Jun 17, 2015
By Alex Kopelyan
#RedefiningBillionaire
#RedefiningBillionaire

I was recently inspired by Jason Silva’s Captains of Spaceship Earth:

“First we build the tools and then the tools build us”

Biology, as a technology is accelerating, the technology that builds us and our environment, what many people don’t realize is that we use it everywhere and it’s only just beginning.

From the moment you wake up, you use biology, it’s used to build the fibers of the sheets you sleep on, the coal/oil that’s burnt to power your lights, it’s in the food you eat (yes, even in your cornflakes with GMO corn), it’s also in the toothpaste you use and the vitamins that you take and that’s just before you’ve left your house, we haven’t yet begun in earnest with using biology as a next generation manufacturing platform.

What’s coming next are improvements, lots and lots of improvements for all on this planet through, expanding outside of the world of biomedical innovation into everything else.

Scientists are now becoming founders and entrepreneurs, creating incredibly exciting companies, Bolt Threads recently announced a successful $40M fundraising round to create an entirely new type of material, bioengineered spider’s silk, which is 10x stronger than steel per weight, the new products possible are almost endless and that’s just one new material, in an almost unlimited space of biology.

The pace of innovation in biotechnology is exceeding the pace of Moore’s law in terms of cost reductions, not just in genomic sequencing but in automation. Transcriptic, an automated lab has led to a 3x reduction in the cost of plant genetic engineering per YEAR at TAXA (a plant engineering startup best known for making glowing plants), as a reminder, Moore’s law is JUST a doubling every two years, accelerated biology smokes Moore’s law.

We’ve also seen the success of company’s like Novozymes (a billion $+ revenue company) and Zymergen (which just raised $44M to build the next generation of molecular factories) and so my question is, how can we redefine the idea of a billionaire to one in which a billionaire is someone who has positively impacted the lives of over a billion people? The answer lies in the scientist entrepreneurs which are emerging and building the next generation of biotechnologies.

We’d love to hear your ideas, how can we help you build a biotech company to help a billion+ people? Apply to us at sf.indie.bio and we’ll support pioneers with $250k in funding (including a lab and a razor sharp focus on building products, your company and your science).

Here’s our chance to #RedefineBillionare