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Lessons - Solving Impossible Problems | Naveen Jain - Billionaire Serial Entrepreneur · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore how moonshot thinking helps entrepreneurs pursue world-changing
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  problems while building real businesses, discover how better questions unlock overlooked
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  breakthroughs, understand how exponential technology turns impossible ideas into viable
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  ventures and uncover why resilience through constant highs and lows defines lasting entrepreneurial
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  success. I feel like you could just talk about everything you're passionate about for the next
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  next five hours if you wanted to, but I appreciate the framework. I guess I want to understand how
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  you've applied it to what you're working on right now, but when you ask questions like that,
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  when you ask questions that change the lens that we look at a problem through,
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  that's a scary concept for an entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is when you're saying something
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  to the point of, well, we can go through, we can potentially change the way that we actually have
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  to consume food, that for most people is not a problem that can be solved in a lifetime.
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  So when you tackle a problem, you aren't looking to solve a problem in the next 10 years.
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  You're looking to solve something that is truly moonshot. Now, is that something in different
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  context, an entrepreneur should still think about something that can last outlast their lifetime?
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  Remember just because you have a moonshot doesn't mean that you don't have the steps along the way
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  that you actually have business around, right? So the interesting thing about moonshots is you have
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  a North Star. You have your pointing direction where you want to go. And then you say what are the
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  steps that needs to be done along the way for this to happen and everything you go along the way
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  actually creates a business. So it's not like a moonshot is a binary thing either you are in or
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  you are out. Along the moonshots, you develop tremendous amount of technologies that actually can
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  be applied for to create businesses today. And now that we are here, maybe I should actually explain
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  my latest healthcare venture and a moonshot and exactly how we build that moonshot that
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  created a business because that actually allows you to see that this is not some theoretical framework.
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  This actually works in real life, right? So most people who may not know, I started a healthcare
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  company called Wyoming. And as an Indian guy, I cannot pronounce the word V. So it's V as
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  in Victor. Don't ask me why, but that's just why would you name a company that you cannot pronounce?
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  I just fell in love with the name. So V, as you know, is life in French is life. And as Omics is
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  science. So it's really science of life. So when I started Wyoming, the fundamental belief was
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  what if we can find a way to prevent and reverse all chronic diseases, including cancer and
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  aging? So you're talking about diabetes, heart disease, you know, you look at obesity, you look
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  at depression, anxiety, Alzheimer, Parkinson's, and you go on and on and including every cancer.
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  And aging because aging is a chronic disease. If you could prevent and reverse these chronic
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  diseases, the first question was, would it help a billion people live a better life? The answer is
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  7.4 billion people, Jeff Mark. Good. Now you say, why now? Well, the now was we said, okay,
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  in the law, to solve this problem, you have to be able to digitize the human body,
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  understand everything that's happening in the human body at a molecular level, at a biochemical
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  level, everything that's going on in the human body. Well, we say, wow, that's a tough problem.
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  In the last 10 years, the cost of actually digitizing that even a single sample used to be
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  billion dollars came down to million dollars came down to 100,000 dollars. And now it is
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  six years ago was about $1,200. We said, that's too high. But we're looking at the price trend,
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  we know in the next three to five years, that will be down to $100. And I think that's affordable.
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  So we started the company believing the technology will come down and price will come down to about
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  100 bucks. Guess what happened? It came down to about $18. Right. So while we thought we were
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  10 times optimistic, it turns out we were actually five times pessimistic. And that's the power
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  of exponential technology. The next thing was we said, look, even if we could digitize the human
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  body, we won't have access to super computers. So how are we going to process this massive amount
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  of data that's coming in? And we said, look, this cloud computing is really, really starting to take
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  off. And we're going to start using this cloud computing and we launched our first thing.
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  And it cost us $40, $43 to process one single sample. We took a deep breath and say, wow, that's
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  expensive. But we knew that cost has already come down from five other dollars to $43. In the next
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  three to five years, it should come down to $10. Guess what? It came down to about $50.
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  So literally, as you start to see when you find these technology at a trend, the last part
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  was even if we process all the data, would AI be powerful enough to be able to actually analyze
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  all this data and tell you what's causing what to see? No one had argument about that was going to
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  happen. So we took that for granted. And guess what? Everybody was right that we have the technical
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  AI now, right? The last part was the most interesting part, which is why me. I am not a scientist.
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  I am not a doctor. I'm going into this area. And I don't understand anything about
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  human health. But guess what? That as opposed to being really worried that I don't know about it,
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  to me, that was the biggest asset I brought to the industry was I wasn't going to take what
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  experts have said, taken it for granted. I'm going to challenge the foundation of everything
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  that people have taken it for granted. And once you do that, you're able to look at the
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  solution that no one has ever looked at. So there were two things we saw. Number one was
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  everyone in the industry was focused on genetics, your DNA. They wanted to know if I could get
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  your DNA that's so unique to you, I will be able to tell you why you have a certain disease.
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  And being naive, I see a great asset. You DNA never changes. They say, yes, it never changes.
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  Wow, interestingly. So if I do my DNA test today, year later, I get 400 pounds. My DNA hadn't
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  changed. I get depression. I'm like, DNA didn't change. I get diabetes. My DNA didn't change.
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  Hard disease. And then I get, you know, Alzheimer Parkinson's and I die. Even after I die, 10 years
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  after I die, you take my DNA is still the same. So if DNA can't even tell you your dead or alive,
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  how can it tell you that you're healthy or sick? So if your genes are not changing,
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  what are you changing? People say, of course, you know gene expression in changing. The RNA is
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  all the changes. Holy shit, let's go. Imagine that. And we never say, how are we going to do that?
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  Nobody has ever done that. It's a great. So if we could measure the gene expression,
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  because then we know you're causing the onset of a disease or you're developing a disease,
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  how you're progressing, let's measure gene expression. So I asked, great. Don't ask me how,
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  but if you could measure all the gene expression on the human body, would that solve the problem?
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  Isn't that quite? Would it be not quite? I just saw the world hunger problem here. Well,
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  their human body is not just homogeneous coming the DNA from our mom and dad. 99% of all the
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  genes that are expressed in our body actually are not our own. They are the 100 trillion microbiome
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  that's in our gut, in our mouth, in our nose, in our ear, all over our body, 100 trillion of them.
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  In fact, of all the genes that are expressed, 99% are actually coming from these microbiome.
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  So I started reading that, you know, I went back to my research and say, all right, obesity and
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  microbiome, obesity is connected to the microbiome. Wow, it's interesting. Diabetes and microbiome.
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  Literally, you can Google anything you want. Parkinson's and microbiome. Parkinson's
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  starts in the gut 15 years before you see the symptom. And Simon and my background cancer and
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  microbiome and literally every disease is directly connected to microbiome. And at that point,
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  most people would say, you're a government, right? I found it. And that's the time you ask yourself
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  and say, you must be a complete moron. If everyone believes that is the problem and their
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  tens of companies doing the same thing, why is this problem not getting solved then?
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  Then you go back to the framework. What questions are they asking in microbiome?
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  Well, it turns out everyone was asking exactly the same wrong question, which was, I want to know
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  what organisms are in your gut. I want to know what organisms are in the people's gut who have
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  different diseases. Now, don't laugh. I have no idea what these organisms are. In my mind,
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  I'm thinking these organisms are like a tiny humans doing shit in my body. I say good.
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  In that case, wouldn't it be possible that could be thousands of different organisms doing exactly
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  the same thing that's making me sick? So I take two people with diabetes completely different
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  organism yet producing exactly the same thing that's causing me a disease. So I think we need to
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  focus on what they are doing, not who they are, because the same organism could do something good
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  in Scott's gut, because it's in right environment, a nice friendly environment, and the same organism
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  can make me sick because my environment and the gut is fighting amongst each other.
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  Just like I thought, human being, you take a good person, put them in a bad environment,
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  they do bad behavior, you take a bad person, put them in a good environment, they do good behavior.
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  So let's focus on what they are doing, not who they are, and that was fundamentally the
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  I ask and say, what if we can find out what these microbiomes producing, and we can find out
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  every gene that's expressing the human body, and then we look at the totality of that,
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  would that solve the problem? Everyone say if you could do that, this problem can get so great.
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  So I went on a mission trying to find this technology that could do that.
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  Kid, you know, I went to every single university, and first my first stop was by the way,
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  NASA JPL, as you know I was coming from the space side, I knew these guys have tons of technology
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  they developed, and they're sending the rovers to the Mars trying to find the them organism on the
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  Mars, they have to have solved this problem. So I go there at NASA JPL, and I'm like talking to
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  the director, talking to scientists, and they're saying, we don't care, we just need to find out
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  there's something there, we don't really care what they're doing. And I say, you guys have a bunch of
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  morons, I'm going to go to the NASA Houston, they probably got this figured out, and then NASA
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  Houston, and I get to touch all the moon rocks, I get to play with all the cool stuff, but it's
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  still no technology. So I now at a NASA Kennedy Space Center, no good. So I started going to the
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  national labs, I went to Lawrence, Berkeley, Lawrence, Livermore, and I'm like everyone, I'm starting
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  to get like people say, yeah, it's possible, but we haven't done it. I am now at Los Alamos National
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  Lab. And by the way, if you don't know Los Alamos National Lab is famous for, come on Scott,
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  work with me. I don't know, I don't know what I'm so enthralled by this story. I have so many
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  questions. What is what is what is what is the lab famous for? I can't remember. Atomic developing
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  atomic bomb. Oh, okay, so I should know that. That's that's my mistake. Okay, that's my bad. Okay,
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  so they they they have a little bit of technology there. A little bit. So they basically even though
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  it was called Manhattan Project, it wasn't done in Manhattan. It was done in Los Alamos. Right.
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  So anyway, so these guys, I was there and now I am like at the end of my road and I'm thinking,
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  God, I don't know this problem is solvable or not, but I'm going to throw out a challenge to
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  all the scientists and say, is there anyone out here? Let alone what these guys are doing. Can
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  they actually tell me if these guys, what is a bacteria? What is a virus? So that when you are
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  sick, you can find out you need antibiotics or not. Now, these one guy, so I have 12 scientists
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  pitched me like a sharp tank and they all have the idea. I can have a 3D microscope. I can do this.
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  I can do that. And one guy comes up and says, you know, the not only I can tell you what my
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  what whether it's a bacterial virus, I can tell you exactly what they're producing. I can even
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  tell you whether antibiotics are going to work or not going to work or I can tell you which
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  antibiotics are going to work and I can tell you exactly what they are. And my first reaction
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  was really, so what project are you working on? And the guy looks at me and he says, what's your
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  security clearance level? And then he says, stop. And he says, it doesn't matter. Even if you
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  told me you work at CIA, I can tell you that you don't have a security clearance level. So stop
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  asking me questions. And what do you see when I can entrepreneur? I'm like bullshit. Yeah,
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  it's nice to know. Tell me. Show me. Yeah, bullshit. I said, totally fucking bullshit. You
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  giving this my security clearance level. I said, forget it. I don't need to know what you're
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  working on. Can you tell me how it works? And it's of course I can tell you. And he goes on to
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  describe what they have done in the 10 years, developing a technology to be able to analyze RNA.
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  And basically it is a bio defense project. And I just all I know that is basically to protect our
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  country and bio weapons. Right. You could argue a lot of cynics out there and say, protect
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  they probably were developing bio weapons. Not by far. I'm not going to get. But let's just assume
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  they're protecting our country from bad, bad actors. And if they're protecting our country from
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  bad actors, what problem they have to solve? Which is, hey, if there was a terror, we don't care
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  what all millions of them. We need to know what they just produce so we can build the antidote for
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  it. Right. So they needed to solve the problem that I was trying to solve. And they literally,
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  so it took me six months to actually license the technology and hired the guy who was working on
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  it, got him out of his federal job and he's my chief science officer. Right. And then we said,
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  and then I said, God, now we have the technology to analyze this. I need the AI guy. So what do I do?
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  I hire the guy, the head of IBM Watson to quit his job, bring his whole team to go to the AI for me.
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  And that's literally so what we started, why? So what point I was trying to make was we asked
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  a slightly different question. And that's what allowed us to solve the problem that had remained
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  unsolved. And the last part of why me is really important. And I think just from the perspective of
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  any business you start, Scott, it is going to have ups and downs. And I think you probably know
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  every entrepreneur who tells you they don't have ups and downs either lying or they just don't know
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  what the fuck is going on in their business. Every business goes through. In fact, almost every
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  successful business has gone through what I would call near death experience, Facebook,
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  Oracle, Apple, I mean, literally Apple, Amazon, everyone went through the near death experience,
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  every one of these businesses. Right. Apple was almost a dead company Microsoft saved them.
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  Now they're taking it. That's right. I mean, every one of these companies go through near death
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  experience. In fact, what I, you know, I don't know if you ever follow me, I always tell people
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  life of an entrepreneur is being alive. How do you know your alive? You have a heartbeat. It goes
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  up and down, up and down. When you are, when you have a smooth line, you're dead. So if you're looking
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  to live a life, which is smooth, you're looking to live a life of a dead person. You're not looking
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  to live life or heartache. The beauty of the thing is when you are down, all you have to do is
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  hunker down and know the next beat is going to be up. And when you're on the top of that beat,
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  never get too cocky because remember the winter is coming and winter shall come.
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  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you
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  never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links
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  in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.