Joan Siefert Rose, the former longtime leader of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, now leads LaunchBio, a national nonprofit. From that role, Rose now tracks the state’s life science sector. And in the latest report about the State of Startups series assessing the entrepreneurial economy across North Carolina Rose talks about the biotech sector. Is startup activity slowing?

Not necessarily, she says, but she is seeing changes.

“My current title is CEO of LaunchBio,” she explains, noting the role she assumed in February of this year “This is a national nonprofit that is a partner with the BioLabs co-working spaces, including BioLabs North Carolina in the Chesterfield Building in Durham. Our focus is on providing a strong support network for early stage life science entrepreneurs, especially those just spinning out of academic research institutions.”

(Note: All previous parts of the series are linked with this post.)

Our Q&A.

  • Do you see any indications that the number of startups is showing any sign of slowing down?

I’m now focused exclusively on the healthcare and life science space. The number of companies forming in biopharma is usually not large in any given year in the Triangle, but we’ve seen some strong companies emerge recently.

StrideBio (from UNC) and Element Genomics (from Duke) are 2 recent startups that moved to co-working space in BioLabs North Carolina, and within a year, each was generating sufficient data to attract their first institutional investors.

This, to me, shows that the path to starting a company is changing, not necessarily slowing down.

On the healthcare IT side, the recent formation of groups like Digital Health in the Triangle and RioT have helped pull a support network together that should result in more startups in that space.

  • Based on your experiences and conversations, what do you believe the level of enthusiasm is among entrepreneurs?

Cautious optimism.

  • What’s the enthusiasm among those who are thinking about starting a new venture?

Entrepreneurship is generally seen as a far more acceptable career path to young people who came of age during the recent Recession than it was to people even a decade older.

Today’s new, young entrepreneurs want to create a business where they have control over their own destiny, can work with people they like, and can make a positive impact in the world.

Entrepreneurship is blurring the lines between work and “the rest of life” in a way that wasn’t envisioned by a previous generation of startup founders.

  • Do you see any signs that coworking spaces may be overbuilt, so to speak, with ongoing expansions and a new site coming in 2019 from WeWork?

I’ve seen that concern raised in other, similarly fast-growing markets, but I believe that there is still demand for flexible space that offer a mix of amenities and community.

It could be that the types of companies that join these spaces will change (perhaps less comprised exclusively of tech-focused companies), but so long as this option beats working out of your living room, it will attract interested parties.

If anything diminishes the popularity of these spaces, it may be access to parking or lack of mass transit options to allow an easy commute.

On the life science side, BioLabs North Carolina has taken some of the best ideas from tech startup spaces and applied them to wet lab space. Companies can rent Class A office and wet lab space by the month in a dynamic downtown environment, and have access to lab equipment, procurement services, lab management, and IT support/break room amenities for a rate that is much more capital efficient than the old model (signing a 3-year lease, buying lots of expensive equipment, spending 9 months setting up the lab before you do your first experiment).

Because companies can begin doing science experiments the first month they are in the co-working space, they can produce results more quickly, at a much lower cost.

The expectation is that more life science companies in North Carolina will form because of this model, as has been the case in other communities where BioLabs has partner co-working spaces — Cambridge, MA; San Francisco; San Diego; and New York City.

  • If the economy continues to grow at a 3 percent or higher rate, will this keep the startup enthusiasm strong? Or could the opposite occur as entrepreneurs decide to stay at their current job?

In the Triangle, the strength of the economy works both ways. Many entrepreneurs have a spouse with a steady job and benefits, and this allows the family to live on one income while the entrepreneur is getting the company started – so a strong, stable economy could give people confidence to take that step.

However, the strong economy also increases demand for certain types of talent – computer coding, sales, certain lab skills — so it can be challenging for entrepreneurs to afford the right people as they try to grow their companies.

Given the choice between a strong economy and one that’s shrinking, however, I’d choose the strong one anytime.