We're Building a Bio Company With the Garage Door Open
Can the startup methodology used in Stanford, the USA National Institutes of Health and Indiebio help us bring the new bioeconomy to the developing world?
💀 It’s memento mori time again. Life is short. What should I be doing in the next few years?
Here’s the best way I’ve found to answer this question:
Solve the biggest most interesting problem I can get my hands on…
…using the weird combination of skills and interests I’ve accumulated.
During the pandemic, the answer was AccessibleGenomics.org. I saw the problem because I was nerding out on nanopore sequencing before the pandemic hit (I was already preparing for a masters thesis using the ONT MinION). I knew I had a good chance of executing the solution because what it needed was 3rd world entrepreneurship and project management:
Build a global volunteer team of students and scientists: done via #nanopore Twitter and Just One Giant Lab.
Raise funding: got two grants from Just One Giant Lab and donations from NEB and GISAID.
Equip a representative lab in the developing world with the training and equipment needed to sequence SARS-CoV-2: Philippine Genome Center Mindanao.
Use the experience to help other labs in the developing world (ongoing)
By March 2021, PGC Mindanao made history: the first sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 enabled by volunteers, and the first on-site sequencing of any organism in the region of Mindanao, Philippines. Here’s the preprint.
In trying to solve one problem (lack of genomic SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in developing countries), we uncovered a more fundamental problem to doing science in the global south.
The biggest threat to Project Accessible Genomics turned out to be the sourcing of reagents. We need to buy them from US or Europe. These are already expensive for labs in the developing world. On top of that, we found out labs here pay an additional 30% to 100% to gate-keepers, both legal rent-seekers and corrupt ones. Our old nemesis has reared its ugly head again!
Which brings us to our memento mori. Time is ticking. What could be my unique contribution to making molecular biology more accessible to labs in this part of the world?
First, let’s take a look at what others are already doing
The person who has done the most work in this area is probably Jenny Molloy:
She started Open Bioeconomy in 2018 (a research group to democratize access to lab reagents)
Then founded Beneficial.bio in 2019 (a social enterprise producing low-cost lab reagents in West Africa and Latin America)
Then initiated Reclone.org in 2020 (a network of researchers facilitating access to lab reagents)
A lot of people have worked to bring these initiatives forward, but Jenny seems to be a the middle of it all!
Back in June, one of the scientists in Project Accessible Genomics, Isaac Larkin, invited me to the overgrad iGEM team, Frienzymes. The goal of the team is to create a frugal biofoundry using open-source wetware, hardware and software. In the upcoming months, we will prototype this frugal biofoundry in PGC Mindanao and in three other labs (one in Ghana and two in the US).
It turns out there is an open-source movement in synthetic biology that has a lot of parallels with the open-source software movement in the 90s’. I wrote about it in this Hackernoon article. Open-source synbio has a constellation of players tackling the wetware, hardware, software and IP law obstacles to accessibility.
And last week Jenny introduced me to Kieth Moore, a professor in Ateneo de Manila University, a top university in my country. His lab has produced a proof of concept for local manufacturing of reagents and is planning to spin-off a company to supply the local market.
Doing the dirty work so that scientists can do more science
I’ve worked with really smart scientists in Project Accessible Genomics. I noticed many of them don’t enjoy the hustle of getting projects done. Which sort of makes sense: they went into science to do science, not to deal with the messiness of sales, operations, recruitment, etc.
This led me to my new personal value proposition: I’ll do the dirty work so that scientists can do more science. Project management and entrepreneurship feels like play to me.
So how can I complement the current work of Friendzymes, Jenny and Keith?
If we map out the work that Friendzymes is doing in a business model canvas, we’ll see that it is designed to answer questions posed by the left side of the canvas:
What capabilities, equipment and processes do you need to create products?
How do you operate a biofoundry?
How much will the production cost?
What companies and institutions do you partner with?
For Friendzymes to create a frugal biofoundry playbook, it has to also answer questions posed by the right side of the canvas:
Which customer segments want this solution the most?
Why do they want the solution? (value proposition)
How do we get, keep and grow customers?
How do we price the products to optimize reach and sustainability?
Beneficial.bio has been prototyping one business model in African countries. They have started producing reagents locally (left side of canvas). I’m hoping to get answers to the following (right side of canvas) when I talk with Jenny, after she’s back from her vacation. I’ve applied to be a local sales hub and manufacturer of Beneficial.bio.
At what scale will sales sustain the business?
What their marketing and sales approach? Are they able to compete with the relationship-heavy large-contract commission-driven sales force that usually deals with government procurement?
What’s the price difference compared to imported reagents?
What are their margins?
Keith Moore, in this presentation in one Reclone symposium, shares how they have produced a functional enzyme for use in a SARS-CoV-2 saliva test, as well as an Rnase inhibitor. Production of several other reagents are in the development pipeline.
They aim to become a “robust developer and supplier of high value proteins for health R&D, supporting growth of the Philippine diagnostics, biotechnology, vaccine & biopharmaceutical sectors.”
Their target markets are labs in high schools, universities, research institutes, health establishments and industry.
Here’s their long term strategic plan:
I’ll know for sure when I meet with Jenny and with Keith, but my guess is that, like Friendzymes, their focus is also the left side of the business model canvas, product development rather than customer development.
Applying the startup methodology used in Stanford, the USA NIH and IndieBio in the developing world
I can easily transport myself to that evening I read Chapter 3 of Steve Blank’s The Four Steps to the Epiphany. The old computer in front of me with the clicky keyboard, the window-type air-conditioner humming in the background, the pale glow of the fluorescent lamps. I remember that scene so clearly because the concept introduced in that book—customer development—has been central in my entrepreneurial journey.
A couple years after that fateful moment, Steve Blank announced that he is running a class in Stanford called Lean LaunchPad, which teaches the methodology (by then popularized as Lean Startup). I couldn’t attend that class, so I did the next best thing (perhaps even better): I convinced a local university to let me to run the class with some Masters students (I reversed engineered the curriculum, but a few months later, Steve Blank open-sourced the teaching playbook).
Lean LaunchPad was later adopted by many other universities, the National Institutes of Health of the USA, and accelerators like Indiebio.
When taught to scientists, the Lean LaunchPad is presented by Steve Blank as “evidence-based entrepreneurship.” This means we need to prototype both the technical solution and the market solution. For Friendzymes to know whether our frugal biofoundry actually works, we need to see the actual engineered organisms produce our desired proteins in resource-constrained environments like rural Philippines and Ghana. If we want to know whether this biofoundry could be part of a sustainable business, we need to see actual customers pay for these products.
Readiness in the product development side of the canvas means we know the exact sequences, protocols and equipment to synthetize that product. Readiness in the customer development side means we know the go-to-market, pricing, regulatory and channel strategies to sell the product.
As the name suggests, this will involve a systematic validation and iteration of business model assumptions with around a hundred interviews and test sales.
Applying to the universe for my next mission
Since I ran that bootlegged version of Lean LaunchPad I’ve built two businesses. They did not scale as I hoped, but they pay the bills and they give me freedom to play non-profit impact-driven games like AccessibleGenomics.org and long games like helping bring the new bioeconomy to my country.
I’m a free man but I’m still hungry like an NBA player without a championship ring. So, universe, I think I’m the right man for this job. Do you know of any other hungty 3rd world entrepreneur / professional project manager fascinated with genomics and synthetic biology, who has ran a LeanLauchPad, and has a track-record of working with an international team of scientists?
…
I take that as a no, and that you accept my application.
Working with the garage door open to produce a playbook for building a synbio company
In the first phase of this mission, I’ll go through the Lean LaunchPad with Homer Sajonia II, AccessibleGenomics.org’s software/hardware wonderboy. In 3 to 5 months we will be subject matter experts on the local market for whatever valuable molecules could be produced through synthetic biology. We will do this in public, so that our Friendzymes teammates from other countries (and anyone else interested) can reuse the same process for finding viable synbio business models for their locations.
For entrepreneurs in other domains, I’m aiming for this newsletter to be like game footage for a related by slightly different sport. I’ll be using RoamResearch to document our interviews and business model iterations, so this might be of interest to Roam users as well. (By the way, I have a Twitter account on Roam and productivity and I have a published a Roam book on project management.)
The second phase will be starting a business (molave.bio). Our prototyping of the Friendzymes frugal biofoundry at PGC Mindanao, and whatever collaborations come out from my application to Beneficial.bio and my meeting with Keith Moore, prepares us for the technical and production side of that business. Our DIY Lean LaunchPad will prepare us for the market side of the business.
This will be my counterstrike to our archenemy here in the developing world, rent-seeking pseudo-entrepreneurs. We will defeat those who make money through extraction of value from the planet and the powerless—by making money through innovation and entrepreneurship. This is another reason why we work in the open: the enemy works in the shadows.
This journey has a lot of uncertainties and many failure modes. But uncertainty and the chance of failure are key components of adventure. And life’s too short not to embark on adventures. 💀
Join the ride: