The Exchanges

Q Can I ask a subsequent question of why do you think there is maybe a drought or a lessening of young founders or a lack of availability of young founders? What are the reasons for this? Is this a kind of pipeline issue? Is this a societal issue towards longevity and biotech as kind of a career in itself? What do you think it is?

A Well, I think it's pretty straightforward in that if you go ask a typical sort of person graduating, say from a PhD program, what their next options are, you know, if that PhD program is in EE or CS, They all have a very clear and diverse set of options. They'll know they can start a company, go to Google, or any number of a variety of things. If you ask a bio PhD student, typically they'll say, oh, well, I might be able to go into industry or get a professorship, but they don't really consider entrepreneurship. And we actually sat down and chatted with over 50 grad students to kind of understand the mentality around this decision. And one of the interesting things from that was they all kind of, I think, assume that it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to get a drug to market. And so they're just ineligible to go and develop drugs because they know that they can't raise the amount of financing right off the bat. And I think the kind of learning for them is, well, it does take a lot of money to develop a drug, but the amount of money you need to raise as a first pass is actually pretty small. Like most central capital firms and their testing ideas internally raise on the order of 500 K to a million dollars. And so I think it's really an education point that large amounts of capital are required in this space, but they're not all required up front. And you can get started wi…

AI assessment note: “I think it's really an education point that large amounts of capital are required”

Q Can I ask, was there a catalytic moment to you realizing your complete passion and love for longevity, and it being something you have to do, being an observation at a young age of one of these animals increasing performance over time, or a certain book that you read What was that catalytic moment? I have to ask.

A Well, I was generally interested in the topic, but I think if I had searched and kind of gotten a zero, I would have thrown out my hands and walked out the door. There's no use trying to do science if there's no way to do the science that you want to do, but I think the fascinating fact was I searched, you know, aging science, and this page popped up by this woman called Cynthia Kenyon talking about daft mutations in a tiny worm called C. elegans, and basically what it implied was, you know, that we're able to control aging and just modulate it. Like, we can just decide how long we want certain worms to live and Tune their parameters to fit that. And the only question was, well, can we do that in humans? And of course, it takes a lot longer to test that because our cycle of testing is kind of a lot longer and more expensive in humans. But just, I mean, to me, it was so obvious that if you knew that you could do this, well, gosh, I mean, that was the most interesting thing to work on in the world if it were possible to do so.

AI assessment note: “this page popped up by this woman called Cynthia Kenyon talking about daft mutations”

Q Can I ask, was there a catalytic moment to you realizing your complete passion and love for longevity, and it being something you have to do, being an observation at a young age of one of these animals increasing performance over time, or a certain book that you read What was that catalytic moment? I have to ask.

A Well, I was generally interested in the topic, but I think if I had searched and kind of gotten a zero, I would have thrown out my hands and walked out the door. There's no use trying to do science if there's no way to do the science that you want to do, but I think the fascinating fact was I searched, you know, aging science, and this page popped up by this woman called Cynthia Kenyon talking about daft mutations in a tiny worm called C. elegans, and basically what it implied was, you know, that we're able to control aging and just modulate it. Like, we can just decide how long we want certain worms to live and Tune their parameters to fit that. And the only question was, well, can we do that in humans? And of course, it takes a lot longer to test that because our cycle of testing is kind of a lot longer and more expensive in humans. But just, I mean, to me, it was so obvious that if you knew that you could do this, well, gosh, I mean, that was the most interesting thing to work on in the world if it were possible to do so.

AI assessment note: “this page popped up by this woman called Cynthia Kenyon talking about daft mutations”

Q No, totally. I do agree there. In terms of kind of one interesting element I'd love to ask is, was there a breakthrough moment where suddenly the stars aligned and it looked like the sun was coming out to shine after the dark period? Was there that kind of catalytic moment where it came together, so to speak?

A Yes. So I remember it quite clearly. We had just found one of the first companies that we ever invested in, Unity Biotechnology, and we were really, really excited about them. And so I actually used that as the first Deal that I discussed with LPs. And I remember it said the investors that we've been talking to that were hanging around the hoop and saying, look, we found this company and it's amazing. Like this is exactly what we've always wanted to invest in. And we showed them the data. We showed them what Ned was working on. And we said, here's an incredible founder. Here's incredible science longevity. And we have to get in. We're just going to do this deal. Even if we don't have any capital to do, we're going to do the deal. And that was the first time that it clicked for people. I think when they saw kind of the concrete progress that was being made, that's when people decided, okay, look, we can really come in and do this. And I think before things got concrete, it's just a lot harder to make it clear. Cause you know, I think if you're pitching, especially something like longevity, it's, I mean, it's a very out there sounding thing, you know, to the idea of making people live longer that's been sold by people for many millennia, um, as a dream, but not a concrete reality. And so it took a very, very wonderful story to kind of folks very focused.

AI assessment note: “We had just found one of the first companies that we ever invested in, Unity Biotechnology”

Q sure. But if those are the founders that we look for in the space, I'd love to discuss maybe the investment landscape more itself. You said there about kind of the dollar sitting, waiting to be deployed. In terms of kind of the strong headwinds in biotech, would you say you're very much seeing this kind of explosion of capital towards the space? And how do you view it currently?

A Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think biotech's really fascinating in that it's one of the most important things you could possibly invest in, right? I think if you, if you were considering the kind of NPV of a potential drug for Alzheimer's versus a consumer app, it'd be, it'd be very hard to find consumer apps that have a higher NPV socially, and perhaps even from a market perspective, depending on how you weigh the probabilities. But I think that they're, they're kind of like waves of interest in biotech. And generally what you see is I think people, especially generalist species will kind of come in and Um, or Alzheimer's or, um, you know, X where X is one of a variety of different subjects. All of our peers are interested in X. We've read articles in MIT tech review that kind of center around X. And we've seen with nature papers being published in this area. So we kind of generally feel that that's a good place to deploy capital. And so I think that can sometimes lead to kind of a lot of investment in X where X was, is exciting, but, but probably won't pay off on quite the timelines that folks are assuming. And so I think we might be seeing that a little bit now where there's kind of a lot of excitement around bio in general and And I think probably rightly so, but I just, I think there might be a difference between the expected payoff timelines and kind of the actual payoff tim…

AI assessment note: “Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think biotech's really fascinating”

Q No, totally. I do agree there. In terms of kind of one interesting element I'd love to ask is, was there a breakthrough moment where suddenly the stars aligned and it looked like the sun was coming out to shine after the dark period? Was there that kind of catalytic moment where it came together, so to speak?

A Yes. So I remember it quite clearly. We had just found one of the first companies that we ever invested in, Unity Biotechnology, and we were really, really excited about them. And so I actually used that as the first Deal that I discussed with LPs. And I remember it said the investors that we've been talking to that were hanging around the hoop and saying, look, we found this company and it's amazing. Like this is exactly what we've always wanted to invest in. And we showed them the data. We showed them what Ned was working on. And we said, here's an incredible founder. Here's incredible science longevity. And we have to get in. We're just going to do this deal. Even if we don't have any capital to do, we're going to do the deal. And that was the first time that it clicked for people. I think when they saw kind of the concrete progress that was being made, that's when people decided, okay, look, we can really come in and do this. And I think before things got concrete, it's just a lot harder to make it clear. Cause you know, I think if you're pitching, especially something like longevity, it's, I mean, it's a very out there sounding thing, you know, to the idea of making people live longer that's been sold by people for many millennia, um, as a dream, but not a concrete reality. And so it took a very, very wonderful story to kind of folks very focused.

AI assessment note: “that was the first time that it clicked for people”

Q I couldn't agree with you in terms of that founder-centric thinking, but you did mention that pitching to the LPs and how it makes strategic sense. I'm really, really interested. How was the LP fundraising process for you presenting a very different presentation and thesis I'm sure the majority of presentations and theses that they see. How was that process for you? Were there any really surprising elements?

A Yeah, it was definitely one of the most confusing and disorienting processes I've ever been through. I mean, for context, I had just dropped out of MIT. When I moved to the Valley, I was, uh, 16, maybe 17 at the time. I'd never raised financing before. I had maybe a couple thousand dollars in my bank account, and I didn't have any understanding of what the process should look like, and so the first two years, for me, were just this really confusing process of going, and, you know, I literally... Spent the first couple months, like, you know, emailing the Forbes for a hundred billionaire list, because I thought that that was the best way. It was sort of like, well, I guess I'll need billions of capital to do this. Who has billions of capital? Well, there's like a list of people who do, and I'll just go talk to them. But it took a long time to understand that I think pitching your first fund is a lot more like pitching a company than it is a fund in its later stages, and your first investors are probably going to be angels, and people who know you well, and mentors, and people just putting in small checks, and that you have to raise your first fund, I And so you have to generate deal flow before you raise your first fund, which of course is kind of a chicken and egg problem. And I think actually most VCs never encounter this because they're starting off with funds that have a dec…

AI assessment note: “it was definitely one of the most confusing and disorienting processes I've ever been through.”

Q I mean, the other element that's often cited there, and you kind of touched on it with the co-investor element, but everyone tells me that there's kind of fundamental lack of downstream investors within biotech. How do you think about And is that a fallacy and a myth or is it a truth and a concern?

A I mean, I'd say empirically for us, it's not been true. All of our companies that have wanted to have been able to attract full on capital and most times from kind of outside investors. And so I don't think we've seen that. I think if you, if you haven't produced value in the first couple of years of the company, it might be hard to argue for full on capital, but I think we were aware of just enormous numbers of people with multiple dollar funds, even kind of, you know, funds really large up there in size. Who are looking to, you know, for the first time kind of move into biotech, and so we almost see an increase in the availability of full-on capital. I think my question is, you know, for how long, right? There's always concern that if somebody's just moved into biotech, they could also just move out next year, and so I think we take that into account when evaluating potential syndicate partners, but I mean, I think that might be the case for some areas. Maybe there's some specific sectors that are experiencing that. We don't really see that in our companies, you know, and hope continues.

AI assessment note: “I'd say empirically for us, it's not been true.”

Q Can I ask a subsequent question of why do you think there is maybe a drought or a lessening of young founders or a lack of availability of young founders? What are the reasons for this? Is this a kind of pipeline issue? Is this a societal issue towards longevity and biotech as kind of a career in itself? What do you think it is?

A Well, I think it's pretty straightforward in that if you go ask a typical sort of person graduating, say from a PhD program, what their next options are, you know, if that PhD program is in EE or CS, They all have a very clear and diverse set of options. They'll know they can start a company, go to Google, or any number of a variety of things. If you ask a bio PhD student, typically they'll say, oh, well, I might be able to go into industry or get a professorship, but they don't really consider entrepreneurship. And we actually sat down and chatted with over 50 grad students to kind of understand the mentality around this decision. And one of the interesting things from that was they all kind of, I think, assume that it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to get a drug to market. And so they're just ineligible to go and develop drugs because they know that they can't raise the amount of financing right off the bat. And I think the kind of learning for them is, well, it does take a lot of money to develop a drug, but the amount of money you need to raise as a first pass is actually pretty small. Like most central capital firms and their testing ideas internally raise on the order of 500 K to a million dollars. And so I think it's really an education point that large amounts of capital are required in this space, but they're not all required up front. And you can get started wi…

AI assessment note: “they don't really consider entrepreneurship... assume that it takes hundreds of millions of dollars”

Q preference today, Harry, is the build internally and fund internally strategy. How do you think about the kind of more traditionalist biotech model of building internally large ownerships carrying throughout and pre-acquisition? How do you think about that? I had Peter Parker on the show from BioInnovation. He said it doesn't work. I know the team at Atlas are very much fans of it. How do you think about it?

A I mean, I think it's a great strategy. It's great for the VCs for certain parameters. I think the likelihood of success is slightly higher. The equity stakes are definitely higher, and there's a better pitch to LPs in the short term. My proprietary process for producing value, gosh, that isn't that better than talking about the kind of shared deal pool where I have to go to the well that all these other VCs are, you know, also going to and argue for my advantage based on how much founders like me. I mean, gosh, isn't that a better story? But I think it somewhat loses track of where the value has been created in a biotech historically, right? I mean, look at Bob Sure, he came from Kleiner Perkins, but the guy was an entrepreneur, you know, to his soul, and I think one of the special things about Genentech was just how founder-driven that company was. There's a statue of Herb Boyer and Bob Swanson still in the patio of Genentech, you know, the two guys in metal kind of eternally, you know, in the patio of the company that he helped create, and then when you walk in for orientation there, that kind of focuses on the founders, and that's very different, I think, from a VC firm kind of selecting a few specific pathways and then pursuing those. I mean, You can argue the firms are trying to have that same founder focus to the degree that it's rational and that they're aware of kind of…

AI assessment note: “I mean, I think it's a great strategy. It's great for the VCs”

Q I couldn't agree with you in terms of that founder-centric thinking, but you did mention that pitching to the LPs and how it makes strategic sense. I'm really, really interested. How was the LP fundraising process for you presenting a very different presentation and thesis I'm sure the majority of presentations and theses that they see. How was that process for you? Were there any really surprising elements?

A Yeah, it was definitely one of the most confusing and disorienting processes I've ever been through. I mean, for context, I had just dropped out of MIT. When I moved to the Valley, I was, uh, 16, maybe 17 at the time. I'd never raised financing before. I had maybe a couple thousand dollars in my bank account, and I didn't have any understanding of what the process should look like, and so the first two years, for me, were just this really confusing process of going, and, you know, I literally... Spent the first couple months, like, you know, emailing the Forbes for a hundred billionaire list, because I thought that that was the best way. It was sort of like, well, I guess I'll need billions of capital to do this. Who has billions of capital? Well, there's like a list of people who do, and I'll just go talk to them. But it took a long time to understand that I think pitching your first fund is a lot more like pitching a company than it is a fund in its later stages, and your first investors are probably going to be angels, and people who know you well, and mentors, and people just putting in small checks, and that you have to raise your first fund, I And so you have to generate deal flow before you raise your first fund, which of course is kind of a chicken and egg problem. And I think actually most VCs never encounter this because they're starting off with funds that have a dec…

AI assessment note: “it was definitely one of the most confusing and disorienting processes I've ever been through.”

Q I mean, the other element that's often cited there, and you kind of touched on it with the co-investor element, but everyone tells me that there's kind of fundamental lack of downstream investors within biotech. How do you think about And is that a fallacy and a myth or is it a truth and a concern?

A I mean, I'd say empirically for us, it's not been true. All of our companies that have wanted to have been able to attract full on capital and most times from kind of outside investors. And so I don't think we've seen that. I think if you, if you haven't produced value in the first couple of years of the company, it might be hard to argue for full on capital, but I think we were aware of just enormous numbers of people with multiple dollar funds, even kind of, you know, funds really large up there in size. Who are looking to, you know, for the first time kind of move into biotech, and so we almost see an increase in the availability of full-on capital. I think my question is, you know, for how long, right? There's always concern that if somebody's just moved into biotech, they could also just move out next year, and so I think we take that into account when evaluating potential syndicate partners, but I mean, I think that might be the case for some areas. Maybe there's some specific sectors that are experiencing that. We don't really see that in our companies, you know, and hope continues.

AI assessment note: “I'd say empirically for us, it's not been true.”

Q I thought I was a young farm manager. That is something else. So, uh, thank you for making me feel terribly unaccomplished so early in the interview. I really appreciate that. Let's start with a question, actually two questions, really, from Daniel Gross. He said, and quite rightly so, first in terms of the passion around longevity, What really is longevity, and what makes it so special?

A Yeah, so on longevity front, I remember, you know, when I was a kid, and I first got interested in this subject, I went to my computer, and I think it was one of the first Google searches I must have done, um, called, like, aging science, and If I had done that kind of search and science and the literature about a hundred years ago, nothing would have shown up. There was really very little work on aging and longevity, but the past three decades have resulted in massive advances. So we now know that it's possible to genetically control aging, that aging is malleable. And I think what's really fascinating is if you look across 46 different types of animals, you see huge differences in longevity. You know, we age, but many animals don't. Many animals You know, have increased fertility and decreased mortality with time, and so there's a question, to what extent is our longevity fixed, and the fascinating fact in the past few decades has been, you can change it, you can influence it, and it may be something that we're able to translate into drugs that people take in the next couple decades.

AI assessment note: “we now know that it's possible to genetically control aging, that aging is malleable.”

Q would love to ask, listening to you, there's this kind of unwavering determination of what can be done and what you have achieved over the last few years. Was there any doubt when you were a 16, 17 year old coming to the valley with a couple of thousand dollars that this wasn't going to work? Was it always kind of this unwavering belief that it would all work out?

A Well, it's kind of funny. I think that I've been super lucky, even compared to most kids who want to get into science, and that the first email I'd ever sent when I was 12 to a scientist to work in their lab, Got kind of a brilliantly positive response to and ended up resulting in kind of a two-year lab stint, and so I think I had this kind of inherent assumption that, like, things have been too easy kind of so far, and I was kind of due for a hard slog, and so I think part of the resilience through those years just came from kind of, well, I guess this is, you know, this is the hard part. Should have been expecting that, but yeah, I definitely think that raising your first fund, it's a pretty tough go, especially when you don't have much of a, you know, set of anecdotes to rely on that give you context for how long it should take or how hard it should be or even feedback on kind of what you're doing right or wrong during that process.

AI assessment note: “I was kind of due for a hard slog”

Q preference today, Harry, is the build internally and fund internally strategy. How do you think about the kind of more traditionalist biotech model of building internally large ownerships carrying throughout and pre-acquisition? How do you think about that? I had Peter Parker on the show from BioInnovation. He said it doesn't work. I know the team at Atlas are very much fans of it. How do you think about it?

A I mean, I think it's a great strategy. It's great for the VCs for certain parameters. I think the likelihood of success is slightly higher. The equity stakes are definitely higher, and there's a better pitch to LPs in the short term. My proprietary process for producing value, gosh, that isn't that better than talking about the kind of shared deal pool where I have to go to the well that all these other VCs are, you know, also going to and argue for my advantage based on how much founders like me. I mean, gosh, isn't that a better story? But I think it somewhat loses track of where the value has been created in a biotech historically, right? I mean, look at Bob Sure, he came from Kleiner Perkins, but the guy was an entrepreneur, you know, to his soul, and I think one of the special things about Genentech was just how founder-driven that company was. There's a statue of Herb Boyer and Bob Swanson still in the patio of Genentech, you know, the two guys in metal kind of eternally, you know, in the patio of the company that he helped create, and then when you walk in for orientation there, that kind of focuses on the founders, and that's very different, I think, from a VC firm kind of selecting a few specific pathways and then pursuing those. I mean, You can argue the firms are trying to have that same founder focus to the degree that it's rational and that they're aware of kind of…

AI assessment note: “I think it's a great strategy. It's great for the VCs for certain parameters.”

Q I mean, I love that kind of thinking on market timing, because it's the one risk that always makes me incredibly uncomfortable, whether it's in AR, VR, name your kind of frontier investing space. How do you then fundamentally think about market timing, given the sheer difficulty considering the macro in front of you?

A Yeah, exactly. So I actually think that's one of the reasons, and this is very counterintuitive to most people, but one of the reasons we chose to invest in longevity, I literally thought it was the least risky, most likely to work part of biology in general, Particularly the part of biology that would be easy to test, easy to test in humans, and that's very counterintuitive to most people. Most people would assume that longevity is actually definitely the hardest place to invest, the most risky, and the longest to invest in humans, and so I'll explain why we think that. You know, all the companies that we invest in have drugs that have worked not just in kind of mouse models of Alzheimer's typically, but also diabetes and heart disease, and kind of typically the pathways that we invest in have been tested in and work in almost every Age-related disease pathology that they've been sort of looked at in context of, and so while most companies that go out there for one of these diseases have kind of like a single sort of pathway-focused therapeutic, the therapies that we invest in sort of work in all the diseases, and so they can also then be clinically tested in any one of the diseases, and so you have a much broader variety of indications to select from. You can pick the fastest ones, so I think we're actually optimized on speed to clinic and efficacy once in clinic, And then I …

AI assessment note: “You can pick the fastest ones, so I think we're actually optimized on speed”

Q would love to ask, listening to you, there's this kind of unwavering determination of what can be done and what you have achieved over the last few years. Was there any doubt when you were a 16, 17 year old coming to the valley with a couple of thousand dollars that this wasn't going to work? Was it always kind of this unwavering belief that it would all work out?

A Well, it's kind of funny. I think that I've been super lucky, even compared to most kids who want to get into science, and that the first email I'd ever sent when I was 12 to a scientist to work in their lab, Got kind of a brilliantly positive response to and ended up resulting in kind of a two-year lab stint, and so I think I had this kind of inherent assumption that, like, things have been too easy kind of so far, and I was kind of due for a hard slog, and so I think part of the resilience through those years just came from kind of, well, I guess this is, you know, this is the hard part. Should have been expecting that, but yeah, I definitely think that raising your first fund, it's a pretty tough go, especially when you don't have much of a, you know, set of anecdotes to rely on that give you context for how long it should take or how hard it should be or even feedback on kind of what you're doing right or wrong during that process.

AI assessment note: “I had this kind of inherent assumption that... I was kind of due for a hard slog”

Q I thought I was a young farm manager. That is something else. So, uh, thank you for making me feel terribly unaccomplished so early in the interview. I really appreciate that. Let's start with a question, actually two questions, really, from Daniel Gross. He said, and quite rightly so, first in terms of the passion around longevity, What really is longevity, and what makes it so special?

A Yeah, so on longevity front, I remember, you know, when I was a kid, and I first got interested in this subject, I went to my computer, and I think it was one of the first Google searches I must have done, um, called, like, aging science, and If I had done that kind of search and science and the literature about a hundred years ago, nothing would have shown up. There was really very little work on aging and longevity, but the past three decades have resulted in massive advances. So we now know that it's possible to genetically control aging, that aging is malleable. And I think what's really fascinating is if you look across 46 different types of animals, you see huge differences in longevity. You know, we age, but many animals don't. Many animals You know, have increased fertility and decreased mortality with time, and so there's a question, to what extent is our longevity fixed, and the fascinating fact in the past few decades has been, you can change it, you can influence it, and it may be something that we're able to translate into drugs that people take in the next couple decades.

AI assessment note: “the fascinating fact in the past few decades has been, you can change it”

Q sure. But if those are the founders that we look for in the space, I'd love to discuss maybe the investment landscape more itself. You said there about kind of the dollar sitting, waiting to be deployed. In terms of kind of the strong headwinds in biotech, would you say you're very much seeing this kind of explosion of capital towards the space? And how do you view it currently?

A Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think biotech's really fascinating in that it's one of the most important things you could possibly invest in, right? I think if you, if you were considering the kind of NPV of a potential drug for Alzheimer's versus a consumer app, it'd be, it'd be very hard to find consumer apps that have a higher NPV socially, and perhaps even from a market perspective, depending on how you weigh the probabilities. But I think that they're, they're kind of like waves of interest in biotech. And generally what you see is I think people, especially generalist species will kind of come in and Um, or Alzheimer's or, um, you know, X where X is one of a variety of different subjects. All of our peers are interested in X. We've read articles in MIT tech review that kind of center around X. And we've seen with nature papers being published in this area. So we kind of generally feel that that's a good place to deploy capital. And so I think that can sometimes lead to kind of a lot of investment in X where X was, is exciting, but, but probably won't pay off on quite the timelines that folks are assuming. And so I think we might be seeing that a little bit now where there's kind of a lot of excitement around bio in general and And I think probably rightly so, but I just, I think there might be a difference between the expected payoff timelines and kind of the actual payoff tim…

AI assessment note: “Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think biotech's really fascinating in that it's one of”

Q you might have some incredibly finely tuned answers to these, but I am interested, and it's something that's often cited on the show. So with the new fund, how does one think about portfolio construction when investing in longevity? Obviously, it's inherently more risky than, you know, investing in kind of scalable SaaS solutions. Does one have to have this widely diversified portfolio, and how do you think about that?

A I think that we have 60 to 90 different mechanisms internally of longevity that we track, and we really just try to, and it's pretty rare that we find amazing drugs with wonderful founders that fit any one of those pathways inherently, and so I think to some degree, we're pretty diversified across biological mechanism, and if you look at our portfolio, we have platform companies, and so we're diversified across platform versus therapeutic, we're diversified across type of approach, we're diversified across even kind of general category of approach, I mean, we have with a, you know, oncology company and fund one portfolio, and And several others, you know, we're diversified across biological and small molecule. So without even consciously really pushing for it, we're diversified across almost every axis you could think of. Part of that is just, you know, the space is one where when you see an amazing asset, you just kind of have to invest because it's so rare to find all the stars aligning and the biology really determines that. And so I think, you know, we'd love to have, you know, I think eventually as the space grows, we'll probably think a lot more constructively about what exact proportions of a portfolio might be best allocated to different things. But right now I think we're very opportunistic. And that's just surprisingly and hilariously resulted in, like, complete diver…

AI assessment note: “without even consciously really pushing for it, we're diversified across almost every axis”

Q you might have some incredibly finely tuned answers to these, but I am interested, and it's something that's often cited on the show. So with the new fund, how does one think about portfolio construction when investing in longevity? Obviously, it's inherently more risky than, you know, investing in kind of scalable SaaS solutions. Does one have to have this widely diversified portfolio, and how do you think about that?

A I think that we have 60 to 90 different mechanisms internally of longevity that we track, and we really just try to, and it's pretty rare that we find amazing drugs with wonderful founders that fit any one of those pathways inherently, and so I think to some degree, we're pretty diversified across biological mechanism, and if you look at our portfolio, we have platform companies, and so we're diversified across platform versus therapeutic, we're diversified across type of approach, we're diversified across even kind of general category of approach, I mean, we have with a, you know, oncology company and fund one portfolio, and And several others, you know, we're diversified across biological and small molecule. So without even consciously really pushing for it, we're diversified across almost every axis you could think of. Part of that is just, you know, the space is one where when you see an amazing asset, you just kind of have to invest because it's so rare to find all the stars aligning and the biology really determines that. And so I think, you know, we'd love to have, you know, I think eventually as the space grows, we'll probably think a lot more constructively about what exact proportions of a portfolio might be best allocated to different things. But right now I think we're very opportunistic. And that's just surprisingly and hilariously resulted in, like, complete diver…

AI assessment note: “without even consciously really pushing for it, we're diversified across almost every axis”

Q So on the founders themselves, we mentioned your youth there in the intro, but biotech founders are increasingly younger in age, so kicking off with this, where are young biotech founders found, so to speak, and maybe how does the sourcing for these founders fundamentally differ from maybe more consumer or B to B investing and sourcing with traditional venture?

A Yes, I think that's been one of the most surprising aspects of working in venture over the past couple years was I used to think that young founders weren't really seen in the space much, and the problem there was the funding wasn't available and the climate wasn't right. I think one of the founding into biotech venture capital has doubled over the past couple years, and that's a huge fact, but the number of companies started to stay fairly stable, and I and my colleagues are kind of sitting here, especially those coming from the more founder-oriented funds, Hungering for young founders to come pitch us, and we're really not seeing, I think, as high a degree of that as one might expect. And so I think the fascinating thing is, you know, I always assumed from the outside that biotech venture capital was really limited by dollars, and I think it used to be, but I think the fascinating fact is now it's all about talent, and just, you know, we're sitting here, like, where is the talent? Where are all these young founders in biotech? Or just new company ideas. It doesn't have to be young founders. I think it's a lot less than I would have thought. I think it's possibly an education issue.

AI assessment note: “we're sitting here, like, where is the talent? Where are all these young founders”

Q So on the founders themselves, we mentioned your youth there in the intro, but biotech founders are increasingly younger in age, so kicking off with this, where are young biotech founders found, so to speak, and maybe how does the sourcing for these founders fundamentally differ from maybe more consumer or B to B investing and sourcing with traditional venture?

A Yes, I think that's been one of the most surprising aspects of working in venture over the past couple years was I used to think that young founders weren't really seen in the space much, and the problem there was the funding wasn't available and the climate wasn't right. I think one of the founding into biotech venture capital has doubled over the past couple years, and that's a huge fact, but the number of companies started to stay fairly stable, and I and my colleagues are kind of sitting here, especially those coming from the more founder-oriented funds, Hungering for young founders to come pitch us, and we're really not seeing, I think, as high a degree of that as one might expect. And so I think the fascinating thing is, you know, I always assumed from the outside that biotech venture capital was really limited by dollars, and I think it used to be, but I think the fascinating fact is now it's all about talent, and just, you know, we're sitting here, like, where is the talent? Where are all these young founders in biotech? Or just new company ideas. It doesn't have to be young founders. I think it's a lot less than I would have thought. I think it's possibly an education issue.

AI assessment note: “we're really not seeing, I think, as high a degree of that as one might expect”

Q I mean, I love that kind of thinking on market timing, because it's the one risk that always makes me incredibly uncomfortable, whether it's in AR, VR, name your kind of frontier investing space. How do you then fundamentally think about market timing, given the sheer difficulty considering the macro in front of you?

A Yeah, exactly. So I actually think that's one of the reasons, and this is very counterintuitive to most people, but one of the reasons we chose to invest in longevity, I literally thought it was the least risky, most likely to work part of biology in general, Particularly the part of biology that would be easy to test, easy to test in humans, and that's very counterintuitive to most people. Most people would assume that longevity is actually definitely the hardest place to invest, the most risky, and the longest to invest in humans, and so I'll explain why we think that. You know, all the companies that we invest in have drugs that have worked not just in kind of mouse models of Alzheimer's typically, but also diabetes and heart disease, and kind of typically the pathways that we invest in have been tested in and work in almost every Age-related disease pathology that they've been sort of looked at in context of, and so while most companies that go out there for one of these diseases have kind of like a single sort of pathway-focused therapeutic, the therapies that we invest in sort of work in all the diseases, and so they can also then be clinically tested in any one of the diseases, and so you have a much broader variety of indications to select from. You can pick the fastest ones, so I think we're actually optimized on speed to clinic and efficacy once in clinic, And then I …

AI assessment note: “one of the reasons we chose to invest in longevity, I literally thought it was”