Really loved reading this :) I’ll never forget the first time I met folks from Checkerspot at SynBioBeta! Loved their refreshing approach to marketing bioproducts - it felt like someone had finally figured it out. With current infrastructure constraints, the solution really does seem to be targeting a niche, somewhat cost-agnostic market (like skiers in Salt Lake City…) with a bio-based, sustainable but also high-performance product. 👏 Hopefully someday, we can also make commodities, but for now this seems to make more sense.
Perhaps the most impactful AI system for synbio will be one that helps the lab scientist understand their product market fit rather than design new genetic circuits.
Idk but I suppose using a library of successful business case studies. Perhaps not even just limited to biotech. Just focusing on understanding product market fit in general. To be fair, this is asking to train a model to truly understand the core human psyche. And I guess if someone had a model like that, since addict biology market fit might be one of the lowest ROIs in the opportunity space. But still I agree that this valley of death is a real obstacle for a better world.
Yeah I think there could be interesting ways that AIs could be part of a process and help interpreting different signals and contexts and patterns (but perhaps also some dark patterns/addictive behaviors!), but my stance is that product market fit is emergent from the interaction of the technology and the market, and can't be fully predicted in advance. That's the transformative/niche-construction point of view, like the organism is itself changed as it builds a niche.
I’d pitch that a root cause of this is that most biotech founders are a lot more excited by their technology than they are by their product… we need to reverse this.
Love this post! And not just because it’s algae centric : ) But sometimes it does seem like algae and other versatile/novel feedstocks are like these incredibly cool keys in search of locks.
Really loved reading this :) I’ll never forget the first time I met folks from Checkerspot at SynBioBeta! Loved their refreshing approach to marketing bioproducts - it felt like someone had finally figured it out. With current infrastructure constraints, the solution really does seem to be targeting a niche, somewhat cost-agnostic market (like skiers in Salt Lake City…) with a bio-based, sustainable but also high-performance product. 👏 Hopefully someday, we can also make commodities, but for now this seems to make more sense.
Perhaps the most impactful AI system for synbio will be one that helps the lab scientist understand their product market fit rather than design new genetic circuits.
ooh how would you train it?
Idk but I suppose using a library of successful business case studies. Perhaps not even just limited to biotech. Just focusing on understanding product market fit in general. To be fair, this is asking to train a model to truly understand the core human psyche. And I guess if someone had a model like that, since addict biology market fit might be one of the lowest ROIs in the opportunity space. But still I agree that this valley of death is a real obstacle for a better world.
Yeah I think there could be interesting ways that AIs could be part of a process and help interpreting different signals and contexts and patterns (but perhaps also some dark patterns/addictive behaviors!), but my stance is that product market fit is emergent from the interaction of the technology and the market, and can't be fully predicted in advance. That's the transformative/niche-construction point of view, like the organism is itself changed as it builds a niche.
I’d pitch that a root cause of this is that most biotech founders are a lot more excited by their technology than they are by their product… we need to reverse this.
What a refreshing article in biotech I read today
Loved this!
Love this post! And not just because it’s algae centric : ) But sometimes it does seem like algae and other versatile/novel feedstocks are like these incredibly cool keys in search of locks.
severely underrated idea here