John Stuelpnagel’s path to entrepreneurship started in a barn — as a large animal veterinarian. After more than a decade, Stuelpnagel felt compelled to follow his heart and become an entrepreneur. “For me, it really wasn’t a choice,” he says. “Entrepreneurship was in my blood — I just had to pursue it and see if I could do it.”
And what did treating large animals teach Stuelpnagel about the world of entrepreneurship? “Try not to get kicked,” he jokes.
Since changing careers, Stuelpnagel has founded some of the world’s most influential genomics companies, including Illumina (now a $25B company), Ariosa (acquired by Roche) and 10X Genomics (private).
Today, Illumina dominates DNA sequencing, but the company’s path to success is a good example of the slow and steady approach needed to ride out the rough spots. “We started out at an interesting time in the late 1990s — things were roaring pretty hard for internet and biotech companies,” Stuelpnagel says. Then came the financial meltdown — and by 2002, Illumina’s stock was trading at just a dollar.
“We never lost faith in the company,” Stuelpnagel says. Their strategy harkened back to what he learned in business school: “building a business with sustainable competitive advantage, where you can have profits year after year and reward employees and investors.” Contrary to what most people think, he says, the key to success isn’t necessarily chasing patents, but making sure the business continues to turn out innovative products that the market actually wants.
“Someone recently asked me about intellectual property,” Stuelpnagel recalls. “If Illumina — which has hundreds of patents now — had absolutely zero patents, their market share would be exactly where it is today. Patents create an illusion of protection, but the sustainability came elsewhere.”
There’s plenty of room in genomics, Stuelpnagel says, for newcomers to carve out similar success. “Genomics is the integrated circuit of our next century,” he predicts. “We’re actually still in the early innings, and incredibly interesting things are going to come up.” He predicts the best opportunities for growth and investment are:
Tools: There’s plenty of demand for these. “We’re just seeing a fraction of the genome,” he says. “We’re looking under the light where the lamppost is. We can find things where we look — but we don’t know where else to look.”
Applications: With these solutions, “you’re making observations about people’s health or making discoveries associated with a particular genetic variant,” Stuelpnagel says. When he left Illumina, he helped found Ariosa, which focuses on prenatal testing.
Manipulating DNA: This market niche is poised to get going, Stuelpnagel says. “We’re reading DNA, but we’re also learning how to manipulate it,” he says. “What’s going to be so exciting about the future is when we put reading and writing together. When we actually have DNA computing, we’ll start curing disease and feeding a hungry world.”
