Bio+Tech was started as a monthly gathering to bring together the best and the brightest entrepreneurial minds in biomedicine and combine them with leaders in the SF tech start-up world.  The idea was that we have an amazing collection of biomedical entrepreneurial minds in SF and with the advent of bio-incubators and tech breakthroughs, the barriers to starting a bio start-up continue to drop.  There’s also a curiosity about biomedicine in the tech realm.  Who better to infuse biomedical and informatics start-ups with entrepreneurial energy and push biomedicine start-ups over the entrepreneurial hump than folks from this bastion of entrepreneurial energy? Plus, the biomedical start-up world doesn’t network nearly to the same degree as does the tech start-up world – that’s critical to the tech start-up world’s success in the SF Bay Area.  Thus Bio [plus] Tech – not just the same old biotech complete with high barriers, lack of networking and support.  Six months in to the Bio+Tech experiment I’d say that so far it’s been a success.

As a note: When I talk about biomedical entrepreneurship I mean that broadly – whether informatics, biotech, pharma, bio-energy, etc – it’s all welcomed and encouraged at Bio+Tech. And, I can’t emphasize enough that not only are we looking to bring together biomedical folks, we’re also looking to bring tech folks – developers, co-founders, start-up managers, etc – in to the mix.  You absolutely do not need a PhD in biophysics to join the group.  Just a healthy interest in bio or medicine – trust me, you’ll blend right in to the group!

Bio+Tech has grown from a group of 10 in January to an average of about 30 people at each monthly gathering.  To boot, that growth has been achieved solely through word of mouth.  I’ve been to a lot of meet-ups and gatherings where there’s lots of noise and very little signal – Bio+Tech has been purposefully kept small to keep the quality of the level of interaction high.  This set up was inspired, in part, by the SF meet-up Founder Dating, which requires an actual application and recommendations from other start-up folks.  Jess Alter and her crew do an amazing job!  Go check it out if you’re looking for a tech start-up or a techie person to help you build your start-up.  I also want to give a shout out to Vinnie Lauria and his Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup as the founding source of inspiration behind Bio+Tech.

Bio+Tech isn’t quite as complicated as Founder Dating and not as large as the SV NewTech Meetup, but to join the invite list you do need to demonstrate a basic interest in biomedical, tech or bio-energy entrepreneurship.  All too often a lot of biotech meet-ups are crowded with sales people and other vendors who are more interested in selling than sharing ideas, tips, contacts or starting businesses.  That’s not to say that we don’t accept sales people in to the group – you just need a genuine interest in creating a company or joining a start-up.

Michael Shuster speaks on the changing IP landscape and how that affects biomedical entrepreneurship.

Want to join us? Each month, the time and date of Bio+Tech will be posted on its webpage, with the location in SF to be announced. If you’re not already on the invite list, feel free to contact me at windmiller@gmail[dot]com and let me know why you’d like to attend.  Just a little paragraph with your interests and what type of company you’re looking to start or join, and a link to your LinkedIn profile – nothing too complicated.  In return, I promise to do my best to connect like-minded people at the meet-up.

We’ve had a couple bio start-ups find co-founders or developers – heck, there’s even been cross-pollination of neuroscience-principles back in to a tech start-up’s social media algorithms!  Yes, it’s a bit nerdy, but I can honestly say that out of the 6 gatherings so far, everyone who has attended has been someone I’ve really enjoyed talking with and sharing ideas.

Each Bio+Tech starts with a good bit of mixing and conversation.  It’s kept that way to maximize interaction and to warm things up.  We then get together to introduce each other to the group – with 30 people I’m always amazed at how efficiently we get through the group.  This is an opportunity to introduce yourself to the group and also spot others with like minded interests.  And, of course, we welcome solicitations for co-founders or technical help or any other start-up needs to the group.  This is a chance to network and find those you’d be interested in working with.

Starting in August we’re going to try to have monthly speakers as well.  It’s a highly informal 10-20 minute talk from people in the biomedical start-up or in the tech start-up world designed to bring ideas and prime the conversation.  We’ve had Michael Shuster, partner at Fenwick & West, speak on the changing landscape of Intellectual Property (IP) and how that’s affecting start-up strategy and execution.  A lot of biomedical start-ups are realizing that execution is just as important as securing IP to start-up success.  This isn’t news to tech start-ups, but this shift in perspective is somewhat groundbreaking in biomedicine start-ups.  We’ve got John Wilbanks, VP of science at Science Commons speaking at our August gathering on the open sourcing of biomedical data sets and tools and how that is altering and encouraging opportunities in the biomedical start-up scene.

And, Bio+Tech is purposefully kept free.  Whether you’re an undergrad or grad student, or on your 5^th start-up, everyone is welcome and encouraged to come.  I believe firmly that cost should not be a barrier to attendance.  And, please pass this along to people you think would be interested in Bio+Tech – that’s how we keep new, fresh ideas coming in to the group!

I haven’t posted on genomics in a while, so it’s about time. Two weekends ago I attended the Sage Bionetworks and Science Commons 1^st annual Sage Congress here in San Francisco. The main aim of the conference was to begin to gather science folks from across the country and begin thinking about making scientific research and data sets more open. While that may seem like an easy task in the era of open source, it’s tricky from many perspectives and the effort still has a lot of skeptics. But, more on that soon – personally, I think Science Commons and Sage Bionetworks are brilliant ideas.

At the conference Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and president of 23andme gave the keynote on the last day of the conference (video at right). To be fair, in the past I’ve been skeptical of 23andme – particularly from a clinical perspective. And, the MD side of me remains skeptical of genetic testing in general – at this point we know too little to apply genomic information to clinical care. There are a few exceptions, like breast cancer and a few other diagnostics, but otherwise in my humble medical opinion tests like 23andme should be used with a skeptical eye from a clinical and medical perspective. Again, there are a few case examples of where genetic testing has helped, but those remain too few and far between.

All that said, something about Anne’s keynote struck a chord with me – the amount of phenotypic data that the company is gathering in conjunction with their tests holds tremendous promise. Consumers purchase the test, and once their results are delivered, 23andme asks the consumer to participate in a series of surveys about their health and physical traits. To date, as was mentioned time and time again at the Sage Congress, research efforts to link patient, clinical and genomic data have proven to be arduous, time consuming and expensive. But, 23andme is capturing it right out of the box.

It’s hard to really convey how valuable this data truly is. A lot of the genomic data and research the scientific community has done to date has been on a couple cells in a petri dish or in mice, etc. Less has been done in humans, but that’s changing. With the collection of millions of genetic data points per consumer plus their trait/phenotypic data via 23andme, that will all begin to change much more rapidly. Being able to directly correlate genes to their traits will be a powerful tool for researchers to help push our genetic understanding and medical knowledge forward.

How we think about DNA and our genetic information as consumers is changing. Here, a DNA gel is aligned as art.

What makes 23andme special is that they’re utilizing social media and other consumer internet approaches to engage consumers and get them to provide their data essentially for free. While this might sound intuitive to most internet junkies, it hasn’t been for much of the scientific community. Indeed, from my perspective at the Sage Congress, 23andme’s approach seemed to me met with a bit of skepticism from the community – and this was an even more open and broad thinking group of people. But, it’s working. Consumers are readily contributing information, but it’s because of 23andme’s social media and internet approach. Not only will it change consumer genetics, but I bet that 23andme’s approach will alter how we collect research data, which will in turn, accelerate breakthroughs.

This shift in thinking will be critical as genetic research and genetic testing moves forward. Genes are far from being directly causal – i.e. very rarely does one gene lead to one distinct feature. And to uncover the patterns of the chaotic interaction of genes and their environment, gathering the type of rich data that 23andme does with their surveys will be absolutely critical as we move forward. Part of the next movement in genetic testing and genetic discovery will also require new tools to deal with massive data sets and help us find those needle-in-the-haystack discoveries that shed new light on human health and disease.

Again, more DNA as art - we're beginning to re-think our relationship to our genetic information.

And, to boot, one large win for society with companies like 23andme is that they are making consumers more and more comfortable with the concept of genomic testing. That in and of itself is a tremendous value to the market and for research. In the future I predict that we’ll look back on efforts like 23andme as landmark and critical to helping us reach the next plateau of genetic discovery and understanding. And, because of that and 23andme’s awareness of that fact, I think they’ll be successful in the long run.

It’s election day in the UK and it’s been an historical election – the first ever in the UK with televised debates.  While the UK election system is vastly different than the US, it’s also a much shorter season as well.  The Queen dissolved parliament on April 6th, meaning it’s been just about a month of elections – personally, that would be welcome to me here in the US!

I’m an observer (fan) of UK politics and enthralled by the House of Commons, particularly Prime Minister’s Questions.  You can watch them here.  Although, Gordon Brown is a bit of a bore, I got to see Tony Blair in his prime – what a show, indeed.

So, as a tip of the cap to our UK friends I’m posting this image – a bit of British propaganda from World War II.  Although it wasn’t widely used during WWII, it has become a more modern sign of the British stiff upper lip and resolve.  Personally, I like the image quite a bit.  You can buy them from several places online if you need a copy of your own.

The Tesla Roadster Sport - really, there's nothing like it

Here’s a non-traditional Medicine Think entry, but I wanted to share my first drive of an all-electric car – the Tesla Roadster Sport.

I feel like last night I had one of those rare experiences where you feel like you’ve seen the future.  It might sound like a hyperbole, but that’s what it felt like to test drive the Tesla Roadster Sport.  And, no, I’m not in the market for one, but after driving it, I really wish I had about $110,000 in disposable cash laying around.

So, what is it about the Tesla that makes it feel so futuristic?  It’s an all-electric car – there’s no hybrid or gas component – it’s a 100% electric motor.  That means that from the moment you put your foot on the “gas” (is it more appropriate to call it an accelerator pedal? The “electric?” The “juice?”) it’s a different driving experience than you’ve ever had.  The only similarity is that there are four tires, the car looks like a Lotus Elise, and there’s a steering wheel – most other experiences are different.

There’s no engine noise.  Honestly, you don’t miss it.  An electric motor, by nature, has 100% of torque at 0 RPM – that means the thing accelerates so rapidly that it’s hard to believe.  0-60 in 3.6 seconds – that’s Lamborghini fast.  Instead of having to “rev” the car up, all the power is there and ready to go when you push down on the pedal.  It’s unlike any car I’ve ever been in.

There are no gears – nothing to shift, no transmission beyond forward and reverse.  After the car bolts to speed, the engine itself has a tremendous amount of braking power.  The moment you let up from the accelerator, the car begins to drag to a stop.  You literally don’t need a brake other than to come to a full stop at stop lights.  Put another way, to maintain speed, you have to keep the pedal down – even on downward slopes where gas power cars would shift to neutral or have a very low factor of engine braking.

Apparently, a lot of Tesla’s patents and intellectual property in how the car electronically mimics the way we drive today in gas cars.   By that, I mean it’s not in the nature of an electric car to cruise forward when you let up on the brake.  But the Tesla does – that’s a purposeful design and apparently very hard to do in an electric car.  From my understanding, this technical achievement will be difficult for others to mimic.  Apparently this technology bleeds over in to how the car accelerates smoothly and the car reaches cruising speed.  Whatever they’re doing it’s definitely working.

With the electric engine comes the need to store the electricity to power the car.  The battery “pack” alone weighs just shy of 1000 pounds.  That’s a lot of weight.  It’s positioned mid-car just like in a gas powered sports car, which helps balance the handling overall.  Regardless, the 1000 pounds is a lot of weight, especially when the car weighs a mere 2,700 pounds overall.

Otherwise, the car is definitely a stiff little roadster and to be honest I had a hard time seeing through the windshield.  I’d love for the car to have a few more inches, and I hope that comes at a later date.  Maybe by the time I can afford one.

It was truly an exhilarating ride, and I don’t think it really hit me until I stood up and I felt like I had just stepped out of a rollercoaster – the same shakes and legs feeling almost like rubber.  I don’t know if that was because I’m a pretty novice sports car driver, or the all-electric roadster really is that cool.  My gut sense is that the car really is that cool.  I was on a high for the entire rest of the night – I’m not kidding.

And, this sense had nothing to do with the environmentally friendly nature of the car.  That said, I’d be really curious of the overall carbon footprint of a mile in a Tesla versus an efficient gas car.  How many carbon emissions are released during the production of the electricity to power the car?  Is it really less than driving a mile in a gas car?  Either way, the electric car really is that cool.

Heading back tomorrow to get a behind the scenes look at the dealership and shop in Seattle.  More to come!

© 2003 Mark Stivers - www.markstivers.com

It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve gotten back to writing on Medicine Think and I’ve got some more entries in store.  For now, this comic by Mark Stivers caught my attention.  Head over to his comic blog – very funny stuff.

The comic just reminded me that during a time of such intense national debate – healthcare, taxes, finance reform, housing reform, student loan reform (and on and on) – sometimes it’s best to step back and gain a new perspective and consider the other side.

Biology and technology have much to learn from each other - concepts from each discipline can inform and help create breakthroughs and new businesses. Image courtesy of Scientific American

I recently sat down with a friend who’s developed an ingenious way of using neuroscience concepts and neural networks as the basis for an information filtering algorithm. He’s taken that algorithm and created a personalized and customized news feed from Twitter.  In short, he’s helping to actually make sense of the Tweetstream.

So, what do I really mean by saying that he has employed neuroscience concepts as a foundation for his algorithm? First, think about the brain and how it processes incoming signals and stimuli – if it’s an important signal, say a pouncing mountain lion, it’ll get through all the other noise and register with you.  Much the same way, my friend’s technology uses a couple “filters” that determine whether the incoming tweet is relevant to your interests. If it’s relevant and important it’ll pop up in your news stream. In works much the way that neurons in the brain work – in order for a signal to pass along it’s gotta make the next neuron fire.  The same can be said about tweets this technology filters – if it’s relevant and important it makes it through the algorithm.

The second instance of neuroscience inspiration in this friend’s Twitter algorithm comes from the basic premise that how and what we forget is just as important as the things that we actually remember.  Think of it this way – if we remembered EVERYTHING that we see, hear, touch, smell and taste our brains would be overloaded and wouldn’t work efficiently.  We’d have trouble actually finding memories in our brains if we stored too much information.  The same goes for computer systems – learning how to forget, to get rid of irrelevant or increasingly irrelevant information is just as important as figuring out what to keep. However, the tricky part is figuring out what to forget and what’s worth remembering. That’s part of his trade secrets.

By merging his knowledge of computer science with a dabble of inspiration from neuroscience my friend has been able to pull together a really, really compelling product that might actually make Twitter useful for the 95% of the population that’s not on it. Where other techniques have failed to make sense of the Tweetstream, my friend’s inspiration from the fundamentals of neuroscience has greatly aided his product.

In the above example neurobiology has inspired and informed computer science design, but it’s also a clear case of how this interdisciplinary approach can help both fields make advances.  Another example would be 23&me. I clearly don’t think much of their business model or clinical relevance – but they did inspire some advances in bioinformatics through employing experienced techies to help build their data systems.

See, this is what you get when you mix biology with technology!

What I mean is that (as I’ve been told anecdotally) one of the things 23&me did absolutely right was hire a number of engineers from eBay who were fantastic at database engineering and management.  Instead of bringing in data folks with 10 years of background in bioinformatics and creating databases the way a biologist would, 23&me created an extremely efficient and scalable system for their genomic data.  This type of insight will enable science to make more advanced breakthroughs all that much quicker and effectively. It has also enabled 23&me to have a more feasible business model as well. Technology enabling and inspiring the advancement of biology.

All of this to say that in the world of entrepreneurship and design there’s a lot that the intermingling of bio and tech can bring to help inform and advance both fields.  I’m hoping that Bio+Tech can be one of those ways that technology and biology can intermingle to bring about not only a more vibrant start-up community here in San Francisco, but to help create breakthroughs and inspiration for the next generation of technologies. Drop me a line if you’d like to attend the meetup on February 17th!    windmiller[at]gmail

Biology and technology coming together isn't really a new concept - it's clearly been occurring for thousands of years. We just need to continue to encourage new interdisciplinary approaches as see what comes of it. A beer along the way doesn't hurt, either.

Most people want the best health coverage possible, but is it possible Cadillac Health Plans are the wrong way to think about it?

Cadillac Health Plans and insurance remain a hot topic of conversation since I pondered Cadillac Health Plans several months ago.  Generally a Cadillac Plan provides many bells and whistles for its subscribers, but also comes with a much higher premium.  Taking that car analogy in a different direction, what if we could rethink what it means to have good health insurance and model it after car insurance? This would give people more control over their health and health spending, much like the car insurance model.  Now, that would be more like a true Cadillac Plan . . . . I digress.

In an earlier post about health insurance costs I talked how we (my wife and I) will pay about $12,960 for health insurance in 2010. It’s a pretty good plan – a PPO – one that has more degrees of freedom than other plans. But it still dictates how we spend the dollars that we’ve paid in to the system and incentivizes wasteful spending.  Moreover, why does everyone have to be on the same paradigm? Put a lump sum in, get some care out – why not create insurance products that work differently while at the same time creating social pressures to reduce unnecessary costs?

The annoying thing about this insurance plan is that we only used about $2,000 worth of the benefits.  So, in essence, we pay almost $13,000 in to the system and the system tells us what we can and cannot do and only allows us to use $2,000.  And that was only for costs that were deemed “appropriate and necessary” by the insurance company.  We had to pay another $1,500 out of our own pockets for legit physical therapy and dermatology treatments.

OK, so clearly that extra $11,000 that we paid in is a risk premium to cover catastrophic costs – if something happened to either one of us, I’m sure we’d be glad we had the insurance.  That said, $11,000 sounds like an awful lot, particularly when you consider that you probably pay only $1,000 or so a year in car insurance.  Why can’t healthcare be structured more like that?  The person pays for maintenance and routine care, while insurance pays for catastrophic and serious illnesses/conditions.

For instance, let’s say such a plan existed.  My wife and I could contribute $2,000 (more or less, depending on how much we wanted to put away) in pre-tax dollars to a Health Savings Account (HSA – yes, it rears its head again).  That $2,000/year per person could be used to cover sick visits to the doc, derm care, physical therapy or other costs – any way we saw fit.  Another benefit is that if we needed more money, we could pay out of pocket and submit those receipts on our taxes much like we do today – all care dollars would be pretax.  Best of all, those HSA dollars would roll-over year to year just like cash.

For catastrophic illnesses, we could purchase insurance much like we do for our cars.  Let’s say it would cost us $2,500/year per person for that insurance – that’s almost 3-4 times more than our car insurance covers and our car insurance covers about $100,000 worth of damages and injuries. Seems decently reasonable.

And, according to this simplified model, we’d still only be contributing $9,000 for our healthcare – that would leave an extra $4,000 in our pockets over what we’re spending today.  We’re not used to thinking about that money as coming out of our paychecks because it’s part of our benefits. But, you can be sure it’s affecting our take-home dollars.  Additionally, I’m sure spending money out of our HSA would also cause us to pay more attention where our money is going and help curb frivolous spending.

When looked at from another angle, the current state of doing business in healthcare it pretty bad. Why not completely change some aspects to make it work better?

What I’m proposing is that we as consumers gain more control in how we spend our healthcare dollars.  This insurance model could be similar to how car insurance works today.  You pay for your own maintenance costs (i.e. the HSA dollars) and then pay-in to insurance for catastrophic costs.

For example – let’s say you went in to the ER with abdominal pain and the doc suspects you have appendicitis and a CT scan is performed.  Lo and behold you need to have an appendectomy – that’s a pretty serious illness, which would be covered by your catastrophic insurance.  Everything from the CT scan to the operation and anesthesia.  All told, about $20,000 worth of care – easily less than most car accidents, and therefore it seems that there should be a feasible business model like car insurance in there somewhere.

I’m sure that I’m over simplifying the catastrophic insurance proposal and it might cost more per person per year.  Even so – if we paid $3,000-$4,000 a person per year for catastrophic insurance that would still save us money over what we pay today.  To boot, we’d have more control and responsibility over our day-to-day healthcare spending.

This plan won’t work for everyone and we’d still have to make a determination of how to provide care for the uninsured and current Medicaid patients, but I’m sure we could use a system similar to what we have today.  Additionally, chronic illnesses would also need to be addressed, but it’s most likely do-able if some of the current healthcare reforms go through.  This high-level model that I’m proposing is at least a new way to start thinking about the change we’d like to see. Maybe it would be a sub-component of larger change?  It’s a start.

Cadillac care, indeed.  Or at least modeled after insurance for Cadillac autos.  What do you think?  Curious to your thoughts!

My wife and I recently had to decide what we wanted to do with our health insurance for 2010, and it really made me think hard about the way we understand the finances of and how we pay for healthcare as individuals. However, once we dove in we found that insurance companies and their policies and available information make this process overly difficult.  Given the current state of healthcare reform, creating this cost transparency for consumers should be a top priority.

We have a fairly unique PPO-type plan that gives us a $2,000 budget to spend as a family – on doc visits, lab tests, drugs, etc.  We don’t pay for a single co-pay or for a drug or a test until we utilize $2,000 worth of services.  Everything from $2,000-$6,000 comes out of our pocket, and then after that $6,000 threshold, the insurance company would have to pay for everything else 100%.  Not too bad, especially for healthy individuals, right?

But, what if ended up using more than that $2,000 budget? We’d be on the hook for 100% of our costs up to $6,000.  The alternative insurance plan we were weighing against included co-pays as our only costs with the plan. Period – no other hidden costs (or so it was our impression). We wondered whether there was a chance that if we had chosen the alternative plan, even despite making the co-pay payments all year, that it would have actually been cheaper over the course of the year to just pay for the co-pays out of pocket? We wanted to understand at what financial point would our co-pays and all the out of pocket expenses under the alternative plan actually be better than getting our “free care” up to $2,000?  A break-even point, if you will.

Well, as it turns out, it’s literally 100% impossible to answer that question.

It wasn’t possible for us to make a real informed decision as to which plan would have been right for us.  I see the dermatologist 4-5 times a year and a general practitioner about once for a cold.  My wife has regular check-ups and maybe visits the doc 2-3 times a year.  But we each might have a few tests here and there or a minor ‘procedure’ at one of these visits.  Given that, we wanted to know how quickly we’d burn through the $2,000 budget.

Given all that, we called the insurance company and asked to get an estimate of what our costs would be, which would then allow us to make an informed decision. I asked about specific acne treatments at the dermatologist and my wife asked about other doc visit costs.  The insurance company literally refused to release those financial figures.  We couldn’t do basic estimations on visits and yearly costs because the insurance company wouldn’t release the figures.  They said something about costs varying on a per-provider (doctor or facility) basis and pharmacy.  Each time one of us called there was a new or different excuse as to why they couldn’t make the costs transparent.  Sounded like a lot of fudging to us.

We got the distinct sense (and from talking to others, we’re not the only ones) that the insurance company (and other insurance companies I researched) was deliberately throwing up smoke screens and trying to be opaque.  Whenever a system actually strives to be opaque regarding costs or hides facts, that’s a red flag to me that something’s up. Certainly from the way the insurance companies are acting, it seems as if they are better off at keeping us all in the dark.  The less the public knows, the better. Confusion seems to be a key component to the insurance industry’s business proposition and model.  This needs to be alleviated in the current healthcare reform process.

My sense is that the system as a whole would be a lot more efficient and effective with greater transparency and improved business models.  Healthcare reform needs to include new insurance models that provide this transparency and make it easier for consumers to make informed decisions.  I’m going to follow up on this with upcoming posts on how healthcare IT and new healthcare polices would be able to not only improve our care, but make our system more efficient and actually save money.  My upcoming posts are going to address that exact fact, look at how the system can be more transparent, why it’s failed in the past and how several different types of business models in the healthcare and insurance industries might actually make sense.

As I’m pulling those posts together I’d love to hear from you!  What do you think?  What have you noticed about your insurance company that might be a bit odd or difficult? How should that affect healthcare reform?

UPDATE: Please RSVP to: windmiller [at] gmail

This Wednesday night – January 20^th at 7pm I’ll be hosting what I hope will be the first of many meet-ups for entrepreneurially minded biotech and bioinformatics people here in San Francisco.  It’ll be at Crossroads Café in SOMA. In February the meetup will most likely be moved to a more permanent location at i/o Ventures, a start-up incubator space in the city.  Information will be updated on the meet-up’s page on Medicine Think and on my @medicinethink Twitter account (follow me!).  Feel free to pass this info on to interested friends.

Genome Valance by Ben Fry. Ben's expertise is helping to graphically represent and interpret massive data sets and information. This piece represents genomic analysis using BLAST. I picked this piece specifically because it takes a new look at how to represent and understand genomics and informatics - something I hope this meetup will help to encourage more of. More about his work from Ben at http://benfry.com/genomevalence/ (click to enlarge)

So, why the meetup?  I’ve spent the past 4 years in San Francisco in both the tech and biotech realms.  Actually, I’ve been a passively active member of the tech community – out of interest I go to events and meetups with friends.  I meet people through my wife who’s in tech PR.  I’m actually pretty well immersed in the community without really trying that hard – it’s a pretty open and warm community.

But as I’ve actively tried to network and attend events in the biotech and genomics space, it’s been much more difficult.  While I’m just about one or two degrees from most of the tech crowd here in SF, I can’t say the same about the biotech space.  And, perhaps with some good reason – the biotech/life science/genomics space rely pretty heavily on intellectual property and trade secrets, so that stunts people’s ability to be social.  Despite that, I think there’s much more room for building a more solid general community outside of the big players and established start-ups.

One of the beautiful things about the tech community in SF is the intermingling of different specialties and cross-pollination of ideas.  This leads to start-ups, improved technologies and a more healthy and vibrant tech community.  Often, these ideas, through start-ups, are passed up to the larger players through acquisitions – so from early start-ups to big behemoths the entire community benefits from this networking and open community.

The biotech community here could use more of this attitude and community.  San Francisco and the University of California has made a substantial investment in the Mission Bay neighborhood – there are very, very few areas in the country that have the foundation for success as does this very special part of SF.  And with visionary institutes like QB3, which is based at UCSF and Berkeley, I see a whole new generation of PhD and other grad students with an entrepreneurial energy that hasn’t been created at other campuses.  Combine that with Stanford’s legacy of doing the same thing and you’ve got the seeds for an amazing industry and community.

Don’t get me wrong, the Bay Area is already a leader in biotech – clearly there’s a lot going on.  But to take it to the next level, the community also has to kick it up a notch.  I hope this meet-up can serve as a partial catalyst (of course, there will need to be many, many more events, etc) to tap in to both the tech and biotech communities here and bring together a diverse and energetic crowd.  Ideally, I’d like to promote an interdisciplinary meetup – between not only biotech and bioinformatics people, but to bring in members of the tech community.  I think tech could greatly inform how bioinformatics and biotech does business – from improving how data is handled, to user interface and analytics and beyond – there is much room for tech to impact the biotech community.  And, to a certain extent, tech would also benefit from some of the thinking from leaders in biotech.  From algorithm and natural language specialties, to managing massive data sets and making meaning, to scalable software, SF and Silicon Valley is well positioned to inform biotech and informatics and help solidify the Bay Area as a leader in biotech and informatics.

If you’re in SF or the surrounding areas, please come by Wednesday at 7 to the Crossroads Café. Even if you are a tech person with a curiosity about biotech, genomics, personal medicine and the like, without a super deep background or expertise, we’d love to have you.  I think these two groups have much to learn from each other and that this type of social interaction will lead to new ideas, energy and companies that will help take the Bay Area to the next level and retain a leadership in the life sciences.

What do you think?  What would you like to see at these types of meetups?

In the past I wrote about getting a start-up off the ground. More precisely, about how to take an idea and give it legs and maybe get it running – how to mold an idea and begin to improve it. I call this socializing the idea (with the next steps being socializing the company/concept). But, how do you take it to the next level? Making that transition between idea to fully operating start-up is tough, particularly if you’ve not done it in the past (read: if you haven’t been a successful entrepreneur in the past).

A good friend, who has successfully sold two pretty large start-ups, gave me the advice that angel (or seed) investors tend to only invest under three conditions: 1) you’ve been successful in the past, 2) they know you personally (worked with you, are a family member, want to get in good with your family, etc), or 3) are intimately tied and invested in the space you’re working in. While I took in his advice, I’m not sure we followed it well in my first start-up. None of us in the venture had successfully launched a start-up, we didn’t come from money and most investors didn’t like to invest in the healthcare space (at least at the time). Turns out my friend was more right than I could have guessed. This made it incredibly hard to pitch to angels, and ultimately we didn’t get funding (but that’s another story).

One other thing about starting that I’ve learned over the past 4 years is that often times it has taken companies a lot more effort than they showed or they had some sort of secret weapon to getting started. Almost no one company starts go smoothly or easily. One company in particular that comes to mind was lauded as having been an amazing story and elevated its founder to a great reputation. They raised a little under a million dollars and sold for $25M. That’s a great story. Then you peel back the layers back and realize that one of the co-founder’s father invested a majority of that initial $1M (they didn’t raise it from a typical angel investor) and that father was also an executive at the company that eventually acquired the start-up. Don’t get me wrong, this start up still took a tremendous amount of work to get the product to grow and to accumulate users. But, as a note to up and coming entrepreneurs, stories like this one, including the message that was told to the public and meetups regarding the ease they had fundraising are often misleading. It’s still a success story, but definitely not as shiny as it initially seemed.

But where does that leave first time entrepreneurs without a track record or the good fortune of befriending a Silicon Valley maven or a PhD in computer science? A couple new efforts have really filled that niche for talented, but new entrepreneurs. The most well known and a pioneer of these efforts is Y-Combinator – a Silicon Valley and Boston based effort that hold biannual “try-outs” for new start-ups. Essentially, you make an appointment for the try-out session, pitch to Y-Combinators’ board and if they like you they’ll give you some minimal seed funding ($10k) and help set you up with the resources you need. More importantly, being accepted as a Y-Combinator company pulls you in to their social circle which works wonders in being connected to partners, customers, getting advice or going for a larger funding round. Perhaps most important in this effort than having a great idea is who you know and who you have access to – funding from Y-Combinator can help you gain that toe-hold and help you jump in to the game. They also have great partners, including Paul Graham who has a widely read start-up blog. In other words, it’s less about the amount of funding and much much more about the connections being one of their companies brings you.

Now, utilizing efforts like Y-Combinator doesn’t come without a price – namely that it’s reported that they take 10% of equity in a company. That’s definitely very, very expensive. However, at the same time it’s indispensable if you are new to the start-up game, particularly in the Bay Area. Other, less well known efforts are also taking root, including Adeo Ressi’s The Founder Institute. Their model is a little different – they take a smaller chunk of the company if it gets funded and then splits the profits from this equity pool amongst other founders. It’s too much to really explain here, but suffice it to say that the Founder Institute is more about gaining connections than anything else.

A third option is a location in San Francisco named Dogpatch Labs. Run by Polaris Ventures, Dogpatch Labs gives entrepreneurs very inexpensive, shared workspace with other start-ups. It’s more about community and connecting with your fellow entrepreneurs, but it’s also a great networking tool. In this case, entrepreneurs and young companies need to pony up some cash for the space, but in a place like San Francisco, a resource like Dogpatch Labs is invaluable to the start-up community.

Last and certainly not least is i/o Ventures. Just announced today (January 6, 2010), i/o Ventures looks to be both a small seed round along with a new, open workspace in SF. It’s got an impressive list of advisors and other folks surrounding it, including the likes of Michael Arrington. Pretty amazing exposure and a mashup of some of the concepts from other incubators/labs. Sounds like they’ll be shelling out more money for a smaller percentage of the company as well (compared to Y-Combinator’s $10k and 10% take). Watch out for these guys in the future.

Overall, these efforts give an amazing amount of camaraderie, work space, inspiration and most importantly legitimacy in the eyes of potential users, customers, and funders. It’s a fantastic way to start if you’re new to the game. I’m sure there are other spaces like these, including Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA – more of a meeting of the minds and place for work inspiration and perspiration. Did I miss something? Who else should be included in this list? Leave a comment about them below!