Data as a Moat: Why Biotech's Most Valuable Asset is Buried in a Hard Drive

In this episode of Data in Biotech, host Ross Katz sits down with Jesse Johnson, founder of Merelogic, a software consulting firm specializing in data infrastructure for biotech organizations.

Jesse brings a rare perspective to the conversation: having built data systems at Google where engineers control the data collection function end to end, before moving into biotech, where the biology does what it wants and bench scientists, not engineers, generate the data.

The result is a grounded, pragmatic take on one of the most consequential and underappreciated questions in life sciences right now: as bio foundation models fundamentally change the value equation for experimental data, are biotech labs structured to capture that value?

Jesse argues the answer is usually no and that the fix is less technical than most assume. It doesn't require a production-grade data pipeline or a cloud architecture. It requires lightweight, human-readable standard operating procedures, clear expectations between computational and wet lab teams, and a data strategy designed not just for the questions you're asking today, but for the ones you don't yet know you'll need to ask.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

>> Why the transition from tech to biotech requires a fundamental reset of assumptions about data infrastructure and why the biggest difference isn't technical, it's organizational.

>> How bio foundation models have flipped the value equation for experimental data by reducing the cost of organizing it while dramatically increasing the potential return

>> How the strategic value of proprietary data is evolving in the biotech ecosystem, from Tahoe Therapeutics building an acquirable single-cell dataset to Eli Lilly's Lowe lab using data as currency for partnerships

>> Why electronic lab notebooks aren't going anywhere and how the real question facing biotech software teams isn't whether to use an ELN, but how to balance schema rigidity against the flexibility required for the long tail of one-off exploratory assays that no automation pipeline will ever fully capture

Meet our guest:

Jesse Johnson is the founder of Merelogic, a software consulting firm that works with biotech and biopharma organizations on data infrastructure and data operations strategy. Jesse writes regularly about data strategy for biotech on his Substack, covering topics from bio foundation model adoption to the evolving role of electronic lab notebooks in an AI-augmented research environment.

Connect with Jesse Johnson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-johnson-biotech/ Follow Merelogic on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/merelogic/