Zach Weinberg on entrepreneurship
From Ep143: Zach Weinberg and Alexis Borisy on Freeing the Biotech Founders · · The Long Run with Luke Timmerman
“Being a therapeutics founder was way harder than being a software founder. The biggest one probably being the cost of a mistake.”
On , Zach Weinberg, Co-founder of Flatiron at Flatiron Health, spoke about entrepreneurship during Ep143: Zach Weinberg and Alexis Borisy on Freeing the Biotech Founders on The Long Run with Luke Timmerman.
About Zach Weinberg
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.