Douglas Cole

About Douglas Cole

Noubar Afeyan runs Flagship Pioneering as a company that makes companies through a systematic four-phase process where ideas start as bad ideas, get tested with killer questions, and only become named companies if they survive—he even numbers early companies to make them easier to shut down. He coined the term paranoid optimism to describe toggling between survival and thrival mindsets, draws on his Armenian immigrant background to approach high-risk innovation, and focuses deliberately outside the circle of adjacencies by asking what if about things that don't yet exist.

Focus Areas

Investment Stage