202. Setting Sail for Biotech Scale: Jenny Rooke Steers Innovators at Genoa Venture

So you got to turn science into products and get products into markets and show product market fit. And that looks like building just a real business, but based on biotechnology. Ola Carlos, Ben Venido, I'll grow everything podcasts, totals. Gracias, Iroam. Come on, Das. And that's where the Spanish ends. Oh my God, Iroam. I thought you were fluent. I should be, actually, we should probably talk more. I mean, I took a lot of Spanish classes from middle school to college, but I do understand it. Yeah. Well, I am getting ready to travel to Spain at the end of October to go to the ATG Sin bio conference where I'm going to be giving a talk on lessons from successful biotech hubs. And I'm super excited about that. But for our listeners, welcome to the Grow Everything podcast where we talk about how biology is transforming all industries. Iroam, last week was nuts, wasn't it? I'm still recovering from climate week. It was just back to back to back and wonderful. We're still processing. We need some time for that. And I still have lots of follow-ups to do. So if you haven't heard from me, you will soon, but wow, how are you feeling? I mean, I think by the end of the week, I didn't want to talk to anybody. And then, you know, I was lucky I got to have a very restful a weekend. I mean, this week has been very busy, but not like last week because during climate week, you go to a lot of meetings, you go to a lot of events, and you want to see how people are thinking about biotech or biology when it comes to addressing the climate issue. Yes. Yes. And there are lots of solutions out there. We talk about all many of them here on the podcast. And even when I went to these events, you know, a lot of these events were very climate heavy on the energy side. And a lot of the solutions were measured in carbon capture and everything. So, you know, when I come into the room, I'm like, oh, I'm in biotech, people look at me, like I'm crazy, like what you're at the wrong week by a week was this other week. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I always borrow from our friend, Kristen Ellis, who said the vent diagram between climate and biology is a circle. And at one event, like they asked some people to come up and kind of share why they're there and what their hot take is on climate. And I got went up there and sang the song of grow everything and you talked about biology and people were like, oh, okay. And they're like, wait, you know, it's like, isn't it, isn't petrochemistry isn't, it's in fossil fuels aren't in that biology. I'm like, yeah, it's dead biology. And it's one thing, you know, but there's many other things and, you know, we've got to get creative. And that's what we like to do is bring all the creative people that are actually building things and thinking of it from an entrepreneurial point of view or even a deep academic point of view and bring them a podcast and have them share their perspective. Absolutely. And I think what I found, first of all, I walked away super optimistic from this climate week. We are going to talk about it more in a future episode. But I just felt like all the talk about building, all the talk about clean energy, which is the cheapest form of energy. And when I would talk to people and I would say biotech is this restoration layer on top of everything, then people would want to want to know more. And so, you know, shout out to all the people that we got to meet. And I just walked away more positive about climate week than I have in years past. I think one of the highlights of climate week is when we attended this round table to talk about the Americans living library act, which is right now, a bill that supporting the idea of sampling our public lands in the United States and all the different plants and animals and just really just getting a sample and sequencing their genomes and to have that information stored and then being able to look within that database and see what happens. What kind of novel things, one of the things that we wanted to represent from us that grow everything a messaging lab and then we had our friends from the biome consortia, which I'm a founding member of to talk about the microbial world and what's going on in our public lands because we found so many wonderful things, even from sampling our public lands, which was more of an academic exercise and not a nationwide exercise. The researchers found a unique microbe that was the precursor or the idea of doing PCR, which is now a technique that's used across many laboratories when it comes to doing analysis on biological samples, it was used plentifully in doing COVID to do COVID test. All was because someone went to a public lands to examine what microbes were doing in different environments and how they withstood extreme environments. These are extremophiles that were discovered in Yellowstone National Park, so it's a valiant effort and we talked about bioliteracy, which we're championing here on the podcast, but we need more people listening and we need other people to do their efforts and what is bioliteracy actually mean. The great topic of conversation, what did you take away from that Carl? So let me just put on my best Lisette voice for a second, for those listeners who don't know what PCR is, it stands for the polymerase chain reaction, which is used to multiply strands of DNA. You need a lot of DNA to do experiments and so PCR makes that possible and it's done by putting DNA with this bacteria they do rum is talking about into a container and you do heat cycling. PCR is really a very important tool for biotechnology. What did I take away? You know, I mean bioliteracy is super important. I just recently did a search where I wanted to know how many people globally are involved in the biotech industry and the number is like between seven and nine million people. I don't know if that number includes agricultural, I have to go back and find out. That's not very many people doing something as important as biotechnology. And I'd like to think that kind of given what AI is going to enable more people would become interested, but if you think about 10 million people responsible for growing life and using life to transform everything, it's not really a lot of people. So I think this idea of bioliteracy, we have to do a better job, we need to do a more extended job, we need to do a lot more to just get people interested in what biology enables. Yes, yes, and this round table and the America's Living Library Act was orchestrated by the National Security Commission of emerging biotechnology. So they were represented there, they hosted at the American Museum of Natural History, which was a beautiful space. And alongside of bioliteracy, we talked about policy literacy because what actually goes on in government to get an idea as big as sampling the US public lands and sequencing the genomes of plants, animals and microbes, what does it take for government to rally around this and how do they collect resources and interest in the public imagination. And that was really great to learn and really the kind of the big takeaway is that we need more people to understand that this is an effort. People in government to understand and so people can continue sponsoring that bill. I think there's about 30 sponsors. How do we make that 300 sponsors. So we'll share some more information in the show notes if you want to get involved in this, you know, is going to be like a right to your congressperson type of situation, but maybe there's more, but stay tuned for that. We're going to have them come back on the podcast and share what we've learned from that round table and their efforts throughout the time that they created these policy recommendations to grow the bi economy. So you flagged, which I thought was a lot of fun. This idea that some states have a state microbe. Let's talk about that for a minute. What states have microbes on their official list of official things like official bird official flag official plant. Yeah, yeah, this came from how to call with my friends at the buying consortia and one of the members, Leslie Robertson mentioned this and I was so surprised. I'm like, I've shared this with our friends on the group, everything podcast. So there's only three states in the United States that have an official microbe as a part of their state microbe. There's Oregon, they have saccharomyces cerevisae, which many people may know as brewers or baker's yeast, and they wanted to honor that microbe because of the state's thriving craft brewing industry, which is really cool. And then there's New Jersey, whose state microbe is streptomyces grisas, which is designated as their state microbe in 2019 to honor the discovery at Rutgers University of the bacterium because it is the first effective antibiotic against tuberculosis. And finally, Illinois has a state microbe. It's penicillum rubins, which many people might recognize as the life saving microbe that was mass produced during World War II, and it was discovered on a mold strain. I think in on a piece of fruit, and it's like, wait, what, this is a fine such a, you know, random find. And Illinois wants to honor that microbe. Once the U.S. states, I will say honorable mention, there's a official India state microbe and India carola declared bacillus subtlest as it state microbe to promote the awareness of beneficial probiotic bacteria and the role in agriculture and digestion, which is very cool. That is cool. So what should New York state microbe. So I looked this up because I was like, well, does New York state have a microbe. It does not. And the Google search suggested three one penicillum rock 40, which is what's used for ripening blue cheeses. I'm a huge fan of that. Yes, yes, blue cheese blue cheese with chicken wings always all you ranch people. Checkin' wings and. Ranch and some blue cheese shame on you, anyway. - And then the other one that was suggested for New York State was lacto, caucus, lactis, which is a bacteria that's used in making, again, cheeses and yogurt. And New York State is actually a huge yogurt producer. So I don't know how much blue cheese we produce. Whenever I get domestic blue cheese, I always think it's made in Wisconsin, but I don't know that I've seen blue cheeses from New York State now, I'm gonna pay more attention because I really wanna taste my local blue cheese. So, Iram, something else that's been going on and part of the reason why you've been super busy is you're taking the how to buy a manufacturer almost anything course at MIT. What's that been like? - It's been busy. I think one of the things is, first of all, I have to say that David Kang is an amazing instructor. He makes it very fun, interesting, keeps it high level. So you don't get too deep in the weeds, especially for this class, this class is really promoting the idea of using AI to really hone in on what you're trying to do. And it was very interesting because part of the class is like, well, what do you wanna buy a manufacturer? What's your project going to be? And of course, you and I talk about this every single day, every single week of it, by manufacturing things and what's going on in the market. So we have a different perspective. I mean, there were students in there that were really thinking of it on a very, very particular PhD hat where it was like, oh, I just wanna find this mechanism and see if that mechanism works and David was like, oh, no, no, no, what do you wanna make? What's the creative thing you wanna do? And so I love that aspect and I'm getting introduced to all the software. So right now, this week, I'm working on DNA design. So using tools like Benchling, kernel, overall, I've been using Claude in Claude Science and kind of working with both of them to see who's right and seeing how Claude Science gas lights Claude regular or other Claude as it refers to it. So that's been a very interesting exercise. Just to see how they respond to each other. And then it was great to see just how it works. What is involved? Do you have a background in biochemistry? So I had to dust off a lot of terminology and like, oh, that's right, we do need a promoter. You do need these start and stop codons. Okay, I see, of course, Igem created a lot of parts and that's integrated into the as and off kernel system. So it was great to see what information that they have that could be used. And luckily, I've been accepted into the Gen Space node. So we have a bit more homework. We have to do the homework. We have to share it with each other. So there's like a group of 12 of us. We share our ideas, some of the challenges that we're experiencing with the homework. And next week is learning about self-free. And how do you create self-free? And yesterday we did this, well, I did the virtual tour that class at MIT went in person to Ginkgo Bioworks to see their automated labs. And so we were getting the virtual tours as someone's holding a camera and these are smart students, but they're not production crews a little shaky. But it's okay, I got to see everything. But it was very good to see what's available to us. And I believe there's a certain amount of, as we had this conversation with Jason Kelly a few episodes ago, he talked about the labs and that there are these modules, these independent carts that have equipment on it and a lot of this liquid handling equipment. And there's about 16 of them, I think, dedicated to this class so that we can run experiments virtually. So far, I'm still in it. I mean, part of me is like, should I be doing this? Oh my god, I have this client work. You have this meeting. Don't forget, you are a gamefully employed and we are very busy. Yes, I am, yes. But this also counts as professional development. Thank you. Okay, great, because I also try to get into bed by 10 pm, but now it's like, you know, 1230, 'cause I have to do the homework, you know, and that's like a lot. So I'm trying to stay dedicated. Yeah, going back to, you know, putting on your old biochemistry hat, 'cause I remember I had had a conversation with Aaron Shaq who's been on the podcast of Biomedit. And he told me that I don't remember why or how he ended up taking either biochemistry or microbiology. And he was like, we covered everything that I learned in college in the first four weeks and the rest of the semester was all new stuff that I knew about, but it never covered a textbook. So there's so much new knowledge and it just continues to expand exponentially. And it's very exciting. That's what we're here for. Yeah, and it's great because when I was in school, I didn't have an application that was passionate. I didn't connect anything. So I was just like learning to learn, but now I'm going backwards. This project, which, you know, a part of submitting the homework is submitted on this public web page. And I'll share it when I finish it so people can see this exercise. But it was more like, I have kind of a vision and I want to have a question. And like we've had this conversation about bi-manufacturing food dye. I'm like, well, how does that work? How do you do it? And so this is my exercise. I want to bi-manufacture colors that are food safe. So let's see how far I get. It's very interesting how it all works 'cause color structural. And there's things going on in the nanoscale and biologies, the perfect factory to build things on the nanoscale. So let's see, stay tuned. That's awesome. I mean, there's so much good stuff going on in biology. There's so many good things happening when it comes to climate, health, AI. And we're bringing on the perfect person to speak about it. Jenny Ruck, founder of Genoa Ventures. Jenny is a PhD and I'm happening to know her for a very long time through symbiotic data. One of my favorite people to talk to and get a sense of the pulse of what's going on on the investor side of the world. She's the founder and managing director of Genoa Ventures and Genoa invests in early stage companies at the convergence of biology and technology. By the way, a background, Jenny was a physicist who turned geneticist at Yale. She consulted it McKinsey and managed a $250 million fund at the Gates Foundations. But with that, let's let Jenny kick it off. (upbeat music) Jenny Ruck, Genoa Ventures, we've been wanting to have you on the grow everything for the longest time. We're so happy to have you here. - It is great to be here, Carl. Yes, we've been talking about it literally for years and here we are. And it's a great time, I think we will get into as we have the conversation. - Excellent. So I'm gonna kick it off by just talking a little bit about your background. You studied physics at Georgia Tech. You've got a PhD in genetics from Yale. You consulted at McKinsey and you've launched several venture funds. What took you from solving physics equations to betting on the convergence of technology and biology? - Well, I'm drawing to hard problems as you can probably hear from that journey. And each step was really for the longest time about learning the next skill set. I'm just very curious and I would be exposed to something new. I would need to learn about it, need to develop some level of mastery. And so that kept building. I had physics, I had software engineering. I fell in love with genetics. So I went and learned about that. Then I wanted to learn about business and strategy and how you build businesses. Then that naturally turned into, well, how do you specifically build science-based businesses? Startups, technology-driven companies. Then ultimately having had a collection of those experiences found myself saying, okay, I think I have a basis set of knowledge here. What do I do with it? How do I use it? That's when I moved to the Bay Area started running around, seeing what people were doing and found out, and this is, I guess, a little foreshadowing, that the world needed yet another venture fund, surprisingly, to focus on the kinds of companies that I care about, which I'm sure we'll get into. - Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for your service. - Exactly. - Well, it's so nice as you can hear. I also love it, so. - Yeah, the world of venture capital and startups vying for those dollars can be very stressful on both sides. And you've started a bunch of venture funds. You built the Gates Foundation early investing function and you raised a massive syndicate on angel list, which I love that platform. But can you tell us what the biggest lesson you received about early stage risk that traditional VCs regularly miss in deep tech? - It's true. I've now invested off quite a number of platforms and I had the privilege of investing with a wide variety of types of investors who each bring their own passions, knowledge, frameworks, and limitations, which we all have. Well, I think one of the most surprising thing relates back to one of my biggest surprises in transitioning from physics and software engineering into the lab where I remember doing my first PCR experiment as a graduate student and it didn't work. There were no bands back then we did things by hand and we looked at bands, there were no bands on the gel and I took it to my PI and I said, "What happened?" He said, "Don't know, sometimes it doesn't work." - Yeah, classic. - I was. - Lavergathed offended, it was a real immediate lesson when you're working in the physical world. A lot of times things just do not work. And fast forward to investing. I think if you haven't had that kind of gut experience of you can't passion your way through it, you can't pivot your way through it. There are real physical laws that represent risk in investing in the physical world. And so if you don't take that into account in your risk evaluation in your timelines, it will get you because the probability is, failure. It's a big, all null set out there in the universe with very new things that actually work. Yeah, failures of default. You have to work really hard to get away from that. So let's talk about Genoa and its origins. You named it not after the city of Genoa. So I actually didn't know this until we started doing the research, but it's actually a sale that boosts a boat speed and stability. And clearly, you view founders as captains of their ships. Yes. How do you balance giving founders autonomy while stirring them away from fatal early-stage problems? I appreciate you calling that out. I would have started the firm earlier if I could think of the name. It took a long time to come up with it. And I wanted to pick something that frankly wasn't about me or even about the technologies that I love personally, but make a big enough tent for my partners to come along and be excited about the next thing. Founders to come in the door and be talking about something that I hadn't heard of. And so I really focused in on our values and the values what I want Genoa to stand for, which is as you describe, honoring that it's the founders, the management team who are taking this incredible risk and striking out in uncharted waters to try to bring us all to a better future. I had met enough venture capitalists and I did not want to be like, who seemed to think it was all about them. So now let's keep this front and center as we build the firm and take it seriously. This privilege we have of supported founders. But you're right, it's also our job as fiduciaries of our LP's money to try to help founders avoid steering their ships on the rocks being called by the sirens. Odyssean challenges of being on a voyage. And so that comes down to things like first and always knowing that you're not in charge, but building relationships of trust and aligned purpose. So you can say, look, I'm not here to tell you what to do, but here's what I've observed in the last hundred companies. I've seen like this. You can tell me you're going to be the exception, but it lets at least talk about why so that you're being clear-eyed about some things I've seen before that I hope will help you get to the success that we're all aligned around wanting for you. Yeah, that's amazing and very like helpful to think about. So let's get a little bit more into the thesis of Genoa. So it focuses on this idea of bioconvergence, which spans research tools, diagnostics, medtech, food, ag, and industrial biology, which we love to talk about. And that's pretty broad. It's a broad portfolio of very different looking businesses. So can you tell us what characterizes a quintessential Genoa investment? And then what is the ultimate economic or technical reality that these hybrid companies face when moving from lab into commercial markets? Inventory, these has to be a big enough tent to bring an exciting group of people together and build a portfolio, but focused enough that you know what you're not going to do. So the throughline here for Genoa company is turning impactful science into companies of consequence. And so they're almost always based on proprietary biology, but other kinds of technology, technological innovations. That's where that bioconvergence comes in. That multidisciplinary, bigger than the sum of the parts innovation. And then turning that into companies that are not limited to traditional, quote, biotech. So not limited to medicines or even health care, because biotechnology is a general purpose technology. It's transforming all of those industries you mentioned. And so we're looking for those kinds of founders who are bringing an insight about a particular market and an application of biotechnology that maybe someone else hasn't seen before. And why do you think that term bioconvergence is maybe more useful or more expansive than biotech? Which we do find it's problematic. I mean, to people who are outside of this space, you say biotech and they immediately, if they even think about it, they say pharma. Right. Right. Well, I think you just answered your own question. I think the label biotech is in a sense of victim of its own success. And this was true even as of the early 2000s when there was a consultant serving big pharma McKinsey. And they said, our clients had, we'd like to help with our biotech strategy. And I got super excited because you know, the human genome project was just done. And we're trying to figure out how to sequence genomes. And this was going to transform how we understand human disease and interventions. And so it's okay, let's talk about a technology-enabled vision of the pharma future. And they said, no, no, no, we want to know which antibody companies should we buy? Like they were already so clearly making biotech makes new drugs. Which, thank goodness it does, right? It really proves that all of these things we're talking about can make a huge impact on people's lives and build markets and just look at the trillions of dollars of value created just from GLP, right? So that's all great. However, if that's kind of stealing all the oxygen in the room, then it's going to be really hard to talk about industrial bio and how biotechnology there can also make new products and businesses. So we thought it was important to pick a term that frankly people have to ask, what does that mean? Because otherwise you're bringing the biases that limit themselves and founder when it comes to building these new bio businesses. Yes, and you've seen this happen for many years. You've invested through multiple generations of biotech. So there's biotech 1.0 with the bioethanol. That was the new industrial biotech was exciting. And now we're in a new place. What did the first generation of send bio companies teach you about what it actually takes to build a durable business? And what has changed that makes you believe this moment is different? Yeah, I had in a sense the benefits were the luxury of kind of watching from the sidelines during I would say industrial bio or send bio 1.0. I was still at Gates Foundation. What's called around the 2010 mark when the first send bio beta happens and came down the Bay Area for that. And people were kind of trying to define these other kinds of bio businesses. So by the time I moved to the Bay Area in the mid-20 teens and was back to looking to back startups, there was already a generation of founders, managers, customers who had learned some of the lessons. I think you're pointing to here, which made it a really exciting time to write checks to companies like Symargin. So you had a management team who said we know kind of what worked and what didn't. And also the technology has come a long way for accelerating how we engineer biology in particular. So we want to do it faster, we want to do it smarter. I think we're seeing now in this generation that flywheel turning even faster particularly with the help of AI to plan and interpret our biotechnology work. Yeah, I mean you're you're probably super interesting because it spans research tools like intubio and goes to ag platforms like meogenics. How do you weigh the long-term horizon discovery bet against an immediate revenue generating tool? I mean as a scientist I love it all, right? And so I love the deep discovery. I love reading papers and going to conferences. As a venture capitalist, I have agreed to hold myself to a wind condition, which is returning to multiple of my investors capital in the seven to ten year timeframe. So that is a lens that we bring to actually writing checks into startups is thinking from the outcome backwards. And that kind of long timeline, whether you can start from a napkin sketch or basically a beta, a prototype of a product really depends on the sector. You mentioned a couple of very different ones. Our new tools, there's a fairly well-defined journey from concept to product and market and scaling that fits within that window. If it's something like an engineered crop, you have to take into account the lifecycle time of that crop, which is very different for something like tomatoes that myogenics does versus say bananas that traffic does. Yeah, that's super helpful. I love the fact that we're looking at ag and you're also looking at pharma, too, and the world of healthcare. And you were at JP Morgan this year. This was my 20th JP Morgan, by the way, and it felt bizarre to go from a confused baby associate 20 years ago who had to fly cross country to get here to a person who took a robot car to my office. I mean, my portfolio company is like, what a different world. Wow. It's amazing. So, doing GPM, you highlighted that there's this world of next generation clinical assessment tools. So, what is your primary filter here? Are you looking at novel biomarkers, faster, cheaper infrastructure for existing clinical assays? What are you really looking for in this world? Yeah, I love how you've described it, which is fundamentally about getting information about biology that can inform clinical decisions. So, this is another area where the term, the conventional term diagnostics, I think, is freighted with a lot of biases and lines from the past. But that's really what we're talking about. Is it a test that that a patient can take with a clinician's support to get information about their health and their healthcare. But to answer your question, we look at the full spectrum of, is there a new, say, compartment in biology that can inform better diagnostics? That's where our company is like, Interven and actual come in, where they look at either glycoproteomics or the distribution of DNA fragments in a patient's blood respectively. So that's just a whole new lens on the patient biology. In some cases, like our company brain box, specific biomarkers that we believe are going to be more informative for managing concussion in a way that is historically not tapped into molecular biology. And then, companies like Codetta in the portfolio, which are enabling, whether it's researchers or clinicians to look at multiple types of markers, simultaneously, DNA, RNA, protein, all at once to get a more complete picture of a sample, whether that's for research or for diagnostic purposes. So we're up for the full spectrum. Certainly, we believe that the realm of clinical assays and getting better information there, is more and more part of the value in delivering great healthcare, in lockstep with those new therapies. So I was quick follow up, as this is split between diagnostics in the world of like a healthcare system or there's consumer diagnostic tools, what are you seeing there? 'Cause we've been seeing a lot of, you know, you can order a microbiome kit and they'll test your microbiome and they'll recommend different things 'cause they'll diagnose your microbiome of like not having a certain amount of, you know, microbes in it or something. And I'm curious to know your thoughts on the more hospital system side of diagnostics versus the consumer side. - Yeah, really interesting times, isn't it? Because the technology is making what possible to generate data. So you end up with this more of a continuum of solutions, rather these kind of rigid categories, which is exciting and sometimes confusing. I have a few fundamental beliefs about it, which is a diagnostic test, delivers information and insight on which a clinical action can be taken. So whether that happens at the home or in a clinical setting, it has to change behavior for it to be an effective diagnostic test and often for it to be paid for. So therefore for it to be an effective business. Otherwise it's information and sometimes infotainment. - Yeah, we can tell you all the information about our sleep, like I like it my sleep chart, it's fun. - Did it make me actually go to bed earlier, maybe? (laughing) - Yeah. - Am I gonna skip that second class of line, maybe? So that's part of what is changing behavior and decision making. And then I think it always has to be in the context of a bigger question of implementation. So for at home test or consumer test or information, a question is does the consumer by themselves have everything they need to take action? So maybe yes in the case of sleep data, not so much in the case of a cancer test. They can interpret the information, although increasingly that's getting better. So I'm excited about that. They can't take action because they don't have the available treatments or facilities. So in those cases, it's no one's fault, but those tests really need to be impactful for patients in the healthcare system. They do need to sit. I like your word, Carl, professional. They need to sit in a professional setting where someone has access to all of those resources to bring it to bear on the actual decision-making and patient care. - Yeah, I like how you said it contributes to infotainment because it's true. And I mean, this is my beef with 23 and me, you know, when they first came out. It's like, here's all this information about your genetics. And 99% of people who are getting that information had no idea what it would mean. And yes, you know, oh, they're going to gait some of the information because it might hurt you to know that, you know, you're carrying two genes for Alzheimer's or something like that. But it is infotainment because most people don't know what to do with that information. I want to go back to this idea of bioconvergence. One of the things you've said is that bio-based products are an on-ramp for your LPs or limited partners who basically have stayed away from biotech because of the risk in drugs. And I mean, drug discovery and drug development is very risky. It's like one out of 10,000 chance that you're going to hit it. And if you do, you might hit it very big. I mean, look at the GLP ones. It took decades to get there. Make the case. Why is bio-convergence an easier yes for some investors than biotech? Yeah, you framed it well, which is, as we know, in quote, biotech, meaning making new medicines, you spent many, many years up to a decade. And many hundreds of millions of dollars have not billions these days to find out whether it worked. And most of the time, it doesn't, which that's just the odds. And that is one game that one can play. And if played well, can make the world a better place and generate a lot of value. That's terrific, also pretty terrifying. And particularly what we found is LPs and investors who maybe come from the technology world, deep tech, software, come from building businesses and entrepreneurship. That doesn't feel like the kind of vision for building the future that they're familiar with, where you can, over time, take a series of risks and see if they work out and just keep growing and building. Whereas the world that we're talking about, biobased products, technology's businesses, the journey looks a lot more like what you might know from building a software company or a deep tech company or frankly any company. Again, you need to know about some customers that live in a marketplace where they have a need. And you have a belief that a biobased solution could meet that need in a proprietary way. And in the course of a few months, a few years at the most, you can test that belief that your technologies can do something that no one else can do. And so that gives people a chance to get some exposure to this incredible time of biotechnology where new solutions are coming online, but a chance to learn alongside the companies to bet on the kinds of entrepreneurs. They see themselves in, which are business builders, who care about customers and markets, just a much more accessible way to apply biotechnology to value building and entrepreneurship. - Yeah, and throughout the years, we have seen some incredible companies come through. But then with those companies, there's been incredible failure for some of these companies where there's massive amounts of money put in and unfortunately it didn't span out. I don't know if you've read the Graveyard Report from first-spite ventures. They kind of did an evaluation of industrial biotech and try to pinpoint certain reasons why these companies have failed. But can you tell us what are the challenges of venture capital when it comes to evaluating these companies, maybe how they're financed or built? - Your diagnosis of maybe why some of these companies failed, but not just such companies, but how venture capital maybe needs to be thought a little bit. - Yeah, you're getting right to the heart of why we're bothering to build Genoa, right? Which it's hard to build a new venture firm. There are plenty of them out there. But what I saw in some of those early investments that we talked about was if you don't bring sort of a fresh mind and a beginner's mind to these companies which are in a sense a novel category, at least for the entrepreneurial venture back world, then the kind of pattern matching that VCs are famous for will fail you, will get you into trouble because the rules for where things are risky and where they fail as you're describing are different. And so really understanding some of those. One that I'm sure you've talked about many a time on this podcast is the challenge of scaling bio-based products. And I was fortunate to again, talk to some of the real pioneers in this space early on who called that out, who said the predictivity of success at the lab bench to translating that into success at commercial scale is very poor. It's very hard to know what's going to work. It's an analogy, I would say, to some of that fundamental science work, the R&D. If you're still in the R&D, you don't know whether success is right around the corner or 20 years from now. And that can be true for scaling as well. So taking that into account when someone is building a business in that space, when someone is investing in that space is critical for understanding how much capital is going to be required, much time is going to be required, what sort of expertise you need around the table, whether that's on the investor base or in the management team. I think that's a great example is just the scaling challenge. It's very different than pharma, for example, where that's not really the question, can you make enough of the drug, at least in small molecules is pretty straightforward? - Yeah, it's interesting because we're recording this just after a climate week. And before this, we had traveled to Omaha to this bio-innovations conference where the entire conference was built around scaling and particularly in the Midwest where there's a lot of these ethanol plants and people are putting together these pilot plants. And I think that, and this might be my bias, I think that many, Founders that are working in this space don't really have that vision of what does that million leader facility look like what does it take what are the steps that it's going to take to get there and for other people by manufacturing can mean anything from fermentation to enzymes to these big huge production systems that I'm describing when you use that term what future are you actually describing. I like it as a broad label again sort of bio manufacturing being making things out of biology or using biology to make other things so can go in both direction. Now we're really excited about adjust closed the fourth investment out of Genoa's newest fund general plan three super excited about it it is despite having founded Genoa to make investments in industrial bio it is the first one we've made in our eight and a half years. Yeah, because it is so hard it is so hard to get these things right that you're describing and we're taking a bet on this one and it isn't by manufacturing pretty excited about that one it's brand new but you know watch this space. Yes, watch the space exactly and so then what else are you looking for more tools picks and shovels what do you envision for the next. You know five to ten years so at Genoa we don't have target allocations to our different sectors whether it's tools or diagnostics or agriculture it's really best idea wins every time and so I can't tell you what that's going to look like for fund three or for the next hundred years and that's kind of intentional because what we know is at the convergence of innovation of biology and AI and material science and automation. Where that has impact changes over time and so we're going to be able to react to that in real time in conjunction with our founders or what I will say if I look at fund three so we know what the first five of the fifteen companies or positions is and there's a very strong through line of bio manufacturing again by manufacturing writ large. But using biology to make things making the inputs that are required in biology one of our companies it looks like a tools company it's called Hermes bio came out of Stanford and they have a better way for isolating exosomes which are the little vesicles that run around in our bodies there's orders of magnitude more of them and there are cells lots of information in there we need to get at that's a tool right but one of the applications that people are most excited about. For exosomes is using them as payload delivery and medicines and diagnostics so even that we see as not just getting information but as a prep step for making things out of biology yeah that's super exciting. Okay so we are at the part of this interview where we're going to ask you some quick fire questions. Are you ready? Sure. Alright here we go if a founders pitch stack had to be replaced by a single emoji which one are you hoping to see. Wow okay well there's the part of my heart that will always just love genetic so much so a double helix will get my attention if that were it would be but more generally it would be an emoji that is a chimera of other emojis. If we're constantly looking for something that is an unusual combination of parts that maybe the world hasn't seen before that's that bio convergence concept so I don't know maybe it's a smiley face with the Christmas tree growing out of it Ted you tell me. I recognize those parts but I've never seen them in that combination before not the rocket ship or like the graph with the exponential curve no actually because I would say those are the same kind of pattern matching that doesn't work here. Our graphs are like an extended J curve you it looks more like biotech where you got a weight for the climax. Alright fill in the blank relying on traditional VC playbooks for bio convergent startups in 2026 is like trying to navigate a ship using. Print out from map quest for a printed atlas right it's no yet there's useful information in there in a printed atlas or map but it's not dynamic you can't ask it questions so I feel like that's the kind of pattern matching that gets VCs into trouble is they're not asking dynamically what fundamentally is this company it's technology what are they trying to do today in today's environment. That I need to take into account and be creative round. Yeah I love it I love it so if Genoa ventures had an official rally cry printed on a canvas sale what for words are on it. I'm going to take the liberty of giving you my for words this is Jenny rock not necessarily Genoa although I can't tell the difference between the two anymore so. So so my personal creed is for words and it is combination of no or learn all that's that curiosity and then with that make good so in Latin. That is only a disc and a bone and cray are that's my personal motto wow so sophisticated curiosity and learning I love that yeah try to learn as much as you can though that's an endless well of venture and then use it to make good things and that looks like by manufacturing to me. If a founder 60 slide pitch deck was replaced by a single Spotify playlist what song needs to be on the track for you to write a check. I feel like that's a personal question to them right I want to know what their playlist is and certainly I'm not going to react and spend my LPs money just based on you know it's like whatever's whatever speaks to you for me it's I have a soundtrack that I put together a playlist that I call all I do is win. When I'm pitching because I fundraise to and it does include the titular song all I do is win it includes a lot of Broadway you know a lot of like because in just about every Broadway musical there's that triumph over adversity song you got to have that yeah. Oh my gosh that's amazing okay we're getting in to learn more about your music taste I wasn't sure if you're going to say like a hard rap hip hop you're like oh okay all right. Oh that mama said knock you out. All right. Don't call it a comeback I've been here for years. It's funny because when Lisa Rosler of you know of Amra's came on and we asked her about yeast and what song she would choose she chose like the death leopard song. For some sugar on it. On me. Poor some sugar on me. Sorry sorry. Perfect. Yeah. There were more songs about genetics I suppose that would be in my list but I have to go with metaphors I guess. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're making any music around DNA and genetics call us. Yeah. You need to get away from Devo's Mr. DNA or adolescence Amiba. So Jenny thank you so much for joining us on the gravity thing podcast we're so happy to have you on great champion for by manufacturing. I'm sure a lot of startup founders are listening they're going to reach out to you. So you're going to have your inbox full. It's delightful that's what we're here for is to make that that home we sometimes say it's like the island of misfit toys. We're that firm that if you are to bio to go to the tech funds and you're to tech to go to the bio funds that's where general lives of come see us. Thank you so much for your time. This is great. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Hey. This episode is sponsored by Messaging Lab. At Messaging Lab we translate complex science and economics into compelling business narratives. And we have done so for the most successful biotech forward companies across farma agriculture, personal care and beauty materials and the list goes on. We're here to make sure your ideas not only get heard but resonate with your audience. So if it's time to amplify your company's voice and elevate your business visit us at Messaging Lab dot com. Let's grow. Carl, would you think of that episode? I mean, Jenny is always such a pleasure to speak with I'm pretty sure you had met her once or twice before as well. And I just feel like she's a really deep thinker and a lot of fun to talk to. And when she talked about bio convergence, I kind of was like, huh, is this a better frame for biotech or biotechnology? We know that biology is this general purpose technology is a general purpose platform. And it combines engineering, data, AI, and so that means that research tools, diagnostics, agriculture, industrial bio, they're all in the same category, even though they don't look the same on paper. And this is why we have this podcast because in our podcast, we were talking to people who are creating colors, creating foods, you know, using biology to make mining more efficient. And so this technology just has so many applications. I think we're still just scratching the surface. You're on what did you think? Oh, yeah, I mean, I had met Jenny through, you know, you introduced me to her at events and what a pleasure to speak with. And then like I saw her background and I suddenly became very intimidated. I was like, Holy. Nah, I guess I didn't want to curse. Jason Kelly cursed a lot in his episodes. I'm trying to keep it, you know, friendly here. But yeah, it's so amazing. And of course, we love speaking with her because on one hand, she is looking in the world of farmers. drug development. And that's the binary, but drug development is pretty mature in terms of how it can commercialize, but this idea of biobased products that could bring new money into this world of biology. And she talked about tools, of course, from diagnostics to biobased products, there are more ways to win early revenue, right? Drug development takes such a long time to realize that revenue, maybe a lot faster these days, for sure, because it's been going on for a while. But we just need earlier revenue, which consumer products can afford. And we've seen that with K18 hair. That was an amazing story, a three year story to acquisition. And it's great. So I think for Jenny, she's always looking for startups to support, of course, looking for limited partners to raise money to grow her fund. And she made it easier for these limited partners to say yes to buy industrials or buy convergence. Love that, love that concept. What else, Carl? Jenny talked about like that kind of first wave of synthetic biology, kind of what happened, you know, after the biofuels failure. And that idea really taught us that unit economics and scale up really decide who survives. And that's been something we've been talking a lot about here. It's like how do you build that ecosystem from the beginning, not just what you're doing on the bench, because the bench is very important. But like, how do you get it to the scale where going to hit cost, volume, and customer pull? All those things together are really that ecosystem that needs to be built. And what I also appreciated about this conversation is she said right now it's kind of different because tools AI and manufacturing are much more mature. And a lot of founders are more commercially minded. I think we see that all the time. And these are the kinds of people that we've been bringing on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I love the story of how she came up with the name Genoa ventures. It's not from the town in Italy, but it's the Genoa sale. So it's like this idea of, you know, a ship. And she looks at, you know, the investor's job being a sale, they're not the captain. The founders are the captain. And I love that analogy. But the VCs, what they do is they add speed and stability. They help figure things out. They flag fatal mistakes, you know, they do their due diligence. And otherwise stay out. They want you to sale to growth. Some people use rocket ships as the vehicle, but here at Genoa, it's the sale boat. So I really love that aspect of the conversation too, because a lot of its mission, a lot of this is storytelling. You can make such great technology. But if you just talk about it in a very cold, you know, factual way versus how it can transform how people live and how, you know, things work. It's just just not as strong of a story. It's not as captivating as you can say. There you go. Well, with that, I think let's wrap up this episode. We've got a lot of exciting episodes coming up. We've got some really interesting people working at the interface of conservation and biotech. We have a few science fiction authors that we're going to bring on. And then some people working at some really large companies looking at biotechnology as a solution for what they're trying to do. Yes, absolutely. Can't wait for those. Thank you for tuning in to the Grow Everything podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us. We love to talk to you guys. Our contact information is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe to our subs, so you get that dose of grow everything in your inbox. So, let's grow. Let's grow. Thank you.