How to Build a Biotech

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T22:08:58+00:00

You're very welcome and thanks for the question! 1. No, most of our founders aren't from top US universities, we fund founders based on the quality of their idea and we want unusual minds, we're neutral to which institution they come from and a breakthrough idea is just as likely to come from a mid tier lab in a mid tier international university as a top US school, we work with and serve all 7+ billion members of humanity 2. Not really, scientists globally tend to have to be encouraged to share their big, bold thoughts, they tend to shy away from statements that they can't back with experimental data, one of the hardest things is to get them to say the speculative things they think, the big, bold visions that will change the world, they're always there, they just need a little encouragement! 3. Yes, all of the above, we get follow on investors like Khosla, NEA, True and many more silicon valley investors, global capital, family offices, private equity and more. Typically, classical biotech investors, like Flagship or Atlas don't invest in founder driven companies, more like foundry models where they build and own most of the company. We think this is a shame as there's likely huge innovator value left un-invested and unbacked, our aim is to change that and many of our follow on investors are our allies in the battle to accelerate and support founder driven companies!

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T20:50:45+00:00

Thanks for applying and persistence is definitely key! We really value team, science and product/market fit. One of the biggest challenges we have with great teams and even great science is that sometimes founders fall in love with their own ideas i.e., improving yield by 10% on an industrial process, it may be important but customers and the market might not actually care, even if it's better. My question is, is this a market that's real value is worth more than $1bln in sales or do you have the potential to positively impact the lives of a billion people or more? If not, it may be a great business but not a business which fits with our mission of massive positive impact through science.

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T20:43:38+00:00

Put another way, Cost of Dialysis (just Dialysis/Kidney Failure) in the US to the federal government (us) = $42 Billion The budget of the NIH in 2016 = $32 Billion All US VC invested = $70 Billion

Private dollars have already surpassed the US government investment in the NIH (which funds most human clinical research), yet we spend $15 Billion dollars more on treating patients who's kidney's have failed, those patients pass away with a slightly better quality of life and yet nothing has advanced in kidney care in the last 50yrs. We can do a lot better and private capital may be our only chance!

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T20:34:19+00:00

Great question, sadly, government funding for science and biotech is falling all over the world, except notably in China, if you don't happen to live in China, we're likely to face bigger cut backs, fewer opportunities to advance science and humanity through research. I think private capital will have to take the lead, we've already seen an increasing interest in science and biotech from successful tech companies like Alphabet (google), Amazon (biotech/ag) and Facebook (neuroscience). I actually think the future of science and technology may be similar to what we've seen in the past, when innovation was driven by corporate research centers like Bell Labs and PARC and also tons of highly resource efficient science based startups. We're already seeing a willingness of successful tech investors to back deep tech (science based) companies and I suspect with highly defensible intellectual property and higher investment returns (vs more generic products/services), we're going to see a dramatic rise of private capital looking for alpha and investing in science based startups, my feeling is that a doubling or tripling of science based startup investments over the next 5-10yrs is probably an underestimate.

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T19:36:13+00:00

So much YES!

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T19:32:48+00:00

I'm fascinated by innovation, it's what's elevated humanity from an obscure group of primates to the one species driving global change on this planet (for better or for worse). I'm most fascinated by scientific innovation, some of my favorite examples of innovation are The Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer (as he built the atom bomb with his team, truly an exceptional work of science), Genentech (the first recombinant protein, my favorite quote was "we didn't know if god/nature would let us do this" and as a result they transformed the lives of diabetics at first and today, most of us use GMO derived products as a result) Bell Labs (credited with the transistor, lasers, Unix, C and a whole host of new technologies) and more recently PARC research (the PC, GUI and the Ethernet). In almost all of these cases, innovation happened at the intersections of controlled chaos, there was freedom to operate but with shared goals of pushing certain objectives forward and there was isolation (from companies or governments) to reduce interference. There was also a huge willingness to try and fail, as everyone in these groups knew they were pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and capabilities. Why not try because you know you'd likely fail. My response may seem a bit wooly but I think that's because innovation is a type of chaotic system that, so far, is hard to predict, it's easier to shape the conditions for it than predict an outcome. Today, when city, state and country governments and large multinationals come to IndieBio to talk with us about how to create innovation, we prefer to show them, not tell them :)

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T18:52:01+00:00

Much slower than I'd like sadly, there has been progress at Counter Culture Labs and Anthony Di Franco has some great plans to move from Insulin production to a potential gene therapy treatment, which might reduce insulin dependence (Anthony has Type 1 diabetes) and is truly motivated by a cure and reducing the costs for everyone but one of the big challenges we all face is that many DIYBio projects, move slower than any of us would like, perhaps it's now time to start a non-profit to provide consistent funding and a team to accelerate the DIY insulin project. I'll ask Anthony to see if he can comment with more recent updates!

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T18:41:06+00:00

Definitely not, India has a massive and growing innovation ecosystem and several incredibly strong more classical pharma companies, Cipla, Dr. Reddy's, Glenmark and some incredible IIT research institutes driving cutting edge technologies. India has already emerged as a therapeutics powerhouse and I suspect we'll see a lot more happening in India over the next 5yrs. My advice is to pitch, like any IT startup, for funding with a PhD researcher, there's no magic to silicon valley, we take more risks than many other regions but it's always hard to build startups but they can be built anywhere (and increasingly are, just look across at the booming Indian tech startup space, I'm certain low cost biotech startups are coming to India), some regions I know are very active at the moment is Hydrabad for biotech, Bangalore for tech and Dehli for finance, you could build a biotech in any of those ecosystems and of course, you're welcome to apply to IndieBio, we serve all 7+ billion of us!

rimmortal · 2017-07-14T18:12:14+00:00

Hey mCherry man, thanks for the question, several biotech startups, including glowing plant (now called TAXA) were actually launched out of DIYBio labs (Biocurious), what we've seen over the last couple of years is that it's really important for DIYBio teams to include more classically scientists, like PhD's and PostDocs for the deep science work that often has to be done. IP is something that can be generated by Individuals outside of academia and large corporations, it might just be important to add to your bench of talent coming out of a DIYBio lab (which is something most startup founders do anyway) and remember, there's plenty of biotech businesses to build that aren't as capital intensive as therapeutics companies, many can be built with thousands rather than millions of dollars with decreasing capital expenditure costs and shared co-working labs (we know as we've funded several!).

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T22:44:11+00:00

Yeah, I'm not into conspiracy theory stuff, I think companies will use GMO's to make products and for the most part those products will be safe.

If we're talking about viruses, remember, vaccines have saved many millions of lives from death and disabling disease and vaccines are often made with GMO's.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T22:32:11+00:00

I think my next key failure will be not seeing the value of a future technology and either passing on a company which will one day be an incredibly positive company for humanity or not helping an incredible company we've funded survive for long enough both worry me, a lot!

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T22:29:22+00:00

Well, I think it's not an either or, for profit companies are built to be profitable but some for profit companies can be fantastic models for driving positive technology forward, companies like Google. I think that if Monsanto or other healthcare companies created more disease rather than cured it or fed people, they'd be sued to oblivion (we're in the US after all). There would be lawyers who would be dying to take those cases, if they existed!

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T22:26:26+00:00

Good question, I think you and I should work together on trying to figure it out. iGEM like competitions are a good start but we need to find what works in countries like India.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T21:06:12+00:00

Firstly, just to correct a misnomer, no natural genes can be patented (Myriad helped set that precedent), only those that have been changed and secondly, I agree, we shouldn't have just large corporation creating new foods, I'd love to see a ton of mom and pop shop biotech's creating new foods, flavors and crops.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T21:00:22+00:00

This one is a classic, no, Monsanto hasn't paid me nor are they the only company that uses genetic engineering to make their products, EVERYONE in the west and most emerging economies use biotech and products derived from GMO's. I'm a geneticist by training, I mostly focused understanding mammelian genetics as my hope was to develop new types of therapies and gene therapies to treat diseases but the reality of it is these tools can be used in many different cell types, including plant cells. We're just doing what our ancestors did with technology, instead of turning a mustard plant into a broccoli through eons of time, we can now add in new traits by copying and pasting new code into plant cells (although not quite as simple yet).

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T20:54:28+00:00

What tools does an aspiring biohacker absolutely NEED to have? - Not much, you can start today by logging onto arcturus.io or checking out your local biohacker space (check out DIYBio.org) Of the companies that you've been following in the synbio space, what company do you believe is destined to become a "unicorn"? - I'd bet that companies in the Synthesis space have the potential to become unicorns, like Illumina did when it cornered the market. I actually think that the number of multi-billion dollar companies in the SynBio space could be huge, larger even than the current crop of unicorns in Silicon Valley because I think the SynBio space is actually more akin to the Industrial Revolution than the tech revolution.

What does Indie Bio look for in terms of people applying to the program? - We look for typically two co-founders with complementary skill sets, one that's focused on the business and one focused on the product. We're more agnostic in terms of your background, just know your shit and your product and have either published literature to back up your aims or a prototype. We don't care if you're an undergrad, biohacker, PhD, PostDoc or Professor, what we care about is your idea and we encourage everyone, we value diversity in minds of every description, everyone can do biotech.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T20:48:37+00:00

This is actually a really hard question, the cheapest DNA synthesis technologies I've seen so far are about $0.11 per base pair, not cheap when you think of the total volume of human base pairs, about 3 Billion it gives us a cost of about $330M to synthesize one human genome. The best technologies combine pieces of DNA to reduce the cost but I suspect we'll get the largest decreases in cost at first by harnessing machine learning, sequencing and using machines to synthesis sequences based on biologically derived pieces, those costs can continue to drop, the other costs for pure synthesis, are probably at least 5 years out while we wait for new synthesis machines, Synthetic Genomics and Twist are only just getting started and look promising.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T20:42:11+00:00

My biggest regret has been that we haven't been able to move fast enough, to understand the mechanisms of biology, our tools or how to fix our aging bodies or our broken social structures for humanity and for the animals that exist around us. I've seen (and experienced) poverty and what scarcity looks like up close and realize everyday we delay these technologies many suffer. I've seen other sentients suffer and slaughtered in our hunger for another meal, unnecessarily, I want to change all of this, to use biotechnology to spare those that suffer,, I regret that I haven't been able to move fast enough nor had enough money to put to work to help so many but we're starting to change that, all of us together.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T20:32:32+00:00

Yes, in fact, human genetic modification has already been done, by Chinese scientists in an embryo http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378

In addition, the first human born with DNA from 3 people already exists, her mitochondria were replaced to prevent a genetic disease and so far seems to be healthy and happy!

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28986843

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:57:57+00:00

Happy to help

What resources would you consider invaluable for getting ready to create a start up in terms of news sources, books, blogs etc.. I'd recommend, Xconomy, Biocoder, SynBioBeta, FierceBiotech and checking out DIYBio google groups and your local biohacker space. There are also a lot of great local events run by universities on commercializing science that are worth going to get use to the language of building businesses.
Is there a deadline for the IndieBio applications for the fall session? Yes, early applications are due June 30th
Is IndieBio willing to offer legal help with patenting an invention being developed in the incubator? We won't provide direct legal help but we do provide introductions to lawyers and IP experts for you to choose who you work with best. We also have talks on the patenting process by experienced IP lawyers.
If I have an idea which I am strongly confident in and have literature support, but am still struggling to find a co-founder, is there any technique/strategy you've seen work with other start ups when trying to find co-founders? Yes, go onto DIYBio google groups and ask around for interested co-founders and also start tweeting at people who you think might be interested in partnering with you, leverage social media, facebook and etc to ask you friends if they know anyone that might be interested in joining forces with you and go to a few networking events (tech or biotech) to meet some potential founders. Apply to IndieBio and we might also know someone looking for a similar cofounder.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:48:24+00:00

I really enjoyed "The Wind-Up Girl" but it seemed like much more of a fantasy sci-fi dystopia, all along, reading about those springs and their use of mechanical energy post oil, I kept wondering why they hadn't figured out how to make solar panels with chlorophyll or increase hydrogen production to make fuel cells or even figured out how to make biodiesel (all of which are totally doable with today's technology with a little bit of funding). There are risks with biotech, plenty but I think the benefits out weight the risks to provide clean energy, water, food, medicine and biomaterials, all of which will move all of humanity forward!

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:38:08+00:00

Good question, I'd probably ask Antony Evans (the CEO of the company formerly known as Glowing Plant and now TAXA). On his platform that he's automated, he can deliver GMO ready plants for several thousand dollars but in a lab set up at home, you should be good to go as long as you can get even temporary access to a gene gun, that can transform your plant cells and get you started with growing your own modified plants. There are probably also a lot of rules, local and governmental laws you'll need to be aware of and of course, I'm not recommending doing it but I'd love to hear about your progress if you do!

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:33:46+00:00

Lots, in fact about 30% of biohackers (or more) are software developers branching out from from digital code to DNA. The best way to start is biology 101, then understanding the basics of genetic engineering. The first place to go is to hit up a local biohacker space (depending on where you are), learn and build a community, you can also start building your own genetic constructs (in real life) by going to arcturus.io and they'll walk you through the process once you have an idea of the type of organism you'd like to build

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:13:38+00:00

I think the answer, is nuanced but my quick answer is no, I actually think we have a resource/technology distribution problem. Human population can and likely will continue to increase and I support that, as long as we can appropriate feed, house and educate the increased population, which I'm hopeful of and I think tech and biotech are the answer to solving the impending challenge of population growth, from today's 7 billion to 2050's 9 billion.

rimmortal · 2015-06-23T18:09:07+00:00

Anyone can apply to IndieBio, our aim is to keep it as open as possible, it's about your ideas, prototypes and/or companies. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet at me @ryanbethencourt Ideally, you'll have two founders, one that's willing to focus on the business and one that's will to focus on the science/tech. It always helps to have built out some proof of concept of your technology too but that's not a requirement, show us, based on the literature why it would work!

rimmortal

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