Biology 101: March 11, 2018 Snippets
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This week’s theme: biology as a brand new frontier of technological exploration and value creation. Plus, announcing our Series A investment in HubHaus.
So far this year in Snippets, we’ve been looking at certain kinds of industries where software hasn’t yet had a truly transformative impact. In some cases, it’ll come; it’ll just take more time. But in others, it’s going to take something else: an entirely new technological transformation that transforms something scarce into something scalable and abundant, which isn’t information processing or information distribution but rather something completely new. And as you might guess, one of these shifts is beginning to happen now, even though the origins of this technology go back billions of years on earth: biology.
21st century biology, or if we want to be a bit more specific, synthetic molecular biology, could turn out to make the same scale of impact on the world over the next century as software and the internet have on our world today. And we’re going to spend the next several weeks on Snippets talking about how and why that is, what kind of problems biology helps us fundamentally solve that software can’t, and how value creation in the biology world may proceed a lot like the way it carried out with computers. It’s a really exciting time for us to be learning about this stuff at Social Capital, and over the next few weeks we hope not only to share what we’ve learned from you, but maybe even peek behind the curtain at a few of the projects we’ve been working on.
But first, let’s start with why. Why? I mean, biology is already the foundation for all of the life on earth that we know. The energy we consume, in one way or another, essentially all came from plants photosynthesizing the sun’s energy. We already eat those plants for food, burn their fossilized remains to fuel our cars, already use them to treat our illnesses and keep us healthy; what’s going to be the next “phase” of our learning how to harness and employ living systems? In other words, what can synthetic biology — DNA, cells, organisms, natural and artificially tinkered with life in general — do for us in a practical, engineered way?
Broadly speaking, I think there are four categories of problem where biology can do useful work, and where the fundamental barrier to solving the problem is something that can’t be solved with information (i.e. computers) alone:
1) Build up. We’ll cover this more next week, but at a very simple level, cells are little machines for taking in simple organic building blocks and turning them into more complicated ones. We already use living organisms to make one kind of high-value product: pharmaceuticals. Any kind of medical peptide or protein product, like insulin, is most likely made today in a giant living cell factory; soon, new kinds of complicated products like leather and meat will follow. Anything that’s carbon-based, which is most interesting things, could one day be a candidate: even building materials like concrete could have some part of their production process be handled by living organisms one day.
2) Break down. Just like cells can assemble simpler building blocks into complicated ones, they can also do the reverse: digest complicated molecules and structures back into those simple building blocks once more. This will be critical for many problems facing the world today: pollution, bioremediation, even the general problem of what to do with garbage. “Recycling” won’t just be something we do for plastic; it’ll eventually be a system where anything carbon-based gets biologically reprocessed and every little building block can live lives in many different products over time.
3) Fuel. Here’s a really fundamental one. There are few things we know with absolute certainty, but one of them is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: we have to continuously do work in order to fight entropy. What that means in practice is that everything we make and everything we do consumes energy in some way, and that energy is often stored in the form of chemical bonds. Atoms like carbon and nitrogen can be in a chemically reduced “energy-rich” state, or in a chemically oxidized “energy-poor” state: this is why we fuel cars with gasoline and not CO2, even though they both could be the same carbon. Living organisms are experts at making energy for themselves: either by harvesting it from the sun through photosynthesis, or eating other organisms that contain their own energy sources. Both of those functions will be critically important in the future: either by turning the sun’s energy into new fuel and new structures, or by environmentally remediating and recycling existing garbage, in a process that’s both energetically and environmentally sustainable.
4) Signal. Finally, there’s one way where cells are actually quite a bit like computers: they’re little information processing machines. Living organisms have evolved remarkably powerful and efficient ways of communicating information within and amongst each other; although we likely won’t ever use them to do the same kinds of information processing that computers are good at, it’s quite possible we’ll find other instances of sensing, processing and signalling information where living organisms will excel.
Overall, over the next few weeks we’re going to walk through the building blocks for a pretty bold thesis: that over the course of this century, molecular and synthetic biology may turn out to create as much *or possibly more* value than computers and the internet have created over the past fifty years. (Which is a lot.)
Here’s where we’re heading with this over the next few weeks. First, we’ll go over two essential reasons why synthetic cells and living systems are like computers. Next, we’ll go over two essential reasons why living cells and systems are not like computers. Then, with those comparisons and contrasts in mind, we’ll take a look at how today’s early synthetic biology industry looks an awful lot like the early days of mainframe computers, where early breakthroughs are just beginning to make waves.
A case being argued before the supreme court could reshape how antitrust laws work in two-sided marketplaces:
Ohio v. American Express: the supreme court case that could give tech giants more power | Lina M Khan, NYT
The ICO, take 2 (now featuring: compliance with the law?)
The American ICO is dead | Preston Byrne
Old and great writing on arts and media that is timely today:
Podcast episodes for your listening enjoyment:
The OmShow podcast: a conversation with Chris Michel, entrepreneur & photographer | Om Malik
Claire L Evans, author of Broad Band: the Untold Story of the Women who Made the Internet | The Internet History Podcast with Brian McCullough
Cash flows:
Credit card defaults: disaster looming? | Kaz Nejatian
How I learned to stop worrying and love working capital | Ethan Agarwal
Other reading from around the Internet:
We may have finally found Amelia Earhart, 80 years later | Becky Ferreira, Motherboard
After losing China, Jeff Bezos really wants to win in India | Saritha Rai, Bloomberg Technology
I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that:
In this week’s news and notes from the Social Capital family, we have a new company joining the family that we’re excited to share. As you know, our overarching mission at Social Capital is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. One of these problems, which we’ve all experienced to some degree, lies at the intersection between housing, community, and belonging. For those of us who aren’t living with family or partners, especially as we arrive in new cities without a strong existing social network, finding rental housing is more than just a logistical challenge of “Where do I want to live and can I afford an apartment there”, it’s just as much a question of “Where and how can I find my community?” That’s why we’re happy to announce our Series A investment in HubHaus:
Why we invested in HubHaus | Mike Ghaffary
HubHaus’s business revolves around subletting houses and apartments, helping do the work to make sure renters can find shared housing easily, that groups can find and interact with each other to make sure renters can find the best matches, and that housing owners are happy throughout the whole process. Once the lease is signed, HubHauses become more than just subleases: they become communities. As Mike writes:
One company and one model can’t solve the entire housing crisis, but it is amazing to see how much traction HubHaus already has. Over 400 community member live in 70 houses managed by HubHaus in the Bay Area and the greater Los Angeles area. Each house has its own unique feel and sense of community, which is by design. … I was really struck by this as I visited various HubHauses while getting to know the company. One community member, Pam, had moved to the United States for college from Costa Rica on a scholarship. After finishing her degree in architecture in Montana, she found a dream job at an architecture firm in San Francisco, but couldn’t afford to live anywhere near work. Instead she lived 2 hours east of the city, losing 4 hours of commuting each day, but that wasn’t even her biggest challenge with the living situation. She found it hard to make friends and feel any sense of community here, being from another country and not having a default network of people.
Then Pam found out about HubHaus and moved into one right next to a BART stop on the peninsula that lets her get to work in about 20 minutes. The real win was that she was instantly plugged into a community: a network of friends not only in her house, but in all the surrounding houses in her HubHaus “neighborhood”. HubHaus has events both within the house and jointly with others, and I could see by the way she lit up when speaking about it what a difference this had made in her life.
One of the great things about HubHauses is that they aren’t groups of people who all work in the same industry or have the same life experience. As people in the Bay Area tech community know all too well, living in a monoculture where everybody does the same things and talks about the same things can be draining and toxic; but when you’re new to a city and you mostly know your coworkers, having someone like HubHaus to help branch out and create rich new communities can be a great force for good — not just for our individual happiness, but maybe one day for our civic happiness too. If this mission speaks to you and you want to find out more, HubHaus is hiring — please say hello, and forward on to other people who might be looking too. And if you or someone you know is moving to the Bay Area or Los Angeles, check out some HubHauses there. You just might find your next home.
Have a great week,
Alex & the team from Social Capital
