Hello again Everyone!
Safe to say my 2020 ambitions for this newsletter didn’t necessarily pan out. But it’s currently Day 13 of my Managed Quarantine in New Zealand, so now's as good a time as any to kickstart this again.
I've been trying to pinpoint what led to me losing steam last year. With all that's happened (and is happening), there certainly wasn't a dearth of topics to write about. But I realized I was “over-engineering” my newsletter - I tried too hard to make it novel, almost treating each essay like an admissions essay, and that resulted in many unpublished drafts (Ok, two unpublished drafts before I just gave up). Too much perfectionism breeds procrastination.
I was recently in a creator workshop organized by Ali Abdaal, and he said something that piqued my interest: “there are no new messages, only new messengers”. This was that juicy dose of confirmation bias I was looking for. The underlying lesson was that as a creator, you shouldn't start from zero. You should be looking for things to "steal" and add your own twist too. That’s what got me thinking about my approach and how I handicapped myself, which took me down the rabbit hole you'll see throughout this issue.
As always, I would love any thoughts or feedback on format, content, etc. - please just hit reply with your thoughts! With that, lets jump in:
Authenticity is invaluable; Originality is non-existent
I wish I came up with that title, but I stole it. It’s a quote from the film director Jim Jarmusch discussing how creativity revolves around theft. Since encountering that mindset, I realized many creators convey it in their own way (there are only new messengers!) In his pithy book on creativity, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon explores it by weaving it through ten core aspects of creation. Steve Jobs even captured it when he outlined how "Creativity is just connecting things". Most famously, Isaac Newton discovered it when he wrote “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
All of this boils down to one core theme: creation starts with curation. Find great ideas, "steal" them, and add your own twist. Stealing gives you a foundation from which you can weave your own magic instead of struggling to reach a starting point. Stealing lets you focus on taking things to a new destination - people's good ideas unlock new possibilities by giving you a head start.
Now this mental model is great for someone (like me) who's looking for a way to create faster. But its reach is far more pervasive. In fact, it's the foundation of much of today’s technology.
A primary example of this is Cloud Computing. By providing computing infrastructure (Compute and Storage) over the internet, cloud providers (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) allow other companies to "stand on their shoulders" so they can focus on their core businesses. New startups could choose to set up their own infrastructure (which takes ages), but they’re able to focus on innovating by simply using a cloud provider. They build on the cloud providers’ foundation, and differentiate by focusing on their expertise.
This pattern also expands beyond computing infrastructure and into other internet services such as payments (Stripe), communications (Twilio), and even video conferencing (Zoom). Commonly referred to as the "API Economy", it revolves around the fact that companies can cobble together a series of APIs (short lines of code that allow you to achieve complex tasks by accessing someone else’s work) to perform core functions. They then build from there to customize for their space. APIs mean companies can choose the shoulders they want to stand on, allowing them to look further and move faster.
What's perhaps more fascinating is how this pattern emerges beyond pure software. For instance, we're starting to see it unfold in Biotechnology too. Biotech companies have historically managed the end-to-end drug development process in-house. They own the entire process from drug discovery/development through manufacturing, regulatory approval, and launch, meaning it's not exactly easy to start a new Biotech company. But that’s starting to change.
There's been a proliferation of startups in the space that focus on one development step (Ex. Clinical Trials or Drug Discovery), and work to increase its speed, accuracy, and efficiency. As more of these individual steps get modulated away, the barriers to starting a Biotech company shrink. While still early days, the advent of programmable medicine (Ex. gene therapies and engineered cells) is also catalyzing this trend. It's revealing the need for shared, re-usable development processes such as novel drug delivery (improving stability, precision, and control), resulting in the emergence of companies who focus on just that. These companies will be the shoulders that future BioTech startups can stand on.
Whether it's writing, company building, or inventing, creativity begins with curation. Identifying the right shoulders to stand on vastly accelerates and unlocks creativity. Though we typically think of creativity as amassing from nothing, it often starts where a previous giant left off. So the next time we’re stuck, instead of asking “how do I start” maybe we should be asking “what can I steal”?
Startups of the week
It wouldn’t be fair to plant my future of Biotech idea without some proof, so I picked two startups that are taking this “platform approach” in Biotech. As more of these individual processes get teased apart, we could eventually be in a world where Biotech R&D is far more virtual. Imagine a world where scientists can drive drug discovery, design, and the resulting development processes all from their home. This would not only remove the massive setup costs Biotech companies incur today, but also increasingly globalize contributions… what doors could that open for Biotech’s future?
Biotech: EQRx raises $500M Series B as they strive to reduce drug costs by reengineering drug development processes
As an industry, Biotech’s goal is to expand what it can treat (cure more diseases) and who can be treated (lower costs). Most Biotech startups take “therapeutic risk” and focus on the product. They identify critical illnesses and try to cure them with novel medicine, which is expensive and binary. It either works or doesn't. But EQRx is different - instead of the product, they focus on the process. They identify proven yet costly drugs, then re-engineer their development processes to remove friction, integrate data science, and reduce cost. EQRx’s approach could yield a standard platform for drug production that is more nimble and cheaper than current offerings. Such a solution could create a world where EQRx is a “giant” that Biotechs rely on for future drug development.
Biotech: Scribe Therapeutics raises a $100M Series B to continue developing its “CRISPR by design” platform to accelerate gene editing
Over the past decade, CRISPR reemerged as a potential method to treat genetically caused diseases. The promise of CRISPR-based therapeutics is to work by editing your genes - they remove or replace the genetic causes of a disease, much like editing writing or code (Here’s a neat 2 minute explainer). But the reality of how CRISPR works is incredibly complex. It originates in bacteria and isn’t naturally evolved for human use, making the drug development process difficult. That’s the problem Scribe is striving to solve. Their goal is to build a CRISPR platform, meaning CRISPR molecules could be engineered instead of discovered. This would enable scientists to synthesize molecules with critical therapeutic properties such as editing efficacy, specificity, control, and delivery. It sounds like science fiction (and naturally still has progress to make), but this could change the landscape with its potential to accelerate gene editing with CRISPR design and development.
Coolest content from the week
The Pastry AI that learnt to fight cancer
There’s been plenty of famous accidents in science history - from the discovery of Penicillin to X-Rays and Microwaves. But as someone who likes pastries too much, this one definitely “takes the cake”. A Japanese company spent years building bespoke machine learning models to automate pastry identification and accelerate the bakery checkout process. This was a huge effort as they developed this before modern day deep learning methods became common. They nearly collapsed in the process, but eventually solved the problem and were widely used across global bakeries. Then a doctor realized that cancer cells look a little like bread… resulting in them repurposing their model for medical applications like identifying cancer cells. Regardless of whether their approach will continue to be adopted, it’s a fun and optimistic example of how we can never know what doors innovation unlocks.
How NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and Social Tokens redesign the Creator Economy
You may have heard of NFTs after the $60M digital art sale in early March. They are blockchain-based records that uniquely represent ownership over pieces of media (Ex. Digital art, virtual land, collectibles, etc.) This means we can prove ownership over digital assets (anything from a tweet to an image or highlight). "Non-Fungible" refers to how each token is unique. While money is fungible (you don't care which dollar bill you have), owning unique digital media is non-fungible (one piece of art is not equivalent to another). Today there is a ton of hype around NFTs, but this article lays out a thoughtful prediction on how NFTs and another blockchain-based concept, Social Tokens, could change how creators and their fans derive value.
It's a fun but lengthy read, so the crux of it is this: "NFTs are about monetizing distinct works, and social tokens are about monetizing distinct identity." Both rely on the immutability of blockchains - the fact that transaction records cannot be changed. On the NFT front, this enables creators to benefit from their initial sale and every future sale. For example, the artist behind that $60M digital art sale would've received a % of that sale and any future sales that occur. Social tokens allow "super fans" to invest directly in a creator (imagine investing in Taylor Swift in the early 2000s) and receive certain benefits in return (exclusive events, community access, or direct interactions, for example). As the creator rises in fame, the fan's token increases in value, allowing both the creator and the fan to benefit from their success. These are both early and distinct changes to how content creators are compensated today, but it'll be fascinating to see what else they unlock.
Finally, Substack posts look ugly without pictures, so here’s a photo I took on one of my favorite Pacific Northwest hikes, Harry’s Ridge at Mt St Helen’s:
Thanks for taking the time to read - enjoy the weekend and see you next time!
Aqil
Aqil Hope you are doing well, It was really great read touched many cutting-edge topics. Looking forward for next one. Stay safe and enjoy !!!
Nicely done, Aqil! A good range of topics and and I liked the personal connection to each topic that you were able to bring out.