My suspicion, based on limited experience, but still, is that investing in startups purely for the potential gains is the road to a bad end comprising one part disinterest and one part disconnection. Startups are a tool to achieve an end, which is to say some form of change in the world. If you have a very clear view of the change you wish to achieve, that can be useful, and indeed I'd argue it is essential if you want to avoid the aforementioned bad end.

For me, the goal is specific new capabilities in medicine, with a fairly strong opinion on which strategies are worthwhile when it comes to achieving those goals. Everything else flows from that point: I care about getting research done, answering specific questions about whether X works or Y does not work, and then moving working research closer to the clinic.

From the point of view of where the money goes, there is actually little difference between investing in an early stage biotechnology startup and making charitable donations to a late-stage laboratory group. In both cases those funds buy research: use of laboratory resources, the ever-expensive reagents needed for modern research, mice for animal studies, the efforts of scientists, and all the other essentials. There is no rule that says a particular research project has to be carried out before or after the point at which non-profit labwork transitions to for-profit labwork; where the work happens in the typical chronology of the clinical translation of science to medicine is very much a matter of circumstance and the character of those involved.

When you are putting money into research with this philosophy, where the for/non profit split isn't as important as getting the job done, you'll find yourself better placed in the for-profit side.

Investing is something that investors do moderately well - there is a method and a discipline and a body of tradition and knowledge. But it isn't the only thing that investors can do to speed the development of medical science. What the investment community should do, attempts to some degree, but remains very poor at accomplishing, is the process of nudging along pre-commercial scientific efforts, of strategically funding specific research projects in order to produce a new crop of biotech/medtech companies. This seeding of the field can be highly effective, yet for the most part even personally interested investors leave philanthropy in their field to other people. Thus funding for truly radical, high-risk, high-reward new research is next to non-existent. The other side of the coin, targeted funding for medical research projects with excellent prospects, or that are only a few years and a million dollars away from the leap to a candidate therapy and a startup, nudging them into the target zone, is also very thin on the ground.

All of this is to note that the launch of a company happens a long way after the start of the development process, and investors should become involved well before that point if they want to better achieve their goals. Building on what has been learned so far, better and more organized ways to meld philanthropy and investment might be assembled. A community with deep pockets that can build the intricate networking tools and the energetic, highly networked approach to for-profit investment that presently exists should be able to make the leap over the barrier to organize and assist the non-profit research pipeline as well.