4 ms·

Let’s not ignore biotech. It’s experiencing a tremendous boom in SV (and in the Berkeley-Emeryville area). It gets way less attention than Tesla and Facebook,

Let’s not ignore biotech. It’s experiencing a tremendous boom in SV (and in the Berkeley-Emeryville area). It gets way less attention than Tesla and Facebook, for some reason... probably because its products and innovations are much harder to explain to the public. (Though that may be an overly cynical answer with regards to the media.)

godelski 6y ago
I thought these technologies are still early and in the research phase. That would make sense for them to operate in stealth mode. Tesla sells vehicles to the public (and let's be real, Elon is a big PR department). Are these companies producing useful products currently? It seems that you're implying that they are and that we (me) aren't aware of them, so I'm curious if you could expand on this and enlighten us. I do know investors are dumping a ton of money into bio-tech, just not aware of products that are being sold.
- haram_masala 6y ago
  Regarding products, I'd divide biotech into three very broad categories, medical, industrial, and food. Medical biotech is generally the most well-established, from Genentech (now Roche) on down to the companies being created today. Most of that work are novel and very promising therapies for a range of diseases, and diagnostics/prognostics to detect and track disease states. Both are generally at the level that's popularly known as "personalized medicine" (specific to your genome, epigenetics, and in some cases microbiome). Some of the diagnostics in development and hitting the market now would be considered sorcery just five years ago. Industrial biotech is harnessing biological and biochemical processes for industry and production. That's much smaller but growing fast; people outside the industry would be shocked to discover what chemicals and other products can and will be produced simply by fermenting various microbes. Zymergen is one company doing this, and among the biggest but by no means the only one. Recently there's been a surge in biotech-based food production. Most people don't realize that the Impossible Burger (and other products from Impossible) taste so "meaty" because it contains transgenic yeast that secretes cow heme. There are companies that are creating cow dairy products from transgenic yeast - you can actually buy their ice cream today - and companies like Memphis Meats are working on cell-cultured meat, made entirely from animal-free processes , minus the initial cell biopsy. Same with Finless Foods. All of the above are within a couple miles of each other, and these are only a few examples.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Yes, I get all this, but is anyone selling a product? For example, a company like Finless Foods (which I'm decently familiar with) isn't selling meat to customers yet. For this reason it is unsurprising that the general public doesn't know about them, let alone to the same degree that they do for Facebook (billions of users) and Tesla (~1 million vehicles sold). I'm saying these are unfair comparisons (that's at least 6 orders of magnitude difference in users!). If people could get FF in their local supermarket I'd understand your point, but they're (like every other cell-cultured meat company) producing small quantities, learning how to refine the product, and how to scale. It is wildly misleading to say that FF or MM should have the same recognition as Facebook or Tesla. I was asking if there are companies NOT in the research phase and are producing products that I or someone I know would be using. Such a biotech company would be a fair comparison to FB or Tesla and I'd understand the criticism of the lack of fame to them. But you cannot compare companies with 0 users (or 0 planned users for at least a year) to companies with millions or billions of users. That's an insane comparison, regardless of how groundbreaking these technologies could be. Yes, lots of potential, but they aren't there yet. It is potential.

godelski 6y ago

I thought these technologies are still early and in the research phase. That would make sense for them to operate in stealth mode. Tesla sells vehicles to the public (and let's be real, Elon is a big PR department). Are these companies producing useful products currently? It seems that you're implying that they are and that we (me) aren't aware of them, so I'm curious if you could expand on this and enlighten us. I do know investors are dumping a ton of money into bio-tech, just not aware of products that are being sold.

haram_masala 6y ago
Regarding products, I'd divide biotech into three very broad categories, medical, industrial, and food. Medical biotech is generally the most well-established, from Genentech (now Roche) on down to the companies being created today. Most of that work are novel and very promising therapies for a range of diseases, and diagnostics/prognostics to detect and track disease states. Both are generally at the level that's popularly known as "personalized medicine" (specific to your genome, epigenetics, and in some cases microbiome). Some of the diagnostics in development and hitting the market now would be considered sorcery just five years ago. Industrial biotech is harnessing biological and biochemical processes for industry and production. That's much smaller but growing fast; people outside the industry would be shocked to discover what chemicals and other products can and will be produced simply by fermenting various microbes. Zymergen is one company doing this, and among the biggest but by no means the only one. Recently there's been a surge in biotech-based food production. Most people don't realize that the Impossible Burger (and other products from Impossible) taste so "meaty" because it contains transgenic yeast that secretes cow heme. There are companies that are creating cow dairy products from transgenic yeast - you can actually buy their ice cream today - and companies like Memphis Meats are working on cell-cultured meat, made entirely from animal-free processes , minus the initial cell biopsy. Same with Finless Foods. All of the above are within a couple miles of each other, and these are only a few examples.
- godelski 6y ago
  Yes, I get all this, but is anyone selling a product? For example, a company like Finless Foods (which I'm decently familiar with) isn't selling meat to customers yet. For this reason it is unsurprising that the general public doesn't know about them, let alone to the same degree that they do for Facebook (billions of users) and Tesla (~1 million vehicles sold). I'm saying these are unfair comparisons (that's at least 6 orders of magnitude difference in users!). If people could get FF in their local supermarket I'd understand your point, but they're (like every other cell-cultured meat company) producing small quantities, learning how to refine the product, and how to scale. It is wildly misleading to say that FF or MM should have the same recognition as Facebook or Tesla. I was asking if there are companies NOT in the research phase and are producing products that I or someone I know would be using. Such a biotech company would be a fair comparison to FB or Tesla and I'd understand the criticism of the lack of fame to them. But you cannot compare companies with 0 users (or 0 planned users for at least a year) to companies with millions or billions of users. That's an insane comparison, regardless of how groundbreaking these technologies could be. Yes, lots of potential, but they aren't there yet. It is potential.