VCs at $2.4 billion Lux Capital think 2020 will be the year Big Pharma companies buy startups that ship Viagra and hair-loss pills to your door

Lydia Ramsey

Dec 31, 2019, 19:17 IST

Lux Capital

Lux Capital partners Zavain Dar and Adam Goulburn

Lux Capital partners Adam Goulburn and Zavain Dar expect pharma companies to build out new ways to reach consumers, perhaps by acquiring a direct-to-consumer healthcare business.
As pharmaceutical companies look to revamp their businesses, getting direct access to costumers and better using artificial intelligence in drug development could be key pieces.
The goal for pharma companies, Dar said, is to figure out, "How do we make sure we don't get disrupted?"
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2020 could be a big year for pharmaceutical companies looking to rethink their business models.

That could happen in a few ways, Lux Capital partners Zavain Dar and Adam Goulburn told Business Insider. Dar and Goulburn lead life sciences investments at Lux, a $2.4 billion venture capital firm that's invested in companies like Auris, a robotic surgery company acquired by Johnson & Johnson and CTRL Labs, which was acquired by Facebook in September.

Dar and Goulburn said that in 2020, pharmaceutical companies could have some interest in buying a direct-to-consumer health company like Hims or Nurx. The companies have made a big business out of providing prescriptions to consumers and shipping their medications straight to their doors.

"I think pharma starts to look at those" Goulburn said

He said the extra revenue from the small startups wouldn't make a big difference to giant pharma firms. Instead, what the companies would gain is "direct access to patients," he said.

Dar said it's not just pharma that might be looking at the direct-to-consumer health companies. Amazon, too, could use one of these companies as part of its pharmacy strategy, alongside its PillPack business.

Goulburn and Dar said they also expect 2020 to be the year when pharmaceutical companies have their DeepMind moment - that is, pharma companies will acquire companies developing AI capabilities in drug discovery and development, much like Google's acquisition of the UK AI company DeepMind in 2014.

The goal for pharma companies, Dar said, is to figure out, "How do we make sure we don't get disrupted?"

That won't come without its challenges, particularly from a cultural perspective. Pharmaceutical companies don't move quite as fast as tech companies, and groups within companies aren't as open about sharing data in the way a veteran engineer coming from a big tech company would be used to.

"I think they're going to fail around integration," Dar said.

Dar joined Lux Capital in 2014, and also teaches as an adjunct at Stanford University. He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford in symbolic systems, and a master's in computer science, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Goulburn has worked at Lux since 2011. He graduated from Monash University with a Ph.D. in stem cell research in 2010.

A big year for biotechs looking for funding

2020 won't see the end of massive biotech funding rounds, Goulburn and Dar predict.

"The music doesn't seem to be stopping on large financings in biotech," Goulburn said.

More traditional tech investors from Silicon Valley are placing bets on biotech companies, particularly those that sit at the intersection of biotech and artificial intelligence, Dar said.

Simultaneously, as machine learning and AI speed up the way companies develop new treatments, Goulburn identified the rate-limiting step to faster drug development as the wet lab, where the experimentation on the biology side happens.

He predicts that in 2020 that will start to see major advancements that speed up the process, especially as more automation and robotics are added to labs.