[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_137":-5,"_138":-5,"_139":140,"_141":142,"_143":144},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/2219/good-storytellers-get-out-of-their-bubble","id",2219,"title","Good storytellers get out of their bubble","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.960\nreally develop that skill.\n\n2\n00:00:01.960 --> 00:00:05.880\n- I think you have to be exposed to a lot of people\n\n3\n00:00:05.880 --> 00:00:08.440\nthat aren't just like from your little bubble\n\n4\n00:00:08.440 --> 00:00:10.600\nto be good at storytelling.\n\n5\n00:00:10.600 --> 00:00:14.760\nThere is a certain story I can tell to my PhD friends\n\n6\n00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:17.960\nfrom MIT that has like every little bit and bop\n\n7\n00:00:17.960 --> 00:00:21.880\nexactly right and you know has 18 papers supporting it\n\n8\n00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:23.440\nand all this stuff and I've got close friends\n\n9\n00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.160\nwho will like rip my head off if I get one little thing wrong\n\n10\n00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:28.240\non the technology X or Y.\n\n11\n00:00:28.240 --> 00:00:29.560\nIf I only hang out with those people,\n\n12\n00:00:29.560 --> 00:00:31.520\nI don't actually know how to tell a story\n\n13\n00:00:31.520 --> 00:00:34.640\nthat like a wider set of people can understand right.\n\n14\n00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:36.720\nAnd I had the benefit that I grew up\n\n15\n00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:38.920\njust around a wide set of people, you know, in Florida.\n\n16\n00:00:38.920 --> 00:00:40.360\nMy parents were pharmacists, you know,\n\n17\n00:00:40.360 --> 00:00:42.760\na lot of close friends were craftspeople.\n\n18\n00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:44.840\nYou know, I had a range right.\n\n19\n00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:47.320\nI also got exposed to the MIT crowd too,\n\n20\n00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:50.400\nbut like through my life I've had exposure\n\n21\n00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:52.400\nto a wider set of people which lets me talk\n\n22\n00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:54.000\nto a wider set of people.\n\n23\n00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.040\nThat's the thing I think you spend the time\n\n24\n00:00:56.040 --> 00:00:58.000\nand you see what works when you talk to people\n\n25\n00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.080\nand that is how you ultimately get good at storytelling.\n\n26\n00:01:01.080 --> 00:01:02.400\nYeah, other than that is practice.\n\n27\n00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:04.680\nAnd the only other thing is if it's a story\n\n28\n00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:06.400\nyou know you're going to tell,\n\n29\n00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:08.520\nlike I'm giving a present like a door annual meeting\n\n30\n00:01:08.520 --> 00:01:11.480\nor something like that, like I'm giving like a can talk,\n\n31\n00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:13.320\npractice way more than you think, right?\n\n32\n00:01:13.320 --> 00:01:18.320\nI will repeat a speech, you know, myself alone, 25 times.\n\n33\n00:01:18.320 --> 00:01:22.520\n25 times.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",1599639,"end_time",1677739,"keywords","story, speech, talk, practice","slug","good-storytellers-get-out-of-their-bubble","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","43DeJb6IevlfvQsSNXlkTHyqGSkznny8rEhhPAO3Fsg","mux_asset_id","YWU6duzDf00AAzKhGRuim15qckQyjzYFYYM00RRicYdfs","leader_id",52,"episode_id",199,"updated_at","2025-02-26T19:50:24.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/2219/good-storytellers-get-out-of-their-bubble","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_101":102,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_25":107,"_108":109,"_62":110,"_59":110,"_111":112,"_69":113,"_39":114,"_115":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_116":117,"_89":118,"_44":119,"_120":121,"_122":123,"_46":-5,"_124":125,"_126":127,"_93":128,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":58,"_59":60,"_61":-5,"_62":60,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":-5,"_69":-5,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":-5,"_35":36,"_39":75,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_76":77,"_78":79,"_80":81,"_82":83,"_84":-5,"_85":-5,"_86":87,"_88":-5,"_89":-5,"_46":-5,"_90":91,"_92":-5,"_93":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","How to Simplify the Complex","how-to-simplify-the-complex","Learn how to talk about your company with clarity and confidence, how programming DNA is a lot like programming computers, and how to fire up your workforce to operate like owners.","summary","

Today’s guest is Jason Kelly, the cofounder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, the largest designer of synthetic DNA in the world.

Think back to the last time someone asked you what you did for a living. For as simple of a question this is, it can actually be really hard to answer. The reason is, in the back of your mind you might be thinking “where do I even start?!”

Running a business is complex! But until you learn to simplify all of the complexity and learn to talk about what you do in a simple way, you’ll be limiting the kind of impact you could be making as a leader.

And this is something that Jason Kelly has mastered. I mean, tell me a more complex business to have to explain than a synthetic biology platform company. And yet, Jason has learned to simplify the complex. I’m no bioengineering buff but when I hear Jason talk about Ginkgo and what’s possible with the technology they’re pioneering and scaling, he has me leaning in!

So whether you’re leading a billion-dollar brand or a small business, how you communicate as a leader matters. The great leaders I know have learned to simplify the complex.

Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:

The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go

Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each day

Whichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.530\nWelcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I\n\n2\n00:00:06.530 --> 00:00:07.340\ninterview some\n\n3\n00:00:07.340 --> 00:00:09.480\nof the very best leaders in the world.\n\n4\n00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:12.990\nI break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have\n\n5\n00:00:12.990 --> 00:00:13.580\nsomething\n\n6\n00:00:13.580 --> 00:00:17.480\nsimple you can apply as you develop into a better leader.\n\n7\n00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:20.120\nThat's what this podcast is all about.\n\n8\n00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:25.560\nToday's guest is Jason Kelly, the co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, the\n\n9\n00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:26.680\nlargest designer\n\n10\n00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:29.720\nof synthetic DNA in the world.\n\n11\n00:00:29.720 --> 00:00:34.040\nBack to the last time someone asked you what you did for a living.\n\n12\n00:00:34.040 --> 00:00:39.960\nFor a simple question is this, it can be really hard to answer.\n\n13\n00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:44.730\nThe reason is, in the back of your mind, you're probably thinking, \"Where do I\n\n14\n00:00:44.730 --> 00:00:46.000\neven start?\"\n\n15\n00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.900\nYou can imagine if you are running a synthetic biology company, I mean, holy\n\n16\n00:00:51.900 --> 00:00:53.320\ncow, but running\n\n17\n00:00:53.320 --> 00:00:56.120\nany business is complex.\n\n18\n00:00:56.120 --> 00:01:00.760\nUntil you learn to simplify all the complexity and learn to talk about what you\n\n19\n00:01:00.760 --> 00:01:01.640\ndo in a simple\n\n20\n00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:06.100\nway, you'll be throttling the kind of impact that you could be making as a\n\n21\n00:01:06.100 --> 00:01:06.600\nleader.\n\n22\n00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:10.360\nThis is something that Jason Kelly has mastered.\n\n23\n00:01:10.360 --> 00:01:16.560\nTell me a more complex business to have to explain than synthetic biology.\n\n24\n00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:20.840\nYet Jason has learned to simplify the complex.\n\n25\n00:01:20.840 --> 00:01:25.960\nI'm no bioengineering buff, but when I hear Jason talk about Ginkgo and what's\n\n26\n00:01:25.960 --> 00:01:26.640\npossible\n\n27\n00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:32.480\nwith the technology they're pioneering and scaling, he has me leaning in.\n\n28\n00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:37.030\nSo whether you're leading a billion dollar brand or a small business, how you\n\n29\n00:01:37.030 --> 00:01:37.880\ncommunicate\n\n30\n00:01:37.880 --> 00:01:43.310\nas a leader matters, the great leaders I know have learned to simplify the\n\n31\n00:01:43.310 --> 00:01:44.280\ncomplex.\n\n32\n00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:45.560\nSo let's get right to it.\n\n33\n00:01:45.560 --> 00:01:56.000\nHere's my conversation with my friend and soon to be yours, Jason Kelly.\n\n34\n00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.730\nI have to tell you, I have really had a lot of fun learning about you and Gink\n\n35\n00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:00.360\ngo getting\n\n36\n00:02:00.360 --> 00:02:02.600\nready for this conversation.\n\n37\n00:02:02.600 --> 00:02:06.300\nAnd I've got to tell you, you've got one heck of a challenge to simplify for us\n\n38\n00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:07.440\nnon-scientific\n\n39\n00:02:07.440 --> 00:02:08.440\ntypes.\n\n40\n00:02:08.440 --> 00:02:10.400\nWhat's your business is all about?\n\n41\n00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:14.040\nTell us about your business in the most simple terms you can.\n\n42\n00:02:14.040 --> 00:02:15.040\nSure.\n\n43\n00:02:15.040 --> 00:02:20.760\nSo inside of every cell out there in nature is digital code in the form of DNA.\n\n44\n00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:26.080\nSo it's ATCs and Gs, not zeros and ones like what's inside your computer.\n\n45\n00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:28.760\nBut you can actually read this code with DNA sequencing.\n\n46\n00:02:28.760 --> 00:02:32.480\nYou might have heard of the human genome project, that whole thing.\n\n47\n00:02:32.480 --> 00:02:35.020\nThat was you basically grind a cell up, you put it in a machine and on your\n\n48\n00:02:35.020 --> 00:02:36.480\ncomputer screen,\n\n49\n00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:38.840\nATCGGG starts coming up.\n\n50\n00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:40.280\nThat's the code inside.\n\n51\n00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:41.840\nThat's the reading of the code.\n\n52\n00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:46.440\nWell, the other side of that coin is we have technology to write DNA code.\n\n53\n00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:50.960\nSo I type on my computer ATCGGG, I hit print and here in the labs we have about\n\n54\n00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:52.560\n200,000\n\n55\n00:02:52.560 --> 00:02:58.360\nsquare feet of automated labs here in Boston, that piece of DNA gets printed.\n\n56\n00:02:58.360 --> 00:03:02.780\nAlmost like HP, inject kind of printing, you make the DNA molecule and then you\n\n57\n00:03:02.780 --> 00:03:03.240\ninsert\n\n58\n00:03:03.240 --> 00:03:05.960\nthat DNA into a cell.\n\n59\n00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:09.690\nIt reads the code, just kind of like if you installed a new app on your phone\n\n60\n00:03:09.690 --> 00:03:09.840\nand it\n\n61\n00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:11.840\ndoes something new.\n\n62\n00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:15.980\nAnd this allows us to have applications and things like animal-free meat and\n\n63\n00:03:15.980 --> 00:03:16.520\nnew ways\n\n64\n00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:18.520\nto do agriculture and new medicines.\n\n65\n00:03:18.520 --> 00:03:22.910\nWe can talk about all those, but the core idea is inside of cells is digital\n\n66\n00:03:22.910 --> 00:03:23.280\ncode in\n\n67\n00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:25.520\nthe form of DNA that you can read and write.\n\n68\n00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:28.840\nAnd Ginkgo today is the largest writer of that type of DNA code in the world.\n\n69\n00:03:28.840 --> 00:03:30.200\nThat's an amazing place to be.\n\n70\n00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:35.180\nAnd it's synthetic bioengineering, it's basically a new category for most\n\n71\n00:03:35.180 --> 00:03:36.000\npeople.\n\n72\n00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.840\nWhy do you see it as essential for the present and the future?\n\n73\n00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:43.120\nYes, I'll give you another computing analogy before we go too nerdy on biology.\n\n74\n00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:45.280\nSo what makes computers special?\n\n75\n00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:48.920\nThey get better all the time as a sort of exponentially improving technology.\n\n76\n00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:53.390\nThey have digital code, like I said, which means you install a new program and\n\n77\n00:03:53.390 --> 00:03:54.080\nsuddenly\n\n78\n00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:56.560\nyour phone can do something today that it couldn't do yesterday, right?\n\n79\n00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:59.040\nIt can order you a car or something.\n\n80\n00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:01.600\nThere is a limitation on what computers can do though.\n\n81\n00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:05.520\nIt's only things in the world of bits, in the world of information.\n\n82\n00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:10.340\nSo if you look at what computers have been disruptive to, media, telecom,\n\n83\n00:04:10.340 --> 00:04:11.120\nfinance, all\n\n84\n00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:14.860\nyour information-based industries, let me tell you what hasn't been disrupted\n\n85\n00:04:14.860 --> 00:04:16.600\nby computers.\n\n86\n00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:17.600\nHamburgers, right?\n\n87\n00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:20.960\nHamburgers were left out of the computer revolution, all right?\n\n88\n00:04:20.960 --> 00:04:26.200\nWell, we'll talk about because the analogy is disrupting hamburgers because a\n\n89\n00:04:26.200 --> 00:04:26.480\ncell runs\n\n90\n00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:27.960\non code, you install a new code.\n\n91\n00:04:27.960 --> 00:04:31.290\nI swear it does new things when you put that new DNA code in, but it doesn't\n\n92\n00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:32.240\nmove information\n\n93\n00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:33.440\naround.\n\n94\n00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:35.120\nIt moves atoms.\n\n95\n00:04:35.120 --> 00:04:36.720\nIt builds things.\n\n96\n00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:40.510\nAnd so it's going to be disruptive not to the information-based industries, to\n\n97\n00:04:40.510 --> 00:04:41.200\nthe physical\n\n98\n00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:42.640\ngoods industries.\n\n99\n00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:45.610\nThings like food, things like medicine, things like building materials and\n\n100\n00:04:45.610 --> 00:04:46.200\nchemicals and\n\n101\n00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:47.200\nfuels.\n\n102\n00:04:47.200 --> 00:04:48.880\nThese are all biotech industries.\n\n103\n00:04:48.880 --> 00:04:50.680\nThey don't know it yet.\n\n104\n00:04:50.680 --> 00:04:52.120\nThat's why synthetic biology is interesting.\n\n105\n00:04:52.120 --> 00:04:55.560\nYeah, you got to believe we can get good at programming these cells, which is a\n\n106\n00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:56.280\nconversation\n\n107\n00:04:56.280 --> 00:04:57.560\nwe should definitely have.\n\n108\n00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:01.460\nBut if you can, those are the types of industries that need to pay attention to\n\n109\n00:05:01.460 --> 00:05:01.760\nit.\n\n110\n00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:05.540\nSo how do you go about building a company that really makes this possible in\n\n111\n00:05:05.540 --> 00:05:06.360\nthe future?\n\n112\n00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:08.880\nThis is an incredible challenge, it seems like.\n\n113\n00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:10.440\nWell, first off, you have a long view.\n\n114\n00:05:10.440 --> 00:05:12.000\nOkay, so I met my co-founders.\n\n115\n00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.480\nWe started our PhDs together at MIT, I think in 2002.\n\n116\n00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:18.800\nI was pushing 20 years now, actually.\n\n117\n00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:24.180\nFirst off, you surround yourself with people that are passionate believers in a\n\n118\n00:05:24.180 --> 00:05:24.960\nlong-term\n\n119\n00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:25.960\nvision, right?\n\n120\n00:05:25.960 --> 00:05:28.000\nAnd so I'll give you a little background on my co-founder.\n\n121\n00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:29.920\nSo there's four of us that were in grad school.\n\n122\n00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:33.080\nThe fifth founder was a professor at MIT.\n\n123\n00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:34.800\nIt's fellow Tom Knight.\n\n124\n00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:38.120\nAnd Tom gets to the heart of your question of how do you do a big disruptive\n\n125\n00:05:38.120 --> 00:05:38.560\nthing.\n\n126\n00:05:38.560 --> 00:05:43.900\nSo Tom started at MIT on the faculty in the early 1970s in computer science and\n\n127\n00:05:43.900 --> 00:05:44.760\nelectrical\n\n128\n00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:45.760\nengineering.\n\n129\n00:05:45.760 --> 00:05:48.660\nI have this great old black and white photo of Tom with his master's thesis,\n\n130\n00:05:48.660 --> 00:05:49.040\nwhich is\n\n131\n00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:51.560\nthis refrigerator-sized mini computer.\n\n132\n00:05:51.560 --> 00:05:54.920\nSo Tom went, he programmed mainframes.\n\n133\n00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:56.320\nHe was a computer architect.\n\n134\n00:05:56.320 --> 00:05:57.760\nHe had designed that machine.\n\n135\n00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:01.520\nAnd so what happened was computer architecture moved into semiconductors.\n\n136\n00:06:01.520 --> 00:06:04.720\nTom taught the semiconductor design course for many years at MIT.\n\n137\n00:06:04.720 --> 00:06:07.800\nAnd then mid-90s has this insight I mentioned earlier.\n\n138\n00:06:07.800 --> 00:06:10.480\nHey, DNA is code.\n\n139\n00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:13.000\nAnd I've been programming computer code for 25 years.\n\n140\n00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.920\nMaybe I could go out and help those biologists out, right?\n\n141\n00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:19.600\nAnd so begins this journey of what's now called synthetic biology, where Tom\n\n142\n00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:20.440\nbasically started\n\n143\n00:06:20.440 --> 00:06:23.800\nlike a biology lab in the MIT computer science building.\n\n144\n00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:27.560\nThey're growing bacteria, scaring all his coworkers, who had never seen this\n\n145\n00:06:27.560 --> 00:06:28.200\nstuff,\n\n146\n00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:31.720\nand built a relationship with the biologists.\n\n147\n00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:35.710\nAnd so you had this meeting of computer scientists who had their lessons,\n\n148\n00:06:35.710 --> 00:06:36.600\nbiologists who were\n\n149\n00:06:36.600 --> 00:06:39.080\nlike, hey, biology's too complicated to think of it.\n\n150\n00:06:39.080 --> 00:06:43.350\nAnd we kind of banged on each other for five or 10 years at MIT and kind of got\n\n151\n00:06:43.350 --> 00:06:43.920\nto a point\n\n152\n00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:46.600\nwhere, hey, some of this could work.\n\n153\n00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:48.840\nAnd then we started the company in 2008.\n\n154\n00:06:48.840 --> 00:06:52.980\nBut that same group, we've all been following Tom's vision for the last 20\n\n155\n00:06:52.980 --> 00:06:53.760\nyears now.\n\n156\n00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:57.860\nAnd we're believers that someday it will be as easy to program a cell as it is\n\n157\n00:06:57.860 --> 00:06:58.280\nto program\n\n158\n00:06:58.280 --> 00:06:59.280\na computer.\n\n159\n00:06:59.280 --> 00:07:00.720\nAnd that's a 50-year vision.\n\n160\n00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:04.880\nBut by having that unified goal, it helps you through all the crappy stuff.\n\n161\n00:07:04.880 --> 00:07:06.120\nThe company's 15 people.\n\n162\n00:07:06.120 --> 00:07:07.520\nIt's running low on money.\n\n163\n00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:11.080\nOr this, you're sort of like, well, it's worth a try, right?\n\n164\n00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:13.080\nBecause we have this bigger goal we're going for.\n\n165\n00:07:13.080 --> 00:07:15.480\nThat's a big part of it, is having that shared long-term vision.\n\n166\n00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:16.880\nAnd Tom gave us that.\n\n167\n00:07:16.880 --> 00:07:19.400\nYou go from a company having 15 people.\n\n168\n00:07:19.400 --> 00:07:21.240\nHow many people do you have now?\n\n169\n00:07:21.240 --> 00:07:23.200\nAbout 700 people now.\n\n170\n00:07:23.200 --> 00:07:24.200\nYou're the CEO.\n\n171\n00:07:24.200 --> 00:07:26.480\nSo you've got to tell people the story.\n\n172\n00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:27.960\nYou've got to tell Wall Street the story.\n\n173\n00:07:27.960 --> 00:07:30.720\nYou've got to bring in new people telling your story.\n\n174\n00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:34.200\nWhat's the hardest thing to communicate about what you do?\n\n175\n00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:37.960\nThe hardest thing is it's sort of a new area for people.\n\n176\n00:07:37.960 --> 00:07:41.630\nIf you're the latest SaaS company or social network, you have a lot of things\n\n177\n00:07:41.630 --> 00:07:42.040\nto point\n\n178\n00:07:42.040 --> 00:07:46.200\nto in the past and say, well, listen, snap, right?\n\n179\n00:07:46.200 --> 00:07:48.480\nWe have these angles to compete with Facebook.\n\n180\n00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:49.480\nAnd this is our modes.\n\n181\n00:07:49.480 --> 00:07:51.520\nBut you understand how a social network makes money, right?\n\n182\n00:07:51.520 --> 00:07:52.960\nI mean, advertising.\n\n183\n00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:54.320\nSo that's just what we're going to do.\n\n184\n00:07:54.320 --> 00:07:56.240\nSo there's a proven business model.\n\n185\n00:07:56.240 --> 00:07:59.680\nAnd you just have to really understand, do these guys have an edge?\n\n186\n00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:04.760\nFor Ginkgo, we're saying, look, there should be a new industry that doesn't\n\n187\n00:08:04.760 --> 00:08:05.440\nexist.\n\n188\n00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:10.290\nLike if you look at how the computer industry is organized, market-specific\n\n189\n00:08:10.290 --> 00:08:11.680\napplications,\n\n190\n00:08:11.680 --> 00:08:17.200\nhorizontal infrastructure, operating systems, programming languages, cloud\n\n191\n00:08:17.200 --> 00:08:18.160\ncomputing, those\n\n192\n00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:21.320\napply to every application in computing, right?\n\n193\n00:08:21.320 --> 00:08:25.280\nYou look at the biotech industry that I'm in, everything is vertical.\n\n194\n00:08:25.280 --> 00:08:27.760\nEvery pharma company has got its own technology stack.\n\n195\n00:08:27.760 --> 00:08:31.990\nAnd companies don't-- so all those investors people are used to seeing is, hey,\n\n196\n00:08:31.990 --> 00:08:32.520\nJason,\n\n197\n00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:34.000\nwhat's your drug that you're making?\n\n198\n00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:36.200\nTell me about that therapeutic you're making.\n\n199\n00:08:36.200 --> 00:08:37.200\nWhat's that new?\n\n200\n00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:38.200\nAre you making a new seed, right?\n\n201\n00:08:38.200 --> 00:08:40.040\nAre you going to go compete with Monsanto?\n\n202\n00:08:40.040 --> 00:08:41.040\nLike what product?\n\n203\n00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:42.440\nAnd I'm like, no, no, no.\n\n204\n00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:44.280\nDNA is code.\n\n205\n00:08:44.280 --> 00:08:46.440\nIt's common across all organisms.\n\n206\n00:08:46.440 --> 00:08:48.320\nThere should be operating systems.\n\n207\n00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:49.920\nThere should be Amazon Web Services.\n\n208\n00:08:49.920 --> 00:08:51.520\nThere should be App Stores, right?\n\n209\n00:08:51.520 --> 00:08:53.920\nWe should have a platform business model.\n\n210\n00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:56.320\nAnd they're like, what the heck are you talking about?\n\n211\n00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:58.640\nBecause it's new in that industry.\n\n212\n00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:02.310\nBut we've spent the first 10 years at MIT really thinking through the\n\n213\n00:09:02.310 --> 00:09:03.240\ntechnology kind\n\n214\n00:09:03.240 --> 00:09:04.720\nof physics of this industry.\n\n215\n00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:09.320\nAnd I spent the last 13, 14 here at Ginkgo figuring out the business model side\n\n216\n00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:10.160\nof it.\n\n217\n00:09:10.160 --> 00:09:13.120\nAnd the lesson was the models come from tech.\n\n218\n00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:14.120\nIt's the right thing.\n\n219\n00:09:14.120 --> 00:09:15.120\nIt's just a new thing.\n\n220\n00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:18.760\nAnd so that, far and away, is the hardest thing to explain to people.\n\n221\n00:09:18.760 --> 00:09:21.120\nIt's sort of like bringing in those types of app store.\n\n222\n00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:25.480\nLike we get royalties and economics on the products developed on our platform.\n\n223\n00:09:25.480 --> 00:09:29.170\nYou know, we signed up tens of new deals every year with all these different\n\n224\n00:09:29.170 --> 00:09:29.560\ncustomers.\n\n225\n00:09:29.560 --> 00:09:31.800\nSo it's not like we have one product to explain to you.\n\n226\n00:09:31.800 --> 00:09:35.200\nYou know, we just passed 100 in terms of programs on the platform.\n\n227\n00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:37.840\nSo anyway, just to give you a sense of some of the difficulties.\n\n228\n00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:41.600\nWhen you think about disrupting the industry, you talked about the hamburger.\n\n229\n00:09:41.600 --> 00:09:45.290\nGive us an example of a product you guys have developed that is really changing\n\n230\n00:09:45.290 --> 00:09:46.120\nthe game.\n\n231\n00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:46.640\nOK, yeah.\n\n232\n00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:47.680\nSo I like the burger.\n\n233\n00:09:47.680 --> 00:09:49.040\nThat's a good example, actually.\n\n234\n00:09:49.040 --> 00:09:52.520\nAnd by the way, a reminder, I don't develop these end products.\n\n235\n00:09:52.520 --> 00:09:54.040\nOK, our customers do.\n\n236\n00:09:54.040 --> 00:09:55.320\nSo I'll give you an example.\n\n237\n00:09:55.320 --> 00:09:58.480\nSo if you ever had-- and by the way, Impossible Food is not one of our\n\n238\n00:09:58.480 --> 00:09:59.040\ncustomers.\n\n239\n00:09:59.040 --> 00:10:00.520\nI'll give you an example from this industry.\n\n240\n00:10:00.520 --> 00:10:01.960\nSo if you ever had an Impossible burger--\n\n241\n00:10:01.960 --> 00:10:03.120\nYes, I am.\n\n242\n00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:03.480\nAll right.\n\n243\n00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:04.720\nSo it's veggie burger.\n\n244\n00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:06.440\nYou bite into it.\n\n245\n00:10:06.440 --> 00:10:07.960\nIt bleeds.\n\n246\n00:10:07.960 --> 00:10:10.080\nWhere are they getting the blood from, David?\n\n247\n00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:10.600\nRight?\n\n248\n00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:12.880\nYou know, like there's not a lot of blood in plants.\n\n249\n00:10:12.880 --> 00:10:13.380\nRight?\n\n250\n00:10:13.380 --> 00:10:14.600\nAnd so like, how's this working?\n\n251\n00:10:14.600 --> 00:10:19.440\nAnd so what Impossible did was they found the gene for hemoglobin.\n\n252\n00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:22.630\nOK, this is like the protein in blood, in cows, in humans, or whatever else\n\n253\n00:10:22.630 --> 00:10:22.920\nthat makes\n\n254\n00:10:22.920 --> 00:10:24.160\nblood red.\n\n255\n00:10:24.160 --> 00:10:28.080\nAnd they take yeast, like think like brewer's yeast, like you would use to make\n\n256\n00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:28.840\nbeer.\n\n257\n00:10:28.840 --> 00:10:32.000\nThey install that DNA code in for hemoglobin.\n\n258\n00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:35.720\nAnd then you grow it up in a tank and something that looks like a brewery.\n\n259\n00:10:35.720 --> 00:10:39.360\nInstead of beer coming out, hemoglobin comes out.\n\n260\n00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:41.480\nBecause you just reprogram the yeast to do that.\n\n261\n00:10:41.480 --> 00:10:43.200\nWell, now you add it back into a burger.\n\n262\n00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:44.560\nAnd suddenly, it smells right.\n\n263\n00:10:44.560 --> 00:10:45.560\nTastes right.\n\n264\n00:10:45.560 --> 00:10:47.160\nIt's the Impossible Whopper at Burger King, right?\n\n265\n00:10:47.160 --> 00:10:52.450\nThat is a disruptive consumer product where the back end is actually synthetic\n\n266\n00:10:52.450 --> 00:10:53.200\nbiology.\n\n267\n00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:54.200\nAnd so we have a company.\n\n268\n00:10:54.200 --> 00:10:56.900\nThere's a company on our platform called Motif Food Works that got founded four\n\n269\n00:10:56.900 --> 00:10:57.560\nyears ago.\n\n270\n00:10:57.560 --> 00:11:00.930\nWe actually did a project with them to engineer a yeast cell to make a hem\n\n271\n00:11:00.930 --> 00:11:01.640\noglobin.\n\n272\n00:11:01.640 --> 00:11:06.860\nAnd their business model is supply those types of biotech flavor ingredients to\n\n273\n00:11:06.860 --> 00:11:07.320\nall the big\n\n274\n00:11:07.320 --> 00:11:12.160\nfood companies so that you get better plant-based products in the future.\n\n275\n00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:15.280\nAnd similar things for egg proteins, milk proteins, and so on.\n\n276\n00:11:15.280 --> 00:11:19.040\nCan we get these veggie products to actually not taste like cardboard?\n\n277\n00:11:19.040 --> 00:11:22.560\nThat's an example of a product I'm excited about in synthetic biology.\n\n278\n00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:25.560\nYou're so passionate about this business, Jason, obviously.\n\n279\n00:11:25.560 --> 00:11:30.320\nWhat's your personal purpose behind the obvious passion that you have?\n\n280\n00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:34.560\nBiology is this thing that we all take for granted.\n\n281\n00:11:34.560 --> 00:11:35.560\nOkay?\n\n282\n00:11:35.560 --> 00:11:38.960\nLike I give all these talks in Silicon Valley where I would show this slide and\n\n283\n00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:39.360\nhad all\n\n284\n00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:43.400\nthese things on the table like an Apple PC and an iPhone and a camera.\n\n285\n00:11:43.400 --> 00:11:46.080\nAnd there was this little like potted plant on the corner of the desk and I\n\n286\n00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:46.880\nwould be like,\n\n287\n00:11:46.880 --> 00:11:50.960\n\"Hey, what's the most complicated, sophisticated device on the table?\"\n\n288\n00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:51.960\nRight?\n\n289\n00:11:51.960 --> 00:11:54.600\nAnd the answer is the house plant.\n\n290\n00:11:54.600 --> 00:11:58.280\nAnd like if you look at it like an engineer, it's obviously the house plant.\n\n291\n00:11:58.280 --> 00:12:00.680\nYou break that leaf, it repairs itself.\n\n292\n00:12:00.680 --> 00:12:01.680\nRight?\n\n293\n00:12:01.680 --> 00:12:04.480\nImagine if you cracked your iPhone screen and the thing just fixed itself over\n\n294\n00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:04.880\nthe next\n\n295\n00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:05.880\ntwo weeks.\n\n296\n00:12:05.880 --> 00:12:08.280\nLike we'd be like, \"You know, celebrating Tim Cook as a God.\"\n\n297\n00:12:08.280 --> 00:12:09.280\nRight?\n\n298\n00:12:09.280 --> 00:12:14.490\nAnd when you plant the seed, you add air water and sunlight, it manufactures\n\n299\n00:12:14.490 --> 00:12:16.120\nitself.\n\n300\n00:12:16.120 --> 00:12:17.240\nNo manufacturing facility.\n\n301\n00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:20.440\nIt literally builds itself out of thin air, right?\n\n302\n00:12:20.440 --> 00:12:21.440\nYou know?\n\n303\n00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:22.440\nThink about that.\n\n304\n00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:23.440\nOkay.\n\n305\n00:12:23.440 --> 00:12:24.960\nAnd then this will blow your mind.\n\n306\n00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:29.400\nIt makes seeds that you plant and it just makes copies of itself.\n\n307\n00:12:29.400 --> 00:12:31.000\nIt's self-replicating, right?\n\n308\n00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.720\nImagine what that would do to apples margins if you just copy, you know,\n\n309\n00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:34.400\ncopying iPhones\n\n310\n00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:35.400\nfor free.\n\n311\n00:12:35.400 --> 00:12:36.960\nThis is intrinsic to the substrate.\n\n312\n00:12:36.960 --> 00:12:39.040\nLike basically all biology does that.\n\n313\n00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:42.270\nIf we just walked up on that and hadn't existed, we'd think of it as like some\n\n314\n00:12:42.270 --> 00:12:42.800\nunbelievable\n\n315\n00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:44.920\nalien advanced technology, right?\n\n316\n00:12:44.920 --> 00:12:45.920\nYou know?\n\n317\n00:12:45.920 --> 00:12:48.400\nBut, \"Oh, hey, it's a house plant.\"\n\n318\n00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:50.520\nYou're so accustomed to it that you ignore it.\n\n319\n00:12:50.520 --> 00:12:53.720\nAnd so for those of us that kind of were passionate about biology, we're like\n\n320\n00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:54.280\ncrazy people.\n\n321\n00:12:54.280 --> 00:12:56.920\nWe're looking around like, \"Why does anyone else notice this?\"\n\n322\n00:12:56.920 --> 00:12:57.920\nRight?\n\n323\n00:12:57.920 --> 00:13:01.960\nAnd so when I got into MIT, like flipping through the course catalog being,\n\n324\n00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:03.040\nlike undergrad,\n\n325\n00:13:03.040 --> 00:13:05.240\nlooking for the genetic engineering courses, right?\n\n326\n00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:07.520\nBecause I was like, \"I had read about and known about.\"\n\n327\n00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:09.000\nSo even then, I don't remember what's that.\n\n328\n00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:12.360\nI think it was probably like Jurassic Park when I was like 12 or 13 came out.\n\n329\n00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:15.200\nIt's like, \"I wanted to do it,\" right?\n\n330\n00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:18.640\nAnd I had this experience when I was an undergrad at MIT taking lab classes.\n\n331\n00:13:18.640 --> 00:13:19.640\nI clearly remember that.\n\n332\n00:13:19.640 --> 00:13:21.720\nI thought a whole summer in the lab.\n\n333\n00:13:21.720 --> 00:13:26.250\nAnd by the way, if you've ever done lab work, David, it is a frustrating\n\n334\n00:13:26.250 --> 00:13:27.280\nexperience.\n\n335\n00:13:27.280 --> 00:13:28.280\nOkay?\n\n336\n00:13:28.280 --> 00:13:32.150\nLike you are like standing at a lab bench, moving clear liquids around, mixing\n\n337\n00:13:32.150 --> 00:13:32.640\nthings\n\n338\n00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:33.640\ntogether.\n\n339\n00:13:33.640 --> 00:13:36.200\nIt's kind of like an advanced chef sort of thing, except any little mistake and\n\n340\n00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:36.360\nthe whole\n\n341\n00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:37.360\nthing falls apart.\n\n342\n00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:42.020\nAnd so I spent a whole summer trying to move one gene into a bacteria and I\n\n343\n00:13:42.020 --> 00:13:42.800\nfailed.\n\n344\n00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:43.800\nOkay?\n\n345\n00:13:43.800 --> 00:13:46.820\nAnd I remember this at the end of summer, I was like, \"Oh my God, this doesn't\n\n346\n00:13:46.820 --> 00:13:47.360\nwork.\"\n\n347\n00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:50.260\nI thought I could get to program biology and kind of like, at the time I wouldn\n\n348\n00:13:50.260 --> 00:13:50.520\n't even\n\n349\n00:13:50.520 --> 00:13:53.880\nuse that language, but just like, you know, engage with it at the DNA level.\n\n350\n00:13:53.880 --> 00:13:55.680\nAnd I was just like, \"God, hopeless.\"\n\n351\n00:13:55.680 --> 00:13:59.920\nIt wasn't until I met Tom and my advisor at the time drew Andy who were like, \"\n\n352\n00:13:59.920 --> 00:14:00.360\nHey,\n\n353\n00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:02.840\nlisten, we're going to be able to do this.\n\n354\n00:14:02.840 --> 00:14:04.560\nIt's just going to take time.\"\n\n355\n00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:05.560\nAnd I was like, \"Fine.\"\n\n356\n00:14:05.560 --> 00:14:06.760\nBecause it's like, \"What else could I do?\"\n\n357\n00:14:06.760 --> 00:14:09.280\nYou know, like I was like, \"At least these people are trying and they seem\n\n358\n00:14:09.280 --> 00:14:09.960\nsmarter than\n\n359\n00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:10.960\nme.\"\n\n360\n00:14:10.960 --> 00:14:11.960\nSo that was a big part of it.\n\n361\n00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:16.510\nAnd then as we built Ginkgo, I've gotten sort of a second purpose around how do\n\n362\n00:14:16.510 --> 00:14:16.680\nyou\n\n363\n00:14:16.680 --> 00:14:19.440\nbuild a lasting company and what are the ways we should structure it,\n\n364\n00:14:19.440 --> 00:14:20.120\nparticularly\n\n365\n00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:24.030\naround thinking about how the people who work here kind of own and gain meaning\n\n366\n00:14:24.030 --> 00:14:24.440\nfrom the\n\n367\n00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:25.440\nplace we're building.\n\n368\n00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:26.440\nAnd so that's become a second.\n\n369\n00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:27.440\nBut that was later, right?\n\n370\n00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:30.640\nLike really the driver out of the gate was Jurassic Park.\n\n371\n00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:32.640\nI get it.\n\n372\n00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:33.960\nYou know, you love biology.\n\n373\n00:14:33.960 --> 00:14:37.440\nLike I love marketing and you get started in it and then you get the chance to\n\n374\n00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:37.800\nbuild\n\n375\n00:14:37.800 --> 00:14:40.640\na company that you want to make live a long, long time.\n\n376\n00:14:40.640 --> 00:14:44.560\nYou know, you go to MIT, you hook up with these other Brady acts.\n\n377\n00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:46.320\nYou know, tell us how that happened.\n\n378\n00:14:46.320 --> 00:14:47.320\nYeah.\n\n379\n00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:50.530\nSo I had had that sort of like meltdown, right, where I wasn't able to sort of\n\n380\n00:14:50.530 --> 00:14:51.200\nengineer these\n\n381\n00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:52.200\ncells.\n\n382\n00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:57.680\nAnd then I met Drew, my boss, Drew Andy, who's now a professor at Stanford.\n\n383\n00:14:57.680 --> 00:15:01.730\nHe and Tom were kind of pitching this concept that cells were code and you\n\n384\n00:15:01.730 --> 00:15:02.680\ncould program\n\n385\n00:15:02.680 --> 00:15:03.680\nthem.\n\n386\n00:15:03.680 --> 00:15:07.700\nAnd then we had this meeting called the synthetic biology working group and it\n\n387\n00:15:07.700 --> 00:15:08.600\nattracted this\n\n388\n00:15:08.600 --> 00:15:11.480\nlike crazy carnival of people.\n\n389\n00:15:11.480 --> 00:15:12.480\nOkay.\n\n390\n00:15:12.480 --> 00:15:13.480\nRight.\n\n391\n00:15:13.480 --> 00:15:16.860\nAnd the reason was serious biologists at the time were like cells are not\n\n392\n00:15:16.860 --> 00:15:17.440\ncomputers.\n\n393\n00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:19.720\nGuys, like let's just be clear about this.\n\n394\n00:15:19.720 --> 00:15:20.960\nThey are not predictable.\n\n395\n00:15:20.960 --> 00:15:23.720\nThey're squishy, they're wet, they move around.\n\n396\n00:15:23.720 --> 00:15:24.720\nAnd yes, you're right.\n\n397\n00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:25.720\nThey run on code.\n\n398\n00:15:25.720 --> 00:15:28.240\nI'll give you that, but I won't give you anything else.\n\n399\n00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:31.960\nWe were like not that welcome with that community at the time because they were\n\n400\n00:15:31.960 --> 00:15:32.640\nlike, you guys\n\n401\n00:15:32.640 --> 00:15:34.000\nare oversimplifying it.\n\n402\n00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:38.740\nBut we had certain folks, like Pam Silver and Harvard and others who like took\n\n403\n00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:40.040\npity on us\n\n404\n00:15:40.040 --> 00:15:41.040\nengineers.\n\n405\n00:15:41.040 --> 00:15:44.600\nAnd we're like, all right, I'm going to explain to you some of the things here\n\n406\n00:15:44.600 --> 00:15:45.040\nthat you're\n\n407\n00:15:45.040 --> 00:15:47.960\ngetting wrong and you're going and you appear to be people who can learn.\n\n408\n00:15:47.960 --> 00:15:51.140\nAnd so we're going to like get there and please teach me some of the lessons\n\n409\n00:15:51.140 --> 00:15:51.600\nyou have\n\n410\n00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:52.960\nfrom computer science.\n\n411\n00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:57.170\nAnd so we kind of had this interesting hodgepodge and everyone was like good\n\n412\n00:15:57.170 --> 00:15:58.080\nspirited about\n\n413\n00:15:58.080 --> 00:15:59.080\nit.\n\n414\n00:15:59.080 --> 00:16:02.440\nAnd I met, you know, the other founders like all we were kind of drawn to that.\n\n415\n00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:05.040\nAnd we were just a little students sitting there while these professors were\n\n416\n00:16:05.040 --> 00:16:05.360\nkind of\n\n417\n00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:06.360\nfighting it out.\n\n418\n00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:09.400\nAnd eventually, because we were the kind of first crop of students, we became,\n\n419\n00:16:09.400 --> 00:16:09.720\nyou know,\n\n420\n00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:11.920\nkind of leaders in the early days there.\n\n421\n00:16:11.920 --> 00:16:12.920\nThat was basically how it happened.\n\n422\n00:16:12.920 --> 00:16:21.550\nIt was like lost to a flame based on somebody saying that DNA could actually be\n\n423\n00:16:21.550 --> 00:16:22.000\nengineered.\n\n424\n00:16:22.000 --> 00:16:25.560\nWe'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jason Kelly in just a\n\n425\n00:16:25.560 --> 00:16:26.240\nmoment.\n\n426\n00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:29.540\nHave you gotten stuck because you felt so overwhelmed by how complicated\n\n427\n00:16:29.540 --> 00:16:31.240\nsomething seemed?\n\n428\n00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:35.570\nWhen I sat down with Kendra Scott, we talked about her process of striving for\n\n429\n00:16:35.570 --> 00:16:36.320\nsimplicity\n\n430\n00:16:36.320 --> 00:16:38.360\nin these kinds of moments.\n\n431\n00:16:38.360 --> 00:16:43.760\nSo many companies, you'll get a customer service packet that's like 200 pages\n\n432\n00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:44.280\nand you give\n\n433\n00:16:44.280 --> 00:16:48.060\nthem to a new employee and you say, here, here's our customer service and\n\n434\n00:16:48.060 --> 00:16:48.760\npolicies.\n\n435\n00:16:48.760 --> 00:16:49.760\nRead this.\n\n436\n00:16:49.760 --> 00:16:50.760\nMine is simple.\n\n437\n00:16:50.760 --> 00:16:52.000\nIt's a sister rule.\n\n438\n00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:55.640\nYou treat every customer like they were your sister or your brother.\n\n439\n00:16:55.640 --> 00:17:00.930\nGo back and listen to my entire conversation with Kendra, episode one here on\n\n440\n00:17:00.930 --> 00:17:01.840\nHow Leaders\n\n441\n00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:08.000\nLead.\n\n442\n00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:10.280\nTell us though, the origin of your business model.\n\n443\n00:17:10.280 --> 00:17:13.520\nYou've got a very unique business model and how did it start out and what is\n\n444\n00:17:13.520 --> 00:17:14.200\nyour business\n\n445\n00:17:14.200 --> 00:17:15.200\nmodel today?\n\n446\n00:17:15.200 --> 00:17:16.200\nYeah.\n\n447\n00:17:16.200 --> 00:17:19.370\nSo I mentioned earlier that we take a lot of cues from tech industry and\n\n448\n00:17:19.370 --> 00:17:20.280\nplatforms, right?\n\n449\n00:17:20.280 --> 00:17:24.270\nAnd so if you look at how horizontal platforms get commercialized, I can be two\n\n450\n00:17:24.270 --> 00:17:25.120\ngood examples\n\n451\n00:17:25.120 --> 00:17:26.560\nthat have influenced our business.\n\n452\n00:17:26.560 --> 00:17:28.200\nOne is cloud computing.\n\n453\n00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:32.470\nSo cloud computing, big capital investment in infrastructure that reduces the\n\n454\n00:17:32.470 --> 00:17:33.040\nmarginal\n\n455\n00:17:33.040 --> 00:17:36.400\ncost of a service, in this case, a compute cycle, and then you make it\n\n456\n00:17:36.400 --> 00:17:37.480\navailable to people\n\n457\n00:17:37.480 --> 00:17:39.120\non a fee basis.\n\n458\n00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:41.400\nAnd they're happy to pay the fee for two reasons.\n\n459\n00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:45.920\nOne, it's actually in many cases cheaper at your scale.\n\n460\n00:17:45.920 --> 00:17:48.000\nYou don't have the scale to build their big facility.\n\n461\n00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:51.060\nSo if you built a small server, it would actually be more expensive than their\n\n462\n00:17:51.060 --> 00:17:51.720\nbig servers\n\n463\n00:17:51.720 --> 00:17:53.480\non a per-compute basis.\n\n464\n00:17:53.480 --> 00:17:54.480\nSo that's number one.\n\n465\n00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:56.280\nIt's cheaper than it you running it yourself.\n\n466\n00:17:56.280 --> 00:18:00.000\nNumber two, no capital investment for you, right?\n\n467\n00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:03.080\nYou don't have to spend the big upfront money to buy all those servers.\n\n468\n00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:05.360\nYou can just go and deploy in the cloud.\n\n469\n00:18:05.360 --> 00:18:06.360\nOkay.\n\n470\n00:18:06.360 --> 00:18:07.880\nAnd there was this big transition, right?\n\n471\n00:18:07.880 --> 00:18:11.580\nIf you might remember, you know, in the kind of 2000s where companies started\n\n472\n00:18:11.580 --> 00:18:12.000\nshifting\n\n473\n00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:15.360\ntheir IT from on-prem servers into the cloud.\n\n474\n00:18:15.360 --> 00:18:18.240\nAnd then you had startup companies that got born cloud native.\n\n475\n00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:19.240\nOkay.\n\n476\n00:18:19.240 --> 00:18:20.480\nAnd I'm like, this is what we got to do in biotech.\n\n477\n00:18:20.480 --> 00:18:22.960\nDavid, you have no idea what it takes to launch a biotech company.\n\n478\n00:18:22.960 --> 00:18:24.080\nIt is crazy town.\n\n479\n00:18:24.080 --> 00:18:27.600\nYou go license some expensive lab infrastructure in Cambridge.\n\n480\n00:18:27.600 --> 00:18:31.460\nYou go buy millions of dollars of equipment from equipment providers in the\n\n481\n00:18:31.460 --> 00:18:32.280\nlife sciences\n\n482\n00:18:32.280 --> 00:18:36.230\nindustry, all these reagents, buy all these materials and beakers and yada yada\n\n483\n00:18:36.230 --> 00:18:36.720\n, hire\n\n484\n00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:38.320\na whole team of scientists.\n\n485\n00:18:38.320 --> 00:18:40.960\nAnd now it's taken a year and you can start working.\n\n486\n00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:41.960\nCrazy.\n\n487\n00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:42.960\nOkay.\n\n488\n00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:46.570\nWhereas with me, I can say, hey, listen, why don't you just have a variable\n\n489\n00:18:46.570 --> 00:18:47.040\ncost R&D\n\n490\n00:18:47.040 --> 00:18:50.730\nbudget and spend on my, what we call our foundry, our robotic lab\n\n491\n00:18:50.730 --> 00:18:52.040\ninfrastructure.\n\n492\n00:18:52.040 --> 00:18:54.280\nAnd we'll do the lab work.\n\n493\n00:18:54.280 --> 00:18:57.840\nAnd you can just have a line item budget to spend without all that upfront\n\n494\n00:18:57.840 --> 00:18:58.560\ninvestment,\n\n495\n00:18:58.560 --> 00:19:01.710\nwhich is particularly good for startups, which are some of our best customers,\n\n496\n00:19:01.710 --> 00:19:01.840\nlike\n\n497\n00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:05.740\nthat company, Motif, I mentioned in the food industry, never had to build a lab\n\n498\n00:19:05.740 --> 00:19:05.800\n.\n\n499\n00:19:05.800 --> 00:19:08.520\nSo the way I charge for that part of the business, just fees.\n\n500\n00:19:08.520 --> 00:19:09.520\nYeah.\n\n501\n00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:10.520\nHow much do we move the robots?\n\n502\n00:19:10.520 --> 00:19:11.520\nHow much do you pay?\n\n503\n00:19:11.520 --> 00:19:13.320\nHow much compute cycles does Amazon use?\n\n504\n00:19:13.320 --> 00:19:14.320\nHow much do you pay?\n\n505\n00:19:14.320 --> 00:19:15.320\nAll right.\n\n506\n00:19:15.320 --> 00:19:16.320\nSo that's one half.\n\n507\n00:19:16.320 --> 00:19:19.360\nThe other half, this is where we differ from Amazon.\n\n508\n00:19:19.360 --> 00:19:23.760\nAnd I work with you to do a project, like let's take that hemoglobin.\n\n509\n00:19:23.760 --> 00:19:25.560\nThat was about a two year project for Motif.\n\n510\n00:19:25.560 --> 00:19:29.880\nSo we engineered that cell to produce that hemoglobin at a cheaper price.\n\n511\n00:19:29.880 --> 00:19:33.600\nThey used our facility, paid us fees to do the work.\n\n512\n00:19:33.600 --> 00:19:37.520\nIt ends when I'm done with the yeast.\n\n513\n00:19:37.520 --> 00:19:38.520\nNow they've got a strain.\n\n514\n00:19:38.520 --> 00:19:39.680\nThey're putting it into bigger tanks.\n\n515\n00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:43.000\nThey're doing, you know, I'm going to do commercial deals and all that stuff.\n\n516\n00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:47.600\nThey stop needing me because I'm not a server providing their website.\n\n517\n00:19:47.600 --> 00:19:50.720\nI'm a programming tools environment.\n\n518\n00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:53.200\nAnd so the business model there is actually different.\n\n519\n00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:57.320\nThe most direct analogy comes from Microsoft in the 80s, which I will explain.\n\n520\n00:19:57.320 --> 00:19:59.720\nBut the one people are most familiar with is the App Store.\n\n521\n00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:00.720\nOkay.\n\n522\n00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:02.960\nSo Apple similarly is like, hey, we're going to host your thing and give you\n\n523\n00:20:02.960 --> 00:20:03.320\nall this\n\n524\n00:20:03.320 --> 00:20:06.910\ndistribution and blah, blah, blah, but someone's going to download the app just\n\n525\n00:20:06.910 --> 00:20:07.360\nonce.\n\n526\n00:20:07.360 --> 00:20:10.560\nAnd so as a result, I need to take a piece of all your business.\n\n527\n00:20:10.560 --> 00:20:11.560\nRight?\n\n528\n00:20:11.560 --> 00:20:14.980\nI need that 30% rev share in the App Store because they're not doing an ongoing\n\n529\n00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:15.320\nthing\n\n530\n00:20:15.320 --> 00:20:16.560\nfor you.\n\n531\n00:20:16.560 --> 00:20:19.590\nThey're basically a place someone comes to kind of pop off this thing and then\n\n532\n00:20:19.590 --> 00:20:20.120\noff they run\n\n533\n00:20:20.120 --> 00:20:21.120\nwith it on their phone.\n\n534\n00:20:21.120 --> 00:20:22.360\nSo they got to take a piece.\n\n535\n00:20:22.360 --> 00:20:25.840\nSo Microsoft in the 80s had a programming tools business.\n\n536\n00:20:25.840 --> 00:20:30.330\nYou know, they would basically provide tools to people who are writing software\n\n537\n00:20:30.330 --> 00:20:30.600\n.\n\n538\n00:20:30.600 --> 00:20:33.700\nAnd then if you embedded your software in their app, they charge you like a\n\n539\n00:20:33.700 --> 00:20:34.360\nseat licensing\n\n540\n00:20:34.360 --> 00:20:35.360\ncost.\n\n541\n00:20:35.360 --> 00:20:38.090\nI was like, that was an App Store business model in the 80s before there was\n\n542\n00:20:38.090 --> 00:20:38.520\neven, you\n\n543\n00:20:38.520 --> 00:20:40.200\nknow, and it was fascinating.\n\n544\n00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:42.320\nAnd so that's very much what we provide.\n\n545\n00:20:42.320 --> 00:20:47.210\nWe effectively are outsource developer tools, like you have to use our robotic\n\n546\n00:20:47.210 --> 00:20:47.960\nlabs, but\n\n547\n00:20:47.960 --> 00:20:52.840\nas a result, you got your app written and we get a percent.\n\n548\n00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:57.250\nAnd so that's the second half of the business model is once the app is done, I\n\n549\n00:20:57.250 --> 00:20:58.360\nneed a royalty,\n\n550\n00:20:58.360 --> 00:21:02.140\nmilestones, or maybe even equity in your company if you're a smaller company so\n\n551\n00:21:02.140 --> 00:21:02.280\nthat\n\n552\n00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:05.880\nI participate in the long tail of value that you get from that app.\n\n553\n00:21:05.880 --> 00:21:09.490\nYeah, I thought that was interesting that you actually get paid in some cases\n\n554\n00:21:09.490 --> 00:21:10.680\nwith equity\n\n555\n00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:14.040\nin the company with these startups that you're dealing with.\n\n556\n00:21:14.040 --> 00:21:17.350\nSo one of the other kind of general policies I have with building the business\n\n557\n00:21:17.350 --> 00:21:17.720\nis like,\n\n558\n00:21:17.720 --> 00:21:19.200\nlearn from your customers.\n\n559\n00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:20.520\nIt's a novel idea.\n\n560\n00:21:20.520 --> 00:21:21.520\nThat's a very novel idea.\n\n561\n00:21:21.520 --> 00:21:24.680\nYou're supposed to be amazed how many people don't want to do that.\n\n562\n00:21:24.680 --> 00:21:28.140\nSo I would talk to these startup companies and I'm like, guys, this platform is\n\n563\n00:21:28.140 --> 00:21:28.520\nreally\n\n564\n00:21:28.520 --> 00:21:29.520\nuseful to you.\n\n565\n00:21:29.520 --> 00:21:31.960\nLike I said earlier, you don't need to build that lab.\n\n566\n00:21:31.960 --> 00:21:33.440\nOkay, you could just use me.\n\n567\n00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:37.000\nI'm like, you actually get more value out of it than like my customers like\n\n568\n00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:38.440\nRoche or Bayer\n\n569\n00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:42.040\nor Biogen who are like big companies and already have labs.\n\n570\n00:21:42.040 --> 00:21:43.600\nYou just can skip the lab.\n\n571\n00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:44.600\nIsn't that great?\n\n572\n00:21:44.600 --> 00:21:47.980\nAnd they're like, yeah, Jason, but I've raised $5 million and like working with\n\n573\n00:21:47.980 --> 00:21:48.400\nyou is going\n\n574\n00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:49.480\nto cost me $3 million.\n\n575\n00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:50.480\nSo that's not going to happen.\n\n576\n00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:54.410\nAnd I'm like, yeah, but you're going to go spend two on the lab and then\n\n577\n00:21:54.410 --> 00:21:55.440\nanother two kind\n\n578\n00:21:55.440 --> 00:21:57.830\nof doing some like half-assed work in the lab and you're not going to get\n\n579\n00:21:57.830 --> 00:21:58.400\nanything done\n\n580\n00:21:58.400 --> 00:21:59.400\nin time.\n\n581\n00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:00.960\nLike you're better off spending that free with me.\n\n582\n00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:02.040\nAnd they're like, no, it's too bad.\n\n583\n00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:03.040\nI can't.\n\n584\n00:22:03.040 --> 00:22:06.040\nThe normal thing to do is hire a bunch of scientists.\n\n585\n00:22:06.040 --> 00:22:07.760\nAnd so I'm like, oh my God, this is killing me.\n\n586\n00:22:07.760 --> 00:22:12.520\nAnd so what I realized was they're cash sensitive, okay, right?\n\n587\n00:22:12.520 --> 00:22:16.910\nWhich makes sense, you know, and the scope of work in biotech is not small,\n\n588\n00:22:16.910 --> 00:22:17.560\nright?\n\n589\n00:22:17.560 --> 00:22:19.640\nLike you actually need to do a lot of lab work now.\n\n590\n00:22:19.640 --> 00:22:23.720\nAnd so what we can do is say like, well, you are off selling equity in your\n\n591\n00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:24.320\ncompany\n\n592\n00:22:24.320 --> 00:22:27.520\nto people, you know, in exchange for their cash, right?\n\n593\n00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:32.020\nCan I work out some structures where I can actually get equity in your company\n\n594\n00:22:32.020 --> 00:22:32.520\nin lieu\n\n595\n00:22:32.520 --> 00:22:34.080\nof cash?\n\n596\n00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:37.440\nAnd that can really help kind of us be able to engage those companies.\n\n597\n00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:39.570\nUnfortunately with the money we've raised, we have the balance sheet to do this\n\n598\n00:22:39.570 --> 00:22:39.800\nsort\n\n599\n00:22:39.800 --> 00:22:40.800\nof thing.\n\n600\n00:22:40.800 --> 00:22:43.520\nAnd so it makes it a lot easier to get kind of startups on the platform.\n\n601\n00:22:43.520 --> 00:22:45.920\nSo that's an example of kind of how that happens, David.\n\n602\n00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:48.900\nAlso if you launch a company on our platform, like we've been doing that, we\n\n603\n00:22:48.900 --> 00:22:49.360\ncan end up\n\n604\n00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:52.880\ninstead of a royalty, we could actually just take a piece of the company up\n\n605\n00:22:52.880 --> 00:22:53.440\nfront and\n\n606\n00:22:53.440 --> 00:22:54.440\nwaive the royalty.\n\n607\n00:22:54.440 --> 00:22:56.320\nAnd certain startups prefer that.\n\n608\n00:22:56.320 --> 00:23:00.280\nThey think it's a little bit better for future investors to not see a royalty\n\n609\n00:23:00.280 --> 00:23:00.720\ntale to\n\n610\n00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:01.720\nginkgo.\n\n611\n00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:02.720\nGreat.\n\n612\n00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:03.720\nOkay.\n\n613\n00:23:03.720 --> 00:23:04.720\nSo that's a big equity in the company.\n\n614\n00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:07.240\nSo those are the two ways we end up holding equity.\n\n615\n00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:11.380\nIt has mostly been like us learning from what the smaller companies needed to\n\n616\n00:23:11.380 --> 00:23:12.800\nget on platform.\n\n617\n00:23:12.800 --> 00:23:15.560\nDefinitely thinking outside the dots there, though, there's no question about\n\n618\n00:23:15.560 --> 00:23:15.800\nthat.\n\n619\n00:23:15.800 --> 00:23:20.630\nAnd the power of having this horizontal platform that you're talking about\n\n620\n00:23:20.630 --> 00:23:21.400\nreally allows you\n\n621\n00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:26.490\nto address every category, infinite categories, which category do you think\n\n622\n00:23:26.490 --> 00:23:27.640\nwill ultimately\n\n623\n00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:28.640\nbe the biggest?\n\n624\n00:23:28.640 --> 00:23:32.080\nToday in biotechnology, it's therapeutics.\n\n625\n00:23:32.080 --> 00:23:35.980\nThe therapeutics is really kind of the cash cow of the biotech industry about,\n\n626\n00:23:35.980 --> 00:23:36.280\nyou know,\n\n627\n00:23:36.280 --> 00:23:39.260\ndepending on what you look at, calling it about a third or more of therapeutic\n\n628\n00:23:39.260 --> 00:23:39.640\ndrugs on the\n\n629\n00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:43.060\nmarket every year are biotech made drugs, which means that they're coming from\n\n630\n00:23:43.060 --> 00:23:43.760\nan engineered\n\n631\n00:23:43.760 --> 00:23:44.760\ncell.\n\n632\n00:23:44.760 --> 00:23:46.520\nHuman insulin was the very first one of these.\n\n633\n00:23:46.520 --> 00:23:49.450\nSo Genentech, which is the company that we actually DNA our ticker came from\n\n634\n00:23:49.450 --> 00:23:50.040\nGenentech.\n\n635\n00:23:50.040 --> 00:23:53.080\nGenentech was like the originator of all biotechnology.\n\n636\n00:23:53.080 --> 00:23:54.520\nTheir first product was human insulin.\n\n637\n00:23:54.520 --> 00:23:55.520\nOkay.\n\n638\n00:23:55.520 --> 00:23:56.520\nMy dad's a type one diabetic.\n\n639\n00:23:56.520 --> 00:23:58.480\nMy wife said type one diabetic since seven.\n\n640\n00:23:58.480 --> 00:23:59.480\nOkay.\n\n641\n00:23:59.480 --> 00:24:00.480\nSo there you go.\n\n642\n00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:03.910\nAll that, you know, and that whole experience and, you know, that technology to\n\n643\n00:24:03.910 --> 00:24:04.360\nbe able to\n\n644\n00:24:04.360 --> 00:24:07.080\nmake human insulin instead of poor scene, right?\n\n645\n00:24:07.080 --> 00:24:08.600\nLike, that's exactly this.\n\n646\n00:24:08.600 --> 00:24:11.850\nIt literally, it's the very first biotechnology of taking cutting and pasting\n\n647\n00:24:11.850 --> 00:24:12.480\nin that case,\n\n648\n00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:18.030\nthe DNA from a human gene for insulin into a bacterial cell and then growing it\n\n649\n00:24:18.030 --> 00:24:18.360\nin a\n\n650\n00:24:18.360 --> 00:24:19.360\ntank.\n\n651\n00:24:19.360 --> 00:24:23.090\nNow, what's changed since 1978, you know, and when that first got going, we don\n\n652\n00:24:23.090 --> 00:24:23.440\n't need\n\n653\n00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:24.600\nto cut and paste anymore.\n\n654\n00:24:24.600 --> 00:24:27.740\nAgain, we just type in the computer, we print whatever gene we want from any\n\n655\n00:24:27.740 --> 00:24:28.120\ngene that's\n\n656\n00:24:28.120 --> 00:24:29.400\nknown in the world.\n\n657\n00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:30.400\nOkay.\n\n658\n00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:33.310\nAnd so that's very enabling and also things are sort of getting cheaper to do\n\n659\n00:24:33.310 --> 00:24:33.520\nit.\n\n660\n00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:36.440\nLike I said earlier, you know, take the food industry.\n\n661\n00:24:36.440 --> 00:24:39.320\nLike, like animal meat as an example.\n\n662\n00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:42.480\nGates had a quote, you know, maybe six months ago or something where he was\n\n663\n00:24:42.480 --> 00:24:42.920\nlike, there's\n\n664\n00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:48.480\ngoing to be eight to 10 Tesla scale companies in climate.\n\n665\n00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:52.560\nAnd Tesla represents this watershed event where you have, you know, a trillion\n\n666\n00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:52.960\ndollar\n\n667\n00:24:52.960 --> 00:24:53.960\nat various times, right?\n\n668\n00:24:53.960 --> 00:24:55.480\nAnd Mark Evans today is volatile.\n\n669\n00:24:55.480 --> 00:25:00.040\nBut like, you know, trillion dollar company built from scratch.\n\n670\n00:25:00.040 --> 00:25:01.040\nWhy?\n\n671\n00:25:01.040 --> 00:25:07.840\nWell, they have a vision for in a carbon neutral economy, what has to be true?\n\n672\n00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:11.600\nOh, well, the cars need to be electric.\n\n673\n00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:13.480\nI think that's right.\n\n674\n00:25:13.480 --> 00:25:14.480\nOkay.\n\n675\n00:25:14.480 --> 00:25:16.560\nWhen that was the question.\n\n676\n00:25:16.560 --> 00:25:20.920\nLike, when would the technology come together to make that possible at scale?\n\n677\n00:25:20.920 --> 00:25:22.560\nBut you know it's gone to happen.\n\n678\n00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:26.920\nAnd when it does, oh, have you seen the size of the auto industry?\n\n679\n00:25:26.920 --> 00:25:29.210\nLike, you know, of course it's going to, you know, and so then you can repeat\n\n680\n00:25:29.210 --> 00:25:30.360\nthis process,\n\n681\n00:25:30.360 --> 00:25:31.360\nright?\n\n682\n00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:36.120\nLike, let me tell you in a carbon neutral world, we're not growing cows at\n\n683\n00:25:36.120 --> 00:25:36.960\nscale.\n\n684\n00:25:36.960 --> 00:25:38.200\nZero chance, David.\n\n685\n00:25:38.200 --> 00:25:40.440\nIt is way too much of global emissions.\n\n686\n00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:41.440\nIt's way too inefficient.\n\n687\n00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:42.440\nIt's not happening.\n\n688\n00:25:42.440 --> 00:25:43.440\nIt's over.\n\n689\n00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:47.520\nAnd so you just have to bet when and then that industry, be there trillion\n\n690\n00:25:47.520 --> 00:25:48.240\ndollars, you\n\n691\n00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:49.240\nknow, right?\n\n692\n00:25:49.240 --> 00:25:50.240\nThese are the energy.\n\n693\n00:25:50.240 --> 00:25:51.240\nYou're gigantic, right?\n\n694\n00:25:51.240 --> 00:25:52.240\nYou know?\n\n695\n00:25:52.240 --> 00:25:53.240\nThat's one.\n\n696\n00:25:53.240 --> 00:25:57.480\nBuilding materials concrete is a ton of carbon emission.\n\n697\n00:25:57.480 --> 00:25:59.920\nThey all have biotech interfaces to them.\n\n698\n00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:02.800\nI see all, like all these kind of physical goods areas are big ones.\n\n699\n00:26:02.800 --> 00:26:03.960\nSo yeah, I think it'll be something like that.\n\n700\n00:26:03.960 --> 00:26:07.360\nI think ultimately pharma is a great way to get the technology bootstrap, but\n\n701\n00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:07.720\nthe bigger\n\n702\n00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:09.920\nindustries will be outside.\n\n703\n00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:13.870\nIt's interesting you bring up Elon Musk because you've been compared to\n\n704\n00:26:13.870 --> 00:26:14.960\nfounders like him\n\n705\n00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:19.570\nbecause, as you mentioned, you're a salesman innately, you know, you obviously\n\n706\n00:26:19.570 --> 00:26:20.200\nare smart\n\n707\n00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:21.200\nas hell.\n\n708\n00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:22.200\nOkay?\n\n709\n00:26:22.200 --> 00:26:26.630\nYou're able to tell compelling stories that can drive your market cap up before\n\n710\n00:26:26.630 --> 00:26:27.320\nyou really\n\n711\n00:26:27.320 --> 00:26:28.320\nhave the revenue.\n\n712\n00:26:28.320 --> 00:26:29.320\nElon Musk did that.\n\n713\n00:26:29.320 --> 00:26:32.920\nYou know, people would say it when, but they believed in him.\n\n714\n00:26:32.920 --> 00:26:37.480\nYou know, being a storyteller is a powerful asset for a CEO.\n\n715\n00:26:37.480 --> 00:26:39.800\nHow have you really developed that skill?\n\n716\n00:26:39.800 --> 00:26:44.500\nI think you have to be exposed to a lot of people that aren't just like from\n\n717\n00:26:44.500 --> 00:26:45.160\nyour little\n\n718\n00:26:45.160 --> 00:26:48.600\nlevel to be good at storytelling.\n\n719\n00:26:48.600 --> 00:26:53.790\nThere is a certain story I can tell to my PhD friends from MIT that has like\n\n720\n00:26:53.790 --> 00:26:54.600\nevery little\n\n721\n00:26:54.600 --> 00:26:57.000\nbit and bop exactly right.\n\n722\n00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:00.360\nAnd you know, has, you know, 18 papers supporting it and all this stuff.\n\n723\n00:27:00.360 --> 00:27:03.200\nAnd I've got close friends who will like rip my head off if I get one little\n\n724\n00:27:03.200 --> 00:27:03.960\nthing wrong\n\n725\n00:27:03.960 --> 00:27:06.240\non the technology X or Y.\n\n726\n00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:09.850\nIf I only hang out with those people, I don't actually know how to tell a story\n\n727\n00:27:09.850 --> 00:27:10.400\nthat like\n\n728\n00:27:10.400 --> 00:27:12.560\na wider set of people can understand, right?\n\n729\n00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:16.240\nAnd I had the benefit that I grew up just around a wide set of people, you know\n\n730\n00:27:16.240 --> 00:27:16.840\n, in Florida.\n\n731\n00:27:16.840 --> 00:27:20.440\nMy parents were pharmacists, you know, a lot of close friends or craftspeople.\n\n732\n00:27:20.440 --> 00:27:22.760\nYou know, I had a range, right?\n\n733\n00:27:22.760 --> 00:27:25.360\nI also got exposed to the MIT crowd too.\n\n734\n00:27:25.360 --> 00:27:29.480\nBut like through my life, I've had exposure to a wider set of people, which\n\n735\n00:27:29.480 --> 00:27:30.200\nlets me talk\n\n736\n00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:32.160\nto a wider set of people.\n\n737\n00:27:32.160 --> 00:27:34.990\nThat's the thing I think you spend the time and you see what works when you\n\n738\n00:27:34.990 --> 00:27:35.960\ntalk to people.\n\n739\n00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:38.160\nAnd that is how you ultimately get good at storytelling.\n\n740\n00:27:38.160 --> 00:27:40.400\nOther than that is practice.\n\n741\n00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:44.300\nAnd the only other thing is if it's a story you know you're going to tell, like\n\n742\n00:27:44.300 --> 00:27:44.760\nI'm giving\n\n743\n00:27:44.760 --> 00:27:47.450\na present like a door annual meeting or something like that, like I'm giving\n\n744\n00:27:47.450 --> 00:27:49.640\nlike a can talk,\n\n745\n00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:51.200\npractice way more than you think, right?\n\n746\n00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:57.920\nI will repeat a speech, you know, myself, alone, 25 times.\n\n747\n00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:01.800\nThat really surprises me, Jason, because you're so good off the top.\n\n748\n00:28:01.800 --> 00:28:05.320\nYou know, you seem like a guy who could just get up and stage and just do it.\n\n749\n00:28:05.320 --> 00:28:06.320\nI am.\n\n750\n00:28:06.320 --> 00:28:07.320\nThat's the point, David.\n\n751\n00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:08.320\nI actually am.\n\n752\n00:28:08.320 --> 00:28:12.290\nBut if you want to make a can talk like truly amazing, like practice the hell\n\n753\n00:28:12.290 --> 00:28:13.040\nout of it.\n\n754\n00:28:13.040 --> 00:28:15.240\nIt's sad advice because it just requires work.\n\n755\n00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:20.400\nBut like, you know, don't make me do something I don't want to do that.\n\n756\n00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:24.420\nYou know, Warren Buffett told me once he said that one of the best ways to\n\n757\n00:28:24.420 --> 00:28:25.240\nreally build\n\n758\n00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:28.520\ncredibility was to talk about things that could go wrong.\n\n759\n00:28:28.520 --> 00:28:31.970\nAnd the reason why he told me that is that I love my company and I, you know,\n\n760\n00:28:31.970 --> 00:28:32.240\nthese were\n\n761\n00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:35.360\nmy babies and I talked about the brands and we could do this and this.\n\n762\n00:28:35.360 --> 00:28:39.620\nAnd he said, you'll gain more credibility if you talk about what could go wrong\n\n763\n00:28:39.620 --> 00:28:40.080\nin your\n\n764\n00:28:40.080 --> 00:28:41.080\nbusiness.\n\n765\n00:28:41.080 --> 00:28:43.600\nYou know, it's the concept of sober selling.\n\n766\n00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:45.480\nSo what could go wrong in your business?\n\n767\n00:28:45.480 --> 00:28:46.840\nAnd do you ever talk about it?\n\n768\n00:28:46.840 --> 00:28:48.280\nYes, I do actually a lot.\n\n769\n00:28:48.280 --> 00:28:50.040\nSo it's an interesting balance, right?\n\n770\n00:28:50.040 --> 00:28:53.880\nLike when I talk with like an investor, it's very much sober selling, right?\n\n771\n00:28:53.880 --> 00:28:58.640\nIt's sort of like, okay, like let me explain to you how someone can get at us.\n\n772\n00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:02.000\nMy view on Gengo has been like, look, plan for success.\n\n773\n00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:05.240\nThat is going to create a big pool of value.\n\n774\n00:29:05.240 --> 00:29:06.880\nHow will you defend it?\n\n775\n00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:09.340\nHow is someone going to try to say, is someone going to be able to copy you\n\n776\n00:29:09.340 --> 00:29:09.840\neasily?\n\n777\n00:29:09.840 --> 00:29:12.200\nSo those are some of the best ways, like that's what investors want to hear.\n\n778\n00:29:12.200 --> 00:29:15.360\nThey want to know you've given some thought, you know, to those sort of things.\n\n779\n00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:16.360\nOkay.\n\n780\n00:29:16.360 --> 00:29:18.900\nSo in terms of like what can go wrong, well, number one, we got to keep that\n\n781\n00:29:18.900 --> 00:29:19.320\ntechnology\n\n782\n00:29:19.320 --> 00:29:20.720\ncurve going, right?\n\n783\n00:29:20.720 --> 00:29:23.130\nSo this is why the number one priority, like when I'm talking internally at the\n\n784\n00:29:23.130 --> 00:29:23.480\ncompany,\n\n785\n00:29:23.480 --> 00:29:28.300\nI'm like, let me tell you what breaks this place is if the platform stops\n\n786\n00:29:28.300 --> 00:29:29.240\nworking.\n\n787\n00:29:29.240 --> 00:29:32.780\nAnd by which stops working, I mean stops improving exponentially, like getting\n\n788\n00:29:32.780 --> 00:29:33.160\nbetter\n\n789\n00:29:33.160 --> 00:29:35.680\nbecause hey, it's like, it's like semiconductors.\n\n790\n00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:38.250\nIf the thing doubles in efficiency every couple of years, like how do you not\n\n791\n00:29:38.250 --> 00:29:38.800\nmake money,\n\n792\n00:29:38.800 --> 00:29:39.800\nright?\n\n793\n00:29:39.800 --> 00:29:42.450\nSo I'm sure that people understand that is, I don't think it's like the biggest\n\n794\n00:29:42.450 --> 00:29:42.920\nweakness.\n\n795\n00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:46.230\nLike we have a good plan for the next five years, but it is like the most\n\n796\n00:29:46.230 --> 00:29:48.440\nimportant thing.\n\n797\n00:29:48.440 --> 00:29:51.440\nAnd then it's keep the thing fed.\n\n798\n00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:55.470\nSo if I'm going to be tripling my output, boy, I need a lot more projects every\n\n799\n00:29:55.470 --> 00:29:56.040\nyear.\n\n800\n00:29:56.040 --> 00:29:58.650\nAnd so we have very aggressive targets on the number of new programs we're\n\n801\n00:29:58.650 --> 00:29:59.400\ngoing to add.\n\n802\n00:29:59.400 --> 00:30:02.700\nWe said we're going to hit 30 last year and we met or beat that, you know, like\n\n803\n00:30:02.700 --> 00:30:02.920\nadding\n\n804\n00:30:02.920 --> 00:30:06.370\nnew customers on the platform, that was always also a flank I was worried about\n\n805\n00:30:06.370 --> 00:30:06.600\n.\n\n806\n00:30:06.600 --> 00:30:08.240\nAre we able to do that?\n\n807\n00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:09.240\nCan I convince?\n\n808\n00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:12.070\nBecause the reasons people have excuses not to want to move on the platform,\n\n809\n00:30:12.070 --> 00:30:12.400\ncan I get\n\n810\n00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:13.400\nthem on?\n\n811\n00:30:13.400 --> 00:30:14.400\nRight?\n\n812\n00:30:14.400 --> 00:30:15.920\nAnd so I have my strategies to solve that problem.\n\n813\n00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:18.840\nAnd this is one of the reasons I tell investors like, hey, watch these things,\n\n814\n00:30:18.840 --> 00:30:19.160\nright?\n\n815\n00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:21.120\nLike how are we doing on the foundry?\n\n816\n00:30:21.120 --> 00:30:23.000\nHow are we doing on adding new programs?\n\n817\n00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:24.000\nRight?\n\n818\n00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:25.000\nThose are the things I think about.\n\n819\n00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:26.280\nThose are the things you should think about.\n\n820\n00:30:26.280 --> 00:30:27.280\nRight?\n\n821\n00:30:27.280 --> 00:30:28.600\nAnd so, so those are the big ones.\n\n822\n00:30:28.600 --> 00:30:30.120\nI think everything else kind of works out.\n\n823\n00:30:30.120 --> 00:30:33.420\nYeah, as long as you're selling it, you're developing something relevant to\n\n824\n00:30:33.420 --> 00:30:33.840\nsell that\n\n825\n00:30:33.840 --> 00:30:35.200\nyour customers want.\n\n826\n00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:36.880\nYou can figure out all that other stuff out.\n\n827\n00:30:36.880 --> 00:30:37.880\nYeah.\n\n828\n00:30:37.880 --> 00:30:39.760\nIf there's something wrong, I can fix that.\n\n829\n00:30:39.760 --> 00:30:40.760\nRight?\n\n830\n00:30:40.760 --> 00:30:44.040\nLike, oh, did I get this, this bit or how we do this term or blah, blah, blah.\n\n831\n00:30:44.040 --> 00:30:45.040\nThose are all fixable.\n\n832\n00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:46.040\nRight?\n\n833\n00:30:46.040 --> 00:30:48.960\nWhat's not fixable is if that breaks down on my scaling.\n\n834\n00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:51.490\nAnd so like we're very, and I don't mind being public about that because I want\n\n835\n00:30:51.490 --> 00:30:51.680\nthe\n\n836\n00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:53.920\nteam here not to lose the thread.\n\n837\n00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:57.710\nThose are the things we got to focus on, you know, keep the platform improving\n\n838\n00:30:57.710 --> 00:30:58.200\nand fill\n\n839\n00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:00.400\ndemand and everything else will work out.\n\n840\n00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:04.840\nSpeaking of competition, Reed Hastings, another unbelievable founder, the\n\n841\n00:31:04.840 --> 00:31:06.400\nfounder of Netflix\n\n842\n00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:09.880\ndescribes his competition as sleep.\n\n843\n00:31:09.880 --> 00:31:11.600\nHow do you view your competition?\n\n844\n00:31:11.600 --> 00:31:12.600\nYeah.\n\n845\n00:31:12.600 --> 00:31:16.040\nSo my competition is you doing this on-prem.\n\n846\n00:31:16.040 --> 00:31:19.310\nSo in other words, like think back to that cloud computing analogy when cloud\n\n847\n00:31:19.310 --> 00:31:19.720\nis just\n\n848\n00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:20.720\nfirst getting going.\n\n849\n00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:21.720\nWho was their competition?\n\n850\n00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:23.920\nNot the other cloud computing providers.\n\n851\n00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:27.200\nYou keeping your servers, your IT department, right?\n\n852\n00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:29.600\nThat didn't want to move into the cloud.\n\n853\n00:31:29.600 --> 00:31:30.600\nOh, and why?\n\n854\n00:31:30.600 --> 00:31:35.400\nOh, well security and oh, uptime and all these reasons.\n\n855\n00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:36.400\nRight?\n\n856\n00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:38.640\nBecause they have owned it in the past.\n\n857\n00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:39.640\nRight?\n\n858\n00:31:39.640 --> 00:31:44.180\nAnd so that's my main source of competition is the current status quo is, and\n\n859\n00:31:44.180 --> 00:31:45.080\nby the way,\n\n860\n00:31:45.080 --> 00:31:46.480\nthousands of biotech companies, right?\n\n861\n00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:49.540\nWe'll walk over to Cambridge and open a door and there's a farm, a biotech\n\n862\n00:31:49.540 --> 00:31:50.040\ncompany and\n\n863\n00:31:50.040 --> 00:31:55.710\ninside that door is a lab with somebody like me in a white lab coat, PhD train,\n\n864\n00:31:55.710 --> 00:31:56.240\nslaving\n\n865\n00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:58.760\naway, you know, moving clear liquids around.\n\n866\n00:31:58.760 --> 00:31:59.760\nIt's brutal.\n\n867\n00:31:59.760 --> 00:32:03.100\nAnd like those people need to be on a computer and thinking and, you know, and\n\n868\n00:32:03.100 --> 00:32:04.200\nusing infrastructure\n\n869\n00:32:04.200 --> 00:32:06.600\nlike ours to get their work done.\n\n870\n00:32:06.600 --> 00:32:08.440\nThat's my main source of competition.\n\n871\n00:32:08.440 --> 00:32:11.970\nYou know, so you don't really necessarily see like coming from a nontraditional\n\n872\n00:32:11.970 --> 00:32:12.560\ncompetitor\n\n873\n00:32:12.560 --> 00:32:14.440\nlike a Google or a Merck?\n\n874\n00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:17.520\nNo, the world of bits is a lot easier than the world of atoms.\n\n875\n00:32:17.520 --> 00:32:20.400\nAnd so when people from the bit world come over, they're like, oh boy, I'll\n\n876\n00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:20.640\ntell you\n\n877\n00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:22.960\nthe story from back we're at MIT because this is a funny experience.\n\n878\n00:32:22.960 --> 00:32:26.640\nSo Tom Knight, you know, again, MIT professor starting computer science since\n\n879\n00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:27.440\nthe 70s.\n\n880\n00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:28.440\nIt's the 90s now.\n\n881\n00:32:28.440 --> 00:32:30.440\nAnd he's like, hey, I'm going to do this biology thing.\n\n882\n00:32:30.440 --> 00:32:33.800\nSo all these like computer scientists who, by the way, it's very obvious to\n\n883\n00:32:33.800 --> 00:32:34.160\nthem that\n\n884\n00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:35.160\nDNA is code.\n\n885\n00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:38.240\nThey're like, wow, I would love to program that, Tom.\n\n886\n00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:39.240\nLet's do it.\n\n887\n00:32:39.240 --> 00:32:41.740\nAnd so they get in the lab and Tom gives them a pipette, which is a little\n\n888\n00:32:41.740 --> 00:32:42.240\ndevice you\n\n889\n00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:44.360\nuse to move liquids around on the bench.\n\n890\n00:32:44.360 --> 00:32:46.560\nAnd they get to work doing these experiments.\n\n891\n00:32:46.560 --> 00:32:48.800\nThey do an experiment and they get one result.\n\n892\n00:32:48.800 --> 00:32:52.200\nThey do the same experiment the next day and they get a different result.\n\n893\n00:32:52.200 --> 00:32:54.760\nAnd they're like, Tom, Tom, I just do the exact same thing twice.\n\n894\n00:32:54.760 --> 00:32:55.760\nAnd I got a different result.\n\n895\n00:32:55.760 --> 00:32:57.320\nAnd they're like, yeah, yeah, that happens.\n\n896\n00:32:57.320 --> 00:32:58.320\nAnd they're like, why?\n\n897\n00:32:58.320 --> 00:33:01.240\nAnd he's like, oh, well, you're never going to know.\n\n898\n00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:02.800\nAnd it's like, right?\n\n899\n00:33:02.800 --> 00:33:06.570\nYou know, like if you're a computer scientist and you run your code twice and\n\n900\n00:33:06.570 --> 00:33:06.880\nyou get a\n\n901\n00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:10.570\ndifferent result, you know, like something is way messed up in the universe,\n\n902\n00:33:10.570 --> 00:33:11.120\nright?\n\n903\n00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:12.120\nYou know?\n\n904\n00:33:12.120 --> 00:33:15.270\nAnd so they're leaving this world of pure logic over at a Google to enter the\n\n905\n00:33:15.270 --> 00:33:15.720\nsquishy\n\n906\n00:33:15.720 --> 00:33:16.720\nword of biology.\n\n907\n00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:19.200\nAnd every single time it just breaks people.\n\n908\n00:33:19.200 --> 00:33:22.610\nAnd so, you know, the funny thing about Tom, why he was able to do it, he came\n\n909\n00:33:22.610 --> 00:33:23.000\nfrom the\n\n910\n00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:29.280\nera of computing back in the 60s and 70s where computers were like that, right?\n\n911\n00:33:29.280 --> 00:33:30.680\nLike Tom did punch cart computing.\n\n912\n00:33:30.680 --> 00:33:32.040\nWhy did my computer not?\n\n913\n00:33:32.040 --> 00:33:33.040\nMy code not run.\n\n914\n00:33:33.040 --> 00:33:34.640\nWell, it jammed, you know, right?\n\n915\n00:33:34.640 --> 00:33:36.560\nLike just like all these crazy mess.\n\n916\n00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:40.520\nSo Tom saw the arc and computers and, traditionally, are more scalably program\n\n917\n00:33:40.520 --> 00:33:41.920\nmable, but like boy,\n\n918\n00:33:41.920 --> 00:33:43.560\nthey were messy back when he was there.\n\n919\n00:33:43.560 --> 00:33:46.040\nAnd so he had a little more like ability to tolerate it.\n\n920\n00:33:46.040 --> 00:33:49.320\nBut yeah, that's the reason I'm not worried about tech companies coming in.\n\n921\n00:33:49.320 --> 00:33:52.560\nOur issues never been like really someone new trying to take it.\n\n922\n00:33:52.560 --> 00:34:01.600\nIt's been convincing the market to shift to our way of doing this kind of work.\n\n923\n00:34:01.600 --> 00:34:05.470\nYou know, because you listen to this podcast, there's one thing I know about\n\n924\n00:34:05.470 --> 00:34:06.360\nyou for sure.\n\n925\n00:34:06.360 --> 00:34:09.080\nYou're someone who wants to improve as a leader.\n\n926\n00:34:09.080 --> 00:34:12.680\nAnd I'll tell you, if you want to take what you're doing to the next level,\n\n927\n00:34:12.680 --> 00:34:13.200\nsign up for\n\n928\n00:34:13.200 --> 00:34:17.450\nmy weekly leadership plan where each and every week I'll send you an email that\n\n929\n00:34:17.450 --> 00:34:18.120\nwill help\n\n930\n00:34:18.120 --> 00:34:21.280\nyou build confidence as a leader.\n\n931\n00:34:21.280 --> 00:34:26.760\nJust head over to howleaderslead.com/plan to sign up for free.\n\n932\n00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:29.560\nThat's howleaderslead.com/plan.\n\n933\n00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:36.360\nWe mentioned that powerful word, \"win.\"\n\n934\n00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:37.360\n\"Winds is going to happen.\"\n\n935\n00:34:37.360 --> 00:34:40.120\n\"Winds the electric car going to really take hold.\"\n\n936\n00:34:40.120 --> 00:34:45.470\nAnd you come out, your company goes public, your market cap goes up to $23, $24\n\n937\n00:34:45.470 --> 00:34:46.280\nbillion.\n\n938\n00:34:46.280 --> 00:34:51.060\nAnd now with what's happened, I mean, every growth company in the world, every\n\n939\n00:34:51.060 --> 00:34:51.960\ntech company\n\n940\n00:34:51.960 --> 00:34:57.240\nin the world's been under pressure, your market cap goes down to four.\n\n941\n00:34:57.240 --> 00:34:59.960\nYou've got all these people that you brought into the company.\n\n942\n00:34:59.960 --> 00:35:04.410\nHow do you keep people fired up when they see the stock taking the tank like\n\n943\n00:35:04.410 --> 00:35:05.040\nthat?\n\n944\n00:35:05.040 --> 00:35:07.080\nHow do you lead in that kind of situation?\n\n945\n00:35:07.080 --> 00:35:08.600\nYou brought up Buffet a couple times.\n\n946\n00:35:08.600 --> 00:35:13.040\nHe has a really nice little answer to a question on this topic where he talks\n\n947\n00:35:13.040 --> 00:35:13.760\nabout buying\n\n948\n00:35:13.760 --> 00:35:14.760\na farm.\n\n949\n00:35:14.760 --> 00:35:16.240\nHe's like, \"You buy a farm.\"\n\n950\n00:35:16.240 --> 00:35:19.870\nImagine you bought a farm and you understand the topology of the land and how\n\n951\n00:35:19.870 --> 00:35:20.480\nmuch corn\n\n952\n00:35:20.480 --> 00:35:22.640\nit makes and so on.\n\n953\n00:35:22.640 --> 00:35:24.440\nAnd you're going to run at your great farmer.\n\n954\n00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:25.840\nAnd there's a neighbor for this farm.\n\n955\n00:35:25.840 --> 00:35:27.720\nHis farm is exactly the same as yours, right?\n\n956\n00:35:27.720 --> 00:35:30.080\nSame topology, same output, blah, blah.\n\n957\n00:35:30.080 --> 00:35:33.480\nThis neighbor, he's like, \"That is one crazy quirk where every morning he calls\n\n958\n00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:34.160\nyou up.\"\n\n959\n00:35:34.160 --> 00:35:36.400\nAnd he's like, \"He offers to buy your farm.\"\n\n960\n00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:37.480\nAnd he gives you a price.\n\n961\n00:35:37.480 --> 00:35:40.800\nAnd he offers to sell you his farm and he gives you a price for that.\n\n962\n00:35:40.800 --> 00:35:43.240\nThis guy, the other one, he's a normal farmer, but he just does this one thing\n\n963\n00:35:43.240 --> 00:35:45.040\nevery day.\n\n964\n00:35:45.040 --> 00:35:48.280\nAnd Buffet's like, \"This is a great neighbor.\n\n965\n00:35:48.280 --> 00:35:50.240\nIf you ever needed to sell your farm, you could do it.\n\n966\n00:35:50.240 --> 00:35:52.860\nIf you wanted to expand, you could buy his, you would love to have this\n\n967\n00:35:52.860 --> 00:35:53.400\nneighbor.\n\n968\n00:35:53.400 --> 00:35:56.480\nThere's one thing you cannot do.\n\n969\n00:35:56.480 --> 00:36:00.360\nWhat he is telling you, influence how you run your farm.\"\n\n970\n00:36:00.360 --> 00:36:04.470\nIn other words, his little call there has changed nothing about the topology of\n\n971\n00:36:04.470 --> 00:36:04.800\nyour\n\n972\n00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:07.440\nfarm or the best way to get the corn to make and all that stuff, right?\n\n973\n00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:08.880\nLike, that is not easy.\n\n974\n00:36:08.880 --> 00:36:11.960\nSo I think that's number one is for people to understand the intrinsic value of\n\n975\n00:36:11.960 --> 00:36:12.560\nthe company\n\n976\n00:36:12.560 --> 00:36:16.340\nin our case comes from the compounding technology improvement and getting more\n\n977\n00:36:16.340 --> 00:36:17.080\ncustomers.\n\n978\n00:36:17.080 --> 00:36:21.200\nAnd the only reason that strategically the share price matters if we have the\n\n979\n00:36:21.200 --> 00:36:21.920\ntap capital\n\n980\n00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:22.920\nmarkets.\n\n981\n00:36:22.920 --> 00:36:26.240\nAnd all the good thing I have going for me is I just raised $1.5 billion, David\n\n982\n00:36:26.240 --> 00:36:26.520\n.\n\n983\n00:36:26.520 --> 00:36:28.040\nSo I don't need to have capital markets.\n\n984\n00:36:28.040 --> 00:36:31.950\nSo from a strategic standpoint, if you're just being a purist about it and how\n\n985\n00:36:31.950 --> 00:36:32.440\nsomeone\n\n986\n00:36:32.440 --> 00:36:35.320\nlike a Bezos or a Buffet, if you want to build a long-term, last company, you\n\n987\n00:36:35.320 --> 00:36:35.840\nfocus on the\n\n988\n00:36:35.840 --> 00:36:38.520\nintrinsic value and you just make sure you're not going to run out of money\n\n989\n00:36:38.520 --> 00:36:39.080\nwhen it's a\n\n990\n00:36:39.080 --> 00:36:40.680\nbad time to need it.\n\n991\n00:36:40.680 --> 00:36:45.280\nNumber two, you foster a culture of ownership in the company.\n\n992\n00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:47.200\nAnd I think this is particularly important.\n\n993\n00:36:47.200 --> 00:36:49.920\nWe have a good amount of employee equity ownership at Ginko.\n\n994\n00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:51.440\nI want to grow that number.\n\n995\n00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:55.760\nI want people to feel that they capture the value of the work they put out.\n\n996\n00:36:55.760 --> 00:37:01.060\nAnd to understand that, they need to understand also that that is set over time\n\n997\n00:37:01.060 --> 00:37:01.920\nbasically.\n\n998\n00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:05.890\nLike any other Ben Graham quote, near term, the markets of voting machine, long\n\n999\n00:37:05.890 --> 00:37:06.400\n-term,\n\n1000\n00:37:06.400 --> 00:37:07.680\nit's a weighing machine.\n\n1001\n00:37:07.680 --> 00:37:08.680\nWhat should everybody do?\n\n1002\n00:37:08.680 --> 00:37:12.200\nBuild the company and overtime, it'll work out.\n\n1003\n00:37:12.200 --> 00:37:14.760\nThere's no other magic to it than that.\n\n1004\n00:37:14.760 --> 00:37:16.440\nBut I don't want to get people in an attitude.\n\n1005\n00:37:16.440 --> 00:37:21.160\nThe thing to be careful of is to say, oh, equity's not worth anything.\n\n1006\n00:37:21.160 --> 00:37:22.560\nYou know, like, oh, it's volatile.\n\n1007\n00:37:22.560 --> 00:37:23.560\nIt's crazy.\n\n1008\n00:37:23.560 --> 00:37:26.080\nIt's all involved on crazy on a short time scale.\n\n1009\n00:37:26.080 --> 00:37:31.120\nOn a long time scale, it reflects the actual work you do, which by the way,\n\n1010\n00:37:31.120 --> 00:37:31.960\nsalary does\n\n1011\n00:37:31.960 --> 00:37:32.960\nnot.\n\n1012\n00:37:32.960 --> 00:37:36.800\nOkay, your salary at a company is like the market clearing price for your\n\n1013\n00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:37.600\nservices,\n\n1014\n00:37:37.600 --> 00:37:41.800\nas set by the Radford survey of companies your size and your position engineer\n\n1015\n00:37:41.800 --> 00:37:42.120\nnumber\n\n1016\n00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:43.280\nseven, you know, right?\n\n1017\n00:37:43.280 --> 00:37:46.240\nIt's your replacement cost, which, oh, that's interesting.\n\n1018\n00:37:46.240 --> 00:37:47.880\nIt applies, you're basically a cog.\n\n1019\n00:37:47.880 --> 00:37:52.880\nBut the equity you hold in the company is the product of your work overtime.\n\n1020\n00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:56.200\nWell, that's how you want people who work at your company thinking.\n\n1021\n00:37:56.200 --> 00:37:59.980\nWhat you want people to focus on is that they are getting the value of the work\n\n1022\n00:37:59.980 --> 00:38:00.520\nthey put\n\n1023\n00:38:00.520 --> 00:38:01.520\nin.\n\n1024\n00:38:01.520 --> 00:38:03.930\nLike, I would like Ginkgo to be owned like more than 10% by employees into the\n\n1025\n00:38:03.930 --> 00:38:04.360\nfuture.\n\n1026\n00:38:04.360 --> 00:38:05.360\nImagine Amazon.\n\n1027\n00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:07.960\nThat'd be like, if you'd be able to a trillion dollar company, it's a hundred\n\n1028\n00:38:07.960 --> 00:38:08.600\nbillion dollars\n\n1029\n00:38:08.600 --> 00:38:09.680\nof value for people.\n\n1030\n00:38:09.680 --> 00:38:11.360\nThey deserve it, right?\n\n1031\n00:38:11.360 --> 00:38:12.720\nLike they built the company, right?\n\n1032\n00:38:12.720 --> 00:38:16.380\nAnd so you want to have like a worker culture that ultimately does that and\n\n1033\n00:38:16.380 --> 00:38:17.040\ngets people\n\n1034\n00:38:17.040 --> 00:38:18.040\nthere.\n\n1035\n00:38:18.040 --> 00:38:20.970\nAnd that's a big, in my view, how you kind of get people over like their head\n\n1036\n00:38:20.970 --> 00:38:21.440\nspinning\n\n1037\n00:38:21.440 --> 00:38:23.600\non stock price volatility in the short term.\n\n1038\n00:38:23.600 --> 00:38:26.750\nAnd you get a more valuable company for investors who are holding it for the\n\n1039\n00:38:26.750 --> 00:38:27.560\nright reasons for\n\n1040\n00:38:27.560 --> 00:38:28.560\nthe long term.\n\n1041\n00:38:28.560 --> 00:38:29.560\nAnd Ginkgo's always been clear about that.\n\n1042\n00:38:29.560 --> 00:38:30.560\nWe're a long term company.\n\n1043\n00:38:30.560 --> 00:38:33.000\nYou're not going to see me play for a quarter.\n\n1044\n00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:35.880\nBy the way, you and I have something in common.\n\n1045\n00:38:35.880 --> 00:38:40.220\nI think we both were CEOs of companies with two of the best ticker symbols in\n\n1046\n00:38:40.220 --> 00:38:40.960\nthe history\n\n1047\n00:38:40.960 --> 00:38:42.440\nof the world.\n\n1048\n00:38:42.440 --> 00:38:45.800\nMine was Yum, you know, which was great.\n\n1049\n00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:49.760\nAnd I think another great one was Southwest Airlines when they had love, LUV,\n\n1050\n00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:50.320\nwhen they\n\n1051\n00:38:50.320 --> 00:38:51.960\nwere spreading love all over Texas.\n\n1052\n00:38:51.960 --> 00:38:53.240\nThis was years ago.\n\n1053\n00:38:53.240 --> 00:38:54.480\nAnd yours is DNA.\n\n1054\n00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:57.040\nYou know, how did you get the DNA ticker symbol?\n\n1055\n00:38:57.040 --> 00:38:58.040\nYeah, yeah.\n\n1056\n00:38:58.040 --> 00:38:59.040\nOkay.\n\n1057\n00:38:59.040 --> 00:39:01.850\nSo what happened was Genentech had it because remember Genentech invented bi\n\n1058\n00:39:01.850 --> 00:39:02.520\notechnology,\n\n1059\n00:39:02.520 --> 00:39:03.520\nbasically, right?\n\n1060\n00:39:03.520 --> 00:39:06.320\nLike Herbert Boyer, UCSF got no surprise, right?\n\n1061\n00:39:06.320 --> 00:39:09.000\nMoving one gene to another founder of the company.\n\n1062\n00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:13.600\nAnd so of course, you know, they realized the right thing they get is DNA.\n\n1063\n00:39:13.600 --> 00:39:16.880\nAnd so they got bought by Roche.\n\n1064\n00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:20.520\nAnd so when you get bought, the ticker goes back to the stock exchange.\n\n1065\n00:39:20.520 --> 00:39:24.890\nAnd Nizie and Nasuk each get a short list that they're allowed to keep for\n\n1066\n00:39:24.890 --> 00:39:26.120\nthemselves.\n\n1067\n00:39:26.120 --> 00:39:27.120\nOkay.\n\n1068\n00:39:27.120 --> 00:39:28.120\nAnd Nizie had this.\n\n1069\n00:39:28.120 --> 00:39:30.760\nAnd so, you know, they're always trying to eat get you to list with them.\n\n1070\n00:39:30.760 --> 00:39:33.200\nAnd we were like, oh, we want DNA.\n\n1071\n00:39:33.200 --> 00:39:35.920\nThat's a hallowed ticker in biotech world.\n\n1072\n00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:36.920\nRight.\n\n1073\n00:39:36.920 --> 00:39:39.840\nAnd remember, Genghos always been like a little bit outsiders, right?\n\n1074\n00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:42.000\nLike we're the engineers coming to the biologists.\n\n1075\n00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:44.080\nThey're people that work on hamburgers.\n\n1076\n00:39:44.080 --> 00:39:45.080\nAnd by the way, we do work in pharma.\n\n1077\n00:39:45.080 --> 00:39:49.400\nI did a deal with biogen and, you know, a V gene therapy work without devron on\n\n1078\n00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:50.040\nvaccinee\n\n1079\n00:39:50.040 --> 00:39:52.600\nof capping enzyme, ingredient for mRNA vaccines.\n\n1080\n00:39:52.600 --> 00:39:56.320\nLike we do stuff in pharma, but we're not like your usual drug discovery\n\n1081\n00:39:56.320 --> 00:39:57.040\ncompany.\n\n1082\n00:39:57.040 --> 00:39:59.680\nAnd so like I want to do right by the ticker, you know, right?\n\n1083\n00:39:59.680 --> 00:40:02.760\nLike we're sort of like, yeah, we know, but like we are like Genentech.\n\n1084\n00:40:02.760 --> 00:40:05.540\nLike those guys were like when you look at the beginning of Genentech just a\n\n1085\n00:40:05.540 --> 00:40:05.920\nnerd for\n\n1086\n00:40:05.920 --> 00:40:10.320\none minute, you know, they work on human insulin as we talked about.\n\n1087\n00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:11.320\nIndigo die.\n\n1088\n00:40:11.320 --> 00:40:13.200\nLike, you know, they were going like for blue jeans.\n\n1089\n00:40:13.200 --> 00:40:14.440\nThey're working on plants.\n\n1090\n00:40:14.440 --> 00:40:16.480\nThey're working in enzymes for laundry detergent.\n\n1091\n00:40:16.480 --> 00:40:18.920\nSo like there's a company that basically what happened was when insulin hit,\n\n1092\n00:40:18.920 --> 00:40:19.440\nthey sold\n\n1093\n00:40:19.440 --> 00:40:20.440\neverything off.\n\n1094\n00:40:20.440 --> 00:40:22.480\nThe enzymes business unit got sold to Corning.\n\n1095\n00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:26.840\nIt became Gen N Core, which then was a good size enzyme company, right?\n\n1096\n00:40:26.840 --> 00:40:29.440\nAnd and ultimately sold to DePont and then to IFF.\n\n1097\n00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:31.880\nLike Genentech tried to do it all.\n\n1098\n00:40:31.880 --> 00:40:35.320\nThey realized what we realized DNA is code and it should apply to everything.\n\n1099\n00:40:35.320 --> 00:40:37.680\nWhat happened was they were not platform business model.\n\n1100\n00:40:37.680 --> 00:40:40.760\nThey were product and their big product that hit first was insulin.\n\n1101\n00:40:40.760 --> 00:40:44.930\nAnd so they became a pharma company and they gave up on the platform dream of\n\n1102\n00:40:44.930 --> 00:40:47.320\ngenetic engineering.\n\n1103\n00:40:47.320 --> 00:40:48.560\nWe're not going to do that.\n\n1104\n00:40:48.560 --> 00:40:51.430\nWe'll either burn to the ground or we'll build the platform that's like the,\n\n1105\n00:40:51.430 --> 00:40:52.000\nyou know, the\n\n1106\n00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:55.160\nfirst OS type thing for programming DNA.\n\n1107\n00:40:55.160 --> 00:40:56.480\nAnd so we deserve the ticker.\n\n1108\n00:40:56.480 --> 00:40:57.840\nYou deserve DNA.\n\n1109\n00:40:57.840 --> 00:40:58.840\nYou deserve that.\n\n1110\n00:40:58.840 --> 00:40:59.840\nWell, you have it.\n\n1111\n00:40:59.840 --> 00:41:01.320\nSo you got to deserve it.\n\n1112\n00:41:01.320 --> 00:41:02.680\nNobody could take it away from you.\n\n1113\n00:41:02.680 --> 00:41:03.680\nYo.\n\n1114\n00:41:03.680 --> 00:41:04.680\nSo this has been so much fun.\n\n1115\n00:41:04.680 --> 00:41:08.910\nJase, I want to ask you, I do a lightning round of Q and A. What's the one word\n\n1116\n00:41:08.910 --> 00:41:09.400\nthat best\n\n1117\n00:41:09.400 --> 00:41:10.400\ndescribes you?\n\n1118\n00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:11.400\nPassionate.\n\n1119\n00:41:11.400 --> 00:41:15.800\nIf you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why?\n\n1120\n00:41:15.800 --> 00:41:19.710\nI was one of called Barbara McClintock who discovered transposons and she got\n\n1121\n00:41:19.710 --> 00:41:20.280\nthe Nobel\n\n1122\n00:41:20.280 --> 00:41:21.680\nPrize and she got it.\n\n1123\n00:41:21.680 --> 00:41:25.200\nShe learned about transposons because she could talk to corn.\n\n1124\n00:41:25.200 --> 00:41:27.520\nShe was like a true biology mystic.\n\n1125\n00:41:27.520 --> 00:41:31.370\nAnd I don't know how her brain worked and I would love to learn how she thought\n\n1126\n00:41:31.370 --> 00:41:31.760\nthat\n\n1127\n00:41:31.760 --> 00:41:32.760\nway.\n\n1128\n00:41:32.760 --> 00:41:33.760\nGreat.\n\n1129\n00:41:33.760 --> 00:41:36.200\nWho's the smartest person you've ever been around and why?\n\n1130\n00:41:36.200 --> 00:41:37.200\nTom Knight.\n\n1131\n00:41:37.200 --> 00:41:43.140\nWho the heck has seminal contributions in things ranging from early debuggers\n\n1132\n00:41:43.140 --> 00:41:43.800\nfor main\n\n1133\n00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:48.260\nframes to semiconductors to bitmap displays and then invents the academic\n\n1134\n00:41:48.260 --> 00:41:49.200\ndiscipline of\n\n1135\n00:41:49.200 --> 00:41:53.080\nsynthetic biology like the range is insane.\n\n1136\n00:41:53.080 --> 00:41:55.160\nWhat's your biggest pet peeve?\n\n1137\n00:41:55.160 --> 00:41:58.660\nPeople thinking too much about themselves, I think it's even better for\n\n1138\n00:41:58.660 --> 00:41:59.920\nyourself to pursue\n\n1139\n00:41:59.920 --> 00:42:02.200\na higher meaning or some bigger cause.\n\n1140\n00:42:02.200 --> 00:42:05.320\nAnd so if you just overly focus on yourself, it bothers me.\n\n1141\n00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:07.720\nThat's something few people would know about you.\n\n1142\n00:42:07.720 --> 00:42:12.470\nI was on the junior pro tour playing Magic the Gathering when I was in high\n\n1143\n00:42:12.470 --> 00:42:13.240\nschool.\n\n1144\n00:42:13.240 --> 00:42:17.840\nI was a very good card player.\n\n1145\n00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:19.480\nCan you go to Las Vegas?\n\n1146\n00:42:19.480 --> 00:42:23.440\nThey did actually at one point at the peak of that card game.\n\n1147\n00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:24.440\nIt was on ESPN.\n\n1148\n00:42:24.440 --> 00:42:29.120\nIt was like the best thing ever for all of us nerds.\n\n1149\n00:42:29.120 --> 00:42:31.600\nWho do you go to for inspiration?\n\n1150\n00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:33.760\nMy old advisor at MIT, Dr. Randy.\n\n1151\n00:42:33.760 --> 00:42:36.720\nHe thinks big about biology.\n\n1152\n00:42:36.720 --> 00:42:39.630\nYou have to be resilient to build a company for scratch, which you're doing\n\n1153\n00:42:39.630 --> 00:42:40.080\nwith your\n\n1154\n00:42:40.080 --> 00:42:41.080\nfounders.\n\n1155\n00:42:41.080 --> 00:42:43.440\nDo you have any rituals that keep you going?\n\n1156\n00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:45.000\nI think I would say about starting a company.\n\n1157\n00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:46.990\nSometimes you'll hear people tell advice like don't do business with your\n\n1158\n00:42:46.990 --> 00:42:47.400\nfriends.\n\n1159\n00:42:47.400 --> 00:42:50.320\nIf you're going to start a company, you start a company with your friends.\n\n1160\n00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:54.140\nThe ritual we've had to have resilience is like being human beings who care\n\n1161\n00:42:54.140 --> 00:42:54.560\nabout each\n\n1162\n00:42:54.560 --> 00:42:55.560\nother.\n\n1163\n00:42:55.560 --> 00:42:58.400\nMy pandemic happened in 2020.\n\n1164\n00:42:58.400 --> 00:43:00.480\nMy self and very rich, which my co-founders are married.\n\n1165\n00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:01.480\nWe all have small kids.\n\n1166\n00:43:01.480 --> 00:43:04.370\nWe literally moved in together with another family we were friends with and\n\n1167\n00:43:04.370 --> 00:43:05.040\nlived together\n\n1168\n00:43:05.040 --> 00:43:06.040\nfor the summer.\n\n1169\n00:43:06.040 --> 00:43:07.680\nWe were all losing our minds.\n\n1170\n00:43:07.680 --> 00:43:10.240\nIt was both work stressful and life stressful.\n\n1171\n00:43:10.240 --> 00:43:14.160\nI could lean on them because they're co-founders of my company, but because we\n\n1172\n00:43:14.160 --> 00:43:14.720\ncare about each\n\n1173\n00:43:14.720 --> 00:43:15.720\nother.\n\n1174\n00:43:15.720 --> 00:43:20.800\nWhat would be the single most important advice you'd give aspiring leaders?\n\n1175\n00:43:20.800 --> 00:43:22.040\nI'd be a servant leader.\n\n1176\n00:43:22.040 --> 00:43:26.140\nUltimately, the actual work of an organization is the output of the collective\n\n1177\n00:43:26.140 --> 00:43:26.760\nactions of\n\n1178\n00:43:26.760 --> 00:43:27.760\nthe people.\n\n1179\n00:43:27.760 --> 00:43:30.440\nYou should respect their contribution.\n\n1180\n00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:31.720\nThey're not cogs.\n\n1181\n00:43:31.720 --> 00:43:34.320\nYou should respect it in reality as people.\n\n1182\n00:43:34.320 --> 00:43:38.880\nThen you should tie their value in the organization and their control over the\n\n1183\n00:43:38.880 --> 00:43:39.920\norganization to\n\n1184\n00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:40.920\nthat.\n\n1185\n00:43:40.920 --> 00:43:43.080\nHow do you do that, Jason?\n\n1186\n00:43:43.080 --> 00:43:45.160\nEverybody says, \"Servant leader.\"\n\n1187\n00:43:45.160 --> 00:43:48.400\nIt can be a bunch of BS for a lot of guys.\n\n1188\n00:43:48.400 --> 00:43:50.880\nI want to be a servant leader.\n\n1189\n00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:55.490\nWhat are you doing within your culture that really reflects that that's your\n\n1190\n00:43:55.490 --> 00:43:56.280\nmindset?\n\n1191\n00:43:56.280 --> 00:43:58.080\nWe've done a thing again, Go where we've given.\n\n1192\n00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:01.780\nWe have a Class B share, it's a 10x voting share.\n\n1193\n00:44:01.780 --> 00:44:06.480\nThis is something that, by the way, got pioneered by Sergey and Larry.\n\n1194\n00:44:06.480 --> 00:44:07.480\nZuckerberg has these.\n\n1195\n00:44:07.480 --> 00:44:12.280\nIt's been a tool for founders to maintain control of the business.\n\n1196\n00:44:12.280 --> 00:44:15.090\nYou can't acquire Facebook without Mark Zuckerberg's approval because he has\n\n1197\n00:44:15.090 --> 00:44:15.920\nthe majority voting\n\n1198\n00:44:15.920 --> 00:44:18.320\nshares because of his super voting shares.\n\n1199\n00:44:18.320 --> 00:44:19.520\nWe did that for the Ginkgo founders.\n\n1200\n00:44:19.520 --> 00:44:23.560\nWe did it also for all the employees now and in the future, actually.\n\n1201\n00:44:23.560 --> 00:44:26.440\nWe met new B shares and those Go to employees.\n\n1202\n00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:29.640\nThe employees at Ginkgo have 10x voting.\n\n1203\n00:44:29.640 --> 00:44:33.490\nThat is how you empower people because the way a corporation works is it works\n\n1204\n00:44:33.490 --> 00:44:34.120\nin service\n\n1205\n00:44:34.120 --> 00:44:35.960\nof the shareholders.\n\n1206\n00:44:35.960 --> 00:44:40.800\nGinkgo, the largest shareholder block, is the workers.\n\n1207\n00:44:40.800 --> 00:44:44.780\nFrom my standpoint, this is also in the great overwhelming as founder control\n\n1208\n00:44:44.780 --> 00:44:45.360\ncompanies\n\n1209\n00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:48.520\nhave demonstrated from Facebook to Google and Amazon.\n\n1210\n00:44:48.520 --> 00:44:52.140\nIt is also how you vest power in the hands of folks and end up with servant\n\n1211\n00:44:52.140 --> 00:44:52.880\nleadership\n\n1212\n00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:54.600\nbecause they're serving the shareholders.\n\n1213\n00:44:54.600 --> 00:44:59.330\nJason, you've got an unbelievable company, unbelievable challenge on your hand\n\n1214\n00:44:59.330 --> 00:44:59.680\nand a\n\n1215\n00:44:59.680 --> 00:45:00.680\ngreat future.\n\n1216\n00:45:00.680 --> 00:45:01.680\nLast question.\n\n1217\n00:45:01.680 --> 00:45:03.680\nWhat's your market cap in 2050?\n\n1218\n00:45:03.680 --> 00:45:07.760\nI don't know what I'm allowed to say on stuff like that, David.\n\n1219\n00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:13.110\nI'm going to say nothing, but if we manage to make biology easier to program as\n\n1220\n00:45:13.110 --> 00:45:13.960\ncomputers\n\n1221\n00:45:13.960 --> 00:45:17.100\nand we are the horizontal platform for it, I think people can work it out on\n\n1222\n00:45:17.100 --> 00:45:17.760\ntheir own.\n\n1223\n00:45:17.760 --> 00:45:18.760\nThank you very much.\n\n1224\n00:45:18.760 --> 00:45:19.760\nI appreciate it.\n\n1225\n00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:20.440\nYeah, thanks, David.\n\n1226\n00:45:20.440 --> 00:45:31.800\nIt wasn't that a fascinating conversation.\n\n1227\n00:45:31.800 --> 00:45:35.640\nJason spoke with such passion and conviction and clarity.\n\n1228\n00:45:35.640 --> 00:45:39.200\nYou can tell that he's done a lot of work to be able to communicate what he\n\n1229\n00:45:39.200 --> 00:45:39.680\ndoes in\n\n1230\n00:45:39.680 --> 00:45:41.160\na simple way.\n\n1231\n00:45:41.160 --> 00:45:43.880\nAnd I got to tell you, I'm impressed.\n\n1232\n00:45:43.880 --> 00:45:45.200\nAll right.\n\n1233\n00:45:45.200 --> 00:45:49.270\nSo this week, here's something you can do to apply what you've learned in this\n\n1234\n00:45:49.270 --> 00:45:50.400\nepisode.\n\n1235\n00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:54.770\nThe next time you're at a party and someone asked you what you do, I want you\n\n1236\n00:45:54.770 --> 00:45:55.400\nto watch\n\n1237\n00:45:55.400 --> 00:45:59.920\nthe person's eyes that you're talking to and see if they glaze over.\n\n1238\n00:45:59.920 --> 00:46:00.920\nI'm serious.\n\n1239\n00:46:00.920 --> 00:46:03.320\nThat's what I want you to focus on.\n\n1240\n00:46:03.320 --> 00:46:04.760\nAnd here's why.\n\n1241\n00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:08.450\nIf you can tell they're not tracking with you, you need to go back to the\n\n1242\n00:46:08.450 --> 00:46:09.320\ndrawing board\n\n1243\n00:46:09.320 --> 00:46:15.310\nand work to simplify how you talk about your business, how you explain your job\n\n1244\n00:46:15.310 --> 00:46:15.560\n.\n\n1245\n00:46:15.560 --> 00:46:20.400\nBecause if you talk about what you do in a simple way, I guarantee you, you'll\n\n1246\n00:46:20.400 --> 00:46:20.920\nbe on\n\n1247\n00:46:20.920 --> 00:46:23.840\nyour way to be an unstoppable.\n\n1248\n00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:26.280\nSo do you want to know how leaders lead?\n\n1249\n00:46:26.280 --> 00:46:31.000\nWhat we learned today is that great leaders simplify the complex.\n\n1250\n00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:35.130\nComing up next on how leaders lead is Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major\n\n1251\n00:46:35.130 --> 00:46:36.640\nLeague Baseball.\n\n1252\n00:46:36.640 --> 00:46:42.480\nYou have an obligation to go in a room and exchange views and try in good faith\n\n1253\n00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:43.400\nto find\n\n1254\n00:46:43.400 --> 00:46:44.400\ncommon ground.\n\n1255\n00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:50.450\nI really do believe that that exchange of views in the room is crucial to\n\n1256\n00:46:50.450 --> 00:46:52.280\nmoving people towards\n\n1257\n00:46:52.280 --> 00:46:56.280\nthe center, towards an agreement in a robust way.\n\n1258\n00:46:56.280 --> 00:47:00.960\nSo be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation.\n\n1259\n00:47:00.960 --> 00:47:04.830\nThanks again for tuning in to another episode of How leaders lead, where every\n\n1260\n00:47:04.830 --> 00:47:05.640\nThursday you\n\n1261\n00:47:05.640 --> 00:47:09.960\nget to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world.\n\n1262\n00:47:09.960 --> 00:47:14.010\nI make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can\n\n1263\n00:47:14.010 --> 00:47:14.840\napply to your\n\n1264\n00:47:14.840 --> 00:47:18.440\nbusiness so that you will become the best leader you can be.\n\n1265\n00:47:18.440 --> 00:47:28.440\n[BLANK_AUDIO]\n\n1266\n00:47:28.440 --> 00:47:38.440\n[BLANK_AUDIO]","

David Novak 0:03

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen. And while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Jason Kelly, the co founder and CEO of gingko, Bioworks, the largest designer of synthetic DNA in the world. Think back to the last time someone asked you what you did for a living? A simple question is this. It could be really hard the answer. The reason is, in the back of your mind, you're probably think, Where do I even start, you can imagine if you are running a synthetic biology company, I mean, holy cow, but running any business is complex. And until you learn to simplify all the complexity, and learn to talk about what you do in a simple way, you'll be throttling the kind of impact that you could be making as a leader. And this is something that Jason Kelly has mastered, I mean, tell me a more complex business to have to explain than synthetic biology. And yet, Jason has learned to simplify the complex. I'm no bioengineering buff. But when I hear Jason talk about ginkgo, and what's possible with the technology, they're pioneering, and scaling, he has me leaning in. So whether you're leading a billion dollar brand, or a small business, how you communicate as a leader matters, the great leaders I know have learned to simplify the complex. So let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with my friend, and soon to be yours, Jason Kelly.

I have to tell you, I have really had a lot of fun learning about you, and gingko getting ready for this conversation. And I've got to tell you, you got one heck of a challenge to simplify for us non scientific types, what your business is all about. Tell us about your business in the most simple terms you can.

Jason Kelly 2:14

Sure. So inside of every cell out there in nature is digital code in the form of DNA, right. So there's a T C's and G's, not zeros and ones like what's inside your computer. But you can actually read this code with DNA sequencing, like you might have heard of like the Human Genome Project, right, that whole thing that was you basically grind the cell up, you put it in a machine and on your computer screen, a TCG GG starts coming up, that's the code inside. That's the reading of the code. Well, the other side of that coin is we have technology to write DNA code. So I opposite I type on my computer ATCG GG, I have print. And here in the labs, we have about 200,000 square feet of automated labs here in Boston, that piece of DNA gets printed, almost like HP inkjet kind of printing, you make the DNA molecule, and then you insert that DNA into a cell. It reads the code, just kind of like if you installed a new app on your phone, and it does something new. And this allows us to have applications and things like animal free meat and new ways to do agriculture and new medicines. We could talk about all those but the core idea is inside of cells is digital code in the form of DNA that you can read and write. And ginkgo today, as the largest writer of that type of DNA code in the world,

David Novak 3:28

that's an amazing place to be. And it's, you know, it's synthetic bioengineering. It's basically a new category for most people. Why do you see it as essential for the present and the future?

Jason Kelly 3:38

Yeah, so I'll give you another computing analogy before we go too nerdy on biology. So what makes computers special, you know, they get better all the time. It's a sort of exponentially improving technology. They have digital code, like I said, which means you install a new program. And suddenly your phone can do something today that it couldn't do yesterday, right? It can order you a car or something. There is a limitation on what computers can do, though. It's only things in the world of bits in the world of information. So if you look at what computers have been disruptive to media, telecom, finance, all your information based industries. Let me tell you what hasn't been disrupted by computers, hamburgers, right? hamburgers were left out of the computer revolution? Well, we'll talk about because synthetic biology is disrupting hamburgers, because a cell runs on code, you install a new code, I swear it does new things when you put that new DNA code in, but it doesn't move information around. It moves atoms, it builds things. And so it's going to be disruptive, not to the information based industries to the physical goods industries, things like food, things like medicine, things like building materials and chemicals and fuels. These are all biotech industries. They just they don't know it yet. That's why synthetic biology is interesting. You gotta believe we can get good at programming these cells which which is a conversation we should definitely have, but if you can, those are the types of industries that you need to pay attention to it?

David Novak 5:01

So how do you go about building a company that really makes this possible in the future? I mean, this is an incredible challenge, it seems like,

Jason Kelly 5:08

well, first off, you have a long view. Okay. So I met my co founders, we started our PhDs together at MIT, I think in like 2002. And I also put the push in 20 years now, actually, first off, you surround yourself with people that are, you know, passionate believers, and in a long term vision, right. And so you know, I'll give you a little background on my co founders. So there's four of us that were in grad school, the fifth founder was a professor at MIT. That's fellow Tom Knight. And Tom gets to like the heart of your question of like, how do you do a big disruptive thing? So Tom, started at MIT on the faculty in the early 1970s. In Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, I have this great old black and white photo of Tom with his master's thesis, which is this refrigerator sized mini computer. Tom, when he program mainframes, he was a computer architect, he had designed that machine. And so what happened was, you know, computer architecture, moved into semiconductors, Tom taught the semiconductor design course for many years at MIT. And then mid 90s Has this insight I mentioned earlier, hey, DNA is code. And I've been programming computer code for 25 years, maybe I can go out and help those biologists out, right. And so begins this journey of what's now called synthetic biology, where Tom basically started like a biology lab in the MIT Computer Science Building, started growing bacteria, scaring all his co workers, you know, who had never seen this stuff, and built a relationship with the biologists. And so you had this meeting of sort of computer scientists who had their lessons biologists who were like, hey, biology is too complicated to think of it like and we kind of banged on each other for five or 10 years at MIT, and kind of got to a point where, hey, some of this could work. And then we started the company in 2008. But you know, that same group, we've all been following Tom's vision for the last 20 years now. And we're believers that, you know, someday it will be as easy to program a cell as it is to program a computer. And that's a 50 year vision. But by having that unified goal, it helps you through all the crappy stuff, that companies 15 people that's running low on money, or this that, you know, like, you're sort of like, well, it's worth a try, right? Because we have this bigger goal we're going forward. That was that's a big part of it is having that shared long term vision. And Tom gave us that you go from

David Novak 7:17

a company, I've been 15 people, how many people do you have now?

Jason Kelly 7:20

I'm about 700. People now.

David Novak 7:22

Yeah, you're the CEO. So you've got to tell people the story, you got to tell Wall Street, their story, you got to bring in new people telling your story. What's the hardest thing to communicate about what you do?

Jason Kelly 7:34

The hardest thing is, it's sort of a new area for people. If you're the latest SAS company, or social network, you have a lot of things to point to in the past and say like, well listen, like snap, right? Like, we have these angles to compete with Facebook, and this is our modes, but you understand how social network makes money, right? I mean, advertising. So that's just what we're gonna do. So there's a proven business model, and you just have to really understand, do these guys have an edge? For ginkgo? We're saying, look, there should be a new industry that doesn't exist. Like if you look at how the computer industry is organized, market specific applications, horizontal infrastructure, operating systems, programming languages, cloud computing, those apply to every application and computing. Right, right? You look at the biotech industry that I'm in, everything is vertical, every pharma company has got its own technology stack and ad companies going big data. So all those investors people are used to seeing is, Hey, Jason, what's your drug that you're making? Tell me about that therapeutic you're making? What's What's that new? Are you making a new seed, you know, right? Are you gonna go compete with Monsanto? Like, like, what product? And I'm like, no, no, no. DNA is code. It's common across all organisms. There should be operating systems. There should be Amazon Web Services, there should be app stores, right? Like, we should have a platform business model. And they're like, What the heck are you talking about? Right, because it's new in that industry. But we've spent the first, you know, 10 years at MIT really thinking through the technology, kind of physics of this industry. And I spent the last 1314 year again, go figuring out the business model side of it. And the lesson was, the models come from tack, it's the right thing, it's just a new thing. And so that far and away is the hardest thing to explain to people is sort of like bringing in those types of App Store. Like we get royalties and economics on the products developed on our platform, you know, we signed up, you know, 10s of new deals every year with all these different customers. It's not like we have one product to explain to you, you know, we just passed 100 In terms of programs on the platform. So anyway, that just to give you a sense of some of the difficulties,

David Novak 9:37

when you think about disrupting the industry. You talked about the hamburger. Give us an example of a product you guys have developed it is really changing the game.

Jason Kelly 9:46

Okay. Yeah. So I like the burger. I think it's a good example actually. And by the reminder, I don't develop these end products. Okay, our customers do so I'll give you an example. So have you ever had and by the way, Impossible Foods, not one of our customers. I'll give you an example from this industry, have you ever had an Impossible Burger? Yes, I am. Alright, so as veggie burger you bite into it, it bleeds. Where are they getting the blood from David? Right. You know, like there's not, there's not a lot of blood in plants, right? And so like, how's this working? And so what impossible did was they found the gene for hemoglobin. Okay, this is like the protein in blood and cows and humans or whatever else that makes blood red. And they take yeasts like think like brewers yeast, like you would use to make beer. They install that DNA code in for hemoglobin, and then you grow it up in a tank and something that looks like a brewery, except instead of beer coming out, haemoglobin comes out, because you just reprogram they used to do that? Well, now you add it back into a burger, and suddenly, it smells right taste, right, it's the impossible Whopper at Burger King, right? That is a disruptive consumer product where the back end is actually synthetic biology. And so we have a company, there's a company on our platform called motif FoodWorks that got founded four years ago, we actually did a project with them to engineer a yeast cell to make a hemoglobin and their business model is supply those types of biotech flavor ingredients to all the big food companies so that you get better plant based products in the future. And similar things for egg proteins, milk proteins, and so on. Can we get these veggie products to actually not taste like cardboard? That's an example of a product I'm excited about in synthetic biology. You're so

David Novak 11:22

passionate about this business, Jason, obviously, what's your personal purpose behind the obvious passion that you have?

Jason Kelly 11:29

Biology is this thing that we all take for granted? Okay, like I give all these talks in Silicon Valley, where I would show this like slide and had all these things on the table, like an apple PC and an iPhone and a camera. And there was this little like, potted plant and on the corner of the desk, and I would be like, hey, what's the most complicated sophisticated device on the table? Right? And the answer is the house plant. And like, if you look at it like an engineer, it's obviously the house plant. You break that leaf, it repairs itself, right? Imagine you cracked your iPhone screen, and the thing just fixed itself over the next two weeks. Like we'd be like, you know, celebrating Tim Cook is a god Right? Like, you plant the seed, you add air, water and sunlight. It manufactures itself. No manufacturing facility, it literally builds itself out of thin air, right? You know, think about that. Okay, and then this will blow your mind. It makes seeds that you plant and it just makes copies of itself. It's self replicating, right. Imagine what that would do to Apple's margins if you just copy Yeah, copying iPhones for free. This is intrinsic to the substrate like basically all biology does that. If we just walked up on that and hadn't existed, we think of it as like some unbelievable alien advanced technology. Right, you know, but Well, he's a houseplant. You're so accustomed to it, that you ignore it. And so for those of us that kind of, we're passionate about biology, we're like, crazy people. We're looking around, like, Why does anyone else notice this? Right? And so when I got I remember when I got into MIT, like flipping through the course catalog, being in my undergrad, looking for the genetic engineering courses, right, because I was like I had read about unknown about. And so even though I don't remember, like, what's I think was probably like Jurassic Park, when I was like, 12, or 13 came out. It's like, I wanted to do it, right. And I had this experience when I was an undergrad at MIT, taking lab classes, I suppose I clearly remember that a whole summer in the lab. And by the way, if you've ever done lab work, David, it is a frustrating experience, okay, like you are like standing on a lab bench, moving clear liquids around mixing things together. It's kind of like an advanced chef sort of thing, except any little mistake in the whole thing falls apart. And so I spent a whole summer trying to move one gene into a bacteria. And I failed, okay, and I remember this, and I was like, Oh, my God, this doesn't work. I thought I could get the program biology and kind of like getting out at the time. I didn't even use that language, but just like engage with it at the DNA level. And I was like, got hopeless. I wasn't until I met Tom and my advisor at the time drew, nd who were like, Hey, listen, we're going to be able to do this. It's just going to take time. And I was like, fine, because like, what else could I do? You know, like, I was like, once we at least these people are trying and they seem smarter than me. So that was a big part of it. And then as we built gingko I've gotten sort of a second purpose around how do you build a lasting company? And what are the ways we should structure it particularly around thinking about how the people who work here kind of own and gain meaning from the place we're building and so that's become a second but that was later Right. Like really the driver out of the gate was Jurassic Park.

David Novak 14:32

I get it you know, you love biology, like I love Barkat, eat and you get started in it. And then you get the chance to build a company that you want to make live long, long time. You know, you go to MIT hook up with these other Brainiacs. You know,

Jason Kelly 14:45

tell us how it had happened. Yeah. So I'd had that sort of like meltdown, right, where I was able to sort of engineer these cells and then I met Drew, my boss, Drew Andy, who's now a professor at Stanford. He and Tom were kind of pitching this concept that At cells were code and you could program them. And so they hosted this meeting called the synthetic biology working group. And it attracted this like, crazy carnival of people. Okay, right. And the reason was serious biologists at the time were like, cells are not computers, guys, like, let's just be clear about this. They are not predictable. They, they're squishy, they're wet, they move around. And yes, you're right, they run on code, I'll give you that. But I won't give you anything else. We were like, not that welcome with that community at the time, because they were like, You guys are oversimplifying it. But we had certain folks, you know, like Pam silver at Harvard, and others who like took pity on us engineers. And we're like, Alright, I'm going to explain to you some of the things here that you're getting wrong. And you're going and you appear to be people who can learn. And so we're going to, like, get there. And please teach me some of the lessons you have from computer science. And so we kind of had this interesting hodgepodge. And everyone was like, good spirited about it. And I met, you know, the other founders, like all we were kind of drawn to that. And we were just a little students sitting there while the professors were kind of fighting it out. And eventually, because we were the kind of first crop of students, we became, you know, kind of leaders in the early days there. That was basically how it happened. It was like moths to a flame based on somebody saying that DNA could actually be engineered.

David Novak 16:21

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jason Kelly in just a moment, have you gotten stuck because you felt so overwhelmed by how complicated Something seemed? When I sat down with Kendra Scott, we talked about her process of striving for simplicity, in these kinds of moments.

Kendra Scott 16:38

So many companies, you'll get a customer service packet, that's like 200 pages, and you give them to a new employee. And you say, Here, here's our customer service and policies read this. Mine is simple. It's a sister rule, you treat every customer like they were your sister or your brother,

David Novak 16:55

go back and listen to my entire conversation with Kendra episode one here on how leaders lead.

Tell us the origin of your business model, you've got a very unique business model, and how did it start out? And what is your business model today?

Jason Kelly 17:15

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that we take a lot of cues from tech industry and platforms, right. And so if you look at how horizontal platforms get commercialized, I'll give you two good examples that have influenced our business. One is cloud computing. So cloud computing, big capital investment in infrastructure that reduces the marginal cost of a service, in this case, that compute cycle. And then you make it available to people on like a fee basis. And they're happy to pay the fee for two reasons. One, it's actually in many cases, like cheaper at your scale, like you don't have the scale to build their big facilities. So if you built like a small server, it would actually be more expensive than their big servers on a per compute basis. So that's number one. It's like cheaper than you running it yourself. Number two, no capital investment for you. Right? You don't have to spend the big upfront money to buy all those servers, you can just go and deploy in the cloud, okay. And there was this big transition, right? If you might remember, you know, in the kind of 2000s, where companies started shifting their it from on prem servers into the cloud. And then you had startup companies that got born cloud native, okay, and I'm like, This is what we got to do in biotech. David, you have no idea what it takes to launch a biotech company. It is crazy town, you go licensed some expensive lab infrastructure in Cambridge, you go buy millions of dollars of equipment, from equipment providers in the life sciences, industry, all these reagents by all these materials, and beakers and yada, yada, hire a whole team of scientists, and that now it's taken a year and you can start working crazy, okay? Whereas with me, I can say, Hey, listen, why don't you just have a variable cost r&d budget and spend on my, what we call our foundry, our robotic lab infrastructure, and we'll do the lab work. And you can just have a line item budget to spend without all that upfront investment, which is particularly good for startups, which are some of our best customers like I that company motif I mentioned, the food industry never had to build a lab. So the way I charge for that part of the business just fees. Yeah, how much do we move the robots? How much do you pay? How much compute cycles does Amazon use? How much do you pay? Alright, so that's one half. The other half, this is where we differ from Amazon. When I work with you to do a project, like let's take that hemoglobin, that was about a two year project for motif. So we engineered that cell to produce that hemoglobin at a cheaper price. They used our facility paid us fees to do the work. It ends when I'm done with the yeast. Now they've got a strain. They're putting it into bigger tanks. They're doing, you know, going to commercial deals and stuff. They stopped needing me because I'm not a server providing their website. I'm a programming tools, environment. And so the business model there is actually different. The most direct analogy comes from Microsoft in the 80s, which I will explain, but the one people are most familiar with is the App Store. Okay, so So Apple similarly is like, Hey, we're gonna host your thing and give you all this distribution and blah, blah, blah, but someone's gonna download the app just once. And so as a result, I need to take a piece of all your business, right, I need that 30% rev share in the App Store, because they're not doing an ongoing thing for you. They're basically a place someone comes to kind of pop off this thing, and then off, they run with it on their phone. So they got to take a piece. So Microsoft, in the 80s, had a programming tools business, you know, they would basically provide tools to people who are writing software. And then if you embedded your software in their app, they charge you like a seat licensing cost. I was like, it was appstore business model in the 80s. Before there was even, you know, it was fascinating. And so that's very much what we provide, we effectively are outsourced developer tools, like you have to use our little robotic labs. But as a result, you got your app written, and we get a percent. And so that's the second half of the business model is once the app is done, I need a royalty milestones or maybe even equity in your company, if you're a smaller company, so that I participate in the long tail of value that you get from that app. Yeah, I

David Novak 21:06

thought that was interesting that you actually get paid, in some cases with equity in the company with the startups that you're dealing with.

Jason Kelly 21:13

So one of the kind of general policies I have with building the business is like, learn from your customers.

David Novak 21:19

That's a novel idea. That's a very novel, I'd

Jason Kelly 21:22

be amazed how many people don't want to do that. So I would talk to these startup companies. And I'm like, Guys, this platform is really useful to you. Like I said earlier, you don't need to build that lab. Okay, you could just use me, I'm like, you actually get more value out of it than like my customers like Roche, or Bayer or Biogen who are like big companies and already have labs, you just can skip the lab. Isn't that great? And they're like, Yeah, Jason, but I've raised $5 million, and like working with you is going to cost me 3 million. So that's not going to happen. And I'm like, Yeah, but you're gonna go spend two on the lab, and then another two, kind of doing some, like half assed work in the lab, and you're not gonna get anything done in time, like, like, you're better off spending that free with me. And they're like, No, it's too bad. I can't, the normal thing to do is hire a bunch of scientists. And so I'm like, Oh, my God, this is killing me. And so what I realized was their cash sensitive. Okay, right, which makes sense, you know, and the scope of work in biotech is not small, right? Like, like, you actually need to do a lot of lab work now, now. And so what we can do is say like, well, you are off selling equity in your company to people, you know, in exchange for their cash, right? Can I work on some structures where I can actually get equity in your company in lieu of cash. And that can really help kind of us be able to engage those companies. And fortunately, with the money we've raised, we have the balance sheet to do this sort of thing. And so it makes it a lot easier to get kind of startups on the platform. So that's an example of kind of how that happens, David, also, if you launch a company on our platform, like we've been doing that we can end up instead of a royalty, we could actually just take a piece of the company up front and waive the royalty and certain startups prefer that they think it's a little bit better for future investors to not see a royalty tale to Ginko. Great. Okay, no problem, you know, we can just take equity in the company. So those are the two ways we ended up holding equity. It has mostly been like us learning from what the smaller companies needed to get on platform.

David Novak 23:12

Definitely thinking outside the dots here, though, there's no question about that. And the power of having this horizontal platform that you're talking about, really allows you to address, every category infinite categories, Which category do you think will ultimately be the biggest

Jason Kelly 23:28

today in biotechnology? It's therapeutics. So Therapeutics is really a kind of a cash cow of the biotech industry about you depends on what you look at Colin about a third or more of therapeutic drugs on the market every year are biotech made drugs, which means that they're coming from an engineered cell. human insulin was the very first one of these so Genentech, which is the company that we actually DNA, our ticker came from Genentech, Genentech was like the originator of all all biotechnology their first product was human insulin. Okay, my dad's a type one diabetic,

David Novak 23:56

my wife's had type one diabetics and seven. Okay, so

Jason Kelly 23:59

there you go. So then you know all about you Mulan, and that whole experience and you know, that technology to be able to make human insulin instead of porcine. Right? Like, that's exactly this, it literally, it's the very first biotech product of taking, cutting and pasting, in that case, the DNA from a human gene for insulin into a bacterial cell, and then growing it in the tank. Now, what's changed since 1978? Well, you know, and when that first got going, we don't need to cut and paste anymore. Again, we just type in the computer, we print whatever gene we want from any gene that's known in the world. Okay, and so that's very enabling. And also things are sort of getting cheaper to do it. Like I said earlier, you know, take the food industry, like animal meat as an example. Gates had a quote, you know, maybe six months ago or something where he was like, there's gonna be eight to 10 Tesla scale companies in climate and Tesla represents this watershed event where you have you know, a trillion dollar at various times right? Mark as today it's volatile, but but like, you know, trillion dollar company, built from scratch why I, well, they have a vision for in a carbon neutral economy, what has to be true? Oh, well, the cars need to be electric. I think that's right. Okay, when that that was the question like, when would the technology come together to make that possible at scale? But you know, it's gone to happen. And when it does, have you seen the size of the auto industry? Like, you know, of course, it's good. So then you can repeat this process, right? Like, let me tell you in a carbon neutral world, we're not growing cows at scale. zero chance, David, it is way too much of global emissions. It's way too inefficient. It's not happening, it's over. And so you just have to bet when, and then that industry beat 100 trillion dollars, you know, right. Like, these are these industries are gigantic. Right, you know, and so who's gonna win it? You know, that's one, building materials. Concrete is a ton of carbon emission. They all have biotech interfaces to them. I see all like, all these kinds of physical goods areas are big ones. So yeah, I think it'll be something like that. I think ultimately, Pharma is a great way to get the technology bootstrapped. But the bigger industries will be outside.

David Novak 26:09

It's interesting, you bring up Elon Musk, because you've been compared to founders like him, because, as you mentioned, you're a salesman, innately, you know, you obviously are smart as hell, okay? You're able to tell compelling stories that can drive your market cap up, before you really have the revenue. Elon Musk did that, you know, people were saying when, but they believe in him. You know, being a storyteller is a powerful asset for a CEO, how have you really developed that skill?

Jason Kelly 26:39

I think you have to be exposed to a lot of people that aren't just like from your little bubble. To be good at storytelling, there is a certain story I can tell to my, you know, PhD friends from MIT that has like every little bit min bop exactly right. And you know, as you know, 18 papers supporting it and all this stuff. And I've got close friends who like rip my head off, if I get one little thing wrong on the on technology, x or y, if I only hang out with those people, I don't actually know how to tell a story that like a wider set of people can understand, right, and I had the benefit that I grew up just around a wide set of people. You know, in Florida, my parents were pharmacists, you know, a lot of close friends or craftspeople. And, you know, I had a range, right, I also got exposed to the MIT crowd to but like, through my life, I've had exposure to a wider set of people, which lets me talk to a wider set of people. That's the thing, I think you have to spend the time and you see what works when you talk to people. And that is how you ultimately get good at storytelling, other than as practice. And the only other thing is, if it's a story, you know, you're going to tell, like, I'm giving a present, like we do our annual meeting or something like that, like I'm giving like, I can talk, practice way more than you think. Right? I will repeat a speech, you know, myself alone. 25 times,

David Novak 27:57

that really surprises me, Jason, because you're so good off the top, you know, you seem like a guy who could just get up on stage and just do it.

Jason Kelly 28:05

I am. That's the point David actually am. But if you want to make a can talk like truly amazing, like, practice the hell out of it. It's sad advice, because it requires work. But like, yeah, don't make me

David Novak 28:17

do stuff that I don't want to do it. You know, Warren Buffett told me once he said that one of the best ways to really build credibility was to talk about things that could go wrong. And the reason why he told me that is that I love my company. And I, you know, these were my babies, and I talked about the brands, and we could do this and this and he said, You'll gain more credibility, if you talk about what could go wrong in your business. You know, it's the concept of sober selling. So what could go wrong in your business? And do you ever talk about it?

Jason Kelly 28:46

Yes, I do, actually a lot. So the interesting balance, right, like, when I talk with like an investor, it's very much so over selling, right? It's sort of like, okay, like, let me explain you how someone can get at us. My view on Django has been like, what plan for success that is going to create a big pool of value? How will you defend it? How is someone going to try to someone will be able to copy you easily. So those are some of the best ways like that's what investors want to hear. They want to know, you've given some thought, you know, to those sorts of things. Okay. So in terms of like, what can go wrong? Well, number one, we got to keep that technology curve going. Right. So this is why the number one priority, like when I'm talking internally at the company, I'm like, let me tell you what breaks this place is if the platform stopped working. And by we stopped working, I mean, stops improving exponentially, like getting better, because hey, it's like it's like semiconductors. If the thing doubles in efficiency every couple of years, like how do you not make money right? Like, I make sure that people understand that is I don't think it's like the biggest weakness like we have a good plan for the next five years. But it is like the most important thing. And then it's keep the thing fed. So if I'm going to be tripling my output, boy, I need a lot more projects every year. And so we have very aggressive targets on the number of new programs. We're going to add. We said we're going to hit three already last year, we met meta beat that, you know, like, like adding new customers on the platform that was always also a flank I was worried about, are we able to do that? can I convince there's all these reasons people excuses not to want to move on the platform? Can I get them on? Right? And so I have my strategies to solve that problem. And this is one of the reasons I tell investors like, Hey, watch these things. Right? Like, how are we doing on the foundry? How are we doing on adding new programs? Right, those are the things I think about, those are the things you should think about. Right? And so so those are, those are the big ones. I think everything else kind of works out.

David Novak 30:30

Yes. As long as you're selling it, yeah, you're developing something relevant to sell that your customers want. You can figure out all that other stuff out. Yeah, yeah.

Jason Kelly 30:37

And even if I get something wrong, I can fix that. Right? Like, you know, like, oh, did I get this this bed? Or how we do this term, or blah, blah, blah, those are all fixable, right? What's not fixable is if that breaks down on, you know, on my scaling, and so like we're very, and I don't mind being public about that, because I want the team here not to lose the thread. Those are the things we got to focus on, you know, keep the platform improving and fill demand and everything else will work out.

David Novak 31:00

Speaking of competition, Reed Hastings, another unbelievable founder, the founder of Netflix describes his competition as sleep. How do you view your competition?

Jason Kelly 31:11

Yeah, so my competition? Is you doing this on prem? So in other words, like, think back to that cloud computing analogy, when clarity was just first getting going, who was their competition, not the other cloud computing providers, you keeping your servers, your IT department, right, that didn't want to move into the cloud? Oh, and why oh, well, security, and oh, uptime, and audit all these reasons, right? Because they have owned it in the past, right. And so that that's my main source of competition is the current status quo is and by the way, 1000s of biotech companies, right, will walk over into Cambridge and open a door, and there's a form of biotech company. And inside that door is a lab with somebody like me, in a white lab coat, PhD train, slaving away, you know, moving clear liquids around, it's brutal. And like, those people need to be on a computer and thinking and you know, and using infrastructure like ours, to get their work done. That's my main source of competition, you know, so

David Novak 32:08

you don't really necessarily see like coming from a non traditional competitor, like a Google or a merc,

Jason Kelly 32:14

know, the world of bits is a lot easier than the world of atoms. And so when people from the bid world come over, they're like, oh, boy, I'll tell you the story from back here at MIT, because this is a funny experience. So Tom Knight, you know, again, MIT professor starting computer science since the 70s. It's the 90s now, and he's like, Hey, I'm gonna do this biology thing. So all these like computer scientists who by the way, it's very obvious to them that DNA is code. They're like, Wow, I love to program that, Tom. Let's do it. And so they get in the lab, and Tom gives them a pipette, which is a little device you use to move liquids around on the bench, and they get to work doing these experiments, they do an experiment, and they get one result. They do the same experiment the next day, and they get a different result. And they're like, Tom, Tom, I just did the exact same thing twice. And I got a different result. And then he's like, yeah, yeah, that happens. No, like, why? He's like, Oh, well, you're never gonna know. And it's like, right, you know, like, if you're a computer scientist, and you run your code twice, and you get a different result. You know, like, something something is way messed up in the universe, right, you know, and so they're leaving this world of pure logic, you know, over at Google to enter the squishy word of biology and every single time, it just breaks people. And so you know, the funny thing about Tom why he was able to do it, he came from the era of computing back in the 60s and 70s, where computers were like that, right? Like Tom did punch card computing. Why does my computer not why did that my code not run well get jammed, you know, right. Like, like, just like, all these crazy mess that Tom saw the arc. And computers intrinsically are more scalable, programmable, but like, boy, they were messy back when he was there. And so he had a little more like, ability to tolerate it. But yeah, that's the reason I'm not worried about tech companies coming in. Our industry has never been like really, someone new trying to take it, it's been convincing the market to shift our way of doing this kind of work.

David Novak 34:01

You know, because she listened to this podcast, there's one thing I know about you, for sure. Here's someone who wants to improve as a leader. And I tell you, if you want to take what you're doing to the next level, sign up for my weekly leadership plan, where each and every week, I'll send you an email that will help you build confidence as a leader. Just head over to how leaders lead.com/plan to sign up for free. That's how leaders lead.com/plan You mentioned that powerful word when when's this gonna happen when z electric car gonna really take hold, you know, and you come out your company goes public, your market cap goes up the you know, 23 $24 billion. And you know, now, you know, with what's happened, you know, I mean, every growth company in the world, every tech companies in the world has been under pressure. You know, your market cap goes down to four, you know, you've got all these people that you brought into the company. How do you keep people fired up when they see, you know, the stock taken in the tank like that? How do you lead in that kind of situation? You brought

Jason Kelly 35:07

up Buffett a couple of times, he has a really nice little answer to question on this topic where he talks about buying a farm. He's like, you buy a farm, right? Imagine about a farm and you, you know, you understand the topology of the land and how much corn it makes, and so on. And you know, you're gonna run it, you're a great farmer, and there's a neighbor for this farm, and his farm is exactly the same as yours, right? Same topology, same output, blah, blah, this neighbor, he's like, there's one crazy quirk, where every morning he calls you up, and he's like, he offers to buy your farm. And he gives you a price. And he offers to sell you his farm. And he gives you a price for that. He this guy, the otherwise normal farmer, but he just does this one thing every day, okay? And Buffett's like, this is a great neighbor. If you ever needed to sell your farm, you could do it. If you wanted to expand, you could buy his you would love to have this neighbor, there's one thing you cannot do. Let what he is telling you influence how you run your farm. In other words, it his little call there has changed nothing about the topology of your farm, or the best way to get the corn MA and all that stuff, right. Like that is not easy. So I think that's number one is for people to understand the intrinsic value of the company, in our case, comes from the compounding technology improvement and getting more customers. And the only reason that like, strategically, the share price matters if we have to tap capital markets. Well, the good thing I have going for me as I just raised $1.5 billion. David, right. So like, I don't need to have capital markets. So you know, from a strategic standpoint, like if you're just being a purist about it, and how something like a Bezos or Buffett, you want to build a long term lasting company, you focus on the intrinsic value, and you just make sure you're not gonna run out of money, when it's a bad time to need it. Number two, you foster a culture of ownership in the company. Okay. And I think this is critically important, right? Like, we have a good amount of employee equity ownership at ginkgo, I want to grow that number, I want people to feel that they capture the value of the work they put out. And to understand that they need to understand also that like, that is set over time, basically, right, like any get you know that another Ben Graham, quote, like near term, the market is a voting machine long term, it's a weighing machine. What should everybody do? Build a company and whole and over time, it'll work out. There's no other magic to it than that, you know, right. But I don't want to get people in an attitude, the thing to be careful of is to say, oh, equities not worth anything. You know, like, oh, it's volatile. It's crazy. It's not, it's only volatile on crazy on a short timescale. On a long time scale, it reflects the actual work you do. Which, by the way, salary does not. Okay, your salary at a company is like the market clearing price for your services as set by the RAD for survey of companies your size and your position engineer number seven, you know, right? Like it's your replacement cost, which Oh, that's interesting implies you're basically a cog, but the equity you hold in the company, is the product of your work over time. Well, that's how you want people who work at your company thinking what you want people to focus on is that they are getting the value of the work they put in, like, I would like ginkgo to be on, like more than 10% by employees into the future. Imagine Amazon that'd be like, if you build a trillion dollar companies $100 billion of value for people, they deserve it. Right? Like they built the company, right? And so you want to have like a worker culture that ultimately does that and gets people there. And that's a big, in my view, how you kind of get people over, like, their heads spinning on stock price volatility in the short term, and you get a more valuable company for investors who are holding it for the right reasons for the long term. And giggles always been clear about that. We're a long term company, you're not gonna see me play for a quarter. By the

David Novak 38:33

way, you know, you and I have something in common. I think we both were CEOs of companies with two of the best ticker symbols in the history of the world. Okay, mine was Yum, you know, which was great. And I think another great one was Southwest Airlines when they had love Luv when they were spreading love all over Texas. This was years ago and yours is DNA. You know? How did you get the DNA ticker symbol?

Jason Kelly 38:57

Yeah. Okay. So what happened was Genentech addict because remember Genentech invented biotechnology, basically right? Like Herbert Boyer, UCSF got Nobel Prize, right, like moving one gene to another founder of the company. And so, of course, the you know, they realized that you know, the right thing, they get his DNA and so they got bought by Roche. And so when you get bought, the ticker goes back to the stock exchange, and Niazi and and NASDAQ each get a shortlist that they're allowed to keep for themselves. Okay, and Nike had this and so, you know, they're always trying to get you to list with them and we were like, Oh, we want DNA. That's a hallowed ticker in biotech world. Right and remember King has always been like a little bit outsiders Right? Like we're the engineers coming to the biologists were people that work on hamburgers and by the way, we do work in pharma to deal with Biogen and you know a V gene therapy work without Deb Ron Beck Sinitta capping enzyme ingredient for mRNA vaccines like we do self in pharma, but we're not like your usual drug discovery company. And so like I want to do right by the ticker, you know, right like, like we're so They're like, yeah, we know but like we are like Genentech like those guys were like when you look at the beginning of Genentech, just a nerd for one minute, you know they're working on human insulin as we talked about indigo dye light, like, you know, they're working on like, like for blue jeans, they're working on plants. They're working in enzymes for laundry detergent. So like there's a company that base what happened was when insulin hit, they sold everything off. The enzymes business unit got sold to Corning, it became GNN core, which then was a good size enzyme company, right and ultimately sold to DuPont and then to IFF. Like Genentech tried to do it all they realized what we realized DNA is code and it should apply to everything. What happened was they were not platform business model, they were product, and their big product I hit first was insulin. And so they became a pharma company, and they gave up on the platform dream of genetic engineering. We're not going to do that. We're gonna burn to the ground. And we'll build the platform that's like the, you know, the first class type thing for programming DNA. And so we deserve the ticker.

David Novak 40:56

You deserve DNA. You deserve that. Well, you have it, so you gotta deserve it. Nobody can take it away from me yet. Yo. So a This has been so much fun. Jase, I want to ask you, I do a lightning round of q&a. What's the one word that best describes you? Passionate? If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be and why?

Jason Kelly 41:16

This woman called Barbara McClintock, who discovered transposons and she got the Nobel Prize and she got it. She learned about transposons because she could talk to corn. She was like a true biology mystic. And I don't know how her brain worked. And I would love to learn how he thought that way.

David Novak 41:32

Who's the smartest person you've ever been around? And why?

Jason Kelly 41:36

Tom night? Because who the heck has seminal contributions in things ranging from early debuggers, from mainframes to semiconductors to bitmap displays, and then invents the academic discipline of synthetic biology? Like the range is insane. What's your biggest pet peeve? People thinking too much about themselves. I think it's even better for yourself to pursue a higher meaning or some bigger cause. And so if you just overly focus on yourself, it bothers me.

David Novak 42:04

What's something few people would know about you?

Jason Kelly 42:08

I was on the junior Pro Tour playing Magic the Gathering when I was in high school, I was very good card player.

David Novak 42:17

Alright, can you go to Las Vegas?

Jason Kelly 42:20

Yeah, they did. Actually, at one point at the peak of that card game. It was on ESPN. And it was like the best thing ever for all of us nerds.

David Novak 42:28

Who do you go to for inspiration?

Jason Kelly 42:30

My old advisor at MIT? Randy, he thinks big about biology. Yeah, you have to be

David Novak 42:37

resilient to build a company from scratch what you're doing with your founders? Do you have any rituals that keep you going?

Jason Kelly 42:43

I think I would say about certain companies. And you'll hear people tell advice. Like don't do business with your friends. Like if you're going to start a company, start a company with your friends, that you know, the ritual we've had to have. Resilience is like being human beings who are care about each other. When the pandemic happened. 2020 like, you know, myself and Baron Reshma are two of my co founders are married. We all have small kids, we literally moved in together with another family we were friends with and like live together for the summer, because we were all losing our minds. And it was like both work stressful and life stressful. And I could lean on them. Because not because they're the co founders, my company, but because we care about each other.

David Novak 43:15

What would be the single most important advice you'd give aspiring leaders,

Jason Kelly 43:20

that'd be a servant leader. Ultimately, the actual work of a organization is the output of all the collective actions of the people. And so you should like respect their contribution, like they're not cogs, you should respect it in reality as people and then you should tie their value in the organization and their control over the organization to that, how do

David Novak 43:41

you do that? Jason? I mean, it you know, everybody says servant leader, and it's, you know, it can be a bunch of BS, and for a lot of guys, you know, I mean, I want to be a servant leader. And what are you doing within your culture that really reflects that that's your mindset.

Jason Kelly 43:55

We've done a thing again, where we've given we have a class B share, to 10x voting share. And this is something that, by the way, like got pioneered by, you know, Sergey, and Larry and Zuckerberg has these, it's been a tool for like founders to maintain control of the business. You bet you can't acquire Facebook without Mark Zuckerberg approval, because he has the majority voting shares because of his super voting shares. We did that for the good co founders. We did also for all the employees now and in the future, actually. So we met new B shares, and those go to employees, so the employees that can go have 10x voting. And so that is how you empower people, because the way a corporation works is it works in service of the shareholders. And it can go the largest shareholding bloc is the workers. And so from my standpoint, this is also in the great overwhelming as founder controlled companies have demonstrated from Facebook to Google and Amazon. But it is also how you vast power in the hands of folks and end up with servant leadership because they're serving the shareholders and Jason

David Novak 44:54

you you've got a unbelievable company, unbelievable challenge on your hand and grateful Future last question, what's your market cap and 2050?

Jason Kelly 45:03

Da. I don't know what I'm allowed to say on stuff like that, David. So I'm gonna say, I wouldn't say nothing but Italy. But if we managed to make biologies easy to program as computers, and we are the horizontal platform for it, I think people can work it out on their own.

David Novak 45:17

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks.

Wasn't that a fascinating conversation? Jason spoke with such passion and conviction and clarity, you can tell that he's done a lot of work to be able to communicate what he does in a simple way. And I gotta tell you, I'm impressed. All right. So this week, here's something you can do to apply what you've learned in this episode. The next time you're at a party and someone asks you what you do, I want you to watch the person's eyes that you're talking to, and see if they glaze over. I'm serious. That's what I want you to focus on. And here's why. If you can tell they're not tracking with you. You need to go back to the drawing board and work to simplify how you talk about your business, how you explain your job. Because if you talk about what you do in a simple way, I guarantee you'll be on your way to be an unstoppable. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders simplify the complex. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of Major League Baseball,

Rob Manfred 46:36

you have an obligation to go in a room and exchange views and try in good faith to find common ground. And I really do believe that that exchange of views in the room is crucial to moving people towards the center towards an agreement in a robust way.

David Novak 46:56

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be

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