Announcing My New Book for Startups

At long last, I have now started serious work on my new book for startups: The Bioscience Startup Journey. Two chapters are already written. And I’m now recruiting beta readers who’ll help me write the book in an agile development way.

For the past 15 months, I’ve been jotting down ideas and content for a new full-length book, and testing some of this material in my lecturing and blogging. I now feel very confident I have a lot of interesting and useful things to say-I just have to turn it into prose! “Practise what you preach” goes the well-known saying. In an analagous way to how I work with startups to iteratively develop their business models, I’ll be developing this book using feedback from early adopter readers. Click here if you are interested in joining my Beta Reader Programme.

I’ve set out the book contents and a brief description of each chapter below. This should give you a pretty good idea what the book is about. By the way, I would like to thank the Panacea Innovation team for coining the “sci-entrepreneur” phrase- a very appropriate moniker for the proliferating number of biologists, chemists, clinical professionals, bioengineers and bioinformaticians founding startups.

Contents of The Bioscience Startup Journey

Part I. Introducing the Bioscience Startup Journey

This book is written for you, the sci-entrepreneur! It’s a guidebook for bioscience entrepreneurs on their business building journey-how you transform a raw idea into a thriving business while making a significant impact on health and society at large. Achieving this can involve a long and arduous journey, with many unexpected twists and turns along the way. I hope by reading this book, you will be better prepared.

Chapter 1. Startups are Different
A startup is not only a young or small enterprise. Startups are aspirational and need investment. Startups relentlessly mitigate risk with proactive business model development. Roadmap of the entire book.

Chapter 2. Startups Build Business Models
Business model building is the central theme along your startup’s journey. All the components of a business model explained. And how you pilot your startup journey via iterative business model development.

Part II. Shaping Your Customer Proposition

You see a big patient or researcher problem needing a much better solution? You have a bioscience innovation looking for a big problem to solve? Start here.

Chapter 3. Right Problem, Solution and Market
How bioscience and healthcare entrepreneurs get started. What an attractive problem and solution looks like. What makes a market investible for entrepreneurs and investors.

Chapter 4. Healthcare is Different
Distinctive challenges faced by startups operating in and around the healthcare sector. How healthcare differs from other industry sectors.

Chapter 5. Bioscience and Healthcare Megatrends
The megatrends sweeping through the bioscience and healthcare space. How startups can exploit these megatrends.

Part III. Getting Inspiration-a Business Models Field Guide

Can your idea spawn a real business? Should you adopt or tweak a proven business model? Or assemble a bespoke business model? Inspiration from what others have done.

Chapter 6. Traditional Business Models in Bioscience and Healthcare
Understanding the business models of future customers and competitors. Or a future business model you can aspire to and build up towards.

Chapter 7. Well-Worn Business Models for Startups
Business models that investors and customers are familiar with. How to win when your business model is mostly the same as your competitor’s.

Chapter 8. Business Models for Platform Technology Innovators
What defines a platform technology. Consequences of shoehorning a well-worn business model. Applying bespoke and hybrid business models. How to manage the balance between risk mitigation and enterprise value growth.

Part IV. Navigating Your Startup Journey

Stage-by-stage walkthrough of how you develop your startup’s business. From the initial self-funded stage all the way to preparing an exit for a proven enterprise.

Chapter 9. Discovery & Conception
Listening to prospective customers and enriching your understanding of their problem. Conceiving an attractive customer proposition and developing an initial business model. How to use your non-dilutive and pre-Seed funding.

Chapter 10. Testing & Adaptation
Testing and adapting-qualitatively over multiple iterations-your customer proposition and commercial model. Building a pipeline of early adopters and planning how to quantitatively validate your business model at the next stage. How to use your Seed funding.

Chapter 11. Validation & Detailing
Validating your entire business model quantitatively to show product-market fit, repeatability and scalability. Building a credible scaling plan. How to use your Series A funding.

Chapter 12. Optimisation & Scaling
Optimising your business model for efficiency and scaling the business aggressively. Preparing for an eventual stock market listing, trade sale or transition to private equity investors. How to use your Series B and subsequent funding rounds.

Cover Image by Markus Winkler from Unsplash

Originally published at http://scitechstrategy.com on May 29, 2020.