Co-founder of Flatiron, Flatiron Health
Search every verified Zach Weinberg interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Zach Weinberg, co-founder of Flatiron Health and Curie.Bio, has been discussing his approach to biotech venture funding and the challenges of building companies in healthcare. In a July 2025 podcast, Weinberg and his Curie.Bio co-founder Alexis Borisy described their firm's model, which combines a $520 million venture fund with in-house drug-discovery expertise. Weinberg stated that the goal is to "free the founders" by allowing them to retain a greater percentage of ownership and control compared to traditional venture capital structures. He has also commented on the difficulty of starting therapeutics companies, saying that "being a therapeutics founder was way harder than being a software founder" due to the high cost of mistakes. Weinberg has also reflected on his earlier entrepreneurial experiences, including building Flatiron Health, which he said used a "network business" model of selling discounted software to cancer centers to aggregate clinical data. He has offered advice to founders entering healthcare without prior experience, recommending that they "embrace the current structure" and take time to understand industry regulations. In discussions about broader industry trends, Weinberg expressed skepticism about blockchain in healthcare, stating that data-sharing problems are "mostly about incentives and culture, not a technology fix," and questioned whether the current AI boom might be viewed as a "great distraction" in retrospect.
“Being a therapeutics founder was way harder than being a software founder. The biggest one probably being the cost of a mistake.”
“The idea, if you will, of freeing the founders is how do you give founders the access to both people and vendors and insights that they would have in a much larger organization. How do you give them the credibility, the names, the email intros, but also the hands-on help?”
“I wonder if in 10 years we look back and we call this whole thing the great distraction. There's a lot of money, there's a reasonably large number of smart people in this, a lot of effort and hustle. The good stuff will get funded, it will survive, it will work eventually.”
“Remote first will win for most of these companies over the long period because of talent and talent alone, not because it's better, not because it's more effective or anything along those lines.”
“It's very hard to return a 20 billion dollar Mega Fund in the private Market. Yes, that is not hard, it's not like an easy thing to do when you know there's like one outcome every year that can support it.”
“If you as a Founder in software cannot figure out how to get your thing funded if by just like dropping the price, it probably means the business is like is challenged on its own.”
“I think we're going to shift a little bit to maybe the eye of Sauron if you will, of like employers, but that's the trade right, like that's the trade if you want to be able to work in your pajamas.”
“We took a venture fund — a $270 million seed-stage venture fund — and stapled it to a services entity of deep drug-discovery expertise so founders can materially benefit from top drug hunters while still owning the majority of their company.”
“The cost to do early pre‑clinical, pre‑human work has been coming down — sequencing, synthesis, and vendors have improved — but you still don’t see as many seed therapeutic companies because access to the right people and vendors matters as much as money.”
“For oncology data we had a human curation team — nurses abstracting charts — and used machine learning mainly for search/space reduction; the quality bar for medical data was higher than what language models could do at the time.”
“The right approach to drug pricing is to pay a lot more for drugs that genuinely work and much less for ones that don't — we should distinguish efficacy and reward the good ones accordingly.”
“We’re keeping older people alive longer, which increases total cost — there’s a Medicare population boom but we don’t have the replacement tax base because people are having fewer kids, so the demographics and math don’t look great.”
“I’m cool with crowdfunded science, but you don’t need blockchain for that — data-sharing problems are mostly about incentives and culture, not a technology fix.”
“If we get an Alzheimer’s or dementia drug that really works, it could blow up the budget — and similarly the new effective weight‑loss drugs are going to be a tens‑of‑billions‑of‑dollars category.”
“When you have no credibility in a field, one of the best tactics is to come to conversations with something you can teach people — if they learn from you they’re far more likely to share the nuanced knowledge in their heads.”
Zach Weinberg and Alexis Borisy of Curie.Bio on Freeing the Biotech Founders.
Zach Weinberg is the founder of Flatiron Health sold for $2B to Roche, Curie.Bio a $520M fund to be the YC for BioTech and Invite Media sold to Google for $85M. In the episode, Logan and Zach banter on the current state of the venture capital industry, as well as everything from remote work, artificial intelligence, and founder advice. Prior to Curie.Bio, Zach was the Co-Founder at Flatiron Health (acquired by Roche) and the Co-Founder at Invite Media (acquired by Google). (0:00) Intro (1:34) NASDAQ Closing Bell Ceremony (7:14) Publicly launching Curie.Bio and working from home (34:16) Stat…
During the SPC TechBio forum, we hosted a fireside chat with Zach Weinberg, Co-founder of Flatiron Health and Curie.Bio, on ...
In the 54th episode of The Logan Bartlett Show Zach Weinberg returns to share everything from “catching the bug” of the internet in college, to founding and exiting 2 companies, to his latest venture Curie.Bio; a drug discovery co-pilot and seed investment firm focused on Biotech. Lots of interesting comparisons drawn between Biotech today and the early days of tech. (0:00) Intro (1:25) Welcome Zach Weinberg (3:21) Background (6:46) Starting EatNow (9:56) Why healthcare? (19:55) The best way to learn about an industry (29:08) Building and Selling Flatiron (36:10) Buying an EHR (46:06) Curie.B…
Zach served as Flatiron's president and COO until April 16, 2021, overseeing the research, product, engineering, recruiting and ...
Zach and Logan discuss Amazon's acquisition of One Medical and what they might do with it now. Listen to the show Apple ...
Join Zach Weinberg and Micha Breakstone as they discuss their experience launching and scaling startups. Zach Weinberg: ...
Join Zach Weinberg and Micha Breakstone as they discuss their experience launching and scaling startups. Zach Weinberg: Co-founder/COO of Flatiron Health (acq @Roche for $2b) & Invite Media (acq @Google for $81m) Micha Breakstone: Co-founder of Chorus.ai (raised $100m) and Founders Club TLV This event will be hosted by Nicole Priel, Vice President at Ibex Investors and Elias Davis, Principal at Kli Capital. Ibex Investors Founded in 2003, Ibex Investors is a US-based multi-strategy investment firm targeting outsized returns through differentiated global strategies. Ibex proactively seek…
Find out why Flatiron Health founders Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg made the 2019 TIME 100 Next list. Subscribe to TIME ►► http://po.st/SubscribeTIME Get closer to the world of entertainment and celebrity news as TIME gives you access and insight on the people who make what you watch, read and share. • Playlist Find out more about the latest developments in science and technology as TIME’s access brings you to the ideas and people changing our world. • Playlist Let TIME show you everything you need to know about drones, autonomous cars, smart devices and the latest inventions w…
Learn more at http://rwe.flatiron.com Flatiron's Zach Weinberg and former CMO & CSO Amy Abernethy open the 2018 Flatiron ...
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