Many scientists come to biotech out of an interest in drug development. But drug development is a long, expensive process that does not always pan out. Jim Hayward, currently CEO of Applied DNA systems, describes one solution to the problem. When he left his position as a scientist at Estée Lauder to found his own company, he had enough funding from the sale of a previous biotech company that he was able to start his new venture, the Collaborative Group, without doing additional fundraising. The experience at Lauder had also taught him a lot about the high profit margins of the personal care industry. He knew that it was potentially a really workable idea for a biotech business to have two sides, a cosmetics side that brings personal care products to market quickly and profitably, and which funds the drug development side that “actually made medicines and developed new discoveries that would benefit people in deeper ways.” The strategy worked pretty well, and Jim brought in outside investors only later on, “because I wanted to acquire a large-scale CGMP manufacturing operation.”
