Jascha Blobel: “Biotech is a hard business, success tends to come slowly”

Molomics is a small-molecule drug discovery company based on a proprietary technology that integrates Artificial Intelligence with specialists. As molecules are designed collaboratively in silico between machine and humans, the company expects their drug candidates to be more efficacious and safer, increasing the success rates in clinical development.

Why did you want to be an entrepreneur?

With 20 years old, I worked for a biotech (Aclara Bioscience) and got to smell the start-up environment that was coming up in the Silicon Valley. It seemed so powerful what a small team can move! This gave me the confidence that it is possible to do big projects like developing a new drug if you have a good idea and the right team.

What is the most important strategic decision you’ve made so far?

To have faithful co-founders that are highly complementary, excellent at their work, responsible and, most important, motivated to go together through a long journey. Biotech is a hard business as you compete on an international level, so success tends to come slowly.

What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?

It comes from my grandmother: "People who try and work hard cannot always be unlucky." I think that many people working in start-ups know this situation of trying 100 things so that 1 thing will have success.

And now what? What milestones do you want to achieve in the short term?

The technology is fully functional so we need to take advantage of it as much as possible. This translates to advancing our different Parkinson assets/drugs into the pre-clinical phase but also scoring collaborations, similar to the one we have with a Chinese biotech in cancer.