Yesterday, we started our day with a shocking piece of news. Our biggest competitor in the DNA data storage space, Catalog DNA, announced that they are winding down operations.
It’s easy to ask why and try to pin point a single reason. But these are decisions that involve a lot of nuance and multiple factors compounding over time. While Catalog was a pioneer in developing the DNA writer Shannon, we believe that it fundamentally boils down to the unit economics of writing data into DNA not making enough sense for the market to embrace it.
That’s why we at BioCompute are focused on an approach that doubles down on bringing down the cost of writing data into DNA, bypassing the holy grail of synthesis and adopting a modification-based approach. This is what gives us the courage and conviction to keep building day after day.
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Some cool announcements:
1. BioCompute is now officially a member of the DNA Data Storage Alliance alongside Western Digital, Microsoft, Biomemory and more (yay!). This will help us be in rooms where computational frameworks around DNA data storage and policy recommendations are being formulated, and find relevant collaborations.
2. We are co-authoring a book titled ‘DNA Data Storage – Current Approaches and Emerging Trends’ being published by Springer Nature, alongside leading researchers in the field (P.S. this is the first comprehensive book on DNA Data Storage to ever be published). We are expecting the book to come out later this year, so stay tuned!
3. Our electronics lab is now called the Pore-formance Lab and our bio lab is called the EpiC Lounge (brownie points for figuring out why they are named so xD).
4. We are hiring a full-time ML engineer to accelerate DNA reading at our Pore-formance lab. Here is a comprehensive JD. If you love isolating signal from noise, and building ML models from scratch while working at the cutting edge of tech and with one of the smartest and most creative electronics engineers you will meet, this is the role for you. If you know someone who is a great fit for the role, do pass it on to them (there’s a surprise gift for you if we end up hiring the person you recommend).
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I spent most part of September in San Francisco. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of a city, but definitely one that pushes you to build (more on this in my personal blog).
Here’s the major stuff I was up to.
Our investor 1517 organized an Unplugged gathering of their founders, LPs and community members in the YMCA camp. It was 2 full days of being present with each other in meditation, camp fires, movie screening under the stars, and honest conversations about everything ranging from UFOs to burnouts (having 0 network helps with this). I learnt so much about company building, avoiding burnout as a founder, fundraising, and tech milestones without the shallowness of a networking event. It’s energizing to be amidst people who are building crazy stuff, while also holding on to a deep sense of compassion and hope for the world.
With Danielle, founding partner of 1517 SNIA Storage Developer Conference
This event was the anti-thesis of 1517 unplugged. Super formal, structured and lots of presentations. I got an insider view of the storage ecosystem, the wins, the problems that companies are pouring time and money into. The conference showed me that there is all the more reason to accelerate our work in the DNA data storage space given the intense storage requirements emerging as a by product of the growth in AI.
At SDC listening to some intense presentations Crashed into a YC demo day, listened to many of the pitches and got a sense of the ecosystem
Visited and met interesting people at Berkeley and Stanford. I also attended the Nucleate event at Baker Labs where I met folks working on cool scientific problems in the biotech space.
At (a) Berkeley and (b) Stanford respectively Finally met the Savant founder Jeson Lee and his community who are chasing good quests. BioCompute was a part of the Savant accelerator earlier this year but I couldn’t make it to the demo day due to visa issues (also if you want your US Visa to get done, the best person I have found is Moiz Saifee from Saifee Tours and Travels, he sorts everything out from visa appointments to interviews and flight ticket bookings with zero hassle).
Visited the Founders Inc space and worked out of there for a few days. I loved the energy and camaraderie, and hope to be back there soon. I also had a candid chat with Abhinav, building Orangewood robotics, which was super insightful.
Identified the best automation system for us to scale up our data storage system. It’s being shipped and we hope to have it in hand by next week. A huge shoutout to Mike Ferguson for going out of his way to help me with this.
Attended the flagship event of Notion, with a VIP pass (thanks to Akshay Kothari being one of our early backers through the Kothari Fellowship). I loved how the event was structured so systematically and yet so informally, and how Ivan Zhao brought in Alan Key for a fun chat about philosophy and design.
Launched a community for Indian origin scientists and engineers in the US looking to move to India, or work across the US-India corridor. We are doing our first virtual meetup this weekend. If you or someone you would like to be a part of it, here’s the link to sign up.
More stuff soon!
