Jess Mah describes hiring a biotech veteran named Tom to evaluate commercial opportunities in Michael Levin's bioelectricity research.
Insight
Mah: Ideas are worthless is Silicon Valley's worst advice
“I think it's some of the worst advice I've ever heard in Silicon Valley.
So what's your take?
My take is that ideas are really fricking important.
And if you have the wrong idea, you'd be a great team and you're screwed.”
Assertion Supported
Mah: Jet buyers can write off $12M jet with $3M down
“Last year it was 60% upfront, but now with the new administration, it looks like accelerated depreciation is back. So if you bought a twelve million dollar airplane, financed it, you can write off the whole twelve million dollars off your tax bill, even though…”
Disclosure
Mah: I stepped down as CEO to avoid private jet backlash
“If you're an operating CEO of a company, you're going to get shat on by your employees, your customers, your investors, and I realized that that would be a problem for me a few years ago, so that's why I stopped being an operating CEO, actually.”
Prediction Held up
Jess Mah predicts artificial human egg generation from genetic material by 2028
“Let's say you wanted to be the mother of a child, not the father, and we could take your genetic material and create an egg out of that. I think that we're going to see that within the next five years.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jess Mah predicts longevity advances will extend human lifespans past 120
“And then what's also realistic, I think, is extending our lives by 30%. I think we need to be prepared to live till we're a 120 or longer.”
Disclosure
Jess Mah is building a biotech company to rehabilitate cancer cells
“And if you could train them and coach your cells, so killing them, let's rehabilitate them, get them to integrate back in with their surroundings, then you could fix cancer. And so we're working on a company around that”