua Xiao, CEO and co-founder of Hanan Medical Company: I think there are two views. The first thing is to do something very innovative. You must first have an advantage or a long board, and then make up for your shortcomings from scratch. The promotion of this process must have a team, and there must be talents in all aspects within the team. Second, find out the difference between some products of advanced countries and China, make different changes to products of other countries in a way suitable for China's national conditions, and effectively apply them to China's market. Such success is basically guaranteed. It is also very important to have a place in the international market.
Q: What kind of research results are likely to become good entrepreneurial projects?
Q: What is the reason for the company to adopt the "Sino-American amphibious" development model? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this model?
Yang Xing, founder and chairman of Akono Bio: The reason is that the Chinese and American markets have their own advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of China lies in its large market. At present, China is the second largest market for IVD in the world, and its annual growth rate will still be close to 20%. Sales are mainly through the franchise model. The advantage of the United States is that it has a mature R&D ecological environment, and it is very convenient to set up laboratories, recruit R&D personnel and buy reagents used by R&D. We were doing product research and development in San Diego at that time, so we plan to do technology research and development there now, but it takes a lot of financial resources to register with the FDA and set up a sales team.
Q: How to solve the conflict between "technology" and "product"?
Yang Xing, founder and chairman of Akono Bio: I am from a technical background. I am very grateful to my working experience in Bio-Meria, which has enabled me to learn and understand the market demand and accumulate more business experience. Iacono's products were developed after I analyzed the market demand, not just from the technical point of view. Now everyone is talking about microfluidics. I studied microfluidics when I was a Ph.D. student in the late 1990s, but I have nothing to do with microfluidics in my career, because technology is not an industry. So our current products are completely defined from the perspective of the market.
Q: What is the most critical factor for entrepreneurial success?
Ding Wei, founder and chairman of Pinfeng Medical: I think there are three dimensions: the right time, the right place and the right people. At the age of 20, I thought harmony was the most important thing. Ten years later, I think timing is the most important thing, and I pay attention to following the trend. But at this age, I think weather, location and people are very important. The right time, the right place and the right people can help you rush up quickly in a short time, but in the end, it depends on people and this factor to decide whether your company can succeed. For investors, timing may be more important. If you only look at the right person, the time is not right. For enterprises themselves, humanization and harmony may be more important.
Q: What is the main reason why Jingtai Technology can rapidly develop into a track head company?
Wen Shuhao, co-founder and chairman of Jingtai Technology: As a head company, what is your anxiety? First of all, external opportunities are very important, and there is a founding team that has the ability to match and trust each other. In addition, large foreign pharmaceutical companies were chosen as the starting point. They are both customers and teachers for us, and we have accumulated a lot of experience and ability in the process of cooperation. Recently, a lot of anxiety is to compete with internet giants for talents. We need to maintain our ability to gather talents in the market.
Q: What's the new development trend of in vitro diagnosis market under the epidemic situation?
Xu Jingbo, senior practitioner of in vitro diagnosis and independent consultant of medical investment: The in vitro diagnosis industry is developing very fast in China. Its market opportunities and motivation mainly come from several aspects: large development space, import substitution, wide application scenarios (diagnosis runs through the whole medical process), various new technological advances, policy dividends and COVID-19 epidemic. At present, the market focuses on molecular diagnosis (such as neocoronavirus), import substitution, POCT, laboratory automation, mass spectrometry and microfluidic. The new changes in these two years have also had a great impact on the in vitro diagnosis industry, and even reshaped the market. For example, the COVID-19 epidemic, DRGs, the construction of a multi-level medical system, the innovative support of localized products, and the possible decoupling of the medical field between China and the United States.
Q: In the in vitro diagnostic industry, how to choose entrepreneurial products?
Xu Jingbo, a senior practitioner of in vitro diagnosis and an independent consultant of medical investment, said that the design criteria of in vitro diagnosis products should be considered from the following aspects: technology development, disease screening, drug guidance, personalized treatment, public health and environmental health testing, and the extension of products' functions in medical activities. The simplest principle is to test faster, more accurately and smaller than existing products. For the selection of entrepreneurial products, it is suggested to mainly refer to the three orientations of market (clinical demand), technology and policy. Among them, taking the market (clinical demand) as the core, we should first dialectically screen the clinical (doctor, laboratory) demand, select diseases with high incidence rate, and at the same time quickly follow up with the giants in the in-vitro diagnosis industry, arrange the product development order according to the profit rate, select products that are easy to get certificates, and try to be slightly innovative. Finally, we should have the concept of international market.
Q: What challenges do medical workers face in their cross-innovation transformation?
Professor Wang, doctoral supervisor of Robotics Institute of Beihang University, mainly includes three aspects: First, the cross-cooperation between doctors and workers: China's science, engineering and medicine are independent and do not cross each other, but it takes a long time for these disciplines to run in and penetrate each other, and cross-demand can bring valuable methods, products and innovative achievements. Second, the initial problem of cooperation: in the early years, the intersection of doctors and workers was not for economic contribution. In this field, it took five years to prove the initial intention, and 65,438+00 years to verify the growth, aiming at the contribution to the economy, which reflected the responsibility and mission of the enterprise. Third, the combination of commerce, technology and clinic: R&D and clinical trials take a long time and medical products are difficult. It needs the continuous operation of enterprises and the continuous investment of investors to develop and grow.
Q: What are the breakthrough ideas for cross-innovation and transformation of medical workers?
Professor Wang of Beihang Robotics Research Institute: First, identify the breakthrough direction, take the initiative to get to know the influential top three hospitals and directors of major departments, and communicate with them iteratively to determine the pain points and high frequencies of the track to help confirm the direction; Secondly, looking for excellent business partners, credibility and patience are the most precious qualities; Finally, starting from the end, aiming at the license plate, starting from the demand. There are two possibilities if you want to make a breakthrough in business. First, contact small B-end institutions, such as clinics, third-party images, and chains; Second, go to the top three hospitals. These are two channels from technological breakthrough to commercialization.
Q: How will the hierarchical system of hospital system in China develop?
Zhang Weiyi, head of China Foreign Innovation Cooperation Center of Boehringer Ingelheim: We all say that we go to the community for minor illness and go to the hospital for serious illness. This is what the country has been vigorously promoting, including some models similar to online hospital and online consultation, in order to make some connections. For example, the five key areas proposed in the past, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chengdu, will be combined with municipal hospitals within the radiation range of these cities. Generally, only people with important diseases will be treated in these five areas, and chronic diseases and long-term diseases will be treated in their own cities. At the same time, in the process of building this system, some digital tools are also needed to help enterprises carry out specific operations.
Q: What do you think is the key to patent protection?
Zhang Weiyi, head of China Foreign Innovation Cooperation Center of Boehringer Ingelheim: In the past, due to the evaluation system and other problems, many products entered the China market late and the patent protection time was short. This may be because China is mainly a follower of development needs; At present, on the basis of embracing innovation in the big environment, the most fundamental principle of innovation is to maintain the exclusiveness of the patent itself. The full value of a patent lies in its exclusivity. It is said that the new patent law will take effect in June this year, and then we can look at the requirements of relevant laws and regulations.
Q: How to treat digital security and how to realize transnational and interregional data joint projects?
Fang Qi, Chief Operating Officer of Yi Tu Medical: Data security is a very important issue, and data access rights are also related to application scenarios. For example, in the environment of clinical diagnosis and treatment, data are not allowed to go abroad and are not allowed to go to the cloud. However, if it is used for scientific research, the data can be desensitized, entered into the public database, reviewed and approved by the hospital ethics association, National Health Commission and other relevant departments, and then used for transnational and trans-regional projects. Many product data of Yi Tu Medical are highly confidential. For example, the cancer screening platform in China is a national multi-center, and the data need to be highly confidential. Therefore, the data server belongs to a private cloud rather than a public cloud in the hospital.
In this medical science and technology entrepreneurship camp, 26 students from Zhenge Planet have different entrepreneurial directions, but they all cherish the ideal of changing the world with science and technology: they are committed to developing gene therapy drugs for various ophthalmic diseases, from condensed matter physics to clinical medicine, deeply applying intelligent computing to screening, diagnosis and rehabilitation of senile degenerative diseases, and developing wearable devices that can continuously monitor blood pressure for 24 hours. ...
In the process of breaking the ice, the students quickly got to know everyone, including brothers and sisters who met unexpectedly, peers who had short-term exchanges, and partners who brought new fields, different interests, cross-knowledge and insight to each other.
During the visit and between classes, they carried out all kinds of passionate brainstorming around their own development direction and interests, from putting forward ideas to forming teams, from product prototypes to commercial landing, and listened to the peer feelings and gains shared by their instructors that day.
In the middle of the night, Zhenge Planet also organized a relaxing ZhenRefelction meeting. Students drank beer and talked with colleagues all night, sharing their passion for the future, as well as the difficulties and vagrancy they may encounter at present.
The road to entrepreneurship is full of unknowns because of "uncertainty", which is a fate. The founder seems to be walking a tightrope every day.
"Accepting risks and challenges is no longer a virtue, but an inevitable result of survival. When everyone wants to take the first step of starting a business, risk is not the most important factor to consider, just do it. " Wang Qiang, co-founder of Zhenge Fund, gave his own opinions on the topic of "uncertainty" during the business camp.
Entrepreneurship is indeed an adventure, which not only requires unique technology, sufficient funds and a steady stream of talents, but also requires entrepreneurs to embrace all kinds of "uncertain" challenges.
Finally, let's meet the "brave" of Zhenge Planet in this issue.
The second issue of "Zhenge Planet" ended successfully.
Bless you who are changing the world.
Take firm steps and don't ask any questions.
Aim at the stars
Landing on Jane's planet