watch time: 13 minutes

The bio industry is evolving and tech will play a large part in bio’s next chapter. In fact, biology is looking more and more like programming lately, from “digital therapeutics” to “computational biomedicine” and “cloud bio”. But how can this help with, for example, cancer? And how does it affect investing in bio startups (hint: software lets you de-risk at every stage).

This interview of a16z bio fund general partner Vijay Pande (conducted by David Clark of VenCap International) discusses the challenges — and possibilities — of software brought to healthcare startups, including the difference between computer science x bio (as opposed to the ‘biotech’ of yore) and, therefore, why now.