Biotech investors have struggled with the fact that it takes take years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and widely varying sets of expertise to create a product. For Synosis, the answer is translational medicine: it starts life with nine compounds from three European companies, aiming to figure out the best indications and dosing for each, prove them through Phase II, and then out-license them.

Did the 31 biotechs who pulled IPOs since 2003 destroy value? By and large, no-thanks to a growing variety of financing and exit options, most thanks to Pharma's increasing appetite for high-value deals and deeper private equity pockets.

More of Europe's VCs have found the product religion, abandoning platforms. Now they say they need two things to manage product risk: larger portfolios of drugs than most in-licensing companies can create and management teams which can both develop drugs and exercise commercial discipline in choosing programs to bring forward, alone or with a partner. Spin-outs, which provide both management and a relatively large group of projects, are increasingly the European start-up method of choice.