In the past, biology has been a backwater type of activity - a bunch of nerds in a lab. Now the sheer potential of biology to re-program our physical world is a new reality for everyone.
I imagine a day, some time in the not too distant future when children and teenagers will be able to create their own genetically engineered machines, cure the diseases of the old and find new ways to build and extend the capabilities of humanity, moving from programming software to programing the physical world, through biology.
We're finally moving out of the realm of solely discussing biology in regards to a drug-based world.
The potential for synthetic biology and biotechnology is vast; we all have an opportunity to create the future together.
Biology, it's the technology which builds our world, and we can harness it to shift humanity from a scarcity to an abundance economy.
The success stories in biotechnology are mainly due to the straightforward application of design thinking in both the business and science aspects of our lean startups.
Simple genome engineering of bacteria and yeast is just the beginning of the rise of the true biohackers. This is a community of several thousand people, with skill sets ranging from self-taught software hackers to biology postdocs who are impatient with the structure of traditional institutional lab work.
IndieBio's capital, facilities and deep mentoring by a network of biotech specific experts have the potential to spawn the Google's, Facebook's and Instagram's of biology.
People wanted to do science outside of classical institutions like universities or big corporations, so we embraced it.
We'll continue to heal human bodies through biotechnology but we'll also increasingly feed, clothe and house the world through bioengineered systems. Ultimately, there's no reason why live animals should be used in any part of our food or goods chain and we're working to make that a reality.
We're starting to see a renaissance of investors embracing the idea that scientists can build businesses.
When deciding whether to fund and build a company, we start from basic principles and because many of the businesses and products that our companies create are a complete novelty to us, them and the market, we have to do the math.
Biology is greener and, at scale, should be incredibly cost-effective: The cost of goods sold should be little more than the sugar water needed to brew almost anything.
Biohackers want to tinker; do fun science; and, in the process, accelerate the pace of biotech innovation.