Thank you for your question. My French
is not very good, but I understand your questions. Let me respond in English.
Definitely the current model of raising money and starting a small biotech company—I'm talking about biotech—is as presented in the slide: you raise the money through round one, round two, round three, and it keeps on going. People keep going back to the well for more and more money, and they keep burning more and more money. The more money they raise, the more money they burn.
Of course, we see that finally they just want to get out of it. The scientists, the people working in the company, lack security; they know that if they don't get their next dollar, they're all going to be out of jobs. So they're all looking for another job here or there. In my view, this is very important.
Start-up venture capital companies are somewhat guilty in this, because that's what they want: they want a good team to present good science, first; and secondly, they want them to focus on one thing. Obviously, simply by running this kind of company, you're gambling with the lives and the jobs of everybody working for you, because it's all or nothing: you either make it or you go bust.
The model I'm suggesting is simply that it's great to aim high, but you have to think about today and tomorrow. You have to have both the steak and the sizzle. You can't have it all just by saying, we're going to go ahead and make a billion-dollar product and from now until then we're going to starve.
I think that's very important.
My colleague was talking about BDC. I think BDC can play a much more important role, similar to an NRC-IRAP, if they put some team in place to look at intellectual property.
We are living in a time, for example, in which there is a knowledge-based industry worldwide. This knowledge-based industry has formed, but we don't have anything in Canada to evaluate intellectual property. My bankers, including BDC, came to Norgen. They valued the chairs and the tables, the hard assets. They understand those; they gave me money for the tables, the building, chairs, and computers. But none of them gave me a single penny on 25 patents. That is a shame.
In my view, BDC can definitely take a lead, or NRC can take a lead on what the value of these patents is. That would help lots of companies, because there is a tremendous number of patents out in every university.