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
Evicting Tenants - My Thoughts
What’s up, guys? It’s Graham here. So I want to take a moment to talk about something serious. Whether or not this affects you, I think this is something worth knowing about and discussing further. That would be the upcoming wave of evictions and mortgag…
The Rarest & Most Expensive Watches On Earth - Patek, F.P. Journe, Audemars Piguet, & MORE
[Music] Well, well, well, everybody, Mr. Wonderful here in a very special magical place. If you’re talking watches, with two great watch friends—first of all, Paul Boutros, the legendary auctioneer for very high-end watches. The Phillips auction is legend…
Sonic Postcards from The Appian Way | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
That was our first experience with an unpassable section of the Appian Way. We were with Ricardo at that point. Ricardo told us the path is not clear, so probably we have to cross the river. But let’s see. Writer Nina Strolik and photographer Andrea Fraz…
Dividing polynomials by x (no remainders) | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy
Let’s say someone walks up to you on the street and they give you this expression: x squared plus 7x plus 10 divided by x plus 2. And they say, “See if you could simplify this thing.” So, pause this video and see if you can do that. One way to think a…
How To Get Rich According To Ray Dalio
There are a million ways to make a million dollars, and in this video, we’re looking at one of them. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, is a role model for the world of finance. With a net worth of over …
Exposing "Fake YouTube Gurus" and the business of Selling Courses
There are very few industries out there where you have the potential to make tens of millions of dollars with no employees, no overhead, no office, no physical products, and nothing but a computer, an internet connection, and something to teach. There are…