Episode 200 Special: Joachim Eeckhout on building Labiotech and the future of biotech media
Episode
43 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Career Growth, Relationships, Investing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Media accessibility as a founding strategy: Labiotech launched in 2012 specifically to solve two concrete problems: biotech media remained in expensive print formats costing roughly €1,000 per year, and no free digital alternative existed. Targeting zero-cost, online-first content from day one built an audience that traditional publishers were structurally unable to serve, particularly students and early-career scientists.
- ✓Original content over curation as a growth lever: When scaling from the French platform to the pan-European site in 2014, Labiotech deliberately shut down labiotech.fr — even though it had higher traffic at the time — and committed exclusively to original reporting. Traffic on the European platform subsequently surpassed the French site, demonstrating that audience trust follows editorial investment, not aggregation volume.
- ✓Fundraising for media startups requires network-first thinking: Raising seed rounds in 2016–2017 as a media startup meant bypassing standard venture capital criteria entirely. The breakthrough came through a Berlin-based family office run by a media entrepreneur, which provided accelerator support and credibility to attract a small group of biopharma and media investors. Warm introductions, not cold pitches, drove the outcome.
- ✓Local presence as a competitive moat against AI-generated content: With AI enabling mass content production, Knowbio's strategy centers on reporters physically located in Europe covering European biotech. US outlets like STAT News and Endpoints News produce strong US coverage but lack boots-on-the-ground European presence, creating a defensible niche where verified, locally sourced reporting cannot be easily replicated algorithmically.
- ✓Early coverage of pre-breakthrough companies builds long-term brand authority: Labiotech covered BioNTech years before the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Mainz-based company was an obscure German mRNA startup. Consistently tracking early-stage companies with novel platform technologies — before mainstream recognition — positions a media brand as a credible primary source when those companies eventually scale into household names.
What It Covers
Joachim Eeckhout, cofounder of Labiotech and now co-owner of Knowbio, traces the platform's evolution from a free French-language student blog in 2012 to Europe's leading independent biotech media outlet, covering fundraising, acquisition by Impart in 2021, and the current AI-driven shift in science media.
Key Questions Answered
- •Media accessibility as a founding strategy: Labiotech launched in 2012 specifically to solve two concrete problems: biotech media remained in expensive print formats costing roughly €1,000 per year, and no free digital alternative existed. Targeting zero-cost, online-first content from day one built an audience that traditional publishers were structurally unable to serve, particularly students and early-career scientists.
- •Original content over curation as a growth lever: When scaling from the French platform to the pan-European site in 2014, Labiotech deliberately shut down labiotech.fr — even though it had higher traffic at the time — and committed exclusively to original reporting. Traffic on the European platform subsequently surpassed the French site, demonstrating that audience trust follows editorial investment, not aggregation volume.
- •Fundraising for media startups requires network-first thinking: Raising seed rounds in 2016–2017 as a media startup meant bypassing standard venture capital criteria entirely. The breakthrough came through a Berlin-based family office run by a media entrepreneur, which provided accelerator support and credibility to attract a small group of biopharma and media investors. Warm introductions, not cold pitches, drove the outcome.
- •Local presence as a competitive moat against AI-generated content: With AI enabling mass content production, Knowbio's strategy centers on reporters physically located in Europe covering European biotech. US outlets like STAT News and Endpoints News produce strong US coverage but lack boots-on-the-ground European presence, creating a defensible niche where verified, locally sourced reporting cannot be easily replicated algorithmically.
- •Early coverage of pre-breakthrough companies builds long-term brand authority: Labiotech covered BioNTech years before the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Mainz-based company was an obscure German mRNA startup. Consistently tracking early-stage companies with novel platform technologies — before mainstream recognition — positions a media brand as a credible primary source when those companies eventually scale into household names.
Notable Moment
Eeckhout and his cofounder cycled across France in summer 2013, filming biotech CEOs at their companies to produce an amateur documentary. They later screened it in the US, Germany, and the UK — a low-budget stunt that generated substantial brand recognition and a durable industry network across Europe.
Episode Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Beyond Biotech, the weekly podcast from Labiatek. I'm Dylan Kysain, and this is episode 200 for the podcast, a milestone for all of us at Labiatek. Today, I'm delighted to welcome back a very special guest, Joakim Ekut. Joakim is a cofounder of Labiatek, and he joins us now as co owner of No Bio and the founder of The Science Marketer. From a small student blog launched in Paris in 2012 to becoming Europe's leading independent biotech media platform, Joachim tells the Labiatek story, one of vision, persistence, and a deep belief that the European life science sector deserve better storytelling. In this episode, we go back to the very beginning. The frustrations, a bike tour of France that became legendary, the leap to Berlin, the fundraising rounds, the acquisition, and the launch of this very podcast. We'll also hear where Joe Akim is today with his new ventures, his candid take on the current biotech media landscape in Europe, and what he sees coming next for science communication and media in our industry. So whether you followed Labiatek since day one or you're discovering Joakim's work for the first time, you're in for a fascinating conversation. Joakim, welcome to Beyond Biotech. Thanks for the invitation. Really happy to be here. Maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about your background. What first drew you into biotechnology as a discipline in the first place? Yeah. I think I I've always been interested about, you know, biology at school, and I tried medicine for for one year, but, yeah, really didn't really stick to it. And then I I I found an interesting program in Paris. It's, yeah, a school called BioTech, specialized in engineering of biotechnology, and that's, yeah, really where I dived into the biotech field, biotech science, etcetera, and, yeah, always been interested, about it since. What about when it came to media, though? Was there any sort of early attraction there too? Yeah. I think, yeah, I was also kind of interest really early on, like, always what's really magazines and stuff like this, you know, like, on different topics, not necessarily biotech, but also, like, when I was younger, I I I read a lot of magazines. And I was always interested about how you craft kind of the content behind it. And as, you know, I was growing up with Internet, basically opening other ways of creating content, Yeah. I I I really had a big interest for media and scientific media, first of all. Yeah. Today, you're co owner of Knowbio as well as the founder of the Science Marketer. It must keep you pretty busy. What does a typical day look like for you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It keeps me busy differently. Yeah. Typical day, I would say it's, there is no typical day because every day is very different. But if there is a red line, it's a lot about creating content. And so …
Get the full transcript (6,006 words) + summary by email — free
One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.
One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.
You just read a 3-minute summary of a 40-minute episode.
Get Beyond Biotech summarized like this every Monday — plus up to 2 more podcasts, free.
Pick Your Podcasts — FreeKeep Reading
Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode
SignalCast may earn commission on purchases via these links.
company
“covering fundraising, acquisition by Impart in 2021, and the current AI-driven shift in science media.”
“Labiotech covered BioNTech years before the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Mainz-based company was an obscure German mRNA startup.”
“US outlets like STAT News and Endpoints News produce strong US coverage but lack boots-on-the-ground European presence.”
- LabiotechBy guest
“Joachim Eeckhout, cofounder of Labiotech and now co-owner of Knowbio, traces the platform's evolution from a free French-language student blog in 2012 to Europe's leading independent biotech media outlet.”
“US outlets like STAT News and Endpoints News produce strong US coverage but lack boots-on-the-ground European presence.”
- KnowbioBy guest
“Joachim Eeckhout, cofounder of Labiotech and now co-owner of Knowbio, traces the platform's evolution.”
More from Beyond Biotech
We summarize every new episode. Want them in your inbox?
How Evox Therapeutics is targeting CNS diseases with exosomes
BIOSPAIN 2026: partnering, policy, and the rise of Spanish biotech
Beyond biology: Nanobiotix's physics-first approach to cancer
How Cancer Research Horizons is building the future of childhood cancer medicines
Why Western pharma is sleeping on China's circular RNA revolution
Similar Episodes
Related episodes from other podcasts
TED Radio Hour
Aug 14
The price of creativity
Design Matters
Jan 26
Brian Chesky
a16z Podcast
Aug 19
How Whatnot Built a Global Marketplace
No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
Aug 13
What Chess.com Teaches US About Superhuman Capabilities, with CEO Erik Allebest
Latent Space
Aug 11
🔬The BioAI Phase Shift - Matthew McPartlon & Neil Patil, Chai Discovery
Explore Related Topics
This podcast is featured in Best Biotech Podcasts (2026) — ranked and reviewed with AI summaries.
Read this week's Investing & Markets Podcast Insights — cross-podcast analysis updated weekly.
You're clearly into Beyond Biotech.
Every Monday, we deliver AI summaries of the latest episodes from Beyond Biotech and 192+ other podcasts. Free for one show.
Start My Monday DigestNo credit card · Unsubscribe anytime