Long Island has many prominent educational and research institutions. On paper, it looks like the ideal place to build a biotech industry, especially since it’s near the venture capital powerhouse of New York City. But as Long Island biotech entrepreneur Dan Yarosh describes, getting venture capitalists from Manhattan to pay attention to what was going on Long Island often ended up being more difficult than expected.
Dan Yarosh, interviewed on May 23, 2023
Place: Rare Books Room, Carnegie Library, CSHL
Interviewer: Antoinette Sutto
Antoinette: It sounds like there was a certain amount of— synergy is a cliche word, but like this kind of— There was a lot of biotech companies being founded on Long Island at this time. Did you have the sense that this was a really good place to do biotech specifically? Were there any challenges associated with being in this region rather than somewhere else?
Daniel: Yes. [chuckles] I think there were more challenges than benefits. On paper, it looked great. It made a lot of sense. We would say, “Oh, there’s Mass— there’s Boston, there’s San Francisco, and there’s New York.” A lot of things worked against the biotech industry here.
The first one, New York venture capital never viewed the New York area as theirs. They were global and so they didn’t take particular interest in local companies. Local didn’t mean anything to them. They’d hop on plane and go to Boston, they’d hop on a plane to go to San Francisco.
Antoinette: Sort of that New York—
Daniel: There was—
Antoinette: It’s prejudice against outlying areas around New York.
Daniel: Oh, yes. If you invited a venture capitalist from Manhattan to come out to Freeport, they’d say how am I going to get there? They wouldn’t think anything of flying to Vienna, but they thought they’d have to get a passport if they went from Manhattan to Nassau County. There was that. That we didn’t have the favored status of being close to Manhattan that Boston companies had with the Boston venture capitalists, certainly, Silicon Valley. There were venture capitalists in San Francisco said we’re not looking at anything except what we can go and see in a day. That was one thing.