Last week we hosted a synthetic biology futures conference in Cork, Ireland.
What was really fascinating to watch was the interaction between the indy bio hackers and the mainstream academics. Both groups were extremely smart and yet started the day with some deep divisions around what was possible to do with synthetic biology in the real world.
Coming from substantially funded labs, the consensus of those from the colleges was that only really big businesses would (or even could) make strides in commercialising synthetic biology. In fact there was a kind of lab envy going on between the colleges and the commercial companies, who had more funds and better equipment.
The idea that small, poorly funded indy teams could make a commercial product was almost utterly dismissed out of hand and yet as the day wore on and more presenters from the indy biotech and bio maker movements spoke of their small, yet hard won successes, the mood in the room changed.
The day ended with robust discussions and much optimism. Something had palpably changed and yet the change was ephemeral. What had changed was perception. We got to see in real time the shift from dismissive through intrigue to downright belief and support, and all it took was a day.
On one hand, you could say that nothing has really changed. None of the indy labs are going to get more funding and none of the well funded lab researchers are going to be leaving their well kitted out existence to go and work in a bio-maker space.
Yet that would be the wrong impression. In fact, what really changed was that the previously impossible is now possible.
William Gibson famously said, “The future has already happened it’s just not evenly distributed.” The fastest way to get that distribution is for people to perceive what the new future is. Especially when that new future carries the promise of an upgrade of some kind.
What was previously dismissed by the academics as not possible is suddenly seen in a new light and by virtue of this the new perception, gains credibility. It is remarkably hard to do something truly new for the very first time. Copying the first work of another, while hard, is many times easier. The more something is replicated and shared, the faster it tends to evolve and progress.
Yet while something new remains at the fringes of perception, it feels less real to us. This means that fewer people are inclined to put effort into it and therefore it’s less likely to become a thing. It’s less likely to work.
A major “THING”
Synthetic biology is a major thing in mainstream biotech and the pharmaceutical industry. My daughter’s life would be considerably worse without the synthetic, human analog, insulin, that she requires to continuously address her Type 1 diabetes.
What is shifting is that Synthetic biology has so far been the province of big companies and academic institutions. Because it has only been those organizations that have had the financial muscle to afford the incredibly expensive tools needed to make stuff with synthetic biology that works.
It is just like the early days of the computer industry where IBM, DEC, NCR and other TLA companies coupled with a few well funded colleges and some defense research organisations held sway over the entire computer industry. Nothing else was even possible. Then suddenly the price of computing power dropped and people started sharing knowledge informally. Open source was born and people built their own computers in their back yards.
Lots and lots of computer technology was deployed by small teams to solve an exponentially larger number of problems and suddenly perception shifted. People began to quickly realize that computers were not just desirable, they were available. There followed an explosion of technology. This explosion was created by the hackers of the day (and I don’t mean hacker in the pejorative sense.)
We have new terms for this kind of hacking around mentality, terms like indy and maker have become synonymous with this kind of low cost high impact innovation. Indy Synthetic biology, bio hacking and bio making are on the brink of being big “THINGS”. Really “big things”. And it’s all about the shift in perception.
It’s like being invited to the garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were futzing with circuit boards, with one huge difference in the mix. Once you make a really good prototype piece of computer hardware, you still need a lot of money to make copies of it. With indy biotech, to make copies of your brilliant invention, all you need is sugar and a fermentor.
Startup Lessons Learnt Regardless Of Industry
Startup entrepreneurs need to take a few lessons from all this regardless of the industry they are in
* If you are doing something new be wary of “experts” who are locked into the old paradigm. They may not end up forwarding your cause.
* No matter how good your prototype or product is for it to become a “THING”, there needs to be a lots of people who perceive it as such. This means that promotion, socialization, public relations and networking are probably more important than you realise.
* If you want to rock the world then you need your product to become a “THING”. And until it does start to become a thing you need to keep your costs down. Stay lean. Many a startup has faltered by hitting the end of the runway before their wings have formed. You need to have enough people and time to make the perceptions work.
SOSV is betting early that independent synthetic biology is becoming a “THING” by running our accelerator program RebeBio. We’ve done it before, betting that small agile hardware companies would be a “THING” and that’s exactly what they have become. The proof being the massive success of our global HAX program. We have had 80 companies graduate from the program in just five years.
But even if you don’t intend on creating a startup company, look around you. What things are you not yet seeing that are going to be huge things in your life?
Mobile phones, tablet computers, Twitter, Facebook and Apple were all once not “THINGS”, until they were.
Bill Liao is Managing Director at RebelBio and General Partner at SOSV.
Originally published at sosv.com on March 25, 2014.
