Accelerating Innovation

I think fair amount about the gap between discovery in primary research and broad scale application.

200 years passed from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovering bacteria (with a single lens microscope), to Lister building on Pasteur and deploying antiseptics, as a medical application. I wrote in a previous note about how the early 20th century saw a number of techntonic shifts with electricity, automobile and the telephone.

My dad’s generation has also experienced quite a stir,. He witnessed radar, atomic bomb, penicillin, synthetics. Now I can ask chatGPT to explain CRISPR, or build a data app. But how do we avoid Leeuwenhoek’s dilemma.

21st century may see nature’s unshackled fury. We cannot operate in 6 month Enterprise planing cycles, so we have to find compelling visions and builders. The good news is that the surface area of disruptions is increasing.

There are clear spikes in R&D: Deep models can now to deconstruct your thoughts, predict protein folding structures and write code. The key is to convert this academic energy into productivity gains. I read papers in the Scientific American on water desalinization and new battery technology.. There is an opportunity to find and support builders who operate on the edge the newest practical applications with a focus on product market fit (there is a reason we don’t give every PhD a $1M as YC for science).

With another exit, I am starting to sense how amazing entrepreneurs experiment and where to help them build faster. I’m engaged with GPs to support their portfolios and help find new investments.

In an world filled with noise (and false positives), it takes certain experience to dig beyond the pitch deck and better understand potential bets. Let’s dig in.