“Investors are now asking for off-take agreements, meaning that a brand needs to sign something that guarantees a purchase order of a certain quantity at a certain price for a certain duration. That’s the sort of thing you would normally expect in series A or series B, and now pre-seed startups are being asked for it!”
Suzanne Lee‘s latest interview in Formes de Luxe captures exactly what we’ve been tracking across dozens of conversations with major brands and biotech founders.
The rules of the game have changed.
The biotech investment landscape isn’t just “brutal” because of market conditions.
It’s brutal because the old playbook is broken.
Brands want materials that work better, not just cleaner.
Consumers want about results, not process stories.
This shift makes biotech orchestration exponentially more valuable than pure invention.
Most (not all) biotech founders are still thinking linearly: great science leads to great products leads to excellent outcomes.
But investors now want proof that someone can actually deliver at scale before they’ll write checks. They want to see partnerships, supply chain relationships, and commercial pathways that turn lab breakthroughs into market reality.
The companies that win in this environment aren’t necessarily the ones with the most elegant biology. They’re the ones that can navigate the complex ecosystem of manufacturers, regulators, brands, and consumers to create sustainable value chains. In other words, the biotech companies with an orchestration strategy.
We’re watching this pattern play out. The breakthrough moment isn’t when the science works — it’s when all the pieces of the commercial puzzle click into place.
As Suzanne notes, luxury brands know that they need alternatives to traditional materials, as regulatory pressure and climate change are rendering current supply chains unsustainable. But those brands won’t commit until they see fully orchestrated solutions, not just promising molecules.
This is the future of biotech commercialization. Not just better biology, but better business architecture. Biotech orchestration strategy.