Tim DraperFounder and Managing Partne, Draper Associate · I back the ideas that look crazy first

🚀 Silicon Valley’s brightest minds are taking the stage!

1 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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0:51

A health-data startup pitches its platform connecting DNA sequencing providers like Illumina to pharma companies like Pfizer. Investors probe the business model, worry about bigger players absorbing it, and ask whether dentists could be the first paying customers.

That was a good demo. Most demos don't work anyway. Who's paying you?
And what are they paying you for? You need some sort of privacy settings. So on the one end you have Illumina that runs the sequencing, right? Yes, exactly. On the other hand you have Pfizer or somebody who has all the data. Exactly. Why do they need you in the middle?
Do you think that the existing groups will eventually do this and this will end up just being a feature on their site? Is it kind of spoiling the dogs because all the messages are needs and asks? Give me a sense for why a dentist is buying. If I'm a dentist, how do you sell me? You don't think you'll be squeezed by Illumina and Pfizer or whoever.
So what's the aha moment here?
What, what made you say, I gotta start a business here?