Thanks a lot for joining. Yes. I think we got to make you, uh, yes.
All right. Yeah. So, I know I'm on what is it? Boba and Boba.
And I, I embarrassingly must admit I've had like one boba tea in my life because I'm like, texture of the... Oh, yeah. Let me use this thing. Like
Oh, wow. It has like a special hole. There's like... I take that off. No, you stab it.
That's what the pointy end is for.
See, this is advanced [stuff].
And now I'm going to drink and there's going to be like little balls of... Yes.
This is the part I don't like. Cheers.
I got one. Delicious.
We're off to a good start. They are.
You're allowed to swallow. You do whatever you want. Which kind of... Okay. All right. Let's go.
All right. Do you want to give a little bit of background on yourself? Sure.
Okay. Uh, I'm Jason, uh, co-founder CEO here at Genko. I grew up in Florida. I went to MIT.
Huh, you know Florida's a beautiful place. Gotten, you know, it changes changed over time. Uh, but went to MIT for undergrad. Wanted to be a genetic engineer right out of the gate.
Yeah. Thanks to Jurassic Park when I was like 13. Uh, so that's... Yeah, I know. Uh, and there was a bioengineering major. So, I did chemical engineering.
Uh, and bio. 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. I was like, I need to pick one of the engineering majors at MIT. I can't do biology.
I picked chem because it was the best engineering major for indecisive people. 'Cause I was like, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Nice. And I was like, this closes the least number of doors.
Got it. Yeah. Well, it took until like by year two before I realized like chemical engineering is primarily about oil and gas plants. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. I was like, distillation.
Oh, I see what this is. Yeah, it's fine. I powered through it. Uh, then I... But by the time I graduated, MIT did have a bio engineering PhD, which I did do. And then we started Genko out of grad school in 2008.
So, what made you want to go straight to startup land? I mean, normally people don't do that out of school.
Yeah, I mean, especially back then. It's a little cooler now. Yeah, it's got... but you know I thought it would be like more for like obviously starting tech companies out of undergrad 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. It's still pretty uncommon. My view is like if you know the history of Y Combinator by the way I'll just like go on a little aside here. I tweeted YC like in 200... I got started in '06 or something that went to a time 2006 2012 like Paul Graham had this insight that there were this untapped pool of founders who were like under smart undergrads and he wanted to get them before they took a job at Google. Yeah, because once they took a job at Google it was like paradise. Yeah. Right. Like you know all this money do anything. It was like so much easier than MIT but like you got to take... Okay. And so he's like, "We got to get them 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. Yeah. Right. And and so that was like insight number one which he was totally right about. And that obviously gave him like that first class by the way was like the Reddit guys, Sam Altman, Alex Haney, like they were all like ridiculous, you know, like that first like a murderer's row in that first 14 people. It was like a beacon. Yeah. for these people that weren't otherwise able to get that level of attention from anybody because even the tech VCs back then were like, "No, you're too young."
Yeah. Okay. And so, so that was number one. The other thing that helped them out though, so AWS came out at the same time. And so suddenly a little bit of money. Yeah. You didn't... It was like less expensive to start a internet company. Yeah. Than it had been five years earlier. And and that meant that you could tap angels and like risk your sloppier money as a young person where you might have been blocked out of actually getting a check even back then at the time from like uh a Sequoia.
Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense? And so I think our problem in biotech is number like I see that same untapped pool. Yeah. Right. Like PhDs and postdocs like this is another like blind spot Silicon Valley has like what kind of loser would do a PhD? Like like people I met at MIT are like the smart... like I've met all the YC people like like they were [expletive] killers you know right like like people that go and do PhDs not all of them of course just like every tech founder is not a killer but like the top slice of PhD students 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 the edge of technology like they're... and and you see this reflected now a little more with the AI guys like Dennis, 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. Yeah. And then the problem though is you hit the next wall which is like we don't have the AWS.
Yeah. So it's still so [expletive] 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. Does that make sense? They're building all their infrastructure from scratch. So it's like super duplicative.
Bingo. It's just it's just the cost to go from like idea to like first good value in proof point is tough stuff. So so short the reason I tell you about launch story is not that has not changed that much and so we're still in a world where where we're like a rarity even after 16 years of this. So okay our story um we there was four of us who were doing grad school together.
Uh I worked for Drew Andy, me and Barry and then Rachman Austin worked for this guy Tom Knight who we ended up founding the company with. And so there were four of us who were students, fifth 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 Langanger or something, right? 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'll get a little bit or something, right? But like the average professor sort of like, well, I'm a founder. I'll take the same equity as you but just not quit. You know, right? Like it's horrible, right?
Have an anti-dilution profession.
Yeah. Right. A 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 he put in the first check himself, right? Like our first 250k was from Tom and then he left MIT like a year and a half later to join the company.
Yeah. 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 in founder. Yeah. Like in other words like put it on the slide you thank you for your help. You don't need like a giant amount of equity. Okay.
Yeah. because for a lot of them I think it's just like a free option if they're going to stay.
Yeah. Yeah. It's 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.
Yeah. Because this is like the beginning of synthetic biology. We were basically the first graduating class of grad students. Uh and since that field kind of got catalyzed there was like an NSF pro uh Sinberg uh research center that kind of kicked it off four or five years earlier. And so we're like great we'll go get professor jobs. Uh to do that you basically have to go get a postdoc. This is like the mania of academia. It's like this is like get me started. And so we're like well we had been talking about starting a company. We had done the MIT50k which is like 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 we think about starting this company and he was like oh I do it with you.
Yeah. And I think it was like that moment that kind of triggered it because 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 go back and do a postdoc, right?" Like like a year is like, "Oh, we just got drunk, went into the costless, right?" Like we're like, "Well, whatever." Like like it's not like we can't get a postdoc job. It's like the worst job in the world, right? Like like I can get that. So So like we're just like we'll do this deviation knowing we could go back.
All right. And so that's the first point I would make. I think for like PhDs who think like I'm on track or blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. like I don't think it's that much of a deviation if you like time bound it. And so we really did. We were like we'll try for a year. And then what happened was we couldn't raise money.
Yeah. That was actually another feature for us. Turns out uh a like I said earlier, we're children. They won't fund us. We weren't making a drug which makes no sense to biotech people. And it was 2008.
Yeah. Okay. And so what we did was we applied for grants. Genius. So So we actually... That's a great way to raise money if you're a recent PhD because let me tell you what you know how to do.
Write grants. Yeah. And and so like we we like applied for dude we was like a machine sir DARPA grants and what happened was we got like 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. Yeah.
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 Baker, right? And so then we were like, well, this just seems like great, right? Like even if it falls apart, wherever I go looking to either do maybe I just go straight to become a professor because I'm like, hey, look, I got this grant. Yeah. Right. So, we also had that like we kind of hedged it during that period, which was a good thing because I'd say we were like four years early.
Yeah. 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 would 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 still dilute of money it's very flexible yeah so be another piece of advice I guess I would say for like PhD listening in like don't be afraid of that go get those grants and so the first four million bucks into the company or five million bucks was grants and then 2014 we did Y Combinator uh and then it was like off to the races 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 Yeah. was crap. Yeah. Right. Like the uh it's almost like we're giving up a lot. And so I think that got us over the line.
And what features like because you guys are public now and everything like what features do you think were the critical traits that helped you get this far?
That's a Yeah, so that's a that's a big question because like a lot of it is relatively rare. It's more common in tech. Even in tech, people get nuked. CEOs get nuked along the way. U it's wildly uncommon in biotech.
Yeah. I mean, no found companies to begin with, right? It's all like manufactured by VCs, right?
They get together with the whiteboard. They're like, "This sounds good. Let's make it."
Yes. It's a studio. Um and so 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.
Yeah. So, you know, there's there's five founders. Yeah. Tom's, um you know, uh 30 years older than the rest of us. Okay. But the four of us are like 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 into areas of like expertise.
Yeah. And so I think that helped right like because like my co-founder Ra 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 RA focused on like internal like management scaling the team and all these things and it it kind of meant we could both be better at it than we would have 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 bite's weird and raising money from tech if you're biotech is weird. There's like a million weird things we were doing. So we also did not we were not like very playooked.
And so the other um I think reason people get swapped out is like oh it's time to hire the clinical CEO for your classic, right? Like classic put a bullet in the in the platform guy, right? Like and well that's because there's a good playbook for that.
And and because we were always a bit like weird. Yeah. There wasn't like well who would you swap me for? Right. Like you know, right? So, so like there is that help. Yeah, 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's in part because those four year like we did not raise money for five years. So, we were like five years into bootstrapping when we did YC. So, we were like very pot committed to this company, right? Like like I'm like my life has been in this thing. If you think you're going to like come in as like a new VC and then fire me in a year, like no way, man. Like we had bought equipment on eBay. We ground this out for five years to get to where we are today. I said we tried it for a year, but I really meant for life.
Yeah. And so so like the So we did we were extra sensitive on all the control provisions and things like that. Even with investors, we had great investors. Yeah. Right. Like like it was our early investor. They were fabulous. Like like you know, never a hint of anything like that, but we still had it in there.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then when we went public, we also kept a lot of that stuff. Yeah. And and so because when you go public, you can, you know, we have super voting shares for all the actually not just for us, but for the employees, too. Like not just founders, but every employee of the company. Uh so those are 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.
Yeah. And so we were the right people to run it. Yeah. I don't The other thing 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 in any thing you're trying to learn about.
Yeah. Not someone like 10 years ahead of you. Like someone like two years ahead of you.
Yeah. That's just very practically useful, 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 in 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 tacet knowledge.
Yeah. And the next pothole to watch out.
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. Raised money in Silicon Valley, you know, whatever 10 years ago. Yeah. Right. But I don't even know those guys anymore.
You don't as much. Right. Like I keep close to some people but I don't know them as well. Right. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Know that totally resonates. Do you think the ecosystem has gotten any better or more favorable towards the kind of fresh out of PhD founders for biotech?
It was getting better for a bit like in the Zerp era. So there was definitely a window. Um like there's funds like Indie Bio for example. I don't know about these guys but they did all the Animal Free Meat stuff kind of got going on that wave and the wave happened right? It was almost like you know like hitting it and then the wave crashed. But if it if that had kept going I think that would have been more self-reinforcing. Um I've not seen it in even during ZERP. You didn't see much of it in pharma drug development. Yes, you saw a little bit but just a little bit like you know Andre and Bofunded a couple companies but not a ton. And then because in general the West Coast VCs and the tech VCs their their intuition is to back a founder.
The Boston area venture capital.
Why you think the intuition is different?
Well because that's what success look like. I mean it's basically because of the PC industry. Um but honestly so take that back. It it's because of Intel.
Mhm. Right. So like the origin of it is like the traitorous estate or whatever the people that left Fairchild to start Intel and how well that went and then gates.
Yeah. And then and then they were just kind of like okay this is what this is what big this is what drives big success. I feel like one of my pet theories is that part of the reason biotech never has just knock out of the park successes the way tech has is because they'll take technical risk but they'll never take management risk or they'll rarely ever take management risk as you get uh 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 PC. We will sell to Pfizer for two billion and move on to do something else."
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 issue 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 big company is Regeneron.
Yeah. Right. Like John Mor Magenor was sort of that even though he wasn't the founding CEO was close enough I would say but he's he's not there anymore. So like Regeneron is our only real example I would say of a of a big biotech but still has like founder energy.
Yeah. That's a bummer right. Whereas if you compare that to the tech industry, you had Bezos for years and Gates for years and Musk is still it's a crazy right like you know like and so there is just this like you're you're getting so much leverage by having a person with like the moral authority of being the founder of the company deploying the resources of a company worth a trillion dollars like you can put a dent in you know like like you can do some damage right like so so that's an unfair advantage and then there in those companies that the people have managed figure it out at that scale of the game, then that gives them an unfair advantage versus whatever industry they're going after often, right? Musk, I think, showed that in spades, right? They just like ripped up like [expletive] aerospace and and the car industry, right? Like like I mean, it's kind of amazing, right? Like what more did he have going for him other than honestly like that?
Yeah. 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 because you can you can do unpopular things for long enough for it to suddenly 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 don't believe they don't believe what you're saying is going to happen in year 10 and you can get to year 10 and if then the next part is it has to be right so so like that that's the you know like but but if you can put those two things together yeah that's Musk right and So yeah, we haven't had a lot of that in biotech unfortunately and I think drugs is particularly brutal.
Yeah. So for that Yeah. 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 going to work.
Yeah. I guarantee 10% chance.
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. sound like a generalist about biotech. Like what I got got got me into this was not curing cancer. I love three I'd love to help that, you know, have canc but like what got me excited about it was genetic engineering as a technology.
Yeah. Like programming cells is what I'm excited about, not drugs. And and so but I'm bummed out that our only app area for the whole technology stack is drugs.
Yeah. I mean 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 therapeutics.
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 because that can lead to the big outcomes and that's the uh like the gamble the VCs and biotech are used to doing 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?
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 GKO was sort of applying a platform style business model you can talk about in outside of pharma. So, industrial biotech, agricultural biotech. All my first customers were like flavor, fragrance, nutrition, cannabis, cosmetics, uh bare crop science, like r, you know, summal chemical and startup companies doing animal free meat, like all this weird [expletive] Yeah.
Okay. And it turns out like like a 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 they've not been successful in the market. Yeah. And so, we're still pretty much stuck down the pharma lane. So when people say like platform verse product, what they're really saying is platform that makes drugs verse products that make drugs. Okay. Just for clarity.
Okay. Which is a bit of a bummer. Yeah. 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. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. 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 ADAB.
Yeah. Okay. uh where they have a platform business model not because let me 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 valueies.
No royalties. No piece of the value of the of the things that get made with your tools. Yeah.
Or you can try to concoct a platform business model where you would get a piece Yeah. of the value of the things developed on your platform. And so Adamab's been like the most long-standing instance of that. And the way their deals work is you pay some amount like a half million bucks or something and like they do some R&D for you. They discover you in this case like antibbody binder against Target and then they take a royalty single digit royalty on the back side and get some milestones at like you know whatever different phases and they they did it for like a zillion anti drugs and it's like it's okay.
Yeah, right. Like Adam has a real ass company like they have real employees but they're like you know 200 people in Lebanon, New Hampshire like it is not Regeneron. It's not over that same period. It's not a 25-y year old company. Right. And so and and the basic challenge I think is just the time to get to the royalties and everything in drugs is tough. It's just tough.
Well, I think it's also hard to convince no.
Yeah. I mean, Adam sat on the biggest platform wave ever in pharma anyway, which was maps. Yeah.
Right. Like antibbody drug. And so everyone else is like, I'm gonna make a platform and this like you know like whatever RNA or blah blah like Ionis versus Al is another good example. like kind of went out with a platform model in RNA and then and then they had to go then crushed them basically in terms of overall now I think make their own drugs and so the and so that that's the other classic thing you come out as a platform and then you become a drug you become a drug yeah and so a couple of the antibi companies are like that now um Absai um yeah I mean and I like that's kind of 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 like Yeah, even back when we were doing the industrial stuff, we're getting pressure to like go be a fragrance company or make a in fact the main the company we ended up acquiring which was the other company that had a lot of the same kind of robotics and and centralized genetic engineering technology had is a company called Zyrgen. Yeah. The reason we were able to buy them was because they chose to vertically integrate into like thin film chemistry and that product was a miss.
Yeah. And so that that's your ri and that's what happens with these platform 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. Is there a way to solve that? Because I totally agree that's like one of the shames as you see all these really cool technologies come up. You're like that tech probably still works. It's just like whatever about that indication and that drug did it.
Yeah. So now let us move our eyes from the drugs the platform business models which I would love someone to find one that works but I have not seen it to the tools industry.
Yeah. 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'm I'm not going to tell them go try to make a drug.
