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Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. AP PHOTO/MORRY GASH |
The youngest contender present on the debate stage on Wednesday night didn't manage to gain favor among his fellow Republican presidential candidates. He challenged their ethical stance, ridiculed their commitments, and asserted that his lack of government experience uniquely positioned him to tackle the nation's challenges.
This wasn't unfamiliar terrain for Vivek Ramaswamy.
Even before he elucidated Perestroika to Mike Pence and applauded Nikki Haley's potential future in the defense sector, Ramaswamy exhibited a comparable audacity in the field of biotechnology. Back in 2015, at the age of 29, just after graduating from Yale Law School, he lectured the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry about their flawed approach to drug development.
His enterprise, named Roivant, aimed to outsmart giants like Pfizer and Merck by recognizing the latent potential in medicines that were beyond their bureaucratic grasp, consequently embarking on what he touted as "the most high-yield venture ever undertaken in the pharmaceutical realm," as he shared with Forbes at that time.
Similar to the responses he elicited during the recent debate—alternating between enthusiastic cheers and the need to raise his voice over boisterous jeers—Ramaswamy's impact was divisive. Initially, some peers in the biotech sector hailed him as a visionary, an outsider shaking up a field that had stagnated at its upper echelons. Conversely, others regarded him as a profiteer exploiting what was then a historic biotech boom, a speculator with a seemingly gimmicky business plan more likely to enrich him and his hedge fund associates than to birth new medicines.
In 2016, a business professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology remarked, "I might risk looking foolish a few years from now, but it appears that some people are being hoodwinked."
A year later, the initial trial of Ramaswamy's unwavering self-assuredness culminated in humiliation, as an Alzheimer's disease treatment plucked from obscurity failed in a closely-watched clinical test, erasing $2 billion in valuation and lending credence to the belief that Roivant's purportedly revolutionary business model was overly ambitious.
After the failure, biochemist Derek Lowe expressed, "I sympathize with those who were taken in by the hype, and I empathize with Alzheimer's patients and their families who had pinned their hopes on this compound. However, in my view, this entire endeavor misallocated funds—funds that could have been better utilized almost anywhere else in Alzheimer's research."
Facing this setback, Ramaswamy wrote a letter to his employees, admitting, "This failure is personally challenging and humbling for me. Nonetheless, it might not be detrimental to our enterprise. I intend to channel the discomfort I presently feel into redoubling my commitment to the company's triumph. Our experience with failure will only bolster Roivant's strength."
By then, Ramaswamy, recognized as biotech's most prominent millennial outside of Martin Shkreli, had implemented contingency plans. Roivant possessed a pipeline of medicines, engineered by an ever-expanding network of subsidiaries, and Ramaswamy's adept fundraising had secured its future with substantial investments from entities like SoftBank and Viking Global.
In 2021, Ramaswamy relinquished the role of CEO to become the executive chairman. Roivant's identity had shifted from a bold disruptor to a conventional pharmaceutical entity. As of February 2023, when Ramaswamy completely departed the company to embark on his presidential campaign, Roivant had garnered FDA approval for six medicines, with approximately a dozen more in advanced development stages.
While it remains to be seen if Roivant can fulfill Ramaswamy's foundational pledge of achieving the most remarkable return on investment in industry history, its estimated value stands at around $9 billion. Notably, the very Pfizer and Merck that it once aspired to outshine are reportedly showing interest in its acquisition.
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