12 ms·

YC Bio

338 points by jameshk 9y ago

dbmikus 9y ago
Living healthier for longer will not help the healthcare crisis if the tail-end of life has the same health distribution. I think healthspan is a more important first target that lifespan. It's great to see some targeted support for bio, though! It seems like a harder market division to get into than a pure tech company.
- reasonattlm 9y ago
  Think about how complex machines fail. Reliability theory is a good tool for this, and has been used to effectively model how aging works, as failure of units in a system of redundant units. https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2001.2430 https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2001.2430 You will see that there is no good way to compress the tail end of mortality and consequences resulting from accumulated unrepaired damage. The only cost-effective path is to postpone it indefinitely through periodic repair of that damage. Aging is damage, and mortality/disability rises with damage. Effective treatments for aging are forms of repair of damage, of which only senolytics presently exist in any form that is available. Once you accept this model, you can start to reason about the effects of various approaches, and everything makes a lot more sense.
- tomjen3 9y ago
  If people live healthier for longer, then there will be a larger share of healthy people to pay into the pool of sick people, which should help the healthcare crisis.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  Don't you dare talk about QALYs in the US! What are you, a democrat? (Sorry, I couldn't suggest you're Russian anymore, since that's apparently synonymous with Republicans. And Yuri Milner, of YC fame).
roymurdock 9y ago
Looks like a great opportunity from YC and a field I wish I knew more about - especially implantable tech and wetware/biohacking. In the embedded/IoT industry, the majority of medical device innovation is centered around home monitoring/care for older patients in nursing homes, or for preventative/medicine. Can anyone with experience in the bio/chem/pharma startup world point to good resources where we can get up to date on the most exciting/promising new bio tech/startups of the past 20 years or so? Also related - has anything come out of Alphabet Calico [1]? [1] https://www.calicolabs.com/ https://www.calicolabs.com/
- reasonattlm 9y ago
  No-one in the field is particularly impressed with Calico at this point in time. Calico is the second coming of the Ellison Medical Foundation, which is to say they're just analyzing the details of aging and expanding on the NIH budget. Nothing they are known to be doing is likely to have the slightest impact on the progression of rejuvenation therapies. E.g. some resources in which people are less than complimentary: http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-month-16-any-rejuvenation-relevance-roundworm-reproduction http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-month-16... https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-strange-life-span-trip/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-stran... https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/google-calico-secretive-aging-mortality-research https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/go... There are plenty of others if you want to go look for them.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Armchair opinion, probably gene editing. Not in people or animals, but I'd put money on it becoming "easy" in plants before much longer, as CRISPR gets more accurate and people apply it to already-understood micropropagation cloning strategies. There was a startup trying to make autoluminescent plants with jellyfish genes before CRISPR even existed, just using ordinary plasmid creation and transfection techniques.[1] That particular effort failed commercially, but I believe they recently reincorporated as 'GLEAUX'. Anyways, Biology is messy and difficult, but I really think that we are getting to a reasonably solid understanding of genetically engineering plants. And once someone turns that into a '1, 2, 3' process...well I don't think you need more than a 5-figure investment for equipment/space. [1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015461 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
zitterbewegung 9y ago
Has YC had successful Biology startups with real exits? Just curious I couldn't find any.
- firloop 9y ago
  No exit but Ginkgo Bioworks (YC S14) is doing quite well https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/gingko-bioworks-secures-275-million-in-series-d-valuing-the-company-at-over-1-billion/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/gingko-bioworks-secures-27...
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  Biopharma startups are about as different from tech startups as you can get. The traditional tech incubator approach doesn't really work for biopharma. It can work for some life sci stuff but not pure biopharma (which is where most of the opportunity is) That said, they said they've learned some lessons and they are providing more capital, and I'm sure if any organization can fix the biopharma seed exosystem it's them The most important thing for them will be to get the right group of mentors. If you go off on the wrong scientific direction at the start of the company, it's much harder to salvage things with a pivot, so you need good eyes on all details of your experiments before you deploy capital
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
  I was really disappointed to see YC involved with 'glowing plants' a few years back, which predictably failed (non-science founders, among other reasons). Color me skeptical. Biology is a very different field; stuff that is wonderfully promising can get help up for years based on trivial mistakes or simple strategic errors. And on top of that, 95% of the stuff that sounds great won't amount to anything, and you can't tell until a few years have passed. Our understanding of molecular biology isn't nearly as plug-and-play as many would like it to be.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    Personally I love the idea of glowing plants. We first discussed it in 1983 after the announcement that the luciferase gene sequence had been added to a tobacco plant. What could be better than glowing monkey grass leading up to your house? But as always, devil is in the details.
peter_retief 9y ago
Biology and AI could possibly be the next coal face
- ovrdrv3 9y ago
  Are you saying that it is going to make as much revenue as coal? That would make sense, but the amount of jobs created is going to be lower I would guess.
  - peter_retief 9y ago
    Coal face is an metaphor :) It means that labour in this discipline will produce many new products and results https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_the_coal_face https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_the_coal_face
timrpeterson 9y ago
Do you have to move to the Bay Area? I'm a professor at WashU and am interested, but I live in St. Louis.
- asimpletune 9y ago
  Just move! It’s great here!
  - timrpeterson 9y ago
    I have ample lab space and the team to execute here in St. Louis. Also, I have a family. YC's "move to the bay area" requirement makes sense for software startups, but less so for bio (at least for most of the good ideas).
    - jonlucc 9y ago
      As a fellow midwesterner, I agree. It might make sense if the requirement was to move to a bio-rich region (such as San Diego or Boston), but the bay doesn't seem like the place to be for a lab.
      - timrpeterson 9y ago
        Most people who will be qualified will already have lab space wherever they are.
        giarc 9y ago
        I agree, and if they were required to move, it would take more than the 3 month batch to prepare items for movement. Why not just leave in their location?
      - vqc 9y ago
        The Bay Area is extremely bio rich. It is on par with Boston and SD w/r/t bio jobs, lab space, NIH funding, VC funding, etc.
kamens 9y ago
The more investment and talent going into taking control of our biology and reducing disease, the better. If using your tech skills to help battle disease in an ambitious way is interesting and you wanna learn about a new, quiet startup (top-tier funders, world-class bio folks already on board for you to partner with, rare advisors from tech/bio/pharma), ping me: kamens@gmail.com We're hiring a couple more for our early team and specifically looking for data, infra, and ML engineers. No specific bio background required. Staying quiet for now, can share more when we talk.
- forgotpwagain 9y ago
  Just to add a single word -- I think it is very important that investments be well-targeted. And almost all of the time, this means listening to the scientists involved to get a realistic picture of where the domain experts think the field is going and how to best support efforts that are likely to be successful. Sometimes, we have some promising leads on disease that we can begin to chase down. Most of the time, however, we have no idea where to begin, and so a shotgun basic science approach may ultimately be more fruitful. Every subfield is different and difficult to master, which is why it is so important to engage with the people who actually do the work. I know the tone of this sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. I'm sorry.
  - kamens 9y ago
    Completely agree. A tight and respectful partnership b/w scientists and technologists is table stakes in any of these ventures.
- wuschel 9y ago
  Agreed! Great to see YC address the lab space issue and give a larger cash/equity cut for biotech focused companies. I am wondering how early/late stage the desired biotech company should be. Right now, many biotech-y YC applications/interview participants seem to be rejected with the comment that they should come back later.
psychometry 9y ago
Why focus on age-related disease when massive racial and economic disparities still prevent a large proportion of the population from even reaching an advanced age?
- icelancer 9y ago
  "Why work on this burning city when this earthquake-ridden city is in shambles!" a) There's no obligation to work on earthquake-ridden cities over any other issue. b) Mythical Man Month problem; firefighters might be good at extinguishing flame but not repairing earthquake issues, and there's only so many civil engineers to go around. c) Your comment is proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    d) YC is fantastic and produces results, but a startup accelerator probably doesn't have a viable pathway to reduce economic disparities. Those will probably need to be addressed through political means.
- Techowl 9y ago
  You'd be surprised. Heart disease, for example, is one of the deadliest age-related diseases, but it's by no means exclusive to the wealthy. See for example the World Health Organization's statistics[0]; they report that three quarters of deaths from cardiovascular disease occur in low-income and middle-income countries. [0] http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/ http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Not only would I not fault them if they hadn't tried anything along the lines, but they've been doing a UBI pilot for ages.
- snowmaker 9y ago
  I agree - we need to work on both.
2pointsomone 9y ago
This is such a great news. YC is focusing its efforts on areas of biggest change and need in the coming decade, and life sciences is really critical.
aaavl2821 9y ago
there has been an amazing amount of innovation in bio the last 5 years, but the biggest bottleneck to making more progress is lack of seed funding and shortage of entrepreneurs. So this is great to see I wrote about the opportunity in bio earlier this week and run a program connecting top tier scientists with life sci VCs. If you are interested in bio and don't have a science background, this is the best time ever to get involved: http://newbio.tech/blog.html http://newbio.tech/blog.html
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
logicallee 9y ago
The Bitter Pill The way I read it, they are saying "we know our resources are limited, and bio science is huge. And expensive. We don't presume to have all the answers. So we will focus on one small area at a time. First, we will achieve immortality. After all, all the breakthroughs in the next thousand years can't help your rotting bones. Barring violent accidemt (think nuclear explosion) there is no physical reason humans should have an end of life. Once we have achieved this, we will have a number of options about what to tackle next. We were frankly undecided between obesity and superintelligence. Solving one leaves you fit and attractive, after all, and AI will surpass human intelligence anyway. So why is our next bio focus after immortality on superintelligence, rather than obesity? Simple: having all the fitness answers in the world is no help if the subjects' dumb asses don't apply them. In fact, intelligence is more importance than fitness. If you're smart enough, you'll always apply the best techniques for fitness. On the other hand, if you're a dumbass, it doesn't matter how great the fitness solution is: you just won't apply it. So our focused, humble goals are, in order, immortality, superintelligence and making an adonis/aphrodite out of everyone." :D Okay, now are you listening, founders? The above is actually not what I said it was about, but is actually what your game plan should be in the face of dumbass investors and a hostile world: Step 1: become default-alive. Make your company immortal. Get a negative burn rate. Nobody can fail to roll sixes infinite times in a row. Even with loaded unfair dice. Become immortal. You are then guaranteed to win. Step 2: become smarter. You will see your peers be dumbasses trying to focus on being attractive investment targets first. Ignore them. Investors aren't smart enough to invest in the most attractive business plans on the planet. So don't try to make an attractive business plan, instead, focus on a smarter product. Step 3: when you have the smartest product and team in your industry, only then focus on being fit amd an attractive investment target. Now you have all the tools you need to succeed. Good luck :) p.s. sorry about hiding this bitter pill in what seemed like simple satire. My comment is totally off-topic and has nothing to do with YC Bio ;) It's pure 100% allegory all the way.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Color me skeptical. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have gotten myself mostly well when that is not supposed to be possible. I was a homemaker for a long time. Eating right and germ control are a very large part of what I do and it isn't rocket science, as they say. I also can see no means to turn it into a business model or income stream, nor even get anyone interested in benefiting from what I know for free. It isn't the magic bullet people are looking for. A spartan life, eating better and lots of walking is not an answer people want. It also isn't an answer that investors will fund. Meanwhile, hey, lung transplants and $300k/year new drugs for CF are all the rage. That makes headlines and apparently makes money. A business model for healthcare seems to produce Frankensteinian outcomes. Things that are actually health promoting, like having a full-time parent to care for the kids and primary breadwinner, eating right, exercise etc are boring and don't make VCs rich. They are actually quite challenging to promote at all. I wish I saw it differently.
- feistypharit 9y ago
  Don't, you're mostly right. The model is broken. I think the US is in a giant bubble right now, in 100 years will be like most of Europe is today. That is...better.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jforman 9y ago
  Every disease is a different beast, and biology is very hard to tame. We've thrown probably trillions of dollars at cancer over the past few decades, and only in the past few years, with immuno-oncology, has there been any real hope of progress toward broad cures (there was a heady moment after Gleevec, too, but that turned out to be the exception rather than the rule). There was just a huge wave of Alzheimer's treatments that people were so hopeful might make any dent in the disease. They all failed, apparently because the breakthrough we thought we had made in understanding the disease turned out to be specious. Had the drugs made ANY improvement they'd be on the market and we'd all be bitching about how pharma "likes to make bandaids rather than cures," and that would have been a disservice to the years of toil people put into these drugs. Not every pharma actor is a good actor. But overall the space is mostly filled with scientists and doctors trying to make people healthier, and mostly failing.
indescions_2018 9y ago
Timing is perfect on this. We are fortunate enough to be witnessing Year One in the Age of Crispr ;) For those brainstorming startup ideas some relatively recently funded companies include: eGenesis - Dr. George Church's company that uses edited porcine stem lines for human xenotransplantation Twist Bio - synthetic bio for applications ranging from novel materials to data storage Denali - focus on age related neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Benchling - molecular bio and gene editing design software Synthego - free gene knockout kits But of all the breakthroughs last year. The one that may be most impactful. Editing human genes in the embryo to remove hereditary disease. Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23305 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23305
- senatorobama 9y ago
  saved
- jforman 9y ago
  Well... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00335-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00335-8 Maybe the first startup YC should fund is one to mutate the enzyme to avoid immunoreactivity while preserving function...
- comstock 9y ago
  And here’s my take on how this will play out... Tech investors are almost totally unequiped to do the necessary DD. They either therefore go for plays that are easy to understand, largely computational exercises or in the rare cases they do go for something higher risk, they back something crazy (e.g. Theranos) because they don’t do good DD. Getting an “expert” to vet the play rarely works. Because tech VCs don’t know how to choose good experts. So most of (all?) these plays will ultimately fail. It won’t matter much to seed round investors though, because they’ll take 10 years to fail and they will likely have at least partially exited by then...
  - lsc 9y ago
    So, I came of age right in the middle of the first dot-com boom. My observation is that back then, no one with money knew what they hell they were doing. My observation during this dot-com boom is that a lot of the people who did well last round are now part of the VC infrastructure, like our own Paul Graham. My impression is that this time around, money is a lot more competent because of this. Because this made such a huge impact on my life, I kinda want to extend it: perhaps the first round of any new technology is going to be littered with bad ideas. Perhaps that is necessary. Then perhaps those with experience can look backwards and do better next time. I personally still think we are headed towards a second dot-com bust, but I've been saying that so long that at this point, I'm just wrong. Unquestionably, the business and money people did their jobs much more skillfully this time around than they did in the '90s.
kayhi 9y ago
Awesome! We've been supporting start up bio companies by offering them a fair pricing on equipment, supplies and chemicals. I think we've sold to every YC bio company except Ginkgo (doh!). There's a huge problem in non-transparent pricing for products. For those outside the industry it's like buying used cars, dealing with sales reps and everything is a quote. Researchers are at a huge informational disadvantage when it comes pricing. Example, acetone which is a commonly used solvent: https://i.imgur.com/QyJ1Tj5.png https://i.imgur.com/QyJ1Tj5.png https://i.imgur.com/mJyfFfX.png https://i.imgur.com/mJyfFfX.png $900 vs. $300 Another example, IPTG: https://i.imgur.com/tvnVAqO.png https://i.imgur.com/tvnVAqO.png We commonly see 3-5x differences and up to 10x for the exact same item. This makes a huge difference when you're in the range of 500k to 1 mil from YC Bio.
- unknownkadath 9y ago
  Don't forget eBay! If you're willing to do some simple repairs, you can save a ton of money when revving up a new lab.
  - kayhi 9y ago
    eBay is decent for used equipment some glassware, but would not recommend it for chemicals.
- braja 9y ago
  +1 for Sean and P212121
- lsc 9y ago
  Buying datacenter bandwidth is that way. 3-5x variance and sometimes 10x between the first quote and what you pay. Interestingly, servers seem to be only 1.5x, and if you buy your servers in parts, the variance is even smaller.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  Is there are reason you only accept university email addresses? Seems strange if you are targeting biotech companies.
d33k4y 9y ago
"...it could be one of the best ways to address our healthcare crisis." It seems to me a great deal more people face a very different question, "how can I afford to live longer?"
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Those two are connected - in particular, issues related to aging are a huge money sink, so just improving healthspan without improving lifespan would not only make a difference to people, but also free up resources in healthcare.
  - d33k4y 9y ago
    Resources are freed up in healthcare simply due to its unaffordability. Effective but devastating demand-side management strategy if you believe healthcare should be a universal right. Lifespan has increased dramatically over the last 50 years. In "Being Mortal", Atul Gawande argues we haven't figured out how to live with the substantial increase in life- and health-span that medicine has already given most of humanity. Recent discussions around ageism in the workforce (e.g. Tad Friend, New Yorker, 2017-11-20) highlight the double edged sword of increasing income disparity and longer life. "Healthspan" must also include mental health. Without sense of belonging, value, a feeling of security in one's future, mental health suffers. Deterioration of mental health manifests as physical health issues. The rate of growth of diagnosis and medical prescription for psychiatric problems is high. What can be done about the terror of aging? Back to the OP, and to append my original comment, money for research aimed at solving medical conditions causing the greatest reduction in life span is excellent news.
daemonk 9y ago
There needs to be more of a narrowing of the gap between biology and tech. I feel like right now the giants in both fields are still very much experts of their own biology or technology domains. The perspective one takes on the biological system in question is vastly different depending on where you are coming from. Biologist understands bigger picture ideas about the system and can narrow down potential solutions. Tech injects more rigor and organization into how data is collected and analyzed. The skills are very complementary. I am optimistic because I am seeing more people coming up in the field who are trying to do both molecular biology and data science.
beatpanda 9y ago
How is enabling people to live longer going to address a healthcare crisis that is primarily about the cost of care? If people live longer they are going to end up paying more for care, especially for whatever treatment any of these companies comes up with that enables them to live longer.
- snowmaker 9y ago
  We're focusing on increasing healthspan, not lifespan. That said, it's true that we do also need to address healthcare costs - that is a huge problem and we would love to fund companies working on it.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Life extension research does this by focusing on "healthspan" - that is, the amount of time you spend living in full health. The idea isn't to let you live 200+ years as 80-year-old person. The idea is to let you live up to 80 as if you're 30-40 - that is, to extend the time you're fully able to function and enjoy life - and push it out from there, keeping the tail-end small and extending the total lifespan. This happens to both offer huge potential healthcare savings, and meshes nicely with the idea that everything happening to your health past ~40 is part of the disease of aging.
dawhizkid 9y ago
Curious how the healthcare industry will try to monetize fasting i.e. this free, unlimited thing that anyone can do that has proven time and time again to not only increase lifespan but increase the number of healthy years in the last years of life.
- tejtm 9y ago
  making it less painful to start would get my cash
zappo2938 9y ago
Much of what we learn in biology comes from happy accidents. Targeted research for financial gain is very, very difficult. Moreover, much of what we need to learn will come observing biologic mechanisms that have evolved over eons in life in places like the rain forests of Brazil that are being destroyed with all the knowledge and medicines that can be developed from the research of the species that live there. Sadly, your interest is money but for the human race investing in protecting rain forests as a whole would be a greater investment.
cryoshon 9y ago
as a former biologist: please, please, please, please, please, please, please ensure that at YC the people with money do not try to interpret laboratory data and stay far away from making any kind of project-level decisions. it's something they (VCs) love to do, in my experience. incorrectly. and it's a massive waste of scientists' time, to have to correct the moneymen's misunderstandings of rudimentary things. then it's a cringe session when you hear them trying to explain it to other moneymen. then it's a big tearjerker when the moneymen's childlike expectations aren't met, and the company suffers. something about biotech VCs and business types makes them think that they understand their products and products-in-development even if they're unqualified. the reality is that the depths of their ignorance are very embarrassing. but i digress. i hate to rain on the parade here, but my bet is that most of the early stage biopharmas at YC will fail due to one of two reasons: 1. nature isn't working in the way they need it to. 2. the people with money don't stay out of the way enough and make stupid decisions that they don't understand. i've seen a few biotechs fail to reason 1-- always tragic, but nature always has another trick that mankind will figure out some other day. i've also seen a few fail to reason 2. it's very predictable, and saddening every time. non-technical types in leadership positions need to stay far away from biotech, especially at an early stage... they ruin things by cutting funding at the wrong time; they ruin things by forcing idiotic focuses; and they ruin things by believing that manipulating nature is similar to making a faster horse. i have plenty of ideas on how to make biotech startups work better when they receive funding, however. they are, shall we say, politically incorrect-- both to the society of the scientists as well as the society of the VCs. perhaps i will share them on some other evening.
- uptownfunk 9y ago
  Ah yes the old “the business man thinks he knows how to science and the scientist thinks he knows how to do business” problem.
d_burfoot 9y ago
I am cheering for you guys, but.... I fear YC is moving way out of its center of competence. Startup mantras like "build something people want" and "move fast and break things" are probably wildly inappropriate for the biotech world. Even the setup of the the YC course, where you hack intensely for three months and then present something cool at Demo Day, seems totally misconfigured for doing bio research.
- snowmaker 9y ago
  Yes, life sciences is very different. We've been funding life sciences companies for several years now, so we've learned how to adapt our advice. We've also made tweaks to the YC batch cycle to fit companies with longer development cycles. It's still not perfect, though, so the things we're trying in this experiment, like providing lab space for companies, are the next step.
poppingtonic 9y ago
Is this going to expand the funding that goes to the SENS program? There's a lot of basic Science that is yet to be done, and it appears (from Aubrey de Grey's talks) that a lot of it is still rather underfunded. See this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ARUQ5LoUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ARUQ5LoUo
subcosmos 9y ago
Here's a visualization I made of the top causes of death in the USA. We've got a lot of work to do! Fortunately, the mechanisms of aging underlie many of these illnesses. https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap
hycaria 9y ago
I wish I could somehow make sense of my both biological and software proficiencies, and I try to follow what's happening in the Biotech world, but nowhere do I feel like an ideal fit. So I enjoy doing both separately for the moment !

338 points by jameshk 9y ago

Living healthier for longer will not help the healthcare crisis if the tail-end of life has the same health distribution. I think healthspan is a more important first target that lifespan. It's great to see some targeted support for bio, though! It seems like a harder market division to get into than a pure tech company.

reasonattlm 9y ago
Think about how complex machines fail. Reliability theory is a good tool for this, and has been used to effectively model how aging works, as failure of units in a system of redundant units. https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2001.2430 https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2001.2430 You will see that there is no good way to compress the tail end of mortality and consequences resulting from accumulated unrepaired damage. The only cost-effective path is to postpone it indefinitely through periodic repair of that damage. Aging is damage, and mortality/disability rises with damage. Effective treatments for aging are forms of repair of damage, of which only senolytics presently exist in any form that is available. Once you accept this model, you can start to reason about the effects of various approaches, and everything makes a lot more sense.
tomjen3 9y ago
If people live healthier for longer, then there will be a larger share of healthy people to pay into the pool of sick people, which should help the healthcare crisis.
killjoywashere 9y ago
Don't you dare talk about QALYs in the US! What are you, a democrat? (Sorry, I couldn't suggest you're Russian anymore, since that's apparently synonymous with Republicans. And Yuri Milner, of YC fame).

roymurdock 9y ago

Looks like a great opportunity from YC and a field I wish I knew more about - especially implantable tech and wetware/biohacking. In the embedded/IoT industry, the majority of medical device innovation is centered around home monitoring/care for older patients in nursing homes, or for preventative/medicine. Can anyone with experience in the bio/chem/pharma startup world point to good resources where we can get up to date on the most exciting/promising new bio tech/startups of the past 20 years or so? Also related - has anything come out of Alphabet Calico [1]? [1] https://www.calicolabs.com/ https://www.calicolabs.com/

reasonattlm 9y ago
No-one in the field is particularly impressed with Calico at this point in time. Calico is the second coming of the Ellison Medical Foundation, which is to say they're just analyzing the details of aging and expanding on the NIH budget. Nothing they are known to be doing is likely to have the slightest impact on the progression of rejuvenation therapies. E.g. some resources in which people are less than complimentary: http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-month-16-any-rejuvenation-relevance-roundworm-reproduction http://www.sens.org/research/research-blog/question-month-16... https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-strange-life-span-trip/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603087/googles-long-stran... https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/google-calico-secretive-aging-mortality-research https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/27/15409672/go... There are plenty of others if you want to go look for them.
leggomylibro 9y ago
Armchair opinion, probably gene editing. Not in people or animals, but I'd put money on it becoming "easy" in plants before much longer, as CRISPR gets more accurate and people apply it to already-understood micropropagation cloning strategies. There was a startup trying to make autoluminescent plants with jellyfish genes before CRISPR even existed, just using ordinary plasmid creation and transfection techniques.[1] That particular effort failed commercially, but I believe they recently reincorporated as 'GLEAUX'. Anyways, Biology is messy and difficult, but I really think that we are getting to a reasonably solid understanding of genetically engineering plants. And once someone turns that into a '1, 2, 3' process...well I don't think you need more than a 5-figure investment for equipment/space. [1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015461 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Has YC had successful Biology startups with real exits? Just curious I couldn't find any.

firloop 9y ago
No exit but Ginkgo Bioworks (YC S14) is doing quite well https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/gingko-bioworks-secures-275-million-in-series-d-valuing-the-company-at-over-1-billion/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/gingko-bioworks-secures-27...
aaavl2821 9y ago
Biopharma startups are about as different from tech startups as you can get. The traditional tech incubator approach doesn't really work for biopharma. It can work for some life sci stuff but not pure biopharma (which is where most of the opportunity is) That said, they said they've learned some lessons and they are providing more capital, and I'm sure if any organization can fix the biopharma seed exosystem it's them The most important thing for them will be to get the right group of mentors. If you go off on the wrong scientific direction at the start of the company, it's much harder to salvage things with a pivot, so you need good eyes on all details of your experiments before you deploy capital
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
I was really disappointed to see YC involved with 'glowing plants' a few years back, which predictably failed (non-science founders, among other reasons). Color me skeptical. Biology is a very different field; stuff that is wonderfully promising can get help up for years based on trivial mistakes or simple strategic errors. And on top of that, 95% of the stuff that sounds great won't amount to anything, and you can't tell until a few years have passed. Our understanding of molecular biology isn't nearly as plug-and-play as many would like it to be.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  Personally I love the idea of glowing plants. We first discussed it in 1983 after the announcement that the luciferase gene sequence had been added to a tobacco plant. What could be better than glowing monkey grass leading up to your house? But as always, devil is in the details.

peter_retief 9y ago

Biology and AI could possibly be the next coal face

ovrdrv3 9y ago
Are you saying that it is going to make as much revenue as coal? That would make sense, but the amount of jobs created is going to be lower I would guess.
- peter_retief 9y ago
  Coal face is an metaphor :) It means that labour in this discipline will produce many new products and results https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_the_coal_face https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/at_the_coal_face

timrpeterson 9y ago

Do you have to move to the Bay Area? I'm a professor at WashU and am interested, but I live in St. Louis.

asimpletune 9y ago
Just move! It’s great here!
- timrpeterson 9y ago
  I have ample lab space and the team to execute here in St. Louis. Also, I have a family. YC's "move to the bay area" requirement makes sense for software startups, but less so for bio (at least for most of the good ideas).
  - jonlucc 9y ago
    As a fellow midwesterner, I agree. It might make sense if the requirement was to move to a bio-rich region (such as San Diego or Boston), but the bay doesn't seem like the place to be for a lab.
    - timrpeterson 9y ago
      Most people who will be qualified will already have lab space wherever they are.
      - giarc 9y ago
        I agree, and if they were required to move, it would take more than the 3 month batch to prepare items for movement. Why not just leave in their location?
    - vqc 9y ago
      The Bay Area is extremely bio rich. It is on par with Boston and SD w/r/t bio jobs, lab space, NIH funding, VC funding, etc.

kamens 9y ago

The more investment and talent going into taking control of our biology and reducing disease, the better. If using your tech skills to help battle disease in an ambitious way is interesting and you wanna learn about a new, quiet startup (top-tier funders, world-class bio folks already on board for you to partner with, rare advisors from tech/bio/pharma), ping me: kamens@gmail.com We're hiring a couple more for our early team and specifically looking for data, infra, and ML engineers. No specific bio background required. Staying quiet for now, can share more when we talk.

forgotpwagain 9y ago
Just to add a single word -- I think it is very important that investments be well-targeted. And almost all of the time, this means listening to the scientists involved to get a realistic picture of where the domain experts think the field is going and how to best support efforts that are likely to be successful. Sometimes, we have some promising leads on disease that we can begin to chase down. Most of the time, however, we have no idea where to begin, and so a shotgun basic science approach may ultimately be more fruitful. Every subfield is different and difficult to master, which is why it is so important to engage with the people who actually do the work. I know the tone of this sounds like I'm beating a dead horse. I'm sorry.
- kamens 9y ago
  Completely agree. A tight and respectful partnership b/w scientists and technologists is table stakes in any of these ventures.
wuschel 9y ago
Agreed! Great to see YC address the lab space issue and give a larger cash/equity cut for biotech focused companies. I am wondering how early/late stage the desired biotech company should be. Right now, many biotech-y YC applications/interview participants seem to be rejected with the comment that they should come back later.

psychometry 9y ago

Why focus on age-related disease when massive racial and economic disparities still prevent a large proportion of the population from even reaching an advanced age?

icelancer 9y ago
"Why work on this burning city when this earthquake-ridden city is in shambles!" a) There's no obligation to work on earthquake-ridden cities over any other issue. b) Mythical Man Month problem; firefighters might be good at extinguishing flame but not repairing earthquake issues, and there's only so many civil engineers to go around. c) Your comment is proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  d) YC is fantastic and produces results, but a startup accelerator probably doesn't have a viable pathway to reduce economic disparities. Those will probably need to be addressed through political means.
Techowl 9y ago
You'd be surprised. Heart disease, for example, is one of the deadliest age-related diseases, but it's by no means exclusive to the wealthy. See for example the World Health Organization's statistics[0]; they report that three quarters of deaths from cardiovascular disease occur in low-income and middle-income countries. [0] http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/ http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/
bpicolo 9y ago
Not only would I not fault them if they hadn't tried anything along the lines, but they've been doing a UBI pilot for ages.
snowmaker 9y ago
I agree - we need to work on both.

2pointsomone 9y ago

This is such a great news. YC is focusing its efforts on areas of biggest change and need in the coming decade, and life sciences is really critical.

aaavl2821 9y ago

there has been an amazing amount of innovation in bio the last 5 years, but the biggest bottleneck to making more progress is lack of seed funding and shortage of entrepreneurs. So this is great to see I wrote about the opportunity in bio earlier this week and run a program connecting top tier scientists with life sci VCs. If you are interested in bio and don't have a science background, this is the best time ever to get involved: http://newbio.tech/blog.html http://newbio.tech/blog.html

deleted 9y ago
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logicallee 9y ago

The Bitter Pill The way I read it, they are saying "we know our resources are limited, and bio science is huge. And expensive. We don't presume to have all the answers. So we will focus on one small area at a time. First, we will achieve immortality. After all, all the breakthroughs in the next thousand years can't help your rotting bones. Barring violent accidemt (think nuclear explosion) there is no physical reason humans should have an end of life. Once we have achieved this, we will have a number of options about what to tackle next. We were frankly undecided between obesity and superintelligence. Solving one leaves you fit and attractive, after all, and AI will surpass human intelligence anyway. So why is our next bio focus after immortality on superintelligence, rather than obesity? Simple: having all the fitness answers in the world is no help if the subjects' dumb asses don't apply them. In fact, intelligence is more importance than fitness. If you're smart enough, you'll always apply the best techniques for fitness. On the other hand, if you're a dumbass, it doesn't matter how great the fitness solution is: you just won't apply it. So our focused, humble goals are, in order, immortality, superintelligence and making an adonis/aphrodite out of everyone." :D Okay, now are you listening, founders? The above is actually not what I said it was about, but is actually what your game plan should be in the face of dumbass investors and a hostile world: Step 1: become default-alive. Make your company immortal. Get a negative burn rate. Nobody can fail to roll sixes infinite times in a row. Even with loaded unfair dice. Become immortal. You are then guaranteed to win. Step 2: become smarter. You will see your peers be dumbasses trying to focus on being attractive investment targets first. Ignore them. Investors aren't smart enough to invest in the most attractive business plans on the planet. So don't try to make an attractive business plan, instead, focus on a smarter product. Step 3: when you have the smartest product and team in your industry, only then focus on being fit amd an attractive investment target. Now you have all the tools you need to succeed. Good luck :) p.s. sorry about hiding this bitter pill in what seemed like simple satire. My comment is totally off-topic and has nothing to do with YC Bio ;) It's pure 100% allegory all the way.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Color me skeptical. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. I have gotten myself mostly well when that is not supposed to be possible. I was a homemaker for a long time. Eating right and germ control are a very large part of what I do and it isn't rocket science, as they say. I also can see no means to turn it into a business model or income stream, nor even get anyone interested in benefiting from what I know for free. It isn't the magic bullet people are looking for. A spartan life, eating better and lots of walking is not an answer people want. It also isn't an answer that investors will fund. Meanwhile, hey, lung transplants and $300k/year new drugs for CF are all the rage. That makes headlines and apparently makes money. A business model for healthcare seems to produce Frankensteinian outcomes. Things that are actually health promoting, like having a full-time parent to care for the kids and primary breadwinner, eating right, exercise etc are boring and don't make VCs rich. They are actually quite challenging to promote at all. I wish I saw it differently.

feistypharit 9y ago
Don't, you're mostly right. The model is broken. I think the US is in a giant bubble right now, in 100 years will be like most of Europe is today. That is...better.
- deleted 9y ago
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jforman 9y ago
Every disease is a different beast, and biology is very hard to tame. We've thrown probably trillions of dollars at cancer over the past few decades, and only in the past few years, with immuno-oncology, has there been any real hope of progress toward broad cures (there was a heady moment after Gleevec, too, but that turned out to be the exception rather than the rule). There was just a huge wave of Alzheimer's treatments that people were so hopeful might make any dent in the disease. They all failed, apparently because the breakthrough we thought we had made in understanding the disease turned out to be specious. Had the drugs made ANY improvement they'd be on the market and we'd all be bitching about how pharma "likes to make bandaids rather than cures," and that would have been a disservice to the years of toil people put into these drugs. Not every pharma actor is a good actor. But overall the space is mostly filled with scientists and doctors trying to make people healthier, and mostly failing.

indescions_2018 9y ago

Timing is perfect on this. We are fortunate enough to be witnessing Year One in the Age of Crispr ;) For those brainstorming startup ideas some relatively recently funded companies include: eGenesis - Dr. George Church's company that uses edited porcine stem lines for human xenotransplantation Twist Bio - synthetic bio for applications ranging from novel materials to data storage Denali - focus on age related neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Benchling - molecular bio and gene editing design software Synthego - free gene knockout kits But of all the breakthroughs last year. The one that may be most impactful. Editing human genes in the embryo to remove hereditary disease. Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23305 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23305

senatorobama 9y ago
saved
jforman 9y ago
Well... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00335-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00335-8 Maybe the first startup YC should fund is one to mutate the enzyme to avoid immunoreactivity while preserving function...
comstock 9y ago
And here’s my take on how this will play out... Tech investors are almost totally unequiped to do the necessary DD. They either therefore go for plays that are easy to understand, largely computational exercises or in the rare cases they do go for something higher risk, they back something crazy (e.g. Theranos) because they don’t do good DD. Getting an “expert” to vet the play rarely works. Because tech VCs don’t know how to choose good experts. So most of (all?) these plays will ultimately fail. It won’t matter much to seed round investors though, because they’ll take 10 years to fail and they will likely have at least partially exited by then...
- lsc 9y ago
  So, I came of age right in the middle of the first dot-com boom. My observation is that back then, no one with money knew what they hell they were doing. My observation during this dot-com boom is that a lot of the people who did well last round are now part of the VC infrastructure, like our own Paul Graham. My impression is that this time around, money is a lot more competent because of this. Because this made such a huge impact on my life, I kinda want to extend it: perhaps the first round of any new technology is going to be littered with bad ideas. Perhaps that is necessary. Then perhaps those with experience can look backwards and do better next time. I personally still think we are headed towards a second dot-com bust, but I've been saying that so long that at this point, I'm just wrong. Unquestionably, the business and money people did their jobs much more skillfully this time around than they did in the '90s.

kayhi 9y ago

Awesome! We've been supporting start up bio companies by offering them a fair pricing on equipment, supplies and chemicals. I think we've sold to every YC bio company except Ginkgo (doh!). There's a huge problem in non-transparent pricing for products. For those outside the industry it's like buying used cars, dealing with sales reps and everything is a quote. Researchers are at a huge informational disadvantage when it comes pricing. Example, acetone which is a commonly used solvent: https://i.imgur.com/QyJ1Tj5.png https://i.imgur.com/QyJ1Tj5.png https://i.imgur.com/mJyfFfX.png https://i.imgur.com/mJyfFfX.png $900 vs. $300 Another example, IPTG: https://i.imgur.com/tvnVAqO.png https://i.imgur.com/tvnVAqO.png We commonly see 3-5x differences and up to 10x for the exact same item. This makes a huge difference when you're in the range of 500k to 1 mil from YC Bio.

unknownkadath 9y ago
Don't forget eBay! If you're willing to do some simple repairs, you can save a ton of money when revving up a new lab.
- kayhi 9y ago
  eBay is decent for used equipment some glassware, but would not recommend it for chemicals.
braja 9y ago
+1 for Sean and P212121
lsc 9y ago
Buying datacenter bandwidth is that way. 3-5x variance and sometimes 10x between the first quote and what you pay. Interestingly, servers seem to be only 1.5x, and if you buy your servers in parts, the variance is even smaller.
danieltillett 9y ago
Is there are reason you only accept university email addresses? Seems strange if you are targeting biotech companies.

d33k4y 9y ago

"...it could be one of the best ways to address our healthcare crisis." It seems to me a great deal more people face a very different question, "how can I afford to live longer?"

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Those two are connected - in particular, issues related to aging are a huge money sink, so just improving healthspan without improving lifespan would not only make a difference to people, but also free up resources in healthcare.
- d33k4y 9y ago
  Resources are freed up in healthcare simply due to its unaffordability. Effective but devastating demand-side management strategy if you believe healthcare should be a universal right. Lifespan has increased dramatically over the last 50 years. In "Being Mortal", Atul Gawande argues we haven't figured out how to live with the substantial increase in life- and health-span that medicine has already given most of humanity. Recent discussions around ageism in the workforce (e.g. Tad Friend, New Yorker, 2017-11-20) highlight the double edged sword of increasing income disparity and longer life. "Healthspan" must also include mental health. Without sense of belonging, value, a feeling of security in one's future, mental health suffers. Deterioration of mental health manifests as physical health issues. The rate of growth of diagnosis and medical prescription for psychiatric problems is high. What can be done about the terror of aging? Back to the OP, and to append my original comment, money for research aimed at solving medical conditions causing the greatest reduction in life span is excellent news.

daemonk 9y ago

There needs to be more of a narrowing of the gap between biology and tech. I feel like right now the giants in both fields are still very much experts of their own biology or technology domains. The perspective one takes on the biological system in question is vastly different depending on where you are coming from. Biologist understands bigger picture ideas about the system and can narrow down potential solutions. Tech injects more rigor and organization into how data is collected and analyzed. The skills are very complementary. I am optimistic because I am seeing more people coming up in the field who are trying to do both molecular biology and data science.

beatpanda 9y ago

How is enabling people to live longer going to address a healthcare crisis that is primarily about the cost of care? If people live longer they are going to end up paying more for care, especially for whatever treatment any of these companies comes up with that enables them to live longer.

snowmaker 9y ago
We're focusing on increasing healthspan, not lifespan. That said, it's true that we do also need to address healthcare costs - that is a huge problem and we would love to fund companies working on it.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Life extension research does this by focusing on "healthspan" - that is, the amount of time you spend living in full health. The idea isn't to let you live 200+ years as 80-year-old person. The idea is to let you live up to 80 as if you're 30-40 - that is, to extend the time you're fully able to function and enjoy life - and push it out from there, keeping the tail-end small and extending the total lifespan. This happens to both offer huge potential healthcare savings, and meshes nicely with the idea that everything happening to your health past ~40 is part of the disease of aging.

dawhizkid 9y ago

Curious how the healthcare industry will try to monetize fasting i.e. this free, unlimited thing that anyone can do that has proven time and time again to not only increase lifespan but increase the number of healthy years in the last years of life.

tejtm 9y ago
making it less painful to start would get my cash

zappo2938 9y ago

Much of what we learn in biology comes from happy accidents. Targeted research for financial gain is very, very difficult. Moreover, much of what we need to learn will come observing biologic mechanisms that have evolved over eons in life in places like the rain forests of Brazil that are being destroyed with all the knowledge and medicines that can be developed from the research of the species that live there. Sadly, your interest is money but for the human race investing in protecting rain forests as a whole would be a greater investment.

cryoshon 9y ago

as a former biologist: please, please, please, please, please, please, please ensure that at YC the people with money do not try to interpret laboratory data and stay far away from making any kind of project-level decisions. it's something they (VCs) love to do, in my experience. incorrectly. and it's a massive waste of scientists' time, to have to correct the moneymen's misunderstandings of rudimentary things. then it's a cringe session when you hear them trying to explain it to other moneymen. then it's a big tearjerker when the moneymen's childlike expectations aren't met, and the company suffers. something about biotech VCs and business types makes them think that they understand their products and products-in-development even if they're unqualified. the reality is that the depths of their ignorance are very embarrassing. but i digress. i hate to rain on the parade here, but my bet is that most of the early stage biopharmas at YC will fail due to one of two reasons: 1. nature isn't working in the way they need it to. 2. the people with money don't stay out of the way enough and make stupid decisions that they don't understand. i've seen a few biotechs fail to reason 1-- always tragic, but nature always has another trick that mankind will figure out some other day. i've also seen a few fail to reason 2. it's very predictable, and saddening every time. non-technical types in leadership positions need to stay far away from biotech, especially at an early stage... they ruin things by cutting funding at the wrong time; they ruin things by forcing idiotic focuses; and they ruin things by believing that manipulating nature is similar to making a faster horse. i have plenty of ideas on how to make biotech startups work better when they receive funding, however. they are, shall we say, politically incorrect-- both to the society of the scientists as well as the society of the VCs. perhaps i will share them on some other evening.

uptownfunk 9y ago
Ah yes the old “the business man thinks he knows how to science and the scientist thinks he knows how to do business” problem.

d_burfoot 9y ago

I am cheering for you guys, but.... I fear YC is moving way out of its center of competence. Startup mantras like "build something people want" and "move fast and break things" are probably wildly inappropriate for the biotech world. Even the setup of the the YC course, where you hack intensely for three months and then present something cool at Demo Day, seems totally misconfigured for doing bio research.

snowmaker 9y ago
Yes, life sciences is very different. We've been funding life sciences companies for several years now, so we've learned how to adapt our advice. We've also made tweaks to the YC batch cycle to fit companies with longer development cycles. It's still not perfect, though, so the things we're trying in this experiment, like providing lab space for companies, are the next step.

poppingtonic 9y ago

Is this going to expand the funding that goes to the SENS program? There's a lot of basic Science that is yet to be done, and it appears (from Aubrey de Grey's talks) that a lot of it is still rather underfunded. See this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ARUQ5LoUo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ARUQ5LoUo

subcosmos 9y ago

Here's a visualization I made of the top causes of death in the USA. We've got a lot of work to do! Fortunately, the mechanisms of aging underlie many of these illnesses. https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap https://www.infino.me/mortality/usmap

hycaria 9y ago

I wish I could somehow make sense of my both biological and software proficiencies, and I try to follow what's happening in the Biotech world, but nowhere do I feel like an ideal fit. So I enjoy doing both separately for the moment !