Clinical Trials Are Broken! Michael Young On Reinventing How We Create New Medicine

Michael Young is the co-founder of Lindus Health and a former Special Advisor to the UK Prime Minister on life sciences. Lindus has raised $55 million to redesign clinical trials from the ground up - building what Michael calls an “anti CRO” that treats the trial as the product, not a service.In this episode, Michael explains why the real bottleneck in medical progress is the way we test new treatments, how hourly-billed CRO incentives slow everything down, and what a world of real-time, adaptive trials looks like.He also shares the 10% decisions that created 90% of the value, how to keep investors truly aligned, the hiring trade-offs in a regulated industry, and why founders should resist building a “faster horse” and instead change the paradigm.As always, if you enjoy this episode, make sure to like and subscribe 🔔Chapters:(00:00) Intro(02:24) What went wrong during COVID trials(03:48) The CRO incentive problem and rising costs(04:55) What a CRO actually does(06:05) When overruns get rewarded(07:02) Founding story, Negronis, and first principles(08:16) Why “anti CRO” and not just another vendor(09:29) End-to-end partner: integrated tech and fixed pricing(11:10) Make biotech feel like SaaS: agile, parallel, fail fast(14:26) AI discovery vs the clinical bottleneck(15:59) Picks-and-shovels for the AI-biotech wave(16:24) Start simple, then scale complexity and customers(17:58) Choosing customers: digital health vs big pharma(19:05) Why digital health cooled and what still works(20:29) The 10% decisions: end-to-end, adaptive trials, geo setup(21:51) Why start in the UK: trial talent and product hiring(24:49) The pain points: services + tech and hiring fit(26:55) Investor alignment and avoiding SaaS-metric traps(28:41) Running a tight fundraise: time-boxing and intros(31:11) Updates, boards, and radical transparency(32:46) Growth can hide sins: product and ops complexity(34:04) If you were the VC, what would you ask(34:55) 10-year vision: more biotechs, more adaptive trials(35:58) Mental health (36:56) Ethics of speed and shutting down weak arms early(37:30) Don’t build a faster horse: change the trial paradigm(39:02) Big bet inspiration: Palantir, Anduril, Wave(40:18) Switching off(47:45) What was it all for⭐ Listener Suggestion – Software of the Week: https://attio.com/👍 Why subscribe?If you build products, care about evidence, and want the operator’s view on scaling hard things in health and tech, this channel is for you.🔔 Tap the bell so YouTube tells you the moment new episodes drop 🔔#Biotech #ClinicalTrials #HealthTech