Biotech Startup
Helping a biotech founder turn a breakthrough patent into a $1M business in year one, on track for $3M in year two.
Turned a breakthrough patent into a ~$1M business in year one, on track for $3M in year two.
Where they started.
A biotech scientist had patented a breakthrough antimicrobial formulation, but the business had stalled on how to commercialise it.
The formulation could serve applications across pharmaceutical, industrial and consumer markets, each with different economics, barriers and timelines. A daunting question, and the one that decides everything: what to build.
A Big 4 firm had already had a go at the question. The founders came away with a smart-sounding opinion and no decision they could act on.
We were engaged by the founders to settle it properly.
The work.
- 01
Map. We worked with the founders to unpack how the formulation works, then mapped 30+ potential use cases across pharmaceutical, industrial and consumer markets.
- 02
Assess. We brought structure and simplicity to the question, scoring every use case against a single framework: prevalence of the target condition, market pricing, competition, effectiveness of the formulation, regulatory complexity, cost of implementation and fit with the founders' capabilities.
- 03
Find out. We took the top use cases into direct interviews with patients, pharmacists, doctors, regulators and distributors, the people who decide. The interviews exposed high entry barriers in the initial target conditions and disambiguated low-barrier alternatives the client was well placed to win. We pivoted the focus.
- 04
Build. Combining our team's operating expertise with the insights of the people who decide, we devised a realistic rollout plan and executed it fast: within a few months we launched 10 SKUs and built the full operation behind them, from contract manufacturers, ingredient suppliers and logistics partners to regulatory and industry licensing, and the sales, ecommerce, brand, marketing and compliance teams to run it (see the Build case study for the full story).
What it produced.
- 01
Year one delivered close to $1M in sales across five major channels: Walmart, Amazon, Chewy, direct to consumer and multiple retail chains.
- 02
The business is on track for $2M to $3M in year two.
- 03
The pivot avoided years of regulatory delay in the original target conditions. Weeks of talking to the market caught the wrong idea before a year of money and morale went into it, and settled what a Big 4 engagement had not.