Issue #7

Jun 17, 2023

Est. Reading Time: 4 mins

VC 🚀

By The Weekend Fund

Vertical labor marketplaces (VLMs) are those that serve the hiring and worker management needs of specific industries, unlike horizontal marketplaces like LinkedIn.
Embedded finance is one of the trending solutions that startups such as Workrise and CareGuide are leaning into by providing payroll, insurance, and payment solutions.
While gig economy marketplaces flourished due to the demand and supply of largely undifferentiated labor with interchangeable skills, vertical marketplaces have sprung up due to the need for knowledge workers with specific skill sets. According to Braintrust’s Knowledge Worker Demand Index, it takes at least 30 days to fill knowledge worker roles.
While embedded training within VLMs is difficult to implement, one startup has seemingly cracked the code. US-based Jobwise has created a three-sided marketplace between technical schools, students, and employers.
Promising industries where VLMs can thrive include care providers, agriculture, tech & engineering, and construction.

By The Economist

Retraction Watch is an online database that contains nearly 40,000 research papers that have been retracted.
Fabricated papers are usually from two sources:
- Individual or group of fraudsters: Many individual fraudsters are senior scientists at major universities or hospitals.
- Paper mills: They generate fabricated papers by copying published papers and substituting a particular gene/disease with another. China has a prolific paper mills industry.
Fabricated papers are usually identified by chance and then other papers by the same authors are traced. Some of the red flags to check for are:
- Tall claims about the specific treatment
- Strange drop-out rates among research participants
- Mention of statistically impossible events or occurrences
There’s a lot of variation in how publishers react to retraction requests, whether or not they investigate, how long the investigation will take, etc. Usually, it takes two to three years to get an expression of concern or a retraction published. Even if a paper is retracted, it continues to remain in online libraries and continues to be cited by other papers.
The publisher is not incentivized to retract papers but to keep publishing more papers as publishers are largely unregulated entities. So, when a suspect is identified, the publisher usually passes the ball to the institution that employs the suspect to take the necessary decisions.

By Stock Spotlight

Biotech is not restricted to just human health but encompasses the production of biofuels, bioplastics, fermentation, pollution control, farming technologies, etc. But, human health still forms the largest part of the sector given the sheer scope and high margins.
Biotech vs Pharma:
- The primary difference between pharma and biotech is that, while pharma uses chemical molecules to address health issues, biotech companies employ biological compounds and processes to achieve the same. Hence, biotech products are usually way more complex than pharma drugs.
- Both biotech and pharma are subject to the same regulatory processes.
- The biotech industry is more inclined to have startups than large corporations. Hence, compared to pharma, R&D spending in biotech is higher at 40%-60%.
- Unlike pharma companies, biotech companies rely on just a single idea or technology. Even the patents granted to biotech companies tend to be longer than the pharma patents.
Key metrics to track biotech companies include expected burn rate and TAM in terms of how many people have a specific disease.
Revenue streams/exit routes for biotech usually involve:
- Acquisition by large pharma companies.
- Sell the IP to a large pharma company.
- Licensing/revenue sharing with other entities in exchange for support with completing clinical trials and commercialization. Many biotech companies search for partners just before they enter phase III clinical trials as significant de-risking has already happened.

By The Pudding

Absolutely brilliant artwork and epitome of scrollytelling.

By Rest of World

Award-winning journalism by the Rest of World. The Ambani empire has amassed dizzying amounts of power by creeping into every facet of our lives.

Overlooked by Alexandre Dewez: I love Alexandre’s Venture Chronicles series where he lists all the great content that he consumed over the past month.
How Many Plants: How Many Plants was built by a particularly passionate houseplant obsessive, but it's here for all plant parents, seasoned enthusiasts and first-timers alike.

For more free resources (180+ websites and tools), please check out Searching (it’s a Notion database that I’ve created).