The White Space Race

White space, or uncharted territory, is a tantalizing proposition for life science venture capitalists. It dangles the prospect of outsized returns and the chance to dominate an entirely new technology before anyone else. But finding a slice of white space is hard, and understanding it well enough to inject dollars into it is even more challenging.

BioCenturysat down with Atlas Venture's Jean-Francois Formela, one of the industry's leading practitioners of white space investing. He's been at Atlas since 1993 and is focused on novelty in therapeutics and discovery technologies. Among his numerous board seats in industry, Formela is a director at RaNA Therapeutics Inc., a biotech he co-founded that is one of Atlas' most recent forays into white space...