yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Reshma Shetty Speaks at Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference 2016


3m read
·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

[Music] Hello everyone. Um, so first off, I'd like to, uh, thank both Jessica and Susan for inviting me to be here today. It's a real privilege and honor to speak to such a talented, amazing group of women here.

Um, so, so as Cat said, my name is RMA. I'm a co-founder of Geno Bioworks, a biotech company based in Boston, uh, so not from Silicon Valley. Um, uh, I wanted to first start by asking you a question. Um, does anybody know what the most complicated piece of technology on this desk is? You're right, it's the plant, right?

Uh, so if you think about it, right, this plant is capable of self-replicating. It's capable of self-repairing. It can self-assemble, right? It makes its own shape itself, um, and it can assemble structures with about a nanometer degree of precision, right? These are all traits, uh, that other engineering disciplines can only dream of, but biology has it all inherently. This is what makes me so in love with biology, right?

Is that it's capable of all these things. Um, so in my mind, biology is the most powerful manufacturing platform on the planet, um, and it's what I want to be able to use to build stuff, right? Um, and so for us at Geno, what we're excited about is that this next century is going to be, uh, the place where we learn how to design biology, right? Where we learn how to program DNA, program biological systems.

And so we think the next generation of designers are going to be designing biology, and that's what we're all about. Um, just a few quick facts on GKO. Uh, we were founded in 2008, so we're about 8 years old now. We're based in Boston, we're around 75 people or so, and basically what we do is design microbes, design organisms to spec.

Um, and I basically, what I do today is just give you a little bit of our backstory: how do we come to be where we are today, in case you might find it interesting? Okay, so, uh, Geno started, um, officially 8 years ago, but I think it really has its roots quite a little bit longer ago.

Um, uh, I grew up in Utah. Um, my house is, like, just actually off to the side of this picture. Uh, I went to the University of Utah, and I studied computer science there. Um, but at the same time, I also, um, worked in a biology lab. Um, and it was a really interesting experience because I, on one hand, would study, um, uh, programming, computer science, you know, operating systems and so on in class at the same time I was working in a research lab, um, learning biology on the fly.

Um, and the reason I did this was quite frankly, I found biology classes boring, right? They were filled with premed students who just wanted to memorize stuff, and I was much more interested in sort of engineering and hacking. And so, working in a biology research lab and studying computer science was a nice mix for me.

Um, and so then I decided to try to actually merge the two, uh, halves of my life, uh, when I went to grad school. Um, and I went to grad school at MIT, and that's where I met this, uh, person here on the slide. This is Tom Knight. Um, Tom is a very interesting guy.

Um, Tom basically, um, has a legit claim to inventing the internet, right? Um, he was involved in the early days of the ARPANET. Um, this, uh, this is him on the left there standing next to a Lisp machine. Um, you can see from the pants that it kind of dates back to the 70s or so.

And then, but about 20 years ago or so, Tom said, you know what? This computer stuff's getting a little boring. You know, there's a lot of people involved in it now. I don't need to really think about it, um, so much anymore. I'm going to start studying something else.

And he decided to basically go back to school for all intents and purposes. He would take biology undergrad classes and, and, and pair up with the freshmen in, in, in freshman biology labs and learn how to pipet and do biological research, right?

Um, but Tom brought a very interesting perspective when he, uh, went to biology. He brought an engineer's perspective, a hacker's perspective. He thought about, well, how can I take biology and simplify it? How can I design it? How can I program it? How can I can introduce ideas like standardization and abstraction? All sorts of co...

More Articles

View All
From Broke To $500,000,000 (The Empire of Ben Mallah)
So I’d like to introduce you to the most loud-mouthed, over-the-top offensive real estate mogul you’re ever going to meet: Ben Mala. “I bought it because I’m a big fat [__] business, that’s what you worry about.” He is your true rags-to-riches story, hav…
Enumerated and implied powers of the US federal government | Khan Academy
In this video, we’re going to focus on enumerated powers versus implied powers for the federal government. Enumerated just means powers that have been made explicit, that are clear, that have been enumerated, that have been listed someplace. While implied…
I was sitting down about to record a video when a client walked in to buy a private jet.
How much are you flying a year this year? 400? Oh my God, you should definitely have a plan, man. I was recording with my social media team suddenly and unexpectedly when a high-profile individual entered the showroom bus. Steve, we had a private plane s…
15 Ways to Hack Your Brain to Break Bad Habits
How many times have you tried to break a bad habit? 90% of people fail when they first start trying to break their bad habits, and it’s because they’re trying to break it in all the wrong ways. Habits are hardwired into your brain, and they have to be bec…
Voltage | Introduction to electrical engineering | Electrical engineering | Khan Academy
Voltage is one of the most important quantities and ideas in electricity. In this video, we’re going to develop an intuitive feeling for what voltage means. It has to do with the potential energy of electrical charges, and that’s what we’re going to cover…
Camille Fournier on Managing Technical Teams
All right, Camila Fournier, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me! So, you are a managing director at 2 Sigma, former CTO of Rent the Runway, former VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs, also an author. Your first book was The Manager’s Path: A Gu…