a16z Podcast: When (and How) Biology Becomes Engineering

The a16z Show

a16z

Culture, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Software Eating The World, Disruption, Business, Technology, Science

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hypothesis, test, revise -- that's science. Engineering, however, doesn't quite go that way: You have parts you know and understand (like legos), and then you use those parts to design and build something (like bridges). But the key is that when scie...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the A16Z podcast.
0:02.9	Today we're having another of our hallway style conversations.
0:06.1	These episodes are based on videos that are also available on our YouTube channel,
0:09.7	YouTube.com slash C slash A16Z videos.
0:13.8	What does it mean for biology to move from the high-risk,
0:16.4	painstaking realm of the laboratory bench to the lower risk,
0:19.2	get-it-done world of engineering?
0:21.1	Bioteam general partners Vijay Pond, and Jorge Condi, discussed this shift, including how
0:26.2	entrepreneurs can apply principles from one discipline to another and how it affects the
0:30.3	healthcare startups go to market.
0:32.2	Hi, I'm Vijay Pandey, a general partner on the biofund.
0:35.3	Hi, I'm Jorge Condi, also a general partner on the bio fund. And so today we Jorge Conday, also general partner on the bio fund.
0:38.0	And so today we've got one of my favorite topics to go into.
0:40.5	So, you know, we've seen companies that are built with science risk and companies, especially
0:45.2	tech companies that are engineering companies, you know, how can we take things from the science
0:50.1	curve, which is stochastic and high risk, towards something that's more like engineering,
0:54.6	more like grind it out, get it done methodical, a great deal less risk.
1:00.8	Yeah, it's funny because we talk about this concept all the time.
1:03.7	And, you know, reading a children's book to my kid, it was really interesting because
1:08.7	science was defined as this concept that you have a hypothesis
1:12.3	and then you test it and then you revise your hypothesis that's some children's book actually
1:16.3	yeah and then and then i you know i picked up an engineering book at the museum of science and they
	...

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