>The model did not work. Within eighteen months Centessa was shutting down spokes. By 2023, they had abandoned the hub-and-spoke model entirely and pivoted to a single-asset company focused on orexin agonists for sleep disorders. That pivot, to be clear, worked spectacularly.
To me this looks like the hub-and-spoke model working? It makes sense that most of the spokes would be shut down and they would invest in the successful spoke. Is the "not working" part the fact that they didn't keep making more spokes to replace the ones that didn't work?
Yeah it is confusing wording on my part, it did work in the narrow sense of a ‘biotech company succeeded’ but not in the ‘a hub and spoke model survived’ sense.
Of course, perhaps they would’ve spun the spokes back up had the Lilly acquisition not happened, and maybe this is actually the realistic path for most non-rare-disease hub-and-spokes. Spin up a lot of things, dial in on the one that works, sell it, profit
>The model did not work. Within eighteen months Centessa was shutting down spokes. By 2023, they had abandoned the hub-and-spoke model entirely and pivoted to a single-asset company focused on orexin agonists for sleep disorders. That pivot, to be clear, worked spectacularly.
To me this looks like the hub-and-spoke model working? It makes sense that most of the spokes would be shut down and they would invest in the successful spoke. Is the "not working" part the fact that they didn't keep making more spokes to replace the ones that didn't work?
Yeah it is confusing wording on my part, it did work in the narrow sense of a ‘biotech company succeeded’ but not in the ‘a hub and spoke model survived’ sense.
Of course, perhaps they would’ve spun the spokes back up had the Lilly acquisition not happened, and maybe this is actually the realistic path for most non-rare-disease hub-and-spokes. Spin up a lot of things, dial in on the one that works, sell it, profit