Changing What We Expect From Medicine (notes from Nov 5 to 11)

I have mentioned Singularity University a number of times over the last month or so, in addition to suggesting books that have come out of it. I had the pleasure of listening to a number of the conference talks from the Exponential Medical Conference that was held in Coronado, CA over the first week of November. You can find many of the talks available at that site above, also. This was the theme of the week, along with a few listens to a16z on cryptocurrency and 20min VC on seed investing. Hope you enjoy!

  • Moira Gunn, Professor at UCSF (ExMed Live Conference)
  • Tech Nation Health on NPR radio podcast, International Bio Conference
  • Makes a good point of competing for attention, not ears anymore - everyone is everywhere
  • Top biotech/biopharma trends: protein degradation Biopharma as part of Big Pharma
  • Rachel Thomas of Fast.ai (xMed Live Conference)
  • 5 myths of AI Needing "Big Data"; Deep learning only works for very limited problems;
  • 3 Common Myths About Crypto with Katie Haun (a16z, former fed prosecutor) and Paul Krugman
  • Crypto is anonymous (only criminals)
  • Dark net markets in 2012 were 30%+ of value of Bitcoin transactions, now down to only 1%
  • Pseudonymous - government can easily trace crypto, as well as some individuals
  • Financial institutions spending $20bn to fight and stay AML compliant - 99.9% launderers succeed anyhow
  • Besides speculation, no use
  • Speculation as loaded term - wheat farmers, ex
  • Venezuela 10% of localbitcoins transactions there
  • 2bn unbanked people, 86% in Middle East - bitcoin was an option (one of Time's Top 100 who employed women s/w eng)
  • Cryptocurrency allowing transfers that would often lose out 7.5% (avg) or up to 30% in fees to Western Union or other agents
  • Stores of value - digital as photos, songs, music, etc.. Gold vault compared to bitcoin
  • Crypto is just about currency Stores of value, intermediary removal (or transfer), dapps (tokenization and scale)
  • Salim Ismail (xMed conf)
  • Disruption of institutions (marriage, religion, education, taxis, etc…)
  • Marriage updating of institution
  • Pope trying to update religion - where you're selling the afterlife
  • Education and cramming topics into students heads
  • Higher education where you try to study tech that, when done with program, is outdated
  • Music, car, energy industries that will go from physical to informational service
  • Cut middle men as you go end-to-end - deflationary effects are massive (used music as example from peak to trough)
  • Humans are poor in recognizing linear vs exponential paces
  • Drones, lidar, 3d printing (35+ years) Price per performance dropping quickly
  • "Any company designed for 20th century success is doomed to failure in the 21st century" - Ghoas
  • MTP and mentioned GitHub / Microsoft purchase of $7.4 bn for company with no assets, workforce or ip
  • Advice to large companies
  • Transform leadership (mindset, education)
  • Inspire ExOs at edges (change makers at edges and next to market) - Apple's true innovation is organizational
  • Nestle has research on creating diets based on DNA, Corona into marijuana, IKEA into vertical farms
  • "Exponential Transformation" as opensource, FastTrackInstitute - try to solve problems for 1/10 cost (project: corruption in Medellin)
  • "We can't fix that, it's too big" - regulatory issues (think, people leaving to do stem cell research elsewhere, or ultrasound opioid addiction) Retrofitting to the legacy challenge - set up a clinic outside of the hospital or other corporation and spin it off (Nestle and Nespresso)
  • Nicolas Chirls, Founder and Partner of Notation Capital, Pre-seed Investing (20min VC 071)
  • Pre-seed investing in pre-growth startups
  • Fascinated with the company - find a way to join the company regardless of the role (For him, that was BetaWorks) Seed investing business start - knew very little, but others had already left so he got in to learn to the basics
  • His mentors - Andy Weissman, Collaborative Funds
  • Notation Thesis (had started a year prior): NY can produce $1bn exits (Etsy, Mongo, Tumblr, etc…)
  • NY has a critical mass of talent, engineering and designers
  • $150k checks into pre-seed rounds ($500k or less - don't need millions to show traction and a big team for early product-market fit)
  • Running fund for 6 months and made 8 investments - thinks he can work with top founders disciplined with money raised early He counters that repeat founders are best founders (they often choose to raise more - compared to first timers who don't)
  • Has interactions with founders (likes in person) about capital raising and product architecture
  • Not a fan of demo days - prefers meeting and getting to know founders
  • Has a fund of $8mln - initial checks range from high single digit ownership % and follow ups LP universe is hard to navigate as opacity increased
  • Blog - Wait, But Why (profiling various topics/authors)
  • Jay Parkinson? (xMed before Laura Jana)
  • Eugene Debs (president candidate garnered 5% of vote, from prison) talked about people that ended up being wrong in new ideas were the majority
  • Healthcare moves very slowly - 20-30 years - but advantage is that there's a framework / playbook for improving this by other industries
  • Andrew Pelling, U of Ottawa (xMed)
  • Just stretch (mechanical force) as cells start to destroy other cells, physical (dye) difference meant they changed or separated
  • Little Shop of Horrors - Ideal biomaterial
  • Sustainable/ethical source, minimal foreign body response
  • Example of apple-ears (and other type), "designers for ears or other body parts"
  • Regenerative medicine
  • Plant cellulose as being overlooked (flesh, bone, spinal tissue/nerves)
  • David Karow, Health Longevity CEO (xMed)
  • Discussion of various diseases rid from stem cell
  • Osman Kibar, Samumed CEO
  • Bob Hariri, Celularity
  • Group of 3 above - 23&Me, Ancestry - 1000 medically significant variants (but they only look at 3)
  • Layperson algorithms that integrate quantitative data with the actionable