Michael Chavez

Founder at Synthetic Immunologist from @StanfordBioE. Previously @fiftyyears and @stanleyqilab. Cell therapies are pretty cool.

[Michael Chavez @MichaelGChavez]

Transgene silencing reverts an engineered cell therapy back into a regular old cell, destroying its therapeutic potential. I am stoked to share our CLIP method in @natBME that overcomes this effect, enabling any tool to be stably expressed in cell therapies! Thread below🧵(1/11)

[Stanley Qi @stanleyqilab]

Super excited to share our work - out now in @natBME - on stable expression of large transgenes via the knock-in of an integrate-deficient lentivirus:
https://t.co/NeUUpBWBGo
Congratulations🎉🎉🎉 @MichaelGChavez

[Seth Bannon @sethbannon]

London! I'll be in town for 2 months starting next week with @elamadej and @Aleborda21. Why? Big announcement soon 🤫

Who should we meet? Scientists, founders, angel investors, connectors -- let us know!

Have a place for Oct but where should we stay in November? Tips welcome!

[Turpentine @TurpentineMedia]

In this episode of Turpentine VC, @eriktorenberg sat down with @sethbannon, co-founder and general partner at @fiftyyears, a pre-seed and seed-focused VC firm.

They discuss the challenges of commercializing academic research, the differences between biotech and tech bio companies, exploring recent advancements in bioengineering, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and the significance of the "bio moment."

They also cover the impact of AI and machine learning on biological research and examine alternative funding models transforming the scientific startup landscape.

--

TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Intro
(00:53) Seth Bannon's background and inspiration
(03:38) Founding and mission of Fifty Years
(03:51) Defining deep tech and investment thesis
(04:34) Challenges in commercializing academic research
(10:14) The Spinout Playbook
(12:23) Sponsors: Rippling Spend | WorkOS
(14:38) Empowering PhDs to become entrepreneurs
(15:06) Building deep tech companies
(20:41) Biomoment in technology
(27:41) Rapid integration of large language models
(28:06) Startups leading the charge in pharma innovation
(28:46) The role of proprietary data in bioengineering
(29:31) Understanding spatial context in cell biology
(30:43) Getting into biology without formal training
(33:22) The beginner's mind investment philosophy
(34:14) The future of deep tech and network-driven VC
(36:33) Sponsor: Squad
(38:01) Tech bio vs biotech
(45:54) Alternative funding models for science
(49:41) Incentivizing failure in scientific research
(53:50) Wrap

[Michael Chavez @MichaelGChavez]

Much love for my friends @fiftyyears. Some of the few people I know whose energy can turn offhand jokes into making my mom mad.

[Seth Bannon @sethbannon]

The entire @fiftyyears bio team past and present got the same tattoo, designed by our brilliant designer @kabojanowska. Totally not a cult.

[Seth Bannon @sethbannon]

The world needs 10x more scientist-founders.

5050 helps scientists and engineers become great founders and start indispensable companies.

Applications open!

Startups are the best way to make a real impact with research, but where do you get started? How do you know if entrepreneurship is for you?

Whether you’re validating an idea or ready to build — 5050 is for you.

You’ll learn what it takes to become a great founder, how to choose the right problem, technology, and market, and how to build a deep tech startup.

“It’s a cheat code for starting a deep tech startup.”
– @ChEMcShane, 5050 alum.

• @ChEMcShane and Evan spun out of Stanford and co-founded Electroflow to tackle the lithium shortage. They’ve scaled their tech by 200x in 6 months.

• @markwbudde joined 5050 as a postdoc at Caltech. Two years later, @plasmidsaurus enables scientists across all 50 states and most European countries to go much faster.

• Niccolo joined as a Tesla engineer. Three months later, he co-founded Clippership and is building autonomous sailboats to decarbonize maritime shipping.

• Chi and @tayshin0827 joined as postdocs at MIT. Within weeks, they spun out and are now working to enable in vivo cell reprogramming.

At @fiftyyears, we’ve built deep tech companies ourselves. We’ve backed over 100 deep tech startups from the earliest stages and helped them raise over 4.6 billion dollars.

We distilled everything we know about deep tech startups into 5050: a free program to help world-class scientists and engineers start indispensable companies.

Phase I: Explore
We’ll help you answer: How do I turn my breakthrough science into a business? What do I need to make a startup idea work? Am I ready to be a founder?

You’ll learn if entrepreneurship is right for you, identify the idea to build, and pivot quickly if necessary. We’ll guide you through the early days of building in deep tech.

At the end of Explore, those ready to build a startup will be invited to the next phase, Build.

Phase II: Build
You’ll join a cohort of fast-moving founders who will challenge you to ramp up. We’ll coach you to level up into a great founder and guide you through the early days of building in deep tech. Build will help you de-risk your technology, hit key milestones, raise a first round, and reach takeoff speed fast.

Helping great scientists and engineers become great entrepreneurs is our jam.

Apply / nominate! ➜ https://t.co/29qi1exqDg

[Frances Anastassacos @fran_anastas]

Excited to share @nablabio is partnering with 3 of the world’s largest pharma cos to use integrated AI and wet-lab tech to design antibodies against challenging disease targets. Thrilled to also add @radicalvcfund who led our $26M Series A to the family! https://t.co/fmF5s2UCj6

[Nabla Bio @nablabio]

Today we announce the close of a $26M Series A financing, led by @radicalvcfund with participation from all existing investors, and pharmaceutical collaborations with @AstraZeneca, @bmsnews, and @TakedaPharma. Thanks to @endpts for breaking our news. https://t.co/WSxi6bJkxH

[Kenny Workman @kenbwork]

latch is focusing efforts on building a world class platform to distribute and analyze protein + genetic sequencing kit data

progress in engineering biology is bottlenecked by tools

https://t.co/IoijYRBlcM

[Alfredo Andere @AlfredoAndere]

Kits are a key part of the increased pace of biological discovery.

Protocols that 10 years ago took a team of scientists months of work can now be ordered online and done in a few hours!

But there is a massive problem plaguing these kits and ruining the beautiful abstraction:

[Gordian Biotechnology @GordianBio]

Shouldn’t aging be part of drug discovery for diseases of aging? https://t.co/STp9lKyxCj

Gordian exists to move therapeutic testing from plastic wells and young mice into a living environment with all the complexity present in patients with age-related disease.

We’re now sharing results showing how pooled in vivo screening can make highly accurate physiological predictions and find novel treatments for diseases of aging 🧵1/15

[Seth Bannon @sethbannon]

Introducing SF Deep Tech Week

When people think of SF they think of software startups. But SFBA is also the deep tech capital of the world.

Time to show off with events on bio, industrials, defense, energy, climate, space, quantum.

Oh, and parties.

[Tan Lab @TanLabUCD]

Spring Quarter is a season of renewal and growth, both in nature and within our lab :) Welcoming new lab members! We are also looking for new postdocs interested in engineering synthetic cells for biomedical applications. #synbio #UCDavisBME #BME

[Hani Goodarzi @genophoria]

Check out this new preprint/white paper from our friends at Entwine bio together with @vram142 and @ZaroLab. We and others have long been interested in sequence-to-function modeling in RNA, especially as it comes to splicing. https://t.co/5wZeXCjCwK

[Kenny Workman @kenbwork]

ML models like Evo + AlphaFold are emerging to engineer molecules.

It is sometimes unclear how to use these tools to build drugs.

We trace a realistic design, build and test loop of virus capsids on LatchBio.

[Jack Silberstein @Jack_Silb]

I'm excited to share our work "Structural insights reveal interplay between LAG-3 homodimerization, ligand binding, and function" that's now out in PNAS! 1/3

Link to paper: https://t.co/tTqz8a9aIw

Link to press release: https://t.co/BotEe86ztR

[LatchBio @LatchBio]

We’re excited to host a webinar with Elsie Biotechnologies, industry leader and GSK’s partner in oligonucleotide drug discovery, on how to engineer oligonucleotide therapies at unprecedented scale. Register to join us on March 21st to learn more: https://t.co/5RnQAm1VlW

[Victor Tieu @victortieu]

wow!! thank you @ACIR_org & lauren hitchings for the wonderful writeup and visual summary of our work!!

[Sri Kosuri @srikosuri]

Really excited about a new position for our first dedicated ChemML/AI person at Octant. Our HT-Chem platform is really humming, and we are very excited to bring generative approaches in the loop to drive subsequent iterations on the platform. Posting:
https://t.co/482WPlaopq

[Stanley Qi @stanleyqilab]

Excited to share "Multiplexed Effector Guide Arrays" (MEGA) tech, led by Victor Tieu @victortieu & collaboration with Dr. Crystal Mackall, in Cell @CellCellPress. A leap in T cell transcriptome & metabolic engineering for cancer therapy. Congrats to team! https://t.co/OW7LdfiVdP

[Michael Chavez @MichaelGChavez]

My time at 50Y and with 5050 was transformative. From pushing our academic research into products, hiring an amazing team, and storytelling - I cannot recommend this enough if you want to learn about how to take the first steps out of academia and into becoming a founder.

[Seth Bannon @sethbannon]

The SaaS startup playbook doesn’t work in deep tech. “Move fast and break things” doesn’t apply when building nuclear reactors or bioengineering cell therapies.

That’s why we built 5050, “a cheat code for starting a deep tech startup.” (quote from an alumni)

Applications open!

https://t.co/ucsabh5CyT

5050 is a program to help scientists and engineers start indispensable companies. We’ve distilled everything we know about deep tech startups into a two phase program.

Phase I: Explore
We’ll help you answer: How do I turn my breakthrough science into a business? What do I need to make a startup idea work? How do I recruit a world-class team Am I ready to be a founder?

We'll help you diagnose and mitigate risks and pivot quickly if necessary.

At the end of Explore, those ready to build a startup will be invited to the next phase, Build

Phase II: Build
You’ll join a select cohort of the most high-speed founders solving massive world problems. Build will help you de-risk their technology, hit milestones, raise a first round, and reach takeoff speed faster than you think is possible. You’ll learn everything you need to know about starting a deep tech company and what it takes to become a world class entrepreneur.

At @fiftyyears, we’ve backed over 100 deep tech startups, helped them raise over 5.5 billion dollars, and supported our founders in achieving many firsts:

➜ the first carbon-negative molecule factory
➜ the first cultivated meat approved in the U.S.
➜ the first microgeo satellite for internet connectivity
➜ the first in-orbit space pharma drug factory
➜ the first de novo synthesis of a 1000+ base DNA molecule
➜ and many more

Whether you’re validating an idea or ready to build — 5050 is for you.

Apply! ➜ https://t.co/ucsabh5CyT

[Hani Goodarzi @genophoria]

I am late to my own party, but I wanted to write a short 🧵 to put this talk in context. First of all, the @TEDTalks team was amazing; there is so much that goes into these seemingly short talks. It was an amazing experience and I made some new friends.
https://t.co/40AIpkmWrq