Dave Messina - YC founder turned investor talks TechBio

Ever wondered what Pioneer Fund’s Future of Health Fund is excited about? Want to know how to impress Dave Messina? Are you curious about how different funds communicate and interact?

Give a listen to our first in a potential series of the Human 3 podcast: VCxVC talks, hosted by Samantha Rector.

Dave Messina is a General Partner at Pioneer Fund, managing Pioneer’s Future of Health Fund, a fund of over 100 Y Combinator healthtech alumni investing in top health startups.

He’s spent over 25 years in healthcare and has been leading healthcare investments at Pioneer Fund since 2019. Dave has led over 100 deals and has invested in companies including Gilgamesh Pharmaceutical, Assort Health, Freshpaint & PostEra, among many other impressive companies.

We see a lot of companies in techbio as tech companies that use a lot of the same technology that the tech companies who get the headlines use. The tech is often the same even though there’s an overlay of science and regulation.

Dave has been a friend of XEIA’s for several years and has been the lead investor on several common deals including NeuroBionics’ pre-seed, Kerna Labs’ pre-seed and the pre-seed of a very exciting, but also VERY stealth NewCo. We couldn’t have thought of a better friend to bring on for the first VCxVC Human 3 pod.0:00 - Who is Dave Messina of Pioneer Fund?

1:19 - Sam’s recent call to conversation

2:17 - Dave’s take on breaking the conversation rhythm as a biotech VC

3:30 - XEIA’s first VCxVC podcast

4:35 - What is Pioneer Fund and the Future of Health fund?

7:45 - YC and biotech investments

12:30 - How Pioneer and XEIA met each other

14:24 - Pioneer and XEIA’s first coinvestment; NeuroBionics (plug podcast)

14:50 - How Pioneer decides to invest in companies that are not YC alum, like NeuroBionics

16:57 - Why NeuroBionics is so cool

21:56 - The transition from academia to being a founder; what we look for

26:15 - A tough reality for technical founders

28:50 - Another coinvestment; Kerna Labs and its coolness (plug podcast)

34:08 - Tech companies in the life sciences

34:59 - XEIA’s historical focus in techbio: discrete biological problems

37:55 - A shift to drugs that promote lifespan and healthspan more broadly

38:50 - “Pure play techbio” & our third coinvestment: a super stealth company

39:56 - Jack O’Meara and Pioneer’s investment in Aerska; riffing on repeat founders

40:58 - The startup pace

42:22 - Underwriting really young companies as early stage investors

43:28 - Dave’s work on The Human Genome Project (!!!!!)

50:05 - Empowering the individual, non-expert to use LLMs and biological data responsibly

52:51 - Consumerization of health

55:50 - Benefits of AI in healthcare

58:55 - SiPhox and at-home testing

1:00:23 - AI in bio and drug discovery (what it was, what it is and where it’s going)

1:02:50 - Phone ringing interruption lol (ends at 1:03:02)

1:05:08 - What does the future of bio look like? Is data generation key?

1:06:44 - Tighter feedback loops between data generation and predictions; specialization as key

1:08:40 - How AI will impact the future of biopharma

1:09:55 - Dave’s take on SaaS in techbio

1:14:06 - The last burning question for Dave

1:16:26 - How to get in touch with Dave