Episode 10: From PhD to Public Company: Jason Kelly on Building Ginkgo and What Comes Next

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Armon: thanks a lot for joining. 

Jason: Yes. 

Armon: I think we gotta make you a 

Jason: Yes. 

Armon: Open up the bo. 

Jason: All right. Yeah. So I know I'm on, uh, what is, it's Boba and Bo 

Armon: Biotech, 

Jason: biotech.

I, I, embarrassing. Must admit, I've had like one boba tea in my life because I'm like, God, texture of the, oh yeah. 

You 

Armon: gotta open it 

Jason: from, oh wow. It has like a special hole. There's is this, there's like, do I take that 

Armon: off? No, you stab it. 

Jason: Oh, wow. 

Armon: That's what the pointing at 

Jason: is for, oh, Jesus.

Okay. 

audio fix: See 

Armon: this advanced shit 

Jason: and now I'm gonna drink and there's gonna be like little balls of like, yes, you'll fine. 

Armon: Which is part you'll be fine. 

Jason: Cheers. Yeah.

I've got one. Yeah. 

Delicious. 

We're 

a good start. 

Yeah. They, 

Armon: Will they get us 

from, you're allowed to swallow. You're allowed, you can do whatever you want, you want. 

Jason: It's kind of Okay. Alright. Let's [00:01:00] go May. Uh, 

Armon: okay. Alright. 

Do you wanna give a little bit of background on yourself? 

Jason: Sure. For 

Armon: the game? 

Jason: Okay. 

Uh, 

I'm Jason, uh, co-founder, CEO 

here at Kinko. I 

grew up in Florida. Uh, I went to IT, sun 

Armon: Air Place. 

Jason: Oh. You know, Florida's a beautiful place gotten, you know, it changes changed over time. Uh, but, uh, went to my T for undergrad, wanted to be a genetic engineer right outta the gate. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Thanks to Jurassic Park when I was like 13. Uh, so 

Yeah, Hence this. 

I know.

Uh, and. there was a bioengineering major, so I did chemical engineering. 

Armon: Yeah, same. 

Jason: Uh, and, and bio. Uh, but I, you know, how long did it take you to realize, so I picked chemical engineering because it, like biology has chemistry in it. Yeah. I was like, I need to pick one of the engineering majors at m mit.

I can't do biology. 

Armon: I, 

I picked Chemy because it was the best engineering major for indecisive people. Oh. Because I was like, I didn't know what I wanted 

to do. Oh, okay. 

Nice. Yeah. 

And I was like, 

this closes the least number of doors. 

Jason: Got it. Yeah. Well, it took it till like about year 

two before I realized like, chemical engineering is primarily about oil and gas plants.

Armon: Oh, for 

Jason: sure. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, 

oh, 

Armon: distillation 

Jason: costs. Oh, I 

see what this is. [00:02:00] Yeah. It's fine. 

Armon: Power 

Jason: through it. 

but then 

I, by the time I graduated, MIT did have a bioengineering PhD. Mm-hmm. Which I did do. Uh, and then we started ginkgo outta, uh, grad school in 2008. 

Armon: So what made you wanna go straight to startup land?

I mean, it normally people don't do that outta school. 

Jason: Yeah. I mean, 

Armon: especially back then. It's a little cooler now. 

Jason: Yeah. It's got, well, you know, I, I thought it would be like more for like, obviously starting tech companies out of undergrad. Yeah. Even is extremely common now. Um, and we were, we were, you know, straight out of PhD folks trying to start a biotech.

Um, that was very uncommon. Yeah. It's still pretty uncommon my 

is like, if you know the history of Y Combinator, by the way, I'll just like go on a little side here. We did YC like in 2000, I think got started in oh six or something.

that went a time 2006, 2012. Like Paul Graham had this insight that there were this untapped pool of founders who were like un smart undergrads and he wanted to get them before they took a job at Google. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Because once they took a job at Google, it was like 

paradise, you know? Right. Like, [00:03:00] you know, get all his money and 

Armon: couldn't 

Jason: didn't do It was like so much 

easier than MIT, but like, you gotta, okay. And, and so he's like, we gotta get 'em before that. So I'm gonna go hunt these young people and basically offer them in the summer, like ramen money to start their company and my network. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And, and so that was like insight number one, which he was totally right about.

And that obviously gave him, let that first class by the way Yeah. Was like the Reddit guys, Sam Altman, uh, Alex Hanney. 

Like, they were all, it was like ridiculous, you know, like that first was like a murders row 

in that first 14 people it was like a beacon 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: For these people that weren't otherwise able to get that level of attention from anybody.

Yeah. Because even the tech VCs back then were like, no, you're too young. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. And so, 

so that 

was number one. The other thing that helped 'em out though. Mm-hmm. So AWS came out at the same time, 

and so suddenly a little bit of money. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: You didn't, it was like less expensive to start a internet company 

Armon: Yeah.

Jason: Than it had been five years earlier. And, and that meant that. You could tap angels and like riskier sloppier [00:04:00] money as a young person where you might've been blocked out of actually getting a check, even back then at the time from like a, a Sequoia. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: That makes sense. And so I think our problem in biotech is number like I I see that same untapped pool.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like PhDs and postdocs. Like this is another like, blind spot Silicon Valley have, they're like, what kinda loser would do a PhD? I'm like, like 

people I met PhD, mit like this morning, like I met all the YC people. Like, like they were fucking killers, you know? Right. Like, like 

people that go and do PhDs.

Not all of them, of course. Just like every tech founders not a killer, but like the top slice of PhD students 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Is as good as the best YC founders. they're fighting, like for these, like, often if they go into academia, it's like trying to become like a movie star. There's like not a lot of spots.

And so it's extraordinarily competitive. They're very, very good. They're operating at the edge of technology. Like they're, and and you see this reflected now a little more with the AI guys. Like DES is, you know, right. Like, but yeah. Anyway, I think Silicon Valley has this blind spot for these people, and I'm like, it's an untapped pool, so let's do a yc.

Like, like someone should tap it. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And then the problem though is you hit the next wall, which is like, [00:05:00] we don't have the 

aws 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So it's still so fucking expensive to get to if we're talking drug biotech to get to that like proof in a patient that they grind out on not being able to get that kind of money together.

Yeah. Does that make sense? 

Armon: So, 

and they're building 

on their infrastructure from scratch, so it's like super duplicative and 

Jason: expensive. Yeah. Bingo. It's just, it's just the cost to go from like idea to like first good value Inflecting Proofpoint is tough. 

So, so short. 

The reason I tell about long story is not, that has not changed that much.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so we're still in a world where, where we're like a rarity. Yeah. Even after 16 years of this. so, okay. Our story, um, we, there was four of us who were doing grad school together.

Yep. I worked for Drew, Andy, me, and Barry, and then Richmond. Austin worked for this guy, Tom Knight, who we ended up founding the company with. Yeah. Uh, and so there were four of us who were students. Fifth, uh, founder was a professor. This is also a mistake I think a lot of PhDs make. They're like, I'll start a company with my professor.

I work for Bob Langer or something. Right. Yeah. Like, and like there's like these, 

some professors are like, 

okay about it. Like, I think George Church actually does a decent job. He's like, put my name on there and I it a little bit or something. Right. 

But like the average professor's sort of like, well, I'm a 

founder, [00:06:00] I'll take 

the same equity as you, but just not quit, 

you know?

Right. Like, it's horrible. Right. So, and had 

Armon: anti-dilution 

Jason: program. Yeah. Right. Bunch of like 

nonsensical, like, oh my God. 

But like, Tom 

wasn't like that. So Tom had been like, he had started a number of companies before and, and He 

put in the, the first check himself, right? Like our first two 50 K was from Tom, and then he left MIT like a year and a half later to join the company.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So, so that 

was, you know, if you can pull that off, like the absolute, I think it is actually great to start a company with a professor if they'll leave. 

If not, 

then they should be like a church and founder. 

Armon: Yeah. Because 

Jason: like, in other words, it's like, put it on the thank you for your help Give your work, but you don't need 

like a giant amount of equity.

Okay. 

Armon: Yeah. Because for a lot of 'em, I think it's just like a free option if they're gonna stay. That's 

Jason: what, yeah. Yeah. It's not a founder. but then we didn't do that. Fortunately we had Tom and he really came and, and like, and so we were, what happened was, uh, we were kind of planning honestly to go to academia.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Because this is like the beginning of synthetic biology. We were basically the first graduating class 

Armon: mm-hmm. 

Jason: Of grad students. And since that field kind of got catalyzed, there was like an [00:07:00] NSF Pro, uh, Berg Pro, uh, research center that kind of kicked it off four or five years earlier. And so, uh, we're like, great, we'll go get professor jobs.

Uh, to do that you basically have to go get a postdoc. Yep. This is like the mania of academia. Like this is like this, don't get me started, and so we're like, well we had been talking about starting a company. We had done the MIT 50 K, which is like the entrepreneurship competition. Didn't even make it through the first round.

Uh, and 

then 

we were like, we talked to Tom, we're like, Hey, everything about starting this company? And he was like, oh, I do it with you. And I think it was like that moment that kind of triggered it. 'cause like I was a little more forward on it, but we were all sort of also in a good spot to go down the professor track.

And so 

that was like, 

kind of got, I think a few of my other co-founders over the line to say, all 

right, why don't we try it for a year? 

Because we could always back, and do a postdoc, right? Like, like a year is like, 

Armon: well, we just got 

Went and did the static. 

Jason: We're 

It's like, It's like costless, right?

Like, we're like, well, whatever. Like, like it's not like 

can't get a postop job. It's like the worst job in the world. Right? Like, like I can get that. 

that. So, so like we're 

just like, we'll do this deviation. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Knowing we could go back. Right. And so that's the first [00:08:00] point I would make I think for like PhDs who think like, I'm on track or blah, blah blah.

Like I 

don't think it's that 

of a deviation. Yeah. If you like time bound it. Yeah. 

so we really did, we were like, we'll try for here. 

And then what happened was we couldn't raise money.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: That was actually another feature for us. Turns out, uh, a like I said earlier, we're children, they won't fucking fund us. We weren't making a drug, which makes no sense to biotech people. And it was 2008. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. And so what we did was we applied for grants. 

Genius. 

So, so we actually That's a great way to raise money.

Yeah. If you're a recent PhD. 'cause lemme tell you what, you know how to do write 

grants. Yeah, Yeah, And, and so like, we, we, 

like applied for, dude, we was like a machine, uh, SBIR DARPA grants. And what happened was we got like a, actually we got something in Scotland, but then we got like a DARPA grant or something.

I think I was on a DARPA grant with like, David Baker. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And, and I, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly the face. Right. And 

I was like. If I was in my postdoc, I promise you I'd not be a co-PI with David fucking Baker. Right. 

And so then we were like, well this just seems like great. Right? Like it falls apart, 

I, wherever 

I go looking to either postdoc, maybe I just go [00:09:00] 

to become a professor because I'm like, Hey look, I got this grant.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. So we also 

had that, like we kind of hedged it during that period. Yeah. Which 

is a good thing. because I'd 

we were like four years early. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. Right. Like for synthetic biology, 

which itself was like, you know, 15 years, 20 years early. that ended up working out for us Well too, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't be afraid of that.

I think a lot of founders are like, well, grants take too long. I'll go to the VCs. it's ute of money. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: It's very 

flexible. Helps. Yeah. 

So that'd be another piece of advice, I guess I would say for like PhD listening in. Yeah. Like 

don't 

be afraid of that. Go get those grants. And so the first. 4 million bucks into the company, or 5 million bucks was grants.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And then 2014 we did Y Combinator. Yeah. Uh, and then it was to the races. Yeah. Um, but that was how we got going. It was kind of like we, we were thinking about it, Tom said yes, and then we, our batna 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Was crap. 

Yeah. Right. Like the, uh, so was 

like, we were giving up a lot and so I think that got us over the line.

Armon: and [00:10:00] what features like, 'cause you guys are public now and everything, like what features do you think were the critical traits that helped you get this far? 

Jason: That's a, yeah, so that's a, that's a big question. 'cause like a lot of it, it, it is relatively rare. It's more common in tech. Yeah.

Even in tech. People get nuked, CEOs get nuked along the way. Yeah. Um, it's wildly uncommon in biotech. 

Armon: Oh, super. 

Jason: Yeah. Uh, I mean, no, people found companies to begin with, right? Yeah. It's all like manufactured by VCs, right? Uh, 

Armon: yes. 

Jason: They 

Armon: get together with the whiteboard. They're like, this sounds good. Let's make it 

Jason: Yes, it's a studio.

Um, and 

the, uh, but anyway, yeah. We, um, uh, well, yeah. Why, how do we manage to stick around? Um, a couple things. 

One, there's, 

there's a bunch of us. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So, you know, there's, there's five founders. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Tom's, um, you know, 30 years older than the rest of us. Yeah. Okay. Uh, but the four of us are my, my age.

Right. So I'm like 45 now. So the time we're 28 or something. And so like, we, we were able to like grow, um, relative to each other 

Armon: mm-hmm. 

Jason: Into [00:11:00] areas of like, expertise. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so I think that helped. 

helped. 

Like, because like my co-founder ish and I ishma was like sort of our CO and president. I was the CEO. Like I focused on a lot of our external stuff like fundraising, enterprise sales, things like that.

And Ishma focused on like internal, like management, scaling the team and all these things. Yeah. And it, it kind of meant we could both be better at it than we would've been if we had tried to own both. I think realistically, especially at the beginning, like, like that it's just, it was just so much faster for us to do that.

And biotech's weird and raising money from tech, if your biotech is weird, there's like a million weird things we were doing. So we also did not, we were not like very playbook. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so the other, what um, I think reason people get swapped out is like, 

oh, it's 

time to hire the clinical CEO for your pharmac.

Classic. Right. Like classic put a bullet in the, in the platform guy, right? Yeah. Like the, the, and 

well, that's 

because there's a good playbook for that. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And, and because we were always a bit like weird. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: There wasn't like, well who would you swap me for? [00:12:00] 

Right. Like, you know. Right. So, so, so like, there is, 

that's 

Armon: pharma guy 

that, 

Jason: that helps.

That's number one. 

Number two, um, we're very deliberate about, um, board control. Right. Like we, we kind of felt like we, I think it was a part 'cause those four years, like we did not raise money for five years. So 

we were five years into bootstrapping when we did yc. Yeah. So we 

were like 

very pot committed to this company.

Right. Like, like, I'm like, my life has been in this thing. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: If 

you think you're gonna like, 

in as like a new VC and then fire me in a year, like, no way, man. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like we had bought equipment on eBay. We ground this out for five years to get to where we're, 

Armon: I said we tried for a year, but I really meant for life.

Jason: Yeah. And 

so, so like the, so we did, 

were extra sensitive on all the control provisions and things like that. Yeah. Even with investors, we had fucking great investors. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like Viking was our early investor. They were fabulous. Like, like, you know, never a hint. Anything like that, but we still had it in there.

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Right. And then when we went public, we also kept a lot of that stuff. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And, and so, because when you go public, you can, you know, we have super voting [00:13:00] shares for all the, actually, not just for us, but for the employees too. Mm-hmm. Like, not founders, but every employee of the company. Uh, so those were all deliberate choices.

a little bit reflecting all the way back to the beginning, um, where we felt, I think we put in a lot. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so we were the right people to run it. yeah. I don't know. The other thing I, I guess my last point I would say is like, 

Be pretty aggressive about finding, um, like someone, like a year or two ahead of you and anything you're trying to learn about. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Not someone like 10 years ahead of you, like someone like two years ahead of you. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: That's just very practically Right. So like I had a buddy of mine who had, was running a FinTech company and was a couple years ahead of me and he taught me everything about raising money in Silicon Valley.

I had, you know, whatever we had our favorite people and various stuff for management or for this that, or the tools industry and life sciences. Like, like someone who can kind of just tell you like the tacit knowledge 

Armon: Yeah. And the next pothole to watch 

Jason: that. Yeah. And it's, still, um, it's not dated.

Yeah. Because like, but like for example, I'm not a great person to talk to about seed fundraising in Silicon Valley right now. I raised money in Silicon Valley, you know, whatever. 10 years ago. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: [00:14:00] Right. Like, I 

Armon: don't even know those guys anymore. 

Jason: I You don't as much, right. Yeah. Like I keep close to some people, but I dunno them as well.

Right. Does that make sense? Yeah, 

Armon: yeah. No, that totally resonates. And do you think the ecosystem has gotten any better or more favorable towards the kind of fresh outta PhD founders for biotech? 

Jason: It was getting better for a bit. Yeah. Like in the Zer era. So there was definitely a window, um, like there's funds like Indie Bio, for example.

Mm-hmm. I know about these guys. Yeah. Yeah. But they did all the animal free meat stuff. Yeah. They kind of got going on that wave and the wave happened. Right. It was almost like, you know, like hitting it and, and then the wave crashed. But if it, if that had kept going, I think that would've been more self-reinforcing.

Um, I've not seen it in, even during Zer. Yeah. You didn't see much of it in pharma drug development. 

Armon: Yes. 

Jason: You saw a little bit, but just a little bit. Yeah. Like, you know, Andreessen bio funded a couple companies, but not a ton. And then, you cause in general, the West coast VCs and the tech VCs, their, their intuition is tobacco founder.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: The Boston area venture capitalist. 

Armon: Why do you think the intuition's different? 

Right. 

Jason: Well, because that's what success looked like. I mean, it's basically 'cause [00:15:00] of the PC industry. Um, but honestly, so I take that back, it it, it's because of Intel. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Right. So like the, the origin of it is like the traitorous aid or whatever, the people that left Fairchild to start Intel Yeah.

And how well that went. and then Gates. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And then, and then they never just kind of like, okay, this is what, this is what big, this is what drives big success. 

Armon: I feel like one of my pet theories is that part of the reason biotech never has just knock outta the park success is the way tech has 

Jason: Yeah.

Armon: Is because they'll take technical risks, but they'll never take management risks or they'll rarely ever take management risk as you gather bubbles. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: And, and I think that's part of what caps them is because like people don't have no offense to people older than us, but like, they don't necessarily have the imagination to go do something crazy with it.

They're like, okay, I have my modicum of success with this clinical POC. We will sell to Pfizer for 2 billion and move on to do something else. 

Jason: Yeah. yes, I, I think one big problem is there is not the example cases of it having worked. I think it's a chicken and egg [00:16:00] issue.

Yeah. Because to your point, I think a younger ambitious founder is like more likely to do that. they do come along sometimes though. Right. So, um, you know, Chris, most recently, like a Chris Gibson at Recursion. Yeah. today our like only really founder led big company as Regeneron. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like John, uh, mag was sort of that, even though he wasn't the founding CEOs close enough, I would say Alnylam, but he's not, he's not there anymore.

So like Regeneron is our only real example, I would say, 

of a Yeah. 

Of a Yeah. Of a big biotech that still has like, founder energy. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: that's a bummer. Right. Whereas if you compare that to the tech industry, you know, Bezos for years and Gates for years, and Musk and Musk is still, it's a crazy Right?

Yeah. Like, you know, like, and so there is just this, like you're con you're getting so much leverage by having a person with like the moral authority Yeah. Of being the founder of the company deploying the resources of a company worth a trillion dollars. Yeah. Like you can put a dent in, you know, 

well, and, and 

like, like, 

like you can do some damage.

Right. Like, so, so, so. That's an unfair advantage. And then they, in those companies that the people have managed [00:17:00] to figure it out at that scale of the game, then that gives them an unfair advantage versus whatever industry they're going after. Yeah. Often. Right. Musk, I think showed that in spades. Yeah, right.

Like just like ripped up like the fucking aerospace and, and the car industry. 

Right. Like, like, I mean it's kind 

amazing, right? Yeah. Like what more did he have going for him other than honestly like that 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. That he, and but he had enough, he started to accumulate that momentum and he still could make like, founder decisions.

It's right. 

Armon: Because you can, you can do unpopular things for long enough for it to suddenly 

Jason: Yeah. And that's a big, I think that's exactly right. Like you, you can essentially push through periods that, um, if you're like controlled by a committee, they, they don't believe they would, they don't believe what you're saying is going to happen in year 10.

Yeah. And you can get to year 10. Yeah. And if you, then the next part is it has to be Right. 

Armon: Right. 

Jason: So, so like that, like that's the, 

you know, like, but, but if you can put those two things together Yeah. That's mosque, right? Yeah. And, and so. Yeah. We haven't had a lot of that in biotech. Yeah. Unfortunately. And, and I think drugs is [00:18:00] particularly brutal.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, so, so 

Armon: for that 

Jason: platform, right. Like it's particularly brutal 

because you almost can't just say like, if we power through this in 10 years, I guarantee you this drug's gonna work. 

Armon: Yeah. I guarantee you 10% chance. 

Jason: Right. It's just, yeah. 

So you kind of, so I think that's the other like, just like fact about drugs.

again, I'm like a biotech purist. I'm like a generalist about biotech. Like what I got got me into this was not curing cancer. I love three. I'd love to help that. You know, it gets my family like, but like what got me excited about it was genetic engineering as a technology. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like programming cells is what I'm excited about.

Yeah. Not drugs. 

and But I am bummed out that our only app area for the whole technology stack is drugs. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And man. And so I've kind of like, over time had to become like an expert. Now I know all the drug people, I know everything. Most of our customers are pharma companies now. But that's because all the technology squeezes through the keyhole of like FDA approved 

Armon: Yep.[00:19:00] 

Jason: Therapeutics. 

Armon: So, so what and what do you make of that, like whole platform versus therapeutics debate where, you know, when someone comes out with a new technology, there's a lot of pressures to go make a drug out of it. 'cause that can lead to the big outcomes and that's the, uh, like the gamble the VCs and biotech are used to doing.

Yeah. Uh, versus the platform stuff can be more unpopular, where you're just providing a tool for many others to go build things. How do you view the pros and cons of that debate? 

Jason: Yeah, I mean, I, so I'm like an world expert in, uh, platform, business model attempts in biotech. I've tried a lot of things. Uh, I've tried going into different markets, right?

So like the, the early part of Ginkgo is sort of. Applying a platform style business model we can talk about in outside of pharma. Yeah. So in industrial biotech, agricultural, biotech, all my first customers were like flavor, fragrance, attrition, cannabis, cosmetics. Uh, they're crop science, like ran, you know, sumo chemical and startup companies doing animal free meat.

Like all this weird shit. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. 

And it turns out like, [00:20:00] like 

ag is a real industry, but it's just not nearly as big as pharma and all the other like weird applications of biotech just have not gotten 

Armon: mm-hmm. 

Jason: They've not been successful in the market. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so we're still pretty much stuck down the pharma lane.

So when people say like platform versus products, what they're really saying is platform that makes 

drugs versus products that 

make drugs. Yeah. Okay. Just for clarity. Okay. Which is a bit of a bummer. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. I would like to get to the point where it's platform that does genetic engineering, not just platform makes drugs, but that's not the world we're in today.

Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Alright. So then what about drugs versus drug platforms? there have been platform companies in the drug industry. A couple, um, like the most, the one that's lasted the longest is aab. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. Uh, where they have a platform business model, 

not 

because, lemme step back for a sec.

I think there are, uh, three lanes you could theoretically go down. You can develop your own drug. 

You can sell life science tools. Where I think the key distinction here is you do not really, you don't get any piece of the value. These No 

Armon: royalties. 

Jason: Yeah. No royalties, no piece of [00:21:00] the value of the, of the things that get made with your tools.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Or you can try to concoct a platform business model where you would get a piece 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Of the value of the things developed on your platform. 

So Atom Abs been like the most longstanding instance of that. And the way their deals work is you pay some nine, nine half, nine bucks something and like they do some RD for you.

They discover you, uh, in this case like antibody binder against a target, and then they take a royalty, slow single digit royalty on the backside and get some milestones at like, you know, whatever different phases. 

they they did it for like a zillion antibody drugs and it's like, it's okay.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like Adam has a real ass company, like they real 

employees, but they're like, 

know, 200 people in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Like it is not Regeneron, it's not over that same period of time, 25-year-old company. Right. Yeah. And so, and, and the basic challenge I think is just the time to get to the royalties and everything.

Yeah. And drugs is tough. It's just tough. 

Armon: well I think it's also hard to convince 

Jason: pharma to do. 

A hundred percent 

Armon: because usually will stay. No. 

Jason: Yeah. I mean, Adam have sat on the biggest platform wave ever in Varma anyway, [00:22:00] which was, uh, maps. 

Armon: Yeah, 

Jason: right. Like an, uh, antibody and so everyone else was like, I'm make a platform in this and like, you know, like, whatever, RNA or blah blah, like I own this.

Versus Nym is another good example. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like I own kind of went out with a platform model and RNA and then, and then they had to go, and then Alnylam crushed them basically in terms of overall, and I, I now, I think make their own drugs. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so the, and that, 

so that's the other classic thing. 

You come out as a platform and then you 

Armon: become a drug.

Jason: You become a drug. Yeah. And so couple of the antibody companies are like that now. Yeah. Um, uh, AbSci. 

Um, 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and I like, that's kind of the other one, what we went through at Squeeze too. We started as a platform and then had to become a, had to, uh, become a drug in the end. 

Jason: like, we even went back when we were doing the industrial stuff, we were getting pressure to like go be a fragrance company or make, in fact the main, the company we ended up acquiring, which was the other company that had a lot of 

same 

of robotics and, and centralized genetic engineering technology.

You had this company called Zymergen. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: The reason we were able to buy them was 'cause they chose to vertically integrate Yeah. Into like thin film chemistry. And that product was a myth. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so [00:23:00] that, that's your writ and that's what happens with these platforms. Like once you, once you go after the drug, if your drug fails, your technology dissipates.

And that's 

a big bummer for the field. I, 

Armon: is there a way to solve that? 'cause I totally agree. That's like one of the shames is you see all these really cool technologies come up, you're like, that tech probably still works. Yeah. It's just like whatever about that indication and that drug didn't 

Jason: Yeah. So now let us move our eyes from the drugs.

Yeah. The platform business models, which I would love someone to find one that works, but I have not seen it. 

The 

tools industry. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. I think we should talk about this because, you know, the tools industry, I know the tools industry, and I actually think for, um, new PhD types, uh, and like young founders in biotech, 

I 

I'm not gonna tell 'em, go try to make a drug.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like, certainly if you're like an undergrad, I'm not gonna be like, get at it. 

Right? Like, you know, like, go ahead. Like, you know, like, this is, like, now we're fucking away. Right. Like, it's 

Armon: easy guys. 

Jason: it's brutal, right? Like, it's brutal and you won't, I don't know how to 

get you the money. Like I don't, I don't see how I'm gonna get you the 

money.

Right? Yeah. And the best 

you can do is get 

a platform story, sell it to a tech vc, Adam Wise, recursion, blah, blah, [00:24:00] blah, accumulating of money 

to do it yourself. And like, you know, like there are 

ways, but it is, it's tough. Okay. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: But let's take the tools. Industry. Well, tools industry sells to the pharma companies.

They sell like not to startups, also to the giant, the giant farm industry that spends. 60 to $80 billion a year on research. 

Armon: Yep. 

Jason: Uh, they sell to the academic universities, which actually spend money on, it's expensive to run a bottle lab at mit. You have a real budget, you 

know? Right. Like 

you spend money on reagents, you spend money on equipment, all these things.

And so that's a real 

industry. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so why don't we get more startups there? That is, I think, a good question for us to talk about. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: What's your thought? And I'll pile in mine. 

Armon: I mean, well, so the most common thing I've heard for that side, because I think people come with 

Jason: water every one of time.

You, I try to dodge them when I stuck this up, but 

every time I 

got off. 

Yeah, it's in there. It's fine. 

Armon: No, so, so I mean, I think part of the problem you run into is that, or I think a common thing I've heard one of our advisors say is that often the [00:25:00] problem with tools isn't that the tool doesn't work, it's that the market isn't big enough.

Jason: Mm-hmm. 

Armon: And you have this conundrum of, okay, my observation as a PhD, my observation as a PhD. Works, but it's another $30 million away from being productized. 

Jason: Yep. 

Armon: But at that point, if my market is only 30 million annually, it's not a VC investible thesis. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: And a lot of times you don't know how big it can be because you may be enabling a lot of new stuff and you don't know how big that can be.

And related to the kind of having backend economics can be the problem because even if you're successful, if you only have so many customers Correct. That can buy it. 

Jason: Yep. 

Armon: People are gonna be skeptical of how big it can truly be. Like how often is it gonna be an Illumina, 

Jason: a hundred 

Armon: percent percent of outcome.

Yeah. Right. Uh, and I think that's really the challenge. Like is the problem you're solving big enough and do you understand the rest of these problems enough to create more of a solution that's easier for people to adopt Because a five-year adoption cycle will kill you. 

Jason: Yep. 

Armon: Um, you need people to start buying within a year of launch.

Yeah. Otherwise you're screwed. 

Jason: So, yeah, so I think [00:26:00] Illumina's a good example of like one of the big successes people have tried software in the space. Yeah. Like Benchling or something.

Like Benchling has like muscled through that, right? Yeah. The, the, um, and um, uh, there's YC Park partner on Gupta. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, started a company that we acquired before he did yc, and he wrote up a really nice blog post about like, 

Armon: okay, 

Jason: why it's hard to do software selling Right. 

Armon: Why is it hard to do software selling?

Jason: Because, just curious. It's basically, if you do the math on seats, there's like, it's, to your point, there's just not that many, there's just not enough seats. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Not that many seats and no one's gonna pay. And, and like, and like, you know, like the example of the longstanding one would be Schrodinger.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. 

And like Gay Stronger is great, and like, yeah, they did like computational molecule, but again, it's like a billion dollar company. And then like, they started to do well by like creating spinoffs that they Exactly. Took equity in drugs again, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like it was like that, you know? And so, so anyway, um, you know, I think, uh, I think that's right.

I think like, like a narrow tool 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, is just sort of hard to get like a, a like [00:27:00] a giant outcome on Yeah. I think that's like a, a piece of the problem. 

Armon: often to show the new capabilities end to end, so they get tempted into like services and solutions.

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: But then the scalability of services becomes interesting, to say the least. Yeah. Because then the CRO model becomes like a 

fight 

for narrow margins and super commoditized, and how do you keep all your people employed, which like the automation stuff you guys work on can be a huge solution to that.

But I think these are the junctures at which people fall on their face. Yeah. Really hard. 

Jason: Yes. I think that's exactly right. Everyone wants the magical, like, like sequencing was so magical because it was, um, uh, a narrow band of, of like tool. Yeah. But there was a huge amount of demand for it.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And so that's beautiful, right. Um, and so they could really drive a truck through that. And it was like a, you know, again, like, 

like, 

um, wasn't like the original founder was close enough to like a company where they were able to push through all that stuff. And so the, um, you know, fend off an acquisition.

Yeah. I remember Roche tried to buy aluminum when they republic and like they fucking [00:28:00] rejected it. Like, like, 

so they did a really nice 

job getting to as big as I think they were gonna get, uh, pretty quickly. Yeah. And that was a good story, but that was because there was a lot of demand 

down a down a 

narrow lane.

Right. 

Armon: and that's where I think one of the problems that we've all been facing is how do you generate that demand? Because sequencing was kind of a unique thing of like, it had suddenly become hot. Everyone wanted to do it. There was a lot of pull from the market. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: Uh, which made it possible.

But if you're the original spark of that new possibility, whether it's like automation or engineering, whatever, it's Yeah. Um, people wanna see the end to conservative to adopt it at risk. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: What do you think it takes to kind of generate self, generate that momentum if there's not some other macro reason it became popular?

Jason: mean the sweet spot, I think sequence is a good thing to dig in on, right? Yeah. Because I think one of the things that happened was as the cost fell, 

it 

did make more and more like techniques, like more things that you could do with sequencing became a minimal, even on the research side, you could do a bigger [00:29:00] thing, you know, a wider GWAS or like whatever, like there was 

like 

more papers to write, more MH grants to get.

As the cost of sequencing fell. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: You could do like new types of work. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: You weren't like hitting a diminishing return at a certain price point. Yeah. In my view, I think we're still not even there with sequencing. Right. I think like, like if you made it way, way, way cheaper, we would like, we would find more uses for sequencing.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So, so I think there's like a, um, a 

driver, like it is like do, do like technical breakthroughs in your lane. Like is it elastic to that? 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Does that make sense? 

And so, so I think that's another thing to look for, right? Like, can I, if I make it a lot better, will people be able to do broadly new types of research, in which case they're gonna eat it up?

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, and then the beauty is like sequencing then also went into like diagnostics and clinical and stuff and that. But that's been like. Honestly more recent. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like, like whole 

thing of like, oh, we're sequencing the cancers and all that stuff like that, that, you know, the whole growth of Illumina like mostly predates that.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. It was like 

human genomes. Well, like [00:30:00] why? 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like why were 

we sequencing human genomes? 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: You know? Right. Like it's still, you know, like it's still 

not, I got my genome sequence has never fucking done anything for me. Right. Yeah. 

Like we're still early in 

even knowing how to use that and help.

My doctor certainly doesn't look at it. 

Yeah. Right. And so that 

was always really research. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And then all of the other stuff like, you know, whatever, studying all these different cell sites, that's all research. 

uh, and then research for drugs and research for research, uh, clinical diagnostic stuff is like the new wave.

Tempes and all these guys. Right. And so, 

so I do 

think it doesn't even need to be, like, it can be, it can be disruptive to drug discovery and academic research and you can create your own wave. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: But it's gotta be something like sequencing that actually makes a fucking difference, right? Yeah. Like, as it gets better, especially, right?

Like, it's not like a one shot thing, like, cool, I got crispr. It's like one shot. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like, like how does it, you know, like you would really like it to keep going down a technology curve so that people come up with more and more uses over time. Drive volume. 

Armon: Right. So they can expand it 

 [00:31:00] how do you see the role of the government side in enhancing these technologies? 'cause there's obviously the HHS stuff. There's like DOD funding. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: W now, but 

Jason: Yeah, 

Armon: yeah, yeah. 

Jason: mean, I'm pretty bullish about this 'cause I think we have got people in there now that like, are open to, to trying new things.

Yeah. Um, because I think in the best case, the government. On the science side is, is doing a couple things. One is funding the sort of like open-ended, you know, pi driven research that is magical, right? Like the HHMI almost kind of style. Like, here's some money, you're real one, you're 

the 

person in your area, still do things.

Go like, 

the boundaries of human knowledge please. Like by any means necessary. Um, but then the other thing they can do, I think is like, like the human genome project, they can 

push 

technologies into domains where the private market's not ready to push them yet. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And see if they can handle it.

Yeah. Like see if the technology itself can handle it. Yeah. Uh, the Human Genome project did that [00:32:00] beautifully. Ar Arnet did that beautifully. Right. Like, and DARPA's whole thing is like 

our, the, our, 

the people we fund when they fund something like that are supposed to live like five years in the future.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like you're living five years in the future. I know everything around this. Like who doesn't actually accept, but you're gonna pretend and you're gonna like, I'm gonna give you the money to like try that. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. Right. And. 

And if we like what 

we see there, then often the, then that creates the demonstrations for private capital.

Yeah. 

I think that actually 

pretty fucking useful. Yeah. Um, so I think we could see some of that at the, with what's happening with AI right now. I dunno if you followed like the Genesis mission stuff outta the White House. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a, we got some money, but we, um, department of Energy did a $47 million contract with us to build out a, a big autonomous lab up the Pacific Northwest National Lab.

And this is them pushing basically, uh, the replacement of the lab bench. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: With robotics. And the reason that's great is a robotics could run 24 7, it could run on the weekends, but also importantly it can, it plays well with [00:33:00] agents. So an ai, you could talk to an AI as a scientist, ask for an experiment to get run and the, you know, or, or ask them for an experiment to be designed Yeah.

Against a hypothesis you have and have that get executed on autonomous lab and even have that loop. And so we did a project with OpenAI where GBT five ran the lab I just showed you a minute ago. Yeah. Uh, for like six rounds of cycles. And we beat state of the art on a self protein synthesis by 40% with just the model designing the experiments.

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: And 

so, well, hey, I don't know, like, is that, is that, 

like, is there better ways to do science if you adopt this model for AI and robotics to do lab work? Well, I, you know, 

maybe, I mean, but like, is Merck 

gonna dump a bunch of money on that? I don't know. They, they would wanna see that it works, right?

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So 

like, what would be a a cool way to test this? Like, uh, let's say you take like Alzheimer's 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: All right. Uh, to talk 

to the top 

Alzheimer's researchers and be like, all right, I wanna get a hundred hypothesis or a hundred favorite hypotheses to go after and I'm gonna assign an AI agent, smartest one.

[00:34:00] We've got open AI or anthropic, whatever, uh, to all a hundred hypotheses. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: I'm gonna give them access to an autonomous lab. 

To design, 

to basically design an experiment against that hypothesis. 

Armon: Yep. 

Jason: Run the experiment, get the data back, and then go again. 

Armon: Yep. 

Jason: And here's, here's some of the advantages I think that has versus what we do today where we, we have a hundred, we, each of those a hundred PIs gets 

handed 

money to have a lab basically do that same thing, pursue a hundred different, there's so 

Armon: much 

waste. 

Jason: There's at least a hundred, 

uh, uh, different PIs studying Alzheimer's right now. Okay. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Alright. 

one advantage there, the traditional manual labs, like I mentioned are only running during the week. And, you know, it's only so many hours in the day that people are gonna come in and do that. So I think you see like a three x improvement just 'cause the, the Thomas labs running night and day.

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Alright. second, uh, 

how do those 

labs exchange information with each other? Papers three years later. 

Papers. three years. Exactly. Right. So, so, and, 

and in that paper is sort of like what the di distillation of what I learned over three years, which by 

the way is a great [00:35:00] Because I, as 

person reading this, I'm like, I don't wanna hear about every fucking bad experiment you did along the way. I just wanna know, like, 

I trust 

you. You're the person in charge of that. You're putting your name behind it. Yeah. Like put your name on the paper, 

like 

tell me what you've concluded.

Yeah. So I can update my priors for the thing I'm working on over on my hypothesis. Yeah. But we do that every three 

years. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And yeah, made conferences in between, but people are pretty tight. Okay. 

So what 

the AI models do? 

Well, 

every day 

they 

to each other the experiments they ran. And by the way, that's programmatically defined.

Yeah. Through the autonomous lab. So we know exactly the experimental conditions. Exactly what piece of equipment, exactly how long on the equipment, everything. Every liquid transfer, the whole shebang. Yeah. And the outcome of those experiments. 

And if there's like an equipment failure in there that's recorded, if it went perfectly, that's recorded, if the experiment was done correctly, but the result was kind of a dud result for hypothesis number one.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Maybe that D 

Dud result is relevant to, is a useful result for Hypothesis 

79. Okay. And day, every day 

they could pass that information. Every day. They could handle the context of seeing all that. [00:36:00] And probably there's a lot of relevance in the, in the crosswork because they're all working on Alzheimer's.

Armon: Yeah. Why don't we try that? 

Jason: Right. 

And so like that's the 

kind of thing that the NIH should do. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: That's the kind of thing that like do DOE should do through Genesis 

mission 

is like, let's just let it loose in an area and really give it a shot. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Um, 

and, and I think they're the place 

to do that more than.

Uh, 

Armon: yeah. 

Jason: Right. 

Especially, 

so if you asked me on the gov side, I think that's the kind of stuff I'd love to see people trying is like the meta science, like the different ways to even just do this stuff. Like I would like to see it get pushed. 

Armon: Well, especially because the failed experiments are so informative because the papers are only biased towards what worked 

Jason: a hundred percent.

Armon: Uh, and the failed experiments could be so informative. I mean, like, I wonder if it could even go a step further where, similar to how they now, like oblige open access to publications mm-hmm. For the NIH stuff, if they oblige some level of data access 

Jason: Correct. 

Armon: Um, for anything funded by the [00:37:00] NIH so that people can harvest that.

To figure out like, okay, what, what else can we learn from all these things that never got published, 

Jason: agreed. 

Armon: Um, so that we don't repeat the same mistakes. 'cause I would bet any lab, whether it's in pharma, academia, 90% of what they're doing, someone else did it 

Jason: Yes. 

Armon: And already knows it doesn't work. 

Jason: Yes.

Stronger 

Armon: knows that 

works, but then the next part will fail. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: Uh, and if you just had access to that, you would save an insane amount of resources. 

Jason: Yes. So, so, 

Armon: and headache. 

Jason: Yeah. So I think the government can do stuff like that. 

Jason: and I do think, just to go back to the tools thing. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: think the way you make a big tools company, and this is basically what I'm trying to do now, but like the way you make a big tools company is you, you use the fact that there is a good tools industry right now.

Yeah. Like, there are actually, you know, Thermo Fisher's a 200 billion plus market cap company. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Danaher, the two of them are kind of the whatever, the Google and Amazon Cloud, you know? Yeah. Like, like they're the ones who provide everything. 

Then there's 

also actually a bunch of like good size mid, you know, like mid-size companies in there that make a lot of [00:38:00] profits.

Like it's very highly profit once you hit a certain scale. It's a very profitable industry. Reagent companies. Yeah. Certain smaller equipment companies, so forth. 

Armon: Well, it's super sticky. People don't 

Jason: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. It's a good business. 

Armon: Really high margin. 

Jason: It's a high margin good business. And so, um, 

I think you could 

pick an area there that it is a little, you gotta figure out the funding.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: This is, I think the challenge, that initial bite is not really a venture return. If you take out whatever your favorite reagent company something. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Um, but, but if you have a vision on. A transformation of like how we do this stuff. Yeah. Like for me, that's like, I did it. I hit the, I hit the thing.

thing, 

Uh, I'm not supposed to hit this with my Italian arm waving. Um, that if you, uh, have a vision for how to disrupt the whole thing and do it differently. Yeah. And this is your step in, it's like my vision is we should close all lab benches. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Lab benches are, we're great for a hundred years, but like their, their time is done.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And we should move to autonomous labs. Great. That's my long-term vision. [00:39:00] My inlet point might be, uh, hydro food screening systems or, you know, right. Like something that's like a, a thing people buy today. Yeah. That uses a lot of robots. Not the way I want them to use it, but at least they're buying it.

It's 

Armon: close enough 

Jason: and I can kind of like 

muscle in, but then really what I'm trying to do is get you to, to Dr. Dream, my big dream. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And that is a venture. That's a big deal, right? That's a multi hundred billion dollar company because there was a multi hundred billion dollar company. If I could like change how everyone does science.

That is a venture return. And so like, I think that's a possible route Yeah. For people thinking about, and that's just my vision, my dream. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Is this, but like other people have other dreams, like maybe it's something about micros or something about your favorite, like how you do chemistry or reagents, I don't know.

Yeah. Like, 

like a lot of great 

ideas out there, but like find that first one to bite off. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: That you could disrupt, but know that if you kept then leaning into it, you could maybe change the whole way people do this. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: I think that could get so that like that's, that's backable and it's in tools.

Yeah. So you could do it straight outta school. You don't have to be, you know, whatever. 

Armon: Yeah. And, and, and related to the funding [00:40:00] side of it, I mean, you guys are public now, you obviously were private before. How do you view the pros and cons of public side capital markets and their support for these things versus private side?

Jason: They both have challenges. So I would say on the private side, you're the hard, the thing we did very well, but the thing that is very hard to do is normalize weird types of stuff. And by weird, I mean not software 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Or drugs. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. Because like the two, like longstanding venture backed ecosystems are software and drugs.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Because those do yield ultra high margin, big, uh, market products on the, at the other side, 

everything 

Oh, we tried batteries for a while and then we tried clean tech and well, we tried animal free meat. We tried, 

but we actually keep trying 

other stuff, but nothing's had the, like, long-term staying power of drugs and software.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And so if you are not one of those two things, okay. In other words, you're even a tools company is not a drug company. 

Armon: Yep. 

Jason: You're biotech, but you're not how they think of it. then you, your access to capital in, in the private markets is trickier. Yeah. And so a [00:41:00] lot of what you, and by the way, like.

There's a lot of great examples. Like recently more and more of them, uh, boom, aerospace, Andel, Hadian, all these defense tech companies also. Absolutely. They're not making software. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And Andre's blowing stuff up. I don't see, you know, like, oh yeah. We're like, what 

do they do? They're like, well, it's 

about the, the software 

inside.

They're just saying that. Right. Like, like they're just saying that because they're, 

they needed to sell to 

tech Seats. Yeah. Right. And so what Elon, 

it's all about the, the, you know, the car is just a wrapper around a computer, you know? Right. Yeah. Like Yeah. Sort of now maybe with self-driving.

Yeah. But like what he really was building was a car company. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And, and an electric one. That was a transition. So there 

an opening. Yeah. But he was like, if 

he had just pitched an electric car company, people would tell the pound stand. 

So like over 

time, at least they did for years, and that's why he funded himself.

But like eventually he started to tell stories that were 

very much 

like software stories. Yeah. Largely to just normalize what he was doing for the tech investors, my opinion. 

Yeah. 

And so there's 

a, there's a challenge there, which is like. Can you 

like, 

does your story fit? 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And [00:42:00] like, you know it does, 

right?

Like yeah. Software does matter. Like the Tesla does sell in part because like, it's not the whole story, but it's at least part of it. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right? Same goes like, we had a bunch of stuff in ours because we use all the robotics and things like that, that like fit for tech. But if you have nothing that fits, it's tough.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right? But if you have something that fits when you're private, that's your challenge is like, can you normalize it for like the generalist investor 

Armon: Right. 

Jason: To, to invest in you. That's the private Public's different. Pub public 

is amazing 'cause it's like huge amounts of capital. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: So the good thing about being a public company is it's like, it's kind of hard for public companies to go outta business.

Right? Like people just like. If you look, this companies just last forever, right? Yeah. Because there's just like always, you know, like you're repriced automatically. Yeah. Good and bad or so went down 95% like, like, you know, like that's not a lot of fun, but you're repriced. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. So, so like the, the fail case 

of a private company is basically you're repriced, but of your investors wanna admit.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. 

And you're death can't do that down round. 

And then they're like, about this, and they wait and wait and wait and can't you get an up round now [00:43:00] and then wait so long that you're like, well, there's nothing. And they're like, well, I guess their only choice is to wind it down. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And they're like, well, your choice could have been to do a down round a year and a half ago when I first brought it up to you.

And they're like, yeah, 

well 

now. Yeah. 

Right. And so, so like, that's what kill, that's why private companies like die 

with greater frequency than public companies. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. 

Armon: The public one's, like someone can, because of the repricing, someone can always take a bet on what is 

Jason: Oh, what's look? Yeah. You might be like, listen, I don't think, you know, like what? Like, you don't have to love 

you right now, you have to love me relative to my, my current market. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And really my enterprise 

value. right. 

then people can make that bet. 

Yeah. And so like, there's just 

a lot of people, it's easy to get in and out and so there's like always people kind of willing to make that bet in the public market.

Yeah. That, that you don't, it's a different now at the same time. 

You're public, so it's like the 

noise level's insane. It's more complicated with employees. Like a lot of stuff is like my, especially when you're not doing well, it's just harder to have a narrative that like, wow, the shit that we're doing here at GIGO right now is like the fucking coolest shit I've seen in the last 10 years.

I'm like, 

Armon: yeah, 

Jason: literally like programming a robotics. And I ran my first experiment the other 

day. It's like, like [00:44:00] really fun stuff 

happened I fucking love, but like, oh, stock's down. It's like, okay, well I dunno. 

Armon: You 

Jason: know? Right. 

Right. like it's, is just. Whereas like as a private 

company, you control your narrative a lot more.

Does that make 

Armon: sense? Yeah. Because that, yeah, because I kind of thing of it as like the private companies, they're just viewed through a series of snapshots. It's like you take a picture when you're Right. 

Jason: you decide when you wanna take that 

Armon: picture. Exactly. look good today 

saved. I can do this.

But then like public is a movie. They're watching you every day at every 

Jason: Yeah. It's Trueman show. 

Armon: So being a good movie director is very different. 

Jason: Yes. 

Armon: From like, looking good for a day. 

Jason: Hundred percent. It's really like a reality TV show. Yes. 

Yeah. But like 

a hundred percent. Yeah, that is exactly it. That's, that's what 

Armon: makes it work.

Jason: And so like you just have to have 

different attitude about it. I think that that's a big part of it. Um, but otherwise, I mean, I'm very happy we did it. Yeah, 

Armon: yeah. 

Jason: You know? Right. Like, but it's, it's a, that's the difference. I say. 

Armon: Yeah. There's, there's a trade off and, and I think really it's what we were saying with the founders who can make it to a certain extent, like the people that may thrive on that private side may not like, 

Jason: like the, like the microscope.

Armon: The 

Yeah, 

Jason: yeah. Because 

like the 

Armon: camera always 

following them on the public 

side. 

Jason: Yeah. 'cause like, [00:45:00] yeah, when you're over here, it is 

like, it's always good news. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Basically until it's like you're bankrupt. Right. But like private companies 

are like, it's going great, it's going great. Great. And then it's like finally off a cliff or something.

Right? But like they, it never, you know, you don't, which is not the case for public companies. 

Armon: Yeah. You don't, you don't get to see it. 

Jason: I do think the trend of like all the valuation growth while the company's private is a bummer.

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: and that's a little bit because of like socks, like survey socks, like, like the rule, like, and the fact that it's like expense more expensive now. That's the other thing. Cost more money to be anything, to be private basically. So, so, so that drag has kept companies private longer. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: think something like Berkshire's like a beautiful thing, right?

Like if you ever, you ever go to like the Berkshire like meeting, uh, so I, I went like, like five years ago, like, I gotta go before buffet quits or dies or something. Yeah. So, uh, it's awesome. And, 

and you're in 

the stadium and it's. A zillion people, Midwest people like, who 

just made a boat. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like, you like, they're like, this is great.

I listened. You know, like, it's like I bet on this thing 

I went long term and I, you 

know, like [00:46:00] da da da. And so I, I 

do think, like, it would be nice to see more of that, like more early companies come going public earlier. Yeah. And like the thing I, I think that Buffet did really well. Was he divine this habit?

He taught like retail investors about, um, like long-term value investing. Yeah. Okay. Right. Like he explained moats. Like moats is like, kind of like I show buffet thing. 

Armon: Yeah, yeah, 

Jason: yeah. He had that in some fricking letter 30 years ago or something that he wrote. Right. And like, he's like the, and Coca-Cola is the boat and like, hold it forever and don't pay attention to the, you know, all that stuff.

Right. 

I realized this thing, like when we went public and I looked at like who, like we have one of our long-term investors is Bailey Gifford, which is like the Scottish Investment Fund. They're long-term growth in Tesla and huge Make a boat on 

SpaceX. Like 

And, and 

they're kind 

of magical in the sense that they're like, and they were the ones that were big backers of Illumina.

Yeah. Like resisted the Roche takeover. Like they were like, in my opinion, um, probably the best, like, just true long-term growth that's been added for a long time. Public investor. Uh, but also we went public, um, Kathy Wood invest it in Na [00:47:00] Park. Yeah. And, or sorry. And, and she is also, uh, and when I say long-term growth, I mean I'm gonna hold it for a long time '

because I expect in the future 

Yeah.

It's gonna spike. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And I 

don't know exactly 

when, but I'm just gonna like accumulate while it's cheap and then eventually it's gonna go because I believe in, in like this, like longer trend. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: That's different than Buffett buys things that have already hit. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And he thinks they can protect for a long time.

Armon: Right. 

Jason: Does that make sense? That's the difference. So long-term growth. Okay, so I look and I'm like, lemme look at like what Kathy's invested in and what Bailey's invested in because by the way. Just like personality wise. Yeah. These two funds couldn't feel more different. 

Okay. Right. Like, Kathy's on YouTube all the time thing.

And Bailey's like, you know, like wonderful, like quiet Scottish 

right? Like, you know, and so, so 

what the heck? But if you look at their portfolios, it's like 

70% 

overlap. 

Okay. And it's because they're finding 

the public long-term growth Yeah. And there's just not that many of them.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Because like 

most of the companies that are public are past the growth phase, and they're [00:48:00] just kind of, they're buffet things. You're kind of picking which ones you think aren't gonna decline. 

Armon: Right. 

Jason: And they're gonna kind of grow steadily, but they're not the, uh, oh, this is like, you know, whatever. Um, Nvidia.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Which again, Bailey's a long holder of, right. Like these things where you're kind of like, you bet to bet on it for a while and then it infl. 

flex. 

I would love 

to see more of that. I would love to see more like investors who spoke to retail about that. Yeah. Like just this concept of long-term growth.

Armon: Well, well I think the retail part is a big miss for our industry. 'cause I think tech appeals to retail really easily. Yeah. Whereas retail, I think is generally afraid. And you can just tell from like the trading volumes of a typical 

Jason: Totally. 

Armon: Like retail is not involved, it's just the big holders, which obviously there's a lot of good things about them, but it means that the total capital going into our space tends to be quite low.

Jason: Yeah. 

Armon: Relatively speaking, with the exception of the COVID spike where like everyone and their grandmother decided to start making bets. Um, yeah. And if there was only better ways to, I think, you know. E explain our purpose to the broader [00:49:00] public, then there would be more interest. Yeah. Because everyone I think has an inherent interest in health.

They're just like too confused to bet on tools and drugs, et cetera. Yeah. Relative to like, oh, that car was shiny. I kind of like it. I'll buy that. 

Jason: Well, and I don't even 

it's, it's that like, it's not quite even that simplistic on the cars. Like I think you had a lot of people who sort of on the growth side, like the Tesla retail base 

Armon: Yeah.

Jason: Sort of like educated themselves on electric car. Like there's, there's, there was kind of like a, and I, again, I think Kathy and a do a good job like sharing all their research in this regard. Yeah. So I, I. I, I think you're not wrong. Like, I think we, we could do a lot better at that. Yeah. I think the human trial drug thing is its own very particular difficult thing.

That's why I, I actually think tools might be a great place to do it. Yeah. I think we could actually talk to the public and retail investors much better about the tools industry. Yeah. That could be well understood. There's some of this, which genomic mix and things, even ARC has done a, a good amount of work, like talking about this more publicly.

I think that's like nice to see. 

Armon: Yeah.

looking back, is there anything you would do differently in the ways you were [00:50:00] building gingko? Like stuff you learned later that you're like, shit, I should have done that from day one, just to spare others the 

Jason: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Oh, no, there's tons of things. 

Um, there's a lot of things we did well, right? Yeah. Um, like we went through a lot of different transitions, building the company. I think we, we, we, the basic story for us. Oh, I know what I was gonna mention just before I get off the Yeah.

Yeah. The health topic. You mentioned it like, hey, everyone has an interest in health. I think that's true. Right? And so. 

The 

other thing, I think that's wild to me. So I think the thing Elon does beautifully is he's kind of like, there's a big pile of money way out there. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like, I am confident that if, if you put these things together, there's a big pile of money out there.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And, and there's a lot of things you gotta put together and it's gonna take a long time to do it, 

but I'm really sure 

about that big pile of money. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: that is hard for two reasons, putting all this stuff together, but it's also hard to point and know that the money, big pile of money is there.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Like, space is a great example. 

Armon: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Like I'm [00:51:00] sure there's a 

big pile of money if we drop 

the cost of launch to space. Yeah. Like, they may be, 

like, a lot of 

people would say like, what? 

You know, like, what 

are we gonna do? We can't breathe up 

there. You know? Right. Yeah. Like, you know, like, like it's like 

totally rational to be like, I don't see a big pile of money, 

but like, starlink and stuff like that.

Like, he figured out like, okay, I, I even have a first. 

Solid 

pile of money. Yeah. That I'll just do myself to kinda like boot up the concept and now you're seeing other people. I saw some YC company that you could hit a button your phone and it'll point a bunch of satellites to shine sun at a location, like a small location for a period of time.

I was like, fucking coolest thing I've ever seen. 

Like, like for like a nighttime, you know, like when you drag all these lights out to like a nighttime construction site. Right. like, what if instead I could just have construction 

site and I just pay and you just put your GPS cords in 

Armon: practical.

I don't know, but cool. For sure. 

Jason: I mean, I think practical as hell. Right. You know, like, it's like a 

great idea, you know? 

Right. And like, but that's, that's the kind of 

stuff that now, okay, that's in the space pile of money, but God bless you for like money kind of like pointing to it and knowing it's okay.

 [00:52:00] 

Jason: Let me tell you what the absolute biggest pile of money in the entire freaking world is. That's in the future. It's longevity and wellness for human beings into the later ages of their life. 

Armon: Yeah, 

Jason: dude. It's like infinity pile of money. What is what? Like we are starting to get a taste of this. 'cause like of the GLP ones are like a truly consumer product, biotech product.

I mean, Lily and Novos, what were, it was like a trillion dollar market. I mean they're like the next 10 drug companies combined. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: In market cap 

for 

one consumer product. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: And that's because 

whole industry, which is actually amazing, we understand human biology, we understand biotech, right?

There's most fucking esoteric stuff in the world, like Car T, this and blah, blah, blah, that, right? Yeah. And we point the whole thing at the disease market. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Which listen, like diseases are important to cure, but like you don't spend a lot of your life diseased, you know, in the [00:53:00] person. Right. But like in general, across all people, it's actually a very small amount of time.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: It's important time. You don't wanna spend a lot of money in that time. You don't like to spend the money. That's why everybody hates pharma. 

Armon: Yeah, 

Jason: okay. But it's like a period of time. You're not spending by choice, but you're willing to spend. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. So that's what we go after with all that technology.

Okay. One consumer product worth the next whatever, 40 drugs 

something. 

Yeah. Uh, and then, 

and 

that one's just like, all it did was like, make you lose 10 pounds. 

Right. Like, like what, what's it worth? 

Yeah. If it like, like added three years to your lifespan. Well, 

Well, remember I was saying what was it worth 

if you had like the muscles of a 40-year-old in your seventies?

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Everybody. Not like, just like the psychos who spend their whole life trying to do it. Like everybody. Yeah. With a shot like ar Armand, like, is, is that worth 5 trillion? Oh, I, I remember 10 

Like, like, like it, is, it's, dwarfs everything Yeah. remember you know, I throw my phone 

away in two seconds to get that drug.

I remember seeing 

in the river, like, who cares? Like, they, I don't even like 

that stuff. Like, the tech is annoying at this point, you know? Right. Like these [00:54:00] things are 

Armon: No, I remember seeing, um, something about like basically pointing out like, 'cause you were mentioning Warren Buffet, like. Do you not think he would give up 99% of his wealth to be 30 again?

Jason: Yeah. Hundred percent, right? 

Armon: Yeah. I'm like, yeah, totally. I guess, 

Jason: yeah. It's, without question, 

Armon: 99.9%. 

Jason: Right. And so like, that is entirely so there's a similar thing, 

there's like an Elon to do here. Yeah. 'cause it's in the same way, it's not just technological. Like, what's the biggest barrier of that?

Well, regulatory of course. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right? Like, you can't even get a drug approved for a longevity. Yeah. Like, you have to like back your way in, like, oh, this is a drug for diabetes. And like, 

they, it's like, you know, like 

the, oh, 

I just, you know, like, 

it happens to work on this. Like, everyone loses 10 pounds.

Like, like, you know, the, that, so, so this like there's regulatory issues. There's, we don't understand the human biology issues. There's like, there's just a lot a litany of stuff. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: But 

there was a litany of stuff for space. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And so like I do think we could 

collectively work on that. You know, like that's like the kind of stuff I'd love to see.

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, our industry get [00:55:00] after. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Because. the big question is, is the big pile of money there and I think it is. Yeah. So then capitalism can drive a truck through it if we could just point the path. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And that path can be inclusive of we'll have to change some regulatory stuff and other things.

No problem. You, 

Armon: you, you made me beating me to my last question, which was like, if you could wave a wave a magic wand, what would you change? About our industry? 

Jason: number one, I would just close all the benches with everybody. Autonomous. Start with that. 

Um, 

on the research 

Armon: side, 

Jason: obviously, uh, the, uh, get go cloud bio. Exactly. You can try it yourself with $39. Um, we, we, the thing I would, I, on the pharma side, what I would love to see is, um, a, someone put the pieces together to go from like idea.

To phase one B. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Uh, so for like, some like demonstration? Yeah. Clinical 

Armon: poc. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. Clinical poc, for sub 5 million. 

Armon: Okay. 

Jason: Okay. And the reason for that is that gets you in the range that you can [00:56:00] tap generalist angel money. 

Armon: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: we're like at like say 30 or 40 million today, I would say for the average.

And so it's not like a crazy drop, it's like a 10 x drop. So if you can 10 x drop all the pieces in there, here's the magic that happens. 

You don't 

get like 10 times more. You would like, oh, 10 times cheaper, 10 times more drugs. No, no, no, no. Right. Like 

Armon: exponentially 

Jason: Yeah. Because you can go to go, do 

YC and then talk to a bunch of people in coffee shops afterwards and raise $5 million.

Right. Like, you can't, you can't do that today. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Because you need to raise 30 and they're like, God, you're trying to raise 30. I can only write you a check for 50 or a hundred K. Man, you're never gonna make it 

right like that. But 

if it's five people make that all the time. 

Armon: And this is where you need these tools that catalyze the price to drop low enough the price of trying.

Jason: Yes. Get on the right research side, on the manufacturing side and on the, on the clinical side as well. I would love to see that happen. And then I would love to see the regulatory path towards like health and wellness. 

Armon: Yeah. 

Jason: Just, it's gotta be done safely, but like get figured out.

Yeah. Um, because I think that's a [00:57:00] big human good. Right. Like I talked about the pile of money, but the reason, you know, the capitalist in me is like the reason it's there is 'cause everyone wants this. 

Yeah, 

Armon: yeah, 

Jason: You know? Right. Like it 

would be tremendous, tremendous, right. To have a more graceful aging process.

Like I'm not talking about living forever, I'm just saying going out on top. Right. It's like Seinfeld. 

Armon: Yeah, 

Jason: Right. Like, you know, 

like, like let's end on top. Not, not in total decline. I think that's within the realm of like biotech neurological possibility. 

Armon: Sweet. 

Well, speaking of ending on top, thanks a lot for doing this.

Jason: Hey man, it's awesome. 

audio fix: Appreciate 

Jason: it. Thanks for the introduction to the Bob. It is 

disgusting 

Yeah, 

Armon: that.