How Do You Become a Bioentrepreneur?
How does the terrain look like? Who are these bioentrepreneurs? What’s my game plan?
I’m an entrepreneur about to start my MS in Biology. This article is my attempt to map out the intersection of biology-based technology and entrepreneurship. You might find this useful if, like me, you want build a biology-based business.
Here’s what I did:
- Built maps of different biology-based businesses. For fun, I made literal maps using this fantasy map maker.
- Looked at the backgrounds of 56 entrepreneurs building biology based businesses. This gives us an idea what it takes to pursue similar businesses.
- Picked what I’d like to pursue. My main interest as of this writing: can bioreactor design be used for “higher-resolution” cacao fermentation?
- Created a high level plan to get there. Essentially starting my masters and prototyping businesses within the year.
The maps are probably useful for anyone unfamiliar with the field. And while my choices and plans are specific to my situation and interests, the process might help you think of your own goals and plans.
I used two sources to familiarize myself with this field:
- The book “What is your Bio Strategy” by John Cumbers and Karl Schmieder
- The companies under the startup accelerator IndieBio (particularly the ones classified as Industrial Biology, Consumer Biology and Future Food and Agriculture.
After listening to a number of podcasts and a whole lot of Googling, I found that this book and this accelerator captures best the territory I would like to enter.
The maps of this world
The book categorizes the companies they feature in a couple of ways. In Section 4, they give some ideas on incorporating biology into their existing mission, vision, and goals.
- biology to fuel, feed or heal the world,
- genetic engineering to create new foods and fragrances that you’ve never tasted or smelled, designer materials with novel characteristics, probiotics that clean teeth while you sleep, or cells that detect or fight cancer,
- computer-aided design tools to create living circuits that can interact with the environment around them, increase the efficiency of bioprocessing, create medicines in your own microbiome, or living sensors that detect changes in the environment
- couldlabs or bio-automation technologies that enable entrepreneurs to start new companies on a shoestring,
- gene and genome synthesis tools to rapidly prototype new biological forms or store all the world’s data in DNA-based hard drive the size of a shoebox, or
- creating new opportunities or narratives to engage with customers.
In the same section, the authors lay out the companies in the book in what they expect to emerge as “biology as a service” for other businesses:
- Synthesis of DNA and RNA, and gene editing: GeneScript, GeneWiz, Integrated DNA Technologies, Origene, Twist BioSciences, Synthego
- Microorganism design: Gingko BioWorks, Zymergen
- Scaling of bioproduction: Amyris
- Biofabrication: Bolt Threads, Ecovative, Modern Meadow
- Biotech lab software: Riffyn, Synthace
Here’s my own categorization of the companies in the book. A lot of the people featured are prominent thought leaders who have their own Wikipedia pages. Excluding them, we would end up with entrepreneurs who have built one of these three types of companies:
- R&D partners. Deep specialized science that partner with large companies. Twist Bioscience, Amyris, Zymergen, Ginkgo BioWorks, Intrexon
- Biotechnology tools. Synthase (software), Riffyn (software), Bento Bio (wetware)
- Biomanufacturing companies. Bolt Threads (eg, silk via fermentation), Modern Meadow (eg, leather alternative made of collagen), Ecovative (eg, styro replacement made of mycelium)
Indiebio categorizes their companies under the following:
- Industrial Biology
- Consumer Biology
- Future Food and Agriculture
- Computational Biology
- Medical Devices
- Therapeutics
- Regenerative Medicine
Outside the book and the accelerator, the most common classification of biotech, however, is this color coding:
- Red: medical
- Blue: marine
- Green: agricultural
- White: industrial
In some cases, other colors are added, like this one:
Specific to biomanufacturing, here’s an interesting value pyramid from Waag Society.
Who are these bioentrepreneurs?
Now that we have maps of the territory we want to enter, let’s look at the backgrounds of people who have gone there. What skills do we need to have to be successful in this journey?
I made a table of 56 entrepreneurs from the book and from Indie Bio’s portfolio companies. I picked 8 among the 27 people featured in the book, the ones I found most interesting to emulate. The remaining 48 are founders of companies under the three portfolio categories of Indie Bio that I find most interesting: Industrial Biology, Consumer Biology and Future Food and Agriculture. The table includes their highest educational attainment, what they studied, and when they started working, based on their Linkedin profile.
The data support my decision to pursue graduate studies. 78% of these entrepreneurs have graduate degrees (PhD, MS, MA, MD, JD, MBA, MFA). 38% have PhDs and 25% have MS degrees.
What should I study? I made a word cloud based on the titles of their degrees. Here is the result:
Surprisingly, “engineering” is the most common word in the cloud. My undergrad was engineering — how convenient. This made me suspect that these results were influenced by some sort of confirmation bias. But perhaps not. The combination of “chemical” and “chemistry” is the next most common one, and I am not exactly enamored by chemistry the way I have been by biology.
This supports my decision to pursue an MS in Biology. The new discovery is the specific subjects I should focus on: biochemistry, molecular biology and materials science. Nice surprise!
There is a diversity of years of experience, as you would expect from the number of PhDs in the list. This is not necessarily a young man’s game, as some startup domains appear to be.
What is not captured by these data is the skillset of entrepreneurship — the commercialization of technology — which is what accelerators like Indie Bio offer, aside from a bit of capital. I spent the past years in the frontlines, with battle scars to prove it. My game plan is to catch up on the academic side while I continue with my entrepreneurial journey. Details below.
What’s my Game Plan?
Which territories do I enter first? How do I grow as an entrepreneur in these territories?
I marked out the maps above based on gut feel. Then I rationalize those choices. Reading my rationalizations help me see whether my choices make sense or I’m just deluding myself. As Flannery O’Connor wrote, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
- “1” means an immediate option
- “2” means a medium-term option
- “3” means a long-term option
First move: fermentation
It seems biomanufacturing is a good first step. Based on the companies I looked at, this is either based on fermentation or mycelium. More sophisticated operations include genetic engineering of bacteria or yeast.
From the business perspective, I think this is a key question: when is biological processing is more appropriate than (non-biological) chemical processing? The latter is easier to engineer, generally cheaper and more predictable. It seems using biology for manufacturing makes sense only when the product cannot be produced through merely chemical means. The classic example is insulin.
Examples that don’t need genetic engineering are age-old products of fermentation: yogurt, coffee, beer. Which begs the question: in fermentation, when is it appropriate to use more science (eg, bioreactor design) than craft (eg, traditions of beer-making)?
Agriculture (which includes animal husbandry) is technically using biology for production. When does it make business sense to use microorganisms (ie, fermentation) instead of plants or animals (ie, agriculture) to produce things valuable to the market?
Also, when does it make sense to manufacture locally versus importing from China?
In the next 2–3 years, I’ll be answering these questions while I build a solid foundation in biology. However, I should not forget that this move is fundamentally not a business decision. To be honest, I want to study biology for itself. Business is a way for me to pay for this adventure (at the same time, entrepreneurship is also a game I also enjoy in itself). It is not clear why I find fermentation so interesting that I’m planning my masters around it, and not agriculture or chemical engineering. Perhaps I just need to accept these deep personal interests and move forward.
Cacao
Cacao is another choice that did not come from some sort of calculation. A series of crazy serendipities has led me to cacao, which I’ll share in some other post. Its intersection with fermentation leads me to this question:
How far can you take the state of the art in fermentation (particularly bioreactor design) to improve the measurement, predictability and malleability of cacao flavors, and consequently chocolate flavors?
My next step is to validate if this a good question to focus my masters on. There are some interesting papers (eg, 1, 2). I’ll go through the top ones and do some outreach to authors and industry experts.
Long-view: genetic engineering, computational biology and (maybe not) pharma
The game plan for the next 2–3 years is:
- Through an MS in Biology, build a solid base in the science of biology, and depth in fermentation, particularly in its application to post-harvest cacao processing.
- Through systematic customer development and selling and producing as early as possible, build a breadth of understanding of the business ecosystems surrounding the valuable materials that are best produced through fermentation.
In the maps above, I labeled genetic engineering and computational biology as medium-term and long-term targets, and pharma maybe as a non-target. Here are my assumptions:
- All roads in biology lead to genetics
- You need data science to make sense of genetics (ie, computational biology)
- In less than 10 years, tools to practice genetics (at least DNA sequencing) will become affordable for people like me (outside large companies and institutions)
- It is beyond my capacity to execute the 2–3 year game plan above while mastering genetics and data science — thus I’ll have to do these after.
- Product development for pharma requires much more capital and technical depth and specialization compared to industrial biomanufacturing.
I’ll validate these assumptions as I go deeper in this world.
What’s the developing world version of this game?
There is a danger in what I’m doing here. I’m looking at entrepreneurs operating in the richest markets in the world, educated by top scientists, and supported by a mature ecosystem of talent and capital. That is not exactly my environment.
The finch with access to fruits is not necessarily better-off than the finch with access to nuts. But they need different playbooks. How should a science-based entrepreneur operate in the developing world? Off the top of my head:
- Customer development. Solid grounding on local problems, existing solutions and players, ways of doing sales and marketing, raw materials.
- Let early revenue and profitability be the north star, not scalability. Focus on finding and selling to customers, and getting paid solving their problems, instead of pitching to investors. This also means a bias for businesses that could be funded internally.
- Connect with entrepreneurs and keep track of bioentrepreneurship in Asia, Africa and South America. If you are reading this from the developing world, please comment, tweet or email me at bio@corazo.org. Let’s build a community!
