
YC Bio - jameshk
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-bio/
======
indescions_2018
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)

~~~
comstock
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
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.

~~~
comstock
True, but their competence isn’t is science based startups. In all honesty I
think that makes them in general gravitate to Bio tech plays which involve a
lot of traditional Tech. The thesis is easier, but much less likely to result
in high reward.

~~~
lsc
my implication was that this is (to my knowledge) the first round of silicon
valley biotech startups, and if it's like the first round of webapp startups,
there will be a lot of failures, but the seeds will be planted for greater
success in the next round.

My main point was "perhaps the first round failure is necessary" \- of course,
I weakened that with my assertion that this second tech bubble is also a
bubble and bound to burst.

------
kayhi
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
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
eBay is decent for used equipment some glassware, but would not recommend it
for chemicals.

------
kamens
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
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
Completely agree. A tight and respectful partnership b/w scientists and
technologists is table stakes in any of these ventures.

------
dbmikus
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
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.

------
d33k4y
"...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
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.

------
subcosmos
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)

------
2pointsomone
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.

------
cryoshon
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
Ah yes the old “the business man thinks he knows how to science and the
scientist thinks he knows how to do business” problem.

------
roymurdock
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/)

~~~
aaavl2821
I wrote a blog about this earlier in the week. The focus is on the opportunity
in biopharma generally but i touch on some of the key technologies of the last
15 years or so

Short answer: there is a "perfect storm" of innovation right now in bio. Tech
from the 2000s genomic bubble is entering the mature phase of the hype cycle
and ushering in a new era of potential curative therapy (gene therapy, cell
therapy, personalized medicine). Avexis, a company treating a devastating
neurological disease affecting infants using gene therapy, is ky favorite
example to this

There is also the more widely hyped tech, AI, wearables, synthetic bio, etc,
with massive potential, but these techs haven't had much impact on patients
yet

Post here: [http://newbio.tech/blog.html](http://newbio.tech/blog.html)

------
daemonk
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.

------
timrpeterson
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
Just move! It’s great here!

~~~
timrpeterson
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
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.

~~~
vqc
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.

~~~
jonlucc
That's great to hear; thanks!

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

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
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
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.

------
zappo2938
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.

------
poppingtonic
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)

------
beatpanda
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
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
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
making it less painful to start would get my cash

------
hycaria
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 !

------
aaavl2821
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)

------
d_burfoot
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
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.

------
DoreenMichele
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.

~~~
dokein
As a physician, you're absolutely right. There is a HUGE range of problems
that can be made better by proper diet and regular exercise. Although there
are a few efforts here and there, nobody has figured out a reliable way of
changing human behavior when the initial action is hard but the rewards are
far away. We seem only to be good at short-circuiting dopamine reward pathways
so people log in to Facebook more often.

I'm not claiming to do better: my "give a motivational speech when I see you
in clinic twice a year" approach certainly isn't worth shit.

But just because one approach is important does not mean others are snake oil.
CF has a clear biological basis, and there are randomized, controlled trials
proving that secretion management (e.g. DNase), glucose control, timely
antibiotics and anti-inflammatory meds, and chest physiotherapy work. These
trials also establish an average effect size (whereas your anecdote only tells
me about you; I have also had patients who took similar measures but still
died young). The average person with CF died at age 25 in 1986 -- today it's
above 40.

~~~
smoyer
When we were hunter-gatherers, we had to exercise simply to harvest enough
calories to meet our daily needs and our diet was limited to what was in
season and available in our immediate range.

Today we have more leisure time than ever before in human history (well ...
maybe not the HN crowd) but we're spending that time in increasingly sedentary
hobbies/interests.

As a physician, does the idea that manufacturing and robotics will completely
eliminate our need to work scare you at all? If the trend continues, will we
truly be the space-faring humans in Wall-E - tied to our mechanical chairs and
handicapped by our girth while life-spans decrease due to obesity-related
diseases?

~~~
dokein
I'll do you one better. People who work in an office are actively damaging
their health. No unemployment required. We know that walking around and being
active all day is better _even if_ you also ride a SoulCycle bike for 30
minutes a few times a week.

In the short term, I think there is actually more awareness today of exercise
and its benefits than e.g. the 1990s, although there is a large discrepancy
between socioeconomic classes and between metropolitan and rural areas.

In the long term, we may be able to reproduce the benefits of exercise. There
are a couple drug compounds that are in investigation. This will likely
require at least a two-orders-of-magnitude better understanding of the human
body--I seriously doubt that targeting a receptor will do the trick.

Alternately, we can just solve the ability to summon willpower.

------
peter_retief
Biology and AI could possibly be the next coal face

~~~
ovrdrv3
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
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)

------
psychometry
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
"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
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.

