
YC and Ginkgo Bioworks announce new partnership for synthetic biology startups - flipchart
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-and-ginkgo-bioworks-announce-new-partnership-for-synthetic-biology-startups/
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munchbunny
This is really interesting news, but when I asked someone in the genetics
space about this, they had an interesting take:

The hard part about what Ginkgo is doing is not the cell programming, it's how
you write the program in the first place. Which is the same big problem the
industry already has with GMO's and drug development. We don't actually
understand genetics at the level where we can say "this sequence will
accomplish that effect, no bugs", so even if you have the compiler, you're
still just trying thousands upon thousands of mutations until it looks like it
works. Basically the intro CS method of programming.

Ginkgo is not selling a platform, it's selling product development consulting
services on their platform. Giving the platform for free is like giving out
razors but selling the blades.

That could really work! But it's interesting how this announcement is spun to
focus on the platform as opposed to the business model.

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petra
I think the announcement says that qualified YC startups get the product
development consulting services, in return for equity.

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munchbunny
We are both sort of right. Here's what they said:

 _Ginkgo Bioworks will offer to program cells for YC companies doing
qualifying synthetic biology projects on a $0 down basis. Instead of charging,
Ginkgo will get equity. Their equity ownership will be based on achieving
technical milestones, so it’s essentially a risk free deal for the companies.
Ginkgo will effectively be making a big in-kind R &D investment in these
companies. Before engaging with YC companies, Ginkgo will need to vet the
projects for technical feasibility and IP conflicts. But a broad range of
projects will qualify, and I expect that the right companies can save years
and millions of dollars by taking advantage of this deal._

This hints at consulting for product development, but specifically avoids
talking about it as a butts-in-seats service (revenue scales linearly with
people-hours cost). The surrounding wording is similar:

 _Ginkgo’s new deal will make it possible for startups to access the same
platform._

 _Ginkgo providing startups access to their platform is a big step in the
shift that we see towards the AWSification of biology._

That's the opposite of a butts-in-seats framing, but the product development
work at the moment decidedly is a butts-in-seats problem. To be clear I am
hugely hopeful that someone figures this out, because that's a trillion dollar
problem.

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flipchart
I'm curious what happened to the YC bio [1] track which was announced in 2018
with free lab space and a different investment deal. The details seem to have
been scrubbed from the YC website. Did it get shut down? Seems like it was
Sam's initiative and didn't survive his departure.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/11/y-combinator-yc-bio-
track-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/11/y-combinator-yc-bio-track-fund/)

~~~
snowmaker
We kept the intent but changed the structure. After trying it both ways, we
learned that it worked better when we didn't break bio out separately. So
we're still super interested in funding bio companies (hence the Ginkgo
partnership), but we don't have a different deal for them.

~~~
nextos
So YC Bio doesn't imply a much bigger investment for 20% equity anymore?

Most bio startups will require a significant amount of capital to bootstrap.
It's cheaper now, but still an order of magnitude more than for IT.

~~~
nemanja-mit
Surprisingly, bio is pretty similar to software capital-wise, at least
initially and the standard YC deal works well. Jared and Jorge wrote good
pieces around this recently -

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-biotech-startup-funding-
wil...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/how-biotech-startup-funding-will-change-
in-the-next-10-years/)

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/09/biotech-researchers-
ventur...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/09/biotech-researchers-venture-into-
the-wild-to-start-their-own-business/)

Case in point - Asher Bio from the most recent YC batch went from zero to a
working molecule & in-vivo data in ~3 months on the standard deal -
[https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/20/here-are-
the-82-startups-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/20/here-are-
the-82-startups-that-launched-on-day-2-of-ycs-s19-demo-days/)

~~~
kayhi
I would see this more of a reflection of spend matching the access to capital
not that bio is similar to software. The difference between moving atoms and
bits is significant.

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jamestimmins
I'm curious if there are other examples of this type of partnership, where
companies provide services to YC cos in exchange for equity.

~~~
snowmaker
We have a similar partnership with Atomwise: [https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-
partners-with-atomwise-to-fu...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-partners-
with-atomwise-to-fund-more-bio-companies/)

~~~
2_listerine_pls
Does YC have hardware partnerships?

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2_listerine_pls
Does YC have Hardware accelerator partnerships?

