Jul 15, 2017 · 20m · a16z

DJ Kleinbaum

0:00 / 0:00

gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

At an Andreessen Horowitz event, DJ Kleinbaum presents Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL), a fully virtualized life sciences platform that allows scientists to remotely program, execute, and analyze automated laboratory experiments with full robotic precision and comprehensive data tracking.

Chapters · click to jump

2 statements ▾

Emerald Cloud Lab lets scientists globally run experiments remotely in SF open →

Emerald Cloud Lab captures full environmental and maintenance metadata for experiments open →

3 statements ▾

Typical biotech Series A rounds reached $20M to $40M in 2017 open →

Automation allows lean biotech startups to match big pharma research output open →

Emerald Therapeutics taught every scientist on its staff how to code open →

2 statements ▾

Emerald Cloud Lab is virtualization like AWS, not outsourcing like CROs open →

Laboratory virtualization helps solve the reproducibility crisis in scientific research open →

2 statements ▾

Untracked variables, not fraud, drive the scientific reproducibility crisis open →

Emerald Cloud Lab captures all variables for push-button experiment reproducibility open →

1 statement ▾

Typical life science experiments involve 80 to 100 controllable variables open →

2 statements ▾

Emerald Cloud Lab executes submitted experiment protocols within 48 hours open →

Cloud lab turnaround must match Amazon Prime speed to be useful open →

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →

The host as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 1.2 Guest disagreement 1.0 The host pushing back 0.0

speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:00 Rejecting CRO Outsourcing Label

Kleinbaum forcefully rejects the premise that Emerald Cloud Lab is an outsourcing service, drawing a firm line between CROs and true lab virtualization.

Hardest push from the host ▶ 20:10 Host Closing Thanks

The host offers no pushback during this keynote presentation, accepting the presentation without challenge and thanking the speaker at the end.

Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:00 Virtualization Versus Outsourcing Schooling

Kleinbaum educates the audience on the structural differences between traditional CRO consulting and full-control virtualization modeled after AWS.

The host holds their own ▶ 20:10 Minimal Host Interaction

The host does not assert domain expertise or counterarguments in this presentation format, remaining passive throughout.

the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each

Topic	Guest teaching	Guest disagreement	Why
Founding Emerald Therapeutics and Developing Automation Tools	1	2	This is a presentation monologue where the host does not speak. Kleinbaum recounts founding Emerald Therapeutics and lightly mocks legacy vendors that sold bioautomation equipment requiring manual labor every two hours.
Virtualization Versus Outsourcing in Life Sciences	2	2	Kleinbaum explicitly differentiates virtualization from contract research outsourcing, rejecting comparisons to standard CROs. The host remains silent throughout the monologue.
Platform Demonstration: Designing Remote Experiments	1	0	Kleinbaum walks through the software platform demonstration for designing remote experiments. The tone is purely instructional and non-confrontational with no host interaction.
Platform Demonstration: Remote Robotic Execution	2	1	Kleinbaum demonstrates the data network and validation logging, pointing out how fragmented traditional instrument data standards are. The host remains silent while an audience member briefly voices agreement.
Concluding Remarks and Future Rollout Timeline	0	0	Kleinbaum concludes his talk with rollout timeline expectations, and the host briefly says thanks at the very end. No debate or host pushback occurs.

Statements from this episode (12)

Assertion Supported

Emerald Cloud Lab lets scientists globally run experiments remotely in SF

“So we have an application, so scientists anywhere in the world can design an experiment as if they are standing in front of the instrument themselves, That experiment then runs at our essential facility in South San Francisco.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 0:23

Assertion Supported

Emerald Cloud Lab captures full environmental and maintenance metadata for experiments

“But it's not just the data that we send back for that particular experiment. It's all of the other meta and ancillary data around that. So things like For the instrument they ran it on, when was the last time we ran controls on that instrument to verify that i…”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 0:42

Assertion Partly supported

Typical biotech Series A rounds reached $20M to $40M in 2017

“Nowadays a biotech company might raise 20, 30, forty million dollars for a first round of financing, and we raised a tiny fraction of that”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 2:18

Insight

Automation allows lean biotech startups to match big pharma research output

“You can do, ah, the same amount of work if you just make your scientists that many times more efficient than a company, than those who work at a big pharma company or at one of these other biotech firms.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 2:43

Disclosure

Emerald Therapeutics taught every scientist on its staff how to code

“We decided to teach every scientist we hired, so organic chemists, molecular biologists, geneticists, you named it, how to write code.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 4:50

Insight

Emerald Cloud Lab is virtualization like AWS, not outsourcing like CROs

“Be, it's not outsourcing, it's virtualization, so we are much more similar to Taiwan Semiconductor or Amazon Web Services than we are to any of these CROs”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 8:04

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Laboratory virtualization helps solve the reproducibility crisis in scientific research

“The other important thing that is not necessarily obvious is this helps solve the reproducibility issue that we have in science.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 9:04

Insight

Untracked variables, not fraud, drive the scientific reproducibility crisis

“Maybe a tiny fraction of that might be malfeasance, but most scientists are trying really hard to, like, convey the results they have gotten and how they got them. The problem is, is that when you're doing that, when you're doing everything by hand, and you're…”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 9:38

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Emerald Cloud Lab captures all variables for push-button experiment reproducibility

“Every scientifically relevant variable is captured in lab automation and robotics. We have the fully detailed look at what your, what the world looked like when you ran that experiment. So therefore you can go back and get push button reproducibility because y…”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 10:17

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Typical life science experiments involve 80 to 100 controllable variables

“For any experiment, there may, might be 80 or a hundred different possible variables that you could change.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 13:26

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Emerald Cloud Lab executes submitted experiment protocols within 48 hours

“So once you've done this a database succession number gets created, which is the number for this protocol. It gets sent to our queue, and then within 48 hours it will be running on one of our instruments.”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 14:56

Insight

Cloud lab turnaround must match Amazon Prime speed to be useful

“This needs to be like the Amazon Prime of life sciences research, because if there's too long between when you submit your experiment and when we do it, it's not going to be useful to you”

DJ Kleinbaum Jul 15, 2017 ▶ 15:11

DJ Kleinbaum

How this conversation actually went

Statements from this episode (12)

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