In this episode I talk to Eli Velasquez about creating startup ecosystems, commercializing research, especially when it's not necessarily venture-backable, and how the US government thinks about startups. Eli is the head of Venture Development at VentureWell - a non profit organization that funds and trains faculty and student innovators to create businesses. VentureWell helps run I-corps, which talked to Errol Arkilic about in Episode 15 . Currently, Eli runs all over the world helping create f...
Oct 13, 2019•47 min•Season 1Ep. 21
In this episode I talk to Bill Janeway about previous eras of venture capital and startups, how bubbles drive innovation, the role of government in innovation. Bill describes himself as "theorist-practitioner": he did a PhD in Economics, was a successful venture capitalist in the 80's and 90's with the firm Warburg Pincus and is now an affiliated faculty member at Cambridge and the member of several boards. Key Takeaways Bubbles have arguably been the key enabler of infrastructure-heavy technolo...
Sep 23, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this episode I talk to Mark Hammond about how Deep Science Ventures works, why the linear commercialization model leaves a lot on the table, and the idea of venture-focused research. Mark is the founder of Deep Science Ventures, an organization with a fascinating model for launching science-based companies. Mark has many crisply articulated theses about holes in the current system by which research becomes useful innovations and what we might do to fill them. Key Takeaways: There are many pla...
Sep 14, 2019•47 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Alexey Guzey is an independent researcher focusing on how to systemically increase the rate of biology discoveries and the idea that reviving the patronage system may be a way to do that. We spend most of our time talking about the project he's been working on for the past year but also touch on some of his thinking around connecting with people, which he's written about extensively. Key Takeaways Most people doing biology research are embedded in a system that incentivizes incremental consensus...
Sep 06, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Cindy Wu and Denny Luan are the founders of experiment.com - a platform that allows anybody to request funding for a science project and anybody to fund them. It's fascinating because it stands completely outside of the grant funding and publication system that drives most science today. In this podcast we discuss how the current system prevents the creating of new fields, why science communication may be even more important that science funding, and new models for company governance. Key Takeaw...
Jun 17, 2019•56 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In this episode I talk to Errol Arkilic about different systems involved in turning research into companies. Errol has been helping research make the jump from the lab to the market for more than fifteen years: he was a program manager at the National Science Foundation or NSF, Small Business Innovation Research or SBIR program , where he awarded grants to hundreds of companies commercializing research. He started the NSF Innovation Corps , a program that gives researchers the tools they need to...
Jun 02, 2019•50 min•Season 1Ep. 15
In this conversation Sam Arbesman and I talk about unlocking cross-disciplinary innovations, long term organizations, combinatorial creativity and much more. As you might expect from someone with Generalist Thinking as a main area of interest, Sam has out-of-the-box insights in a ton of domains and he's amazing at capturing them in tight concepts like "knowledge mining" and "jargon barriers." By day Sam is the Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital. Don't cite me on it but I think he may be the o...
May 24, 2019•53 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this episode I speak to Matt Clifford about talent investing, how big long term projects can start small, and financial innovations. Matt is the CEO and co-founder of Entrepreneur First. Entrepreneur First, abbreviated as EF, is a fascinating system. It starts with cohorts of around fifty to a hundred ambitious, talented people who want to start companies but might not even have an idea to build around. Key Takeaways The mental model of predictable vs. unpredictable value. The idea that hypot...
May 12, 2019•51 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this episode I talk to Evan Miyazono about tackling metaresearch questions, how novel physical phenomena go from "oh that's cool" to devices that harness cutting edge physics, and how we could better incentivize the creators of innovations where traditionally it's hard to capture value, like open-source software and early-stage research. Evan is a research scientist at Protocol Labs where he helps lead their research efforts - coordinating researchers both inside and outside the company. Prot...
Apr 02, 2019•59 min
In this episode I talk to William Gunn about the guts of science publishing, changing incentives in science, and the relationship between publishing and funding. William is currently the Director of Scholarly Communication at Elsevier. He joined Elsevier when they acquired Mendeley, which is a platform designed to help researchers share papers and notes about them. Before that he was an academic researcher himself and, for a time, a professional chef. Key Takeaways Science publishers aren't idio...
Mar 13, 2019•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode I talk to Torben Nielsen about creating new products and systems in health insurance. We touch on the tension between insurer's well-founded risk aversion and trying new things, the process of insurance companies working with startups, and how to even know if things are working. Torben runs programs at Premera Blue Cross with both internal teams and external startups to build new products and systems. Premera is one of the largest health insurers in Alaska and the northwest US, s...
Mar 05, 2019•51 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode I talk to Dr Robert McNutt about medical innovation, medical research and publishing, and patient choice. Robert has been practicing medicine for decades and has published many dozens of medical research papers. He is a former editor of JAMA - the Journal of the American Medical Association. He's created pain care simulation programs, run hospitals, sat on the national board of medical examiners, taught at the university of North Carolina and Wisconsin schools of medicine, and pu...
Feb 12, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode I talk to Craig Montouri about nonprofits and politics. Specifically their constraints and possibilities for enabling innovations. Craig is the executive director at Global EIR - a nonprofit focused on connecting non-U.S. founders with universities so that they can get the visas they need to build their companies in America. Craig's perspective is fascinating because contrary to the common wisdom that innovation happens by doing an end run around politics, he focuses on enabling ...
Jan 13, 2019•52 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Overcast Link. My Guest this week is Mason Peck, Professor of Aerospace and Systems engineering at Cornell University and former Chief Technologist at NASA. Previously Mason was a was a Principal Fellow at Honeywell Aerospace and has an extremely colorful history we get into during the podcast. The topic of this conversation is how NASA works, alternatives to the current innovation ecosystem - like crowdsourcing and philanthropy, and also the interplay between government, academia, and private i...
Jan 01, 2019•54 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode I talk to Gary Bradski about the creation of OpenCV, Willow Garage, and how to get around institutional roadblocks. Gary is perhaps best known as the creator of OpenCV - an open source tool that has touched almost every application that involves computer vision - from cat-identifying AI, to strawberry-picking robots, to augmented reality. Gary has been part of Intel Research, Stanford (where he worked on Stanley, the self driving car that won the first DARPA grand challenge), Mag...
Dec 30, 2018•59 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Link to this Episode in Overcast In this episode I talk to Jun Axup about accelerating biotechnology, how to transition people and technology from academia to startups, the intersection of silicon valley and biology, and biology research in general. Jun is a partner at IndieBio - a startup accelerator specializing in quickly taking biotechnology from academic research to products. She has both started companies and did a PhD focused on using antibodies to fight cancer. This experience gives her ...
Dec 25, 2018•59 min•Season 1Ep. 5
My Guest this week is Adam Wiggins, the cofounder of Ink & Switch — an independent industrial research lab working on digital tools for creativity and productivity. The topic of the conversation is the future of product-focused R&D, the Hollywood Model of work in tech, Ink & Switch's unique organizational structure, and whether it can be extended to other areas of research. Links Adam Wiggins' Home Page Adam on Twitter Ink & Switch's Home Page A presentation on Ink & Switch's...
Dec 18, 2018•51 min•Season 1Ep. 4
My guest this week is Brian Nosek, co-Founder and the Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. Brian is also a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Virginia doing research on the gap between values and practices, such as when behavior is influenced by factors other than one's intentions and goals. The topic of this conversation is how incentives in academia lead to problems with how we do science, how we can fix those problems, the center for open science, and...
Dec 08, 2018•58 min•Season 1Ep. 3
My Guest this week is Malcolm Handley, General Partner and Founder of Strong Atomics. The topic of this conversation is Fusion power - how it's funded now, why we don't have it yet, and how he's working on making it a reality. We touch on funding long-term bets in general, incentives inside of venture capital, and more. Show Notes Strong Atomics Malcolm on Twitter (@malcolmredheron) Fusion Never Plot Fusion Z-Pinch Experiment. ARPA-e Alpha Program ITER - International Thermonuclear Experimental ...
Dec 07, 2018•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 2
My guest this week is Mark Micire, group lead for the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA's Ames Research Center. Previously Mark was a program manager at DARPA, an entrepreneur, and a volunteer firefighter. The topic of this conversation is how DARPA works and why it's effective at generating game-changing technologies, the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA, and developing Robotics and technology in high-stakes scenarios. Links Intelligent Robotics Group DARPA Camp Fire DARPA Defense Science s ...
Dec 07, 2018•59 min•Season 1Ep. 1
