Herbal medicine is a polite euphemism for legal drugs. The bulk of our business comes from one particular leaf that does have legitimate medical use and is way, way more effective than a reasonable prior says it should be.
We were actually planning on commercializing the active ingredient (called 7H), based on this gap we found in the big pharma drug discovery process, and it would have been a billion dollar business. However, it would have required us to raise money for research, so we could iterate through all of the possible derivatives of the molecule and it's nearly impossible to raise money for research without having a PhD in the relevant area. We tried but kept hitting catch 22's.
At the most recent Startup School, I met someone who introduced me to a young CEO funded by top VCs who assured me that this idea fit the VC model perfectly, that he was pretty confident we could raise a million dollars for research and a patent, and that for something with potential like this, it did not matter at all that our team was incomplete, the VCs would find us people. I told him to give me a day to revise our one pager. I did a quick patent search and found that the Japanese discoverers of 7H had just filed a patent on all possible derivatives of 7H -- and they found some really awesome derivatives. They discovered 7H in 2001 and filed for the patent of the derivative molecules in 2009. For various reasons, we believed that their funding was not for all derivatives of 7H and that they were chasing an impossible pharmaceutical dream, but in retrospect we believe they were selectively publishing papers of their discoveries to throw others off of their tracks, why else would they have published the discovery of a medically useless derivative?
We came so close, but it always seemed a little too good to be true. There's always the next thing. For now, selling the leaf itself pays the rent.
PM or email for more details about the herb/molecule in question; I think it's probably inappropriate to post the links to my business or even the relevant Wikipedia page here.
OK, that makes sense, thanks!
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